NEXARERUM

𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙄𝙉𝙏𝙀𝙉𝙎𝙀 𝙑𝙄𝙊𝙇𝙀𝙉𝘾𝙀 𝙃𝙀 𝙒𝘼𝙎 𝙀𝙓𝙋𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝘿𝙊𝙀𝙎𝙉'𝙏 𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙀. the last time he'd seen her she had been contorted in expression, almost inhuman in appearance. she'd been angry, no, furious. but now that malice is gone, replaced with something emptier. her voice fades in and out, the taste of blood still assaulting his mouth. the pain is unbearable and cruel. bringing him back hadn't been some selfless action. she didn't have a change of heart. dark eyes narrow as he stares at the tree line. selfish. selfish. selfish. anger bubbles deep in his chest, teeth grinding. he scared her, she says. it got too quiet, she says. her tone is flat but a hint of sadness remains. nails drag the grass, ripping up each blade violently. she doesn't help, instead settles under a tree like a child. the silence that follows is uncomfortable, heavy. he laughs again, this time wickedly so. it doesn't even sound like him. beady eyes bore into her from his spot on the forest floor, burning embers in his pupils.

❛ i scared you ? f - fuckin' rich. ❜ if ghost is capable of sympathy there is none to be found. ❛ you kill me . . . then want to pout . . . pathetic. you should've . . . let me die. ❜ he laughs through his teeth. wait, did she say eldritch ? his ribs cause him to groan in pain, cutting off his laughter. finally he manages to roll onto his side. crimson drops slide down his forehead and onto his cheek. bringing his knee's to his chest he curls into a ball, panting as the effort causes him to tire quickly. ghost is certain it'll take weeks, maybe months to recover if he ever does. she's cruel . . . not kind, not merciful.

❛ why didn't you just let me fuckin' die . . . ❜ the words carry in the wind as the trees rustle around them. it almost sounds like a stranger . . . ghost's voice cracking, wavering shakily. clear liquid mixes with blood as it slides down his cheeks. his form curls tighter into itself. ❛ i was fuckin' free . . . and you drag me back here. ❜ trembling hands press into his eyes. the killer's body shakes like a leaf in a rain storm, unable to control his body. when he finally opens his eyes the edges of his vison begin to blur. head pounding he's certain he's never had a headache this massive in his life. he just wants to go back to sleep. it was so peaceful. forcing himself to uncurl he takes his time, slowly managing to get onto his bottom and sit up. he turns, peering at her form under the tree, eyes black.

dragging himself toward another tree he forces down his tears, the agony in his chest and leg overwhelming. but he still has one decent leg. after a blood curling scream he manages to make it to his feet, body shaking. but his eyes never meet her's, turning his back to her as he begins to walk hobble toward the tree line in the opposite direction. truthfully he isn't sure he'll make it, hell he probably won't even make it out of the woods but at this point he doesn't care. if he stays here a second longer he isn't sure he'll ever get to leave.

The confession slips out before she can sharpen it into something defensive. Her gaze drops toward the ruined earth between them rather than his face. It’s easier that way. Because the truth is ugly. When his heart stopped she had felt relief for exactly half a second. Then terror swallowed it whole. Ghost curls tighter into himself as he speaks again, trembling so violently she can see it even from where she sits, and the sight digs beneath her ribs in a way she immediately resents. His voice cracks around the words I was free and something in her expression flickers before hardening again almost instantly. Tears mix with blood down his face while he shakes apart on the forest floor and she hates that part too the horribly human part of herself that wants to move toward him instead of away. “You think death is freedom because you’ve never had it taken from you before,” the witch says quietly. “Not really.” Her throat tightens around the next words. “I have.” The wind shifts harder through the trees then, carrying the scent of wet dirt and blood and crushed greenery between them. Gabriella lowers her head briefly against the bark behind her, eyes slipping shut for one exhausted second as memories threaten to surface where she doesn’t want them; lungs filling with water after the crash, her own blood bubbling hot down her neck in the woods outside Salem, the unbearable snap back afterward every single time no matter how badly she wanted it to stop. The silence after dying had always been peaceful. Coming back never was.

