Chapter Text
Smoke billows out from the joint clenched between Finney’s frigid fingers, her lungs burning with the smoke. She’s waiting for it to start working, to calm her so she can at least try to get some sleep, so Gwen and her dad can’t get on her ass about it anymore. Apparently not sleeping is especially bad for omegas.
Her knuckles sting, red and raw from when she beat up a boy earlier in the day, and how she keeps rubbing them against her rough jacket to scratch the itch the healing brings. That particular fight had tickled her somewhat; a big, strong, promising athlete of an alpha brought down by a ‘petite’ omega. The cold air does nothing to help the stinging, and the mocking stature of a man she well and truly hates standing in the bushes across from her also doesn’t help.
Finney shudders, remembering how that exact man stood in the doorway of her own personal Hell. Remembering how his hands felt on her skin, his hips pinning her down, his hands gripping her already sore wrists, his… She shouldn’t think about that part of him. She bit it off, and she thinks it’s entirely ironic that she can’t think of that particular moment without being sick, despite it being the moment she turned the tables on him and became his predator instead of his prey.
“If you try and touch me, I’ll scratch your face.” Finney mumbles around her joint, her free hand trembling against her thigh, hidden in her jeans’ pocket.
The ghost man tilts his head, mockingly, just like every movement he makes. “This face?” He asks cheerily. Finney remembers it from Hell. His grotesque cheer at being able to scare and torment five boys and eventually a girl.
“Who are you talking to?”
Finney startles, dropping her joint in the snow and wheeling around to come face to face with her dad.
Before Hell, and the ghost man who used to be a very alive man, Finney’s dreams were haunted by this man. This man who stands before her, alive and worried, and Finney isn’t quite sure what to make of him.
Finney has heard all of Gwen’s stories from the year that she was missing, held in Hell and tormented by her own personal devil. How this man before her got drunk more and hit less somehow, overcome with loss and despair. Finney had never once thought that her father would ever hold an emotion for her other than anger. Apparently he did, and it was brought to light when she wasn’t even there to see it.
He’s three years sober. Finney was in the hospital for a year and a half after she escaped from Hell. She remembers coming home from the hospital to the familiar home with the familiar scent of alcohol, and the familiar sound of their old, grainy television playing the news in the background, just for something to listen to. She remembers thinking that, despite how dark this home is, how many bad memories it held, how many ghosts haunted it, literally and figuratively, it was home. She remembers a weight lifting off of her shoulders, because she was finally home.
Home had been Hell since Hope Blake, Gwen and Finney’s mother and Terrence’s wife, killed herself. It may still be Hell for Gwen; a place of waiting, of mourning and uncertainty. But Finney had found a new Hell, and this previous Hell could not and would not compare to the new one.
The Basement will always haunt Finney more than this house will.
“Finn?” Her father repeats, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Nothing, Dad.” Finney tells him, but she knows she probably won’t get away with it.
“I worry about you, Baby.” Her father sighs, and Finney thinks that he’s terrible in this moment.
He’s going to try and ask about The Basement and The Grabber and Finney has refused to talk about those topics since she came crashing through the front door hiding The Basement away, with her own blood mixing with The Grabber’s in her mouth, having to keep her head on her neck with a shaking hand.
“Go on.” The Grabber taunts, staying in his hiding place in the bushes. “Tell Daddy what a naughty omega you were.”
Finney’s fingers find the scar across her neck, where The Grabber’s axe caught her as he went down.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Finney sighs, before her dad can ask the question. “Isn’t it good enough that I’m here and not out on the streets?”
Finney can see her dad’s tiny, minuscule flinch at the sound of her voice. She isn’t exaggerating when she says she had to keep her head on her neck; The Grabber nearly took her head straight off. It was a miracle she managed to kill him before she bled out. But it damaged her throat and vocal cords, so she permanently sounds raspy and in need of a drink. Not the typical voice for an omega.
“Don’t go out, Finney.” Her dad says softly. They’ve had this conversation multiple times, especially the early days when Finney had only just come home and was practically jumping out of her skin at being cooped up in her room, so she would leave through her window and not come back until early morning. It freaked Gwen and her dad out, so she had to stop doing it and sit on the roof instead of escape into the streets.
“I won’t.” Finney nods. Her father stands awkwardly next to her, but Finney basks in the silence. The Basement was always silent, other than the phone ringing and the odd dripping noise, but the hospital she was kept in for a year and a half was never quiet, there was always something going on.
Finney can tell that her father is getting kind of fed up with her behaviour as of late; smoking weed, staying out late, not going to sleep, being moody. The only reason he only slightly tolerates it is because he knows that Finney is only trying to distract herself. He didn’t even throw a fit when she dyed blue streaks into her hair and dyed her bangs entirely blue, or when she snuck away for her eighteenth birthday and got a tattoo of a cluster of eight stars; one for her mother, one for each of the five victims of The Grabber, one for The Grabber’s brother and one for the girl she used to be before she met The Grabber.
“Come in soon, please.” Her dad says, ghosting a hand over her arm, carefully not touching her. He drops his hand and walks back into the house before Finney can answer him, not like she was going to anyway.
Finney’s body burns despite the cold and snow, and she shudders at the reminder of the agony she has to go through every two months.
Other omegas - normal omegas - get their heats every six months, but Finney was kidnapped literally the day after she presented as an omega and had a gruelling five day long first heat, and the stress of the entire situation had messed with her biology.
One of the more frequent doctors when she was in the hospital told her that an omega’s heat was to allow the body to be vulnerable and so the omega can be cared for properly, and the first few heats can be irregular, and that stress and negative emotions can affect heats permanently. When Finney’s heats were irregular in The Basement, they were coming every month, and because the stress wasn’t leaving, they got worse every time they came.
It was only in the hospital that the doctors managed to get her heats to be two months apart.
Finney refuses to pander to her heat-induced needs. She hates her heats, hates how weak they make her, hates how sexualised they are. She’s never had a sexual want during heat, and she isn’t sure whether it’s because there must be something wrong with her, or because she can’t fathom wanting anything along even the remotely similar lines of what happened to her in The Basement.
Ignoring the frightening twist of her stomach at that line of thinking, Finney shrugs out of her thick jacket and leaves it on the railing as she lays herself out in the snow, staring up at the waning stars, wondering if her mother is watching her; whether she still loves her or if she’s disappointed in her.
It’s the pack omega’s job to provide a safe space for the pack, to comfort and heal. Hope Blake had been excellent at her job. She had a massive nest that they could all fit in that always had the best mix of scents of their family, and her purr was as soothing as a warm blanket on a cold day.
Finney had been given the role of pack omega when she presented, but she had been taken swiftly after, and she had never quite learned exactly how to care for her family of alphas the way her mother had done it. Sometimes she feels broken, since she’s the one needing comfort and healing instead of her alpha father and alpha sister.
The Grabber is right, Finney thinks. She is a bad omega.