Chapter Six:

Pink and yellow, purple, orange and green.


Don't cry, snowman, not in front of me
Who'll catch your tears if you can't catch me, darling


Poppy Moser forgets how hard she had struggled in the beginning to be anything but what she was. Maybe it was by accident or maybe her misremembering was intentional. Denial was a cosy coat to wear after all, and her world was a winter wonderland with less snowflakes and more slashing hexes. She needed some warmth in the cold, lonely nights.

Merlin knew corpses didn't offer much heat.

Nevertheless, it was hard to say which way the axe fell, deliberate forgetfulness or not, but Poppy does forget. She doesn't like remembering that year span she spent travelling Europe before setting out for America and the BAU. It had been… Bad.

Poppy had done well in the beginning months of the year, the first two in fact, still riding high off the adrenaline of Tom and his Death Eaters, her Friend still partly filled from the feast that was offered to it at the Battle of Hogwarts.

It had felt like a God at an altar, her Shadow, presented with delectable martyrs to appease its resentment. The problem with Gods, however, as with her Friend, is they forget too, or misremember, and one sacrifice is never enough.

The call came slowly.

She spotted a mugger in Hungry, a relatively harmless pick-pocket, and her Friend-

Her Friend perked up, licked its lips, and then the countdown began.

Poppy ran, and she ran like hell.

She goes to Bulgaria, meets a rapist-

She goes to Italy, finds a con-man-

She goes to Germany, and stares down the barrel of a gun at a bank robbery-

Poppy does nothing, not to them, but she runs, and runs, and runs, and like all good runaways she ended up in Paris. Not the city of love, not Poppy's Paris, but the city of the lost. She rented an apartment there, in the stretch of Rue de Rivoli. It was the quintessential Parisian apartment, classically elegant in its Haussmanian building, nestled at the top with high ceilings, tall French windows, elaborately carved mouldings, marble fireplace, herringbone oak floors and a wrought iron balcony.

A type of place with great bones that looked good in anything.

Poppy rots in there, festers and decomposes in her own man-made body bag.

She locked herself away, slowly but surely, unable to walk five minutes down the fuckin' street without seeing herself, without her Friend showing her, pulling the stashed wand out her arm brace and slashing a passer-by's throat until the road ran red-

So Poppy put herself into seclusion, she padlocked the doors and bolted the windows, and she, sometimes, thought she might die in that apartment.

She comes close to it.

Those last few weeks before-

She acted like a junky, strung out and strung in, whacked away on something worse than any A list drug. She spent one night scratching the apartment to shreds, tearing up curtains and pulling up floorboards and loosening every nail and screw in sight, if only to stop herself ripping out throats. She spent another night curled up like a baby in a womb, in the bottom of the clawfoot bathtub, sobbing so hard she couldn't breathe, couldn't see through her swollen eyes, scream any more through her snot drenched face.

They weren't tears of grief or sadness. They were tears of dissatisfaction, of hunger and need and no way to fill it, and they left salty tracks crusting on her skin, their own little furrows of frustration. The last night… The last night Poppy spent spread out in her chesterfield chair, staring blankly at the empty fireplace, cold and black, for hours.

Was this it? She had thought.

Was that fireplace me?

Was this all there was going to be for Poppy Moser-

She made the mistake of leaving her apartment, sure that if she just had a moment of fresh air, just a small inhale… Everything would be alright.

The boy had been sitting on the staircase by the front door. She crossed his tiny path, glanced back, Merlin, why did she glance back-

And nothing was the same ever again.

He was a small child, seven, maybe eight. Poppy had seen him before, spied him from the corner of her green eye sitting at the bottom of the staircase on the nights before her great seclusion.

He always had bruises. On his pale, wasp thin arms. On the tiny curve of his jaw. On the calf of his one slightly rolled up jean leg.

Léo.

That had been his name.

Sweet Léo.… Sweet Léo, who had a cut across his cheek that night.

Poppy told herself she was doing it, being good, being clean, and once this… thirst was out her system, she could go back to Britain, back to Hermione and Ron, back to something like before, and-

And that was a lie.

It always had been.

Poppy was always coming to this.

Léo had a cut. A jagged, mean thing that-

That did it. That turned the dial. That lit the spark in the hollow fireplace of her chest, and for the first time in months Poppy didn't feel cold.

She felt as if she was on fire.

He was hunched that evening too, sitting down as if he couldn't bear to, in a way that told Poppy that the poor little lion cub hadn't just been abused physically or verbally, but something monstrously worse.

"Dans quelle pièce?"

In which room?

He blinked at her, her voice rough from misuse, and Poppy had repeated herself.

"Dans quelle pièce?"

"Quarante-trois."

43.

Poppy had plunged her hand into her pocket, pulled all the money she had on her out, a good couple of thousand in truth, she was out on morals only, and threw it at the small boy with one word.

One word she had wished someone had told her.

"Courir."

Run.

He didn't need to be told twice. Léo was a smart boy.

He didn't glance back.

