the way we are

Boots kicked off at the door. The little bench that had stood in the hallway of his apartment for years still there, only now his shoes were mostly relegated to being strewn on the floor around it. Freyja’s, Hazel’s, filling the thing with more colour than was in his entire quarter of the closet. Coats hanging in the hall, family photos scattered along it like a breadcrumb trail to the living room and that painting Freyja had commissioned for his birthday. Hazel as a baby, not even out of the hospital yet, her parents shattered and just as red faced as he, beaming grins you couldn’t hide as Frank had arrived with an armful of gifts and that grimace on his face like he was gonna open the door and be faced by the offence of lady parts.

Freaking idiot. He’d seen the look on his brother’s face as he’d held his niece for the first time though. The tears that had shimmered in the hazel eyes that mirrored his own. Uncle Frank was gonna step up for her … had stood up for her. Even now those thoughts swirled in and out. Like kaleidoscope pieces that changed the picture every time you turned one of them.

The scuffs of the stroller on the hallway floor, the sweet scent of baby and milk still hanging in the air as he’d walked in an hour before with his daughter trailing behind him. ”Dinner’s gonna be ready almost as soon as your mom’s home, so don’t get too caught up in anything, ‘k kiddo?” Theo chuckled at the look that’d come his way. She could’ve been fifty, leaving him clinging to his walker the way she had done to hers as she’d toddled these halls like a maniac, her mother’s fierceness and fervour in her eyes, no ankle in sight safe.

At a phantom scrape of wheels on the boards, Theo did that hopping little side step as he headed into the kitchen. Their memories were imprinted on the house, like hundreds of opaque layers built one over another, thin enough for him to see himself walking towards the fridge with Hazel held against his chest with one hand, pulling the chicken and broccoli from the fridge with the other. Music in the air before he’d even flipped the radio on, knees bouncing lightly to keep Hazel from waking up her still exhausted momma with one of those shrieks that already had him calling banshee on their little girl.

Now he sang tunelessly as he worked. His grin and volume growing as one song or another came on, guided by the total cheesiness of the playing song before the door opened and closed and it was Freyja’s holler sounding.

”Talking ‘bout my girl,” Theo crooned as she walked in. Wednesdays were his early finish, classes long ago shunted to mornings a couple of days a week, even if it felt like he’d walked out of the house to pick Hazel up that afternoon, not trailing from his building on campus with a still anxious glance over his shoulders at those woods that could still fill him with dread at their familiarity.


He tapped the spoon off against the side of the pan, turning in time to catch his hurtling fiancée. That ring still circling her finger, glinting bright as the day he’d slipped it there. Sixteen years before. A heartbeat long grimace before he was catching her around the waist carefully, feeling the phantom press of a stomach that still bore the signs of a brand new life, a warrior’s marks. ”Hi.” That single word breathed as his eyes fluttered shut, lips pressed against hers in that drowning wave that had never grown old. Cheeks still unlined by time aching as he grinned broad. Palms slipping up to the small of her back, fingers drumming on the curve of her ass. ”Love you. Missed you.” The echo of those words that were theirs and capable of sending their daughter’s eyes rolling.

Theo chuckled, tilting his head towards the pan. ”Like another round of Spy VS Spy. Nixon. I swear he still thinks we’re wrapped up in some sort of conspiracy. ‘Where were you? I had to cover your class again yesterday.’ I’m beginning to think, you know.” Theo squinted his eyes, tapping a fingertip in a rapid drum against his temple before he swirled it. Those frantic, haunted days after the hunter had cut him down in the clearing and he’d spent months trying to get back from the other side had long ago faded, just leaving the scars of those wounds that could still ache with phantom pains and fear at times. The guy was a crackpot, fuelled by sixteen years of paranoia and spontaneous bursts – brief - of something approaching decency.

