Content Warning: Emotional and physical abuse, psychological manipulation. This chapter and the one coming by next week are rough. Terri tries to pull the old "I'm going to behave like a monster and then 'rescue' you from me" trick, and it horrifically explodes in everyone's faces. I considered not updating this week to avoid being a huge downer right before actual Mother's Day, but I went for it. Enter at your own risk.
[X]
[Fall-Winter 1907]
At first the change was positive. The child seemed to be in an overall better mood more of the time, and he also pestered Bert less. But eventually, Alastor seemed to lose interest in Bert entirely, and when he investigated, Bert began to notice some very odd things.
He was concerned enough at first to think the child was talking to himself. The kid was too old for an imaginary friend. Bert couldn't prevent the spiral into anxiety. The child would have no life if the delusions persisted. He had to administer some tough love, wait outside the supply closet until he came back out and force him to accept that it was a closet, not some nonexistent person's house.
This was what Bert went downstairs to do, only to discover a much more horrifying reality. The closet was no longer a closet. It was a hallway. A long, grey, cold hallway. He slammed the door shut and tried to reorient himself before opening it again. No change. He was greeted by the same impossible sight.
Perhaps Bert could see the hallway because, as a lonely widower with a deep emptiness inside of him, he would also have made good prey. Had Terese appeared to him in the likeness of his late wife, his sadness and desperation may have led him to willfully roleplay, refuse to accept the truth in his boozy haze, and offer her the last scraps of love he had left in his heart. But that would be a short game. So currently Bert was not prey, which may be why the hallway did not manifest as the warm, softly aglow astral tunnel that presented itself to his son.
On the other end, Bert knew, was his child, with whom he had almost no relationship, but who, while not his friend, was his only ally in the shitty situation in which they found themselves. His child whom he desperately wanted to reach but couldn't. So the closet stretched in measure to that psychological distance and perceived challenge. At the end of this disturbingly empty, featureless ash grey tunnel, he saw another door with light beaming underneath it. Through the tunnel, amplified by an echo, came two voices- his son's and hers.
'Miss McGyver.'
'Aunt Terri.'
Bert shut the door again, quietly, unsure of the consequences of being noticed, and backed away. He had finished only two drinks, right? Part of him thought the only conceivable action was to rush in and show that thing what for. Another part of him insisted that this could not be real, and even if it were, the thing had not harmed his child yet, so the matter probably wasn't urgent. But it was still serious. Bert shakily climbed the basement stairs and retired to the comfort of his worn armchair, where he quickly downed two more drinks. Someone else would be in a fog, but for a person whose mind, while sober, raced too quickly with anxiety to think clearly, this allowed for slower, more careful thought than you might expect. It was possible that he was losing his mind, which was the thing he feared most for both himself and his son. But. But. A shared delusion seemed unlikely, right? Bert didn't know how delusions worked because he had never been delusional. Right?
Okay, okay. Deep breath in, deep breath out. He wanted to assume he was dreaming and wait to collect more data points. If they presented themselves, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. But to his dismay, his brain had already pitched him a decent way to test this: surely even a shared delusion could not produce specific dialogue. He would wait outside the door and memorize a few lines of conversation, and later, he would probe.
He didn't need to focus so hard on the specific dialogue, it turned out. He had just heard 'something, something, blanket.' And sure enough, about 10 minutes after Bert quietly crept upstairs himself, the child emerged from the basement carrying a knit blanket Bert had never seen before. It was into late November now, and even though the nighttime temperature in New Orleans rarely fell below 50 degrees at this time of year, it had been an unusually cold month. Still, Bert had barely turned the heat on, hoping to save money. "Where'd you get that?"
Al pointed upstairs with one hand. "Attic."
"You just came from the basement," Bert challenged.
Alastor stared back confidently, with a look that made Bert feel ill. It was clear that the boy expected his father to be too drunk and confused to know the difference. "I came from the attic." The child marched away without another word.
Christ Jesus. The Thing was real.
Bert struggled to collect himself. The pieces were starting to come together now. No way that Thing was anyone's fairy godmother- not at the end of that abominable death funnel. That was the monster under the bed or in (literally) the closet that children were supposed to be afraid of. Maybe his son didn't fear it because he had already been through some terribly frightening things. The reasons didn't interest Bert enough to explore further. He wanted solutions. He was starting to suspect the Thing had something to do with his wife's illness, and now for whatever reason it wanted his son. Or...did it want to pick them off one by one to get to his son?
Again, it didn't matter. Bert had been collecting data. The Thing's patterns of behavior suggested it wished to conserve energy. Bert had no evidence to confirm that it was strictly confined to its den, wherever that was, but he did suspect if they went far enough away, it would not be willing to expend the energy to follow them. He was suddenly struck by the fact that the resulting option was not just an option, but an opportunity. The Thing was a blessing in disguise. He had not possessed the motivation or willpower to do this before, but leaving and starting over made perfect sense. He could find a place where no one knew his history and he could find a job, free of social stigma, and keep a job, because he wouldn't constantly be provoked by snickers over his shoulder. With no context, the kid might pass a paper bag test, he mused. It could be so much better. Why did he feel tied to this house? Because of Camille? He hated it, but his beloved partner was gone. That was that. To hell with it. They were going. He dared the Thing to follow them.
To his shock, the boy didn't seem sold on the idea that things would be better elsewhere. Bert could have wrung the kid's neck. Every other waking moment, his son was complaining that Bert didn't display an ounce of optimism. Now the kid was insisting that people would be no kinder anywhere else, and he was so certain that their social situation wouldn't improve much, if at all, that it didn't seem worth leaving everything else he liked about his home. Unable to get the child to see reason, Bert cracked under frustration and launched into a completely unproductive screaming episode, which drove his son away.
Bert ground his teeth in continued rage upon hearing the closet door shut in the cellar, where his son had very transparently gone to complain to the Thing. But his anger soon morphed into panic. If the Thing thought it had limited time left for a meal, would it slay his son immediately? Should he go down there?
While Bert hovered midway down the steps, listening for untoward sound effects, Alastor explained the dilemma. He tried to deliver it in a 'bad news, oh well, things happen' sort of tone, but he found himself genuinely disappointed. Terri, he admitted to himself with embarrassment, had become his only human(esque) friend. Beyond that, there were other very sensitive things he liked admitting even less. It made him feel weak- especially considering that he had gone without when he was even younger- to acknowledge that it was nice to have someone around being...nurturing. Caring about when he had last eaten, how well he seemed to be sleeping, or even where he was at all. Recently, for the first time, Terri had very carefully, quietly left her side of the house and snuck into his room to check on him while he was down with a cold. He remembered the moment of foggy confusion- completely unrelated to illness- and the jolt of genuine surprise he'd felt, hearing her say she wanted to make sure he was okay, since he was usually in the den by that time. It...mattered to her? Al had only meagerly resisted when she decided to sit with him for a bit while he rested- another completely novel thing he was sure had not happened since before he could remember. He had actually fallen asleep as she watched over him, hand on his shoulder. He never knew he wanted that until he had it, and then experienced the threat of having it taken away or limited.
