“No, it’s fine,” Theron reassured, though the blush still stained his cheeks and he remained a little bashful.
“Guess my people skills are still a little rusty. Things are a bit different back home.”
Lyri beamed, rather enjoying the fact that the blush hadn’t faded from his features. It was adorable.
“I’m not exactly the best at it either. I can come on a bit too strong.”
“Wanted to be sure you were here.” It wasn’t a day for being alone, even if Konis wasn’t comforting. He took the drink with a grateful nod. “Drinking alone isn’t nearly as fun,” he said, offering a half-hearted smile.
“You’re a bad liar,” she answered before tipping her glass at him briefly. Not that she could really judge since her family could, for the most part, read her like an open book.
In a final act, Jack twisted Chance’s jaw suddenly, making sure it was broken well enough that he’d have trouble speaking for a while.
He thought about adding a few more stab wounds, but Chance was still half-gutted, even if his kidney had begun to heal already, so that was at least enough to put him out of action for a while.
Jack picked up his knife and wiped off the blade, returning back to his waistband before he grabbed the gory remnants of Chance’s wings, intending to take them with him and dispose of how he saw fit.
He tried to wait for Jack to be gone before collapsing, but it didn’t really work out that way. He could barely see through his dimming vision, everything beginning to feel numb.
For the first time in his life, he was wondering just how close to truly immortal he was and not entirely sure he wanted to find out.
“Was just thinking that I’ve kinda missed this,” he mumbled, a dreamy look on his face from the drugs in his system.
“I missed you.”
Saph’s expression softened and she wiggled her way upwards to curl against his side.
“I missed you too.”
Hearing that noise meant more to Jack than most probably understood the extent of. It meant Chance was suffering and that was what Jack wanted, as much as Chance might try to hide it, and without his wings, Chance would take far longer to heal his wounds and every moment of it would hurt in a way Jack was sure his father had never felt before, except maybe while he was chained, so even if he never actually went back to the Underworld, this was just as good in terms of making Chance feel what it was like to be weak and vulnerable.
“Who’s weak now, Chance?” he taunted, crouching down and grabbing Chance’s jaw to force him to look him in the eye. Jack wanted his father to see just how far he’d come and that he was the last person Chance should ever want to fuck with from now on.
“You stay away from me. You stay away from my family, or next time I’ll cut off more than your fucking wings,” he warned coldly. “And by the way, we might share dna, but I’m not your son. You’re nothing to me. I don’t even have your name anymore.”
He tried to swat him off, but everything spun the moment he tried to move. He had been staying away from Jack and the only contact he had had with Manson had involved leaving Seraphine with her on rare occasion when she had been pregnant with Teddy.
Avalon had been over, sure, but only to check in on Sera and Teddy, he knew that. He didn’t really care much either. Ava had signed the house over to Sera and him. Other than that, he had only really seen a handful of the family. He had been following the rules damn well and everyone knew it.
Jack was a little quicker and less careful with the other wing, breaking a couple of flight bones in the span as he pinned it with a little more difficulty than the one that had already been injured before he began cutting it.
He was also getting a little more carried away, his sense of vengeance and the memory of his own mutilation driving him now as he tore away at the remaining flesh with his own claws, the knife barely used for more than just separating the second joint as Jack ripped away the feathered mass.
A pained whine slipped his lips and his vision swam. The black spots were pressing hard at the edges and the only thing that kept him conscious was pure stubbornness. Had he had any food in his system, he would have puked, but all he could do was try to force himself to stay even remotely upright.
Jack began scoring tracks into the flesh at its root, the blade slipping under the layers of skin and muscle as he started to flay and separate them, pulling away chunks of bloody meat as he dug deeper toward the bone.
There was a brief pause as Jack decided whether to break the bones and leave them ragged or pry apart the joint the held it together, and he opted for the latter and arguably more painful of the two, jamming the tip of the blade into the seam of cartilage, simultaneously severing the connective tissue and levering the bone out of the socket with a wet popping sound, his foot against his fathers back for additional force.
Chance clenched his jaw tight enough to feel the bones pop, but he refused to scream. Dark spots danced over his vision and a small, pained sound managed to sound in his throat, but that was the only reaction he gave.
Of course, the trembling of his body was more than enough of a sign. The wings had already been damaged from being bound too long, but, if anything, that only made it hurt more.
Even now, Jack expected Chance to put up some sort of fight at the mere thought of losing his wings, but it didn’t surprise him that there was none so far, half figuring that Chance genuinely didn’t know or understand just how excruciating it was, half guessing that maybe he just didn’t have the capacity to even care about that.
Jack pulled the knife free from Chance’s shoulder, turning it over in his hands before correcting his grip and steadying one of the wings with his empty hand. He wasn’t going to make it quick or clean by any means. Chance hadn’t paid him that courtesy, so why should he? Still, Chance should perhaps be thankful that it would still be cleaner than literally hacking at them with a bone saw that hadn’t been properly sharpened like he’d done to his son.
Chance had mostly resigned himself to his fate. He had known the moment he had made that damn deal with Azrael that this was the one thing Jack would make good on. After all, he knew the darkest parts of his son better than anyone outside of maybe Manson.
The only semblance of a fight he put up was to pull his wings tightly to his back, or try to any way. The one was already aching and it made it hard, just enough so for Jack’s grip on it to overpower his own will.
Jack left the blade wedged in Chance’s back for a moment, just out of reach of either of Chance’s hands while he freed up his own to execute the next manoeuvre, something Ava had taught him with Warren’s help in demonstrating proper technique. The way Ava had shown him had been somewhat slow in its motion, but with practice, Jack had gotten quicker at it to the point where he could aim a couple of sharp blows at the correct spot that put enough pressure on to force Chance’s wings out.
The force of the wings coming undone shredded the already ruined shirt and Chance’s eyes went wide. That was a move he hadn’t expected and the knife still embedded in his shoulder made the motion all the more painful. He didn’t have to wonder who had taught the boy that cute little trick and he wished, in that moment, that he could make Ava’s life a living hell for it.
Jack knew he was trying to get a rise out of him but he remained unfazed. Everything he’d done so far would be easy for Chance to heal relatively quickly from in his current state, but Jack knew exactly what to do to change that.
Taking advantage of the position Chance was hunched in, Jack aimed his next blow into the space below one of his shoulder blades, angled so that it didn’t so much aim at piercing his rib cage, but bury itself in the root of where Chance’s wings would be if they weren’t currently bound.
It was almost enough to force at least that wing out and Chance hissed before driving his fist into the floor a few times to try and distract himself from that one. He was a little surprised it had taken Jack that long to get to his back, honestly, but he was beyond being able to goad him about it.
ofviolentdeath 