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wolfeyedwitch · 3 years

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And Still, Part 15

No. 27 - I’M FINE. I PROM…

passing out | vertigo | collapse

CW for panic attacks, internalized victim blaming, and general bad headspaces for both Avery and Devin.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14

Masterlist

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Avery had run with these wolves nearly every day for a decade by now. She had the stamina to keep up with her pack for hours on end, running long distances without stopping to rest.

So it made absolutely no sense that she was breathing hard after such a, comparatively, short run back to the den.

She was shaking, too, fine little tremors licking up her spine and down her arms. Stone and Asher pressed against her legs, bolstering her on either side.

~Scared~ Stone observed.

Avery let out a long breath. Shadow and Stone had been her packmates the longest, at least a decade; lying to them was more or less useless. ~Terrified~ she confirmed.

~Why?~ Earl asked. As one of the younger pack members, he didn’t always understand the intricacies of human emotional bullshit.

~What if… what if they were wrong? And she’s not here?~

~Can’t tell from out here~ Asher observed dryly. He was definitely judging her.

~Right~ she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. By the skepticism her wolves radiated, she wasn’t succeeding.

She just had to… walk inside.

Earl bumped into her from behind, making her lose balance and take the last step towards the den’s hidden entrance. ~Hey!~ she objected.

All three wolves sent back a sense of unimpressed impatience. If they were humans, they’d have their arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

~Fine, fine, I’m going~

She did as she said, making her way inside the den with her packmates on her heels.

She held her breath as she took the first cautious steps through her home, their home, not ready to confirm or disprove Lyn’s presence yet. As soon as she called out for her beloved, she would know. If she was wrong, these were her last moments of hope before having it shattered.

Stone did the wolf equivalent of an eye roll and let out a soft woof. Apparently the wolves were done with her human dithering and were taking matters into their own hands.

Avery tried to listen for Lyn’s reply over the blood pounding in her ears. Nothing. But maybe… maybe it was just too soft for her human senses?

~Anything?~ she asked her wolves.

The three sent a clear, resounding, ~No~ along with their sympathy.

No. No, nonono…

She frantically stalked through the den, looking for any signs that Lyn was maybe there, but couldn’t answer, or maybe she had come and gone already, or…

Or nothing.

There was nothing.

Avery’s knees weren’t working properly, for some reason. She couldn’t keep herself upright any more, and without her pack she would have collapsed to the floor. Between the three of them, Asher, Earl, and Stone were able to support her and let her down gently.

She was such a fool. She had gotten her hopes up, had dared to believe that everything might be alright. That she deserved to have something good in her life, someone good in her life. She had gotten overconfident, had flown too close to the sun— and now she was falling.

The emptiness in her chest was gnawing at her, setting sharp teeth into her flesh and tearing away at whatever was left of her. She leaned over her folded knees, bending until she was pressing her chest to them, making herself as small as she could. Her hands came up to grip her hair, pulling it, hoping the slight pain of that would distract from the consuming emptiness inside.

It didn’t work.

This was her fault. Lynnura wasn’t the one that Corporation wanted; no, she had just been in the way. It was Avery that they were trying to capture. And yes, it had been Lyn’s choice to protect her, but by all there was, was it worth it? Lyn was so much better than her, was a proper hero, not some half-wild experiment who couldn’t bear to live among her own species.

The first tears spilled without her notice or permission. She bit down on the first sob, trying to hold it all in, but there was just too much. All of this was too much, too much to bear. She felt herself shake, and tried to hold herself together, but didn’t know if she even could anymore. The sobs got bigger, too big to contain, and forced themselves out of her with as much force as her compressed lungs could put behind them.

She was coming apart, and didn’t know if she’d be able to put herself back together.

~Friend~ Earl said, trying to get her attention. She ignored him.

Asher tried next. ~Pack-sister~

She curled her arms tighter around herself. Couldn’t they see that she didn’t want to talk, didn’t have any words left for them?

