Where there’s love, there’s loss
January 14, 2004, 19:55
The war and Iron elves
Kingdom,
Domoa castle
Jean is hiding inside mother and father's closet when the enforcers barge into the room. He watches in horror and dread as torture his mother to death, taking turns with torturing her, not even absolving her after she took her last few breath. He feels numb and nauseous as fuck, but he chooses to keep it together, because he doesn't think he has a chance against them anyways.
He closes his eyes and tries his best to shut out the screams his mother howls.
For the first time today, she was a mother to him. She wasn't the hoggish power abuser she has been for the past years of his life. She looked him in the eyes with so much care and love he has never seen in those cold grey eyes before. She held his face like his petals would fall off if she wasn't careful enough, and it broke him, because why today of all the days did she let her emotions beat her ego, why now, Why?
Why would she tell him one last time not to cry over her? Why did she ever commit such Repulsive crimes to let her own lips tell him how sorry she was for being the person she was? Why would she tell him that she loved him, even if she never showed it?
Jean doesn't think her last words with him will stick into his mind for too long, because her screams when she's being murdered is what will haunt him for the rest of his life. He thinks that's how their brains work.
Jean chocks on his tears as he watches her face, eyes missing the bright light or life, staring into nothingness.
He feels the walls of hate and resentment mother and father have built around him all over the years toppling down onto his body, crushing it and leaving a pile of warm flesh and rubble behind.
Its funny, how he never thought he'd grief them, how he'd never mourn their deaths, but he supposes, even if you have only repulsive feelings towards a person, hearing and seeing them being butchered in such an animalistic way would make you feel sorry for them.
His mother wasn't a good person, and maybe she deserves dying in pain, but he still can't help but feel his heart constrict and shatter to pieces by the scene that has unfolded before his eyes tonight.
He feels powerless and weak when they leave the room and he's left with his mother's bleeding corpse. Jean chooses to close her eyes shut for one last time, covering her body with an article of cloth he grabbed from the closet. He leaves her face uncovered, as he lets himself take it in, free from the frown she has always met his eyes with. He allows himself to plant his head heavily on her chest, hugging her hard rock body with all he is.
He loved her, even if he resented her, but he loved her nevertheless.
He takes his time with the one-sided embrace. A mother's hug, one he was deprived from his whole life, he finally got it, but at what cost.
Jean wipes away his tears as he stands up, taking one last look at her beautiful face.
"I'm sorry." He whispers to her corpse, and he feels as his eyes sting when he never gets a sarcastic remark thrown back at him.
Jean grabs his gun from where he left it behind in the closet and stares at it for a while as it weighs heavily between his palms.
I want to die, he thinks.
Jean makes sure the gun is full of bullets before he stands before the mirror of the dressing room and lays the gun well between his upper and lower jaw, teeth clicking against the cold metal. Jean closes his eyes shut and embraces himself for the pain, but it never comes. He suddenly remembers all the other times he thought of doing the same thing and could quite pull the trigger. He pulls the gun out and throws it across the room with a scream.
A coward.
He has always been a fucking coward, hasn't he?
Jean looks outside of the window and he can hear guns firing and bombs blowing up. He thinks about how honourable it would be to die in a battle protecting your own people. One last favour to offer his miserable entourage that his father has been abusing for years.
But he can't.
Because he's a coward.
Jean stands on the ledge of the window and he takes a few breaths to calm his racing heart. He closes his eyes and allows gravity to take its place with a courage leap filled with sorrow and emptiness. And Jean falls.
*
May 4, 2021, 15:00
Beijing, china
Local bar
Evdokia spends the next two days actively trying her best to avoid YuNing's face, which shouldn't be happening in her own respectful opinion.
She'd rather not. She'd rather tell him everything he needs to be told, but she wouldn't dare trespass LiQin's will of keeping it from him. She doesn't get it. She doesn't understand why would he try hiding such an essential part of YuNing from him.
She thinks its selfish of LiQin to decide what path should YuNing take whether it be amongst humans or go explorehis real world. Valodya has told her that he's keeping him in the dark because he'd rather have him live a normal life in his world without having to ask himself if it's the best for him.
Evdokia thinks both worlds are as bad as each other. They both have their pros and cons, and she has seen it herself. She has seen the wars both worlds have unleashed upon themselves, the bloodshed and the hunger for more. Humans aren't that far from creatures when it comes to being monstrous, although, magic does allow much more damage than simply building murderous weapons from metal and steel.