Terri took in the news and forced herself to casually wash dishes, back turned to the little boy. Bert was right- she did want to conserve energy. Was she willing to travel to see the boy if he didn't land conveniently near a door? Probably for a little while, but she knew herself. She'd lose gumption once the relationship became an infeasible source of continuous sustenance and no longer offset the costs. Terri was unsure of why she was feeling the way she was feeling. It made sense that she was frustrated and disappointed that something was coming between her and food security, but the other strange prickly, empty feeling was more difficult to pinpoint. She had known she would like him, but she hadn't expected to like him this much, she supposed. Terri usually found children's curiosity grating, but this one's not so much. Although Alastor- after years of being expected to shut up- was still a long way from how talkative he would become eventually, he already asked a lot of questions. Many of them were clever enough that it gave her the opportunity to talk about things she didn't normally get to talk about with children. Others revealed a degree of close observation, or else the ability to see things that others had never seen before, that could indicate only one thing- he actually cared about getting to know her. She wasn't sure she had ever believed that of one of the humans before. It made her feel worth something. Could she bear to lose it?
Ultimately, it didn't matter. She had her doubts that this would come to fruition. Terri began to ask practical questions about how easy it would be for them to unload the house- which needed a lot of work- or even rent it, or if they had enough money to get started elsewhere if they couldn't accomplish one of those things. When she turned around, the boy's face looked a little less grave. Terri smiled and remarked, "I think you're not going anywhere."
Alastor went on to parrot a number of questions Terri had posed to him, and although Bert knew his son was uncommonly bright, he couldn't help but suspect there was another source. His frustration reached a breaking point as Alastor finished with his own question. The child was surprised to hear himself raising his voice but found himself unable to control it, detached. "Could you even drive?"
There were a few moments of icy silence. Then Bert administered a single, hard back-handed slap across the face and marched back into the house. While his son fumed on the lawn, Bert launched himself down the stairs more assertively than ever before and forcefully threw the storage closet door open. In the seconds before the door swung to the side, part of him wondered if his challenge would be disregarded and if only the supply closet would appear. But it heard him. The long, narrow, and suddenly darker, charcoal grey hallway stretched before him, with that tiny, somehow aggressive sliver of light shining under the door at the other end, looking sharp, like a blade.
Bert steeled himself and entered, made himself walk at a steady pace with a firm step down the hallway. "You!" His voice echoed just a bit. Was the hallway really that long? "I thought you were only hunting for food, but you hunt for sport, too, don't you? You wanna turn my kid against me? That's your game? You like to add insult to injury?" Tap, tap, tap. The thin, sharp sliver of light was now partly obscured by a shadow- a foot, with a heel clickclickclicking against the ground. Bert grimaced through feelings of intimidation and continued to advance.
Jarringly, causing Bert to stumble and almost fall, the hallway elongated in front of him, so that the door was now a few yards away. "Afraid of little old me, huh?" A grating noise behind him revealed the actual intent. Bert turned. As he had woefully suspected, the other half of the hallway behind him had also extended itself, such that the exit was now several more yards away. Presumably, this would continue. She didn't want to get beyond his reach; she wanted him to be unable to escape to either end. So that...what? He starved to death in there, was forced to surrender? As usual, the Thing's desires were cryptic. "I doubt you're going to see him walk through here again if there's a dead body lying in the middle!" he snapped.
And then the hallway inclined. It inclined such that the ground behind him sloped up, the ground before him sloping down at a rapidly increasing angle, and then he slipped and slid forward down it, like a ramp, maybe in part because the floor was so smooth and without texture or detail, but it also seemed suddenly...slick...and warm...like a throat. Unable to gain any traction, he tumbled straight into the door and hit with a thud, face-forward, with a sharp pain. His nose didn't seem to be broken, but a splotch of blood was left on the doorframe.
The shadow remained there but said nothing. The doorknob didn't rattle, but he could see one of the two heeled feet under the gap continue to click its heel against the ground. The hallway was so long now that the simple clicking created a formidable echo. He scrambled back as far up the incline as he could get.
For the very first time, the voice addressed him. "There won't be a body." It should have been impossible for a voice to sound so soft and sweet and so deadly at the same time. Dead silence again. Nothing but that dreadful clicking. Then even that stopped. Bert tried to convince himself to open the door, but before he could scrape up the courage to confront the Thing face-to-face, it spoke one more time. "Get. Out."
The ground inclined again in the opposite direction, nearly vertically, sending him hurtling back toward the open door on the other end. The hallway spat him out like expired food. Bert hit the concrete flat on his back with a loud "F***!" and saw the closet door slam shut without his influence.
[X]
Terri was affronted by certain thoughts she had sensed from Bert as he progressed further and further down her hallway. He couldn't possibly believe he cared enough for the child to deserve him! Please! (In her state of rabid jealousy, Terri failed to notice how ironic it was that she viewed Bert as the same flat, one-dimensional villain that she- to her considerable pain- seemed to be in the eyes of others.) Did he really suspect her of being the main cause of Camille's depression?! Clearly Bert didn't realize how cruel he had sometimes been to his wife while blacked-out drunk. Well. Terri would give him some dreams to help him remember.
Terese chipped the blood off her front door and got to work in a single-minded, rage-driven frenzy. She ground the woodchips up until they mixed into the fine sand filling she used to stuff the doll, and then sewed it up. She held the finished product up by the collar, glaring back into its pitiful frowning face, before tossing it unceremoniously into a deep mixing bowl. Next to the mixing bowl was what looked like a gasoline can, filled with a concoction of her own making that stung the eyes with the force of what seemed as potent as straight rubbing alcohol. She filled the bowl. The doll sunk to the bottom. The witch gripped the edge of her kitchen counter aggressively until her knuckles turned white, seething with hatred and spat at it, "Drown."
There. If he didn't outright drink himself to death, that hex would at least make Bert all the more unlikeable to his son. The little boy would come permanently to her side in no time.
Relishing her enemy's impending doom and her anticipated victory, Terri failed to imagine exactly how spectacularly this callous act of sabotage was about to backfire on everyone involved.
[X]
Alastor found himself spending more time than usual in Terri's half of the house. He had very nearly given up on his father, who seemed to care for absolutely nothing but alcohol anymore. Luckily, even though Bert rarely went out to buy food, Terri could provide food plentifully. And attention, Al finally admitted to himself. Aunt Terri seemed to actually like him and to want to spend time with him; he didn't appear to be second best to anything. It was suspicious, almost too good to be true, but he had not yet found evidence disputing that she intended anything other than to be his companion and protector, just as she had promised. He was inexpressibly grateful for her.
