heart like yours (jennifer jareau)

3. twenty three

AN: hi! happy monday!

so the trigger warning list is extensive bc i'm genuinely not sure if half of them fit but i'd rather be safe than sorry, and even then they're not mentioned in much detail? i'm probs overthinking but oh well lmao

tw:
murder
mentions of rape and torture
blood and gore
guns
dead bodies
suicidal ideations
rampant daddy issues
mentions of stalking
hospitals/medical procedures

i hope you guys enjoy and i'll see you in a week! <3

•

"i am the shape you made me, filth teaches filth." - sophokles

•

The dark was almost suffocating in the woods. Branches hung over them like hands of marble reaching to carve the life out of their chests, and the growls of the animals lurking in the shadows echoed through the air in harmonised lilts with the whistling wind.

It was enough to make a grown man quake in fear as if the tectonic plates under his feet were shifting to divide the land into two and put distance between one hell on earth to the next.

Yet, the grown man was not quaking in fear, because he was not really a man at all. He was a monster; a predator on the hunt for his prey; a self declared judge of life and death seeking to inflict a lifetime of pain and suffering; a huntsman spider desperate to encapsulate his victims in his web once more with binding chains of iron and manipulation.

Elliot Milner held the gun in one hand, held a torch in the other. His feet pounded against the dirt beneath him, the dirt a child would soon bleed out into. He weaved through protruding tree roots and prickling branches carving grooves deep into his bare arms.

He could not deny the panic coursing through his veins. They had stopped playing his game, had tried to escape after he was so convinced they would not. He had convinced himself they would trust him.

They'd had such a nice day together celebrating their birthdays. He had baked them a cake and everything! He'd gone to such effort to give his daughter a gift she would always remember, something of him that she could never rid herself of, and she threw it back in his face by betraying him, by tricking the boy to betray him, too.

No, she had ruined everything. She was her mother's daughter more than she was his, and he hated her for it as much as he loved her despite it. She couldn't have handled this with grace, no, and now Elliot had to play the hero and save what he could of the family he had built, even if it meant the boy had to die.

And, even if it would kill Elliot to lose the closest victim that bore a resemblance to his stepson, Dylan Hart was going to die like all of the other boys did. It was Isobel that had to survive. It was Isobel that Elliot had wanted more than anyone, needed more than anything.

She was brave to fight, Elliot had to admit, but this was necessary. The boy had to die, and Isobel needed to learn her lesson.

Dylan Hart ran through the trees ahead of Elliot, chest burning for air he could not inhale fast enough. His entire body ached from two months of torture, beatings, rape, but he did not stop. He did not stop because he was not the only person running away from Elliot and grasping for what was left of their life.

Isobel.

It was always Isobel. She'd been a permanent fixture in Dylan's mind for as long as he could remember. She'd been there for every milestone. They took their first steps together, to each other. They'd learnt how to ride a bike together. They'd learnt how to swim together, how to climb to the tops of the trees and look up at the stars.