firewatcher | [psl] 2005: all the things I regret

There wasn't really a reason to wait to make sure Madison started to decay and turn to ash, considering her head was a good few meters from her body at this point, but there was something a little strangely satisfying about the way vampires tied off the loose ends they left in death. The only tidy goddamn thing about this clusterfuck of a night.

She gave the now largely empty pile of clothes one more prod with her boot before sheathing the machete and turning away from the scene and going to go find Jonas, leaving Danielle alone standing over the body. She scraped irritably at the sticky, now mostly-dried blood staining her forehead; she wasn't sure who it belonged to, at this point. Didn't care. Still alive, still intact, good enough. Had to be.

The kid was thankfully more or less where she'd left him; she suspected he'd been drugged up, but he was stirring now, which meant that it probably wouldn't do any lasting damage. She picked him up, set him in the crook of her arm, and then sank back against the nearest wall.

Her eyes were dry, if burning from exhaustion suppressed by adrenaline. No tears, not tonight. Just the coiled knot of anger that sat heavy in the pit of her stomach.

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It might have been reflex that made Maria jerk upwards, standing straight up and moving Jonas out of Danielle's reach. (Or maybe it wasn't.) She stared down at Danielle, wide-eyed and frozen, as if seeing her for the first time.

Maybe she was. It was easy, most of the time, to draw a clear line between Danielle and vampires. Danielle was family, after all. She was one of them.

But Andy had been, too. And any vampire could do what had been done to Andy, as the books she'd pored over earlier that day looking for an alternate explanation had reminded her. It was always there, in the blood.

"I—" She took a deep breath, and shook her head. "Some space. Please."

Wide-eyed, Danielle stared up at Maria. Like she'd been slapped.

And the most tragic part of it all--a sick, tiny voice inside of her told her--was that she knew exactly why. Why Maria felt the way she did. And why it hurt Danielle so deeply to the core.

She tried to think of something to say. The right thing to say.

And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Numbly, she pulled her hand back. She worked her mouth, trying to come up with some lame excuse for why she needed to go. But nothing came out, so she just stood up, using the wall for support.

A day ago, she would have told Danielle to wait, apologized. Yesterday, though, none of this had happened. And she was so, so tired of vampires destroying the things she cared about.

She looked across at Danielle, but didn't meet her eyes, her mouth drawn into a tight, thin line. "She never would have been able to get so close to us," she said, dully, "if it wasn't for you."

Tomorrow she might regret that, but adding one more thing to the list of all her regrets was kind of a drop in the bucket at this point.

Danielle didn't need extra guilt slathered on. She was feeling it enough herself. Which was probably why her eyes flashed with anger. More than the actual accusation anyway.

It was probably true.

Still, it wasn't exactly like this had been easy on her. She wasn't enjoying any of the facts about Ruby. Not only had she been deceived and led away from her brother, but she was literally bleeding for the family.

She stopped, pursing her lips. She could let the comment glide off of her back. But she knew it wouldn't. It would eat her alive for the rest of her so-called life. So it would be settled. Here and now. Danielle pulled a hunting knife out of her boot, flipping it around to catch it by the blade. And she offered it to Maria.

After a moment, Maria took the knife from Danielle, and stared down at it, feeling its weight heavy in her bloodstained hand. It was a long thirty seconds before she shrugged, flipped the knife over and under her hand and between her fingers a few times (just like Vera had taught her, how many years ago, now? one more thing vampires had taken from her) finally twirling it around to hold the top of the hilt between her index finger and thumb—and pointed back for Danielle to take it.

"What, you want me to kill more tonight? Which one of us is supposed to be the monster?" Maria said, finally meeting Danielle's eyes.

(Which one of them was the monster, indeed. She tried to ignore the image that came to mind of the body of what had once been her brother, bloodied and battered and lying half-slumped against a tree, the arm that had been outstretched toward her crumpled against his chest.)

"I've killed enough fa—" She cut off abruptly, her voice catching hoarsely in the middle of the word. Shaking her head, she continued, "I've killed enough, tonight."

The lines of Danielle's face hardened, a muscle in her jaw twitching, just slightly. She didn't take the knife back. Nor did she bother mentioning that it had been given to her by Noah. Maria knew that. Because Maria had spent the majority of her life with Danielle in it.

And up until this very moment, Danielle had always assumed that Maria knew Danielle.

Maybe it was grief doing funny things to her. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, Danielle would have preferred it if Maria had just stabbed her. That would have hurt less.

"The day I become a monster, I expect you to kill me," she said tightly, trying not to let the pain s how.

Her thumb ran over the start of the faded inscription on the handle of the knife, and realized what it was—the lettering had faded long ago, but she knew what it said: protect what is ours. Mom and Dad had trusted Danielle. What would they think of her, now? What would they think of Maria, now? (Then again—Mom and Dad had not been entirely innocent in this situation, either. Andy made his choice, but he hadn't made that choice for no reason.)

Maria's mouth twitched, and she flipped the knife back to hold the hilt, deftly tucking it into the knife holster at her thigh. Her parents' legacy. That was right, wasn't it. She was the head of the family now. Like she should have been.

But oh, at what cost.

She unclenched her hands (she didn't remember clenching them) and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. "Believe me," she said, wearily. "Believe me, when that day comes, I will."

Danielle wasn't a monster. She knew that, even if there was still the doubting voice that whispered not yet, anyway. Both of them had known each other longer than they'd known most people. But right now everything she'd ever known felt so wrong, and all she wanted was for all of it to just... go away. For a while.

Maria slid her hand from her nose to her forehead, covering her eyes against the light. "Long as you promise me the same."

Danielle knew plain and simple that humans could be every bit as much the monsters that vampires could be. It was rare, but it still happened. She couldn't imagine Maria ever crossing that line. But all the same, her reply was simple and honest. "You know I will."

She'd never killed a human before. But she would. If she had to, she would.

But she didn't think it would happen.

Maria was the Palmer Family now. In every possible way. And so, in spite of her pain, her exhaustion, her raging emotions, Danielle pulled herself up straight, straight as the soldier Miles had always wanted her to be.

And she bowed to Maria.

Yeah, she might cross that line, sure. But there were easier ways for humans to become monsters. Andy had found one of them, after all.

She'd rather die. She was sure she'd rather die.

Danielle bowed—without any kind of obsequiousness, just a plain show of deference—and Maria sighed, which halfway through turned into a bleak bark of a laugh at how ridiculous this all felt, which came out too loud, startling Jonas momentarily awake. "Christ, don't do that. You know we don't do that. I don't—"

She took a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded, slowly. "Got it."

Couldn't go back now. She could picture them, eleven years ago, that many years happier and stupider and less burdened by things done and left undone, but those people they'd been seemed so far away, now.

Danielle straightened up. "Good."

She gave a momentary, unwavering look at her cousin. Palmer had the look of someone who had seen too much to ever be wide-eyed again.

It would never go away.

"I should go heal," she said quietly. And, without a trace of sarcasm or irony, she added, "With your permission."

"Permission granted," Maria said, falling back on formality. Or—Palmer, now, she figured. Her dad had always been Palmer to everyone but her mom and a couple cousins, and it had been the same way with his dad, her granddad. Andy had never picked it up. And: "Carry on."

All they could do, really. Never really anything else they could do. Clean up and keep going, toward whatever bloody end awaited each of them.

[psl] 2005: all the things I regret

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