picking up the pieces

[Jersey]

It had been a very long night for the blonde; it felt longer than the period that she had been turned, or watching Nakia and Danton die and come back, or even watching Peter heal from the fae. She had spent most of the night curled up in the corner of her sire’s apartment, away from her family and from the planning that they were doing to go after Peter. She had texted her sister for quite some time before eventually asking the woman to go find him. After getting the confirmation that she found him, Jersey had cried for a while. When her siblings returned and Jersey checked his blood levels, she had lost it until one of them pinned her down. She didn’t know which. He had been taken to zero.

She didn’t remember getting up and going to the cabin to check for him or the dogs only to find that he had left and taken them all. The blonde packed her bag, resisting the urge to curl up into a ball and cry, and left after leaving a note. Jersey checked his business, found Bear and she ignored the knife in her chest twisting when she made her way to her apartment. She had apologized to him telepathically, spoken to him a few times and heard no reply. Bear had gone and laid down on the bed immediately once inside, Jersey setting down his dinner in the kitchen. After making sure the door was locked, she had tomed back to Kallista’s apartment, toed her sword further away from where she had dropped it and took a seat beside her siblings.

When she checked his blood again, Jersey resisted the urge to freak out. He hadn’t fed and quietly in his mind, she urged him to get up and feed before closing her eyes to sleep. The next evening, Jersey took the night off from work. She wouldn’t be able to focus, not with what was going on. She sat with her legs crossed and stretched out in front of her. Her green eyes watched her family members come and go, she listened to Danton’s kitten’s heartbeat. Jersey had pretended not to hear Nakia tell Kallista to go finish him off. Her sire wasn’t that type of person. The blonde could remember the tears that had fallen from the brunette’s eyes as Jersey lay dying in her arms and how she had blamed herself for the gunshot in her stomach.

It was only until her sire left to go after Peter that Jersey got up once more, gathering a light gray short-sleeved tee-shirt with Boys Like Girls stamped across the chest and a pair of black jeans before padding barefoot into the bathroom to take a shower. She didn’t want to watch her sire leave to go hunt him down. She offered Kallista a quick, tiny smile before disappearing inside and shutting the door behind her. It was odd to not be on Peter’s schedule, to see him not following it and she had told her family a few times that he was not himself. Nakia, of course, had realized as much but seemed to be intent on her ‘Peter is chipped’ theory, but Danton seemed to at least get what she was trying to explain to some point.

As she washed her hair and scrubbed away her frustration, Jersey considered silently if her sire had gotten it. Surely, she had always seemed to dislike Peter... but she had told her that wasn’t the man that she had fallen in love with. Peter, Kallista. Peter, Kallista. She always felt torn between the two. Where she defended on, she never let the other see that she defended the other just as much. How many times had she made her sire cry? Even in her cold body, she could feel the heat of the shower penetrating her skin and soothing away her despair. Jersey hated herself for hitting Peter, but frustration had built and she lashed out in the worst of ways.

Ten minutes turned to twenty, fading into thirty minutes after she got out of the shower and wrapped herself up in a towel. When her phone begun to buzz, the softest chime of her ringtone following a half second later, Jersey got dressed and then looked at the screen to see a text from Kallista. She pressed her lips together and tapped at the screen to read everything over; her heart sunk to learn that they both had stabbed each other in the heart, but she was relieved to know that she had been right – Peter wouldn’t be killed. In a way, she was proud of them both for ending it. She was proud of Kallista for remaining the woman that she loved and adored, and for Peter, even in the end, he fought. But the question was, as she thought about Bear being left, where did she and Peter stand?

Kallista told her where she could retrieve him, Jersey texting her in reply that she’d be there and she grabbed her dirty laundry, carrying it out with her as she spotted the woman. Seeing Kallista in pain upset her, knowing Peter had been the cause of it, and she knew the emotion would be the same the second she saw the man. Very softly, she asked her sire if there was anything that she could do, she pressed a kiss to her cheek and after she tucked her bag away, Jersey put on her Converse. She glanced at the sword she had thrown away and reluctantly picked it back up. Later, she would look more into firearms, but she wouldn’t remove the knife from where it was kept unless she absolutely needed to. She could throw a punch, thanks to training with Nakia, and make it hurt.

