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geeneelee · 9 months

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Judit’s Backstory, or: Why She Supports Harry

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, especially since it’s apparently not common knowledge in the fandom, but Judit has a developed backstory with Harry that can only be put together through reading one of the case files (so perhaps it’s not that surprising that people don’t know).

We start with Joseph Mills: an idiot and a terrible person.

No, he was awful. Awful sense of humour too. The worst jokes you've ever heard. Really rapey.

Harry can find out about him from reading MURDER IN THE HOOKAH PARLOR from his case files. Long story short, Mills mistook an accidental death for a murder and wasted months on it, only for Harry to identify it as a dumb accident in less than a minute.

What’s more relevant to the present-day is this:

Beaten to death by a throng of Villalobos gang-members when him and his partner J. M. (only initials mentioned) answered a call one night. It's a sad story and it isn't really represented in *your* case files. Stop stalling and get to the MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR.

Judit’s partner was beaten to death by gangsters, presumably while she watched. Technically, J.M. could be anyone, but basic narrative rules + a few other hints make me certain that it’s Judit. Most importantly, what she says about Harry after his disastrous call to the Precinct.

"We must help him." Minot looks down at her neatly polished black shoes. There is a quiet firmness to her voice when she speaks.

"I just know we can't give up on him when he's at his weakest. He wouldn't..." The crowd in the room has started fidgeting uncomfortably. Someone's trying to slip out unnoticed.

I’m presuming here that what she’s going to say is “He wouldn’t give up on one of us”. (Side note: judging by the reactions of everyone else, they agree. Pre-canon Harry had his good moments and his bad with the squad).

Judit might be speaking from experience - we know that she’s only been with C-Wing for two months, but why did she transfer? Given how C-wing has been hemorrhaging members, it seems odd. If she was speaking from experience, then the most likely answer is that Harry helped her out after Mills’ death (first on the scene? Provided support? who knows) and Judit, who was now without a partner, decided to follow him to C-wing.

Between her gratitude to Harry and (probably) low standards for coworkers, she’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt more than anyone else who knows him, although depending on your actions you can burn through the good will - calling her the Horse-Faced Woman and asking if you’ve had sex will make her cold towards you.

She’s also aware of Harry’s drinking problem, but has more hope than Jean does - Jean will shoot down any hint that Harry’s changed, but if he’s stayed sober, Judit will hold onto hope that it’ll stick this time

You haven't been drinking, she thinks. So maybe this time...

(Perhaps it’s just because she’s known him for the least amount of time, but it’s still more hope than anyone else in his unit has for Harry).

It’s easy to miss Judit’s implied past with Harry, and assume her patience is naivety or because she’s a mom (which might be the case in a story written by lesser writers) but it’s something more complex than that, and a tiny hint at the better side of pre-canon Harry.

#harry du bois #judit minot #harrier du bois #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #i love how many icebergs of lore there are in this game

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dulcesiabits · 12 days

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the sun is also a star.

summary: Literally just two drabbles of mhin with my oc Li where they try to bring her back to life when she dies because there is nothing sexier than obsession that even death cannot stop!

notes: 2.2k words, necromancy (descriptions of bodies + cleaning bones + emotional aftermath of bringing someone back to life)

i. I Put Every Bone of Yours Back in Place

There’s a certain clean beauty about bones, Mhin finds, that provide a reassuring and familiar weight to death.

There are 206 bones in an average human body. 80 of those bones make up the axial skeleton, and the remaining 126 bones make up the appendicular skeleton. But what Mhin finds most interesting is that a human is born with 270 bones. Somewhere, during the process of growth and development, those 64 bones are fused with other bones. To change, you must give something up. To live in the world means suffering losses, losses one isn’t even aware of.

Of course, the pages of an anatomical textbook don’t quite capture the reality of a human’s growth. There are always mutations and exceptions. Bones don’t always fuse properly, or someone may simply have been born with extra bones in their hands. It’s difficult to tell if those bones don’t affect the quality of life enough to warrant a checkup with a medical professional. No, it’s only after death that one can gauge the extent of their own deviancy, marked into their very core.

Li, thankfully, only has the average number of bones. Two hundred and six exactly, with no outlying pieces. That makes it easy for them to collect all parts of her. When Mhin lays them on the ground in a facsimile of a human’s shape, they can almost pretend it’s Li again. Her delicate wrist bones, the curve of each rib, the twist of her femur, set in their proper places. She’s beautiful, right down to her skeletal structure.

