#3) how giant miles' hand looks there????

[drinkingbitterboy]

screenshots that make me go 😩

[selenitesdawn]

Temperance (1/3)

pairing: wanda maximoff x female!reader plot: Your best friend Kate convinced you to do charity work in Sokovia with some of your old classmates, including your former bully Vision and his girlfriend Wanda Maximoff, who you inconveniently took too much of a liking in. warnings: 18+ !! minors dni. wanda is with vision... also, suggestive content I guess word count: 1115

Patience is a virtue. Patience is the solution. These have been your only thoughts for days now. From a self-imposed affirmation to a recurring echo in your head, this reminder is all you had to get through the situation at hand. What else could you do? Keep trying to ignore your desire? The craving that has kept you awake for days and nights?

The thing is, you may be able to trick your brain for a while. Convince yourself that the way her nose wrinkles when she grins doesn't do anything to you. That the way her middle and ring finger draw the same patterns over and over again on the pages of her book whenever she is deep in thought, doesn't stir something inside of you. That the muffled moans coming from her and Vision's room at night don't bother you. Your brain has managed to lie to itself for a long time, but you can no longer ignore what Wanda is doing to you. So instead of denying your feelings, you decided that you have to sit through them. Until you can finally leave this place.

You weren't planning on pining after your old classmate's girlfriend, but here you were. Miles away from home, locked up with the constant reminder that you can never be with Wanda the way you want to. Originally, the three months in Sokovia were supposed to fulfill you. You just wanted to take care of the local street dogs with your best friend Kate. Do something good. That was it.

“Come on y/n, you've always had a heart for street animals,” your best friend said to you at the time. Back then she turned up at your door without a warning and told you about this great trip Vision had planned.

“Kate, I barely got anything done last semester. I can't waste another one. Besides, my boss never gives me that long of a vacation.”

You knew Kate wouldn't leave your apartment until you said yes. You could tell by the way her eyes were gleaming. How she slightly bend over the table you were sitting at, her gaze not leaving you for one second. Of course, the whole thing is much easier for Kate. Her mother is filthy rich. Kate can basically do whatever she wants. She could disappear for one year, travel the world with money she didn't earn and wouldn't have to worry about her life back home for one moment. You don't have that luxury.

“Think about it. First of all, you do something that fulfills you. Besides, I know you y/n. You haven't wanted to work in that rancid bakery for months. We'll find something new for you afterwards. Not to mention that volunteering to help street dogs for three months looks great on your CV. Plus: I heard Vision rented a mansion”

Vision. The name alone triggered something in you. Vision is not only the son of the famous billionaire Tony Stark, but also a giant asshole. Before Vision knew you were friends with Kate, he took every opportunity to trigger you in some way. Like standing in front of your locker with his group of followers for no reason, just so you couldn't get to it. The worst thing he ever did was probably when he stole your notebook and read out loud in class what you had written about your former classmate Natasha. Some cheesy and cringe poem you managed to suppress from your memories. From that day on, it wasn't just the whole school that knew you liked women. You also were never able to look Natasha in the eye again. But Vision somehow always managed to come out of it okay. His reputation was disgustingly squeaky clean.

“It's so weird imagining Vision doing something voluntarily that doesn't serve only himself. Are you sure he isn't just joking?,” you had asked back then.

“I think he has really changed since high school. Besides, his girlfriend is originally from Sokovia and I think it was her idea? I don't know for sure. But please, y/n, join me. I'd do anything to spend more than an hour a week with my best friend. And this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! Vision specifically asked if you want to join.”

You've never been able to deny Kate a wish. But also, it's never led you into such a miserable situation before. So this is where you were. In a villa far too grand for it to feel like a prison. Besides Vision, Wanda and Kate, there were two other old classmates; Steve and Bucky. Living together turned out to be easier than you thought, especially considering the fact that Vision was there. But your feelings for Wanda kept causing you problems. Whenever the redhead came near you, you started to stumble over your words. One long look alone could throw you completely off balance. But it was even worse when she smiled at you. When she listened to you and her head slightly tilted at the same time. Or when you were cooking and she suddenly appeared behind you, her hand softly placed around your waist and her head set down on your shoulder.

“What are you blessing us with this evening?,” she inquired with an almost teasing tone in her voice.

Before you were able to even articulate anything, she took her free hand, slid it along your arm and took the wooden spoon out of your hand.

“May I?,” her voice dangerously low, as she already moved the spoon towards her mouth, looking straight at you. You just gulped and managed a small nod as Wanda put the spoon in her mouth, her gaze never leaving you as she sucked it clean. Her green eyes were barely visible as her dilated pupils covered them almost completely. A soft moan escaped from her lips as she handed the spoon back to you.

“You're so good at this y/n,” Wanda groans, her hand which still holds onto your waist making its way to your lower back, smoothly slipping under your loose t-shirt. The cold rings on her fingers on your warm skin immediately sent shivers down your spine. Her pinky slightly slipped under the waistband of your sweatpants before she left you standing alone in the kitchen.

She must do this on purpose. There is no other way.

You thought to yourself. But what was the use? Either you are right and she does it on purpose or you are wrong and project your fantasies onto her. In both cases, it is best to simply stay away from Wanda. Because there is no way you don't end up completely fucked. Right?

: Part 2

[latenightdaydreams]

I HAVE COME BACK! i loved what you did with my request omg <3 but now i have something real dirty i wanna ask of you my lovely.

is it possible we can get a mermaid type thing? so what i'm picturing is kinda like the original Ariel movie yk? so the reader can have a giant fish tail and can speak underwater but instead of losing a voice when they shift to two legs, they lose vision :DDD

really it's like the blindfold kink without a blindfold lmaoo but can we also get the reader to be a bit on the chubbier side? reader likes to eat too much krill lol TYSM MY LOVELY you work so hard i love youu

I LOVE THIS IDEA SO MUCH!!!!

König x Mermaid!Reader (fem)

Part 2

MDNI🔞

Master List ✍🏽

>cw: fem/afab, sketchy deals, blindness, groping

2.0k word count

🧜‍♀️

.

.

Last week you’ve noticed a ship docked in the port; you typically scour for human inventions. Your first thought is excitement about all the new things that might be tossed into the sea or on shore for you to grab. Yet, it’s not the little treasures that keep bringing you back.

You linger miles away from the shoreline, watching as the men on the ship wake up. Only the top of your head peeking through the water so you aren’t spotted. Your eyes instantly focus on him. He towers over all the other men, his pale skin turning red from exposure to the blistering sun. It’s almost as if your heart stops beating when you see him. He’s perfect, worth leaving the safety of distance to get a closer look.

König walks on to the dock with his men, his mind fuzzy as he recovers from heat exhaustion; not being able to fully rest. He has never felt this level of disorientation before. As he walks along the boardwalk, his flash falls off his hip into the water. His eyes shift, looking as he sinks lower down into the water.

“Scheiße.”

König stops, pulling off his white shirt and dark blue pants, tossing them aside so they don’t weigh him down. He dives into the blue water, swimming down after his flask. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a shape, causing him to panic, missing his flask as he turns around to swim back up.

This is the closest you’ve ever been to a human, to him. You watch him return quickly to the surface without his item, so you grab it for him. König breaks the water, crawling up on to the shoreline. He lies on his back breathing deeply from the adrenaline that just rushed through his body. His eyes remain watching the water, yet he sees no shark fin. Could he be seeing things still?

With his flask in hand, you poke your head out of the water. Your eyes instantly locking with his pale blue eyes. After a moment of intense eye contact, you lift your arm with his flask. König sits slack jaw looking at you, a beautiful woman in the water.

Your head goes back underneath as you swim closer to him, showing up only a foot away from one another. You take your time to study his features, how beautiful he looks. His skin was covered in scars and his eyes locked onto you.

“Hallo?” König says in a small voice that surprises himself.

“Hello.” You bring up his flask to hand to him, coming up onto land more.

König ignores the flask in your hand. Instead, he looks at your whole body. Your skin seems impossibly soft, your large breasts bare without a top also exposing your chubby stomach. As his eyes travel down, the color of a bright green and iridescent blue looking fish's tail follows you.

“König!” A group of voices shout from behind him.

“I’ll be right there!”

He turns to look behind him at his men calling for him. Once he turns back to face you, you’re gone. Nowhere to be seen. His eyes frantically search for your presence, but the only thing that remains is his flask pushed into the sand.

“König, come on. We’re late to start the day.” One of his men, Alan, says as he approaches him on the beach.

“Did- did you see her?” König asks, still searching the ocean for you.

“Who?” Alan looks down confused.

“There was… a naked woman. I think she was a woman.”

“I think the suns getting to you again, maybe you should get in the shade and drink something.” Alan tries to suppress the chuckle in his voice so he doesn’t anger the testy giant.

“I heard her speak…maybe you’re right.”

König stands and grabs his flask, walking back to the dock to get dressed before following his men to the small port city so he can get fresh water to drink. The image of your full breasts and soft plush body lingers in his mind. The way your voice sounded so sweet… if you’re a dream come true, he hopes to see you again soon.

You rush back to your home, full of excitement and heart full of love. A soft hum leaves your lips as you dance in the water, celebrating your new found love. That all stopped once you noticed Tabatha, the sea witch, lingering by the entrance of your home. She looks over at you with a knowing smile on her lips.

“Hello, little princess.” She greets you with disdain in her voice.

“What are you doing here?” You stop swimming and stare at her, guarded.

“Oh, nothing.” Her tentacles push her off the rocks behind her body. “Just noticed you were gone today during your fathers gathering.”

“I’m allowed to have my own life—”

“A life near the surface of the water? Near…humans?” She smirks at you as he swims closer, circling your body with her slender long frame.

“Please don’t tell my father.” You instantly begin to beg, the thought of him finding out terrifies you.

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I just wonder why you never come to me…” Tabatha fakes a voice of sadness as her shoulders drop.

“What do you mean?” Her act works, piquing your interest.

“Well, you know I make miracles happen.” Tabatha turns her head slightly, masking her smirk as her blonde hair flows in the water.

“But at what cost?”

“You can’t expect a witch to work for free. It’s always a fair trade, it’s not my fault some don’t…follow through.” She turns to face you again.

“Well, what are you offering me?”

“Human legs. Lungs. The ability to leave your oppressive father and explore the world you desire to be a part of. You can fall in love with that sunburnt lover boy.” Tabatha gets close to you, so close her tentacles begin reaching out and caressing your flowing hair.

“What do you expect back?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really…” She goes behind you, whispering in your ears. “Just your sight.”

“My sight? Are you insane?”

“What? Don’t they say love is blind? So, what will you need your vision for?” There is almost a sound of glee in her voice, she’s aware of how tempting her offer to you is.