Thrilled that her plan was working as intended, Terri was in a rosy cloud. (Echo's gentle warnings to remain cautious went unheeded.) The child at last saw that she was what was best for him. He loved her, Terri hoped, and then believed, with exactly the amount of desperation you might expect from a person who had lived alone in a void for a number of years that was no longer possible to count. Those perpetually-falling rose petals in the windows of her 'trophy room' could freeze at last. Her little prince had finally come. The child was perfect. She had never felt like this about any of the humans before; some had come close, but not quite.
Once she finally convinced herself that she could make her case and that the child seemed sufficiently affectionate toward her, she prepared to at last raise the issue. "Remember to be gentle, ma'am, and that it may take more than one try," Echo reminded her. The puppet servant knew full well that its boss only half heard the advice, and it wished it had the nerve to warn out loud, 'He's not even ready to hug you yet! You cannot ask to be his mother!' Terri seemed blissfully unaware that her platonic adoration of the little boy was causing her to act just as devoid of sense and reason as any of the hopelessly romantic heroes or heroines in her fairy tale 'scriptures,' who she frequently mocked. The concept of perfect and true love, you see, is appealing to anyone, and can transfix even a powerful, uncommonly intelligent supernatural entity who believed herself invulnerable. It is a deadly trope indeed.
As they sat on the porch swing one evening, Terri deliberately chose a tiny miracle to perform ahead of her proposal that would both impress and foster closeness. She patted the seat next to her. "Come close, Button." A blanket appeared. "It's about to get cold." He raised an eyebrow at her. "If I don't do this long," she assured, pointing at the garden, "they'll be fine." Suddenly the breeze became frigid. He scooted nearer to her but didn't fully lean against her until he was distracted by the snowflakes.
"You must have seen snow once or twice before, right?"
"Not in a long time..." It was true that Al had seen snow only a handful of times before, few of which were easy to remember. He didn't pull away from Terri, too busy appreciating the sight of the white flakes twinkling in the perpetual moonlight of the Other World and accumulating in a light frost that glimmered softly on the ground. Seeing the window behind them had begun to fog, Terri reached over and drew a heart with her finger, earning a crooked smile from Alastor.
"I know the cold has been bugging you lately," she said, "but it can actually be pretty fun." She wrapped the blanket around the two of them, and he hesitantly allowed her to put one arm around him. "Would you like to have a snowy Christmas here with me? I would like that so much. We could make snow angels."
"What do you normally do on Christmas?" Alastor asked, surprised that she even acknowledged the holiday.
Shit. She couldn't say 'drink and cry.' That would make her sound like (gag) Bert. "Wait for it to not be Christmas." They chuckled together, but they could each sense the other's years of loneliness behind the laughter.
"Listen…" Terri stroked his hand. "You've been so unhappy out there. Not just discontented, but truly unhappy, for good reason." She lifted his chin. "I don't want to see you unhappy anymore. It hurts me."
"You've made me much happier," the little boy reassured her, pulling back from her touch just a bit, but not as abruptly or forcefully as usual.
Terri tried to be discreet as she inhaled; she knew it creeped him out. His words, his smile, and the scent of his genuine affection filled her with warmth, but it was flickering like a weak flame, with the knowledge that she could receive it for only a few hours a day. She needed more. "I could make you happier still, if you lived with me." To her dismay, the child suddenly looked hesitant. "Why do you look afraid?"
"I'm not afraid. I just… Sometimes I worry about my father."
His father?!
"And there's things I want to do out there."
"Oh!" Terri laughed with relief, thinking she was about to resolve a simple misunderstanding. "You don't think I'd be keeping you prisoner, do you? You could go out!" The distant look on his face didn't change. Maybe she should just be more straightforward- after all, he hadn't hurt her yet. "Darling… I don't want to be Aunt Terri anymore. I'd like to be...your mother."
"I know, I know. You're my Other Mother."
"No, no." This was hard, but she steeled herself. It would all be okay. How could he reject her, with competition like Bert? "What I mean is...I don't want to be your Other Mother. I want to be your Mother."
Alastor looked genuinely caught off-guard.
Terri reflexively shut her eyes protectively, then reopened them. "I… Don't want to make deals." What was she saying? "I just want to be together. You make me very happy. I feel differently about you. I want to…" She didn't have the words.
Apparently neither did he. No response. Even the exceedingly careful child's nonverbals were perfectly controlled. Hindsight was 20-20, and he now saw that he should have come prepared for this eventuality. But after a certain point, he had stopped worrying about it because Aunt Terri had seemed to be so satisfied with their friendship. Now Alastor was catapulted back into the same uncomfortable feelings that had characterized their first encounters, wondering if he was safe, which words were safe to use, where the nearest way to escape was. Just in case this discussion took a hard left turn out of the realm of civility.
"I want to adopt you," she finally blurted.
Nothing. Stiff silence, seeming about to crack like glass.
Terri felt like a crumbling sandcastle. For the first time, fear did not smell like sufficient sustenance at all. "Please say something." It had been many, many hours and days at this point, and they had been getting along so well. They actually had things in common. He had begun to seem as if he had little to no fear of her. He made her feel significant. And the boy hated his father. It didn't make sense, and it just wasn't fair. Terri thinly concealed her pain. "Why won't you call me Mother?"
"...You're...not my mother," Alastor answered, hoping being purely factual was remotely safe. It wasn't.
Insensitively, Terri snapped back, "You don't have any other mother."
This was the first time in a while that the child visibly showed anger. "I did, once! She's still my mother!"
Terri gritted her teeth and turned away from him. Meeting his eyes was agonizing. She needed her buttons back.
Alastor began to regret sounding so hostile. Not only did he want to ensure things didn't escalate, he genuinely didn't want to hurt Aunt Terri. Despite every precaution he had tried to take, she had really, really grown on him. "Aunt Terri… I don't mean it that way." He looked down at his feet. "I feel differently about you, too. I want to keep seeing you forever. ...But you're not my mother."
She swallowed her frustration, hard. "Fine." She abruptly rose from the porch swing and marched inside.
"Where are you going?"
"To sew my buttons back on. I've been a fool. I hope you're entertained."
Alastor took a deep breath in and deep breath out and clawed his hands in front of him in silent frustration. "Aunt Terri, please don't cause yourself pain for no reason."
"I'm not the one causing myself pain for no reason!" He followed her and tried to grab her hand, but she yanked it away as if it burned her. "Go! Go back home to your father!"
