homecoming | adroxis family

[rook]

hal

You wait with bated breath in the darkness of your workshop as the steady footsteps of your client pace back-and-forth, just inches above your safe-haven. Someone you don't really know just gave you some mints to calm your nerves before you handed them the bespoke heavy-duty ballistic weapon, designed to punch holes through brick. It was hand painted by you, with expert craftsmanship and attention to detail, although you're not so much concerned with the job you've done on it's appearance so much as the potential of your creation. This was no vanity order.

Words are exchanged under a cloud of stale cigarette smoke and exchanged pleasantries, and not once can you hear a voice raised from the safety of your basement. Everything goes to plan. There's more chatter, rumours collected from each party, and then a parting of the ways - you follow the heavy footsteps over your head, out towards the side door where they exit, and then you're left in silence.

You think that maybe you've done a good job, but there's part of you that worries just what you've unleashed. Looking down at the black paint and oil spread wildly over your hands, you begin to ask yourself how many hours is it until a life is taken, and although it wasn't your finger on the trigger, you birthed that weapon into the world. So it's your fault, right?

The person who's name you don't know tells you technicalities that are beyond you, so you shake your head and follow him out of your basement and up into the kitchen of the abandoned house. Abandoned as in the previous tenants were forcibly removed so that one of the famous Adroxis prodigal sons could do his work in peace and isolation.

This kitchen stinks of rat poison and stale bread.

You take your split, and head back home to your family. They're proud of you. They think you're important, just like them. You belong there. With all the enthusiasm of a fish on hot tarmac you drag yourself across the streets of Nine and back to the place they call home, but you call a house, and slip inside unnoticed.

These are usually working hours for you, but for everyone else it's the dead of night. You prefer to keep your sleep-cycle as polar-opposite to everyone else as possible - less distractions that way. Less that could go wrong. As if working in a basement on the other side of the District wasn't enough distance between you and your siblings already.

The kitchen here is well stocked, with boxes upon boxes of sugary cereals crammed inside cupboards, and tins all placed neatly in rows. The fridge is full of emerald green bottles of beer and cans of exotic ales. There's more alcohol than food, you notice - half eaten meats and cheeses litter the top shelf, but other than that everything else is a liquid diet.

You're aware you're not alone, and instinctively your hand moves to your hip - just for the briefest of seconds, before your arm then drops. You don't want to blow off the head of one of your siblings, and you're damn sure if it is one of them, then half your brains would already be spread over the kitchen counter if they didn't know their brother better than to come in at this hour.

You think you'd rather take the bullet than the conversation that follows.

[gamemaker kelsier]

n i g h t .

"Seems like street lights,
glowing happen to be just like
moments passing in front of me"

He felt his head falling too late to really catch it, his elbow slipped down instead to brace himself against the wooden desk. The soft yellow light from the desk lamp drew a warm circle around where he sat in the administration office of Adroxis Ammunitions. The warehouse was quiet.

How long had he been sitting there, he wondered, ached for a sign, but all there was was the quiet tick of the clock on the wall above the couch across from him. There was no other sound, everyone else having gone home ages ago while he'd sat bent over the month-end reports.

He had years of that ahead of him, the thought was depressing. Night reached for a cigarette, a bad habit that had formed quickly over the last couple of years. He dropped his hand a moment later. He'd been trying to quit.

Night rested his chin in his hand and gazed out the muton window to his right instead. The street below was empty and he knew that no one at home was waiting up for him or wondering where he was. He kept long odd hours and was barely around anyway. If he died it would most likely take his family a day or two to start searching for him. It was his own fault, he worked too much but there wasn't an alternative. Eve and him had to do it all and since he'd shirked the reports last month, it was definitely his turn.

Still, he decided to call it and made his way out of the factory slowly, tugging on various doors to make sure everything was locked tight. Then, on his walk home, he forgot himself and there was a cigarette between his fingers again. There was a slight breeze wafting through Nine but sweat slipped down his back in the summer air all the same. It always felt a little bit like a walk of shame, going home.

He didn't really like being there, having his sibling's eyes on him and if not theirs, then his great-grandfather's staring at him from over the stairs in the entrance hall. It was a portrait taken when Babe Adroxis had gotten victor. Night had always wondered about the man in the photo, if all of the grandeur had been his intention.

He chose the kitchen entrance instead, the portrait was creepy at night.

Night stubbed his cigarette out on the back steps and slipped the butt into his pocket to dispose of later. Nicotine stained his fingers and he couldn't keep the stale smell of smoke away but it was easy enough to lie to a family that never really looked.

There was no reason to expect anyone to still be awake but Night knew he wasn't the only one who kept odd hours, his siblings had all begun working as well. He could feel the way that they drifted apart and while pieces of him panicked and wanted to try and scrape them all back together, he knew it would never happen. It'd never stick, the childhood he remembered was long gone.

There was Hal though, his little brother, stood in front of the fridge. Night wondered if his brother was growing centimetres daily, he already seemed taller than he remembered. How long had it been though since he and Hal had crossed paths? They were both the type to keep to themselves.

Hal seemed to realize he was not alone before Night could announce himself, his little brother's hand was on his gun within moments. Night simply stared, the gun beneath his jacket untouched, he'd take another bullet for a sibling any day.

"It's just me Hal," Night said, voice slightly rough from hours of sitting in silence, "If you wanted to eat, I could make something."

How long had it been since he'd hung out with Hal, let alone spoken to him? Days at the very least. The offer was genuine but would most likely be rejected, Night had grown so distant from his siblings in the past few years, they might as well be strangers.

