CoR An Earlier than Expected Homecoming

Sune

Sune

Grumpy Badger
Moderator
Benefactor
Developer
Location
The Den
Dev watched the numbers on the taxi meter climb higher, the red digits ticking up like a slow, inevitable countdown. He could’ve picked a cheaper way to get back. But none of them were as fast, none of them as straightforward. The alternatives involved more people—crowded buses, packed stations, unnecessary conversations. And right now, Dev couldn’t deal with people.

Not when he was running on an additional 72 hours of no sleep. Not when his mind kept looping through Baron's cryptic texts, each one leaving a heavier knot in his stomach. Baron was the only one from the pack who could've reached him, but he hadn't given much information—just an urgent need to know where Bastien was. And Ragenard… Ragenard hadn’t responded at all.

Something was wrong.

He dozed off in the backseat between stops, the exhaustion pulling at him in waves. Occasionally, he jolted awake just long enough to buy snacks, numbly watching the landscape shift from the Iverian landscape he'd called home these last few years to the familiar streets of his past.

When the taxi finally rolled to a stop, Dev paid the fare with what little money he had left and shouldered his backpack. He’d had the driver drop him off a few blocks away from The Den—force of habit. Walking the last stretch gave him time to settle himself, to breathe. Snow would be impressed—he’d actually kept up with his workouts. Could even run a few miles now without feeling like he was dying. He couldn't wait to see Salem, Ziessel, and Anna. Hell, he’d even take the inevitable jabs from the others—so long as they were all okay.

But when he turned the last corner, everything inside him seized.

The Den was gone.

A burned-out husk of a building stood where it had once been, blackened and hollow.

Dev’s heart slammed against his ribs. His breath hitched.

"What the fuck happened here?!" he choked out, barely aware he'd spoken.

His hands moved on instinct, yanking out his phone. A few quick tricks, and he hacked into the Bloodstones’ group chat. Then he started typing, fast, frantic.

[To: Group]
Guys?? This isn’t funny.

[To: Group]
What the fuck?

[To: Group]
Where’s The Den?! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY STUFF?!

[To: Group]
What the fuck happened here?


No response.

His pulse roared in his ears as he switched to direct messages, fingers shaking as he typed.

[To: Ziessel]
Help. What the fuck happened? Where are you???

[To: Snow]
DUDE, WHERE IS EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING?!

[To: Baron]
I swear to god, YOU DIDN’T TELL ME THINGS WERE LITERALLY ON FIRE!!


He stared at the screen, waiting. Praying for a response. Any response.

But the silence stretched on, thick and suffocating.
 
Thankfully, before a full minute had elapsed, his phone buzzed with several replies in quick succession.

Snow: Where are you? I'll come and get you.

Snow: Too much happened to explain over text.

Snow: Keep your head down till I get there.
 
There wasn't a direct response to his messages from Ziessel. She had been working on paperwork, damage records and possibilities for the future when her phone buzzed several times. She stopped scratching between Witch Trials' ears gently and the ginger cat prrt'd with thinly veiled disappointment. But she could wait. This couldn't. It wasn't hard to guess or check where Dev had sent the messages from. She had just hoped it wouldn't be this soon.

She got up and was going to go get her bike to meet the pup when she ran into Snow. They were going to the same place, it seemed. Devon and him had been good friends before he left for college. So she wasn't surprised he got a message too. She joined him then, and followed him. It would be faster this way.
 
Dev’s breath hitched before it finally came in shakily the moment Snow’s replies buzzed in. He's alive. Not everything had been lost.

He scrubbed at his face with the back of his sleeve, smearing away the moisture clinging stubbornly beneath his eyes. It wasn’t—he wasn’t—No. Just the damn smog. Thick today. Got in his eyes, that’s all.

[To: Snow]
By the Den—or what’s left of it. I’m tucked in the alley behind the Shake’n’Bake. Hurry.
 
Dev received only one more reply from Snow before radio silence.

Snow: Coming.