Poppy had made her way back up the stairs, steps creaking below her boot, down to the floor below her own torn apart apartment, down the hall to the shiny red door with number forty-three in gold on its face.

Funny. Gryffindor colours. Poppy thought that was poetic, maybe.

But that wasn't before she spotted the emergency axe in the red-glass case. Not before she pulled her sleeve down snug over her knuckles and struck, glass shattering, crushing, her Friend laughing, hooting, testing the weight of iron and wood balanced in her grip with a bob and a bounce.

The man in apartment forty-three answered on the third knock.

He had been tall, well-put together, Léo's father. Blond haired and blue eyed, cuff-linked and classy-

And he had answered the door with his oxford shirt untucked and his belt buckle still fucking undone.

He never got to say a word.

Poppy kicked him back into the apartment, and she swung.

She kept swinging.

Over and over and over and over.

Somewhere in the struggle, the door had closed, somewhere in the struggle, Poppy had woken back up, somewhere in the struggle-

A monster was resuscitated.

Léo's father ended up as tatters and ribbons and slivers of bone on the floor in a puddle of his own rank, unclean blood, and Poppy… Poppy had dropped the axe after what felt like hours, minutes, days-

And she fell to her knees, and she fell to her back, and she laid in it.

The red.

Baptised.

A whole year of restrained disappointment and starvation had converted the man into consommé. Pieces of himself rendered so small in the wake of Poppy's rage and hunger, shards of bone gritted together like splinters in the palm of her hand, locks of blond hair still attached to scalp, and nails like fish scales shiny in the sea of the stained carpet.

Poppy bobbed along in the red sea, and somewhere in the heap, in the feverish chaos, some had gotten on her face, across her mouth, and a little pink tongue peeped out of its hole to take a swipe.

Copper and rust, and something darkly sweet.

Circe, that kill had been messy. She had stayed there in the blood for maybe hours, tasting on the spray that had splattered across her face, into her mouth-

"Biney."

Poppy doesn't know what that word is, where she has heard it from, why she keeps hearing it from a little boys screaming mouth, but it was there, it was said, it was prayed, and she felt as if she was being held, rocked in arms like a babe, safe, finally safe, one less monster in the world, safe and sound and-

Loved.

Survival kicked in over the haze somewhere near dawn, however, when the blood was dry and the sense of arms and embraces were gone.

Her Friend was finally quiet too, slumbering after a full meal, satiated and not shouting in her ear.

Poppy wasn't thinking properly, however. She felt alive again, fixed again, held again-

Right again, and her head was stuck in cloud fuckin' nine. She had left the body right there, the blood too, the fuckin' axe as well, as she had stumbled out of the madness and into the hall, back to her own apartment where she passed out covered in blood on her own coach.

How the Parisian police never found out it was her who killed Pedro the paedophile was anyone's bloody guess. She'd left a fuckin' trail right to her apartment door in her pretty size fours.

But they don't.

Pedro was in bad debt with a loan shark, they pinned it on a small street gang, and maybe they found his stash of explicit photos in his cubbyhole and didn't try very hard to solve his murder at all, and Poppy stayed just a month more in her apartment, making sure to cast cursory glances to the apartment when she ran into neighbours, shivering, rubbing her hands up her arms as if she was cold, saying she couldn't believe what happened just down the hall, just a floor below. No one was surprised when she moved out.

Poor traumatized girl just wanted to get away from the blood, everybody thought.

Wrong.

She was running towards it now.

She had a… Fondness for it, and a deep seated hatred too, but Pedro had taught her one thing of value. She knew a way to feed the need and keep the world clean. You know the saying… Twice bitten, thrice as likely to become a homicidal maniac.

She was reckless back then. Poppy would admit that. She had been eighteen and pumped up on sociopathy, teenage hormones, and a taste for blood. Her first hunts had been little more than-

Little more than a fuckin' feeding frenzy.

But Poppy can't regret them. Not really. They, the mistakes and the blunders and the bloodbaths, they made her who she was.

What she was.

Léo was taken in by a loving cousin when the Parisian police finally tracked the boy down at a train station trying to buy a ticket to said cousin. He was put into a good school, and made pack lunches and, last Poppy heard, he was doing very well.

So was Poppy doing well throughout the years. Honing her skills, refining her tastes, cleaning better, living-

Living in a human suit without the zip showing.

Just like the Parisian police, no one ever saw truly what really lurked beneath the surface. Throughout the years, there were less and less… hiccups, less and less errors, less and less reasons to ever see Poppy Moser as more than the friendly neighbourhood BAU agent-

And then she cut her finger on a fuckin' beer bottle and nearly strangled a forensic officer in the middle of a crowded bar surrounded by his colleagues.

Days since last accident: 0.


Don't cry, snowman, don't leave me this way

A puddle of water can't hold me close, baby


Poppy was a mess as she slipped out into the busy Miami street, swaying, wobbling, sliding about the place like a new born fawn finding its footing, winded and woozy, chainsaw heavy in her heart and head.

