If anyone noticed Aslan’s inevitable disappearance, he figured it would be Crane. May Nisa never consider that.

“Thank you, Crane.”

And so it was last-name basis, despite the practically first-name emphasis.

“Will do,” he said, and it was about 45% true. “You’re tall, they won’t bother you,” he added wryly.

Only the readers know how hard he’ll be choking on those words later.

He was more tenuous about surviving home than the roads. In transit, he was moving. It was far more difficult to take down a moving target than a sleeping one – or a cornered one.

But home Aslan returned, and he was exhausted to the point that remaining there a few hours (dying there, even) seemed comfortable. He quietly opened and closed the door, unbuttoning his jacket in half-awake habit.

[cw: violence and death ahoy!]

What Aslan had avoided, might have been a small mercy, for what he came to when he came home was a nightmare. Nothing was scene, but there was something. An irony smell filled the air, and a few pieces of furniture were definitely out of place.

While the lights were turned down low, it was not dark so he could see the small drops that made a path. It was in a back room he could hear a muffled grunt and gasp. The maid that had managed to survive would have hurried to the door and looked relieved to see it was merely Nisa's brother. She had some materials to clean the floor , her own outfit was splattered with something far too familiar even for a detective.

"I will need this fixed!" Came Nisa's voice. She was stressed by something, but happy, exhilarated even. That was perhaps what drove her. The usually calm and gentle looking woman's eyes were wide and wild but with pure joy. The man who'd thrown a punch at her brother at the ball was on the ground , she was standing on his back, a rope around his throat was twisted as she held both ends crossed the man's neck, tied around wooden handles so that she had a firm grip that wouldn't enjoy her delicate skin. This was her own creation after an almost failed attempt on someone months back.

She tugged hard and a smug sneer came to her face as the man gave a small choke, his face turning a variety of colors. "We will see what happens first!" She said to the maid, not realizing he'd come home yet. "He'll die or I'll pop it off!" Her head turned to the side realizing someone was here and smiled. "Oh brother, you're home!"

From the moment he opened the door, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He had long learned to keep a comfortable distance from instincts of self-preservation past this threshold: what happened, happened. Sometimes he slipped. Other times, he drifted in a lofty numb. This was one of those lofty numbs.

He looked down at his buttons. Saw his own fingers. Saw the contrast of a medium-light complexion against wood, against something darker than wood in between the two.

Aslan was weightless, a feather in the wind. His feet weighed nothing; his thoughts, even less.

A silent look exchanged with the maid. It was to his bitten back dismay that she looked to him in relief: she thought he was part of this … and he supposed she was right. Without a word, he touched fingers to a dry part of her arm. How did he tell her he’d be happy to get her out? Write her a reference before Nisa grew wiser and throw whatever he could scrape up at her one-way train ticket?

Mercy. Was he too late? (Was he too soon?) Nisa sounded … happy. Overjoyed, even. What was the cost he was willing to pay to keep her happy?

He silently opened the door. Tasted bile before his eyes even registered the sight before him. His face remained impassive; each muscle deliberate in motion.

Think, Aslan. Think. No – act. There was no time to think.

“Nisa,” he read off from a long-practiced script of Unconditionally Loving Brother. “You’ll hurt your hands,” he improvised.

He stepped in beside her, closing her arms to take pressure off the man’s neck as he took the wooden handles on false pretense.

“This is quite the tool,” he mused with the slightest of forced smiles, like he’d just found a lovely new rosebush instead of a fucking custom killing instrument in his dear sister’s middle class hands. “Where did you get it?”

‘Please, you fucking idiot,’ he prayed. ‘Run!’

Where was all that blood coming from?

Nisa looked at him more fully. Half of her face and hair was covered and matted with blood. "Oh no, that's why I have this. It is so much easier on my hands. I had to wear gloves for weeks the last time I attempted it, that rope really dug into my delicate skin." She sighed but there was such a giddiness in her, like a bride on their special day.

"I created it myself. Just took a few empty wool spools I managed to buy quite cheap and ran the rope through them and tied it. It works so well. " She let him lower her arms and it might have become evident as she favored her left leg to turn slightly in his direction.

"I was trying to do things in a neater so it wouldn't cause so much damage or take too long to clean. And honestly ..." she dug her good foot's heel into his back until there was a cracked which was impossible to tell if it was the man or her boot. "I never thought I'd see him again. I was sure he was scared off or couldn't find us. But he did, and made sure you were not home. " She finally frowned towards Aslan.

"I feel bad for his lady, but he was so rude. I couldn't let him leave. I tried to drug them with tea. But you know? I don't have any clue about that sort of thing. I think I used too much. He refused to drink any but her..." she sighed. "Just started foaming and clawing at herself. I had the maid take her to the bathroom for water. He was very angry even though I told him it couldn't be the tea. I let everyone take their own cup." She smiled more. "At least they weren't so tragically rude to take any cup but the one closest. Oh well, shame about her. "

She shrugged and tried to delicately take the handles to her new toy from him. "I will get a plumber to replace the sink as soon as possible. And I should finish here. I am sorry we don't have dinner ready yet." She touched his cheek, staining it red. "I will get her to clean herself up and make you something. By morning, this will all be a dream. Ok?" She brought the hand down to get the rope and glared down as the man beneath her gave a desperate gasp.