Snow and Ziessel had exchanged only a few words after running to each other in the lot of the railyard by their bikes -- enough to confirm they'd received the same messages, and had the same thought. It wasn't safe out there alone, especially for someone who didn't know what had been going on.

Less than ten minutes after the brief text exchange, they were pulling up by the bakery. Snow didn't even wait till his bike had come to a full halt before he kicked the stand out and dismounted, leaving it to skid to an unsteady stop as he headed for the alley's entrance at a jog.

Only once he saw Dev was unharmed -- if clearly shaken -- did the knot of tension leave his shoulders. It had been unlikely anything would happen again so soon, but they'd thought that after the Scions, and Aimee had suffered for that assumption. They all had.

Now that he was here, though, he wasn't altogether sure what to say. It had been years since they saw each other in person, and just in the last few weeks, more had happened than he had any idea how to even begin explaining. He didn't know that even someone who wasn't awful with words like he was would be able to.

"You're here," he said instead, condensing an essay's worth of sentiments into just those two words -- most of which were sure to be lost in translation. The relief, at least, was obvious enough. "I ... didn't know you were coming back yet."
 
Other than the urge to see Dev, and the claw around her throat that felt like it was choking her, the dread that he wasn't really okay until she could smell him.. Ziessel did reach the conclusion that she also needed a haircut. It was extremely long, she hadn't bothered with a helmet and it was a wonder she hadn't run someone over or crashed into Snow during their brief hurried ride. She was however out of practice riding and didn't jump off as gracefully as the white haired man did. So she trotted after him moments after, brushing her hair back with clawed hands that lightly scratched at her scalp. With unfocused eyes, she did catch Dev's scent.

He was okay, and he was here. He was real, and he was actually here.

"Dev..." She rasped out, tension she didn't know had been there leaving her body. Taking a few steps towards him with supernatural speed, she hugged him tight. It looked like she suddenly skipped forward. The last few days had been rough, and a mess of trying to sort out her memories while avoiding people she wasn't sure she remembered right. Then paperwork and files that only confirmed and re-confirmed the horrors she had already known.
 
Dev stood with his back against the bakery wall, half-swathed in the shadow of the alley, arms crossed loosely like he was holding himself together by force of habit. At the sound of approaching footsteps—first Snow’s, then Ziessel’s—he looked up. His breath caught, just for a second, when he saw them.

Snow’s voice came first. “You’re here.” Just two words, but they hit like a gut punch softened by familiarity.

Dev’s mouth twitched—something almost like a smile, but not quite. The relief in his eyes gave away more than he probably meant to. He pushed off the wall with a slow breath, one shoulder rising in a half-hearted shrug that didn’t carry its usual laid-back ease.

“Yeah,” he murmured, voice rough—whether from disuse or the knot still coiled in his throat, it was hard to tell. “Baron sent me a text. No details. Just enough to make me worry. So... I came back earlier than planned. Pulled a few all-nighters to get here.”

Then Ziessel moved—blur-fast—and suddenly Dev found himself wrapped in arms and warmth and a scent that hit somewhere deep in his bones, past memory and into instinct. His whole body locked up for a second, caught off guard… then melted. He held her just as tightly, eyes slipping shut.

For a long moment, he couldn’t speak. Didn’t even try.

When he finally did, it was soft, strained—like the words barely made it through the knot in his chest.

“I was scared no one would come,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Fuck… I’m glad you’re here.”

His eyes opened again, gaze lifting over Ziessel’s shoulder to meet Snow’s.

“What the fuck happened?”
 
Ziessel blurring past him was enough to jar Snow out of his moment of uninvited vulnerability -- to remind him of where he was. It was no time to let the walls he'd been keeping up for the past weeks slip. He wasn't confident he'd be able to rebuild them if he did.

His expression had hardened back to a stoic mask by the time Dev looked back up at him, and he shook his head. "A lot. Too much to get into here. We should get you back to the railyard first, then we can talk."

He nodded over his shoulder, back towards the bikes. "When you're ready."
 
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