"That's how you're-? Because things aren't exactly the way you want?! We can't be friends?!" Terri's nose was in the air. 'But I love you,' Al thought in silent anguish. He couldn't say it out loud; seeing her pettiness over what he perceived as a minor detail, he was now seized with the fear that all along she had wanted only to win her game, not to have a real relationship. He tried to mask his feelings of growing humiliation and asked, "What about our deal?"
"Nobody ever said I couldn't walk out of the deal, same as you. It was a social contract. If we're not both invested in it, it's null."
"You don't still want help hunting?"
"Do you think I really need help hunting?"
"Well, no, but isn't it easier for you to get food by going outside than it is to lure it in?"
Terri was temporarily distracted from her anger as she tried to decipher the child's logic train. "What's keeping me from going outside?"
Alastor knew immediately that he had messed up, but now he was in it. Terri had freely admitted that luring things inside was her preferred hunting method, citing energy conservation as a main reason. But there was something else. At a certain point, he had noticed that Terri seemed uncomfortable and hesitant when leaving the den. 'Afraid' wasn't the right word. Just...tense. He had experimented a bit and noticed that the closer to her he stood, the less uncomfortable she seemed to be. As they got emotionally closer over time, this tenseness seemed to recede a great deal. "Do you...like to have someone with you? When you go outside?"
She looked as though he had slapped her. "You think I'm afraid?"
Alastor winced. "That's not exactly what I meant."
"I don't need you." It left her mouth much sharper and meaner than intended.
"I know that!" Alastor bit back. "But we have fun together. Why are you being like this?" Why would she not see reason? Wait. Wait. He knew why! "Aunt Terri, it's a trick."
"I'm not tricking anyone," she snapped. "I'm actually leveling with you. You can be sure I'll never make that mistake again!" They were in her sewing room and she was rifling through her many drawers of buttons, trying to pretend she was choosing a pair but really just visually scrolling aimlessly, unable to concentrate.
"No, you're being tricked." He set his foot down. "The Hungry Thing is trying to trick you so you'll be alone again."
Terri released an indignant exhale. Oh my god. It wasn't just a cute joke between them. He actually perceived her as a kitschy damsel in distress. Her! It certainly didn't help that he was using these exaggerated 'step by step' hand gestures, as if he were trying to explain something complicated to another child even younger than himself. "I'm of perfectly sound mind, young man, and you know very well I've always defeated that thing! You're not saving anybody from any dragon, boy. You could be blown over by a strong wind!"
"Aunt Terri, I'm just worried. You said that- I think it's hunting us both. It wants to separate us."
She briefly considered explaining that this hypothesis made no sense because she was the monster, but she wanted to keep that secret a little while longer. When she said it was her predator, she had meant it only in the sense that it forced her to consume the things she wanted to love her. She had meant that she was self-defeating. Her hunger would have no reason to drive him away in any manner that didn't involve feeding on him. Still...that didn't render his theory completely untenable… Come to think of it, since the consciousness, Terri, was simply one smaller piece of that gigantic primal beast...could it actually be aiming to reintegrate her? After all, consciousness could only persist without the company of other consciousness for so long… Still too embarrassed to consider the possibility, she hissed, "There's no Thing!" Impulsively trying to push him away now, she said, "It was a story I told to earn your sympathy!"
Although this would have been in character, Al acknowledged, he could still tell that she was likely lying about lying. She kept dragging her heel across the ground in a distinctive way.
"In fact," Terri continued, "if anything is trying to eat me, I'd say it's you! You...children...all… CANNIBALIZE. That's all you ever do!" She dropped her face toward the ground to make her eyes less visible and considered that maybe she was able to be tricked. She had slipped and allowed containment to be broken, lost control. She needed to restore the hierarchy and show the boy who was in charge here. She was not his pet, and she wasn't even his friend- she was his Mother, dammit!
Alastor backed away, unnerved by the new amount of rage in her voice. It seemed by allying himself with Terri he had definitely made an enemy of the Thing. "I really don't want to fight."
Terri covered her eyes with her hand. "Just get out! If you think you're such a white knight, go on and protect yourself! Have fun!"
Hoping that if he gave her some space the matter would resolve itself, Alastor said hopefully, "See you soon," and retreated down the basement stairs to the connecting door. On the other side, he found himself feeling nauseous. What if she really wasn't safe and wouldn't let him help her? What if she actually hated him?
Sensing distress in the human, the black cat sat with Alastor on the back porch while the boy flipped aimlessly through one of Camille's folklore anthologies the same way Terri had carelessly thrown open drawers. He landed on an illustration of a princess guarded by a dragon and quietly meditated on it as if the lines were blurring together and he could no longer tell which figure was which. Pluto looked back and forth between Alastor's face and the page and suddenly bapped the child in the head with eyes that said, 'You imbecile.'
"What?" Alastor said, annoyed. Pluto silently curled back onto the human's lap and decided to be content to simply comfort the boy with warmth and companionship. He would no longer actively seek to rescue the child from the witch- this one was clearly too far gone.
In the Other House, Terri allowed the physical sting of the needle to distract her from the feeling of hot coals in her chest. A few black tears caked on her face as she finished replacing the buttons, breathing unevenly. Once the needle was out of her hand, Echo tentatively approached her.
"Ma'am. I heard all of that. I don't think this is the end. You just startled him a little, and confused him. He didn't sound that angry. I think he feels sorry-"
"I don't want his pity," Terri replied tersely. She was remembering the look of amazement and admiration on the little boy's face as she hunted, or did magic, or even just performed for him, and ached for an opportunity to see it again. She wanted him to be impressed, to look up to her. Instead he seemed to have come to believe she was weak, needed rescuing. Well, she was the idiot who had planted the seeds of that notion with her fool story. Now she'd have to correct it. With how poorly the drunk on the other side of the house seemed to be doing, she'd have the chance to do the rescuing soon enough, and then he'd see.
"Ma'am." Echo sounded more emotionally invested than usual. "I know I brushed you off when you said so, but after watching, I think this one really is different. He's had such a positive effect on your health! Please think before you act."
"My health?" Terri turned on her sewing stool. "I need to be mindful of food security, and bless me, I'm not as strong as I was once, but there's nothing the matter with me."
Trying not to gawk at the hints of blood in Terri's drying tears, Echo stood in silent dismay before uttering, "...Of course not, ma'am, ignore me."
"Why are people treating me like I'm made of glass recently? That oaf over there-" she said, pointing toward Alastor's side of the house. "The drunk. He's the flimsy, fragile one. He'll become unbearable eventually and I think I'll be slaying an ogre for dinner. ...Assuming someone says the secret word."
[X]
It was hard to say how the fight made it to the point that it did. Alastor was just trying to get his father to smile again- that was all. He had seemed so ill. Not just low-functioning, but barely functional at all. Bert resisted all efforts to engage, more hatefully than usual, and finally remarked with a level of self-pity that made Alastor want to vomit that only one person could make him smile, and she was dead.
