Open Your Eyes

It had always seemed kinda like bull when his parents would talk about their roles in their marriage. His dad might’ve been the bread winner, the ‘ideal’ for his boys to live up to, but he’d also been the bed rock, something he hadn’t really seen until he was staring down fatherhood himself. Frank had inherited that solid dependableness. He was the guy who’d run straight into a hail of bullets, no matter who they were aimed at, the one who’d dust off his own wounds like he hadn’t just come close to getting gutted and force himself back into the fight. He was the one who’d pull together a fancy three course meal for his brother without a bitching word – OK, maybe there’d been a few and he still owed him on that – but Theo knew where their lines were drawn too. He was more like their mom – the dreamer, the practical one who wouldn’t flinch at catching spit up right in his hands, the planner. Freyja was …

His wife was fierce. Kinda like Frank and his dad that way, never backing down even when the ‘enemy’ was three times her size. He’d called her his warrior princess and he’d never been swayed from that image of her. Freyja was a fucking disaster in the kitchen, but an incredible mom. Just as fierce there. Perceptive too. Those green eyes would flash and fix and that uh oh immediately rolled through him. The little line springing up between her brows with concern, the hands that could rapid fire smacks or all the signs he probably shouldn’t have taught her gentling. Theo let out a little huff at the thought as he tried to drag himself out of the slump. She’d be home soon and if there was any little sign he’d sunk himself into something that concern would bite.

Maybe it should’ve done. Had they both dipped too deep into the warm waters on their break? Taking their foot off the accelerator, missing some sign that was there?

Theo blinked owlishly at his daughter, his lips curling ruefully as the screen went black and he turned to her. She’d been quiet lately, slipping off to her room soon after dinner every night, not bolting off to the Grill or the Coffee Bean immediately after dinner with the warning about her curfew ringing in her ears. That was just being a teenager though, wasn’t it? You went through phases … you worried your parents. God, he and Frank must’ve given his mom white hair (oh vanity would’ve put that bottle of Clairol in the medicine cabinet).

The eyes she’d been named for skipped to the small clock on his desk, the one on the screen hidden from view with the news of his death. Making a small sound Theo drew himself upright and swivelled towards her. ”I was gonna pull some dinner together for her. You want something to eat before bed?” Hazel was disappearing off though, drawing back before he could get to his feet and press a palm to her forehead, like he’d be able to feel what was wrong like he’d done when she was small. Every sniffle met with the abject fear that their baby had something serious wrong, fingers on pudgy cheeks trying to gauge a fever, every tummy gurgle leaving him preparing for imminent explosion.

A frown creased deeper as he pushed up out of his seat. He’d tell Freyja when she was home. Another family ‘meeting’ might be met with deeper worries about what they were gonna reveal next but it would get Hazel talking maybe. ”Hazelnut, you…” The question slipped away as the words tumbled out. Tears, the curse of being her father’s daughter seemed to start building immediately. ”Honey, I know we scared you with all of that but it might not happen. You could just as easily be like your mom.” In two steps he was across the room, pulling his little girl into a hug. It seemed like only yesterday that he’d had to scoop her up to do it, a squirmy little bundle who could rattle the windows with her cries. ”Did something happen? Did you start to hear something?” Auditory stuff never seemed to have come into any discussion he’d had with Freyja about what it’d been like growing up in a house of psychics but each of them were different, her parents, her brothers, all completely individual.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 741

Kids were smart, so much more so than most parents bragged about. It went deeper than little Atticus scoring a perfect 100 on every test he’d taken right back to kindergarten or genius Crispin being potty trained at just three weeks old – those were extra vigilant parents waiting on the tiny crease of a frowny poop face on a kid, not a baby being able to signal right when he was about to fill his onesie. They picked up on everything, every shift in mood in the house, every word that came out of your mouth. They were sponges even when you didn’t want them to be. Theo had always tried to keep his own sense of dread from filling the house, especially after they’d come clean to Hazel but you couldn’t wipe everything away, no matter how hard you tried.

Whispered conversations after, between him and Freyja, the nights he’d crept out of the house over the years. The moments like now when he had to switch out from looking through that dark mirror to acting like a superhero father whose domestic skills and best dad status couldn’t be touched by anything. It was them trying to make sure that Hazel had the sort of childhood both of them had managed, untouched by the things that crept in once they were old enough to handle them – just about.