They wipe their forehead, but all it does is smear grime across their skin: rotten dirt and the faint tinge of death, blood from their own scraped fingers and flesh (from who or what they forget) caught under their nails. It had taken months for them to find her body, months of feverishly patrolling the wastelands, even begging Ais and his disgusting minions for help when weeks of searching turned fruitless. They weren’t above that, not even when their fists tightened at his little smirk. Ais would hold it over their head, they knew.

But all that mattered was that her body was found, monsters and scavengers having already nibbled on every tender part of her, clothing long since reduced to tags and tatters. Her bones shone like stars in the muck. She would be unrecognizable to anyone else, but not to Mhin. There was not a world in which they would not know her.

They had run to her body. Finally, here she was again, and they had fallen to their knees as they picked up her corpse, hugging it to their chest, gore slopping onto their chest, mindless to anything else. It didn’t matter if their shirt stained. It would be better if it stained, if her rotting flesh sunk into the fabric, so they would always carry her with them.

It took time to clean off the bones, too. That was the most exhausting part. To take her body with them into the city in the darkness of the night, to run each part under water, to scrape off all the distended flesh and severed skin without chipping her bones. To gently detangle chunks of yellowing brain matter from the hollow cavity of her skull, watching the flesh fall with a wet slap in the sink. To brush carefully around each opening, which were more delicate and prone to breakage. Through hardened muscle, dead nerves, and congealed blood. To watch the bones pile up, piece by piece, like snowfall, day after day.

Sometimes they had brought her skull to their face, to stare into the eye sockets, the rows of teeth. It was the first piece of her that they had saved. They could feel the memory of her warmth when they closed their eyes, concentrating on how the flesh that once stretched over her skull felt. Her scarred skin, her callouses, the freckle on her knuckle.

They pressed their lips to the hollow teeth, where lips should have been. Nothing but the taste of soap and death. Their first kiss, in months.

She loved to kiss them when she was still around. Mhin would reciprocate begrudgingly, their sour attitude doing little to deter her from throwing her arms around them and peppering their face in kisses. She was like an over eager affectionate puppy, and Mhin had never liked dogs for precisely that reason. But she was an exception, just barely.

The kiss they remembered most had been in her shitty apartment, kneeling in front of each other on faded red cushions. There was a pot of cooling oolong tea in front of them, and Li had found a veil somewhere that she had tossed over her head, just for fun, she claimed. It made her look like a ghost, the lace fluttering over her galaxy of hair.

Wedding rites for their people always involved family, from the little Mhin remembered of matrimonial customs. But neither of them had family left. All they had was each other. So for the tea drinking ceremony, they poured each other cups of steaming tea, raising it to their lips to sip. To honor the only family they had.

There were the three bows, too. But they remembered thinking, even then, that they wouldn’t bow to anyone. Not the uncaring heaven, not their distant ancestors. The only one they would bow to would be to the woman in front of them.

It was an unofficial ceremony. There was no one to proclaim that they now belonged to each other, no city to record whatever they were. But that never mattered. They didn’t need anyone else to prove their relationship was real.

This had been real. Li, in front of them. The bitter tea lingering on their tongue. The sunlight, filtering across the dusty air, making her holy.

They had pushed back her veil, then, and she had smiled mischievously as she grabbed their hand, before pulling the veil so it fell over both of them instead. A benediction, as soft as snow, covering the world in a gauzy, dream of white as she brought her lips to theirs.

The very night they finish cleaning her bones, they return to the wastelands. And now they are laying her bones down piece by piece, in correct anatomical order. They had studied their own textbooks feverishly, just to ensure they wouldn’t mess up the placement, not at this critical juncture. They count over each bone, an obsessive gesture they’ve repeated throughout the night. 206. 206. 206. All in order, all laid out precisely as it would be if Li was taking a nap with her arms outstretched.

The moonlight filters down. Soulless call in the distance, but their dagger is ready at their hip. For an instant, Mhin lets themself relax, and bends down to caress Li’s skull again. The intimate parts of her, which no one but them would ever know and understand.

It was thoughtless of her to leave them behind. She had always been a little scatter-brained and clumsy, prone to having the money stolen right out of her pocket despite being a self-proclaimed thief. But this was her worst mistake yet. To die without them. To rest so peacefully, while making them suffer.

It went against what she always said: that it would just be the two of them, together. And yet she had left them. She had taken on a dangerous job, an escort mission across miles of barren wastelands, soulless at every corner. She had gone out that fateful night, blowing them kisses, promising to return, and then never came home. Hypocrite. How could she do that to them?

But it was fine. It would be fine, and they could forgive her. They would be together again. Mhin was simply fulfilling the promise they made. Even if she cursed them and cried and begged for peace, they would drag her back down to earth, back to their side. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.

