Who: Daemonar with some Evie What: Fetching Red/Will When: After this Where: Hotel and Fairy Tale Door and back again. Warnings: Sads
Evie hadn't fallen apart yet. She knew it was coming, there was no avoiding it, but she had things to do. She had to verify, she had to get Will home, she had to make things happen. There was no one else who would ever be able to do this. No one else who had the right and the responsibility to do it.
Her stomach had sunk at reading his message. She'd tried to write back but nothing came. She didn't wait long after that to make her decision. She'd have to go into the door and Daemonar would have to find Red and bring her back in order to get Will home. She was trying not to hope, but she would have been lying if she wasn't the slightest bit hopeful. But she couldn't afford even that moment to hold on to. She could fall apart later. Right now there were things that needed doing. There was no one who was going to hold her up on this one. Daisy was it, and she was too little lean on. But Evie knew she would have to.
The woman had left the key right where she said she would. And she trusted Daemonar to do what needed doing. Daisy had been left with a sitter, a note had been left on Wren's door that just said she was going to the hotel for a bit and how to reach the sitter if she needed anything. But other than that, she just wanted to get this over with. She told Daemonar all she could and begged to be left alone on the other side of the door. She wanted to be completely gone for what he had to do and he'd agreed. They rarely disagreed even though he was a shit. But in this, this he would hold to his word.
When he stepped through the door he found himself in a thick forest. He was a hunter by nature, a predator, a warlord prince. He would find who he was looking for, but hunting for something already dead - he worried about what it would actually solve. But he'd agreed, he ran a few paces before the canopy of trees above him opened up enough that it made little work of unfurling his bat like wings and taking off into the sky above this strange land.
He'd never been here before but the wind, even as flighty and strange tasting as it was, it was strong. And he was sure, so he caught a breeze and flew over the tops of trees and darted closer to the ground when he thought he saw something. He saw people, he saw creatures, and after what seemed like hours he saw the cottage. He landed about 20 yards away from where Red and the hunter lay crumpled on the ground. He choked back a sob that he wasn't sure belonged to him at all, and walked over to the scene. He didn't bother taking it in. He had work to do, he had to get his lady Evangeline's male home.
It was very little work, or effort, to pick Red up and cradle her and make the long flight back to where he'd started. He held her tightly in his arms, and his muscles in his arms and his wings were aching and burning by the time he found the door he'd originally gone through. He looked down at the lifeless form in his arms and he knew that nothing would ever be the same for his lady again. Maybe even for him. He stepped back across the thresh hold into the hotel placing Will's body on the floor before it was too late and he became not quite strong or big enough to keep holding him up. He wouldn't let either Evangeline or Will suffer the indignity of that.
Evie, for her part was sitting on the floor looking at Will. She wished the last memory she had of him was the smile he'd given her that morning, or the way he'd kissed her the night before. The mental snapshot she had of Daisy and Will snoozing on the couch after a particularly long and fussy night. But that wasn't what being in love was always about. Sometimes the bad moments, like the moment right before her now was the pressure needed to keep the great and good moments so close to her heart. Her hand moved over his face and she closed his eyes, she moved her hand through his hair, and she did her best to ignore the blood that had dried on him. He'd been alone. And scared. It wasn't fair that this was happening to them, it wasn't fair that this was their lives. That a completely different person on the side of a door could die and ruin the lives of countless more. There had to be an end to it, what had made this happen to them?
She kissed his forehead softly and she laid her head on his chest, she wasn't sure the scene she made. She didn't even know if others were coming to their doors, are coming back through. She didn't know if there was anything else going on around her. She wasn't broken, not yet, but she was hurting something fierce and she didn't know how she was ever going to get up off of this floor.