Vanya
Vanya can't get the blood out from under her fingernails.
She stands in front of the sink as the water runs over her hands and she scrubs and scratches till her hands feel raw and red. The cold water soothes her skin, but not by much.
She finally manages to get the blood out, and turns off the tap with wet hands. Her white apron is stained with various blotches of red, brown, and yellow. Truth be told, she's a little glad that she doesn't know where they came from.
She closes her eyes as she hunches forward just a little.
The first two months had been....unbearable, to say the least. Her parents had finally decided that they couldn't deal with her any longer, and she doesn't blame them. It was bound to happen sometime.
Still, she reasons as she straightens and takes off that stained apron and hangs it on the hook. They could've been gentler about it.
But they couldn't.
They really couldn't.
She shakes her head as she steps out of the tavern. The sun will rise in four hours. The air is cold outside, and her breath swirls in a white mist in front of her.
There aren't many people out on the streets right now, only some smokers and unfortunate hawkers. A wry grin twists on her face. The hawkers must be truly desperate if they think that they can sell anything this late at night, especially in this part of town. The grin is quick to fall off, though.
The street lamps flicker as she walks along the road, and she wraps her scarf a little tighter around her neck to warm herself a little more. She can see eyes glinting from the darkness of the alleys she passes, and almost feels sorry for whatever may be living there.
She stops in front of a tall and dilapidated building with broken windows and ivy creeping all over its walls. The wooden stairs creak under her weight, and she wonders how she hasn't fallen through them yet.
The lock clicks faintly as she turns the key, and the doors silently swing open. There's an old metallic coat rack against the wood panelled wall, and the carpets smell as musty tonight as they had on the day she had first stepped into this place. She shuts the door behind her.
The sound of wood hitting wood seals away the noise that comes with midnight loiterers, and her shoulders slump forward in relief. She slips off her sneakers and places them neatly on the low shelf beside the coat rack, and relishes the feeling of the cold, hard wood under her feet.
The house is big, but there isn't much in it. The sounds echo a lot.
It isn't as unnerving as it should be.
Venantius
Venantius sleeps for most of the day, and when he wakes up, everything aches. His uncle is there sometimes, holding his cold hands in his own trembling ones.
He wonders why they shake so much.
His uncle stares at the bandages wrapped around Venantius' torso with a look of deep sadness sometimes, and Venantius stares at his uncle with a feeling he can't identify, and then decides that going back to sleep is easier. He dreams about what his uncle might see when he looks at Venantius, but it's always horrible, and he wakes up sweaty, but his uncle is still there, stroking his hair with trembling hands.
Venantius falls asleep after that.
He wakes up to the smell of soup and ginger tea. A strange combination, one that reminds him of home and makes his heart beat a little faster.
"Venantius," his uncle says, setting the tray down on the floor beside him, "you have to eat something."
Venantius doesn't want to eat. He doesn't even want to open his eyes.
"I don't want to," he slurs as his uncle helps him sit up. He immediately falls back against the cushions.
His uncle's eyes droop a little, and his lips tug into a small frown.
"You mustn't let yourself grow weak, my dear."
Venantius groans. There's nothing much he can do, not when he feels like someone just skewered his body and roasted it over an open fire like a campfire kebab.
His uncle sighs again as he slowly brings a spoonful of soup up to Venantius' lips. His hands still have minuscule tremors running through them, but none of the soup spills.
Venantius sips it slowly, trying his hardest to make a loud and obnoxious slurping noise. He remembers doing it when he was younger, when his parents fought over chilli flakes, sugar, taxes, and whether or not their son should be sent far far away from home .
His uncle would always glance at him, checking if any of that bothered him. When he looked satisfied, he would hold up his index fire, and its tip would burst into flames, catching Venantius' attention immediately.
Then he would bring spoonfuls of soup up to Venantius' mouth with dim eyes, and Venantius would slurp as loudly as he could, and Uncle's mouth would twitch up, his eyes would light up a little, and Ma and Father would turn around to look at him reproachfully.
He wonders if that would still work.
As he slurps the soup, his Uncle's lips twitch up in that familiar way, his eyes sparkle, and Venantius finds that yes, he can still make Uncle smile.
A/N: Have a little draft of a chapter from when I thought I actually had a plot lmao.
