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Tyrant by SavicusVonde
Books » Worm Rated: M, English, Adventure, Words: 88k+, Favs: 1k+, Follows: 1k+, Published: Aug 2, 2021 Updated: May 28
253Chapter 3: 3 - Delilah
Delilah found herself washing the same dishes for the third time that evening. They were spotless already but she had to do something with her hands. If she didn't, she'd just be fidgeting around the house, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a passing moment. Every few minutes she'd peek at the phone, but it stayed stubbornly silent. It had already been days since she'd last seen Ashton. The boy tended to disappear sometimes but not for this long. She'd already called the police the first night, imagining how annoyed he'd be when they found him, or if he found out that she'd panicked. But they hadn't, he hadn't texted or called, and the police had found nothing.
They had asked if she thought he'd ran away from home, that was more common in foster children like Ashton, they'd said. She'd known that of course, you didn't foster kids in Brockton Bay of all places and not know the runaway statistics. As someone that couldn't afford to send her kids to Immaculata or Arcadia and was too far from Clarendon, she had to send them to Winslow High. A fact that she knew put the already relatively high runaway rate of the city into the stratosphere. Ashton wasn't like that though, she was certain of that. Honestly, if she had to name one problem the kid had over any others it would be that he just wouldn't run away from anything. God knew she'd gotten enough calls from that bitch of a headteacher about him getting into fights to know that. Even if he was distant sometimes, they got on like oil and fire. No, he hadn't thrown any kind of tantrum, nor had they had any kind of disagreement that would push a child that far.
That still left her with an empty house and a missing boy and no idea where he was. The police hadn't been very hopeful, she'd seen the way they looked at each other. They saw 'Winslow High', a missing teen, and instantly added it up to him running away and joining a gang or something. Ashton wasn't like that. He hated the gangs with a passion, to the point that Delilah had often worried he'd do something stupid. Her stomach twisted into knots imagining him lying bleeding out in some dark alley. She shook her head quickly, trying to dispel the morbid train of thought for the umpteenth time, he'd be fine.
It wasn't until later in the evening, when she was going around turning the downstairs lights off that she heard the rattling of a key in a lock, followed by the familiar groaning of the door to the house swinging open. Only one person other than herself had a key.
"Ashton Graves!" She yelled, rocketing out of the kitchen towards the entryway, slippers pattering against the wooden floor. She flashed past the white painted walls, something she and David had planned to repaint before… well, before. Her curly brown shoulder-length hair flapped past the picture frames that were hung sporadically along the way, older ones with wooden frames frayed by time and attention but coated in dust of her, David, and a small, blonde-haired bright-eyed boy. The closer she got to the entry the sparser the photos became; the images of a happy family were replaced by shots of a single, different boy with dark eyes and darker hair. A couple of them showed him laughing with Delilah, a few happy moments captured forever, "Where the hell have you been?"
The man on the threshold was huge, taller than the doorframe he'd stooped to step inside. Backlit as he was by the streetlights outside Delilah struggled to make out his features, heart beating thumping rapidly in her chest as he turned to look at her. With a trembling hand she reached out to flick the light switch, but her fingers quivered so badly she missed once, then twice. A great hand gently pressed hers down onto it like he was worried he'd break her, the light flickered on and the pressure relented. Instantly, she whipped her hand back and away, even as he leaned forward to reach the switch and get further inside he towered over her. She back-pedaled until her feet slammed into the bottom of the stairs sending her sprawling back over them breathing heavily.
With the light on the man's shadowed features were revealed. Familiar hair, black as pitch and messily chopped short like they'd been taken to by an enthusiastic amateur with kitchen scissors. Which they had, she remembered how he'd complained when she'd done it but refused to go to get it cut by a professional even when she'd offered to pay to get it fixed. His eyes too were familiar, midnight blue so dark she had to struggle to see where the pupil ended and the iris began.
He was even wearing the same kind of clothes her foster son would've worn, a dark ratty T-shirt she would constantly get on his back to throw away; arguing that if it fell apart anymore it would be indecent. He'd argue back that it was a fan-shirt for his favourite band and that he wouldn't be able to find another in the city like it. In the end, she'd always give in, letting him keep it. The shirt the man was wearing wasn't the right band, but it looked close enough that if she saw it in the right light she could almost mistake it for it, full of holes just like Ash's.
It was like he was some cheap, horrifying imitation of Ash constructed by someone that barely knew him.
