[psl] 2005: all the things I regret

[firewatcher]

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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[beyondthisillusion]

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."

[firewatcher]

"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.