PERVERSE - Apply Fic

30

The fractures split. The six who do not involve themselves with the murder are left in the motel room. The news is still on, rerunning the stories it began two hours ago. With a sunsets so early, their understanding of night is as loose as their understanding of death.

Lydia and Barry do not stick around. Of course, Fallon is a mess. She needs to get out, Leo decides, and so Leo asks Clare and Nico to keep an eye on Ambrose while they wait for Audrey's return. She might not truly be gone. Audrey haunts Ambrose's corpse more than any other part of town, after all.

Then, it is just Clare and Nico and a corpse. Arguably three corpses, arguably none. Maybe two ghosts, perhaps three animated vessels for some other vile thing. Of course, there are a dozen crows cawing outside.

Clare wishes they had internet, or a library. It must not be night, since she is fairly certain crows are not nocturnal.

Somewhere out there, Kaia is helping orchestrate a murder. The other group didn't seem like the kind to wait until tomorrow. Vengeance is not the answer. The impulse Clare understands perfectly well, but if there is a Hell and they are somehow not trapped there, Clare is not keen on propelling themselves there faster.

"You like her," Nico calls out to Clare, back pressed against the doorframe of the bathroom to keep an eye on Ambrose. "Kaia."

Clare closes the curtains. The room doesn't materially get darker, but Nico mourns the potential of starlight. It is a cloudy, windy evening, but the clouds at least were grey. The sky above them was not a reflection of the universe above them, the infinite cold and unflinching endless nothing.

Is that what Clare had expected death would be before this?

"You thought you loved her, didn't you?"

Clare looks at them, "I didn't know her. I mean, I don't know her."

"Are you surprised she wants the pastor dead?" Nico asks. "I'm not."

Clare pulls their hair off their neck, slick with sweat. They try their best to tie it with the fraying elastic she has wrapped around their wrist.

"Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm trying not to buying into the eye for an eye policy," Nico says.

"You think they are right?" Clare asks, looking over at them.

Nico pulls themselves off the ground. This close to Ambrose, in such close proximity, the smell is too strong. Maybe he's burning inside again, with what feels like a warmer, smokier room. Nico goes over to the bowl and grabs potpourri.

"I think they all think they are finding an easy solution," Nico points out. The potpourri is rough against his fingers. Dried petals and leaves. Dead things to mask dead things. "I mean, I think killing someone physically is surprisingly easy. Nobody needs to tell me how fragile life is. But... well I just think about his family finding him and never knowing why he was murdered."

Some part of Nico hopes Kai has solace from the order of it all. Somehow, accidentally, there was a peanut at Christmas dinner. Nico happened to have lost their epipen. Even senseless, wasted life has some cognitive order of events. And from the research they know Clare and Kaia have been conducting, Nico knows Clare must agree.

"Just, what about who finds him?" Clare's voice is quiet. "Someone will have to do it."

And maybe someone's son will write a blog post about that as well. Clare should have just messaged the young man the truth about Kaia's death.