“You don’t understand what it’s like,” she murmurs. “To finally get quiet and know it won’t last.” Ghost forces himself upright then and the sound he makes rips through the clearing so sharply her entire body goes rigid on instinct. That scream doesn’t sound survivable. It echoes through the trees like an injured animal being skinned alive and for one horrible second the thing beneath the forest stirs eagerly in response. Gabriella feels the roots twitch under the ground. Her fingers dig hard into the bark beneath her palm. “No,” she whispers under her breath not to him. He gets to his feet anyway. Every movement looks wrong, agonizing, his body swaying violently while blood continues dripping sluggishly down his face and soaking through his clothes. The leg she destroyed drags beneath him almost uselessly. His ribs shift unevenly when he breathes. He should not be standing. And still he tries to leave. Something cold and unpleasant twists through her chest as he turns his back to her without looking once in her direction. The sight unsettles her more than the violence did. There’s something final about it. Not dramatic this time. Not manipulative. Just exhausted.

Done. The forest notices too. Branches creak softly overhead. The woods stretch endless beyond the tree line, dark and damp and hungry in that ancient way they’ve always been. Gabriella knows these woods better than he does. In his condition he won’t make it far. Maybe not even another twenty minutes before blood loss or shock finally drags him back down again. A crueler part of her thinks maybe that’s what he wants. The thought makes her angry enough to stand. “You are unbelievably selfish,” she says suddenly, voice sharper now, the first real heat she’s shown since morning broke across the clearing. Leaves rustle violently overhead in answer to the shift in her tone. “You think dying means you get to leave everything behind and everybody else just…” She cuts herself off hard enough her teeth click together. Her breathing grows uneven for a moment. “You don’t get to decide that,” she says quieter, but far more dangerous. “You don’t get to force people to watch you die and call it freedom like it’s some kind of kindness.” The irony of the statement hits her immediately and visibly. Her expression twists for half a heartbeat before smoothing itself flat again.

"My thoughts exactly, let's have us a look," Jin answered as Gabriella pulled away and moved toward the door, smirking at her, an air of shared knowing apparently between them, perhaps more-- he could tell that Gabriella felt it, too,  from every nerve in their body to the depths of their mysterious Souls, that there was far more at play here tonight than sheer coincidence. 

"Now what do we have here?" Jin said a few minutes later, after he had stepped up onto the ship's deck, moving in a fashion that was both predacious and regal, especially with Gabriella at his side,  the two of them monarchs of the damned among their cursed subjects that had, too, gathered. 

Across the rippling waves of the Pacific, beneath the cloudy night sky, a dark plume of smoke is seen rising from the Isle of Yakushima, and beneath that plume, a strange, bright, violet light pulses.

"That's the docks at Miyanoura burning, sure of it, but it's only the tip of the iceberg," Yoshi says, while they fidgeted with a tablet-like device in their hands, "something's wrong across the entire island, nothing's coming out, no calls, no internet traffic, no radio signals." Yoshi brings up a screen of radar traffic on the device, showing the island and the surrounding waters. "Not seeing any outbound planes or ships on radar either! It's like the island turned into a dead zone just an hour ago."

"How 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲," Jin curiously eyes the smoke and lights in the distance, and wastes no time as he smoothly demands, "One of you take a closer look at Miyanoura."

Yoshi and the other Bount--the likes of Mabashi, Sawatari, Go Koga, Utagawa, and the twins, Ho and Ban-- exchange silent glances and glares with each other, waiting for someone to step up and heed Jin. They all wait a little too long for Jin's liking, however, and he inevitably chooses for them, saying, "𝙈𝙖𝙗𝙖𝙨𝙝𝙞,  you take a closer look."

Jin shakes his head and says, offhandedly to Gabriella, "Most of the creatures you see here have lived for hundreds upon hundreds of years, some have even lived for a thousand or more, and still, they sometimes act like 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗻."

