onlythebranch | (no subject)

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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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"Laura," he says and he knows that's not an explanation, but it's the only thing he can say. This is Laura after the accident. Laura after he'd done what Wednesday told him to do. He's not about to say that last bit, but he can say the first, just as soon as he gets his tongue working again.

For a second he thinks he might be sick everywhere. The alcohol burns and sloshes in his gut, rolling uncomfortably, and he has to swallow hard against the rising bile.

"Car accident," he says. "She's the one whose husband tossed my coin into her grave. Brought her back to life." Sort of. He can explain the details if she wants, but he needs a minute.

Part of me doesn't believe him. Part of me has already begun to conjure up a new nightmare scenario that Sweeney isn't what he seems. Laura is a woman he's brought back here and murdered and I'm next. I wonder if I should be more disturbed at the thought that I've also slept with a murderer but I've done too much killing on my own to throw stones.

I look back at Sweeney, all fraught and broken, or so I interpret his expression and then at the body. One breath, two breaths. I wish this was a new sight but I've seen bodies before.

"What's she going to do?" Wake up? Demand a coin? Or is she as dead and as still as she looks?

"Nothin'," he answers, his voice flat. "She's dead."

Short of his coin, nothing is going to bring her back. No magic he knows can do that, not if what Ostara has said is the truth, and he thinks it is. She had no reason to lie to him or to Laura.

So Laura is dead. All she's going to do ever again, at least in Darrow, is rot. Bring him shitty memories and rot, depending on where he puts her. The thing is, he doesn't know where that's going to be.

The absurd thing is that in Darrow, it seems almost tame, the idea of someone dying and staying dead. So much in this city is strange and impossible that something obeying the rules of life and death is almost strange.

All his answer does is spur more questions from me and I chew on my lip, uncertain if the copper taste in my mouth is because I've bitten too hard or if the smell of blood has just saturated the air. Thinking about it makes me queasy.

"Did she just...show up?" Why not, when Darrow's given me my own urn, told me of my death? Another question is too pressing not to let loose and I turn, finally, to look at him. "Why did you call me?"

"I was thinkin' about her," he says, his voice a little tight, but he thinks he ought to at least try to be properly honest here. As best he can without incriminating himself too much. "Thinkin' about her and trying not to, so I was drinking. I passed out on the couch and when I woke up just before I called you, she was there with me."

Already dead and for that he's grateful. Watching her die once had been bad enough.

The second question makes him pause and he frowns, still looking at Laura. He fucking hates this. Hates what she'd come to mean to him. It shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have given Shadow that bloody coin.

"I can't do this on my own," he says simply. "I just- I fuckin' can't."

Why is Darrow like this? Why does this place feel the need to be so utterly pitiless? It's not the first time I've asked this question and I expect that I'll keep asking it for as long as I'm in this place.

I risk another look at Sweeney and it's strange to see that facet of him. By now, I've seen the many ways he can look, whether it's from anger or passion but the look on his face now seems so close to fragile. In this sad moment, I'm reminded of Al. He'd been a big man too and I'd seen him at his worst and weakest. I don't like seeing it in Sweeney.

"Okay," I say. This is messy and scary but in my gut, I believe him. "Where do you want to take her."

He hasn't given enough thought to any of this. He should have made a plan while he waited for someone to come, should have started the fucking clean up. Shouldn't have called in the first place, he can see that now. All he's doing is fucking up everyone else in this attempt to get help.

Still, he has to do something, and so he takes a deep breath and says, "The ocean. The water. I can weigh her down with somethin'. She'd... it'd be better."

He can't say how he knows it, only that he does. Laura had crawled out of her first grave and maybe she'll crawl out of the ocean, but somehow he gets the sense a place like that might give her a bit more peace than a dark grave in the woods.

I nod. It makes sense. We can do it quickly and won't have to use up precious time digging a grave. When I'd had to bury my urn, digging the hole had taken a better part of an hour and it had been a much smaller object. I've done a lot of things, many of them hard and unpleasant, but this is my first body.

"At least it's not so far from here."

Not close, either, but at least we don't have to walk from the Bramford.

"We're going to need a sheet or something." We're going to have to figure out how to walk across the city without it being painfully obvious we're carting a body around too.

"Yeah, I've got..."

He leaves the sentence unfinished, wandering away down the hall toward the linen closet. He's acting like a fucking idiot. He shouldn't have called Tris to begin with. This has nothing to do with her and he'll probably have to explain at least part of this in order to keep her from thinking he's done something exceptionally fucked up.