It was the way Bert was just lying down in a hole to die that triggered the disgusted outburst. "Whose fault is that?!"
The unspoken ending of that was intended to be 'not mine,' but Bert assumed it was intended to be 'yours.'
There was a small part of Alastor that did attribute fault to Bert. Although he couldn't quite recall full memories of events, he had strange emotional inklings and occasional dreams that made him wonder if his father had hurt his mother. While it was not a seed Terri had planted herself, it was one she deliberately nurtured through hints dropped here and there. Alastor had no way of knowing that she had been encouraging the same idea in his father's mind as well and that this was one factor escalating his drinking. She had been giving Bert nightmares- some of which were accurate, some of which were exaggerated, and some of which were patently false- of all of the worst ways he had hurt Camille, mostly emotionally, occasionally physically. Needless to say, this was not the right time for Alastor to ask this question.
"Really? Really?!" He knocked over one bottle by accident and a second one on purpose, and his son flinched. "All my fault? Not society's? Not exhaustion? Not sickness? I don't care what these babbling shits say about 'all in your head.' That woman got sick the way your dog or your cat suddenly dies of liver failure- out of the blue. That was a sickness just like some kind of cancer!" For all his failings, Bert could be quite perceptive given the time period in which he lived. "And you think it was all my fault?"
Another previously-existing seed Terri had watered was Alastor's overall sass level. Normally he would never have said a thing like this out loud because he still had a shred of desire left to be kind to his father. And, of course, he had common sense. But any feelings of pity for his father had been replaced by disgust, and he was now in possession of an easy escape hatch, making it unbearably tempting to say: "Not all, just mostly."
Without thinking, Bert threw a shoe at him as if he were a household pest. Alastor dodged it and threw a fallen beer bottle back. It shattered on the ground, and as Bert stumbled, he managed to step in the glass barefoot. "#$% $%^$!"
Alastor charged for the basement stairs, made it down in record time, and opened the closet door. To his unwelcome shock, there was only empty storage space on the other side.
"Aunt Terri!" Al hissed. Was she serious? The closet remained a closet, and there was no lock on the inside, of course, because it was a closet, not a room. His heart was pounding. "Please." He could hear stomping and shouting. He shut the door and huddled inside. "Please, I thought we were friends." He hated that he was dangerously close to crying. How could she?!
If she was being this petty, maybe she just didn't understand the severity of the situation? "I don't think he's well today," Alastor whispered. Bert frequently became aggressive, but usually not to the point of being seriously dangerous. However, his drinking had spiraled alarmingly out of control lately. A tantrum like this had only escalated severely once before, but Al had the terrible feeling this was going to be Part II. Pain, isolated by itself as a factor, was not what worried him. If he were alone in a room and in pain, he could take it. It was the humiliation factor that terrified him. Being hurt until he cried and begged in front of the aggressor was so agonizingly demeaning it made him want to die, and that feeling spiraled off into branches upon branches of deep-seated terror of the feeling of despair and the various kids of horrible ends it could bring. "Don't be mad anymore. I didn't mean anything by it. I'm your friend." The footsteps were approaching. "Please."
Bert threw a tantrum at least once every other week, so Terri assumed it was nothing her brave little boy couldn't handle. It didn't occur to her that frequent did not equal normal, and that even normal didn't reliably equal good. It never dawned on her that she should have stepped in last week, or the week before, or the week before. And the child was so good at controlling his emotions that she never noticed the silent resentment flickering across his face. On this occasion, she wondered if she could use Bert's outburst as leverage.
Surprisingly, Bert stopped short in front of the door. To Alastor's knowledge, nothing was preventing him from opening it, and he had a strange feeling of certainty that Bert knew he was behind it. Yet his father stopped, seemed to pensively pace for a minute, and then sat. Somehow this was more terrifying. It was a waiting game now. Still, the closet remained a closet. Alastor had a thought, but it was shut down immediately as he tried to summon Ferdie- no dice. The voice must be gone, too. 'Keep what you earned after a year,' was the deal, and it had been just a few months. The clear implication here was that she had kicked him out for good.
Just like that, that easily, she didn't care about him anymore.
Alastor felt stupid for being surprised to learn Terri was capable of this degree of cruelty. After all, he had seen those remains in her 'trophy room.' But this was somehow different from that. This was a more sophisticated type of cruelty than violence. It certainly hurt worse already, he thought, than the type of pain his father would deliver, and in a way that made him brave enough to just walk out of the closet himself, unprompted. No more scurrying around in the dark like a mouse.
This was a degree of stubbornness Terri had not expected. He was really that opposed to politely asking his mother to open the door? And that was when her own inclination toward stubbornness reared its head, poisonously. She resolved not to open the door for anything until she heard that word.
Walking out of that closet without back-up, Alastor thought, was humiliating, because he finally understood why his father had waited patiently. He had suspected that, somewhere along the line, Bert had deduced Terri's presence, and now he knew for sure. Al expected that Terri's lack of interest in assisting him would be a laugh riot to Bert, but in fact, his father was so stunned that it almost snapped him out of his temper tantrum entirely. The Thing had just abandoned the kid? There was a split second when he began to feel bad for Alastor, but then, after Bert threateningly demanded an apology, the child did something shocking and unprecedented- he spat at him. Perhaps to feel like less of a joke himself, Alastor spat at Bert and then aimed a sneering smile up at him, saying with his eyes, 'You're the funniest joke I've seen all week.' He was willing to pay a heavy tax to show that he would no longer be intimidated.
The smile may have been punched off his face, but Al tolerated the sting, even though every blow that didn't result in a cry seemed to result in a harder blow. Something had snapped inside of him. He would not cry. For Bert, or for her. His heart would break before he cried.
Willfully meditating through the...sounds...was a test. But Terri was dedicated. She would have the desired relationship or none at all. By the end, though, she felt twinges of concern. Why were there no sounds from the boy? The drunk hadn't actually beaten him to death, had he?! But then she heard a loud bellow of "What is WRONG with you?" and furious stomping up and to the side. Then she heard heavy breathing, but it was not followed up by an outburst of tears, as she would have expected. Instead, she heard not a whisper, but the echo of a whisper. It was an echo because the hallway had expanded, and it took a while to get to her, but the whispered sentence was, "You are a monster."
Terri remained mostly still inside during that as well, but there was a tremor- bubbling, boiling hot self-awareness rising up out of the deep well of her heart. She crushed it quickly, ignored how it scalded her. So be it. Let it happen again. He'd become desperate. He would call her Mother.
[X]
Alastor's sneering, indifferent acceptance of the punishment had achieved the desired effect on Bert. The kid was the one with the bruises, but Bert had to live with the fact that he could no longer fully assert dominance over a child the size of a garden gnome- indignity of indignities.
