TW: Implied Stalking & there's an implication/assumption that a child might be in danger, but nothing comes of that + the the odd inappropriate term for referring to sex workers
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"I knew you were sneaking around!" Beast bellowed.
"Would you listen to your wife? Just calm down and-" Bigby tried to talk him down, but Beast wasn't having it. He shoved Bigby back and swung his fist at him.
"Why does this keep happening to me?" Bigby silently contemplated as he was punched in the face for what felt like the tenth time that week.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Beauty screamed at her husband.
Even when he tries to stay out of shit, he still gets stuck in the middle of it. Was he cursed? Maybe, or maybe it was just bad luck.
His current situation had not been what he expected. Out of all the things that could have happened when going into the seedy hotel, it had to be Beast losing his shit. His own paranoia made him think Bigby and Beauty were sleeping together.
Well, the two of them were standing in the middle of a hotel commonly used for this kind of thing. And he spotted them trying to get a door open to one of the rooms. Yeah, not a great look.
It didn't make Bigby any more happy about being punched in the gut.
"Stop!" Beauty begged as Bigby fought back and threw Beast into the wall. "Leave him be! This is my fault!"
Beast took the opportunity to rip a pipe out from the broken wall. Hitting Bigby in the chest, then pinning him against the wall. During this burst of rage, a set of horns had suddenly appeared on Beast's head, along with some claws and dark red eyes.
On instinct, Bigby lifted his hand and dug his own claws into Beast's eyes. Gouging his eyes out. It caused Beast to stumble back for a moment. Bigby jumped forward and waist-tackled Beast to the ground. He pulled back to punch Beast a few times but stopped when Beauty begged for him to stop again.
Beast wasn't as merciful. Smashing a nearby bottle over Bigby's head.
"You ruined everything!" Beast roared at Bigby.
Bigby had had enough. He ran straight towards Beast and slammed his shoulder into him. Sending them both crashing through the door Bigby was trying to get into in the first place.
Bigby's eyes immediately spotted a trail of blood. He stood up and made his way closer to get a better look.
"Shit, Bigby," Beast wheezed from the floor.
"Look what you did to the door!" Beauty scolded him. "You can't just act like this whenever y-"
"Stand back. You-you don't want to see this," Beast tried to hold his wife back.
Bigby looked around the room in shock. The bed was drenched in blood and the same blue flowers they had found in Lily's hands. It looked fresh, but due to the amount, it was hard to tell from one look.
"Shit," Bigby said under his breath.
"What is it?" Beauty said as she pushed past Beast. Only to see the bloody mess inside. "Oh! Oh my god."
"Don't touch anything," Bigby told her.
"Is this...? Is this...?" Beauty stuttered.
"Lily met her client here, 'Mr. Smith', whoever he is," Bigby said as he studied the room.
"And then..."
"Must have happened right here," Bigby gestured to the bed.
"Last night?"
"Yeah."
"I was on shift last night!" Beauty said in disbelief.
"On 'shift'? Beauty, what exactly-" Beast started asking.
"I'm not a prostitute, you idiot! I work the front desk!" Beauty frowned at him.
Beast stuttered for a bit. Processing the information his wife had just given him. "Still... This is no place for someone like you. I mean, look-"
Beauty stopped him again. Clearly uncomfortable. "Can we please not talk about this?"
"Was anyone acting suspicious? Maybe moving a heavy piece of luggage, or, uh... He got the body out of here somehow," Bigby asked Beauty.
"Jesus Christ," Beauty shook her head. "No, no, I didn't see anything like that! It just seemed like a totally normal night. How is that even possible? There's so much blood"
Bigby turned to Beast. "Go lock the front door. Keep people out of the hallway. I need you to be sure no one comes in here. This is a crime scene. Okay?"
"But-"
"Just do what he says. I'll explain later...okay?" Beauty said to him.
Beast reluctantly did as he was told. Leaving Bigby and Beauty standing in the room alone.
"Bigby, what kind of a person could do something like this?"
"That's exactly what I'm about to try to find out."
Bigby walked up to the bed. It seemed like the logical place to start.
"It looks like she was lying down when she was killed. Flowers were already here."
"How do you know that?" Beauty questioned.
"Blood pattern," Bigby told her. "Also, I'd say the body was dragged off the foot of the bed."
"The Body?!" Beauty frowned. "Jesus, you could say she! That poor girl. I couldn't even imagine..."
Bigby found himself looking over the desks next. Some things didn't really stand out to him. And then there were some that just confused him more.
Ashtray with used huff n puff cigarettes, a bottle of wine (classy), and a forgotten bottle of perfume.
Then there was the fake bird that had fallen on the floor and a tape titled 'for my arrival'.
Something that did catch his interest was a fairly thick book sitting there. It was written in a langue Bigby didn't recognise. He opened it to find that it had a bunch of notes written throughout it, even more text crossed out, and several different sticky notes on different pages.
The illustration was of a giant woman with various plants weaved into her hair. She was holding a child in each of her hands. Smiling proudly. The post-in just said 'Beautiful'.
"What is that?" Beauty asked.
"I think it's about Catriona and Emmanuel's family," Bigby guessed. "How, at least how the mundies saw them."