Even if he has.

He returns, a dark sheet in his hands, then looks at Tris. "Figured white would show the blood," he explains with a shrug, then bends to lay out the sheet. He transfers Laura onto it, then begins to wrap her, taking care to tuck her hair in at the one end.

"Definitely would." Sometimes I wonder if that's not part of why Dauntless insisted on all black. Yes, we'd looked tough and unified in our color but I've also lost count of how many times I'd used it as armor, dismissing a darker patch as an old stain or simply water, even as I'd gotten dizzy from blood loss. The thought gives me a little vertigo now just thinking about it.

Maybe Sweeney's right. Maybe I am still traumatized. I don't want to be but I also don't think I'll ever visit his apartment again either. I won't be able to walk through that door without the smell of blood in my memory.

"You going to explain?" I ask. It's cruel, probably, but the horror of this situation is hard to reconcile with the tender way he pushes back her hair.

"Explain what?" he asks, not knowing what the hell she wants to hear. "She died. I accidentally gave her husband my coin, he tossed it into her grave and brought her back and then she wouldn't give the coin back to me. Who the fuck would? She didn't want to be dead."

He shrugs as he wraps Laura, covering her face gently.

"Spent a couple days with her going across the country to try and find her a real resurrection. Somethin' to benefit the both of us. She gets to live again, go back to the husband that didn't really love her, and I'd get my bloody coin."

It's so much more than that, but he can't get into it. He can't even acknowledge it.

I look at Sweeney, an eyebrow raised, because it still only explains about half of what's going on but I let it slide.

"I used to want to," I say. In the half-dark, when we're already doing something sordid, the confession is easy. Probably too easy. "A lot of things went wrong and none of the factions I encountered knew how to deal with grief." I'd been foolish.

Leaning down a little, I test my leg in its cast, check the straps of the walking boot. I'm not ready to run any marathons but at least I'll be able to help with this.

"I think I'm dead anyway. If I go back."

He wants to tell her to shut the fuck up, because this isn't the sort of shit he wants to hear now, that everyone around him is probably some form of dead, but he knows why she's able to say it now. It'd be a shitty thing, to take that away from her just because he's feeling fucking sensitive.

"Not sure of it, then," he says. It's not really a question, nor is it one he thinks he really wants an answer to either way. Maybe there's a good reason she's not sure. Maybe it's not the sort of thing anyone should really know.

"Better or worse than bein' sure?" he asks.

I shrug. The reality is that I'm sure of it. Maybe if I went home now, I'd remember what I know here, but I doubt it. No one else has. I found my own urn and I buried it but I can't forget it. Sweeney's gruff about it and I think I've probably said too much.

"Worse than thinking I can't change things," I say.

But I don't think I have a choice, particularly ironic when my whole life has been defined by them.

"Okay, where should I lift."

Worse than thinking I can’t change things. He supposes it must be that and he grinds his teeth together for a moment before he passes a broad palm over the back of Tris’s neck. Just barely a touch. Something he won’t make a big deal of or even acknowledge unless he absolutely has to.

Instead he nods at her leg and asks, “You sure you’re okay t’do so with that still goin’ on?”

Maybe she’ll hit him for suggesting she can’t do something. Maybe that wouldn’t be so terrible.

He touches me so lightly that I almost don't realize what he's doing, his hand almost gone before I can try and lean back into it, just a little and just for a moment. It's selfish but after everything that's happened so far, I'll take that little bit of comfort.

"We're not running a marathon. My upper body strength is still fine," I say. I know it's a reasonable question but he's already called me here in the dead of night and him starting to doubt me now makes me stubborn. I lift my chin a little, practically daring him to comment.

"Fine," he answers. It's not a fight he wants to have right now. He's too fucking tired of that, doesn't want to draw attention to them at the moment, figures they need to just get on with this one way or another. He could give her a hard time, but he knows her already, he knows she'll just give it right the fuck back and he's just too goddamn tired for it.

"Take her feet," he says. They'll be lighter.

He could carry Laura on his own and he wants to, a little, but at the same time he's afraid of how they might look. If he carries her, cradles her in his arms, he knows there's going to be more questions.

I nod and do what he asks and wonder why, exactly, he called me here. Sweeney can carry a woman's full weight by himself, a fact I know intimately. I guess, probably, he doesn't want to do this alone but I still can't help but feel as though I'm the odd choice.

I voice none of those thoughts and gesture to the door. "Lead the way."

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