Dinner was normal, dinner would have the three of them around the table, probably laughing over the torment of the meeting Freyja had been stuck in. Hazel might not stick for the whole of it, pushing a few green beans and potatoes around her plate maybe, or breaking chunks off of the sandwich he made her out of the chicken he’d planned on grilling up when Freyja messaged to let them know she was on her way home, but it would’ve been routine.

Would’ve.

Maybe they’d put a dent in routine but pulling back the curtain but it was either that or they let Hazel stumble blindly into what could happen. It had only taken the mental image of the hunter finding their daughter before she was aware of it all to have Theo caving to the big talk. The time it had felt like they should’ve had to do it melting away faster than ice when Freyja was at full boil. It had to have planted the seeds of doubt in Hazel’s mind, leaving them there to grow until the sprouts were too big for her to just ignore.

Seeing the fear on his daughter’s face, Theo was up out of his seat immediately. He could still remember what it was like to have his mom’s arms around him the morning after the MPs had brought him home with the quiet admission that he’d found a body on the base. She hadn’t yelled at him about sneaking out, she’d just held him until he’d stopped shaking and it had felt like maybe everything was going to be OK. Now he was doing the same with Hazel, pressing his lips to the top of her head as she began to cry, clinging onto him like she’d done when she was still a baby and the pain of tiny teeth coming in felt like the worst agony in the world for both of them. ”It’s gonna be OK, honey, whatever’s happened, I promise.” It didn’t stop his tears from pricking his eyes in a mirror image of his daughter’s though.

Theo stood there for as long as Hazel needed him too, rocking her side to side gently until Hazel worked the tears out of her system. He brushed his hand over her hair, letting his hand linger at her cheek as she pulled back to wipe the tears from her cheeks gently with the backs of his knuckles. Her make up was smeared, streaking his skin, his t-shirt too as he glanced down but he didn’t say a word about it. A slow breath rolled out of him, the urge to say he was sorry to her stopping up in his throat. What he hadn’t wanted to come true had. Freyja might’ve had her mom’s voice, her face, his eyes, but he’d hoped to hell she’d take after her mom in the supernatural stakes too. ”Like a radio you can’t tune in?” he asked quietly. ”They’re those things you used to get in cars before Spotify was invented…” The joke was weak but it was the closest comparison he’d ever gotten.

He gave up on trying to brush the black streaks from her cheeks, tucking a lock of Freyja’s golden hair back behind her ear instead. He’d been lucky, there’d been someone to tell him all about what had happened, he hadn’t gone into this alone the same way Frank had. Theo still hoped to hell that it was a one off for him … that it could be for Hazel but for their little nut he didn’t think she was gonna be so lucky. This hadn’t been a cousin or a family friend, someone with a close enough tie. ”I never could tell if it was the voices that led you or if it they were just the background noise. Sometimes … sometimes you can figure out what’s happening and draw yourself out of it.” The fact that Hazel had disappeared out of her room and neither of them had noticed was terrifying. He didn’t care if it had her burning with embarrassment they were putting an alarm in, something to let them know when it happened again.

Brow furrowing, Theo pulled Hazel back in as she inhaled sharply. He tucked his head on top of hers, like somehow he could shield her from everything they were. ”That’s what we do,” he told her softly. ”We give them that in their last moments. Where did it happen, honey? Did you call the cops?” They would have brought her home if she had. Hazel had a sensible head on her shoulders and a tender enough heart that he didn’t think she would’ve just left the body there without telling someone but it had taken her days … ”Are you OK? I … I know you’re scared about it but you’re physically OK?” Theo dragged his hands down Hazel’s arms like he was looking for the spot where whoever dropped that body could’ve hurt her.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 1061

As a kid he’d spent so much time in hospitals that by the time he was getting his hearing aids he’d been able to tolerate just about anything with a smile. X-Rays, injections, blood draws, the thumping, claustrophobic tube of an MRI machine. The docs could do pretty much anything to him and Theo wouldn’t have flinched. With your kid though…

They’d both been there for all those paediatrician appointments with Hazel, mom and dad hovering right there as their daughter was pronounced healthy. Her hearing tests had knotted his gut up the worse, that fear that somehow he’d passed along some dud gene – even though that had really been a possibility since Frank had been healthy as a horse until that IED. All those home tests, the finger snaps, the clapping out of her site, the calling of her name to encourage her to come rushing to them the minute she was mobile validated with that thumbs up from the ENT.