Mabashi fights back the urge to groan, the urge to complain, the urge to speak their mind; they fight back these urges because they were all too aware of what happened when someone of 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 ignored a direct order from Jin, and they were not keen on crossing that 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 bridge tonight.  "Right, right, right, gimme a few seconds here, Kariya, I'm on it," Mabashi says in a somewhat contrived but seemingly relaxed tone, stepping to the very front of the ship where they focus their gaze more firmly in the direction of the port town. A subdued, but visible flash of Reiatsu envelops Mabashi, deep and orange-hued, like the glow that suddenly overtakes his eyes as he channels his preternatural sense of sight to scry on the port town ahead.  Soon enough, Mabashi starts describing the scene revealed to him. "Fire, 𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘵 fire? Lots of damaged buildings. I see bodies, and pieces of bodies, some burnt, others cut up. Good grief, looks like we missed one hell of a party!"

As Mabashi laughs and continues listing off minor details to the other Bount, Jin, too, steps closer to the front of the ship, his eyes still trained on that violet inferno raging in the distance.

"For this to occur a mere hour before we make landfall on Yakushima, well, it almost feels like 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 or 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 is sending 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲," Jin says to Gabriella, sounding both serious and yet vaguely amused, "whether it's meant to 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 us off or 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗱 us further, I cannot say, but this is surely no 𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗉𝖾𝗇𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾."

Jin then looks away from the fire, to Gabriella, piercing crimson eyes holding her in their gaze, "not to mention, there's something about that 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦, something about the 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘸 that stands out to me."

Jin grins, as a dark light infused his expression. 

"I've watched you perform your 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚏𝚝, your 𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚒𝚌𝚜, more than a handful of times now, and I notice in them a distinct 𝚏𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎, 𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 if you will, that mirrors the 𝚏𝚊𝚜𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 qualities of your Soul."

 A gust of wind comes forth, one that, briefly, wraps itself around Gabriella's hands, a touch that was dead-cold, yet tender, "In that glow, I'm almost reminded of 𝚢𝚘𝚞, and the spells you loose from those 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕 fingers of yours." 

Jin gestures with a hand toward the fire in the distance, though he doesn't look away from Gabriella. 

"We're still far from that blaze, but if you look closely, I wonder, do you see the same 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜? Or do you perhaps 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 them from here, instead? It's clearly the 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚏𝚝 of someone far less 𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 and 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 than you, but it's similar nonetheless. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, isn't it?"

The smell reached them only faintly across the ocean, but Gabriella caught more than smoke upon the wind. There was residue buried beneath it. Spiritual contamination. Agony. Fear. The remnants of something violent enough to scar the air itself. When Jin mentioned her magic, she felt her stomach tighten almost imperceptibly. Her emerald hues remained fixed on the inferno ahead as the cold currents summoned by his Doll curled around her hands, gliding over her skin with that now-familiar contradiction of dead chill and sensual tenderness. Usually she would have smiled at the touch, perhaps leaned into it, perhaps teased him for the way he always found excuses to keep part of himself against her, but this time her focus lingered entirely on the island ahead.

Because he was right. She could feel it too. Not exactly her craft. Not perfectly. But enough to disturb her. Enough to stir the nameless thing sleeping deep within her Soul. For several moments, the witch said nothing at all. Her expression slowly shifted from intrigue into concentration, her posture subtly straightening as she listened to the island in the only way someone like her could. Most people would never understand what she meant by that. To ordinary humans, Yakushima would simply appear as a place consumed by violence and fire. But Gabriella had spent her entire life surrounded by haunted places and restless things. She understood that locations held memory. Forests especially. Ancient land absorbed emotion the same way old stone absorbed blood.

And Yakushima was ancient. Old enough to remember terrible things. The realization settled heavily inside her chest. “I do feel it,” she finally admitted, her voice softer now, stripped of most of its earlier amusement. “It isn’t identical to my magic, but it’s close enough that I understand why you noticed.” Her eyes narrowed faintly as another pulse of violet light rolled through the smoke. The sensation brushing against her senses was difficult to articulate. Fractured. Jagged. Like raw power forced violently through an unsteady hand.