Picking the spoon up again Theo stirred the rice that was nearly there. Today was the day, the talk that’d been one hell of a long time coming. ’Hazelnut, honey, we’re not exactly what you think we are….’ Not Ozzie and Harriet, not that they ever could’ve been. ”She headed up the minute we got home. Think she was trying to escape kitchen duty. Uh huh. Big day.” A long breath sliding out as Freyja used him as an anchor, hands on his ears, thumbs sliding gently over his ears like that was going to block out the shriek of her face. He opened his mouth, gawped like a fish like the pressure had grown steam kettle loud, shrieking in his ears. ”Careful, you could deafen a guy like that you know,” he grumbled as those usually grinning lips smacked his. One smacking pat in return, fondness leaving him scrambling as he thumbed the stove off to leave the rice steaming that last bit … in preparation.

Hand in hand, like they were approaching the proverbial gallows, Theo let Freyja draw him into the sunken living room that had sold him on the house the minute he’d seen it. Feet finding the coffee table the moment he sank down on the L shaped sofa that curled around the sunken floor, his arm an anchor around Freyja’s shoulders, his eyes rising at the thump only a teenager could manage down the stairs. ”Dinner’s not ready yet but … come and sit down Nut. We wanna have a little talk before we eat.” Air to clear, a weight to lift and hopefully not a world exploding before they sat around the kitchen table. A happy little supernatural family – a banshee, a psychic and who knew.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA & FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 1096

The calm was all him, but the cynicism, oh Hazel definitely got that from her mother. In those first few weeks after she’d been born everybody had counted off her attributes, assigned them to one parent or another – ’oh, Theo, she has your eyes’, his mom’s voice crooning over the video call; ’lucky for her, she got her mom’s nose’, Frank had knuckled his own, theirs not exactly dainty; ’loud as Freyja was, I swear the windows used to rattle’, her voice, as piercing as it was in those early days when everything from an empty belly to a car door closing outside could have her wailing, drawing comments from them all. It wasn’t just the tone though, she had Freyja’s keen edge, that speed that could lob things back at you faster than the human eye could see.

There’d been a sigh of relief before they’d started to spill the beans but the minute Freyja had started to explain there’d been that little snap of interest or anticipation. His eyes ticking back and forth between them, she scooted to the edge of her seat and watched while they gave her the whole spiel. Their lives in a little potted history set out on the table in front of her for their daughter to pick through, not that she’d have much choice in the matter. As a psychic there were dangers out there, things she could see that were just as terrifying as everything he went through, as a banshee she was there for people in their final moments, could maybe do something to save them. It was a double edged sword that both he and Freyja had been cut by and Theo didn’t want to see the same happen to his little girl.

If, when, it came, she would have the both of them to help her through it.

Hand over Freyja’s, that silent support between the two of them as it always was, he watched as the candles burst into life. It had been shocking the first time he’d seen it, although he hadn’t unpacked what had happened until after the woman Freyja had thrown coffee over had left the two of them alone and they’d unpicked the truth together. Maybe if he had given a little demonstration and knocked Hazel’s chair back a couple of feet there’d been a little less of the chuckled disbelief. ”Sorry Harry, no special school for you,” he drawled lightly, biting down on the tip of his tongue as stubborn mother went head to head with equally stubborn daughter, marshmallow soft dad caught wincing somewhere in between.

There was practically a crackle of the stubborn in the air between the two of them. Theo squirmed in his seat, he knew when Freya was getting close to the line and this was serious enough that she’d ...

Holy freaking shit. He’d seen it before, had willed it to burn bright enough to destroy the afternoon the hunter had come for her in the woods, but up close it left him flinching on the couch, his hand turned over beneath his fiancée’s, clutched until the flames died back and he didn’t feel the urge to rush for the kitchen and the extinguisher that’d been delivered as a house warming gift – to reduce the chance of Freyja really warming the house up at any point. Throat tight, Theo cleared his throat and looked away from the dramatic demonstration. ”Dinner’s when we’ve finished this,” he warned, and the Grill … well, at the rate Hazel was going Freyja was likely to cut that off with a grounding that would’ve made the naughty step plan child’s play.

Knowing those hazel eyes would tick to him Theo lifted his other hand, warded off the ’dad!’ that was bound to come. He wasn’t about to put himself in the firing line over this. ”And I’ll hold your mom’s coat while she does it,” he drawled lightly to his daughter. ”This isn’t a joke Hazelnut.” Oh please God let her take after her mother again. The thought of her drawn to her first dead body, her shrieks filling the air as the terror tore at her. He could still feel the echoes of each scream inside of himself as he wrapped his arm as he squeezed Freyja lightly. ”Whatever you are we’ll be there for you through it, every single step of the way, but your mom’s right, you need to know.”

