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No Ai

Vacker week 2026 day 1

Prompt: fear/anger

Wordcount: 1.000

“Is he going to be okay?” Biana asked quietly, her voice breaking. 

“No reason to worry,” Della parroted. It wasn’t a reassurance, just a mimic of her father. Her father, who was currently having a mental break. 

Biana stilled. This wasn’t happening. 

It had to be a dream. This didn’t make sense. It just couldn’t happen. 

“I hate you,” Fitz whispered. 

Biana looked to him, slowly, but he wasn’t talking to her. 

He was talking to their father. 

“You can’t just leave us like this,” Fitz muttered, his voice rising. 

“Stop,” Biana choked out. “You don’t get to say you hate him.”

Fitz turned to her, his eyes lit with anger. 

“And why shouldn’t I? He knew the risks. He knew Sop— He knew Fintan might hurt him.”

A cold feeling ran through Biana’s skin.

She wished she could disappear, but it wouldn’t do anything because she could still see them.

She could see Fitz, whose jaw was clenched, and Della, who stood there with pale, sunken skin. Worst of all, she saw her father. 

He could just be asleep.

It was so easy to imagine. 

But he wouldn’t wake up.

Biana ran. She ran and ran, although the image of his body burned inside her head. 

“Why did you do it?” she whispered as she ran. She stumbled over a stone, and her knee hit the ground. 

A sharp pain exploded through her knee, but it was nice to distract herself with it. 

But the body in her head wouldn’t disappear. How could her father be reduced to a body? He was alive, still. She couldn’t think of him that way. 

“I hate you,” she added as she kneeled against the ground, tears pouring down her face. It didn’t help; instead, it left a bitter taste inside her mouth. 

It didn’t matter that she wasn’t with him anymore. How could she say such a thing to her father?

“I hate you,” she tested, again, although it caused her chest to swirl. 

She swiped her hand against her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t hate you. Please, I don’t hate you. I’m sorry. Please.”

Her shoulders shook as sobs tore through her. Tears spilled down her cheeks. 

A tear fell through the small body of water in front of her. 

She looked at her reflection. 

“I hate you,” she said, confidently this time. Her image blurred in the pond, but she could still see the red on her cheeks. Her mascara mingled with the tears running down her face. 

“I hate you so much,” she said vehemently. Her face looked too much like her father’s, even though she favored her mother.

She had his eyes. She could easily imagine his face replacing her own. 

Biana sniffed, a cold ache in her chest. 

She splashed her hand through her reflection, marring her face so she couldn’t see his anymore. 

She scrambled back, but the image had been marked forever. 

He was asleep. Right? He had to be asleep. There wasn’t a world in which he could just disappear like that. 

Biana’s arms wrapped around herself.

He was good. He had done everything the Council wanted. Her father had always done everything expected of him. 

It wasn’t fair that he was the one dealing with the same suffering as those who were dangerous to their world. 

Biana closed her eyes. He was just asleep. He would be alright.

Or maybe she was asleep. It could have just been a dream. A really, really bad dream. 

Her nights had been plagued with nightmares recently. 

It followed the right pattern. 

Just a random face, someone she knew and loved, was placed onto the image in her dream. It was completely random that she had pasted her father’s face on the body. And it didn’t quite make sense, the most common thing in her nightmares. 

There was no world in which her father could just be gone.

It was a dream, she thought once again, as her mind stilled. 

She wasn’t here. She was in the wrong world. Her world couldn’t exist without her father. 

It just didn’t make sense. 

It’s okay. 

She repeated to herself again and again as her thoughts pounded through her head. 

“What are you doing out here?” Fitz demanded. 

Biana stared at him blankly. Her eyes were lidded heavily. 

“I don’t know,” she answered. She’d forgotten, just a bit.

“How can you leave?” he pressed. “You don’t get out of this. You don’t get to run and hide. He isn’t coming back.”

Biana pressed her hands to her ears. “Shut up.”

“No,” Fitz told her spitefully, his voice loud enough that she couldn’t block it out. She might have even heard it in her head. 

“Get out,” she ordered. 

“No,” he repeated. Somewhere in the anger in his eyes, she saw the same scared kid that she felt like. 

Biana’s mind was still slipping, but she forced herself to stay present. Just a little. Being present in this world left a crushing pain in her chest, and it felt like the weight of the sky was balanced on her shoulders. 

How could she bear the pain of this?

And what if he never came back?

“Stop,” Fitz begged.

“Get out of my head,” Biana whispered. 

Fitz slipped from her mind, and Biana pulled him into a hug. 

He was stiff, but he relaxed against her. Just for a moment. 

Alvar flickered into view.

Biana jumped. 

“I’m sorry,” Alvar told them softly.

Fitz leaned back from Biana’s embrace, and she immediately felt the cold again. 

"Why did you just show up here?” Fitz accused, and Biana felt the distance return in her head. 

She was just watching from the outside. 

She wasn’t here. 

“Because Dad is not okay, and I wanted to be here for you.”

Fitz shoved Alvar. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to decide he’s not okay.”

Biana gasped.

Please stop, she wanted to beg.