As much as she tried otherwise, the blonde ran out of the flats. She ignored the looks from strangers when she came out of the sewers, heading for the station. She made it just before the train left and squeezed in between a large man that smelled like Doritos and mustard, and a middle aged business man wearing an expensive suit. She checked her phone for the time. “Got a place you need to be girly?” The business man asked only to be ignored. Jersey reached out into her sire’s mind, thanking her softly as she was mindful of her volume and the woman’s pain, hoping silently that she would heal very fast. The others would take care of her, she knew, and she would return after Peter was taken care of to check on her again. Another question was ignored.

Her nails tapped impatiently against her thigh with each station passing. Wickbridge, Honeymead, Cherrydale... Finally, she reached Westwall and the large man and the business man were left behind when she practically jumped out the second the doors slid open. What was it about him that made her so anxious when she was away from him for more than a day? And it made it worse knowing he was hurt. Familiar barking drew her to the ruined apartments, Jack and Ellie sat beside a man that wasn’t her boyfriend, he looked at her as she approached before kneeling down and patting the ground for the two.

“Are these dogs yours, miss?” He asked, having no front teeth and her green eyes watched him for a moment, giving a small nod of her head. “Shouldn’t let them run wild. Lions and stuff’ll get them.” He grinned at her and she blinked slowly before moving to collect their leashes. “Have you seen a few more? A great dane... border collie, and a husky.” Jersey hated this. If the dogs weren’t with Peter, something had happened and it worried her. The man pointed further into the ruins and she hurried inside, whistling as she went and calling out names. One by one, she found them. Lady trotted over to her before she stepped inside completely.

KD took a bit longer, she had somehow ended up stuck in a room and it took Jersey a moment to break down the door before she soothed her hand over the dog’s fur. Hunter was with Peter. He barked when he saw her, but didn’t move to greet her other than lowering his head and giving a low whine, protecting his master. “Stay.” She instructed softly to the other four, moving closer to her still boyfriend and the large dog. “Move, Hunter. It’s okay.” She reached forward and he paused before she shooed him, the dog moving to the others. Her long hair fell over her shoulder as she took in all of his wounds.

“Peter...” Tears welled up in her green eyes as she got down to her knees, her hand moving to softly cup his cheek while her thumb slid over the skin gently. Why wasn’t he moving? She’d seen him have worse wounds. The fae had hurt him, bit his head, impaled his heart, and he had always been awake after. “Baby, wake up.” She pleaded quietly, her voice echo mixing with the dog’s heartbeats in her ears. It had always disturbed her with how still he became when he slept, as if he was a corpse. It wasn’t sunset though. He should be awake. That’s what her logic told her as she softly slapped him. Nothing. There was no response and her heart felt heavy as she carefully adjusted the man to pull him to his feet and then proceeded to fall flat on her behind when his weight caused her to become off balance.

“Please get up. Yelp. Do something.” She tried to slap him awake again and waited. She kissed him, pinched him. She would have punched or poked him with the tip of her knife, but she refused to ever draw it around him again and she wouldn’t hurt him. Jersey sat there for a while, holding him tightly while she tried to think of something to do before finally, she managed to stand up and curled her arms underneath the man’s armpits. She dragged him out of those apartments, pausing every now and then to collect the dogs and herd them in the direction she wanted them to go, and made her way to West Towers.

Time passed.

It didn’t matter how long it had been as she dropped him onto the couch and straightened up, her palms pressing into the small of her back as the muscle protested. Moving to lock the door and then give the five dogs some food and water, Jersey ran her hand over her face as she looked at what of Peter she could see. It didn’t take her long to decide to go collect a pair of his pajama bottoms and a first aid kit. Carefully, she treated the wounds after stripping him of his clothes to make it easier. She would return to the cabin to get him something decent to wear when he would awaken and after adjusting him once more, Jersey dragged Peter to the bedroom to lay him down on the bed, tucking him in before she sat down on the floor.

She leaned forward, letting out a heavy and useless exhale of fresh air as her emotions danced just beneath the surface of a cracking frozen lake. Peter was critical. Kallista was critical. She looked through their memories over and over again before she swallowed and sat up on the bed, her fingertips tracing over the edges of the healing wounds. “Please wake up, Peter. Even if to tell me to go to hell.” She murmured quietly, looking at his burns. How could she have ever hit this man? Anger had pent up and she had burst. That was one way to look at it, but she frowned and leaned forward to press her lips against his temple very softly. More tears trickled down her pale skin, “I’m sorry,” She whispered, “for all of this.”