ecstasy | corpse husband

chapter 39.

"What the fuck are you doing in my house?"

Quicker than she ever thought her legs could move, Elowen hurries into the hallway at the sound of a shotgun cocking, her pulse thrumming in her ears, and she realizes how bad this must look but he raised a gun. Without hesitation. Is he out of his mind?

"Hey," she hears Corpse raise his voice, "We're not your enemy. So before you do something you're gonna regret—"

"Who the hell do you think you are telling me what I'll regret?" Her father grits back, louder. There's a thud then, and between the bodies of her friends in the way, she can see he's pinned Corpse back against the wall with the shotgun jabbed under his chin.

Corpse, eyes narrowed, doesn't resist, but Monroe has stepped forward to intervene and Flare is trying to use words to dispel this; she can hear him calling out, "This is a huge misunderstanding." But her father appears to have tunnel vision.

Amongst the confusion, Elowen can't help but notice Corpse is surprisingly calm for having a gun aimed at him. Looking down the barrel, the corner of his mouth turns upward, as if he finds this amusing somehow. "You really don't want to do this." He pauses thoughtfully. "For your daughter's sake."

That undoes Tommy. Her father grabs Corpse by the collar of his shirt, the two of them at eye level as he threatens, "You have ten seconds to tell me what it is you know about my daughter, and rest assured, once I pull this trigger, I won't give you a second thought." It isn't a threat, it's a promise. "Ten—"

"Papa, stop!" Elowen shouts in a panic, and she doesn't think she's called him that since she was fourteen, but it felt right in the moment. It does the job because like night and day, Tommy's aggression wanes and the tension gripping his face releases him instantly once he's turned his head and seen her. "They're with me, they're with me," she babbles, unnerved by the unfamiliar aggression he just displayed.

Reluctantly, and with one more warning look at Corpse, he releases him and lowers the gun, turning to face her in the dim hallway where the dawn's light has barely begun to dwindle in from the shutters. Recognition slowly ebbs away the severity in his noticeably sunken eyes. Anette pulls themselves aside, clearing a path for him, and Elowen sees he's limping while she meets him halfway.

Before she can comment on his injured state, Tommy takes his daughter's face into his calloused hands, checking her for signs of the sickness first and foremost, then just looking at her. Feeling the blood beneath her rosy cheeks. She's warm. Not cold, not like those things. He's struggling to accept she's even real. There's a good chance she isn't; he hasn't been able to trust his own thoughts in so long, but he finds he doesn't mind if this is his parting blow. Doesn't give one damn if this is all an illusion. He treats it all the same, pulling her into his tight embrace, letting her support some of the weight in his wrung-out body.

Tommy does wince as he waits for the impending bloodshed, or for her to simply disappear the way good dreams fade, but neither happens.

Elowen lets go of the breath she was holding, reassured by her father's hand at the back of her neck, and sinks into his weary embrace. His arms clutch her devastatingly tight, and the rest of the world fades for just a minute—all of her anxieties and dread and uncertainty leading up to this unlikely occurrence, the constant question of whether she lost her last parent or not. The guilt that clawed at her every time she wanted to give up, abandon him, tired of shouldering the burden. That fear that's been draining her unremittingly for weeks—lets her go. He's here with her, in the flesh and breathing, jacket damp with rain, and everything is as it should be.

He's alive.

Except, he is not the same person he was weeks ago. That much is obvious from the warm welcome he gave her friends. And he's injured.