#event 005.

“this is not a coincidence, is it?” it is a dark hour, indeed, when ever-smiling lips turn into a worried line as she stares out to the horizon. the chill has inched towards being unbearable, and it reminds her too much of the island, of what they have escaped.

or so it seems. history mocks them; ice cracking and ghosts reminding them that their stories have not yet ended in this arctic, no matter how much they wish to pretend that this chapter has been long finished. 

stranded and stuck again. when nyima turns to pasha, there is something set in those eyes that makes her look like the survivor that she wishes was a title worn in past-tense. 

it  was  like  attending  prom  all  over  again .    for  most  people ,  at  least ,  he  assumed .    he  didn’t  attend  prom .    no  one  asked  him  plus  his  mom  didn’t  even  like  the  thought  of  him  going .    people  slip  stuff  in  the  punch   &   they  dance  on  one  another ,  she’d  say .    but  this  is  the  kind  of  big  fancy  thing  he  imagined  prom  like .     he  sighs ,  sipping  some  champagne .           ❝    i  feel  like  the  people  who  run  this  town  are  on  crack .      how  do  they  even  afford  to  do  stuff  like  this  for  everyone  here ?    ❞            

trigger warnings: blood, violence

What a mess Raafe has made.

And oh, how they enjoy it.

Glass is crushed underfoot like it’s nothing; same for blood, same for bodies. They haven’t killed anyone yet—not outright. But, if a few of these people die from their injuries (glass to places that are too tender to survive it), then who are they to apologize? Instead, Raafe moves like some predatory animal, slowly, chaos brewing underneath flashing eyes.

The Ghoul doesn’t have to come out for Rafa to be a frightening thing to look at. It’s in the way they accept the fight so readily that is horrifying. Adaptability in times of crisis can be a life-saving quality; in this creature, however, the quality becomes more akin to deep-sea creatures adapting to darkness. They become ghost lights. They become teeth. 

What changes are made to Raafe’s appearance exist only in eyes that appear like a flashlight shone in the darkness, creature’s eyes reflecting back at you—alligators in bayou water at night. Waiting. 

And there are, of course, the fingers that elongate into points. Claws.

trigger warnings: mentions of violence

(When Lenore was a little girl, her father had given her a small box filled with beautiful sea glass. Arturo rarely spoke of family beyond the Menagerie, but he told her he used to collect them along the shoreline with his mamá. Now, seeing people breaking bottles over others’ heads, glass in palms, the memory almost feels wrong. Like it should be another one of Metzger’s stories: tinted red.)

Everything becomes all haze and shaking hands. The skin of Lenore’s knuckles has turned an angry red from fighting, nail polish applied for the performance chipped. She tears herself away from the fighting, settles for looking behind the bar instead, in case there’s anything somebody could use that would help—

And the notion is quickly forgotten. 

She spies a familiar frame hiding on the floor behind the bar, pulling glass out of her skin. There’s no hesitation in the way she quickly crouches down and approaches Emmeline, hands hovering by her face, not touching, knowing by now that there are some moments when her friend can’t take the physical contact. But the offer is there. (The hands Lenore offers are trembling.) 

trigger warnings: violence, blood

Raafe should have worn a body that would have been better suited for a bar fight. Somebody with broader shoulders, hands meant for fighting without weapons. And, perhaps, if they had the time, a number of the humans currently making a fucking mess of the bar would have suited them just fine.

There would’ve been something hilarious about it, too—to mask themself as one of their own, before ripping the others to pieces. They’ve always found ways to have fun in situations like this.

Of course, adaptable as they are, dealing with a glass in the knee is never exactly what they would call a fun time. 

“Jesus H. Fucking Christ,” They hiss between clenched teeth, reacting just as quickly in unceremoniously slitting the throat of the poor sucker who had made the mistake of coming at them with a broken bottle. Their fingers drip dark crimson, same goes for their leg. They don’t pull the glass out. Rafa knows better than that. 

And perhaps, letting themselves get caught up in the fight so much that they would let a fucking human, some goddamned worm, stab them in the leg isn’t their first mistake of the night. But that isn’t something they’re going to address. 

In reality, everyone, at any given point, if not all points in time, are completely full of shit. 

It’s why Raafe takes Metzger’s words as no surprise: apologies, a staff party, permission to roam the streets of this glimmering new city the Menagerie has found itself in. They are all just pretty distractions. A new magic trick thrown up by a man who knows how to play the masses like they’re just one goddamn fiddle—something to take the ease off of past wounds.

Rafa sees this all objectively. 

When the guards disappear from inside the bar, the colored lights flickering over their face casts sharp, distorting shadows over Raafe’s smile. 

Now, the question is: who among them could use a night out? Rather, who among them would be enough to entertain a creature like them for a few hours to go exploring?

trigger warnings: mentions of violence

The end of the night, the bus ride back to the hotel, is all background noise. Lenore can’t stop thinking about the blood on Metzger’s cheek, how it pales in comparison to the glass shards she had seen Emmeline pulling from her hands, the ghost memory of a hard boot between her shoulder blades. She doesn’t even gaze outside of the windows in wonder at Shanghai’s brilliant skyline—her memory of peering out of the airplane window with Emme at her side, gasping in excitement at its sheer beauty, all feels incredibly far away. 

Lenore’s room key is in her back pocket, but she can’t remember where it is, exactly. Not with the ringing still in her ears. Not when every corner she turns feels like she’s going to run into another fight, more broken glass.

She gets lost somewhere on the fifth floor. Little bird walks with her hands held up slightly in front of her, palms scratched from glass splinters, eyes far away. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid to think the humans would treat them like anything other than what they are: ugly, monstrous—

A familiar form, ever graceful, finds its way into her line of vision. 

Lenore’s memory is flickering. This isn’t an unfamiliar feeling.

One moment, she sees Carter—the next, she’s standing with two empty Ziploc bags in her hands, a scooper full of ice in the other. Just like that. Her awareness comes back like a rubber band snapping back into place, and she jolts with it, the faraway look in her eyes fading. Right—she’d told Carter she was going to go get him some ice. 

She makes quick work of filling the plastic bags with ice and finding paper towels to wrap them in. There’s still something frantic about the way her eyes scan the bar and find the table where she had left him, off in some corner where the lights are dim. 

“Hey,” She begins, softly, one ice pack in either hand. She pulls out a chair with her foot and takes a seat next to Carter, offers him the other ice pack with a sad smile. “Sorry it took me so long, I had to find something to put all the ice in. If you need more, I’ll go get it—but I think they said they’d be rounding us up in ten minutes to go back to the hotel.” Like two animals in a corner licking their wounds, they are. She folds her long legs up on the chair with her, close to her chest. (Carter could have turned, could have blown this entire bar to god only knows where, but he didn’t. That has to mean something, right? That has to mean their bones aren’t yet splintered entirely with restlessness, right?)