“The energy feels unstable,” she continued carefully. “Emotional. Like someone forcing far too much power through themselves without knowing how to survive it.” The words left her more quietly than intended because the feeling was painfully familiar. Gabriella inhaled slowly through her nose, and immediately regretted it. Even diluted by distance and sea air, the spiritual residue clinging to the island carried traces of overwhelming emotion. Rage. Terror. Grief. So much grief.

Her fingers tightened subtly around the railing while the silver earrings at her ears flickered faintly beneath the moonlight. The force buried inside her responded instinctively to what called from the island. She could feel it shifting beneath her skin with growing interest, like some ancient creature lifting its head after sensing another presence nearby. Hungry curiosity stirred beneath her ribs. Recognition. The witch hated how familiar it felt.

“It reminds me less of disciplined witchcraft,” she said after a long pause, “and more of what happens when power finds someone before wisdom does.” Her lips parted slightly before she added more quietly, “Or when something ancient answers someone vulnerable enough to listen.” That thought lingered between her and Jin with far more weight than she intended. Because she knew exactly what that looked like. A frightened girl. A forest soaked in blood. Rage strong enough to crack something open inside reality itself. And then something answering from the dark.

Her expression dimmed almost imperceptibly as old memories flickered behind her eyes. Salem. Halloween night. The sound of screaming and tearing flesh beneath moonlight. The shadow of herself waiting patiently among the trees. The violet fire on Yakushima pulsed again. Gabriella swallowed slowly. “This doesn’t feel like a warning,” she said at last, quieter now. “Warnings are cleaner than this. Deliberate. Controlled.” Her fingers rose unconsciously toward one of her earrings, brushing lightly against the silver. “This feels desperate.”

The word hung in the air. Desperate enough to destroy an island. Desperate enough to answer anyone willing to beg loudly enough. Behind them, Mabashi continued nervously describing corpses and ruined buildings while the others exchanged increasingly unsettled looks, but she barely heard them anymore. Her attention remained fixed entirely on the burning shoreline and the terrible resonance buried beneath it.

Then she became aware of Jin’s gaze again. Studying her. Curious as always. Hungry as always. She turned slowly to face him fully, moonlight catching the sharp green of her eyes while the wind moved through her hair. Against the darkness of the sea and the glow of distant fire, Jin looked almost unreal standing there beside her. Pale skin touched silver by moonlight. Crimson eyes reflecting the inferno. Ancient predator wrapped in effortless elegance.

𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝘾𝙀𝙉𝙏 𝙊𝙁 𝙄𝙍𝙊𝙉 𝘼𝙎𝙎𝙐𝙇𝙏𝙎 𝙃𝙄𝙎 𝙉𝙊𝙎𝙀. the last thing he remembers is his chest rattling. the already dim light from the moon dimming until there is nothing. silence. ghost's body is pliant, his faint heartbeat now silent. finally the beast has been slain. but not for long. his body remains still but only for a beat before jerking under her. his hands twist and crack, the noise bouncing off the canopy of trees surrounding them. stillness washes over him again suddenly, hands and limbs going limp. had it not worked ? the blood slides easily down his dry throat, the taste the first sensation he recognizes. disgusting. dark eyes snap open, lips parting as the once corpse now gasps for breath. his instinct is to sit up but he can't, pain wracking his body. fuck. he's back. but how ? confusion and fear fills his eyes. he's supposed to be dead. he was dead . . . wasn't he ? frantic eyes dart around before landing on her. his blood runs cold, his chest still rising and falling quickly despite broken ribs. breathing hurts, existing hurts. he should be fucking dead.

❛ y - you . . . what the fuck ?! ❜ dark brows knit in anger. blood smears her mouth . . . the blood he tasted. did she . . . ? the full extent of her abilities had never been explained or shown to him, not that he ever asked. can she really . . . ? she really can't get enough . . . she may have surpassed even his depravity. ❛ b - bring me back just to fuckin' kill me again . . . fuck you. ❜ his tone is tired, clearly too beaten and bruised to put up any sort of fight. only someone interested in torture would bring back someone as fucked up as him. eyes shut tight, the pain almost unbearable now. just breathing has goosebumps spreading across his arms. a growl sounds from ghost, animalistic in nature. he forces himself on his stomach, crying out from the pain. nails dig into the dirt, tugging himself onto a tiny centimeter forward. his leg drags behind him, his head falling forward. forehead presses against the grass, his body shuddering.