It was the latest indignity in a long list of indignities and things that had been stripped from Bert. The loss of his family, friends, career, inheritance, reputation; Camille; any chance at a relationship with his son; and even his mind, as his cognitive abilities slowly deteriorated. Life and society had screwed him, and now he was so deep in the hole he could never hope to pull himself back out. He was cursed to die a slow, miserable death in this trap, just waiting resentfully with the knowledge that that goddamn Thing in the closet would probably drag him into its den and have him as a snack before his body even got cold, as one last disrespectful cherry on top of the shit pile that was his life.
Wait. No. No. Bert was not trapped!
His heart leapt. The thought had the same effect as the first whiff of cherry blossoms after a long winter.
He wasn't doomed to continue watching his son's painful allegiance to that creature that evidently bore no allegiance to him. That incident was all the evidence Bert needed to feel certain of the Thing's intentions, and he would not stand idly by and allow it to slowly creep in the shadows, waiting to strike. He would not allow yet another entity to flaunt its power in their faces, make them feel helpless, inferior, and slowly but surely devour them alive.
Their suffering could end at any time. He held the power here. His wife had figured this out faster than he had, but Bert had caught up. He was a much slower lab rat now than he had been once, but dammit, he could still learn.
[X]
'Again? Already?' Terri thought in response to the sounds echoing down the hallway from the other side of the house, just a few days later. They were really going at it. She'd never heard the boy get roped into a screaming match before. What would be enough to elicit that kind of response from him?
As long as he was continuing to resist rather than hide. If there was anything positive to be gained from the last time she had listened in on this, it was that she was so, so very proud that her boy had shown that pig he wouldn't be intimidated. She couldn't wait to tell him so. Something in the back of her mind tried its god-honest best to remind her that this was an 8-year-old boy, and not only would it be reasonable for him to hide, but she should absolutely be stepping in right now. This was to no avail- Terri was in a state of outright delusion that her plan would work as intended without interference.
There was louder clamoring and even a yelp or two from the boy, which didn't usually occur. Terri tensed up briefly. The child had stopped screaming. In fact, he was speaking very calmly now, almost in a soothing tone. It sounded quite a lot as though he were hoping to use that siren ability she had taken away from him. Whatever maneuver he was trying evidently failed because, suddenly, his footsteps were heading down the stairs.
"Aunt Terri!"
Her ears pricked up, but she remained focused on the mantra, 'Let him call you Mother.'
More heavily-thudding footsteps close behind.
More panicked. "Aunt Terri!"
'Let him call you Mother.'
The knob on the closet twisted, but the door didn't open, and there was a thud and a scraping sound, as though he had fallen over and was being dragged across the concrete. A yelp as though the man had been kicked. Then a mad scramble for the door again, and finally a yell that sounded downright terrified, like nothing she had heard from him before, echoed down the hallway.
"MOTHER!"
By this point, even for a creature that maintained a naturally low body temperature, Terri felt ice cold. She became consciously aware, perhaps for the first time, that she had been humoring herself, had really just been playing a waiting game to punish him. She had not actually expected her stubborn, proud little star to resort to this to get her attention. In fact, that he was doing so suggested he was in real dange-
BANG!
It was an animal instinct- the purest of reflexes, next to no executive decision making involved. She didn't know she was headed for the other side until she was halfway there. The hallway, which had been creating echoes only moments ago, seemed shorter now- felt like a blink, really- and then she was standing or, rather, towering over the mortal man in a barely humanoid, monstrous form. She became aware of her teeth grinding, and as she tried to simply release her jaw, her mouth seemed to open on its own and an inhuman screech emerged.
"MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNEEEEEEEEE!"
It didn't take Bert long to make a decision when faced with this eldritch abomination. He had tried to prevent them both from suffering a horrific end at the hands of this monster. He had done his best, he told himself. But no way was he going to stay and let her have at it. He wished he could put the kid out of his misery, like he had planned, but there was no time. Reacting in terror, he aimed the gun at his forehead and pulled the trigger.
The little boy gasped loudly and ground his nose into the concrete, not wanting to look. Then he forced himself to be brave and raise his face again. His father was dead, having killed himself after failing at a murder-suicide, willingly leaving Alastor behind to possibly bleed out or be devoured by a horrible monster. But Alastor would have to deal with his many mixed emotions over this development at a later date, if he made it that far. For now, he elected to focus his concern on the fact that the firearm was so far away. As Terri approached, he tried determinedly to drag himself forward toward it. It was confusing, but even though he had just called for her, he realized he no longer trusted her and that her most likely move would be to take advantage of free meat while he was down and helpless. Alastor decided that he would not allow the humiliation of being devoured while vulnerable. He would shoot her as many times as it took to drive her away long enough for him to die with dignity.
Terri was not at all on the same page as Alastor, but her manner was not helping things. In the state of urgency, most of her tumultuous emotions manifested as irritability. She quickly reverted to her fully humanoid form as she got nearer. "Button! Behave! Please!" As Alastor grunted, stretching for the gun that he couldn't quite reach, Terri scooped him up gently, having realized that the heavily-intoxicated Bert had missed dramatically and the bullet was lodged in the child's thigh, rather than somewhere that would make it more dangerous to move him. Alarmed to remember how strong she was, feeling the woman lift him as easily as if he were an infant, Alastor roared weakly and bit her. Terri snapped, "No!" and sharply smacked him on the nose. The child produced a small whine; this was more frustrating than it should have been due to the pain he was in. He struggled to leap out of her arms. "Behave," Terri insisted. "You called me, and I came to get you. Understand? I'm going to help. You're in shock right now. You can't feel it yet, but you can't afford to waste your energy. Stay still."
She brought him to his bed to oversee the damage. "Do you realize how lucky you are that it hit where it did? If it had been somewhere else, we'd be screwed." Even the bleeding wasn't as bad as she had expected, or she'd never have moved him. That bullet must have either missed or barely nicked the artery. This kid was the luckiest goddamn duck. "I may only need to prevent infection," she said, trying to remain hopeful. "If you listen to Mother you'll live. I promise. But only if you listen!" she told him as he continued to struggle. "You don't have a choice!" She sure as hell didn't trust herself, but she also didn't have a choice.
