But monsters are always hungry, darling

          @fiendfyreheart

          elliot has trouble sleeping some nights. she thinks it’s the house, at first, still unfamiliar and new and strange in a way their old home hadn’t been. (she wouldn’t blame him for it, if that were the case. sometimes, she begins to doubt her decision, how quickly she’d made it, how she’d packed them all up herself and off they went. you’re very young, the lawyers told her, are you sure you’re making the right choice?)

           she checks on him again, peeking through the door so she doesn’t bother him. he’s asleep, finally, and she drifts downstairs instead of back to her own bedroom. in the kitchen, with its wide windows and breakfast nook big enough for six people, she flicks on a light, slides onto one of the stools. her laptop is where she’d left it after dinner, and the blue glow is familiar, comforting. (you work too much, elliot had said to her, once. the truth of it is, she doesn’t know what she’d do with herself if she didn’t.) 

          when she hears a noise in the hall, she looks up, expects to see sleep-rumpled elliot standing there. instead, it’s roman. she doesn’t ask what he’s doing up; his schedule, she thinks, is as strange and unpredictable as hers. 

          “everything’s fine,” he doesn’t worry, but she wants to say so all the same. “just finishing some work.”

            restlessness keeps him up at night;  it’s something that he’s grown accustomed to working around.  keeping himself occupied.  the layout of the house was familiar but not as much as he would like it to be,  and he memorizes each door,  each entryway,  everything that one should know when keeping watch of a house and it’s occupants. 

          she keeps a weird schedule as well  --  elliot seems to prefer retreating to his room at night,  get up to find josephine occasionally.  they were very close,  but he understood the bond  --  they were all they had,  despite the people who kept claiming to be forever a part of their life.  he already had to hoist out one person claiming to be a relative and not understanding that didn’t entitle them to money,  relative or not. 

          the phone rings, startlingly loud in the kitchen –– they still have a landline, which has always seemed silly, and seems only more so now, like they’re in the middle of a movie –– and she moves toward it quickly, clumsily, hands shaking. 

            a look to roman, again, like she’s unsure, even though she isn’t, and, “–– hello?”

          gently,  he picks up the other phone and listens.  the voices on the other end  --  muffled.  but he can tell that there are two distinct voices.  the instructions come after the threats  --  what they’ll do to elliot if their wishes aren’t met.  the money  --  three million dollars  --  and a location.  

          she does hear it. she looks over at him, his hands still covering his face, and reaches out to place a hand against his back. (this is –– difficult, she knows, for him too. as much as roman likes to pretend otherwise, she knows he cares about elliot. it’s hard not to. elliot has that effect on people; he always has.) 

           “we will.” there’s no part of this without her. “okay?”

          he looks at her,  and he tries to put something in his voice,  but nothing comes.  nothing has to  --  the phone begins to ring.

          he doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t expect him to. she wouldn’t, if he told her the same thing. he’d tried, at least, and done more than she had. 

          when he slides the plate of food toward her, she knows the conversation is over. she takes it from him, looks down at it, and feels as though she might be sick again. “okay,” still, she tries. a bite of toast, ignoring the acidic taste in the back of her throat, the thought of elliot out there, alone. 

            if it doesn’t, she thinks but doesn’t say, then i will make it happen. impossible, and stupid, but –– it’s her brother. he’s already been gone too long. she doesn’t want to think what they might’ve done to him already. (he’ll be okay. he’ll come home, and he’ll be okay. everything will go back to how it was before and they’ll –– move on from it. they have to.) 

           “–– it’s not your fault.” he hadn’t known. she hadn’t known. she blames herself, but she does not blame roman. “i don’t want to hear you say anything like it.”

          he pauses,  his back to her.  it’s not right of him to argue with her at this moment but he can feel the retaliation on the tip of his tongue.  it is partly his fault  --  mostly his fault  -  because he let himself get distracted and fall for the trap they had played. 

            she knows this house like the back of her hand –– a family house, even if she hadn’t seen it for years before they moved in, even if it had been sitting big and empty and lonesome before she’d told elliot, all of ten years old, that they were moving up here –– but it’s hard, now, to not feel as though she’s lost in it. she’s so used to the noise of it that this sudden silence is smothering. (elliot is quiet, but there’s always been some sign of him somewhere. music from behind his bedroom door, his books left on the coffee table in the living room, his homework in the kitchen. it’s all there now, too, but it’s –– different. it’s different without him here, too.) 