Where before his face had still curved with the baby fat of a growing youth, the jawline was now prominent and strong like she saw in her favourite actors on the TV. In fact, the fat was gone everywhere, she'd never have said that Ashton was unfit before but the man in front of her was sculpted like a statue. When he straightened his shoulders he was almost as wide as the small corridor itself, if he shifted to either side at all he'd be brushing up against the walls. The worst though were his eyes. He was smiling, it was his normal smile mixed with something else, he looked like he was laughing at some cosmic joke only he knew about. But it didn't reach his eyes. They stared through her, none of the reluctant affection she was so used to seeing, nothing. It was like he wasn't even looking at her, like a shark, she thought to herself as her mind flashed back to some nature documentary they'd watched together.
"Delilah," And just like everything else, it was Ash's voice but not. It was still that of a teenager, higher pitch than she'd expect from such a huge body, but its tone was hollow, empty of any real inflection except disinterest, "sorry, it took me a while to remember where you," he paused, "we, lived. Everything's sort of muddy."
"Ashton," She began, voice trembling before she cut herself off, "no. You're not Ash. Who are you? What did you do to him?"
By the end, she was close to screaming, pointing a wavering finger at the hulking figure. He tilted his head, cold eyes pinning her down in place. His lazy smirk drooped slightly, eyebrows knitting together.
"No," he muttered, to himself more than to her, "I guess I'm not."
For a second his eyes cleared, the familiar combination of annoyance and stubborn pride flitting across them, and it was like he really was Ash. He reached a hand up to scratch at his chin, the same nervous tic the boy she'd fostered had turned up with years ago. But then it passed as quickly as it came, blown away like mist in the wind, dark amusement filling them back up to the brim.
"What did you do to him, you, you Cape bastard?!" Delilah bellowed, anger pushing away her fear as she thrust herself back to her feet. If anything that only made the man seem bigger, at her full height and inside his personal space she barely reached the bottom of his chest.
"Cape?" He asked as if it wasn't obvious. As if it wasn't clear that he was another one of those scum bleeding her city dry. He waltzes in, wearing her son's face, sounding like him and she's meant to assume he's a normal human being? Staring at her for a second more in silence, he nodded like she'd answered a question he hadn't asked, "As for Ash, you're looking at him."
He shrugged, arms brushing against the walls on either side. The drywall and paint parted around him, dragged up and away leaving them tumbling to the ground around him in pieces. She flinched but barely noticed, unable to tear her gaze away from Ash's, no, this Cape's face.
"No," She shook her head like she could deny what she was seeing, tears pooling in her eyes, "No, Ash is fine, he's-"
"Gone, now there's only me," He cut her off firmly before something barely visible in his face relaxed slightly, "For what it's worth… I'm sorry."
Silence fell in the house, but she could still hear his voice ringing in her ears like a gong. It was calm, said with the utter certainty of an immutable fact, ringing with a note of finality.
"Please," she whispered, not even sure what she was asking, "please, please, please!"
Every time she said it she got louder, and closer, stalking towards the Cape who didn't falter even as she reared her hand back. It was stupid, some part of her distantly noted, to attack a Cape. Who was she but a normal woman? Rage and desperation rolled over Delilah, she continued begging almost like a chant or a mantra as she swung at him with an open palm.
She slapped him straight in the chest with all her might, but she may as well have been hitting a brick wall for all it did nothing to him and send a shock of pain through her hand.
"Please!"
Again.
"Please!"
Again.
"Give him back…"
Her hands were red and blotchy, almost bleeding but she kept going, scratching and clawing.
"I, I," Delilah sobbed with a hoarse voice, "What more do you want? How much more can you bastards take?"
She couldn't do it anymore. Strength deserting her she slumped forwards hands clutching at the shirt but not finding purchase like she was trying to hold smooth marble.
"I have nothing left…"
A beat passed, then two.
"Are you done?" The man who had, who had killed her son asked, just as blandly as before.
"Done? Done?!" For a moment Delilah surged upwards again, fury and mourning lifting her shoulders. It tapered away when her eyes met his once more, empty and achingly familiar, she deflated again like a burst balloon, "Yeah I'm done. Do what you want, take what you want. I-"
She cut herself off, biting her bottom lip so hard it bled. The cape just blinked at her slowly and with a start, she realised that was the only part of him that was moving at all. His chest didn't rise and fall, nor could she hear him breathing, every part of him staying as still and unmoving as a mountain. What the fuck was he?