Her Friend was bellowing behind the flimsy iron gate she was using to hold it back in her mind. Kill him! Finish him! What are you doing walking away?! He made it red! He made it BLEED-

Her Friend doesn't understand discretion, nor witnesses, or anything else but an empty stomach denied food. Merlin, she was lucky she hadn't whipped her wand out back there, started firing off spells left, right and centre. What was she thinking?!

She wasn't.

Poppy bumped into people, shouldered passed other's, mumbling nonsense as she went, stumbled off the fuckin' curb and nearly headfirst into traffic, the sound of someone following, steps pounding, voice nearly drowned out by the honk of the startled driver in the car that had nearly T-boned her.

"Hey! Wait! Wait up!"

Poppy doesn't wait up, but she does pull back from the road, letting the irate driver in the Ford carry on in his journey, shirked off her leather jacket, refused to look down, look at the blood!-

And haphazardly enveloped the jacket around her bleeding hand blindly.

It was just enough time for the person following her to catch up.

Poppy went to swing at them.

"Easy now! It's just me."

Rudy Fuckin' Cooper stood two pavement slabs away, hands raised in mock surrender. Poppy's own closed fist fell limply to her side.

"I'm going home."

It was the most she could get out, and it was pathetic really, three words, a total sum of her barely hanging on grip. Her head swam, pulsing, the lights for the crossing up ahead behind Rudy's curls going from red, to amber to GREEN-

Hear that?! Lily's screaming! Green means go! Green means die-

Poppy glanced away, recoiling, stumbled under the onslaught of her senses, and Rudy Cooper reached for her.

"What you should do is sit down before you fall down."

He doesn't grab her, perhaps he was smarter than he looked, but he does this strange hovering guide thingy, hands inches from her, trying to coax, and maybe he was right, Muggles tended to be once every blue moon, because suddenly Poppy was exhausted, suddenly her knees were quivering, suddenly-

Suddenly Poppy's crashing down, plonking arse first on the edge of the curb, sitting in a fuckin' gutter, and Rudy was patting his pockets, finding something in there, a little green and white box he pulled out-

A small first aid kit.

Doctors. Always the first to whip out a Band-Aid and try to kiss it all better.

Poppy doesn't have the energy to fight Rudy off when he sits down next to her. Not if she wanted to fight off the muttering, antlered beast salivating for a snack in her head too.

"You should let me look at that hand. You were bleeding quite a lot back there and you're looking peaky."

Peaky.

Poppy wished that was all she was feeling. The world would be so much better if she was Peaky Poppy and not Psychopathic Poppy.

Rudy settled in beside her, sitting down on the far edge of the curb, and reached for her injured, hastily wrapped arm.

Poppy yanked the limb away from him further, curling tighter around it.

"Don't."

Rudy-

Rudy took it in stride, placatingly smiling her way. Poppy wanted to smack that smile off his dimpled face and tear the whole thing off!-

"If we don't get that wrapped up tight and quick it's going to keep bleeding, and it's eventually going to seep through the jacket and might get an infection, which will mean a hospital visit and a boat load of antibiotics. Maybe even a drip. You're choice."

Poppy, sluggishly, strangely, offered the arm out.

Rudy grinned brighter, jutting his chin over her shoulder.

"Might want to look away."

Poppy did, cranking her neck around, over her left shoulder, down the other end of the busy street.

And wasn't that bizarre.

Poppy never did what she was told. Never.

She felt the peel of leather leaving her skin, the sting of fresh air meeting an open nerve, and heard Rudy hiss and curse under his breath.

"Haemophiliac?"

Poppy swallowed deeply, the lump of a dry mouth leading to a parched, constricting throat.

Thirsty.

Always so thirsty! Never get us enough to drink! Just a little, I swear! Just take a little-

Morgana, she was thirsty, and not for water.

"Moderate case, yeah."

Rudy tutted and she heard from behind her the pop of a plastic latch unlocking.

"Haemophilia, a blood disorder that makes the bearer bleed a whole lot even from a nick, and hemophobia, a fear of blood… what a combination."

You're telling me.

Poppy jolted when she felt something wet slip over her palm.

Just a wet wipe, likely trying to clean up the ever-expanding puddle in her palm.

"You might need stitches."

Poppy barked back.

"Just wrap the fuckin' thing. It'll be fine."

Make it white. Make it clean. Make it so I can't fuckin' see it-

Rudy carried on dabbing at her hand, working his way through his stash of antiseptic wipes, tilting her hand this way and that, cleaning up the mess.

"You know, haemophilia is generally an inherited disorder. Mom or dad?"

"Don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? Didn't the doctors who diagnose you have family medical history to work from?"

Poppy let her gaze slip shut, inhaling deep-

Copper-

Fuck-

She could smell-

"No, alright! I'm fuckin' adopted. The doctors took a shot and ran some tests. It's not a hard disorder to figure out. I get cut; I gush blood. End off."

The swiping stalled, and Rudy's voice dipped low.