The word 'magic' entails suspension of disbelief by nature for most people, but it's not quite that simple. The fact was that Terri had shown time and time again that she was unable to generate the type of biomatter compatible with humans. If she could, many of her problems would be solved. But of her many impressive abilities, healing a human was not one of them (although she could make tweaks and alterations to existing biomatter if she tried). She had never realized how embarrassing this was because she'd never been forced to consider it before. She couldn't regrow his own tissue; if she tried to use something like what comprised her own corporeal form, she wasn't sure the graft would take; and even if she could do either one, she knew she shouldn't do it around a bullet. She even hesitated to teleport the round out. Although to the eye it may appear the bullet would simply disappear in one place and reappear in her hand, the metaphysical reality was that it would probably feel like ripping through him a second time. Not just feel like it, but perhaps emulate it, causing more physical trauma. Her biggest concern was disturbing the artery that the bullet had miraculously avoided severing, if she didn't remove the round slowly and carefully. These 'what if's worried her too much. Time to go old school, scouts. She'd remove the bullet, sanitize it, mend him in whatever way the data told her was best, and then fiddle with some growth factor genes and cross her fingers that early onset cancer wouldn't be an unintended consequence. She mimed an inverted cross over herself for good luck.
The child's shock was beginning to wear off, and a few tears slipped down his cheeks. Terri was pained; this was her fault. The little one's tears felt like someone dumping acid on her face. She shook herself out of sentimentality and began to hum a lullaby in her siren voice, hoping to put him under.
"AB...solUTE...ly NOT," Al huffed, refusing to take his eyes off her.
"You're willing to do this without anesthetic, you lunatic?"
Alastor was in too much physical and emotional pain to give a rat's ass; he dropped all pretense and politeness entirely. "I'm not crazy! You're a carnivorous spider monster my father just shot himself in the head to avoid!"
"I'm trying to save your life!"
"Then go to a hospital!"
"I doubt you'll get any better care," Terri retorted, seeming to forget that the last few decades had contained considerable medical advances. Partly to comfort herself, she had retreated into peak narcissism.
Absolutely done with this pompous jackass, who was clearly lying about wanting to rescue him, Alastor wailed, "What are you waiting for?! Just kill me and get it over with!"
Fine, you know what? Terri didn't have time for this. He was willing to be in a crapload of pain? Good for him. It would build character. She ripped a chunk of cloth off the bottom of her dress, stuffed it in his mouth, and commanded, "Bite!" Lost for what else to do, Alastor obediently bit, groaning in anticipation as she flexed a mechanical hand with spindly but incredibly strong fingers, ideal for this job. She removed the bullet carefully, taking about a minute and a half. "You're being very brave," she praised him as he huffed silently and, to both of their surprise, tightly gripped the hand that wasn't digging out the bullet.
The bleeding picked up a concerning amount, causing her to freeze inside. Well, thank the sun and moon she hadn't just haphazardly ripped the thing out. F***f***f***f***f***. "Where's the first aid kit?" she asked.
He pointed her to it but demanded to know, "How do you plan to help with that?" He was similarly alarmed.
There was something to use to tourniquet in it. It seemed to be effective. As he cringed at the pressure, she assured him, "Be glad I don't have to use the rubbing alcohol to clean the metal spatula."
"What?"
"I was going to have to cauterize that thing if this didn't work." The data she was pulling from the future, which held the benefit of additional research, suggested cauterizing or stitching only in cases of excessive bleeding. Otherwise the risk of infection could actually increase, which would outweigh the benefits. Cauterizing was only if stitching would take too long. The bleeding was controlled now, but seemed to have become unnervingly heavy when the tourniquet was off, and it couldn't stay on forever. Making alterations to clotting factors was risky business. She didn't want to go to all this effort just to have him die of an embolism later. Terri calculated... Decision made. "Going to do what I do best. So sharp you won't feel a thing."
She washed it. He continued to squeeze her hand through the stitching, still refusing to be put to sleep. She cleaned it up once more and bandaged it well. Loosened the tourniquet. She was uncomfortable; surely there was something else she should do? For now, she decided the best she could do was ensure that he rested. She resumed humming the lullaby. He continued resisting for a bit, but then seemed to willingly give in, twitching as he dozed off.
With the child asleep and the immediate threat partially addressed, Terri's emotions began to flood out. How could she have allowed this to happen?! What if she failed at keeping him healthy? Did it matter? After the way she had behaved, would he ever be willing to look at her again? The thought of losing him was unbearable.
Before she could embarrass herself with a fit of weeping, Terri noticed a soft, green glow beneath the bandages. She was perplexed for a moment, but then it dawned on her- she had broken their deal. She had never truly, in her heart, walked out of it, and she had broken it by failing to protect him, from his father or from herself. Therefore, he had received some power in advance. She couldn't use her power to heal a human...but if inhabiting a human, could the power learn? One of her greatest abilities was gathering and using data, and she suspected that this was an underlying force that drove or assisted many of the other abilities, so it was far from impossible. Lo and behold, through the bandages, in her mind's eye, Terri's supernaturally-enhanced vision allowed her to perceive something remarkable that looked like knitting. The power had learned how to generate biomatter for the human child.
"Good boy!" she whispered, inexpressibly proud of, and grateful for, how well his instinct to protect himself had succeeded. She patted his head. "I'm going to make everything nice and soft." Wanting to make sure nothing disrupted his healing, she began spooling him into a cocoon. "You're so smart. And I'm an idiot. Please forgive me. It was a mistake..."
She had never come this close to a genuine apology before. You don't regret things that affect someone you have no regard for at all, so she knew he mattered to her. (Well, of course he did. She'd known that already. Had she really temporarily talked herself out of it?!) This knowledge was reinforced by the fact that she kept feeling these strange compulsions to touch him. As a general rule, she liked to be touched as little as he did, which actually helped them get along better. But the desire was growing stronger and more frequent over time, and now she couldn't help but gently trace the bridge of his nose with one finger, over a few very light, barely perceptible freckles that reminded her of stars behind clouds.
Sitting on the bed with her side pressed against him now, Terri could feel his body heat radiating. Curiosity overwhelmed her. No conscious people around to catch her in this embarrassing display… Well, no time like the present. She nudged him forward very gently, laid down and oriented herself against his back, and pulled his body against hers. Terri had never been this close to a human child before for longer than a few moments. Since she was vying for an opportunity to be their mother, she probably should have ventured more than an occasional tap on the shoulder or crown of the head, or boop on the nose, or brief stint of hand-holding. This would occur to most people with common sense, and yet before this exact moment, she hadn't seen how odd it was that she'd never given a child an extended hug or a cuddle. She hadn't even wanted to before recently, within the last few weeks even, when she had started daydreaming about earning a cuddle with a scary story. The strangeness of it slapped her across the face as she realized that this was absolutely wonderful and she could not understand why she had been avoiding it.
Terri could feel his heartbeat through the cocoon. It was captivating. He- not fear or respect or affection radiating from him but he, himself- had a scent that… wasn't repulsive? He was so warm… In fact, she was anxiously struck by the idea that she may not be able to distinguish a fever from normal human body heat. It was a concern, but the heartbeat calmed her again. She found herself stroking his hair and, against the logical part of her that disliked entertaining notions she couldn't guarantee, whispering the promise, "You will be alright," as she slowly drifted into sleep to the feeling of his steady heartbeat and even, gentle breathing.