However their world has changed, she'd still pick it over this polluted hell of a place. Evdokia thinks humans downfall would be their almost unseen respect and honour to nature. It's funny, how destructive creatures could be when driven by the will of wanting power, but they'd still not dare chop down a tree to reach their aspirations. It's poetic in some way.
"That's the man we're looking for." Mizuki's voice pulls Evdokia out of her head, fingers clicking around the glass of cocktail he has ordered for himself.
Evdokia hums, snapping out of it and looking over at the guy.
He's got the same eyebrow scar shaped of a C that ZiYan has told them about, and Mizuki could tell he's a selkie solely by the smell he whiffed when he passed by them.
"What's the plan?" Ira asks.
"We follow him, figure out where they're operating from." Evdokia explains, "Or we make him realise he's being followed and abducting him over to the safe house."
"Wild guess, he probably has a tracker on." Mizuki murmurs while sipping his drink.
"I know. If he's not going to lead us to them, then we lead them to us." Evdokia says as she lays back on her chair, eyes roaming all over the selkie. She wonders what would have lead him to do such dirty work when selkies are one of the most naturally gentle creatures.
They've spent the last two days trying to cook a lie that would pass the FBI suspensions, but they've soon realised its almost impossible to tell off the compound that YuNing and ZiYan were found at due to the scene LiQin has caused. They've decided to rebuild the case themselves, but they needed people, people on the other side of the table that can walk perfectly in their trap and work into their plan.
It's rather a simple one. Find one of the men or women, drag them to the CPA safehouse, make sure you leave trace behind, pretend the safehouse was the house of the kidnappers and catch them when they come looking for their missing team member.
It should work just fine, only if they cared for the pawn of a man. But Evdokia has caught up on what they originally wanted.
LiQin.
They want LiQin so bad they'd go an extra mile to get to him, and she'll use it as her wild card in this game.
And so they wait for the selkie to leave the bar, and then and there, the game kicks off.
*
May 4, 2021, 15:00
Beijing, china
Mogra safehouse
"Can you calm down? it's just a stab." Evdokia says as she sways her way to the living's room, almost toppling over Hook on her way.
"Just a stab? You look paler than a fucking dead JiangShi." Jean scoffs at her, rushing the first aid kit to Ufuk as soon as he saw her state the moment they entered the house.
"jee, thanks sweetie."
Jean sits on the arms of the armchair Evdokia is sitting on, holding her hand tight as Ufuk does his best of work by pulling the blade out and closing off any blood circulation in the area with magic.
"Have any of you seen Yu- fuck, Evdokia, what happened?" LiQin walks into the room, a spiced tea in his hold.
"Nothing! I've handled so much worse." Evdokia brushes it off, even if she flinches a little when Ufuk has pulled out the bade completely. "Thanks, man."
"any time boss." Ufuk sets the kit aside, casting a cooling spell over Evdokia's head to control her temperature that has spiked. It's a good thing Reema took ZiYan and YuNing out for shopping for groceries.
"I'll go get her a cold compress, this wouldn't do." LiQin gets up on his feet and walks to the kitchen.
"What happened?" Valodya whispers as he cups Evdokia's face to check her temperature, and she leans into the touch, the fight getting the best of her.
"We split ways when the man started racing with his car, Evdokia took the side road on her motorcycle and got to him first." Ira explains, unfazed, because this isn't near the first time for Evdokia to put herself in danger for the fun of it.
"Still, how did you get stabbed by a mere selkie-" Valodya is saying when LiQin is back in the room, and he stops in his words, because on their side or not, they're secret agents and their plans should stay the same.
"there, this should make you feel better." LiQin murmurs as he plants the bag on her forehead, making her hiss from the sudden coldness on her heated skin. "You should know better than that, I've taught you better than this." LiQin pouts.
"Can we not? I'm fine, yeah? It's literally just a dagger, I've been implanted with metal wires and st-" her words die out on her tounge the moment her brain visualises those endless nights of torture she has endured.
A tragedy, really, and it doesn't leave the sweetest of tastes on ones tounge.
Evdokia hasn't been getting nightmares much for the last few months, just mild ones, and the mention of it just revives the ghosts and voices in her head.
Evdokia doesn't realise she's crying until she feels a pair of hands wiping away the tears on her face. She's shaking, she also realises when she tries swatting the hands with her own. Her head throbs and a shooting electrical pain fills her entire body the higher the voices get.
She thinks she hears real voices around her, but they fade in the background to what her demons have to say.