"Sorry. I shouldn't be asking you twenty questions when-"

Poppy sighed deeply, using her free hand to scrub at her closed eyes. Focus on the words, focus on the now, don't think of-

"No… No. I shouldn't have snapped. I just… I'm just not good with-… With blood. Not when it's… When it's on me."

In me, around me, sure, but on me?

"Do you have any medicine you need to take?"

Poppy sniffed, keeping her breaths shallow and senseless, fighting back against the smell wanting to seep in through her nose and taunt her Friend.

They were irate enough as it was.

"I have an injection of octocog alfa waiting for me in the back carrier of my bike."

Something wet and cold was sprayed onto her thumb with a hissing release, and Poppy heard the rip of plastic as something else was opened, maybe between teeth seen as the hand upon her own never left.

Not once.

"That's good."

Poppy felt the gauze, squashy and oddly rough, begin to weave around the bottom of her thumb.

Hospital grade by the stiffness.

"So how did you find out you had Haemophilia?"

Maybe it was because she was dizzy, or maybe because her Friend was still roaring in her head, clawed hands wrapped around its prison bars, trying to slink through the cracks, or maybe it was Rudy's methodical sweep of her thumb, the soft-low voice, the smell of menthol overpowering the copper, she would have to remember that trick, that saw Poppy answer-

Truthfully.

"My adopted cousin pushed me over when I was seven. My knee hit a rock. The blood started out slow-… It was only a scrape. Dudley ran off and got ran over not a few minutes later. It was… Bad. An ambulance came and they scooped Dudley off the pavement. My Aunt and Uncle had to take me in the back of the ambulance too. There was no one left to watch me and… A few hours later, while Dudley was in surgery at the hospital, one of the nurses noticed I was still bleeding quite heavily from the scrape still. It was pretty easy to put the puzzle pieces together from there."

A whistling hum.

"Did you see it? Your cousin's accident, I mean… Must have been terrible, and so young too."

I was the one who fuckin' threw him under the tires.

And you left Dexter Morgan in the bar still breathing!-

Poppy counted down from three, and tried to hold on tight to the slightly peppery smell of menthol.

"Yeah… Yeah I did."

A tut, and the bandage wound higher up her thumb.

Rudy had warm hands. Warm and calloused, but somehow still smooth. Hands that knew how to work hard.

"My mother died when I was around nine, ten. Ran over by a truck right in front of me. I know what it's like."

No, you don't.

"Adopted too?"

There was a tug to her thumb, a little pull, something being tied off.

"Not so lucky, I'm afraid. I was a little too old to be any couples first choice, so I ended up bouncing around foster homes until my teens when I set out for Europe, France to be exact. I enrolled in the Sorbonne university in Paris, and the rest is history."

Paris. The city of the lost.

Poppy whirled around, unmindful of her hand, of the blood, neck snapping like an elastic band when pulled just that inch too tight to stretch any further.

"But it's not just history, is it?"

She doesn't know what she's doing, what she's saying, why she's saying anything at all, why this unexpectedly sits so very wrong in her belly, like worms wriggling to the surface, through the dirt to the clean, warm rain above.

"It's never just history."

Rudy smiled gently, relinquishing her hand, and Poppy glanced down to the bandaged thumb, fresh and tidy and white-

Like Tony Tucci's stub.

"No."

Rudy said.

"No it's not."

Death, Poppy thinks, is a funny thing. How it only ever goes on to shape the living and not the dead themselves, they've packed up shop and left the circus, but the living-

The living carry death with them, everywhere they go, sometimes without ever really knowing they did at all.

It makes a man who saw his mother ran over become a prosthetist, spending his days trying to put people back together again because he couldn't do the same for the one person he really wanted to repair. Over and over and over, he will try to fix his mistake, to somehow time-travel and change that day, and it will always come up to fuckin' nothing. A pile of limbs spread across a road and an orphan boy standing in the gutter.

Poppy was no better. The girl stuck hunting down serial killers and murderers because her adopted mother and father were slain by one when she was two and a half years old in her own bloody nursery, and maybe because of something else before that, a wrecked car and engine fumes-

People like Poppy and Rudy… They're punchlines to life's greatest fuckin' joke. Trauma and horror and anguish walk into a bar and order a bottle of blood, and trauma turns to the barman and says give me another.

Poppy drew her hand away, folded it into her lap, the bandage pulling tight across the joint, as Rudy turned to packing up his little box of muggle miracles.

"I should head back and get my medicine-"

"No need. We'll pick it up on the way over to my car."

Poppy wavered, blinking owlishly.

Had she lost that much blood?

"Pardon?"

But Rudy Cooper was pocketing his first aid kit and coming to a stand, black curls skimming over forehead, crowning a smile.

"You've lost quite a bit of blood. It's best you eat after having the octocog alfa to keep your sugar levels from crashing and instigating hypoglycemia. Don't worry, I know a place not far from here. A short drive will get us there."

It was the us Poppy was having trouble getting over, not the drive time.

"I can order in my hotel room-"

Rudy waved her off flippantly.

"Don't be silly. Do you really want to risk a sugar shock on the back of a Bonneville going seventy in a crowded Miami street? What will your police friends think?"