She was glowing. What he would do to make her happy, and this, this was the only thing that made her truly smile. No cost was too great for her fleeting pleasures. Not family, not love, not even the surety of tomorrow, so long as this monster could wantonly slaughter whoever she managed to lure past their threshold.

Their threshold? Her threshold. He paid for the place and he slept here – and sometimes hardly that. This was Nisa’s dungeon, and their father had been the first who mistook it for home.

He lowered her arms, and he had visions of that noose tool wrapped about her neck. His face was expressionless, wood in his hands. There was something … off, about the way she was standing.

The man’s face was still bloated, reddened, when Aslan made eye contact with him. He stilled like a hunted deer – like Aslan had been the ‘true’ threat all along. This man. He had watched and waited, like a hawk? For a moment to catch his little sister, alone and presumably defenseless?

That she wasn’t was not the important part.

Drugged them with tea. Lady (complicit? Antagonist?) incapacitated, or worse. Came here with him, unchaperoned, to do what? Aslan’s hands tightened at first, rope still loose but grip hard on the sordid weapons. Then, his grip slackened. Had they succeeded in what they set out to do-

The victim yanked hard, scrambling out from underneath Nisa in his moment of puzzled distraction. He managed to wiggle out and slide a few steps away, lubricated in his own blood. Aslan caught up in two strides, planting a boot in his back to still him.

“What did you two come here for, that needed me gone?” Aslan demanded, fists clenched.

The man snarled, choked, cried, no words coming out coherently.

Nisa fell back when he moved. There was a small icy look towards the both of them for either losing her prey or being embarrassed in such a way. She stood quickly and approached, with a noticeable limp.

"I do not know if he can speak now. I did quite a bit of damage to the pig's throat. But I know, he made his intentions very clear. If it had been a trick I had no money to pay him back, he'd find some other payment. Either rob us or..." She folded her arms and glared down at him. "He didn't say it. But he made it very clear we were weak to him. I am sure he had not mentioned this to his friend as she seemed very shocked, but I think she was too timid to stop it or fight him."

She waved her hand and grabbed a poker from the fire place and glared down at the man, but then slowly smiled. "Unfortunately for him, I would have done this even if he had come with pure intentions of just getting his money. This is messier than I wished though. "

Nisa rest a hand delicately on Aslan's shoulder. She'd never felt so close to her brother as she did right now when he stomped on the man's back. "Do you want to finish this? I will give you this one gift if you'd like ." She said with sincere delight and kindness towards him.

Nisa limped. Aslan bore his weight down onto the leg upon her – no, their – victim. She implied rape. He let his weight settle hard onto the heel, concentrating it in one painful center.

Then she mentioned his ‘friend’. His ‘friend’, who was likely the other trail of blood, apparently seizing to death in their bathroom if her testimony was accurate. What was her crime? Trusting the wrong man? All he’d seen of her was humiliated devastation. ‘Too timid,’ as his sister put it.

Finally. A moment of truth, hot as the poker she held with relish. Copper and fire and smoked coals. How many times had he smelled something fainter, something that made him wonder? Something that seemed to swelter, stale and sickly sweet, every time the walls swelled with the rain?

He had a nearly-dead man under his boot. Barred him from his escape, for the sin of being too much like Nisa.

“Oh, Nisa,” he said instead, something hollow in his voice. “I would not take such a gift from you.”

His hand covered hers, carefully lifting her hand from its resting spot and squeezing her hand in his.

He couldn’t stand her hand so close to his neck. It reminded him too much of the stranglehold she had on everything else.

“I wouldn’t dare handle this improperly,” he reassured, though there was something even harsher in his gaze than usual.

With that, he let go of her hand and stepped off of the man (was he even still alive?). Closed the door with exceeding gentleness behind him. Went to the bathroom to wash the blood off his boots.

Nisa looked disappointed when he walked away. She shrugged and took the tool in hands to continue what she'd started and there was a sputter and gurgle sound as he walked away.

Unfortunately, the kitchen would have been a better option for Aslan. The sink was only half there. He must have missed her comment about the plumber. On the ground was the woman from the party, her head was slightly caved in and face almost unrecognizable from the lips up. Blood splashed the walls and floor as pieces of crackled and shattered porcelain scattered around the small room.

The woman was crumpled up on the floor in a very unnatural way with a large part of the sink having been unceremoniously left on her back, cracked and coated in blood and organic matter.

There might still be enough of a sink to use if he had wanted. Technically the important hardware was still all there and the bath was in one piece, just dirtied the same as the rest.

‘Hm,’ he thought a thousand meters away. ‘That doesn’t look like just poison.’

“Sorry,” he said to the dead body, like he’d just interrupted a woman getting dressed.

Aslan walked back down, washed up in the kitchen sink, and then spent a significant amount of time at the Swing Bridge contemplating jumping off it.

The night was nice and there was a small fog but not enough to really make the way difficult, just gave it a mood. A perfect night for him to check out his favorite spot.

Francis was surprised to see someone there, even more so it was Whitby's own little detective. He silently moved to stand beside him and look out. The taller man was an impatient and restless sort, so it wasn't long before he slapped the other man's shoulder almost hard enough to mistake it for him trying to send him over the side. He grinned innocently in his direction.

"Life stinks, doesn't it?"