[X]
To her own surprise, Terri awakened hours later. She had not meant to fall asleep and was embarrassed. She concernedly felt Alastor's forehead, but she determined that he was not too warm and noted that his breathing still seemed even and relaxed. Satisfied, she enjoyed the soft, warm thing next to her with the rhythmic heartbeat and basked in the fact that she had been given a rare chance to be affectionate without anyone else around to laugh at her. Her feelers emerged and traced his face until it was etched indelibly into her memory.
But the child eventually awakened in a panic. The cocoon did not help. The act of cocooning, he thought, was a sure sign that he was food. "Oh! Shhh, shhhhhhhhhh…" Terri whispered, wrapping her arms around him. Note: This was the wrong thing to do. He yelped, continuing to misunderstand the situation, and began to struggle again. "No! Nononononono! Darling! Button! Shhhhhhh… You're safe." She cut open the cocoon and plucked him out to demonstrate, but discouraged too much movement by holding him still. "Look, look." She very gently touched the bandages above the wound, then peeled them away to reveal, as she had hoped, significant healing progress and no signs of infection that she could tell. Alastor still looked uneasy, but pleasantly surprised. "See?" Terri said, holding her hands up. "Innocent!"
Alastor rolled over to face her, looking pensive. He had been so sure this was her golden opportunity to just make use of good meat. "Why did you fix me?"
"Reign it in, child, you're not 'fixed' yet. You need to rest for a while," she corrected, rebandaging him.
"Why did you help me?"
Unsure of what to say, she answered dumbly, "I felt like it."
"Why?"
Silence, echoing with anxious uncertainty.
Al willed himself to ask in a pained tone, "Why did you abandon me like that?" He needed an answer, he thought, and he required her to cough up a good one. Or maybe it would be better for her to produce a bad one, so he could stop himself from slipping back under her spell? Alastor knew he was in terrible danger of that happening. His heart had leapt with hope that she still cared the second he realized she wasn't planning on killing him, even though something in the back of his mind was screaming at him that that was a pathetically low bar to clear. He only half heard it. There was another, much closer, voice in his head whispering that this was the only adult left in the immediate area who might care, and if she didn't, his other choice was being all alone for years in one of the county group homes. And still another voice, closer still, said, 'You still love her, don't you, you idiot?'
Terri sighed and looked down, unable to look him directly in the face. Even she was sickened by the possible answer, 'I was jealous. I wanted you to see I'm the better choice.' She must have been completely out of her mind. She remembered, angrily, that she never saw it clearly while it was happening, but every time she snapped out of an irrational episode like this, it was so obvious that her reasoning had been clouded. He had been able to see it, though, Terri realized, recalling his talk of her 'being tricked.' It made her feel even more devastated that she had hurt this special child, who clearly paid her enough attention to notice when something was wrong with her, and cemented the realization that her other possible answer, 'I thought you didn't care for me,' was also completely asinine.
"I never stopped caring about you," she clarified. "I should never have pretended that I stopped. And I certainly never wished you dead. I'm so ashamed. Please believe me."
That was not an answer, Alastor thought, but he could infer her silent, 'I thought you had rejected me,' better than she may have expected. Still not good enough. "You really hurt me, Miss Terri," he told her, trying to be firm but still sounding more vulnerable than he would have liked.
Oof- the 'aunt' had been retracted. 'Stay calm, Terri,' she thought, 'and be happy he's still speaking to you at all.' "I misread that situation." This was clearly unsatisfactory, Terri admitted to herself. She tried again. "I made a very serious mistake. A stupid mistake. I didn't mean for that to happen. ...And I should have stepped in long before it got that far." No reply. "It was my mistake, and I will do anything to make up for it. Can you ever forgive me?" Could he tell that she meant it? She had trained herself so well that her voice still sounded robotic. What if he thought it was faked? For Terri, this was the equivalent of groveling nose to the ground, but to most people it would probably seem very emotionally shallow.
Alastor resentfully came to terms with the fact that he was clearly not going to hear the words 'I'm sorry' come out of her mouth, but her voice had expressed more emotion at the end there. He paused for a long time, in deep thought, trying to decide if he believed her, when he finally noticed the vibrations. He couldn't hear it because it was on the soft mattress surface, but one of her hands was taptaptaptapping away with the frenetic energy of a woodpecker, signaling a state of intense emotion.
Without warning, the little boy flung his arms around her neck and nestled against her.
"Oh! Huh." Stunned, Terri tentatively stroked his hair. "Trust me now, Button?" She felt something wet and a mild trembling. "Oh, don't do that. Not necessary. Nothing's wrong now." Al wished he could explain that he was just glad and overwhelmed that she still cared, but he couldn't. He controlled his tears but continued to tremble a little bit like an overexcited puppy. Terri wrapped her arms around him again, and this time he didn't resist. "Good, brave Spiderling. You're okay. Don't exert yourself."
A minute or two of quiet, awkward cuddling passed before Terri admitted to him out loud, "You were right."
"Right?"
"That I was being tricked by that Thing. I wasn't able to accept that, and you got hurt because of it. I promised I'd protect you, and I didn't. But I'll trust your judgment, going forward. You're a very clever little boy. My very favorite. Really and truly," she swore, fully realizing and accepting how true it was as she said it. She stroked his back. "Please don't cry anymore, love."
She gave him his very first kiss on the forehead that he could remember, and despite her betrayal, Alastor could not help but melt into her arms. Miss Terri was bad at expressing her emotions verbally, but so was he. Could he judge her? Should he forgive her? Could he forgive something this extreme? Al realized that against his better judgment, he was already starting to...and he let it happen. The harsh, stinging details of the fallout of Terri's reckless endangerment blurred and faded against the gentleness of her touch. It felt so good to be held.
[X]
Note: Just confirming my personal thoughts/beliefs in case it's unclear: (1) Terri is tragic as heck, but she absolutely brings it upon herself. She's to blame. Period. (2) By suggesting that she is mentally ill, I am neither excusing her behavior nor associating mental illness with the tendency to be abusive. I am only saying that this woman happens to be both mentally ill and abusive. It's still her responsibility to control her behavior. (3) Definitely not suggesting she *deserves* to be forgiven because she's sorry (also, she didn't even apologize, so...). Unfortunately, she was correct about the Alastor character in Ch2- he is determined enough to avoid negative feelings that he will brainwash himself; he barely needs help from her. And that's not victim-blaming in any way, it's just a tragic trait of the character. (4) I am fully aware that cuddling the kid, who she just wronged and who she knows hates to be touched, while he's sleeping is cringey as hell. But I suspect it is in character for that creepy jackass, which is why it's in there.