He has a point. How does he know we drive a Bonneville? We only said bike. Has he been-

Shut up. Just fuckin' shut up for five minutes. You've caused enough trouble for today.

Rudy grinned bright in the falling night, offering his hand out.

"Come on… I swear I don't bite."

I do.

Equally, something energized zapped its way through Poppy's brain, a photon beam stimulating atoms in her grey matter like constellations, a grouping of random stars lit up the night sky. It was people who made them into patterns, and like those same people, she had the strangest sensation that the offer, the hand out, was more than… More than she could see.

A disclaimer at the bottom of a contract etched in teeny-tiny unintelligible writing.

Maybe it was asking for her soul.

Poor guy didn't realize she didn't have one of those to sell.

Can't miss what you don't have.

Don't be impulsive-

Poppy's injured hand stretched out and stole Rudy's, if only for a little bit of petty payback to the growingly volatile voice in her head, and the older man helped pull her up to a stand with a chuckle and a gentle squeeze careful of the thumb.

The only thing left on the curb was a pile of bloody tissues.


Don't cry, snowman, don't you fear the sun

Who'll carry me without legs to run, honey


The diner Poppy ended up in was a bright affair, nostalgic almost, littered with posters and neon signs, theatrical with its big, laminated menus. It was the quintessential Americana, fun yet whimsical, and completely out of Poppy's wheelhouse.

Where's a dingy pub when you need one?

Poppy sat opposite at the small, white square table, reached over, and nabbed the bottle of chocolate syrup resting near the ketchup and mustard, squeezing it over her bowl. Rudy too, with his lone black coffee not-even-one-packet-of-sugar to keep his hands busy, sat staring incredulously at her piled plate of waffles, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, four scoops, caramel swirled ice cream, three scoops, sliced banana and mini marshmallows.

"What?"

Poppy snapped as she shook the chocolate sauce bottle and-

And went back to squeezing it over her not-quite-breakfast-not-quite-dessert.

"You're the one who told me I needed to replenish my blood sugar."

Rudy cocked a brow as he lifted his mug to blow at the coffee inside. She hoped it was exceedingly bitter, just in spite.

"Yes, replenish, not send yourself nose-diving into a diabetic coma."

Poppy slapped the bottle down and snatched up her fork, using the side of it to saw off a piece of drenched, delicious waffle.

"I've ate worse before."

She promised with a hearty bite, chewing silently.

Rudy chuckled.

"Right. Sweet tooth. I remember."

Between chewing and her next forkful, Poppy bounced the silver utensil in her hand, flicking it like a pendulum swing, glancing at the kitten clock on the wall, tail swinging up to nearly twelve at night.

Rudy had lied. It hadn't been a short drive. It had taken them nearly two fuckin' hours to find their seats here. Perhaps short for an American, but not a Brit.

"So… Interesting choice of venue. I took you more as a coffee house sort of man and not a-"

"Not a race car striped seat kind of guy?"

Poppy chuckled, a strange sensation on its own, an almost pleasurable tickle in the throat, as Rudy took to stirring his coffee with a tiny wooden stick on offer from a dented silver pot.

"Truth is, before the accident… My mother used to take me here all the time. Every Sunday morning for breakfast."

He glanced down at his coffee, must have seen something nice in the reflection by the way he smiled softly into the dark.

"My siblings loved it. Especially my sister. She used to cry until she got her banana split, and then would spend half the time here flinging it at our brother, who would retaliate with his fries. Mom would moan, but she would-… She would be smiling. This place brings back… Fond memories."

Poppy doesn't quite understand that. Wanting to remember. Smiling at ghosts. Looking back and not-

Not shutting her eyes tightly.

It must have been… Nice.

Nice and meaningless.

"Didn't know you had siblings."

Rudy shrugged and sipped sincerely at his coffee.

"We drifted apart. I'm trying to reconnect. Family is important."

Poppy doesn't get that either.

Dudley was the closest thing to a brother she had, and she hated his guts. Hated his guts all the more when they were pushed out his body and across a road.

Rudy tapped his finger against the handle of his white mug.

He likes that colour. Like bandages, like clean tile, like a lab coat and-

ICE.

"Do you have any siblings?"

Poppy shook her head and scarfed down a rather unpolite sized bite of ice cream.

"Nope. None."

The tapping finger on the mug stopped.

"You sound so sure of that?"

Poppy frowned; fork paused hallway to her mouth, dripping off sauce and cream.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Rudy half heartedly shrugged.

"You said you were adopted. Kids get split in the system all the time. A brother goes here, and sister goes there. A family tree scattered in the wind and foster homes."

Poppy lowered the fork, flicked off the ice cream and waffle and marshmallow, and, again, swung it between her fingers.