❛ heh . . . haha . . . hahaha !! ❜ the laughter is anything but warm. it sounds inhuman coming from ghost. his fist slams hard into the dirt, still ignoring the way his ribs scream at him in pain. ❛ this . . . was the only way it was going to end. ❜ he whispers, the little energy he'd had spent on turning himself over. eye lids heavy he can feel his world spinning again. he's going to pass out again and maybe if he's lucky enough he won't wake up again . . . but somehow ghost doubts that.

Hazel hues fixed on him from across the clearing while blood remains smeared dark against her mouth like evidence she cannot wipe away fast enough, because she feels the exact moment recognition hits him the panic blooming sharp behind his eyes, the instinctive horror of realizing he remembers dying and somehow waking afterward anyway and she hates that she understands the look on his face so intimately; the confusion, the violation of it, the unbearable awareness that something impossible has crawled into the natural order and bent it open with bloody fingers. When he demands what the fuck she did, the words breaking apart through pain and exhaustion, she only blinks slowly at him while the wind moves weakly through the trees, carrying the copper scent of his blood between them, and for a second she thinks he looks more frightened now than when the forest had nearly crushed him alive beneath its roots. That thought twists somewhere ugly inside her chest.

He notices the blood at her mouth almost immediately and she sees the realization settle in piece by piece, watches suspicion sharpen despite how broken he is, and when he spits out that she brought him back just to kill him again there’s enough bitterness in his voice to almost sound genuine even through the exhaustion dragging him back toward unconsciousness; she says nothing while he forces himself onto his stomach, trembling violently from the effort, ruined leg dragging uselessly behind him as he claws through mud and dead leaves with stubborn desperation that borders on pathetic, and the sound he makes when pain tears through his ribs again echoes strangely through the clearing, animalistic and raw enough that something deep beneath the forest floor stirs in response before settling once more. Then he laughs. Not warmly, not even sanely, but with the kind of hollow amusement that comes from someone standing at the edge of themselves too long, and when his fist slams into the dirt hard enough to shake leaves loose from nearby branches her eyes flick downward reflexively before lifting back to him as he whispers that this was the only way it was ever going to end.

Silence follows him for several long seconds. The morning feels dimmer somehow, muted beneath the weight of what almost happened here. Finally Gabriella exhales softly through her nose and lowers her gaze toward her hands where dirt cakes beneath her nails and thin scratches mark her knuckles from where bark and roots split beneath her touch earlier in the night. “You’re dramatic,” she says at last, voice rough with exhaustion and disuse, but there’s no real sharpness behind it this time and the attempt at irritation dies almost immediately between them. “You say things like that every time somebody almost kills you.” The words fall flat in the aftermath and she knows it instantly. Her fingers curl tighter against the fabric of her sleeve where dried blood stains the cuff. “I didn’t bring you back to torture you,” she says after a long pause, quieter now, each word measured carefully like she’s afraid of hearing herself say them aloud. “If I wanted you dead, you would still be dead.” There’s no cruelty in the statement, no threat: just fact, and somehow that makes it worse because they both know she’s telling the truth.

A breeze shifts through the clearing then, stirring strands of hair across her face while somewhere deeper in the woods branches creak softly against one another, and her gaze drifts briefly toward his destroyed leg where dark blood still soaks into the earth around twisted flesh and shattered bone; memory flashes sharp and ugly behind her eyes—the wet sound of the break, the way the vines tightened when she lost control, how easily the forest obeyed her when it wanted him hurt—and her stomach turns hard enough she has to look away again. “You should stop moving,” she mutters eventually, rubbing tiredly at dried blood near the corner of her mouth only to smear it further across her skin. “Your body’s trying to decide whether it hates me more than it hates dying.” Another silence stretches out after that, heavy but no longer violent, and when she speaks again the words are so quiet they almost disappear beneath the rustling leaves overhead. “You scared me.” The admission hangs there naked and wrong between them, fragile in a way she visibly hates the second it leaves her mouth, because her posture stiffens immediately afterward and her expression shutters on instinct while she turns her head sharply toward the trees instead of him as though refusing eye contact might somehow undo the confession entirely.