It takes her a few seconds in unconsciousness to realise she is in fact unconscious. She tries shutting them up, tries to close up her ears with her palms. But it all fails, and they swallow her whole, for her to find herself in the belly of the beast in a few.
*
January 13, 2004, xx:xx
The Onis lands
X
When Evdokia wakes up, she feels her soul detached from her body.
She can't see well, everything seeming black shaded like she's got a see through blindfold on. She tries getting up but its almost like her torso muscles have been torn apart, and it hurts, everything hurts like hell.
She moves her head around, looking around the room, looking for her people. But all her eyes was met with are corpses. Corpses of every single person in this room, marked with black veins all over their bodies. They're not just onis and vampires, but moonfolks.
She wonders why she's still alive when whatever abhorrent creature who has done this left no one else alive. She is looking at the other way around the room when her eyes lay on his dead body, vomiting blood and covered in bad scratch marks that has possibly killed him. She moves her hands, they seem heavier than normal, only to find her finger tips covered in blood, fresh blood.
Impossible, she passed out, its impossible that she might have fought the creature.
Panic rises in her throat as she pushed herself off the ground through the pain. She spins and sprints around the room to Amara's body, ice cold body.
When she looks at her brother's corpse, she sees it in his eyes, the look on his face giving her flash backs of what has happened, and-
Evdokia starts screaming, when she sees it, the faded-out ink in her veins still running through her body, her water bounded laughing nymph curse coming to life and killing everyone, she killed everyone, including her own brother.
Evdokia feels lightheaded, every face flashing before her eyes as she killed them one by own, uncontrollably so.
She holds Amara's body close to her chest, as she cries and screams her heart out until her body gives up on her and die, rotting in this pile of bloody dead bodies hall.
*
May 6, 2021, 13:38
Beijing, china
Mogra safehouse
Evdokia wakes up and finds herself in her bed, spooned by Jean. She moves her head and it indicates her waking to Jean. He peels away from her and plops himself on his elbows to be able to look down at Evdokia.
"Good evening. " he smiles gently at her, and she wants to cry.
She goes to laying her head heavy onto his chest, feeling his heart beating, his kind faithful heart.
"What happened? " she asks, not sure if what her memory would serve is even real.
"You blacked out, does your head hurt?" Jean goes to fluffing up her bangs stuck onto her forehead with sweat.
"No, did I hit something? " she moves her hand to feel her head, not feeling anything other than her regular just woke up headache.
"You were gripping your head before you passed out,." His voice is soft and soothing, and Evdokia might have just slept for almost twenty four hours but she's ready to go back to sleep in his arms, throwing their world behind them and all.
Jean leaves a kiss on the crown of her hair and hugs her tighter. He wishes he could take away her pain, her trauma, every bad day she had ever had. Jean wishes he could wrap her in the softest clouds and keep her safe in a cave in the deepest pits of the woods from everything their world is throwing at her. She's a gentle fragile creature who was torn and put back together, and Jean wishes he can undo that, he wishes he can have the bright white flower that has always looked at him like he's her all and whole, free from the tiredness of running and running for miles from ghosts haunting her. He wishes he could pull out his sword and kill them all, one after the other, leaving no trail behind him that might catch the attention of Evdokia and recreating them.
"What were they telling you?" he whispers into her hair.
"I don't know, they were a lot talking at the same time."
"you should talk to LiQin about it, maybe he knows a spell that can make them go aw-"
"No. I don't want them gone."
Jean shuts up with a click of his teeth together. He doesn't agree with her. Yes, she misses them, she feels the burden of having to always be in pain to pay for what she has done. But he doesn't agree with it.
There's a tangled lock within her hair and Jean gently untangles it. She traces the scars lines on Jean's face as he does so.
"I will." She sighs in his arms, tired and worn out. She stuffs her head between the pillow and Jean's chest, grunting, which emits an airy laugh by Jean. It constricts her heart in the best ways, and it only adds to her burden onto cleaning this mess they've stepped into
Jean hums as his fingers travel along her locks.
All Evdokia ever wanted since they came to the humans side is peace, a peaceful life that she spends everyday of it trying to perfect it, perfect their numbered days, because here's the thing, even if Valodya and Jean thought that it's over by them coming here, she never did, never could, not with her people's and family's ghosts haunting her day in day out, reminding her of what she left unsolved behind her and ran away like the coward she still is.