Stone nudged her side, nearly rolling her over with the force he put behind it. ~AVERY!~

She sat up, bewildered. Her pack rarely used her name, preferring to send their feelings about her as their moniker for her and letting her translate that into words in her human mind. For Stone to put the effort into actually saying her name? That got her attention even more than the shove.

~WHAT?!~ she all but shouted at the three.

In unison, they turned towards the door.

She turned to the door as well, utterly baffled. Devin was in no shape to get here this quickly, even if he could remember the way, and she had never shown her den to Morgan and Blaire, so who…

A figure appeared at the entrance, face shaded by the sunlight behind them. Avery’s face creased in confusion. What… what the…

The door closed, and she could see the person properly now.

It was…

No. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

It was Lyn.

Avery scrambled to her feet, graceless in her haste. She felt utterly useless, letting herself fall apart when it just turned out that she had gotten here before her beloved!

She stopped herself before she touched Lyn, her fear and hesitance resurfacing. Ghosts could be seen and heard in the stories, but not touched…

What if…

“Hi honey,” Lyn said, with the little teasing smile she always used when making a joke or reference. “I’m home.”

With that said, whatever kept her moving this long gave out, and she collapsed gracelessly into Avery’s arms.

Devin looked between the couple. “What secrets?” he asked cautiously, throat suddenly going tight. Did Avery know? He had just met these people; were they going to turn out to be just more adults who let him down?

Morgan sighed heavily and rubbed their temples. “Darling, you still have the number of that lawyer, right?”

“The one with a bleeding heart’s morals and a sociopath’s instincts to go for the throat?” Blaire asked.

Devin was concerned.

Morgan nodded grimly. “We’re most likely going to need her. And if I’m right, the girls will too.”

Blaire gave a razor smile, thin and sharp. “I’ll call her.”

Devin was Concerned™.

Blaire must have noticed his expression, because they put a warm hand on his shoulder as they walked by. “It will be okay, sweetie,” they said. “I know you don’t know us from Adam, and you have plenty of reason to distrust people, but I promise.”

Devin turned his face so the black eye was turned away from Blaire, uncomfortable with how easily this couple was reading him. They squeezed his shoulder and reiterated, “It will be okay,” before walking off to, presumably, make that phone call.

He swallowed hard, looking back towards Morgan. He was torn between his instincts to shut up and go unnoticed, and his curiosity and drive to get to the heart of the problem. Eventually the latter won out.

“Why do you need a lawyer?” he asked. “I get why Lynnura and Avery would need one. Actually, I might need one too; I don’t know what Marcus told Heroes League about me being gone. If they’ve noticed yet, that is.”

Morgan looked up at him in surprise. “Why would Marcus say something that would make you need a lawyer?”

Devin felt like he’d stepped onto a patch of ice, and the world was slipping out from under his feet. He shouldn’t have said that, he shouldn’t have said anything, this was a mistake, he was going to be in so much trouble, they would think he wasn’t worth the trouble, why would they want to help him, they just met him and all he was doing was fucking up and—

“Woah, woah, it’s okay.” Morgan was crouching in front of him. When did Morgan get to this side of the table? “Can I take your hands? If not, that’s okay too.”

Devin shook his head frantically. He needed his hands, they were too important to get injured, and Marcus was always so careful to keep the injuries he gave Devin somewhere easily hidden but these people had no such reservations, they could do anything and oh God this was such a mistake, he should have run with Avery, no matter what it did to his ribs, that was better than—

“...evin, Devin, I need you to listen to me,” Morgan’s voice cut through his mental fog. “You need to breathe. You’re hyperventilating. Try to copy my breathing; it’s okay if you can’t do it just at first. Take all the time you need. Just breathe… in, and out…”

They stayed there, crouched to be eye to eye with Devin, and exaggerated their breathing for him to copy. It took a while, and the long inhales hurt his bruised ribs, but eventually the breathing exercise calmed Devin down enough that he didn’t feel quite so much like a spooked rabbit.

“Okay. I’m going to move my chair so I can sit closer to you, alright? I’m not touching.” Morgan looked worried. Why would they be worried? They didn’t know Devin from Adam, either; why would they care if he couldn’t keep his emotions from getting out of hand like that?

