Written: 4/17/24
Word Count: 1,300

c/w: assault; this is the roughest one, so hang on tight

"I will kill you for what you've done," I swore, words falling from my lips like blades, though I wasn't sure of what I'd spoken. Or even if they were in a decipherable order.

"Wait—" Resinee held out a hand to her right, still bent over her knees. "Wait."

All my tunnel vision could see was the pinched expression bunching up the elva's light eyebrows and how their furrowing looked more panicked than scared. In delight, I took one step off the door's threshold, thinking I'd make her learn how to fear me.

"Wait, Rocco! We need her."

A fiercely tight grip closed over my throat, the source coming from somewhere in my darkened peripheral vision. The blow took me by complete surprise, dousing the violent waves in my stomach as surely as a torrential downpour. In a flash, that Beckett—who feared even her own shadow—was back.

I couldn't turn my neck to see what gripped me, but all my body weight suddenly sank into my knees, knocking the poor things against one another in a pitiful clamber. Had I somehow turned into a wooden doll?

That was how easily I crumpled.

The force around my neck sent me reeling into the corner of the open doorway, each painful edge slamming into my spine. My legs went numb at the impact as my back burned awash in electric fire.

Then, the grip started squeezing. My vision darkened. No peripheral. No frontal. Just endless waves of purple and black, no matter how much I blinked or which way I flitted my eyes. Was I going blind? Permanently blind?

Was I dying?

Again?

Without much thinking involved, I wedged my hands up against the thing clamped around my neck, only to feel the hard edges of rough skin. Probing at the invasive hand in frantic scratches, I realized this hand had larger fingers than I thought possible. I couldn't really understand what was happening, but it felt like I was being attacked by the dryad of a giant tree. Something ridiculously large that I didn't have a chance in hell of going up against. A Sequoia?

Despite the futility, my fingers clambered for relief. My brain couldn't keep up. I hadn't realized how much I relied on my vision until it was basically gone. It's not like I could see my facial expressions when my vision was working correctly, but I felt so off-kilter that I didn't know how I was supposed to wear my face.

What was I supposed to do with my eyebrows while I was being choked to death?

The most surprising part of it all was my desperation to claw, no matter how futile, at the creature's hands that were trying to choke the life out of me. I thought I would be fine with death. I'd been fine with it only ten minutes ago, hadn't I? Hadn't I been hoping Resinee would just pierce my skull with a sharp object and end my misery?

So then why was I fighting against an invisible enemy, trying desperately to survive?

"Rocco!" Resinee's voice turned shrill, piercing louder than the call of a hawk. The pressure around my throat decreased a little, only for my head to reel backwards and smack straight into the corner of the door's frame.

Something had...hit me!

I wasn't used to being punched all the time, but it's not like I wasn't familiar with the feeling. With a brother like mine, I'd gotten used to all types of pain. And back when I'd been more prone to picking fights and turning feral, I'd found myself on the receiving end of more than one stomping.

But it was so much worse when I couldn't see it coming.

I flung my hands up in front of my face, but the next blow was a sharp kick to the shoulder. I sprawled, but I didn't know if I was inside the clinic or spread out on the clapboard deck. It felt like I'd been jumped on by a mountain. And now the mountain was dancing on top of me.

I tried to curl into my stomach as another blow went after my ankle, another after my ribs. Each one decisive, quick, not enough to fracture me in half, but with the weight of a wrathful god come to punish its lazy followers.

"Rocco, enough!" Resinee yelled, her voice much closer, much louder than it had been before. Through the sudden ringing in my ears, I finally registered the name she'd been calling all this time.

Rocco.

The eight-packed Dark Elf.

"Monster," I spit. I didn't know if I was lying face up or face down, inside the clinic or out. Something wet and metallic came out of my mouth, choking me a bit as I coughed up more of it. "Yewing monsters. And I'm the one with a problem. I'm the dusted elvaniac."

"Enough, Rocco," Resinee said, her breathing sharp, heavy.

Beside my head, I could feel the shifting of floorboards, so I surmised I must be sprawled out on the deck. At the realization, my body went limp, and I tilted my chin up toward open air. The fight drained out of me, leaving nothing but a puddle of skin and bones and blood and tears gooped in a mess on the wood.

"Beckett, are you alright?" Resinee asked.

I laughed at the pitiful whimpering tone of her voice. As if anyone would believe she was concerned about me.

"Go away," I said, coughing up more phlegm and blood and whatever else. I tried to swallow it back down, but liquid poured from the corners of my mouth all the same. It didn't matter anymore.

I was soiled in more ways than one, after the day I'd had. After the blasted week I'd had. "Is this what you wanted, Father?"

A slight creaking on the deck boards preceded a timid, "Beckett?"

With little more than a snarl, I stared up with my unseeing eyes, and warned the elva one last time. "Kill me or get out of here. You don't get to decide when I leave or what I do while I'm here."

Resinee was quiet for so long that I thought I'd blacked out and didn't hear her and that weighty oaf leave, but then the Dark Elf said, "Your aunt's funeral is to take place in five days. I just...forgot to mention that earlier."

"Is that why you came here?" I laughed. Then laughed some more.

"It's just..." Resinee, the guiltless victim, sounded every bit the sweet and fragile little lamb, "...we really need you here, Beckett. I hope you'll at least consider what your aunt would have wanted. I think you're the only one who can understand. I'll—I'll be back tomorrow. Try to...get some rest."

The quiet pad of Resinee's bare feet dashed across the stalwart boards. No creaking. No groaning. Just the light, dainty touch of a perfect elva.

Rocco, the heavily-fortified bear of an elve, gave a final kick, merely a brushing of his threadbare soles against the delicate bones splayed out in my fingers. As his weight rolled off me, a sharp series of cracks brought a heavy sob to the forefront of my throat, nearly choking me in its vehemence.

I curled up, cradling my injured hand.

Get out. Get out. Get out.

My battered ankle and ribs and side all protested my ball of protection, but I could no longer choose their errant pain over the colossal agony weaving under the skin of my hand. My vision came back in spurts, a kaleidoscope of blues and purples, darkening, then lightening, then whitening. I felt like my head was whirling round and round with the motions, but I knew it wasn't.

Was I screaming?

Get out. Get out. Get out.