“But… I’d miss seeing his face.”

“Oh, princess, you’ll get your vision back eventually—if you can make him fall in love with you with this…ailment…then it’s true love.”

You look off into the entrance of your decorated cave. “What if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll keep your vision and you’ll be forced to navigate the ocean sight unseen. A risk, of course, but I’m sure you’ll succeed.”

You close your eyes and think about König. His pale eyes and skin, the scars litter his face and body. You’ll miss looking at him, but if it’s temporary. Tabatha’s tentacles grab your arms and spin you around to face her. She looks into your eyes, seeing the desperation. She knows she has to add a bonus to push you off the edge, making you take the risk.

“You’ll also be able to return home…see your sea family. If you’d even want too by then.”

“I could?”

“Of course. There are spells for everything.”

“Why are you being so helpful?”

To spite the king, your father. So she can punish him for banishing her for simply having a different body. With you out of water, he would be lost. Broken. With you here simply a helpless creature blinded by love—that’s even better.

“I’ll do it.”

The words escape your lips before you can even second guess yourself. You watch as her eyes darken with pleasure. She caresses your face with her hands as he holds you at the waist with two tentacles.

“Good choice. Look into my eye. Just don’t look away.”

You gaze at her blackened eyes. Slowly, you feel yourself getting light headed. Everything around you begins to fade, your body falling into a sleep-like state. Soon enough you’re out of it, puddy in Tabatha’s grip.

König comes back to the ship, later than the rest of his men. His body was exhausted in the tropical heat. He walks slowly and looks over to the beach where he saw you earlier only to stop in his tracks. You. It’s you.

König rushes to you, his body getting a rush of adrenalin as you lay there. As he approaches, he notices that you’re completely naked. Your plump body is on full display for him. While he wants to look away and be a gentle man, you just look so delicate. He kneels near your body, gently grabbing your shoulder and laying you on your back. His eyes exploring your breasts and apron stomach. Your thighs look welcoming with a forest of hair between your legs guarding your sacred cunt. You can’t possibly be real.

“Hallo? Fräulein?”

You hear his voice as you slowly come to. The feeling of his warm hands radiating throughout your whole body. Your face turns to him, opening your eyes to gaze up at him, but see nothing. There is simply nothing. A hand reaches out to caress his face, fingers tracing down his nose to his thin lips.

König watches your face as you explore him. You’re the woman from before, yet your eyes are pale and you seem to lack your vision. The green tail is now gone. He knows it’s you though, your beautiful face and supple body.

“My name is König.” Your heart flutters hearing the name he was called earlier, it’s him. “Are you okay? Can you speak?”

“Y-yes.” Your voice sounds like a chorus of angels to König.

“What is your name?”

“I’m y/n.”

“Are you lost? You can’t see.” He says as a statement as your hand travels to his jaw.

“I am.”

“How did you even end up here?”

“I don’t know. I passed out and woke up here.”

König’s eyes travel over your body before gently grabbing you, lifting you from the sand. Poor thing probably is suffering from exhaustion. Your body feels cold against his body, a welcomed sensation. He walks you back to his ship, making sure to head straight to his small cabin.

The sounds around you seem louder, each step he takes on the wood beneath him seems to boom in your ears. You wiggle your toes, feeling your new feet. A whole new body you have to explore. You can hear a heavy door close before being sat on a soft fabric.

König takes a seat next to you, his massive body completely towering over you. He reaches out and caresses your arms. A shiver runs over your body, never having been touched so delicately before. His eyes see goosebumps forming on your skin.

“You’re a very beautiful woman.”

You place a hand on your own thigh, feeling it. He watches you closely as your hand moves up to the patch of hair covering your pussy.  Unable to resist, he places his hand on your other thigh. In a slow motion, he rubs a circle on the soft skin of your inner thigh. You let out a sigh and open your legs more to permit him more space.

König gazes at you, taking this as the invite he was desiring. His large hand moves up until he grazes against the fluffy bush, gently pushing past to touch your folds. His finger grazes over your clit to see your reaction. Your leg twitches and a surprised moan leaves your lips.

The simple touch of his finger felt like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Being unable to see his next move sends a jolt of excitement through you. A spark in passion is ignited and you feel hopeful you’ll be able to make him fall in love with you. He’s already obsessed with your body; he can easily fall in love with your mind. 

Part 2

[annievrse]

boyfriend!gojo

—ᡣ𐭩 headcanons a/n: haahahahahahahahahhahahhahah.............

bf!gojo loves when you scratch him behind the ear like a damn cat

bf!gojo gives you 6 wet willies a day

bf!gojo is not allowed a pet because he wanted to cuddle with the fish yuuta got him……

bf!gojo goes on runs (i’m talking like 25km at once because he has so much energy all the time) and he wears singlets

bf!gojo begs for a sip of your drink because “it’s looks so much more delicious than his” so you let him and he drinks the whole thing :/

bf!gojo keeps track of everything you’ve ever said in his notes app so he doesn’t forget anything because his mind is going 2752 miles an hour, every hour, everyday

bf!gojo hums to himself 24/7 (mostly your favourite songs that are stuck in his head or, the most random songs that he’s only heard 24 seconds of thanks to yuuji & his giant fuck off speaker)

bf!gojo has a collection of sunglasses and puts them on you when he’s bored because he loves how cute you look in them

bf!gojo makes you brush his teeth when he’s being a little baby bitch & god forbid you don’t want his oral health to go to shit

i believe bf!gojo takes his shirt off and starts flexing obnoxiously if you say anything about how good he’s been looking lately (like he doesn’t look good all the time……), especially in the living room because “the lighting is better in here”

bf!gojo teleports to the shower (while you’re in it 😐) (“omg this isn’t the kitchen?????”)

bf!gojo loves when you wash his hair (when you’re in the shower together, he just tilts his head back and waits silently, sometimes shaking his hair when you take too long to realise)

bf!gojo watches you sleep and before you start omg ann that is creepy….. he has lost many people ok, gojo will do anything and everything in his power to make sure you don’t join that list, and if watching you sleep soundly helps him avoid a spiral, then let him be

bf!gojo allows you remove his blindfold to wash it because i know that thing is gross (smells citrus-y because other detergents make him feel sick (read: baby with fragrance sensitivity))

bf!gojo hates having his feet touched and will fight anyone who comes close to them

bf!gojo holds your hand every chance he gets, and plays with your fingers (cracking them even though it’s bad!!) like they’re fidget toys 😭

bf!gojo likes to be pampered by you (e.g. eyebrows plucked, non-existent beard shaved, face mask = on, skin = flawless & smooth)

bf!gojo invites all his students over for dinner every sunday and you all cook together (turns into cooking competitions: yuuta always wins & yuuji always complains for an entire week after saying he cheated (until the next week where it happens all over again))

bf!gojo cannot keep his mouth shut to save his life, but he will when you’re doing something that requires silence because he likes to watch you in such a way (reading, meditating, whatever you want; you are the only one who he will willingly shut the fuck up for <3)

[xstarsmvxz]

sub spider men?

𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐁𝐘 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑-𝐌𝐄𝐍 ❥

𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐒 > Miguel O’hara, aged up! e1610 Miles, aged up! e42 Miles & Hobie Brown

𖦹 i just wanna say that I love getting requests, even if they’re simple and small they really help me have motivation to write <3

𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐋 𝐎’𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀 ➬

Fuck, this man may just be one of the most gentle giants ever when it comes to being a sub. His biceps are flexing behind him, his veins bulging out as his hands stay tied to the head board. One minute, his girthy cock is being pumped by your hand and the next it’s twitching and nearly turning purple, desperate to cum as you gently tease the tip with your thumb. His legs are kicking and squirming as he lets out a long whine, his voice cracking as you cup his sack and gently massage. Your other hand finally grabs the base of his cock, slightly squeezing as you lick his sensitive tip, causing him to let out a lewd moan at the sensation.The rest of the night was filled with Miguel’s desperate voice, begging you to let him cum.

aged up! 𝐞𝟏𝟔𝟏𝟎 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 ➬

Remember in my last post when I said that he was a virgin? Well yeah, this guy is definitely a virgin. He’s always been a sub, never a dom.. but to be honest, he secretly likes it that way. He likes the way you ride his cock so smoothly, so confidently, so experienced.. it always causes a jealous feeling to arise in his chest whenever he thinks of you with any other man, whenever he thinks of the fact that you’ve ridden another man just like how you ride him. But strangely enough, he enjoys it. The way your tight cunt professionally squeezes around his length perfectly as your thighs crush his waist. The way you smirk and tauntingly laugh at the whimpers and moans that leave his mouth. Even when he tries to suppress it, you always find a way to get him to let out a sweet moan or whine, either purposely clenching around him or muttering sweet, sexy words into his ear before moving to kiss his sensitive neck.

aged up! 𝐞𝟒𝟐 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 ➬

Bro is for sure a a switch, usually a dom but not for tonight. No, tonight you have him pinned against your bedroom wall, running one of your hands all over his chest, your fingers gliding over his nipple as the two of you lustfully kiss. He’s letting out breathy moans into the kiss, his brows furrowed as your other hand every so gently pumps his cock, the tip of your pointer finger prodding at his slit before you break the kiss, getting onto your knees in front of him as he lets out a small whimper at the sight. Your perky nipples and plump thighs look so good to him right now as you give the side of his cock small kitten licks, moving to give his tip a wet kiss, your saliva mixing with his leaking pre-cum. His hands instinctively move to grab a fistful of your hair before you roughly grab his wrists to stop him, moving his hands away as you slowly take his whole length into your mouth, gripping what you can’t fit with your free hand as you continue to hold one of his. You nearly gag as his tip hits the back of your throat, letting out a groan at the sweet taste of his cock. His eyes are brimming with tears as he searched for something to grip, letting out a broken moan at the feeling of his tip hitting the back of your throat.

𝐇𝐎𝐁𝐈𝐄 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 ➬

Even as a sub, Hobie is still extremely cocky. He’s praising you as you ride his cock, attempting to take control of the situation. It honestly surprised him when you switched the position from military to cowgirl, when you went from subby bottom to dominant top, it wasn’t at all like you. He smirks and toys with his lip piercing as you weakly grind your hips against his, still tired from your previous orgasms, but you don’t stop your movements at all, no… you grind and bounce on his huge dick as if your life depended on it, letting out breathy moans as Hobie grabs your hips, shamelessly letting out groans and whimpers of his own as your tight cunt sucks him in. It didn’t take long for the two of you to reach your climaxes. Hobie let’s out a long groan as he shoots long ropes of cum into you, pulling your body down as he shoves his face into your breasts, whether they’re big or small- they’re still his favourite thing about you.