Frowning faintly, he shifted in his seat, then set his eyes squarely on his daughter. ”I’m not gonna sugar coat it, what I am scares me sometimes but having your mom here, having you, means I can handle it, no matter where I’m called. You ever remember waking up to find me gone?” It had happened, rarely over the years, usually he was dragged from elsewhere, but there were those nights when his last memory before the scream tearing through him would’ve been checking in on Hazel and then slipping into bed to curl up with Freyja, hearing aids purposefully left in now, even if it meant more disturbed nights than he wanted to count.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA & FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 857

Could this have gone better? Maybe. The fear that had filled Hazel had hollowed his stomach out, that father’s instinct to protect his kid against the horrors in the world gripping him even now. He hadn’t wanted to terrify her in the telling but there’d been a necessity to it that they could now start to soften with hugs and the easier side of the truth. Hazel would get through it as the two of them had done and whenever whatever side of them won out in her they’d pick her up, ease those fears again with the hugs and words of comfort and support. No matter how big she’d got he would still be able to shield her, his back the one turned towards those nightmares, his voice the one screaming out to fight things back. His warrior princess at his side, not to be outdone in shielding those she loved.

Theo felt his own measure of reassurance in the pit of his stomach as his quip about them lucking out with Freyja not being able to read minds. Not that she’d have to probe his at the moment to know that there’d been tears in his eyes. She could read every emotion in him like a book and when she needed to fill those shark bites life had left in him she had done it without a word. Sixteen years of the two of them completing one another. The third piece in their puzzle was caught between them now.

Resting his chin a top Freyja’s head he tried to soften the edges of the picture for Hazel. His was a worse case scenario, the inheritance of Freyja’s powers the best. Still, he had to spell it out, in case, not wanting Hazel to be hit with the nightmare the same way Frank had been. Screaming over the body of someone so close to her. Nope. Theo nodded carefully, lips twitching up in a sad smile. ”Like they’re coming through a radio. They’re a guide I guess.” A sound he couldn’t drown out sometimes, bringing on dread every time they burst to life. His eyes met his daughter’s, his throat going tight as he nodded to her. ”Yeah, kiddo. Sometimes they’re just gone, sometimes it’s … it’s right then.” Every one of them stuck with you, teeth clamped into your memory the way some of those things clamped them into flesh.

The shiver ran through him as he pressed his lips to the top of Freyja’s head and began to ease back. He’d left dinner to finish cooking by itself when they’d called Hazel down for the talk, by now it should be ready to dish up, another band aid for what had been torn open. ”Your uncle Kit’s a lot of things I don’t even wanna think about,” Theo quipped as he eased in to smack a kiss on Hazel’s head too. He headed past her, twisting around to shoot a comment back at his wife as he backed into the hallway. ”I swear if he ever steals you away I’m gonna load up a load of silver buckshot in Frank’s shotgun and I’ll pepper his backside.” Theo mock growled, eyes narrowing before he lost it and chuckled.

He listened to Freyja explain as he headed back to the stove. The rice was done, a little seasoning tossed in as he tipped it out into the serving bowl. Theo gave the chicken and broccoli another stir, made sure the sauce was thick enough before the heat went off under that too. He spooned it into another dish, narrowing his eyes over the top of it as he turned back to pass it carefully to Hazel. ”If he wants to avoid that buckshot neither one of you is going to see him shift either. Uncle Kit’s keeping all that furriness to himself. Who’s helping wash up afterwards?” A switch from the wild and, he was gonna admit it to himself, still scary even after all this time, to the mundane. There’d be an argument over it but they all knew he’d likely cave and do it anyway. Hurricane Freyja in the kitchen at any time was a cause for alarm and as much as he’d like to keep Hazel home after this tonight, he knew she’d want to slink off to be with her friends anyway. A normal teenager for as long as she could be now.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA & FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 738