Bigby flicked through the book. Finding a ton of different notes pasted through it. There were two that caught his eye.
The first was of Catriona and Emmanuel. Catriona was covered in the same blue flowers from the bed, and Emmanuel had a bird on his shoulder that was similar to the one on the table.
They each seemed to have notes about them on each side of the page. Things like 'thief' and 'lied to her' on Emmanuel's side. Catriona's side was strange. 'She should have been mine' and 'if only she were more like her mother'.
The second page was of the same woman from the first page. Only this time, she wasn't smiling with pride. There was a melancholy look on her face as she fainted into the earth. There was just one note that said, 'could she have been saved?'
Bigby stared at the book in confusion. It was giving him more questions than answers.
"What's going on?"
"I think he made up the bed to match the picture. Flowers too. He'd have had Lily lie down just like this."
"You mean just before-"
"In the story, she's dying. Maybe this 'Mr Smith' thought a kiss would save her. Like it seemed to work in a lot of stories."
"But what does all this mean?" Beauty questioned. "Why the obsession with a Fable who's been dead for thousands of years?"
"I don't know yet," Bigby was honest with her. "But I'm gonna work it out."
"This is creepy. The weird fixation with Sunny's family. What the hell is wrong with this guy?" Beauty frowned. "Oh god, Sunny. I can't imagine being in her shoes and having to see this."
Bigby was trying not to think about that part. Trying to keep his focus on the task at hand, and not on the fact that he was gonna tear apart the fucker behind this.
He moved on to the closest right by the door next. Inside was a single green dress. It looked more like some kind of robe than a dress, actually. It seemed vividly close to the dress in the book. "Someone's been rough with this dress; it's torn."
Beauty backed away in disgust. "Oh, no, she must have been wearing it! He killed her, and then he...took it back off?"
"No. There's no blood on it. It must have been torn some... other time." Bigby stated grimly. "This is the same dress as the one Sunny's grandmother was wearing in the book. I think 'Smith' was dressing Lily up in it."
Beauty looked over his shoulder into the closest. "You're right; it's the same dress. It fits. He's acting out scenes from the book. That poor girl..."
Bigby let Beauty talk herself way through it. It seemed to be helping her process it. He was trying to connect the pieces himself. He could see what had been going on here, but he still had no idea who had killed Lily. The answer was so close. He could feel it.
He took the cassette tape from the table and looked back to the nightstand. "Do all the rooms have these same clocks with the built-in cassette player?"
"I think so, yes." Beauty nodded. She looked around with an uncomfortable look. "That poor girl... She couldn't have known...she probably just needed the money. She could have been...anyone. How did she wind up...here? I mean, not exactly here, but... Just, how does a person...?
"We can't know the answer to that. Every situation is different."
"Yeah..." Beauty said with sad eyes.
Bigby placed the 'for my arrival' tape in the player. He didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't classical music with random bird sounds, that was for sure.
"Bigby, this, I think I heard this music. Last night. It was playing pretty loudly for a while, then stopped in the middle," Beauty told him. "I didn't think twice about it at the time, I mean, you hear all kinds of things around here, and I guess I've already gotten used to blocking them out.'
"Could have covered up the sound of the murder," Bigby said. Making Beauty cringe.
"God, I can see the whole picture now! It all goes together like you said! This creep put that girl in that dress and recreated the whole story from the book, with the flowers, and birds, and everything!" Beauty huffed as she paced around the room.
"You're a better detective than I thought you'd be." She told Bigby with a smile.
"Thanks?" He didn't really know how to respond to a comment like that.
"So, he planned it out; he had all the details noted down." Beauty started to recount everything they had seen. "Only, then, when it comes time to kiss her and wake her up?"
Bigby nodded his head. It still didn't give them any info on who did this, but he guessed it was better than nothing. Maybe Sunny or Catroina would know something.
"I hope you're just about through. I don't really want to stay here any longer than I have to." Beauty told him with a shiver.
Bigby stepped away from the cassette player. Only to hear a crunching sound coming from his foot. He looked down to see an envelope peeking out from under the bed. He picked it up to see what was inside. There were pictures. At first glance, they all seemed to be of Sunny.
"Are those pictures of the dead girl?" Beauty asked.
"Not all of them," Bigby told her as he slowly flipped through them.
"How do you know?"
"This one has Catriona and Sunny's kid in it," Bigby showed Beauty a photo of the three women talking through Central Park. The youngest waved her arms around in excitement.
"Sunny has a daughter?" Beauty stepped back. "Oh, no. Bigby... This kind of stalking...it doesn't just stop by itself. Trust me, I know about this firsthand. He'll keep trying to get closer and closer.
"His stand-in is gone now, so..."
"He might try and go after Sunny herself... or worse-"
Right as she said this, Bigby took out the last picture. They both stared at it in horror.
"That's-"
"It's Crane!"
I gotta tell you, I've started considering the pros of murder when a 3-hour flight somehow turned into a 28-hour journey to get home recently /j But we're home safe now, and we'll be returning to our regular updating schedule <3
So more inklings about Sunny's family history. I've got a whole story in my head about their backstory, but I don't think I'll really be able to cover in this story.