#bigby.

he never made a single point that, given what he knew about the situation at the time, didn’t have evidence to back it up or didn’t make logical sense.  everything he said was, honestly, pretty fucking fair, and he only said it as Cruelly as he did because  his fucking adoptive sister has been missing for weeks, nobody’s looking for her, and a mutual friend of theirs just turned up headless on the sheriff’s doorstep.

tell me you wouldn’t be pointing fingers and calling the people neglecting the case a couple of nasty names.

a law enforcement representative of said government, aka bigby wolf:     ( enters the trip trap only to interrogate grendel about someone who Isn’t lily  &  whose death he was mostly only disturbed by because he had a personal connection to the victim  —  and doesn’t even explain to grendel that faith is dead, just starts prying at him and holly for information on someone they Thought was their friend at the time )

gren:     Hey Dont You Fucking Uh, Think You Could Have Fucking Listened To Us A Little Sooner And Maybe Not Only Show Up When You Need Something Or Want To Ease Your Own Conscience

bigby:     no.  shut up

gren:

and i  HATE  people acting like bigby is the worst-off person in fabletown when uh.  gren’s fucking book of fables entry straight up  SAYS  he’s basically homeless and when toad’s tenement building  ...  exists  ...  in that state  ...  and there are, um.  literal sex trafficking victims being placed in chains in the backs of butcher’s shops.

like. i’m sorry. but clearly nobody who defends bigby & woody + demonizes grendel ... has put any fucking thought at all into how terrifying and upsetting that whole sequence of events was for him. i could talk for hours about the subtle nuances of every fucking thing woody and bigby did wrong, but let’s just look at shit as an objective sequence of events, because the canon is fucking horrific enough as it is, and i think y'all will see my point if i just ... write a fucking list.

let’s get this timeline rolling.

gren is informed that his friend, who he considers close enough to be a sister, is dead.

( she is dead, by the way, because of the neglect of the local gov’t and law enforcement -- disenfranchised people were ignored at best and outright shunned at worst; grendel tried for weeks to get them to do something about it, but they wouldn’t listen to him. )

he’s also informed that said friend, who was forced into human trafficking  ( no, she was not a willing sex worker the whole time; the minute that ribbon went around her neck, she was a sexual slave, and her life was not her own ),  has been being sexually taken advantage of by his OTHER “friend,” who he ALSO recently found out beats women when he’s drunk.

and then it’s like, fuck. alright. first things first, gren and holly have to deal with the funeral arrangements as quickly as possible. and they ARE fast about it! -- but the body’s already been dumped by the time they all get there to retrieve it.  ( the way bigby treated lily’s body on that autopsy table, by the way? creepy. weird. unnecessarily apathetic. downright disrespectful. )  so. cool! all they had LEFT was the opportunity to at least pay homage to their monstrous traditions, to their culture, and give lily a sacred ritual to send her spirit off ... but they couldn’t. because lily’s body doesn't matter, right? she’s just a sex worker. just a troll.  ( it does matter, btw. lily was incredible. fuck all of you. )

now, they’re working with just trying to gather whatever sentiments they have and ATTEMPTING to hold the funeral, anyway ... which bigby interrupts.

and then bigby attracts the tweedles to the scene.

and the tweedles fucking SHOOT gren and holly, point-blank.

and gren walks holly back to the bar after seeing swineheart -- drugged up, with a fucking shotgun wound to his chest -- because even in this state, he’s absolutely terrified of something happening to her. he’s already lost his arm. they’ve lost lily. they’re struggling. they’ve had so much ripped away from them -- he can't risk losing her, too.

( some fucking funeral. )

so holly’s passed the fuck out once they’re in the bar, and gren makes sure she’s all snug back there in her little cot, and then he decides, you know what? i need a fucking drink.  ( yeah, he’s also abusing his painkillers. it’s fine. )  so he’s further inebriating himself, probably in an attempt to knock himself out + maybe  ( hopefully )  damage his fucking brain so he doesn’t have to remember this shit ... and then woody walks in.

cue sequence of woody trying to bug grendel and get through him to talk to holly. grendel plays it off way fucking nicer than he really should have. he’s VERY patient with woody. he shirks him with humor, not aggression -- aggression isn’t what he wants right now. he pretends he’s less aware of what’s going on than he actually is. he’s giggly, sweet in his dismissals; even his ‘i don't give a shit about what you have to say’-s are delivered with a degree of comedy. HE ISN’T TRYING TO ESCALATE THE SITUATION. HE JUST WANTS WOODY TO DROP THIS SHIT WITH HOLLY AND GO AWAY. woody HURT lily, badly, and he hurt every single one of his “friends” as a result ... and then he tries to put the blame on lily, who can’t fucking defend herself, because she’s, you know, dead. and couldn’t defend herself while she was alive, either. because. ribbon.

and then bigby walks in.

gren is inebriated beyond belief, struggling to stay awake. he can barely protect holly from woody -- and now he’s in a room with TWO people who are sober, aggravated with him, and capable of fucking maiming him, if they really wanted to. gren is the little guy. gren knows they could do anything they wanted to him and he really wouldn’t be able to fight it -- not for long.  ( he even makes a joke. tells them to “take advantage” of the state he’s in. i don’t know how much of that was just a tease and how much of it was grendel playing off his spiked anxiety with a smile, like he always seems to do. )

some aggression arises between bigby and woody, which agitates gren. has every reason to. he’s been eaten away at, bit by bit, throughout the course of this whole fucking day ... and still, he offers them a drink, tries to be funny, tries to make it clear he doesn’t mean any harm.  ( he’s being very fucking forgiving. more forgiving than either woody or bigby deserve. he’s hospitable, if not a little grating, and that’s just to be blamed on the medicine + booze. )

when woody tries to act like he gives a shit about grendel, gren -- who is in a bad place, a bad situation, with bad people -- just fucking snaps. he’s overtaken by a moment of lucidity. he gets teary-eyed. his actual emotions  ( betrayal, predominantly )  start to show -- and yeah, he throws a punch. wraps his hand around woody’s neck. cusses him out when they let each other go. who the fuck could actually BLAME him? he’s lost almost everything and everybody. nobody listens to him. so many of his friends aren’t his friends, after all. so much hurt was going on right under his fucking nose, and he didn’t even know about it. couldn’t stop it.

and he blames himself for that.

grendel wasn’t acting out of malice, folks! consider his circumstances.