           “okay.” it feels wrong, sitting here. waiting. like she’s letting him down, somehow. he’s out there, alone, and she’s here, acting as though something will happen on its own. “i’m not –– i can’t wait forever.”

          he moves around and makes her the easy toast,  wishes it was something a little more complicated  --  something to keep his hands busy.  to keep from thinking of it all.  it weighed so heavy on him  --  he put the blame on his shoulders and it wasn’t going to come up until elliot was safe and sound.  (  he would be found.  he would be okay.  ) 

          she knows roman, even if he’s kept his distance, or tried to. (she doesn’t know if he had a job like this before, or if he merely stumbled into this one with the pair of them. not something she ever would’ve wanted for herself, but she had elliot to think about. he’d been younger, then. he was still too young now.) 

            she knows roman, and she knows that he’s going to keep pushing until she agrees. and it’s easy to, or as easy as it can be. another couple of steps closer to him and she presses her forehead against his arm for just a moment before she pulls away. 

           “okay,” she doesn’t want to, but it’s better to agree, even if she just pushes the food around her plate. 

         he leads her to the kitchen,  ghosting his hand over her back to point in her the right direction.  as if she didn’t know  --  but she had been wandering around,  to his room,  to hers,  looking like she could find him in the house herself.  it broke his heart.  

          maybe roman knows something she doesn’t, but for now, she’s too exhausted to ask. there’s an entire past there that she knows nothing about and has asked very little of because roman deserves that privacy, the anonymity of it. she knows he doesn’t want to talk about it and that’s –– it’s always been enough for her. if he knows this man from that time, then it’s for him to tell her. she doesn’t want to pry. 

          “i’m fine.” still, when he reaches out, she goes a little closer to him. the house doesn’t feel right without elliot; too big, too quiet. “or –– i don’t know. no. no, thank you.”

          she needs someone right now  --  he can be that for her.  he’s kept them both at shoulder length but with all the time that he’s spent here,  it’s been hard to keep it at simply a professional level.  he cared about both of them and if anything happened to elliot  --  

          she shouldn’t let roman deal with it, but she does. she gives a single statement, a recount of events that doesn’t add up to much, and that’s that. she disappears further into the house and, from the landing on the stairs, listens to roman, the detectives, the police. she knows this isn’t good. she knows it. but there’s a part of her, too, that’s desperate to believe otherwise, that has to hold onto the hope that elliot will come home unharmed. 

          when they’re gone, and it’s just the pair of them again, she comes back downstairs, watches him from the doorway. 

          “i don’t know him.” she has no reason to trust him; she’s still not wholly convinced he doesn’t have anything to do with it, no matter what roman says. “so why would i trust him?”

          he’s probably being too cryptic,  so he stops talking about it altogether,  waving it off.  (  dangerous,  he knows,  but in what ways  --  he doesn’t know how.  but threat level vs. his activity wasn’t really malicious,  it was martyr.  )

          he takes her home.  

          there is nothing said.  he deals with everything;  the police, the detectives,  the people that want to help but ultimately he doesn’t know if they can.  when had he heard of hostage situation going right?  but he wouldn’t voice that to her.  he didn’t want to believe it,  either.  (  he’s half tempted to call his mother,  halfway around the world,  to ask if she can come and do this.  fix this.  but he knows he’s not supposed to contact her for her own safety and his and that was how it was going to be for now.  )

          she whirls around at the sound of his voice. he’d seemed innocent enough before, someone she’d seen and never spoken to, but now –– suspicion and a newfound paranoia spike in her chest, and she’s stalking toward him before she can think better of it. 

            “you ––” he’d been talking to her, before, and then he’d gone away. she’d walked away to look for elliot, then, and hadn’t seen him again until now, out here, and it seems too convenient, suddenly, like he’d been there purposefully. “–– how do you know?”

          she can’t let elliot go. she won’t, she won’t, she can’t. she pushes herself off the ground and hurtles herself forward again, all adrenaline and wild energy, throwing herself toward the back of the man who’d pushed her aside. elliot is fighting, too, but he’s not much of a match –– same as she isn’t, apparently, and that burns, too, feeling so helpless. 

           she doesn’t know where roman is, why it concerns her so much, where he might’ve run off to. it worries her, really, because she is so used to roman trailing after them, always being there, steady as anything. 

           the man catches her again, mutters something about her being more trouble than she’s worth, but it only makes her fight harder. she keeps her eyes on elliot, desperate, and she’s not supposed to let something like this happen ––