She had never thought-

Poppy was a Witch. Magic ran in families. Muggleborns, while not exactly rare, weren't as common as Purebloods. She was eighty-nine percent more likely to be the misbegotten product of a Pureblood affair than she was to be a Muggleborn. But if she was a Muggleborn, the chances were that her siblings, the none existent siblings, would have more than probably been magically inclined too, magic users tended to crop up in generations, Hermione being an only sibling the outlander and not the norm, and if they were magical like her they would have been at Ilvermorny, and Hogwarts records would have shown the link-

But there was a slim chance… if she were the only Witch or Wizard in the family-

"Are you alright there?"

Poppy snapped out of it, finding Rudy Cooper looking at her hand-

Her hand clenched so tight around her fork the metal had bent.

She dropped the thing to her plate with a clatter, appetite rapidly gone.

"I just… Never really considered the possibility before."

It sounds stupid, ridiculous, even to Poppy, especially to Poppy. Why had she never thought of that before? Why had the idea ever crossed her mind? Why hadn't she-

Don't fuckin' look backwards! We don't do that! We never do that! Don't look!

Rudy shook his head kindly.

"I only ask because of-… Well, you know. The whole Dexter thing."

Poppy scowled.

"Dexter thing? As in… Dexter Morgan?"

Rude blinked over at her, and took another sip at his steaming coffee. Poppy thought he might have been smiling behind the rim of his mug.

"Yeah, Dexter, Dexter. I know rediscovering family is hard, and if that was one of the reasons you lunged at him earlier, I get it. Dexter will too. Finding a brother can be an emotionally volatile time, and having your hemophobia triggered-"

Poppy cut in sharply.

"Brother? I don't have a brother. I don't have siblings-"

Rudy's cup lowered sluggishly from his face, expression washing slack-

Frightened.

"He… He did speak to you about the blood test, right? When he left my office earlier he said he was going to. I just thought… You both sat together at the booth and arrived so close together-…."

Blood test.

A miraculously chipped beer bottle handed to her by-

Dexter.

Fucking.

Morgan.

Poppy knew it. She bloody well knew it. She had seen it with her own eyes, right when she had that ginger bastard in her grip, that flicker of darkness, that-

Shadow playmate peeping back at us from behind the heavy-duty curtains.

Still, on the drive over to this diner, eighties music blasting from Rudy's stereo, Poppy had told herself that didn't mean Dexter was like her.

Shadow Friends were actually pretty common. Relatively.

A copper who likes pulling his gun out and firing off shots at the first sign of provocation. The drug addict itching for another fix in an alley. The pharmacist who thought about diddling with someone's insulin… They all had their own murky Friends, in a way.

Dexter Morgan was a blood splatter specialist, he had to be sort of fucked up to do his job and keep coming back to do it daily.

He hadn't bulked at her suggestion to keep the lollipops out from under Lieutenant Laguerta's nose, but people, even those not like Poppy, liked lying. They did it all the time. Particularly to themselves. So do you! You're lying to yourself right now.

It didn't mean he was like-

Blood test.

I dripped blood all over him.

He has what he wants, it was a game, and you lost, we lost, we never lose-

Poppy forced herself to smile brightly.

"Oh, yeah, that… The blood test… We won't know for sure for a while yet, though. No point jumping the gun, don't you think?"

Rudy grinned back, and fell for the hook.

"I don't know… The gun seems pretty leapt over already to me. The same Miami police officer called Harry Morgan, who just so happens to be Dexter's adoptive father, pulling you both out of wreckages and adopting you into the family-… Dexter's adopted aunt and uncle called Lily and James Potter. Dexter's what? Three years older than you? Dexter told me in my office this morning that he was five when he was adopted. You would have been around two. Numbers don't really lie that often."

Harry Morgan.

Dexter's father was called Harry Morgan.

The same name as Lily's brother-in-law-

The same names of Dexter's Aunt and Uncle-

Same profession-

That's why he ran from the office earlier-

Rudy drained the last of his coffee in one fell swoop.

"You know, it's a spot of luck too. You'd never have come to Miami without the Ice Truck Killer case calling you in, and you would have never met Dexter to put two and two together."

Rudy's dark eyes twinkled underneath the fluorescent lighting from above, making them appear like dark burgundy wine. Like the dried blood on Dexter Morgan's collar that you left behind!

"Maybe you should send him a thank you card?"

Poppy ignored the joke, and Poppy pushed her half-eaten plate away from herself with an obnoxious screech.

"I'll make sure to offer my gratitude when I capture the snowman fucker."

Rudy grinned.

"You seem so sure about that too."

Poppy didn't need to fake her own smile this time.

"Oh, I am."

Peek below the surface. What's he hiding? What is he? Does Dexter like to play?

If Dexter Morgan wanted to play house-

Who was Poppy Moser to say no?

Please! Please, not in front of my children.

Plural. Not child. Not daughter. ChildREN. Blind, blind girl with cotton in her ears. You never listen! Don't look back! That's the one rule we have. Never look back, and never ReMeMbEr!

Rudy opened his mouth, and the sound of a ringing mobile cut him off. Poppy was thankful for that. She didn't know if she would have been able to hear him over the ringing in her ears.

He scowled darkly, reaching into his pocket, sagging at the name on display before apologetically smiling her way.

"Debs."