They stare down at her bones again. Resurrection was a forbidden art, but Leander had lent them the proper tools for the ritual, the magic and the spells, like a snake whispering in their ear. Weeks of fruitless searching on their own, and Leander was the only one who could offer them what they needed. They would take whatever hand offered them a way to save her, even if it was from someone like him.

Because they were hers, and she was theirs, and not even death would separate them. They would bring her back, and they would tie her so tightly to them that they would be together in every life after this.

Mhin took a breath, and spoke the opening words of the spell as the moonlight spilled over Li’s bones, as if she was waiting for them, too.

ii. Even if You Come Back Wrong, You’re Still Mine

“Sorry.” That’s the first word Li spoke to them, with her palms outstretched in front of her, like a scolded puppy. “It fell.”

It’s easy enough to see the bone protruding from her right hand, the finger cupped in her palms. Mhin lets out a short little sigh. Things like this had become common as of late, her body disintegrating bit by bit after the ritual.

“It’s fine,” they say, gesturing for her to sit. “We can just fix it.”

Li obediently perches on the kitchen chair, and Mhin kneels in front of her, gently taking her broken hand in their own. Her skin is cold, and no amount of rubbing could bring the warmth back into her skin. They had tried, but whatever warmth from their touch her skin absorbed would simply dissipate in a few hours.

They take out the sewing kit from their pocket, a recent benediction from Kuras. When they had tersely asked him for medical supplies, for thick, transparent thread and needles that could puncture skin, Kuras had wordlessly handed them the kit without question. There was never any judgment or pity with Kuras, but his gaze had still seared their skin.

Mhin deftly threads the needle, holding the finger in place, and makes quick, even stitches across Li’s finger. They’re good at delicate work like this, that requires intense concentration and little thought. It’s soothing how the world can always be broken down into patterns and rhythms, into familiar, repetitive motions.

When they’re done, Li stares at her own finger like a stranger.

“Open and close your hand,” Mhin instructs, and she does. The finger moves normally, and they nod.

“Mhin,” Li says, slowly, absently.

“What is it?” they snap, and she only blinks owlishly. Before, she would have shrugged off their complaints as easily as one does water, with a blindly bright and foolish smile. She might have even called them cute.

Li had never been one for quick thinking outside of a fight, but now, her mind seems to move slowly, thoughts struggling to break through the murky surfaces of her own brain. She once worked on instinct and intuition, and now all of her animal senses had been deadened to a dullness that made her stumble where she once would have leaped.

It was as much as what Vere had said, when the bastard had swung by their apartment, ears pricking at the “new amusement” Mhin had been so fixated with that it meant no one in Eridia had seen them outside their apartment in weeks. Vere had deigned to chat with his old gossip partner for a few minutes, but with each dull response of Li’s, Vere’s ears flattened against his head, a sharp, displeasurable scowl on his face. Mhin had then considered slotting their dagger right against his heart when Vere suggested that they should throw away toys that no longer worked.

Li watched them with blank eyes the entire exchange, in the same way she watches them now. There’s a veil fluttering across her gaze, and if they only knew the right words, the right actions, they could finally reach past it to grasp her hand.

“Your face…” she says, and cups their cheeks with her cool palms. They’re still kneeling in front of her, and she gazes down at them, like a blessing.

“What about it?” They lean into her touch, into the smooth skin of death.

“You look…” she frowns. “Sad.” Her words are uncertain.

“I’m not.”

“Okay,” she says.

But for a moment more, they can’t move, can’t pull away from her hands, which have always captivated them. “Li, do you remember what we talked about?” Mhin asks curtly.

She tilts her head. “Which conversation?”

They bring their hands to cover hers, trapping her touch in place. “About what we are.”

She nods, and like a pupil reciting a lesson, states, “That we’re always going to be together, no matter what.”

“Right. Just be sure to keep that in mind,” they say. “That’s the one thing you can’t forget.”

“Okay.”

They close their eyes. “You’re here now,” they repeat. “You’re here. You’re right here.”

“I’m here,” she repeats.

Learned behaviors are just as necessary as innate behaviors. And love is also something that could be learned again, as many times as needed. As long as they kept their hands on hers, then they could believe that the chill of her winter had finally melted away to spring again.

#liya writes #liya’s ocs #touchstarved #mhin #li #sorry idk how to tag these things when its not x reader lmfaooooo #anyways i actually have like. an insane amount of lore for li hiding in my drafts this is just the tip of the iceberg #i just think its cute to pair mhin w someone who is so oblivious self confident and selfish she just pushes past all their walls

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