#desolateroads

It’s not a private room. Rose is in the very last bed, past other sad people shrouded by curtains. Artemis sweeps past them without sparing a thought, boots clicking imperiously against the floor, the steady sound probably unexpected in the stoic gray. 

Rose’s body looks like it has nothing left to give. She’s small and pale in a shapeless gown, wrists and collarbone very prominent. Even her hair in all it’s rich tones looks thin and lifeless against the sterile white of the pillow. She registers Artemis with a slight opening of her mouth, a shift in her body’s position. 

“You look like shit, love.”

Rose moans weakly and covers her face, but it’s too late to be ashamed. Artemis plants herself on the side of the bed and kicks her boots off under it somewhere, then flips onto her side and spoons behind Rose, wrapping both arms around her middle. 

She makes a small noise but it doesn’t sound in protest, clasps her own shaking fingers around the hands on her waist. She smells like cleaning supplies. 

‘Do you remember the hangover of ‘08?” Rose’s voice is tremulous, most likely from puking violently. Artemis pushes her hair aside to kiss the base of her neck.

“I remember you experiencing it, yes. Is it like that?”

“No. I wish it was.”

Neither of them say anything for a little while. It’s filled with the rhythmic beeping of various machines in and around the room, traffic noises half muffled beyond the window, footsteps and the occasional urgent voice of a nurse. Rose should probably get out of here soon, before bills pile up and her parents start getting frantic, but the odd peace is preferable to whatever is waiting for her outside. 

They don’t care if you fuck up here. Nobody is a disappointment here. 

“Did you call Jace?”

“Not yet.” Artemis pauses. “He’s gonna freak out and cry.”

Rose snorts. “I know. Just...get it out of the way.”

So Artemis sends him a short but succinct text (Rose is in the hospital, but ok) over her shoulder, then replaces her hand on the curve of Rose’s waist and waits for the predictable string of distressed replies. They don’t disappoint. 

“I think we should hide at my place, get you out of here.”

“Can we do this there?”

Ash and Jace seem to be doing okay with that, though. Their wholesome, friendly laughter from the kitchen doesn’t seem traumatized, anyway, or concealing that they might be dead inside. How do they do it? This house is like a gay, interracial graham cracker commercial.

“She’s not a dog,” Larkspur, also allegedly three but significantly even weirder, crosses his little arms over his chest, “Leona.”

“My name is Aunt Leo. And Willow can be whatever she wants! Are you a puppy, Wil? Huh?”

Willow stops dead at that, drops the toy, and screams. Well, it’s probably more like crying, but it’s hoarse and bloodcurdling and eternal. Leo is frozen to the floor and Lark makes a deliberately smug noise in her ear.

Ash comes charging out like a paternal bull, abandoning whoever he’s regaling in the kitchen with tales of their last camping trip to scoop his tiny, bellowing child into his arms. She of course almost immediately shuts up, and he’s left with an adorable expression of baffled fear. Jace is peeking around the entrance to the kitchen with a furrowed brow.

“Wow, she must be tired,” Leo laughs a little, gets to her feet shakily, “we were just playing fetch, uh--I should probably get going, anyway. Where’s my wife?”

“I’m not your wife,” Rose is so pretty, sipping Jace’s famous virgin fruit punch, “what did you do?”

Ash snorts and gives her that knowing look, then walks back into the kitchen with Willow, presumably to say goodnight to her other dad and various guests. She’s off the hook, woo.

“I didn’t do anything?” she smooths a lock of Rose’s hair behind her ear and kisses her temple to...endear herself, “This is why I love being an aunt. We can just leave.”

Rose looks kind of wistfully in the direction of another gale of laughter, but the night is winding down and she knows it. Callafam events always end with Willow screaming. Plus, they’re out of taquitos, anyway.

“We can take a bath at home. Last call.”

Rose’s eyes darken, probably remembering the last bath. It was a really good one. Sold.

“Okay, but you have to say goodbye to every single person here.”

They shower at totally different times of day (that’s another thing, Leo has to shower regularly), which really smooths over a lot. Look, it’s not that she’s a bad house guest, she’s just completely weird, god bless her. Leo allows it because sometimes she visits Rose’s room before bed under the pretense of just saying goodnight, when really she wants a whiff of the fruity scents in her wet hair and sometimes a peek at what she wears to bed. No, she doesn’t have a problem. 

The weirdest, though, is when Rose goes on half naked tours around the house in the middle of the freaking night. It’s happened, like, three whole times. 

“Are you okay?” Leo has to ask, again, because Rose looks totally lost in time and space and there’s an eerie glow emanating from...somewhere. It’s four goddamn am. Luna is wide awake, too, bright in the gloomy half dark and flicking her tongue good-naturedly from Rose’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, why?” Rose looks at her like she’s the one wandering partially clothed at the ass crack of dawn--except she is now, too. They’re both participating. It’s like a haunting mid-19th century novel set in the English countryside, except nobody’s wearing floor length nightgowns with neck frills. Thank god. 

“I can’t believe you’re asking me why. Forget it.”

“Hey, do you know how many people have died in this house?” She asks it like it’s not the question she just asked, which is how Rose seems to ask and say a lot of things. No shame whatsoever.

“I don’t know?? Like fifteen, probably. It’s been here a while.”

There’s portraits of old, dead ancestors all over the place, but she’s not really sure who died here, who died elsewhere, and who’s lingering here anyway regardless of where they bit it. You don’t have to be a Navarro to know something’s spooky here, you can be spiritually challenged like Leo and still get the gist. She prefers not to think about it. 

“Huh.”