He mouthed, in way of explanation accompanied by an eye roll. He flicked the handset open and chirped, glancing over to the wall.

"Hey. What's up?... No I'm a bit busy right now… No, we split a few hours back, I've gone into work. I'm finishing a case I can't really pull myself away from. Can't you catch a ride with Dexter?... What do you mean he's already left? What about Angel?... That drunk, huh?"

Rudy glanced back to the chair opposite him-

Poppy Moser was gone, a stack of pale bills left by her plate.

He grinned.

"Actually, I think I've just finished for the night. I'll come pick you up. See you soon."


I want you to know that I'm never leaving

'Cause I'm Mrs. Snow, 'til death we'll be freezing


Poppy Moser tossed and turned in her sleep that night. In her dream, she was somewhere dark.

Alone.

The pine forest she stood in raised over what otherwise would be a bare rain-washed rocky scree, and the silver of the moonlight up ahead barely breached the branches to float to the sodden ground.

For some strange reason, the Pine needles smelled like menthol.

She paused in a small clearing, before her a giant, green shipping container. Those big rectangle ones made from folded steel and in need of a crane to move onto a ferry. Her Friend was perched on top of the entrance, hunched on his haunches, kicking its shadow feet back and forth.

In her dreams it had taken Sirius Black's face, not Tom's or her own or Albus's as it normally stole, always needing a body to inhabit, a silhouette to slip inside of, like smoke finally being caught with bare hands.

Her Friend had taken Sirius Black's face.

This was bad.

It wanted her to listen, and knew she would if it smiled at her with those grey eyes.

It rattled as it spoke.

"Don't you do it, Poppy. Don't you fuckin' dare. Don't look. That's the one rule we have. Do not open this Pandora's box. We leave it here in the dark to rot. That's where bad things go. That's where you went. It's own under-stairs' cupboard. Leave it there, and do not look."

Her own mouth was moving too, speaking the same words, tasting the same alarm. They were the same, she and her Friend, no matter what it looked like and what skin it stole. One of a kind, two sides to the same fucked up coin.

The hand wrapped around the back of her neck, pinning her gaze ahead to the shipping container, tightened.

"Do it. Take a peek. One look. You can't run away forever!"

Whatever was behind her, man or memory or another shadowy form unseen, it spoke with Rudy Cooper's voice.

"Don't-"

"Do-"

Poppy's hands came slamming up, as if she were a child, slapping over her face, hiding her eyes in a game of peek-a-boo with panic.

"Don't look. Don't look. Don't look."

She repeated like a prayer, like a chant, the man behind her laughing with Rudy Cooper's soft voice. She smelled the waft of menthol, felt the cool breath skim her bare shoulder frosting like wind over a snowdrift.

There was an echo of a chainsaw in the shipping container, muffled by the screams of a women pleading Please! Please! not in front of my children!

The hand at her neck shoved her forward, and suddenly it was her own voice screaming in her ears.

"Open it and see!"

Poppy stumbled, nearly fell, and the hand disappeared from her neck.

She blinked, hands pulling down in the silence-

The thing at her back was gone.

The pleading of the woman too, the chainsaw as well.

So was her Friend.

Where was her Friend-

It felt odd, to be so alone, without her constant companion. Like missing a limb, being skinless, a mouth with no teeth or tongue.

Not whole.

A crying wail came from the shipping container.

A child's wail.

Not so alone after all.

Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.

Her feet carried her forward anyway, beyond her desire or wish, and she struggled, tried to stop them but on they trooped, a toy soldier caught in the marching brigade, right to the mouth of the green shipping container. Her hands braced on the bars, white knuckled and trembling.

The child's scream pitched higher-

Poppy dragged the twin doors open-

Blood flooded out, starkly red, too bright, comical, so much, lapping over her legs and drowning the forest, her home, her peace-

The place where bad things were sent to die.

Poppy peered into the dark.

Limbs.

She saw the limbs first.

A wrist. An elbow. A torn apart torso that had a set of turquoise beads dangling around its severed neck.

She saw the child second.

A small thing, so small, lost in the blood and the extremities, pale skinned and black haired, curling around her ears-

A little girl, barely two, sitting upright in blood, smeared in it, drenched in it, born in it-

A place where bad things were born. A hand in her chubby grasp, a woman's hand, nails painted in technicolour wonder, and the child was gnawing on a finger with sharp little fangs.

Poppy collapsed backwards, fell down into the blood, scrabbling on hands and knees backwards as green, green eyes met hers through the dark, a child's chuckle leaping off her ribs-

Her.

That was her sitting there, a little baby, a child lost in blood and bone-

Poppy awoke in her hotel room bed drenched in cold sweat, colder tears on her cheeks, and she bolted for the adjacent bathroom, vomiting into the toilet.

She buckled next to it when the dry heaving stopped, back to the cold, cool tile, head thunking against the wall.

"I fuckin' hate Miami."

It was the medicine, Poppy told herself. The medicine she had to take last night. A synthetic hormone that clotted her blood in her body for her because she couldn't do it herself.

