onlythebranch | (no subject)

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wish plot

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The worse Mad Sweeney's luck gets, the more he thinks about Laura fucking Moon.

It's fucked up, he's very aware of it, because when he thinks about her, he's not just thinking about how badly he wants his bloody coin back. He's thinking of that moment after the second accident, when he'd stood on that highway with his blessed coin between his fingers and just stared at her and known. He's thinking about that creeping insistence inside him that he do the right thing, whatever the fuck that means, and he's thinking about how angry he'd been, how badly he'd wanted to turn and walk away and leave her rotting there on the asphalt.

He's thinking of how gently he'd placed the coin back on her chest, how her dead, skinned muscles had felt under his fingertips.

She didn't deserve the gift he'd given her, but then, he knows he had never deserved it either.

These days he's drinking more than he usually does, which is saying something. Chances are nobody really notices, he's drunk more often than not even when times are good. It's just that drinking makes the rest of it sort of blend into the background and he can forget all this shit he keeps thinking about. It starts with the coin, but it ends up at Laura, and over and over he finds himself wandering back to the idea that it's not the coin he wants to see again, but her.

And that idea can go fuck itself.

He drinks straight from the bottle, Southern Comfort minus the fucking coke, drinks enough that he's stumbling when he moves from the kitchen to the living room. There's a moment's consideration when he thinks he ought to call someone, but then he just collapses on the couch with the bottle resting against his thigh and he turns on the TV. What he gets is some reality show about body painting, which is fine, which is good enough for him. It's brainless and he doesn't have to think, he can just get lost in the alcohol and the colours and when he finds himself drifting off, he thinks he's never been so thankful for a little bit of sleep.

The last thought he has before he slips into a dreamless black is that he wishes he could see her.

It's late when he wakes again. The TV is still on, but it's a different show now, some late night bullshit that never quite makes any sense and it's made worse by the fact that he's still drunk. The lights are off, the room is dark, but all at once he's aware of some change. There's pressure against his thigh other than the bottle of whiskey, something cool and slightly damp.

The air smells like blood.

Carefully, he sits up and sets the bottle aside, then reaches for the lamp he knows is beside the couch. The room floods with warm, yellow light and he looks down into the pretty, dead eyes of Laura Moon.

She's wearing the same clothes she was the night of the accident. The one that killed her. The one he caused. She's lying on the couch beside him, her head propped up against his thigh at a perfect angle that he's staring down into her face. There's blood on her lips, dripping gently onto his jeans, leaving a dark red smear he can feel against his skin.

This isn't Laura with his coin. This is Laura quivering in her death throes on the side of a highway. This is Laura after deciding to suck Robbie's cock one last time, after Sweeney had swerved his truck into their lane on Wednesday's instructions. This is Laura before the coin, the Laura who should have been left to rot in her grave, but instead she's here. On his fucking couch.

He can't stop looking at her. He takes his phone out of his pocket and dials the first person he thinks might be able to help. It's late, he's not sure they'll answer, but when they do -- or maybe it's their voicemail, he's too drunk and too fucked up to think about it -- he just says, "I'm at home. I need help."

Then he hangs up again. Hangs up and stares at Laura staring back at him.

"Fuck," he whispers.

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"Oh, boy," Harley says, stepping inside. It's impossible not to see her there, a body just laid out, taking up a good portion of the couch, definitely dead. Not super dead yet, but definitely dead.

She was gonna ask where she came from, but since he's already beat her to that one, she changes tacks. "So what happened? She just appeared?"

Sounds crazy, but it isn't. Not in a city like this.

Maybe it's because Harley doesn't know him that the words come out, but Sweeney finds himself sinking down into a chair where he scrubs his face over his hands before he begins to speak.

"Remember I told you about the woman brought back to life because she got hold of my coin?" he asks. "My luck? That's her. Before my coin. I was- me and her, we were traveling, trying to find her a true resurrection. She- fuck, she's a complete asshole, maybe one of the most fucked up people I've met in my very long life, but somethin' about her..."

He's not explaining this very well at all and he takes a deep breath, then looks at Harley. "I've been thinkin' about her a lot lately. Not just about getting my coin back, but just fuckin'... just seeing her, I guess. Been doin' a lot of drinking to stop thinking about her. I passed out on the couch a couple hours ago and when I woke up, she was just here."

Harley finds a seat of her own, because standing when he's telling her this doesn't feel fair. These words matter. He says how awful the woman is, but, she realizes, there's something in it that doesn't sound anything like hate. He cares about this woman, cares deeply, and here she is, dead on his couch, nothing he can do about it, no coin to bring her back. It's heartbreaking.

"Do you think maybe you wished her here?" she asks. If he was thinking about her, it seems like a pretty big coincidence that she'd just show up like that. "I've heard this place sends stuff from home sometimes, but I never heard of a person showing up." A body. It's a particularly cruel way to answer someone's wishes. But then, the world isn't usually very nice.

"Christ," he says, then sighs. "Maybe. I usually know better than to make idle fuckin' wishes, but..."