“When your heart stopped,” she continues after a moment, flatter now, trying unsuccessfully to smooth emotion out of the edges of her voice, “everything got quiet.” Her throat tightens subtly around the next words. “Too quiet.” The forest had gone still with him. The thing inside her had gone still too. Waiting. Listening. And for one horrible moment she’d realized she did not want the silence to stay. Gabriella presses her lips together hard enough they pale before finally exhaling shakily through her nose. “I hated it,” she admits at last, the honesty sounding almost reluctant, almost angry at itself for existing at all.

The moment the woman was settled into her seat, Naomi closes the door firmly, careful to control her strength so she doesn't break the mechanism that keeps the door closed. Rounding the front, she settles into the drivers seat with ease, glancing over to see Gabriella basking in the sun. She can't help but to smile some as she starts the car then, turning the ac off entirely so that the woman has time to warm up.

"Go ahead and take control of the temperature... whatever you need is fine by me," she spoke softly, as if she were hesitant to disturb the moment of peace Gabriella was finding in the moment. Though at the apology, Naomi pauses as the car idles, looking back over to the woman with a small smile. "Don't apologize, Sugar. It might have been a long day, but -" she hesitates. Nobody should know what they are... but whatever Gabriella was, wasn't human... so she fell somewhere outside of the rules of secrecy.

"-I'm tougher than I look." and she looked plenty tough. Opting for continued secrecy, Naomi did it not because she didn't trust Gabriella ... but she didn't want to alarm the woman and cause more undue stress than the poor thing was already going through.

"Sorry about the my place thing. If you'd rather go to yours, just punch in the address here-" she switched the screen of her vehicle to the maps section, smiling. "Force of habit... that's all. If you'd rather go home and be somewhere that you're familiar with, that's alright by me."

No matter which Gabriella chose to do, Naomi started her car off in the next moment, pulling out of the morgue and onto the street that would take them away from it.

"So, Gabriella, I hope you don't make a habit of dying often," she teases, looking over to her for a brief moment with a smile in hopes that Gabriella wouldn't take it as anything serious.

At Naomi’s reassurance, the witch glanced over, eyes lingering on her profile. I’m tougher than I look. That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Yeah,” she murmured softly. “I noticed.” There was something comforting about the secrecy without pressure. Naomi wasn’t prying. Wasn’t demanding explanations she hadn’t earned yet. she appreciated that more than she could properly articulate right now. When the map screen lit up, though, her expression faltered. Home. The word sat strangely in her chest.

Her apartment was technically an option. But the thought of walking in alone, covered in dried blood and half-healed trauma, knowing she’d almost stayed dead this time… it made something inside her tighten painfully. And worse, if someone had already heard about the accident? If anyone was waiting? Her fingers curled lightly against the sleeve of the borrowed lab coat. “…I don’t really want to be alone right now,” she admitted after a long pause, voice quiet enough it almost got lost beneath the sound of the engine.

The confession clearly cost her something. Gabriella was used to isolation. Used to handling things herself. But resurrection always left her raw in strange ways, like death peeled layers off her she usually kept hidden. Her gaze drifted toward the passing streets once Naomi pulled onto the road, sunlight flickering across her face in brief golden stripes. At the teasing question, a soft sound escaped her halfway between a laugh and a tired exhale. “No,” she said, leaning her head back against the seat. “I try not to make a habit of it.” A beat. Then, with dry humor slipping back in around the edges: “It’s terrible for my social life.” Her eyes slid shut briefly. “Usually I heal before it gets that bad. This was just…” She grimaced faintly, searching for the word. “Unlucky.” Another pause. “…The car hit harder than most things.” Understatement of the century.

"What was what? What wasn't supposed to happen?" The panic in Caeruleum's voice was as clear as day, attempting to sit up though Cinis was quick to put a hand on his non-ruined shoulder to force him back down. It was clear he was feeding off the energy in the room that had abruptly turned into what it was now, though Cinis wouldn't allow his brother to further injure himself by giving into the rising panic that Cinis himself felt.