           “don’t fucking touch him ––”

          there’s a car there, waiting, and it isn’t theirs. she doesn’t recognize it, just as she doesn’t recognize the valet out front anymore, their faces different. he can’t get in the car, he can’t get in the car, he can’t get in the car –– 

           the man tosses her to the ground again, harder this time, and when she m cdsoves to get up again, there’s his boot in her face, knocking her back. ears ringing, blood in her teeth, she can’t push herself forward no matter how much she’s willing herself to. she tries, still. she does. 

           it’s not enough. one moment, again, and elliot’s gone. just like that. 

          roman is there, suddenly, holding out a hand, and she’s so stunned by it that, for a moment, she doesn’t know what to say. she blinks, touches her mouth, everything throbbing. 

           “they took him.” it doesn’t sound real; it doesn’t feel real. “they –– he’s gone.”

          he didn’t see the car and he didn’t see faces,  and the man that he had already thrown to the ground was gone.  he felt useless,  like the whole point of his existence was broken up into nothing.  he was supposed to keep both of them safe.  he was supposed to protect them.  that was what he was supposed to do  --  

          “  we’ll get him.  we’ll  --  “  he pulls out his phone and dials a few numbers.  the emergency line.  “  are you hurt?  “  

          she watches him go, a little disappointed. by the time he disappears through the crowd –– an easy enough feat at a gathering this size –– she’s already searching for elliot, no longer where he was when she’d last seen him. she sees roman, briefly, but he’s preoccupied as he always is; they rarely speak when they’re at events like these, something he claims distracts him. still, as she passes, she tells him she’s ready to go, and that’s that, and he’s gone, too. figures.

           weaving through the crowd, she finally finds elliot. she knows she should make him stay alongside her at things like these, like she used to, but he seems as enthusiastic about that as she would expect him to be. (or –– really, if it wasn’t for appearance’s sake, if she didn’t have this so heavily ingrained in her, if it wasn’t habit by now, she’d let him stay home. do what he wants instead of what used to be required of them. she doesn’t need to do these sorts of things, either, but –– it’s comfortable, by now. commonplace.) 

          “let’s get out of here, huh?” he’s too tall, now, for her to wind an arm around his shoulders, but she does reach up to ruffle his hair. they weave their way through the throngs of people, and she’s suggesting a burger place on the way home, somewhere quiet and normal, and she should see it. she should, because she’s been looking out for elliot her entire life, and even before new york, and roman, and a security system, and self-defense classes, and all of it, but when it comes down to it (the sort of moment she’s always feared, one that’s never seemed quite real), she doesn’t see it coming. she misses it entirely. 

           one moment, elliot is beside her as they near the doors and the car waiting outside, and the next, he isn’t. there’s a trio of men in masks and it’s like something out of an action movie (this isn’t my life it isn’t it couldn’t be) and, before she can think better of it, she’s throwing herself at them, furious and frantic, trying to fight her way back to her brother. 

          “elliot!” one of them catches her and she thrashes, still, all nails and teeth, even as he throws her back down to the ground. “elliot!”

          he’s not concerned about the man following right behind him as he races through the crowd,  trying to find josephine.  he’s calling himself a million things as he does so  --  stupid foolish idiot dumb  --  he shouldn’t have let her out of his sight.  either of them.  it was a distraction that happened in perfect planning,  and he had gotten too complacent with them.  too distracted.  and if he didn’t get either of them  -- 

          he pushes people down to get through them,  uncaring.  a waiter spills a pile of drinks and the official security guards try and stop him,  two of them,  but he’s quick to wrangle out of their grasp.  but it’s all wasting time.  

           “don’t get all sentimental on me now.” she says, gently, but she knows what he means. they’ve been through a lot together –– not just a marriage, not just four children, but the rest of it, too, whirlwind as it is –– but she wouldn’t trade it for anything, and he knows that. knows how much she loves him, and all she’d do for him, and all she’d do for their family. “haven’t i told you that before?”

          she breathes with him, fingers carding through his hair, still settled comfortably in his lap. it’s a nice quiet. a peaceful sort of togetherness. maybe she’d had more extravagant plans for them when they’d finally gotten here –– he’s right, and she had planned ahead, bought something new just for the sake of it, because she still likes the way it makes his eyes light up –– but she likes this, too. “–– i love you.” 

          “good.” she leans into him easily, happily, pleased that he’s changed his mind. (maybe later, or tomorrow, but for now –– she wants just the pair of them, no distractions, because they haven’t had that in a long time.)