"You think I'm here to rob you?" Very real amusement darted through his eyes for a split second, as he looked around at the sparsely decorated entryway. It didn't exactly scream wealth and opulence, "You've got it all wrong. I'm just here to say goodbye and give you a warning."
"A warning?" Delilah spat back, "What, that I'm next if I don't do what you say?"
He waved her angry accusations off like he could swat them out of the air. Hurriedly she stepped back, knees still shaking and exhausted, warily watching his hand. She'd seen what a shrug had done to the walls. Was he a 'Brute'? She thought that was what the PRT called them, after what had happened to David and Michael, she'd tried to avoid anything to do with Capes, especially those in Brockton Bay. Inevitably though, she'd found herself doing some research and checking online whether anyone had killed the monster that had taken them from her. And now she found herself face to face with a different one; maybe she'd get to meet them and Ash again soon.
"You should get out of Brockton Bay. Things'll get pretty crazy soon," He sounded absolutely sure of what he was saying like he wasn't a madman or a murderer.
"Leave Brockton? This is my home you piece of shit. I'm not going to up and run away just because some jumped up-"
He cut her off again before her rant could even start.
"And what do you have keeping you here?" He pointed at the picture frames on the walls, "You said it yourself, you 'have nothing left'. Go somewhere else, start anew, I don't really care."
The point pierced her like a nail that had been shoved through her heart.
"You killed Ash, you took that from me," Delilah gasped out, mind wheeling from the audacity of the monster in front of her.
He just raised an eyebrow at her, flat gaze unchanging.
"And? Does that change anything?" His timbre clearly saying without words that it didn't.
Sputtering, unable to think of anything to say to the person that could undoubtedly murder her in moments. Her eyes flicked to the phone in its stand, still sitting on the kitchen counter just barely visible from where she stood.
"Look," he sighed, bringing her attention back to him, "I'm done here, I said what I wanted to. Listen, or don't, it makes no difference to me."
Without another word he turned away from her, worn trainers crunching through the broken drywall scattered over the floor. From behind, Delilah could almost imagine that it was Ash standing there instead of another freak, another monster. Her hand raised unconsciously, grasping fingers reaching for his back. Words tried to climb out her throat but it clamped up, a confusing bundle of emotions stirring in her gut.
The door creaked as it opened again, it was almost completely blocked from her view by the monster's giant frame. He stopped just as he was about to cross back over the threshold, looking at the last photo on the wall. It was the last one Delilah had framed, liking the idea of seeing time pass whenever she went to leave the house.
In it, she and Ash stood side by side with an arm thrown around each other. She was giving the camera a sunny grin, while he did his normal thing of trying to hide his smile behind a frown, the twitching corners of his lips giving him away. Delilah had memorised it days ago, finding herself looking at it while waiting for news, any news, about him.
He gripped it carefully, lifting it off the hook on the wall like it was made of glass. Looking at him from the side as she was, she could barely make out the tumult of emotion twisting his face, for a scant few seconds looking the scared teenager. His face cleared, wiped clean of feeling like a mark on a whiteboard. His head turned back to look at her, a hint of something unknowable in his eyes.
"Michael and David," He began, voice almost gentle and familiar. He frowned as if he was trying to remember something on the tip of his tongue, "Which one killed them again?"
Delilah just stared at him, searching for something that even she didn't know. Part of her expected him to leave if she didn't answer but something told her otherwise. His eyes had focused again, boring into her own.
"Hookwolf," She spat the name like a curse, with all her vile contempt and hate leaving her feeling hollow.
The monster stepped out over the doorframe, ducking again to do so. He didn't put the photo back. Instead, the last thing she saw of him was his fingers absently trailing over his own face in the image while he looked down at it and away from her, the other hand moving for the handle. The door swung back slowly, protesting as it did so. His voice trailed back to her just before it shut with what felt like a piercing click in the sudden silence of the house.
"Hookwolf, huh?"
A second later a violent breeze rocked the house, setting the window rattling and, finally, Delilah was left blessedly (accursedly) alone.
A/N: If any chapter so far is going to get some extended editing later it'll be this one. Some parts of it I like, other parts I really struggled with and the whole thing feels kind of off to me. Probably shouldn't post this when I'm feeling so tired but eh, as usual I just wanted to get it out there.
Next chapter will be back to some more action and big moves.
I promise that it's not always going to end up this sad/edgy…
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