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

[tearsofastraeax]

hiii i just love ur stories and i was wondering, could u write a story where a lot of girls flirt with ghost (cause he's just so hot tbh) and we're crying and feeling bad bcs we're scared he'll find better since he dosen't reject or ignore them??

ty a lot and take care <3

thank u anon ♡ i had so much fun writing a lil angst

sorry it took me longer than expected to wrap up your request, the creative juices are not flowing these days, but i hope you enjoy ♡₊ ⊹

It's no surprise to you that going out with an incredibly fine piece of man is going to come with some jealous feelings here and there.

Just a couple weeks after you started to hang out with Ghost, you noticed women staring at him. But you didn't blame them, how could they not stare? Ghost just naturally attracts women, with his broad shoulders, his veiny arms, those giant hands ... you could go on and on forever.

But you never expected to find yourself sitting in your bedroom, hiding underneath the blanket and silently sobbing into your pillow because of it.

Earlier that day when you were out with Ghost for a drink it really hit you. You had barely left for a minute to head to the bathroom, but when you came back you saw a beautiful woman standing next to him. Inching closer and closer to him, her hand on his shoulder and a flirty smirk on her face. And it didn't look like he was opposed to it in the slightest. His body was slightly angled towards her, his face covered in mystery behind his mask, but you could feel his smile, you just knew.

Your heart felt like it was about to drop, break apart, stop beating all together. Your stomach was in knots. Your thoughts ran a mile a minute, you had no right to be jealous, right? You were only seeing the man for a couple of weeks now, nothing serious... only, at one point, unbeknownst to you, your little heart had accepted him in and made it serious. You were fucked, royally fucked.

To feign calmness you took a slow breath, in and out. Before you made your way back to Simon and the woman still plastered to his side. You coughed uncomfortably to make them both aware of your presence.

It took him a moment to take his eyes off the woman, before he turned to you.

"Oh, this is my friend, y/n," he looked back towards her, gesturing to you.

You all but managed to swallow the big lump that had formed in your throat. His friend? Is that all you were? A friend? Nothing more? Did it only take one beautiful woman to suddenly make you nothing but a friend to him? You should have known this, it was just too good to be true. Of course he would find someone better than you. You felt your eyes begin to water, but you aggressively blinked the tears away. No, you were better than this.

"Yea, his friend", you pressed out, a tight and obviously fake smile on your lips. "Who is just about to leave actually. Have fun."

You grabbed the jacket haphazardly thrown over the seat next to the one you were just sitting on and turned around. Your legs carrying you out of the bar, you couldn't wait to get out of there, to just get away, as far as possible.

What you didn't see was Ghost's slightly confused expression as he watched you leave. But what you did know was he didn't follow you. Didn't he notice how upset you were? Did he just not care?

You huffed out an annoyed sigh, at yourself, at him, at the world, at everything.

You had barely made it home, slamming the door behind you, before the tears came. They welled up, making everything blurry, and then they came crashing over you like a wave, making it hard to breathe, harder to see and impossible to do anything but slide down against the door and sob into your hands.

And there you were, laying in bed, an hour later, still fucking pissed and sad and helpless and jealous and ...

Your phone vibrated next to you, Simons name popping up on your screen. You tried to ignore the call but he immediately called again. Deciding to pick it up you heard a low growl in your ear, the hairs on your neck standing up, a slight shiver running down your back.

“Open the fucking door, y/n.”

The edge in his tone made you immediately jump off the bed. For a quick moment though you stopped in your tracks, hating how he could command you and make you feel, how he had so much power over you when clearly he didn't feel the same about you.

But you heard him pounding on your door, so you hurried to open it. The door swung open and his eyes immediately bore into yours. You swallowed down a thick lump in your throat as he crowded into you, effectively pushing the two of you into the apartment. He slammed the door behind him shut and stared down at you, never breaking eye contact.

"What the fuck was that?" He growled. You couldn’t fucking believe his attitude, weren’t you the one that was supposed to be angry?

You took in a deep breath before you answered, "well, I wasn't the one flirting with some chick..."

You meant for the words to come out more powerful, maybe even as aggressive as his. To make him understand that he had no fucking right to barge in here like this and act as if he had the right to demand answers.

"You...", his gaze softened then, shifting into ... surprise? "You're jealous?"

All you could do was shrug, feeling too raw from crying to vocalise your feelings. But to your surprise, he didn't say another word, his hand softly cradling your cheek. Your skin underneath his felt hot to the touch as you looked up to him. His eyes seemed so soft and gentle then, making your breath hitch in your throat. The feeling of him wrapped around you like a warm blanket was overwhelming. His gesture nearly stitching your heart back together all by itself.

"I'm sorry... I-", was all he could say before his lips pressed onto yours, so harsh and hurried, yet somehow gentle and sweet.

His hands slowly travelled down your body, once he reached your ass, he lifted you up so effortlessly, your legs immediately wrapping around his, as he carried you to the bedroom.

He gently whispered between kisses, "I'm gonna make it up to you, I promise."

[rootspiral]

Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 4 part 1

(Wandavision entries: [1][2][3])

(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1][2][3][4] ep3 [1][2][3] ep4 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][+1] ep5 [1])

It's episode 4 If I Can't Reach You / Let My Song Teach You, time for two of my favorite things: glam rock and homosexuals. which are basically the same thing if you think about it.

she's like damn, billy, that was ruthless. honestly this is going to make her care about billy even more, not only he's powerful, not only he reminds her of nicky. now he's a murderer too?? perfect son is perfect. I love how she's studying sharon's body with her detective Agnes face, her mind is going a million miles a minute

her third-wall-break winks destroy me. and that poor hairdo. all gone expect for the giant turd on top.

alice being truly and genuinely sorry about sharon. lilia and jen being gossiping hags

agatha honey you're so dainty and feminine, look at you. and that's an interesting and not at all painful tree shape you picked. (I would have never noticed any of this without brightening the scene, it's outrageous. everyone involved in this show is amazing except the lighting department. shame on you lighting department)

whatever alice does openly and sincerely, agatha does secretly or as a joke. parallels, parallels

jen is like, can you believe this bitch

without being asked, alice goes to help digging the grave

that is the idiot I fell in love with and I'm way past regretting my choices at this point!! I know how rio feels now

"coven two" is one of those lines that make you laugh on first view and shred your heart in a million tiny pieces at every following rewatch. this show HAS to be watched at least twice, don't ever trust reviews or complaints by ppl who didn't, because they missed at least half of what makes it great.

a clown running from the tragic truth that her son wrote the Ballad, making sad clown noises all over the Road

when alice is called to referee as the Resident Ballad Expert and agatha looks at her expectantly hands in pockets, somehow extremely obnoxious, extremely gay and extremely sad at the same time

alice is SO above bickering. jen is being a baby because she's mad at agatha, lilia is being a baby cause she's grumpy and a contrarian, billy is sixteen, agatha is, well, agatha. alice is the only adult in the building

just one, huh? that's fine. that's fine. who needs a heart anyway.

the common gypsophila or baby's breath symbolizes sincerity, purity, innocence. does it symbolizes sharon? or is billy leaving it on her grave a metaphor for his naivety and good intentions gone wrong?

billy's romantic ideals of what it means to be in a coven have just been shattered. he set out, consciously or not, to teach something to these witches and of course it didn't work. he is the one who needs guidance, he is the one who's making a mess of things. he's just a kid.

agatha going !! when billy says he wishes he could go home. agatha covertly pointing out that he has a replacement body and she would really like to know how. she's observing him so closely, trying to puzzle out the mystery. exactly like she did with wanda inside the Hex. not revealing her cards just yet, testing and manipulating him. when that strategy blew up in her face so spectacularly the first time! she's so smart and so reckless it makes her practically an idiot

case in point: she's making up stupid rules trying to manipulate billy into shaping the Road the way she wants. that's right, agatha. let's summon another poor victim you can siphon, wonder who's gonna show up! (and she KNEW sharon was laying dead ten feet away and SOMEONE was bound to be in the neighborhood. dumbass.)

aww he's so proud of himself for having brought the spellbook. he's being helpful! he's made his four moms happy!

check, debatable, check

debatable and debatable

I'm gonna give that one a BIG check

yes I know advil spells "vidal", thank you tumblr for letting me know that one. also same, alice.

'esse viridis non es facile' IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! oh I knew my high school latin was bound to come in handy at least once in my life

(by the way the set + costumes combo is giving me such hocus pocus vibes, but you could never tell because the SCENE IS SO FUCKING DARK) (NO I WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH

I mean girls, you chose to follow the head clown, you have to travel in the clown car. that's on you.

WHY IS THE PRINT SO SMALL???? I LOVE YOU PATTI LUPONE

admit it we all wished it was sharon for a moment

oh?? is that mayhaps someone you know, agatha???

and that's a wrap, see you guys tomorrow!

no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm doing another one tonight. I need to shove all the rio scenes in my eyeballs NOW

go to episode 4 part 2

[dissapointu]

How Jinx Would Comfort You When You’re Sad

1. Unexpected Softness

Jinx might be chaotic and wild, but when you’re feeling down, there’s a surprising softness to her. She notices when you’re off and, despite her own sometimes erratic mood, will make a point to calm down for you. She’ll sit next to you, usually fidgeting with something, but her presence is grounding in its own way. You can feel her eyes occasionally glancing at you, checking to see if you’re okay, even though she struggles to put her feelings into words.

2. Hug Attack

When Jinx sees you upset, she can’t help herself—she’ll probably tackle you in a giant, tight hug. It might not be graceful, and it might come out of nowhere, but her hugs are filled with a kind of frantic energy that says, “I care about you more than I can express.” She’ll hold you close, burying her face in your neck or shoulder as she squeezes you tightly. She’s not going anywhere, and she’ll hold you like that for as long as you need.

3. Trying to Cheer You Up With Wild Ideas

Jinx loves to make people laugh, especially when she can tell they’re upset. Her ideas to distract you are often wild and unpredictable. “How about we cause some mayhem?” she might say, pulling out something ridiculous she’s made or found, like a silly invention or a weird contraption. Her goal is simple: to see your smile again, even if she has to be a little over-the-top to do it.

4. Quiet, Tender Moments

While she’s usually all about the chaos, when she senses your sadness, she’ll sometimes shift into a rare quiet mode. She’ll sit with you, leaning her head on your shoulder, and you might catch her looking up at you with a mixture of concern and affection. She doesn’t always have the words to help, but in these moments, she’ll hold your hand or gently run her fingers through your hair, just offering her silent support.

5. Distracting You With a Little Madness

Jinx’s way of comforting you often includes pulling you into her world of impulsive fun. She’ll grab your hand and drag you along for a little adventure, even if it’s just a spontaneous scavenger hunt around the city or a trip to one of her favorite hideouts. She won’t let you wallow in your sadness for long. Her chaotic energy is contagious, and before you know it, you’re laughing at one of her ridiculous antics.