Nausea was a side effect.

The dream meant nothing-

Everything.

No matter how hard Poppy scrubbed at her face, how harsh she brushed her teeth and the lash of magic she used to clean the toilet, she could still see that woman's hand on the back of her eyelids, nails painted in pink and yellow, purple, orange and green.

She still heard that child's chuckle. She heard it as she showered, as she dressed, as she combed her tangled hair, and she heard it most when-

When she remembered that hand when she stepped out of the bathroom and sat on her rented bed, toeing on her boots, Blood Pop on tongue. Poppy froze, laces wrapped between fingers, thumb still neatly bandaged.

Pink and yellow, purple, orange and green. Poppy had seen those colours before in just that order-

Painted on the hand of Sheri Taylor left behind in an Ice Truck.

But how would the Ice Truck Killer know-

He could only know if he were there.

He was there that day, whatever that day was, the day she could never really bring herself to look backwards to, the day-

The day a bad thing called Poppy Moser was born and had run from ever since. The day that, ever since landing in this magic forsaken city, was seeping back into her mind, her thoughts, her fuckin' dreams. Poppy was lost in the fumes, in the fog, and he, the Ice Truck Killer, he knows what happened that day, better than Poppy does, he knows-

Who else would know what happened that day?

Her mother? Her dead mother? The same mother in pieces in the shipping container? The person who killed her? Harry Morgan? Lily and James Potter? A-

A sibling.

A sibling might now, and Poppy just so happened to recently, maybe, perhaps, possibly, come into the possession of one of those. If… If Dexter Morgan was her brother-

Kilgarrah's balls.

He was a blood splatter specialist. He was used to seeing dead bodies. He would know what forensic evidence left behind would get him caught, he would know how to-

How hadn't she seen it before? She was normally so good at sniffing them out-

But you did! You went to him for the lollipops. You knew something was wrong with him even then. You knew, and you used it… and you sure had your suspicions confirmed last night, in that deeply, dark twinkle of his hazel eye.

Was Dexter…

Was Dexter Morgan the Ice Truck Killer?

Was Dexter-

like her?

Was this what the Ice Truck Killer was toying her with, a broken bond from a rubble of a ruined home, blood-

Blood.

If Dexter Morgan was her brother, they shared blood.

Where did Precious Poppy go?

Here, Poppy wanted to say. Right here. I'm right here!

Don't leave me!

Poppy doesn't know what to make of that, what to do with it, whether she wanted to put her fist through a wall or her own head or Dexter's or-

Or maybe find him and hug him and for once, really, truly, finally, be held again, just one last time-

How many monsters were made that day, in the dark, in the roar of a chainsaw?

Too many. Two fuckin' many.

Don't forget the one the Ice Truck Killer was trying to talk to with his barbie tableaus. How does he fit into the puzzle?

Could it really be-

All roads led to Dexter Morgan. Dexter had her blood, Dexter had answers, and Dexter wasn't sharing.

Rude. Just like every other older sibling. Putting his toys on the top shelf, thinking they were safe up there from grubby, sticky fingers.

And if Dexter wasn't going to share… Well, Poppy would have to go climb that shelf, nab those toys, and find out what pretty secrets were hidden underneath the gilt.

There was no going back now. The shipping container was open, the blood was out, the screams had died, and the chainsaw had spluttered to silence. Now there was only pieces of people to try and stitch back together. Poppy left the hotel room with her boots untied, but a smile upon her face.

She had always been exceedingly good at treasure hunts.


Yeah, you are my home, my home for all seasons
So come on, let's go


Woo or Boo?


Next Chapter: Poppy breaks into a place, Dexter gets some results, and Rudy brings a gift into the Precinct…


A.N: Poppy Moser with a bowler hat and Poirot mustacho wonkily glued onto her face: And as we can see from the evidence I have given today, which is mostly circumstantial and emotionally derived, the Ice Truck Killer is clearly... Dexter Morgan!

Everybody else face palming: Oh, Poppy, no.

Happy New Year Everyone! Consider this my very small gift to you all, and I hope this new year treats you all kindly!

Things are really beginning to pick up from here on out, so heads up! We will also be swapping P.O.V's, so next chapter we have some Poppy and some Dexter, which I think will be a good mix. Unfortunately though, we won't get to see a Rudy P.O.V for a little while yet, for obvious reasons, but we do eventually dip into his perspective which should be fun. I know some of you lovely readers are excited for everything to be finally out in the open, but half the fun of this ramp-up is watching the fumblings and side-steps the characters make while trying to stitch together their own clues. Both Dexter and Poppy are currently only working with half a deck each. Don't worry, everything does get out eventually, identities, magic and late night hobbies, but we still have a little while to go until the gun is fired lol. That said, Poppy does make a big discovery next chapter so... dun, dun, dun XD.

P.S: The lyrics used in this chapter are from Snowman by Sia. (I swear, the lyrics to this song strangely fit this fic lol).

THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I hope you all liked this chapter, the small bit of Rudy and Poppy bonding, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!