Jean seems to hear her and he shifts in his position, raising his palms to pull Evdokia's face out from where it's buried in the pillow. She's beautiful that way, face laminated by the faded yellow lamp behind her. He lowers his head and bops his forehead with hers, nose softly brushing against each other.
"You know you'll never have to deal with this alone, yeah? "
Evdokia closes her eyes and takes in the way his spiky hair tickles her bangs, his cologne, the glide of their noses against each other, his hands cupping her face. It's good that way, life is good when she only got him on her mind.
"I know, I trust you with it." She whispers back.
*
May 8, 2021, 13:38
Beijing, china
Mogra safehouse
YuNing is with Mizuki in the kitchen salting the water in the pot when he hears the front door of the house break and slam to the ground.
The first thing he registers is that Mizuki throws the tablet he had in his hands to the ground and jumps in front of him, towering before him like a shield from whoever seems to have come to disturb the peace of their day.
"FBI put your gun down!" YuNing doesn't know where did Mizuki whip out the gun in his hand right now and he doesn't care that much, he just wanted to have his pasta without anyone trying to jump him and try killing him again.
"I say you drop your gun, so no one would get hurt." The man is familiar to YuNing, he's pretty sure he's one of the men who tried to carve his organs out of him alive. Doesn't exactly leave the best impression on a person. "You know who we want."
YuNing grips the back of Mizuki's dress shirt in fear, but part of him knows Mizuki won't let anything happen to him.
Mizuki leaves YuNing's side and charges at the man, tackling him to the ground in a blink of a second.
"And you're not getting him, so leave while you still can." Mizuki's fangs grow and his eyes become sharper with every word he speaks, an edge of a threat in his voice that YuNing hasn't heard from him yet.
"Yeah, right." The man smirks at Mizuki, and Mizuki punshes the man square in the face, making him fly across the room and hitting the wall with his back. out of nowhere, suddenly Mizuki is encircled by six men and five women who flew into the room, fully geared and all pointing their guns at him. A woman leaves Mizuki's side and takes YuNing by the arm, shoving a gun to his temple. "I really didn't want to do this man, but you forced me to." the man picks up his gun and gets up.
"Flip the house upside down, find LiQin and Andrew." The man dusts himself off and fixes his suite as three enforcers of his listen to his orders.
"I found him in one of the rooms." One of the men come down the stairs, grabbing ZiYan by the hair and throwing him down next to the man in charge's shoes. The man balances himself on one leg as he steps with his other of ZiYan's head. ZiYan trembles in fear.
"You're so dead." Mizuki says, and only then YuNing does realise he hasn't seen anyone in the house other than Mizuki and ZiYan since the morning. Where the fuck are-
"Boss, I found a door that leads to what seems to be an underground room." A woman calls, lifting the living's room carpet, and YuNing catches the sight of shimmering scales over her neck.
"Open it." He says, hands in his pocket and a laid back smug painted all over his face. "come on LiQin, enough of the running away you son of a bitch." He whispers, loud enough for YuNing to hear it.
The second the woman unlocks the little door, they see a sword implanting into her skull and chopping her head into half, making her fall straight into the hole. YuNing screams in terror at the sight.
The man tensed up and nods with his head at three of his men to go forward, audibly gulping and griping his gun tightly between his fists and they do, only for them to get shot in their necks the moment they're in the sight of whoever is inside the underground room. The man gathers his men and woman, and they brace themselves for anything, not leaving their positions and resorting to defend rather than attacking.
A few seconds pass before someone throws a corpse out of the opening, and it's covered in blood and clear flesh. YuNing couldn't take the sight and he feels his head becoming lighter and the taste of acid at the back of his throat. He imagines he sees a black wolf flying out of the hole and clawing at the men and women one by one faster than lightning. He isn't sure if his mind is making shit up or if there's actually a wolf in the room.
The wolf doesn't attack with its fangs or claws, it rather hits the men and women in all the right places to knock them out, quite intelligent for a wolf.
He thinks he sees Evdokia with a gun in her hand, shooting all the ones who fell unconscious.
His head is resting on Mizuki thigh when he hears Evdokia talking to the man who was in charge, bleeding from his abdominal and under the mercy of Evdokia's sword. Who the fuck uses swords at this age?
"who do you work for?" Evdokia spits at the man, the wolf grunting and growling from behind her, standing before YuNing and ZiYan, almost like its protecting them.
"You won't get shit out of me." The man bites back.