6. Random Acts of Kindness

Jinx’s way of showing affection can be a bit unconventional, but it’s still incredibly sweet. When she notices you’re feeling off, she might leave little surprises for you—like one of her homemade trinkets, a random gift, or something she knows will make you smile. It’s her quirky way of saying, “I’m here, and I’m thinking of you.” The gesture might not always make sense, but it’s always heartfelt.

7. Trying to Make You Laugh (Even If It’s Silly)

Jinx is determined to make you laugh again, so she’ll probably act silly to get a reaction out of you. She’ll do something ridiculously funny or even pull faces, trying her best to get a giggle out of you. And when she finally does—when you laugh at her ridiculousness—it’s like she’s won a small victory. Seeing you smile is one of the few things that genuinely makes her feel good, and she’ll go to great lengths to earn it.

8. Being Your Personal Distractor

Jinx will often talk to you in a mile-a-minute manner, spouting random thoughts and ideas to distract you from your sadness. It might be a jumble of half-formed plans, stories from her past, or odd observations, but the more she talks, the more you start to lose yourself in her voice. Her way of comforting you is a bit unorthodox, but it works. You end up absorbed in her world, forgetting your own worries, at least for a little while.

9. Sweet, Honest Confessions

When you’re feeling low and vulnerable, Jinx can sometimes surprise you with a rare moment of vulnerability of her own. If she sees you’re upset and not really talking, she might look at you with a serious expression, her usual energy momentarily fading. “Hey, I… I know things get messed up sometimes. But, um, you’re important to me, okay?” It’s a raw moment, and while she might shy away from getting too deep, you can tell that she’s trying her best to make sure you know how much you mean to her.

10. Fidgeting With You

Jinx has a nervous habit of fidgeting, so when she senses you’re upset, she’ll try to distract herself by pulling out one of her gadgets or playing with something in her hands. Sometimes, though, she’ll use that energy to fidget with you—playing with your hair, tracing patterns on your hand, or gently touching your arm. She does this as a way of calming both herself and you, in a way that feels comforting, even though it’s quirky.

11. Just Hanging Out

Sometimes, Jinx won’t push you to feel better or try to distract you. She knows that sometimes you just need to be, so she’ll spend time with you in the way that feels right. Maybe that means just sitting in silence while she plays with her toys or looking at stars on the roof. She doesn’t demand you talk or open up. She just wants to be there, and that’s her own way of letting you know you’re not alone.

12. Reassurance in Her Own Way

Jinx’s way of reassuring you is a mix of humor and care. “Look, I know life’s not always sunshine and rainbows… but hey, we’ve got each other, right?” she might say with a grin, trying to lighten the mood, even though she’s serious. The thing is, you know she’s being genuine, and even though her approach can be odd, it’s her way of showing you that she believes in you and that everything’s going to be okay.

Jinx’s comforting methods may be chaotic, unpredictable, and sometimes a little unconventional, but they’re always filled with love and care. Her aim is simple: to make you feel like you’re not alone, and to help you rediscover the joy and strength that sometimes gets lost when life gets hard. Through her eccentric ways, she’ll remind you that no matter how messy things get, she’s always there for you—always ready to make you smile again.

[spxdxrpxnk]

thinking abt how PROWLER MILES and SPIDERMILES sleep... 💤💤💤

( notes: this is written by a minor about underage characters, so nsfw/18+ only/'minors dni' blogs please do not interact with this post! thank you <3

i call them prowler miles and spidermiles instead of earth-XXX miles because it's cuter to me :) )

MILES is a very light sleeper.

a lot of people don't really expect that because he always looks like he's having the best, most deepest sleep of his life, all curled up in a tight ball, blankets burrito'd around him

bro is the literal definition of snug as a bug in a rug

he even snores just a little! when you first hear it you think he's like, growling in his sleep??? because of how low it is, nah, he's snorin.

there's literally never any sneaking up on him while asleep- MILES literally woke up because RIO walked past his bedroom door once. she didn't go in, didn't even touch the door; she just tip-toed in her work sneakers instead of socks or slippers.

and that woke him up, made him all grumpy because that was really early in the morning and now he can't go back to sleep

once he's up, he's up. and it takes an hour or so to get back to sleep, so he just deals with it

he sits up, but just stays sitting in bed slouched over like a zombie for a good few minutes.

he just needs a sec to boot up, give him a lil bit and then he's up and at em like he was never asleep in the first place??

weirdo.

one time, UNCLE AARON scared him awake from a nap because they had stuff to do, and he was literally so mad about it. he knew it was a dumb thing to be mad about, but MILES couldn't keep an angry pout off his face and AARON was just snickering at it the entire time

when sleeping, MILES doesn't dream. like, at all.

people around him will be talking about crazy dreams and nightmares they've had where their teeth fell out or they got turned into a horse or got chased by a giant lego man, and he's just like. tf???

he's very clingy in his sleep and when he's tired, even when he tries his best not to be, so if you choose to sleep with him then you just kinda have to accept your fate

thankfully he doesn't move around that much besides the occasional adjustment, he doesn't thrash around or anything crazy

the most annoying thing would probably be him snoring? it's not loud, barely audible if you're not right next to him, but if you do sleep near him then you'll hear it

it kinda just happens no matter how he sleeps, so if you can handle a little. um. natural white noise!

MILES is the best cuddle buddy you'll ever have.

he's very considerate tbh, he'll let you lay on him any way you want as long as it's not that uncomfortable for him

be warned though: he's an early riser.

will wake up first and do dumb shit to wake you if you're not up by time he's done eating breakfast.

he'll start lifting your eyelids, poking you, tickling your hands ( he don't do feet. ) and shit like a little damn kid

and he won't stop until you wake up, so gl w that

MILES, however..

well, he's also a light sleeper. more on the average side

but he doesn't wake up at every little thing. only if someone opens his door or talks too loud

some things wake him up, some don't

sirens and explosions outside of his window only start to wake him up after he becomes spiderman, he could sleep like a baby through it before

he usually falls asleep in a very fixed position, like curled up on his side or laying on his back with his legs crossed

but he'll always wake up halfway off his bed, limbs thrown out like he's a ragdoll, mouth wide open and dry, covers either tangled around his body or just on the floor

so.

yeah, MILES moves in his sleep!

he'll go from laying on his back to on his stomach, from his stomach to his side, from his side to somehow slumped against the wall by his bed???

because of that, he'll wake up very disoriented. he needs more than a second to boot up, his feet just kinda carry him to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face and stuff-

MILES isn't up-up until he blindly puts his hands under the ice cold water to wet his toothbrush and that shocks him awake, only to realize he completely missed his toothbrush and squeezed the dollop of toothpaste directly into the sink

he kinda just stares at it for a few minutes, pretty embarrassed, before scooping it off the porcelain ( or whatever sinks are made of ) and using it to brush his teeth

somehow, JEFF always knows when MILES just let the wasted toothpaste dissolve into the running water and squeezed more.

it's like his own spidey-sense.. just for something as stupid as toothpaste.

MILES does dream almost every time he's asleep, even when just napping, but he often doesn't remember them unless they were super duper crazy

he remembers the nightmare where he shot webs out his butt like a real spider, and that really scary one that he doesn't like to recall but has to do with the prowler

but he can never recall the only one that actually made him wake up in a cold sweat, panting as if he just ran a marathon.

"what was it?", you may ask?

well, MILES was president of some place.

he didn't find out where until DREAM PRESIDENT MORALES set a lot of very prejudiced laws against lego people, and it turns out he was president of lego city

( one of the laws was that, if anyone falls into the river, they're not allowed to be saved )

he got overthrown during a revolution that was led by a very violent lego spiderman who only spoke in what his brain's version of spanish was, so he could barely understand anything

and the part that made him wake up was when they tied him down and were threatening to go through his sketchbook and, upon opening it to the first page, something jumped out at him and startled him awake

you know those jumpscare videos where a spider jumps out during a seemingly calm scenario?

yeah, MILES gets weird deja vu when he sees those, but doesn't know it's because of that dream.

anyways- MILES does try his best to cuddle when sleeping, he really does!

he'll spoon ( big or little, he don't mind ), lay on you, let you lay on him

even just holding hands, or sleeping back to back

anything really, long as he goes to sleep touching you

but if it's one of his more active nights where he makes his big moves, you probably won't survive unless you're a deep sleeper.

he'll probably push or kick you, and not be sorry about it.

and he'll wake up totally out of it, wondering why the hell he's so uncomfortable

and sees he's sprawled on top of you like a terrible blanket instead of the very cute, cliche way he imagined waking up with you

something like this will happen every time, so. just throw him a pillow and a sheet and tell him to sleep on the floor.

or you take the floor, either works for him-

MILES really isn't the perfect gentleman. unless you or his parents tell him to give you the bed, he will happily let you sleep on the floor

never wakes up before you unless he had a really bad nightmare like PRESIDENT MORALES, and if you wake him up he'll be so petty and passive aggressive while he's still half asleep

so just. slap him awake if you need him that bad, shake him violently and yell frantically that they hit the pentagon

just wake him right up, so that he can't just glare at you with an adorable sleepy pout on his face, eyeing you angrily, even as he trudges to the bathroom...

... not looking where he was going, and walking right into the doorframe.

[mossyivy]

Imagine if you finally give into Leon and give him that other baby he’s been nagging at you for…🤭

You’d both announce it to your little girl by surprising her with a shirt that says ‘Big sister!’ Or something like that, and she’s very much start crying as soon as you two tell her what it says and means.

She’d quite literally start sobbing and throwing a tantrum, saying that ‘Daddy’s gonna forget about me!’ ‘Daddy’s gonna love the baby more than me!’ Or ‘The baby’s gonna take daddy from me!’ Sometimes along those lines. You couldn’t help but laugh, reassuring her that this baby didn’t mean that she’d be forgotten or less loved.

As the months flew by, your little girl would definitely fall asleep against your bump, saying it was ‘to listen to her heartbeat.’ Because yes, the two of you are having another little princess.

Leon would come home after a mission, seeing the two of you on the couch, taking a little nap together. Head against your belly, patting your little girls back as she slept. How cute.

- Anon! 🎀

🎀anon you beautiful fuck I love you so much!

(Just for future reference I'll be calling these baby girls Violetta 'Violet' (oldest) and Cecilia (youngest).

Violet's upset hearing the news. Inconsolable at first, even threatens to runaway to her Uncle Chris's house to go live with him, his wife (aunt) and her 3 cousins (2 girls and 1 boy). But then she finds out that since she'll be getting a baby sister they need space in her room for the baby so they end up turning the basement into a giant playroom and suddenly this baby is the greatest thing to happen to her.