“Does that happen often?” Morgan asked.

Devin didn’t understand the question, and it must have shown, because Morgan clarified. “Panic attacks. Do you have panic attacks often?”

“I don’t have panic attacks,” Devin said.

Morgan gave him a very dubious look. “Devin, that was a panic attack that you just had. A pretty bad one, at that.”

Fuck. He was just making trouble everywhere he went, wasn’t he? “I- I’m s-s-sorry.”

“It’s nothing to be sorry for,” Morgan said, shaking their head. “How are you feeling? Are your injuries hurting you?”

Devin shrugged. Yeah, they hurt, but it was nothing he couldn’t deal with. He’d gotten ice and painkillers last night, and a good night’s sleep; that was more than he usually got to recover, even if this was a worse set of injuries than normal.

“I’m just going to take that as a yes,” Morgan muttered. Blaire came back into view, and Morgan said, “Dear, would you mind grabbing the ibuprofen?”

“Not a problem,” Blaire said smoothly, walking into the kitchen. They came back with the bottle of ibuprofen and an unopened bottle of water. “The seal’s intact on the water; it isn’t on the ibuprofen, but you can check the pills against the packaging to make sure they are what we say they are.”

“You s-sound like Avery,” Devin managed to say shakily, fumbling to open the child-proof medicine bottle and shake out a pill for himself. He swallowed it without water, and it got stuck in his throat before he realized just how dry his mouth had gotten. He hastily opened the water bottle—seal intact, just like Blaire had said—and washed it down.

“I think you’ve got that backwards, sweetie,” Blaire said with a soft smile. “Avery sounds like us.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Devin saw them mouth What did you do? at their partner.

“This isn’t their fault,” he hastily said. ”I said something stupid; they asked what I meant, and I freaked out.”

Both of them frowned at that.

“Sure,” Blaire said, sounding extremely dubious. “But just for argument’s sake, I still want to hear Morgan’s side of the story.”

“Devin asked the very logical question of why I might need a lawyer, saying he understood why the girls might need one. He also said he might need one too, because he didn’t know what his mentor had said to Heroes League. I asked what Marcus might have said that would make him need a lawyer, and triggered a panic attack,” was Morgan’s tale of the events.

Blaire scowled, and moved to whack Morgan upside the head. “Really?!”

“I didn’t think!” Morgan said, nonsensically.

“Sweetie,” Blaire said, turning back to Devin. “Was Marcus abusing you? Is that how you ended up with Avery in the first place, you ran away and she helped you?”

Devin swallowed hard, mouth feeling paper-dry again. He took another sip from the water bottle. “Y- yes. Marcus has been ab- abusing me the entire time we were partnered.”

He had never actually said it aloud before. It felt… oddly liberating, to say it.

Devin knew what Marcus was doing was wrong. He had known the whole time; he just hadn’t had any better options. None of the other heroes would take him. If he reported Marcus, Devin would just get thrown into the foster system and would have to kiss his dreams of becoming a hero goodbye. So he had followed the rules and done as Marcus ordered and generally tried to minimize the damage he sustained.

Right up until he decided to break into his mentor’s computer and found his ugly secret.

“But I- I didn’t run away,” he continued. “I… found s-s-something, on his computer, s-something he didn’t want me to find. And he did all this—” he gestured to himself— “in response. Then he left me tied up in the woods for Avery to find. I think he was hoping she’d kill me. I- I thought she was going to kill me.”

“And instead she helped you,” Morgan said, nodding.

“So you think Marcus came up with a story to cover why you disappeared, something that might get you in trouble? And that’s why you might need a lawyer?” Blaire asked.

Devin nodded, grateful that he didn’t have to describe his thoughts about all that. “S-so that’s why I- I might need a l-lawyer. Why do y-you?”

Morgan passed a hand over their eyes, looking suddenly much older. “Because I used to work for Corporation.”

@heathenville @nonbinary-disaster @kim-poce @whump-world @dolls-circus @pickleking8

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