[rook]

hal

The voice that fills the sour void in the kitchen is warm and light, and your shoulders relax a little at the dulcet tones of your brother. You turn to face him, three years your elder but his he doesn't seem as tall as he used to. You're still growing, whereas he has plateaued earlier than you or even he may have expected. Still, he's your older brother - you're oldest brother - and he took a bullet because that's family tradition, and you know he'll always look out for you one way or the other.

It just feels like lately you haven't wanted to speak to any of them. You're sick of your cousins walking around the streets wearing your surname like a badge of honour, like a free pass to do whatever the fuck they want. You're fed up of Eve trying to mother you all the time. Storm and Trace are too immature to understand what you're all inheriting, so you'd rather only see them on the weekend.

You keep yourself to yourself, and hide down in that basement, because there it's easy to forget. It's easy to fall into your own world with your paints and your oils and your job. Your passion. It's easier to turn a blind eye to the money laundering and the drug smuggling and the killing upon killing that's not done in the Adroxis name but you can see the fucking signs that it's got your family's involvement written all over it.

Hal's the oldest brother, one of the two heirs. He shoulders most of the responsibility, along with Eve, and two years ago underwent the same sadistic ritual that your father did. The gunshots still ring in your ears.

You look at Night now and you don't see that crumbled bleeding fifteen year old lying on the factory floor, the faint halogen lighting casting his blood amber like honey. No, he's grown from that moment. From that pain grew a leader among you, and your brother went from strength to strength since. He does more than he's expected to at seventeen, and you know that one day he will run everything.

Here in the kitchen, in the dead of night, two brothers stand and you feel worlds away from him. You've not spoken in days, and when you do it's about business. It's about the bespoke orders you've been working on, it's about bullet manufacturing yealds or optimising supply lines. Your father wants you more involved with logistics than your art projects, and you think that maybe Night has been told to pressure you into that sector too.

But he's not said anything to you about it. Yet.

Your stomach begins to complain, coming to life at the suggestion of food. You know you can't cook, so anything you do put together at this hour would be an unsavoury collection of cured meats and blocks of cheese, followed by an unhealthy amount of yogurt. Your belly doesn't tend to like the hours you keep, and the diet you follow, so you think maybe it'd be good if Night cooks you something more balanced.

"That would be good." Your smile is tired, and you want to laugh at Night's equally exhausted expression, but it's all you can do to muster up a heavy puff of air through your nose.

You take your gun and place it on the marble surface of the kitchen table, before hopping up onto the stool, propping up your elbows and resting your head on your arms like a pillow.

"Long night?" You ask your brother, knowing from the rings under his eyes and the cracks in his voice that he has been putting business before personal well-being. You don't want the details, you just want to be polite.

[[nyte]]

 TY ADROXIS

Sleep comes easier to him than most, it would seem. Home sweet home was infested with rats tonight, their meddling echoes up the walls through old copper pipes and it's driving Ty mad. His family wore suffering as a badge, treating it as though it were inexorable from themselves simply because a shitty old man used his hangman's good will to build a shitty old empire. Then they have the gall to wonder why they can't find peace; the least they could do was suffer a quietly.

He first tries to burrow deeper beneath the covers, pulling faded wool up over his ears. It's hypocritical to be upset - maybe that's exactly why he is. Ty is hardly known for his consideration of others, especially the nights he slips back into bed after wasting it inside some grimy bar high on adrenaline, not booze. Sometimes he'll disappear for days just to see what Night will say. So that he can shout at him for being concerned or not concerned enough.

Voices waft up from somewhere deep in the house and Ty abandons the notion of sleep completely. He sits up with a grimace, swinging his legs over his bed and waiting for the world to come into focus. For a moment all he can see is himself reflected in an adjacent vanity, looking pretty small considering he's meant to be larger than life. The faded grey of his comforter draws tight around his shoulders, sleep-swollen eyes lowered into a half-lidded glare as he's forced to regard himself.

A variety of makeup products lay scattered about the water-stained dresser, most stolen, and he considers applying some so that he can stand the sight just a bit better.

Most of his siblings feel like strangers, though Ty is happy to admit that's entirely his fault. It's not often that he tries to speak with them, not with how many seem happy to wrack up The Adroxis' body count. Maybe he'd like this legacy a little more if the sight of blood didn't leave him nauseous. They fund nine's disorder, profit off of it, no different than the Capitol. Ty can't for the life of him understand how that begets the pride with which they wield their name.

Though he doesn't mind how lonely his life is, not usually.

But the rats in the pipes pick at the scabs on his brain and for some reason it doesn't seem all that unpleasant. He'll chock it up to sleep deprivation and midnight madness come morning.

Letting out a long suffering sigh, he stands up slowly keeping his blanket wrapped around him because god forbid this house be above freezing. Then again, morgues aren't meant to be. His bare feet stick to the stairs as he picks his way down them, following the dim light flooding out of the kitchen.

"Strange time for a party," He drawls, pulling out a chair before using it prop himself onto the kitchen counter, cross-legged. A gun stares up at him from the kitchen table and he quickly averts his gaze.

Hal is here, Ty doesn't mind him too much. He knows older brothers are meant to have soft spots for the younger ones but Ty's scared of fucking that up so he never bothered getting to know them. God knows it hurt when Night went all broken and Ty is much less reliable than their beloved heir apparent. Still, he can't help but offer him a smile.

Which promptly fades the minute he turns his gaze to Night. "Don't mind me," He waves a hand at both of them before stifling a yawn, "I'd hate to interrupt brotherly bonding."

That sounded kind of spiteful, didn't it?