It wasn't until Gabriella grounded herself that Caeruleum himself grew more settled, the demon looking to the witch with annoyance clear in the icy depths of his eyes. "You might not care what it was, but I sure as fuck do. I -"

"Let. Her. Work." Cinis punctuated each word, making Caeruleum flinch and settle back down onto the table. Though not without muttering something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like an insult towards Cinis. The massive demon didn't seem to notice or care, instead was focused on what Gabriella was doing to Caeruleum's body.

The eye never appeared again as the witch worked. The skin that hung had to be cut off, as there was no resealing it back to his body. The demons that had done this hadn't gotten every bit of skin from Caeruleums body, having left a fine layer of skin that acted as a minor barrier between the world and his muscle, though it was translucent in nature. It was difficult to see, but it was there.

For the most part, Caeruleum remained silent as she worked, only cursing here and there as she worked on some particularly sensitive parts. Whether that was because he had become numbed to the pain after dying, or if he just had that high of a pain tolerance was difficult to tell.

"Are you done?" he asked after some time, his voice tight.

“You died on my table,” she muttered while cleaning another stretch of exposed muscle with agonizing care. “You lost sarcasm privileges for at least twenty-four hours.” The faintest twitch tugged at the corner of her mouth afterward, gone almost as quickly as it appeared. Relief bleeding through the horror whether she wanted it to or not. As she worked, she began to notice things she wished she didn’t. The exposed tissue beneath her hands responded strangely to her magic now, faint pulses of shadow threading under the muscle like roots searching through soil. Every now and then the candles dimmed without warning before flaring back brighter. The room itself felt crowded in a way she couldn’t explain, as if something stood just beyond her peripheral vision waiting to see what Caeruleum became next. She ignored it or tried to.

By the time she’d cleaned and stabilized the worst of it, her own hands were shaking from exhaustion and blood loss alike. The cut on her forearm had long since stopped bleeding normally, sealed over by her healing factor into a dark pink line. Then Caeruleum finally spoke again. The witch exhaled sharply through her nose, sitting back just enough to look at him fully. His voice was tight, strained thin by pain, but coherent. Awake. Present. Alive. “You say that like I’m patching a scraped knee,” she said dryly, reaching for another cloth to wipe blood from her fingers. “You were skinned alive, died, came back on fire, and possibly let something weird hitchhike into your body. So no. I’m not done.”

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the places where the eye had appeared earlier, searching for any sign of it returning before forcing herself to focus again. “But,” she admitted more quietly, “you’re stable enough that I’m not actively fighting death anymore.” Which honestly felt like an achievement considering the night she was having. Carefully, The witch rested her hand lightly against the uninjured part of his shoulder, grounding both herself and him for a brief moment before speaking again. “The outer layers are going to regenerate weird,” she explained. “Your body’s already trying to compensate for the missing skin. I can help guide it, but I can’t rush it without risking…” Her gaze lowered briefly. “…more complications.”

dialogue.

you can take the bed, i'll sleep on the floor.

i'll take the bed, the floor is all yours.

you think you could maybe... let me squeeze in a little?

you couldn't have found a different tiny closet to hide out in?

i'm not trying to be this close to you, there's just no space in here.

is that your foot touching mine?

for what it's worth... you smell really nice.

did you even shower? ugh!

huh... i never noticed the color of your eyes before.

hurry up! just get in, sit in my lap if you have to!

i really don't want to be alone tonight…

please… stay with me?

come on, i'm not leaving you alone.

concepts.

trace. sender is much closer to receiver than usual and notices something different and gently traces their finger along that part of reciever's face. (beauty mark, scar, dimples, etc.)

couch. sender and receiver wake up after accidentally napping on the couch together.

floor. for whatever reason, sender and receiver choose not to share the same bed or couch. one party takes the floor and both keep striking up conversation, whether it is bickering or heartfelt.

twin bed. sender and receiver share a twin bed, likely too small for them and causing them to be closer than usual.