The first set of jabs had ruined his record. Daddy holding squirmy little Hazel in his lap, trying to distract her as the doctor prepared the needle. The minute the injection had happened Hazel’s little face had crumpled with the surprise of it and his had followed. Theo had cradled her against his chest, putting up with the dribble and the snot – his as much as hers – his little sobs wringing out his own. In the car after, he’d laughed, rubbing those tracks away with the heels of his hands as he’d taken the ribbing from his wife about it (like she’d been any better since the two of them had started dating). Now he was on the brink of the same. One tear drawing out another. Makes up replacing spit and snot as those years had flown by in the space of a single blink.

Theo accepted the sorry for it with a crooked smile, but it didn’t last long because ruining her eye liner, or whatever she had on that’d left her looking like the female Robert Smith was the least of Hazel problems. He knew exactly how she felt, the sense that you were losing your mind when things started to change, that terror of the first find, the fear it was going to happen again. Just a tiny burst of static enough to have your heart wanting to pound out of your chest. It had taken years for him to stop flinching as it burst in on a radio.

He was glad Hazel was finding some humour in his attempts to ease those fears. She actually laughed at his jokes – that had to be a sign that she wasn’t entirely herself – shooting teasing words right back at him. ”Right,” Theo drawled, the corner of his mouth lifting. ”Before you were even a twinkle in our eyes.” Just months ago they’d danced in the kitchen to it as they waited for the meatloaf to finish cooking, Freyja’s bump a beach ball sized baffle that stopped the two of them … years. God, it felt like yesterday, but that had been Hazel chilling on her mom’s bladder and now his daughter was a shaken teenager, agreeing with the way he’d described things. Banshee things.

The sound was all it took for him to know that Hazel wasn’t the psychic he’d prayed she’d be. Learning not to burn the house down had to be a thousand times easier than realising you were probably going to be finding dead bodies for the rest of your life. Theo’s hands slipped down to his sides as he shrugged, his brows furrowing. ”I wish there was a way that worked every time,” he said on a sigh. ”It’s hard, sometimes it’s gonna be terrifying, but giving in to it can give you a little control back. It’s like when you fight it has to make you go.” That was easier said than done when every instinct in you screamed no.

If they’d realised what was happening they would’ve gone after her, his and Freyja’s instincts always fixed on protecting their daughter from everything that had almost cost them this. Theo held onto his daughter tight as his gentle questioning started to get the details out of her. ”I know we always tell you to call them but you were right … sometimes they do, but none of it was your fault, Hazelnut.” More than once he’d made anonymous calls to the cops, sometimes he’d been there when they’d arrived and had felt the weight of the stares between his shoulder blades when he’d finally been allowed to walk away. Theo’s brows rose sharply at Kit’s name but he didn’t pull back. Frank had said that Kit had been when … when it had happened for him the first time, and the second. Werewolf hearing apparently stretched to banshee screams.

Pulling back when Hazel did, Theo cupped his daughter’s face in his hands. ”I’m not mad that Uncle Kit kept his mouth shut. I know he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think you were safe.” Still, they were gonna have words later about it. Kit was a better uncle that he’d ever expected one of Frank’s cronies to be but this was his and Freyja’s daughter and listening to a sixteen year old girl’s plea to hide something major from her parents should’ve come with some sort of word from him.

Theo took Hazel’s hands in his when he was sure she hadn’t been really hurt by what had happened. It was a relief, but there was still that fear clawing at the back of his brain that she was going to have to go through this again time after time. His lips pressed together as she tried to find her way through it, shaking his head sadly. ”I don’t think so honey. Sometimes they’re just breathing their last but … I’ve never been able to save any of them, no matter how hard I tried.” He squeezed her hands lightly. ”I don’t think there is a way to really understand it. It’s a shitty deal, I know. Never thought you’d wanna be so much like your mom huh?” Which was what he’d wanted for his daughter, that extra measure of safety that came with not constantly being around the dead and dying.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA (finish with yours?) * Word Count: 1053