Ofc, she'll warm up to the baby. Cuddle up to her mommy when daddy's away, promising him to look after her because she knows how daddy gets when he's away from home and her. She can only imagine what he's thinking leaving her, mommy and a baby in her belly!

Immediately starts trying to take Leon's responsibilities. Even if he's only gone for a week Violet's doing daddy's job. Dishes, taking care of the yard (poorly but at least she tried) watering the plants. You wouldn't let her do any repairs and that upset her but she got over it pretty fast. But you didn't realize how often she actually paid attention to Leon's mannerisms until there was a storm coming while he's away. You call for her in the house. Violet doesn't respond...

You start panicking thinking maybe she went outside and then you open the front door. You see her standing on the porch staring out at the dark clouds. Hands on her hips... just like Leon does when he's thinking.

"'Bout a couple miles out." She has no idea wtf that means, but daddy says it every time so she does. You end up taking a picture of her staring out at the clouds from the front door and send it to your husband captioned 'Come get your child 🙄'

Every night he's gone though you two cuddle and end up sleeping in the big bed while Violet reads her books to the baby. Even watching movies together.

Leon ends up coming home a day early and walks in after dinner to find you and Violet curled up on the couch. Her little head on your belly. Leon just smiles, moving to curl up to you on the open side after giving Violet a kiss on the head. He puts his head on your shoulder and hand on your belly and feels the baby kick against his hand.

He's exhausted but so happy to be home. And he gets to come home to this everytime he leaves...

[fartcushion]

Mile High Sub - Part 3

The flight carried on with you locked in the toilet, as you sat on there too scared to make a sound. Over the hours you could hear the occasional shuffling as a passenger tried to use the toilet and seeing it marked out of order, waiting just outside for one of the others to become free. You'd hold your breath so they wouldn't hear you in there, the humiliation would be unbearable. Holding your breath helped as well because the place still stunk. Amir's shit had somewhat cleared, but there was the overall smell of toilet cubicle that was permanent.

You couldn't believe this has happened to you. From such an innocent mistake you'd been turned into the play thing of this giant of a man, and he was taking sadistic pleasure in tormenting you.

The pain in your stomach was getting so intense. Having not eaten the meal earlier and having been sat around for hours, the desperation to eat was growing. Made worse by the fact that you could hear the sounds from the kitchenette and knew they were preparing to serve the next meal. The smell of the cooking food wafted in, but you had to resist breathing it in as it only made you more hungry and with each inhale you were also subjected to toilet odour.

It was hard to say how long had passed, but the trolley had rattled off and stewards came back and forth several times to stock up. Every now and then you'd hear voices laughing outside your door or a quick kick, which brought you back to attention. They were probably laughing about how they were starving you. At least that's what you thought they were saying, but you were sadly mistaken.

Without warning the door latch clicked and the door swung open. Light poured in making you squint, but you could see the full frame of Amir blocking your escape, and in his hands was a tray of food. Any spark of hope that this was in any way a gesture of peace was extinguished when you saw it was the same meal from earlier. The carton lid that had been tampered with. The same opened bottle of water. Only thing that was missing was the squashed bread roll.

"I thought you might be hungry for it now", Amir said flatly with his thick accent. He gave no hint of anything away.

"Please...please can I go back to my seat?" You knew you sounded pathetic but you were desperate.

Ignoring your pleas Amir stepped in, closing the door and locking it behind him. The room, tight for one person, was now full. With you sat on the toilet he towered above you, the food tray held right in front of your face.

"Do as I say and I'll think about it. Now be a good passenger and eat the meal you nearly wasted earlier".

Too scared to argue you reached out, hands shaking, and took the tray. As you placed it on your lap and opened up the foil Amir smirked. Before you had chance to even put your fork in it he stopped you.

"I'm sorry, I have not warmed it up for you. Would you like me to reheat it?"

Just desperate to eat you poked the meal with the fork. "No, no, thank you. This is fine".

"It will be better warmed up, you want me to warm it". The question was dropped, and the tone was unmistakable.

Holding the tray you looked up, tears welling in your eyes. "Please, warm up my food".

"What ever the passenger wants". With that Amir turned around. He had to do it slowly as his large frame made it difficult to turn and his protruding ass wedged up against the sink. But it also had the added effect of exerting more dread over you. As his huge ass turned and stopped right over your meal, Amir looked down with pure sadistic joy in his eyes.

PPPPPPPBBBBBTTTTT

"Thank y-"

PPPBBBTTT

Ppppprrbbbb

"Thank you for warming up my food". You hoped by playing along it would end the ordeal quicker. Maybe he'd lose interest if you were too pathetic.

"You're welcome. Now eat it"

The smell of the farts masked any fragrance the meal may have had. It brought back the smell of the shit you'd been forced to endure earlier. Pushing that thought aside, you took a mouthful of food. The curry and rice was obviously stone cold and as best it could it still tasted decent. You tried not to think if you were getting any flavouring added.

"Would you like me to spice that up for you?"

Swallowing the mouthful you nodded.

Ppprrrrrrppp

Pppprrrrbbb

Taking another bite. "It's delicious, thank you". The smell was so foul. It had a sickly sweet smell, like manure. Every bit of you wanted to throw up the food, but you managed to keep it down.

Amir stayed in position as you carried on eating. Occasionally when you were caught with a mouth full he'd blast a fart in your face, where you were forced to breathe it all in and change the taste of the food on your tongue. Sniggering to himself each time.

As you neared the end of the dish he turned back round. "I'm sorry, I forgot to give you your bread roll". With that he reached in to his trousers. From under his cock and balls he pulled out the squashed bread roll from before. Now even more squashed, and as Amir had unwrapped it, dotted with in his pubes.

He handed you roll. You could smell it from a foot away, every fart had been a direct hit to it. It was warm and moist to the touch from being under his junk for who knows how long.

Without even thinking of protesting you took a bite. If you had been lucky before, you knew that this taste was his ass. It was sweat but also what you could only imagine what his ass would taste of. Again sickly sweet. You ate the bread slowly and with the last bite you violently shook with the need to throw up. Swallowing it back down, your body settled.

"Thank you for my meal. Can I please go back to my seat?"

"If you drink your water you can go back"

Hope reigniting you nod enthusiastically. You reach for the bottle, but Amir snatched it up first. Without a word he opened it up and started to down the small bottle of water, taking big gulps. At first you want to protest, he's doing this so you "fail" and have to stay here. That however was wishful thinking. Amir finished the last drop and binned the bottle. He let out a belch and lowered the zip of his trousers. Pulling out his long thick cock and holding it expectantly.

"Drink your water then. But remember, after this you're going to go back to your seat out there. If you move, if you fail to swallow quick enough, if you fucking bite me, then I will get piss all over you. You will sit out there soaking wet and stinking of piss. Do you understand?"

You nod.

"And this is not a fucking blow job, I know you're used to sucking a man's dick like a pervert, but just swallow my piss. Understand?"

You nod.

"Hurry up then, it's about to be all over you"

You'd been unsure if you could do it. Could you even get through this without throwing up. But all doubts were thrown aside as you lunged forward and got the cock in your mouth just in time to feel it engorge as the piss passed through. Immediately you start swallowing the warm stream as it fills your mouth. Trying to get air as you're forced to swallow again and again. Amir throws his hands behind his head enjoying pissing like a racehorse. It went on for minutes, the entire time locking eyes with you. As the flow subsided and eventually stopped he pulled his cock out and flicked it at your face, tapping his head on your tongue to make sure you got every last drop.

As much as you wanted to cry you resisted. Freedom was finally here. As if reading your mind Amir tucked his cock away and crouched down in front of you. "I'm only letting you out because we'll be landing shortly and if you were found out of your seat I could get in trouble. But know your place, faggot. I am your fucking master and I am not done with you yet".

Without even waiting for any response he let out another loud fart and forced your face down towards the source. Almost pulling off the toilet and dropping the tray in the process. Amir then stood up, opened the door and stood back to clear the way, staring at you.

The intention was clear. You were not allowed to wash your face, or swill your mouth with water. Do anything that may have somewhat removed the smell of the toilet you now were. Not wanting to draw any more attention to yourself, you slowly walked back to your seat. Watched the entire time by Amir.

[yaut-jaknowit]

"You had my curiosity... but now you have my attention..."

Prompt Idea?

Bring Forth Bountiful Lands

Pairings: Gawtin (Female Yautja) x Reader

Word Count: 3815

Summary: Deep in the forest, both you and Gawtin travel. She is in search of her weapons and ship to escape earth forever. Never to return. The two of you come upon a military base. Newly birthed mother and recently injured, surely she can't mean to face that place?! Gawtin doesn't back down.

Author Note: So, I took this in and used it for a part 3 for Gawtin and Reader's origin story. It's an amazing prompt! I just got stuck on where to use it and decided there was a great place!

Part 1 | Part 2

Masterlist

Ao3

Each left step brought forth a burning sensation. Your teeth grinded against one another while you pressed on. You had to or else… You suspected the alien would leave you behind. One of her hands was already full with the green glob of a child who was promptly asleep. Yet, with some sort of debt hanging in the air, you didn’t know what she may do to help. A chance you didn’t want to take. So, you pushed on despite the pain, limping along the forest you know so well.

Gawtin’s foot falls paused and forced you to stop as well. Her hand raised and signaled for you to stay quiet and still. You slowed your heaving breaths the best you could and fought through the pain surging inside of you. She scanned the air around her thoroughly, head turning.

Then, her hand dropped. Her footsteps began once more. You stumbled forward and had to lock your left knee to prevent yourself from collapsing. Yet, you persevered and forced yourself to shadow behind her towering form.

This went on for miles upon miles. The half moon risen to its halfway point in its pathing. It offered just enough light to see the ground ahead of you, missing any potholes or fallen trees.

The tears that once decorated your face had long dried up, leaving behind a sticky, crusty mess. If you had the energy or even a will, you would’ve wiped away the tears. Yet, it was pointless at this stage. Even the pain this far into the trek had began to numb, being pushed to the back burner for you to worry about at a later time.

There was no energy left to even speak to her, ask her what the plan was. At this point, all you knew was she hunted down by the government, gave birth to her child, then is heading back to a facility you didn’t even know existed this close to your cabin. There was also the fact she was an alien and attempting to steal back her ship and weapons. Here you were, stuck in the middle because you saved her from meeting a terrible end.

How naïve you are.

A fallen log caught your bad leg while you attempted to step over it. Your hands came out caught most of your weight before you could face plant into the ground.

Though you had caught yourself, you laid there on the ground, thinking about your life’s decisions. Nearly regretting coming up here for peace for only chaos to meet you in the end.