"oh yeah?" Evdokia smirks at him before pulling out a dagger from her belt and stabs it into the man's right knee. The man wails in pain as she twists the dagger between the joints, it gets YuNing off the edge and he throws up. And just like that, black is all he sees.
*
January 15, 2004, 06:54
The Atlantic empire
The Aqua Castle
Dad has always told Jean not to cry.
Jean hates dad. He never loved him, never treated him well enough, never considered him as a son, more like a trophy child to use as a bragging dingus during their unco upper-class balls they host. Jean would argue that they only have them in the first place solely to show off their weekly renovations in the castle.
It pains him, being an unwanted outcast of a person, even though his parents aren't good people to him, he still wishes for being loved and appreciated by his father and mother. The boil of it becomes bubbly and overflows when he's around other kings and queens with their kids. He has always been jealous of Ira and Evdokia. Both have the picture-perfect family and lives Jean has ever dreamed of. He wishes he can run around in the royal hall and jump onto his father's lap, take his mother's hand and do a little goofy dance with her, just like he sees Evdokia does. Or he can always be stuck by his father's side, through good and bad, or he can hug his father's torso during meetings, sleep soundlessly with his head on his mother's chest while she sings him a lullaby, just like Ira's mother does.
Jean wishes that when he scratches his knees he gets a blow from his mum onto the wound instead of a speech about being a problematic child that knows nothing better than bringing more conflicts to the table of their lives.
Dad is having a conversation with king Dima, the Aqua emperor, while him and Ira are curled up in silence under the covers of Ira's bed, trying their best to block out the noises for people's screams shooting through the water and reaching their ears, even though they're in the deepest pits of the ocean.
Atlantis is beautiful. A breath-taking masterpiece of a place. The moons shining high in the sky cast light upon the creatures of the ocean, creating a symphony of shapes and strokes. The neon creatures reflect the light back up to the surface for whoever is outside, animating the beauty of the ocean on the blank canvas of water. Jean hates that this image will never be the same in his mind ever again.
Jean is crying. Mum has always yelled at him when he cried, telling him to toughen up, to become a better representation of their race. But mum isn't here now, and so he cries and cries, for as long as he needs, and Ira is there to give him a pat on the shoulder, an encouraging gesture that makes Jean's heart swell.
How did they get here?
Last night Jean has witnessed his worst fears, the iron war elves kingdom melt down to lava and ashes. The air was hot and heavy even though they're in the middle of winter. He hates that his father pulled him out of the fire, that he saved him from a man who was practically carving a masterpiece on Jean's face, oh those wounds would leave some ugly scars. But Jean knows his father didn't save him because he cared for him, but rather because he would have never been allowed into the Atlantic empire or the Aqua castle, and he knew Jean was his golden ticket to pass those pearl gates safely. Jean still thinks that he has died in the fire, that he's in the first stages of the after life, just standing there, watching as your people fall one after another for a cause you never understood.
Greed.
Greed and what it does to beings.
Jean feels sick every time he looks at his father's face, hiding underwater while his soldiers and their families are being butchered for mistakes their king has done against other folks.
The war initiative is on the run, his wife, the queen, raped and killed by his rivals, his people left behind to pay the price of his avidity.
To say Jean isn't enjoying this winter vacation would be an understatement, he's even scared being inside this castle knowing well how everyone here feels about him and his father. Jean wishes he could drop that man off their family tree as quickly as a wind mare, that he has nothing in his life with this despicable of a man, that he himself become and omission in this family.
But that's not how life works after all. No one gives a fuck about your guts when it comes to war. If you're associated with the initiative, be it his family or his folk's species, just like those above the water in the flaming forest at the moment, you're in the wrong, and you'll pay for his mistakes and fallacy.
The Emperor and dad said to head to Ira's room because they'll be having an adults talk, and quite frankly, Jean doesn't care. He has no hope anymore. He knows he's dying one way or another because of his father in the next two days.
Oh the irony of bringing him to life and yet be the reason to get him dead. But it doesn't matter, because he can't bare living with what his father has committed, knowing that his blood carries such venomous genes.
Jean is blowing his nose and Ira is petting Fofi, his pet axolotl, when Valodya barges into Ira's room, breathing heavily, almost giving the two boys a heart attack.
"Quickly, gather your essentials. We're leaving." Valodya says in one breathe, looking behind him, where the door is partially opened and showing the royals hallway rooms, like they're being followed.
"Where to?" Jean sniffs and rubs his now red shot eyes, carful he wouldn't touch any of his face wounds.
"fuck if I know Jean."
*