He trails off and shrugs. But he had been drunk. But maybe he really did wish he could see Laura again. But any number of reasons that might mean he'd made a wish without thinking. He should know better than that, he's lived with magic and fairies and gods for his entire long life and he knows what dangers are held in a wish.

But Laura Moon has fucked him up before. Maybe he shouldn't be all that surprised.

"Is that a thing this fuckin' place does?" he asks. "Answers wishes. Shit like that should be included in the welcome package."

"Not usually," Harley says, "I think." It's very possible that there are times when it does grant wishes, and she just hasn't been here long enough yet to find that out. It does, though, seem like the kind of thing a place like this might do. Maybe that's how all the things from home end up here: people just want a bit of home so hard, it comes back to bite them in the ass.

"But it does send stuff from home sometimes that messes people up real good," she muses. "Answering wishes might be part of it. Never heard of it sending a person before, though."

She's not much of a person anymore. That's what he wants to say. That's the callous shit he wants to spit out, right onto Laura's dead fucking body, but he can't do it. He just can't.

If he had his coin right now, he thinks he'd probably give it to her all over again.

Rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes, he looks at Harley and shrugs rather helplessly. "What the fuck do I do with her?" He doesn't usually ask for help. He'd rather face just about anything on his own. But Laura is something like he hasn't encountered in a long time.

It makes Harley's heart ache for him, seeing him like this, sitting here in his uncertainty and, well, grief. Something like it, at least. Whatever she was to him, Harley doesn't know, but it was something. She hates to see him hurting, whatever's causing it, not least because he always seems to her like someone not easily hurt, not by people or this world, not by anything.

"Well," she says, "we have to get rid of her somehow. Bury her." She's pretty sure that's a crime — improper disposal of a body, something like that — but who cares? They can do it with dignity and respect, and keep Sweeney out of jail in the same fell swoop. Seems like good enough reason to her to commit a crime.

It feels good, having someone else take charge, and he thinks he ought to be embarrassed by that, but he's not. Not right now. Everything feels too fucking big for him with Laura lying there.

And Harley's right. They need to bury her somewhere. There's no coin in Darrow to bring her back, even if he would give it to her. Which he thinks he probably would.

"Yeah," he says on a heavy exhale. "Fuck. I should've just fuckin' done it." He shouldn't have called anyone. Shouldn't have gotten her involved at all. It's not quite an apology, but for Mad Sweeney, it's close.

Harley shakes her head, pigtails swaying. "It's a two-person job," she says decisively. He's big enough he could carry Laura himself probably, but something like this requires some speed and focus. He doesn't seem that focused right now.

"We could take her out into the woods. Or out into the ocean. No one'd find her out there." They'd need weights for that, but at least they wouldn't have to dig anything up. And what he needs right now is a quick solution that'll take care of the physical part of this problem, even if it won't make him feel any better probably.

Mad Sweeney knows a hell of a lot more about Laura Moon than he ought to. Between the time they'd spent together crossing the country and the weeks he'd spent watching her before causing the accident, he knows more than she ever thought he did.

"The ocean," he says. The words come without him having given it much thought, but it feels right. The ocean over the ground. He's sure she'd prefer that. He thinks of Laura and the hot tub. Thinks of how she'd tried to fill her lungs with water and poison. "Think she'd like that better."

Harley nods, thoughtful. "Then that's what we'll do," she says. She can see how the ocean would be preferable. Couldn't have anyone come visit after, but there's something to the idea of being buried among the waves she finds appealing. And besides, it's true — once they put her in the water, no one will find her. It's a hell of a lot easier to hide than freshly overturned earth.

"We're gonna need weights," she says, "so she doesn't wash up to shore." And a boat, but she figures they can always borrow one. Without asking. She'll put it right back where they find it, it's fine. She's never done this before, but they'd made a few contingency plans in their time. Water will hide a lot of wrongs.

"Rocks," he says. Not in her pockets, the skirt she's wearing won't allow for that, but it's as close as he can get to what she'd wanted to do for such a long time. It's grotesque, he thinks, replicating a suicide in such a manner, but Laura was grotesque even before she was dead. She was fucked up and broken and a little part of him had loved her because of it and he hates that about himself. And hates her, too.

But if it's what she wanted, he doesn't see the point in clinging to her the way Shadow had done. She's dead now. No coin is here to bring her back. So he'll give her some part of the death she wanted for so long.

"I'll get a sheet," he says, his voice rough. "And thanks."

There's a certainty in his voice when he says it and Harley nods. Rocks. They'll be easier to come by and he seems to know what he wants. It's the best method she can think of. She won't ask him why he's so sure.

She wants to reach out to him still, in words or in deed, but she's not sure how. He's in shock, she thinks, and she wants to help guide him, but she doesn't want to put on her therapist hat with him, so to speak. She's here as a friend, and as such, she wants to give him space and time to grieve. As a pragmatist, though, she knows bodies draw attention far too quickly if left for long.

"Any time," she says gently. "Although you maybe don't want to start accumulating corpses, so maybe not too often."

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