Green feet entered your vision. You turned your head to look up at the creature. She stared down at you, a disappointed expression in her eyes. A sigh left your chapped lips before you hoisted yourself back up to your feet in a careful manner.

Before you had the chance to fully return to your feet, a hand gulfed the back of your neck and logged up into the air. You flew for a second before landing harshly on a muscular shoulder, draped over it like a sack of potatoes. All the air in your lungs was forced out. You sucked in air and scrambled to get back onto the ground. Gawtin didn’t let you and placed a massive hand on the back of your thighs, effectively keeping you pinned.

“You are slow. Stay still,” her voice demanded complete obedience from you. You gulped and stopped moving, afraid of making the deadly alien mad. That was the last thing you wanted to do.  You squeaked out an ‘okay’, barely above a breath, and let the giant carry you.

The sway of each step was nearly lulling you to sleep. You couldn’t truly recall the last time you slept properly. The passing out the last two times didn’t count. Yet, the pain that continued to throb in your legs prevented you from getting any shut eye. You kept an eye on your surroundings behind her though as she walked. Not that the creature needed your help. Clearly, she was irritated by the fact she has to carry you since you can’t walk properly.

It wasn’t long after that she came to a stop again. You tried to use her back as leverage to see why. The angle didn’t allow you permission though. A huff left your nose. All you could do was just hang there and continuously be at her mercy.

Gawtin kneels down and allows you to softly slide off of her shoulder and return to the ground. Once on your feet, you look up at her then at the surrounding area. This wasn’t your property anymore. You return your gaze to the alien, mouth opening to speak. Her hand slaps over your mouth and prevented any sounds from escaping. Even a gasp that clawed at your throat.

Her massive head shook side to side. You rapidly nodded, understanding speaking was a no-go. Just follow and listen to her.

The hand released its hold on you. Gawtin returned to her full height and peered into the direction she was heading in. A finger pointed in the same direction. Your brows furrowed for a moment until you realized that’s the same way she was taking you. Another nod.

After getting your understanding, she started to stalk through the foliage, mindfully placing her feet. You attempted to shadow her each move, to watch out for any branches or leaves. It was hard to due to the size difference and the fact your thigh was begging for mercy, for a break. Not that you could get one.

Yet, somehow, someway, you made it.

She paused again and ducked behind a bush. You were quick to follow her lead and knelt down besides her, thankful for the weight off of your thigh. Questions clawed at your throat but you brushed them off, knowing you couldn’t. Not when you hear voices in the distance. Your entire body tightens up, eyes flickering up to the green alien.

All she does is ignore your presence and peeks over the bush. You struggle to do the same thing but finally see it.

A military base. In the middle of the forest, miles away from your property and cabin. There were people patrolling the area outside of the concrete walls that lined the base. Guns in their hands already. It seemed like they were already on high alert. Possibly from Gawtin’s escape. This must be where she escaped from.

Death and fear hung over your head like a heavy vale. Her wounds weren’t healed from before. Not with the most of two days to give them time to. It’s not either of you were in the best position to march straight into their base and take back her stuff.

Your thoughts came to a halt. What in the world were you thinking?! Like you could do a sliver of harm to any of these soldiers. You were an artist!

But, then, there’s Gawtin. Your gaze returns to the bulky form of the alien. If she can survive getting shot at, hunted down, and then give birth all in the span of a day, she’s clearly powerful. What can she take though? A military base? The soldiers within? It’s not like you can be of any help.

There are no weapons on her nearly bare body. Just the primitive looking material around her waist to cover herself up. All she had to bare was the claws on her hands and the deadly looking fangs that made up her face. Besides that, it was like bring a knife to a gun fight.

Carefully, you inched closer to her until you were next to her. “Is-“ A hand slapped over your mouth. A fierce look made you tremble in your spot. The purple of her eyes blazing with a demand for silence. Silence that you offered completely, understanding if you spoke, death could meet you the next second.

All you wanted to know if this is worth going in there and possibly dying. Was she willing to abandon her child to go retrieve some items? You looked at her like she was crazy before pressing your lips tightly together. It was pointless to argue with her when her mind was set on whatever was important enough to risk her life and safety. You see that clear as the day that awaking’s around you. So, you kept silent.

Her hand slipped off of your mouth with one last pointed look from the creature. Gawtin peered over the bush once more and scanned the area. You hunkered back down on the ground, mindful of your injured leg.

The concrete wall that surrounded the place looked ten feet tall, preventing anyone from breaching the perimeter. Except, there was a creature at least eight feet tall next to you. She could easily scale the wall and get inside. She could probably do a lot of damage before they down her.

Purple eyes drifted down to you and narrowed on your knelt form. Your heart began to race under the gaze of a predator. She stepped closer to you before leaning down and forcing her face into your space. You swallowed hard, afraid to move.

Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it before passing the child over to you. You took a sharp breath in and peer down at the bundle of joy held out towards you. More questions pulled at your tongue. You?! Of course, there was no other option besides yourself.

Timidly, you took the sleeping infant into your arms and snapped your gaze up at her. A question blazed in your eyes so brightly she understood without a word spoken. She nodded then glanced back at the base. With her hands, she motioned towards you then pointed at the ground. Stay here. You dipped your head. That, you could understand.

Wait, that meant… your brows pushed together. She was going to face the base by herself?! Weaponless, injured, recently gave birth. Fear entered your veins. Realization dawned on you.

The infant in your arms felt ten times heavier than before. All the possible outcomes pooled in your mind, swirling around like a whirlpool. If she were to die, then that would leave you with her child. A child you had no clue how to take care or raise. This wasn’t a human baby. This was an alien baby.

Your bottom lip was gnawed on as you were desperate to speak. Those voices you could hear only solidified the danger you were in. So, you kept quiet and observed.

The group of patrolling soldiers passed without issue. Then, Gawtin was sprinting across the open space. She was gone faster than you could even say her name. Her body moved gracefully despite her eight and some off numbers height. Before you knew it, she bounded up and over the wall. Gone from sight.

A silence engulfed you. A terrifying, dreadful silence that the forest produced.

That might have been the last time you would see Gawtin. You’ve only known her for a day and you were already worried sick. Not only about the fact you might have to care for her child if she died. But, the fact she might die by going head first into a military base. She seemed so smart! Why was she doing something so stupid?!

A whine nearly broke the stillness of the air before you caught it. You shifted on your tired, sore feet and hissed when pain shot through your leg. It was going to be a long day until Gawtin’s fate was revealed.

You sat down completely on the ground, legs out in front of you, and leaned against a tree. The child was still asleep. Was this normal? It’s been asleep for a while by the looks of it. Since it had quieted down after its birth, you haven’t heard much of a peep from it. You held it securely in one arm and used a finger to feel at its neck.

When a pulse point was found, strong and steady, relief flooded through you. It was alive. There was no cause for alarm now.

The blankets were pulled tighter on it’s tiny body, to fight off the cool elements of a fall morning. Even for yourself, it was brisk. The coat around your waist was a reminder you could fend off the cold. Yet, all that movement could alert any of the passing guards on your position. Plus, you didn’t want the infant to leave your arms. It was best if it stayed stilled without waking it up.

Every three minutes, a pair of guards would pass by you. Each time, your heart thundered in your ears. Was this the moment they somehow spot you through the foliage? That got you thinking. What would they do to you if they found you here? Especially with an alien child. Would they just kill you and take the child? You couldn’t stop your body from shuttering.

Why did you go out that night?! All of this could’ve been avoided. You wouldn’t be in a mess too far deep for you to deal with. Your head smacked against the bark of the tree.

Guilt hit you. But… without you, Gawtin could’ve died or been brought back to this place. Then, they would’ve gotten ahold of her and her infant. God, you were a terrible person for practically wishing that onto her. You sighed, shoulder sagging as you looked at the sky through the trees.

The sun rose through the sky, slowly passing onwards in the blue sky. With just the bag on your back and an infant in your arms, you didn’t have anything to pass the time. The last thing you wanted to do was move alert any of the guards to your position.

As the time continued mindlessly, you grew more and more worried about the fact their was no sign of Gawtin. One thing you counted as a good sign was there was no noise coming from the base. You suspected a loud alarm would sound if they found her. Since that hadn’t happened yet, you prayed for that to be a good sign. But hours have passed since you last heard from her.

Once the sun had passed the halfway mark in the sky, you had to move. Sitting in the same spot for the last few hours made your butt numb. The throbbing in your leg had dulled to a low irritation that you could push to the back of your mind. Thankfully. When you go to move, the pain surged forward, to the front of your brain. You gritted your teeth pushed yourself off of the ground.

The tree served as a barrier from the base. You shook off the tingling in your legs and butt, relief flooding you. You peeked around the trunk to find no one in sight. Carefully with your injured thigh, you hobbled away from the foliage used as a blind. It may not be smart to move but you needed to. The cramps in your legs were only getting worse. You were going to go crazy if you kept staring at the empty forest for a moment longer.

The swaddled infant in your arms squirmed. You stopped in your tracks, head snapping down to find bright light blue eyes staring into yours. One of its tiny grubby hands reached out towards your face and grasped at the air. The fearful expression that painted your features melted away at the adorable sight in your arms. It may look ugly with its alien face but it was a kind of ugly that was cute.

It gave a squeak and used both arms to reach for your face. When it couldn’t, a louder squeal passed it’s strange, nubby mandibles.

Your entire body tensed. That was alarmingly loud. Your eyes darted over to the area past the tree line.

Two soldiers. Both of their heads faced your direction.

That’s when you felt your heart drop to the floor, at your feet. It worsened when both of them began to walk towards the two of you. Fear drove you to stumble backwards. Your heel caught on an uneven part of the ground. A yelp escaped your chapped lips when your butt landed harshly on the unforgiving ground. Pain zipped up your leg. The throbbing became a forefront of your mind again. You gasped at the agony once more and nearly just gave up.

You steeled your nerves and clambered to your unsteady feet. That’s when you saw the soldiers had their guns raised. It felt like your heart was about beat out of your chest and land in your hands.

Only a moment passed before you spun on your heel and beelined away from them. There was no chance for you to run on your bad leg. The best you could offer was a half-jog, half-limp your way further into the forest. It wasn’t the greatest feeling on your injured leg with each left step that sent scolding pain up the limb.

Distance was gain though.

Until you heard the crunching of pine needles under boots gaining on you.

“There!” a gruff voice called out. You pressed the bundle closer to your chest and tried to quicken your speed.

Tears pooled on the corner of your eyes. The pain amounted even pass your limits. Adrenaline may fill your veins but even it couldn’t over shadow the agony that made up your left thigh. You panted heavily and pushed through the worst of it, fighting the forest and your body.

A thundering bang pierced the tension. Your legs gave out. You barely saved the infant on your elbows and felt the skin tear off.

