bodies, bodies, bodies ✄ arwen one-shots

arwen mortuus.

Wait and bleed.

At the age of 11, Arwen Mortuus believes he is immortal. Unlike the rest of his family, unlike Eirlys who died of tuberculosis and Sin who died of a bullet to the neck, unlike Ridley and Raisa who continue to age, unlike Ivy who continues to pretend nothing is happening. Arwen knows better, just as he had all along. It became a bit of an addiction, catching his aunts in the midst of their battle calls, he started to keep records of everyone who died under their care. Tried to link causation to casualty, imagining his aunt's favorite methods as something as simple as their favorite dishes. 

Death came naturally - murder, nurture. He knew so because Ivy never changed, unlike himself, and it was like she blinded herself to it all even as he held her eyelids back to the light. He wondered who was more delusional: Ivy, or himself. Part of him was convinced he was making it all up, that the green light that plagued his dreams came from a UFO and those nightmares a devious part of some abduction, but there was no denying the way Ridley hid moments before another disaster struck out. He started to view her as his mother, latching onto how she decided who lived, who died. 

Maybe it was her who killed Eirlys Mortuus, his fantasy's tried to tell him so. 

They held no funeral for Sin, it seemed as if no one had cared for him at all. Arwen remembers feeling as warm as they pyre they immolated him to, the beast from the basement finally being dealt with. He hated how the boy never said a word- envious, almost, angered by how little Sin had to explain himself or his actions. Arwen was allowed in the basement after he was taken care of; he and Ivy both, though, she never ventured down that stairwell after Eirlys and the green light. He remembers Ridley and Steel leaving him, and how quiet it was, listening to the snapping and crackling as Sin's being became kindling. Like a child waiting for the oven to finish, he grew greedy with each peek he took into the furnace, taking note of how the sheet melted into the body of Sin. 

Gross, he thought, met with the image of Sin Mortuus's coagulation. 

Fascinations and obsessions bubbled beneath Arwen's surface - he was known as a gentle child, but surprises always come from the shadows. He was always learning from the best, prodigal Lucifer he was, mimicking Ridley and getting beaten for it shortly there after. Arwen practiced on animals, testing his empathy as brutally as he tested the soles of his boots on freshly cracked Robin eggs. He remembered, once, being slapped on the mouth by his aunt, Steel, who had just returned from handling peacekeepers. How he had begged and begged and begged to show her what he kept in an old shoebox; seeing Steel was a special occasion, and he always dreamed of impressing her. 

The mangled body of a copperhead meant nothing to her. 

Less than, she looked from it to him as if he held trash in his very hands. He thought of describing the act: how he went about catching such a creature, how he had stomped and stomped and stomped on its head until he heard the cracking of viper fangs, how he had wrangled it by the neck and ran with it like a captured flag. Played with its body like it was a whip and he an adventurer, before coiling it up like a slinky and bringing it home under his shirt. He kept teeth and scales and cut the bodice up with a cleaver, trying his best to match each chunk of serpent in length and width. 

And she had slapped him for it, disgust transferring from her face to his in one simple strike. He dropped the box, remnants of the wild creature pouring out between their feet before his aunt grabbed him by the wrist and took him to that basement closet again. 

Curled up upon himself, Arwen was raised in the dark. He learned to bring his knees to his chest and guard his eyes with his lap, embracing the limbo he lost himself to. It was easier than constantly looking towards the light, waiting and waiting and never being saved; he didn't need to be saved. Life as a Mortuus was worth everything compared to being dead as another, a determination festered in him to get it right. As desperate for his aunt's approval as he was, once, with the light, one eye closed; the other, never blinking. 

Arwen killed his mother's cat two weeks later. 

To the satisfaction of his own, he didn't share that he ever did this. Instead, he'd simply shrug whenever someone asked - usually Ivy. She and Buttercup were closer than even she & Arwen, the last remaining thing they even had of their mother other than her depressing diaries. That cat had come from the grasps of Ansgar Todd, and he imagined it as the source of their family falling apart. Yes, that's it! Buttercup had returned instead of Hyacinth, and that killed his mother, and the death of his mother killed Eirlys, and the death of Eirlys killed that of Sin. 

The logistics of an eleven year old compared none to that of childish cruelty. Inventive in the way he knew no bounds; it was not family that found the scene, but an outsourced nurse, stumbling into the room with its air as stiff as rigor mortis. Arwen had taken nothing but a butcher knife with him, and it was as if the more he cut away, the more that itch inside of him begged for it. 

He started off kind, but this cat knew best to hate him. Arwen had a habit of playing rough with Buttercup, throwing him against walls and medical cupboards just to hear the sick thud. It was a game of chance, that much he knew when he noticed the cat picked up a new limp that brought Ivy to tears again. How he hated being the cause of another problem - that's what inspired him to finally end it. Arwen brushed his fur and squeezed him tight in a hug, wondering if he'd be able to crush Buttercup by the ribcage.

That's the most he knew of love, how painful it was when it hurt him back.

And it always hurt him back. 

Arwen never felt more clarity than the moment he pinned Buttercup down, digging his juvenile knee into the underbelly of the beast and stabbing into the cat until the hissing stopped. And it stopped, eventually, before the stabbing did. He lost himself to the motions, his hands coated with the evidence of what he did. Arwen didn't stop until there was hardly anything solid left to stab at, his knife cutting at sludge and the bones that contained it. 

He cut each paw off and threw the rest away in a nursery trash bin, keeping the fruits of his crime in a shoebox beneath his bed, between oily snake scales and premature grey robin beaks.