Seconds passed until you were spun around. Now, on your back and staring up at the two imposing soldiers peering down at you. You began to cry and held the fussy infant firmly. “Don’t kill me!” you begged for your life and turned on your side, to shield the bundle away from their prying eyes.

A burning muzzle pressed against your shoulder. The barrel still hot. “What do you have?! Why are you out here?!” the same voice from before demanded and shoved the gun harder into you.

You gave a pathetic cry and rapidly shook your head to deny any wrong doing. “Nothing! I just got lost,” you lied straight through your teeth. It was a pathetic excuse, horrible. Yet, it was all your poor mind could make up in the moment. You grasped the blankets tighter, white knuckling the fabric.

One of them reaches out and grasps the blanket and gives a firm tug. You don’t relent.

No words were spoken to Gawtin but you weren’t going to let er child get taken away. It’s not like you thought this situation was going to happen.

One of your legs shot out and met the shin of the soldier fighting you. The man grunted and darkened his glare through his mask. Your breath hitched.

Before you had a chance to react, a fist met with the side of your face. Your head knocked against the ground, putting you into a daze. But, your arms didn’t even loosen a fraction. You groaned and blinked through your blurry vision.

The barrel found its way to your temple and left an indent. “Tell us. Why are you here?” a different voice grounded out. The gun was a fatal reminder of what would happen if you didn’t give up, didn’t give in to their demands. You painfully steeled your nerves again, teeth gritted, then turned your head to look at them.

One side of your lips curled up into a snarl. The fear inside of you was still ablaze but you couldn’t let them take the infant. “I got lost,” you repeated again, voice trembling despite your horrible excuse of a sneer. You knew it wouldn’t frighten any of them, but you had to stall and give yourself time to possible escape.

Click. The gun was loaded.

“Try that again or else you’ll met the business end again.” Confusion washed over you for a split second before a boot came down on your right leg. There was a sickening crunch that met your ears.

Screams surged past your lips as pain flooded your system. You began to pant, heavily sucking in all the available air in the area. It wasn’t enough. You felt like you were slowly suffocating, loosing the necessary oxygen needed for your brain to function. You writhe on the ground, barely paying attention to what was in your arms.

An ear shattering bellow pulled you from the depths of your agony. The ground underneath you shook with tremendous force. You blinked the majority of the tears away. Only to find a moss green blob landing a few feet away.

“Contact-ack!” Before the man could raise his weapon in defense, an arrow pierced his chest. The deadly tip thrusted through the other side of his ribcage. It was still firmly logged inside of him.

Gun fire only last two seconds. Then, silence filled the air. One broken by your heavily sobs and painful breaths.

The fall of two bodies didn’t even faze you. You curled up into a ball of agony and protection. Your entire body shuttered and trembled. The pain and adrenaline running its course through your form. All you knew though was you had to protect the child who was crying up a storm.

Hands gripped your shoulder and leg, prying your curled form open. You reopened your eyes to find the mother towering over your form, cradling and soothing her baby.

Relief surged inside of you.

Gawtin, a slightly bloody mess, was back. Adorned in primitive looking armor. She looked deadlier than before.

You laid flat on the ground. It hurt to move. There was something terribly wrong with your leg. You didn’t even need to look at it to know that the soldier had snapped it. Then, there was a new burning sensation crawling up your other thigh. As if you had been shot. Again. You gave pitiful whimper, eyes sliding shut.

An unknown amount of time past as you suffered on the ground before something was placed in your lap. You didn’t even have the energy to open your eyes. Whatever happened, happens. Death was either going to greet or Gawtin may save your life.

“You had my curiosity. Now, you have my attention,” her words were muffled in your ear. You grunted, the only intelligent answer you could give.

Arms curled under the backs of your knees and your shoulder blades. The ground left you. One of your eyelids cracked open. Gawtin held you in her arms while her baby was cradled on your stomach. You gave a hum before the pain and exhaustion swallowed you whole.

[3d-wifey]

And They'd Find Us in A Week - Chapter 13

Pairing: Finnick Odair x Reader Word Count: 9.9k Synopsis: Here! Playlist: Listen up! Tag list: - @melancholicmelanin, @yvy1s, @glomp-me, @honethatty12, @swftlore, @hashcakes, @antoheartit, @finnickodaddy, @lilifl0wer, @antoheartit, @kermitcrimess, @persophonekarter, @aawdrea, @obaewankenobis, @xyxlyn, @meandurdaughtergotaspecialthing, @innercreationflower, @kisskittenn, @xngelsau, @coriolanussnowswife Chapter Summary: I've moved the arena around a bit, but nothing major; nothing starts until day 2 1: Blood rain 2: Giant poisonous bugs 3: Toxic Fog 4: Monkies 5: Jabberjays 6: Beast 7: Unknown 8: Unknown 9: Fire 10: Flood 11: Unknown 12: Lightening A/N: this bad boy is 10k, one more chapter b4 we go into mockingjay!!!!!!

Present (XII)

THE ARENA; SECTION 5  (12:23 pm-12:59 pm)

The smell of freshly rained earth lingers around them as they traverse the jungle, and Finnick thinks of you.

During the countdown, he saw you. He locked eyes with you, and, stupidly, he thought that would be enough to tide him over. Just one last moment between the two of you before performing for the cameras. But if that were true, he wouldn’t have looked for you as soon as he reached the Cornucopia—before that, even. When he surfaced from the water, over Katniss’s shoulder as he grabbed a weapon, out of the corner of his eye when he was looking for Peeta; desperate for a glimpse of you. 

And when he finally found you—no, when you found him—your voice carried his name to his ears like a gift. He didn’t need to think; his body was automatically attuned to you like a compass. He had his trident poised and ready to defend you from whatever he considered a threat—a knee-jerk reaction. But when he turned, there was only you. 

You looked at him as though there was a taut rubber band between your bodies, and you had to use all of your strength to resist giving in to that pressure. The desire to run to you was instinctive.

What would that have accomplished other than showing Snow their hand early? It’s not like he could have swept you up in his arms like he wanted to. He couldn't hold you close and make you promise that you'd come back to him, whole, healthy, and his. Being that bold this soon in the Games would benefit no one. Not when you still had to be separated. 

He had almost stopped to watch and make sure you made it out with Johanna, but, as you subtly reminded him, he had to stick to the plan. Plus, seeing you drive your sickle through the head of a man at least two times your size definitely reassured him that you could handle your own.

Not that he didn’t know you could bring a man to his knees. He’s had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of your firm hand enough to—he shakes his head, scolding himself like a misbehaving dog.

Not the time, Odair.

Later, he tells himself, there’ll be time for that later.  

Even now, he’s thinking about how it felt to sleep next to you for the first time in years—head against your chest, listening to your steady heartbeat as you hold him in your embrace. If he closes his eyes, he can feel sure fingers carding through his hair and dull nails scratching softly along his scalp. 

But he can’t close his eyes. No, he needs them open to dart between Katniss’s sprinting form and over his shoulder as they run for their lives through this fucking jungle. 

They’ve covered a good chunk of land in a relatively short amount of time. He’d say it’s taken them about ten minutes to cross a mile, maybe more. He’d be more confident in his estimate if they weren’t traveling up such a steep incline.

Around this point, Finnick decides they’ve put enough space between them and the Career pack that it should be okay to take a short break. He can feel Mags’s heart pounding against his back. Not ideal for a woman this close to ninety.

“Okay, hold up. Hold up.” He calls out, and they all come to a stop. He bends at the knee to help Mags down. “Okay. You alright now?”

He lowers himself to the ground, holding her hand as they sit down. “Okay?” He asks, and she nods, frail fingers gripping his tight as her other hand pats his bicep. Adrenaline makes her shake a little, but she waves off his concern. The four of them sit for a second, gathering themselves.

“God, it’s hot.” Peeta pants and Finnick senses that the oppressive heat might be more to blame than the hike. It’s like he’s choking on it; the air is so heavy that his nostrils don’t feel big enough to inhale it. He breathes in through his mouth and it’s only marginally better. He’s soaked. Something stings as it drips into his eyes and he genuinely can’t tell if it’s saltwater or sweat. “We gotta find fresh water.”

Water. Finnick looks around for any indication of nearby drinking water, listening in for a river or stream. He’d even take a pond. Water would be amazing, preferably without a high salt concentration.

Unknown insects chirp around them in unison; it sort of sounds like a snake. It’s so loud that he’s almost able to ignore the weight of Katniss’s stare. It’s not even like she’s glaring. It’s nearly bird-like how she appraises him—waiting for him to act like the predator she thinks he is. 

Three cannons fire in quick succession. The others look to the sky, but he stares at the tree over Katniss’s shoulder. Any one of those cannons could be you. He holds back a flinch at the thought. You’re not dead. No. No, you wouldn’t do that to him. He's only just gotten you back. And even after two years apart, the two of you are so deeply intertwined that Finnick’s sure his own heart would give out when yours stopped.

With a derisive snort and a shake of his head, Finnick says, perhaps a bit manically, “Well, I guess we’re not holding hands anymore.” His chuckle is met with disapproving silence. Too soon?

Katniss regards him with a look of contempt. Definitely too soon then. “You think that’s funny?"

No, not particularly. But what else is there to do but laugh at the absurdity of it all?

“Every time that cannon goes off, it’s music to my ears. I don’t care about any of them.” He lies. Sometimes, it feels like that’s all he’s capable of. Even now, in the midst of this death sentence, he still can’t be honest about you. He can’t afford to be. Not until he knows you’re safe.

“Good to hear.” With a sly grin, Finnick observes Katniss taking a machete out of her quiver, seemingly more as a threat than a precaution. It’s promptly wiped from his face when she says your name. “Does she know that? If that’s the case, you should have killed her back at the Cornucopia. She didn't even have a weapon. It would have been easy for you.”

“She’s our ally, Katniss." Peeta attempts to caution her or maybe admonish her; Finnick doesn’t know. And he doesn’t care, honestly. Not with how focused he and Katniss are on each other. He can’t even acknowledge Peeta defending you, as odd as it is. 

Unbidden and without provocation, the mental picture of him killing you takes shape. If he wasn’t already so lightheaded from the moist air, he’d be nauseous at the idea. Is she trying to get a rise out of him by bringing you up? Is that what this is? Or is she—is she threatening you? Whatever the hell her angle is, whatever tactic she’s trying to maneuver, he won’t let a threat against you stand—empty or not.

“You know...Katniss. You really shouldn’t speak on things you know nothing about.” He shakes his head as he ignores Mags’s warning grunt, mouth curling in that frosty way of his that entices those stupid enough to mistake a predator baring its teeth for a smile. But Katniss isn’t stupid. This is a language she’ll understand—the language of hunting animals. Her back straightens. His remains deceptively lax. “I mean, can't say that’s ever ended well for you, can we?”

“Are you threatening me, Odair?”

“Threat—” He can’t help but laugh because, honestly. 

This is the girl they’re laying down their lives for? The girl you’re laying down your life for? Emphasis on ‘girl’, she’s far too naïve to be an adult. 

People like her—they're too busy fighting shadows to figure out what’s casting them. Too focused on watching their backs that they don't bother wondering why they have to watch it in the first place—and she’s supposed to lead them to salvation?

He wants to laugh. Instead, Finnick bites his cheek. Maybe he’s bitten into another pipe dream.

“No,” he scoffs. “I’m saving you.”

“Saving? Please, you don’t care about anyone but yourself—”

“Let’s keep moving.” Peeta rises to stand in between them, stopping to give Katniss a long look that she doesn't return, before marching forward and taking the machete with him. The two of them size each other up. For someone so emotionally stunted, her thoughts are broadcast clearly on her face. 

He can see her weighing her odds against him in a fight, whether her speed with the bow is any match for him and his trident, and Finnick’s weighing how much longer she can stand being a team player. He’s not cocky enough to not consider her a threat; she’s a fighter—but, then again, so is he. That’s not what’s staying his hand. Her survival is their only way out of here—not to mention how disappointed you’d be in him if you found out. He won’t be the one to snatch this chance away from you. Not unless she throws the first punch.

He subtly shifts his grip on his weapon into something more defensive, and she gives him one last withering look, or her version of it, before following Peeta. 

He wishes you were here with him. For several reasons, but in this particular moment, to show Katniss how wrong she is. Show her how much he does care about you and how much you care about him in turn. Is it childish that he feels the need to prove anything to a teenager? Maybe.

Probably.

Most likely.

He bends down to help Mags onto his back, scowling at Katniss’s retreating back. 

It’s definitely childish, but still. He sighs. You’d understand. All the more reason to wish you were here. He knows things were touch and go—more go than touch, really—between the two of you at the time, but would it have killed Haymitch to pair the two of you together? Johanna and Blight are more than capable of playing escort for those two brains.

To be fair to the other man, Haymitch had no way of knowing if Finnick would succeed in reconnecting with you.

He takes a moment to really think about it. Namely, how much anger you’ve been harboring over the past two years and the way you drove your sickle through that man’s skull. He tilts his head, squinting. What’s that saying about a woman scorned?

Pairing you together may not have killed Haymitch, but it certainly could have killed Finnick.

His train of thought is violently cut off by Peeta crashing head-first into the force field.

SECTION 11 (12:49 pm-1:12 pm)

“We’re almost at the edge of the arena,” Johanna calls down to your group, climbing halfway down the tree before jumping the rest of the way. 

“What does the arena look like?” Beetee asks, pushing his glasses up for what must be the tenth time since you all decided to stop and get your bearings. The sweat on his face provided no traction to hold them in place.

“One big ass circle and we’re almost at the edge. Other than the beach, there’s nothing but jungle.” She sighs, stomping over to where you sit on the ground. Beetee gives a clinical nod.

“How close is ‘almost’?” You ask, handing her axe back. 

“I’d say at most a quarter of a mile. We’re closer to the edge than we are to the Cornucopia.”

“What do’ya suppose’ll happen if we hit the edge?” Says Blight in his heavy district brogue, which is so different from any you’ve heard before. You had asked Johanna about it at some point—the contrasts of their voices. She explained that Blight was born further north than she was, practically on the border of Seven. 

It’s not like everyone in Eleven speaks the same, but at least some level of similarity can be distinctly found in Eleven—in the southernmost districts in general. It shares a likeness with Eight and Ten. You can sometimes hear the same notes in Katniss and Haymitch’s voices, but not in Peeta’s.

“Most likely? I’d imagine some sort of boundary or force field.” Beetee informs you all.

“Regardless. We won’t know until…” Wiress starts, trailing off as something you aren’t privy to catches her attention.

“—Until we’re upon it.” Beetee finishes for her.

You clear your throat. “I’d say it’s best we don’t find out unless we have to.” You drawl, dropping the Capitol accent you’ve been forced to assimilate for what you realize will be the last time. You replace the over-enunciation and grating lilt with slanted vowels and a melodic tempo.

“We can probably head in a little more and then cut to the left or right,” Johanna suggests and you realize she’s talking to you. Not just you in the sense of the whole group, but you specifically. You glance around. They’re all looking at you. It seems you’re the de facto leader.

When the hell was that decided?

“Right. Well,” you clap your hands, picking your sickles up as you rise, “let’s get a move on. We need to go further while there’s still daylight. Then, we'll find a place to set up camp."

Hopefully.

Blight takes the lead, getting a headstart at cutting through the tightly packed vegetation with his machete.

“C’mon.” You smile down at Wiress as you help her up. She returns it gratefully and Beetee offers her his arm before they trail behind Blight. As you and Johanna carry the flank, you eye the long gash along his shoulder blade that’s steadily bleeding. Your main objective is to get these two to the pickup point, but you’d prefer if you got them there in one piece.

Chaff had said he’d be teaming up with Woof and Cecelia. As well as the morphlings, if they can find them. Unlikely, since they’re masters of stealth. You remember how they didn’t stray far from the camouflage section. You had asked Peeta about the swirls of color on his arm while you were training and he told you it was supposed to be a sunrise that the female morphling painted. She’s apparently fond of them. With skills like that, you know they’ll only be found if they want to be. 

The morphlings. That’s like if you only referred to Haymitch as ‘The Alcoholic’. You scold yourself mentally for using such a needlessly cruel nickname for them just because everyone else did. Either one of your parents would’ve pinched the skin off of you if they knew that.

It's probably an odd time to do so, but you decide it’s high time you learned their actual names. Before now, you had very little reason to since you rarely interacted with them. Yet, even if they hadn’t been rebels, they still deserve the basic respect of being acknowledged as people, not just in conjecture with their addictions. You don’t expect to be BFFs after you make it out of the arena, but you’d like to, at least, be someone who knows and uses their real names.

“Thanks. For what you did back there.” Johanna takes you out of your musings, swinging her axe to and fro on her other side. “Taking that guy down for me. You didn’t have to.”

You scowl at the reminder, pretending to be focused on navigating your steps along the tricky jungle floor instead of looking at her. You didn’t want to think about that. How killing him was the first solution that came to mind. It’s not that you’re naive enough to think that talking him down was even an option. He wasn’t on your side. He wasn’t one of you. He had made his own bed of flowers by turning down Haymitch’s offer. But why couldn’t it have been Gloss or Enobaria that killed him? Why did it have to be you?

Why not you?

“I know I didn’t.”

“But you did, and,” she sighs, jutting her jaw to the side as if it’s taking a lot out of her to say this, “and I’d probably be so minced that the hovercraft would have to make multiple trips to get all the pieces if you hadn’t stepped in, so...thank you."

You smile at her awkward discomfort, ignoring the glances she shoots you out of the corner of her eye and acting oblivious to her increasing agitation.

“Are you gonna say ‘you’re welcome’, or what, asshole?” She scoffs.

“You’re welcome, Your Highness.” You knock your shoulder into hers and she knocks yours right back.

“I owe you one.”

You laugh. “God, I hope not.”

SECTION 5 (1 pm-1:34 pm)

The force of the blow is enough to send Peeta flying backward, knocking them all over so fast that Finnick can barely register that he’s not still standing.

“Peeta’s not breathing!” Katniss cries and it’s a blur of motion as Finnick moves into action, his body acting on autopilot. “Peeta’s not breathing!”

Prop Mags up against a tree.

Check for a pulse that isn’t there.

CPR.

Tilt his head at an angle.

Pinch his nose—a stiff hand to Katniss’s sternum—pinch his nose, blow air into his deflated lungs.

Ignore the arrow pointed at his head.

Put his body weight behind each pump.

Push his will into the unresponsive body. From his shoulders, down his biceps, and into the heels of his hands, to where Peeta’s still heart lies.

C’mon, Peeta. C’mon, c’mon.

“C’mon, Peeta!” He can feel the anticipation of the viewers boiling in on them from all angles, his hair standing on end as he tries to pump Peeta’s heart for him. If they lose Peeta, they lose Katniss. If they lose Katniss, they lose the revolution. If they lose the revolution, they’ll lose, they’ll lose, they’ll lose—“Come on! Come on!” 

He’s got no idea why they haven’t called it yet, why they haven’t blown the cannon, despite his heart stopping before he even hit the floor. Maybe they’re hoping, like he’s hoping, that Peeta will come. The fuck. On.

A small gasp, a cough and—

Finnick falls back on his haunches, hands on his hips and panting as the muscles in his arms buzz. He’s lightheaded again from supplying so much of his air to Peeta. And the heat isn’t doing anyone any favors.

“Be careful. There’s a force field up there.” Peeta huffs and Katniss chuckles, half-hysterical, before dipping down to kiss him. Finnick pauses in the middle of a much-needed inhale, watching the two with narrowed eyes.

“Oh, my God. You were dead. You were dead. Your heart stopped.” Katniss sobs as she drapes over Peeta, shrill and so resoundingly real that Finnick blanches for a second. He’s never seen her hands waver when drawing her bow, but they tremble now as they hold Peeta close. 

Huh.

“It’s okay.” He assures her, still smoldering and smoking a little. “It’s working now.” She helps him up, still sobbing. Or maybe choking? Choking on her sobs. Peeta looks upon her with concern. 

“Katniss?” Peeta prompts, starting to look increasingly panicked and Finnick can’t handle them both freaking out. 

“It’s okay. It’s just her hormones.” Finnick is slow to stand, looking them over quizzically. “From the baby.”

“No. It’s not—” She cuts herself off with more choke-sobs. There’s something here—something he couldn’t see before. Something he hadn’t considered concerning these two, concerning Katniss. That something is familiar. What does it remind him of? It’s nagging at the back of his skull. That staunch fear, the protectiveness followed by the open gasping relief. He recognizes it. Where, where, where—

“She can't possibly care about him that much."

"Yeah, well, you'd be surprised.”

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Of course, he recognizes it—that familiar, desperate love. He’s felt it.

Katniss glares at him, snotty and defensive, and he stares, mystified. He shakes his head, pulling himself from his revelation-induced stupor. The two lovebirds hug each other like they’re the only things holding each other up. And with their current states, they might as well be. To give them some privacy, he walks over to check on Mags and finds her knowing gaze. He can’t have been the last one to know this love story isn’t much of a story at all, right?

SECTION 3 (6:50 pm-10:20 pm) 

Finnick rolls his trident back and forth between his hands as they all wait for Katniss to come back from scouting in the trees. Mags cracks open and eats another one of the nuts Katniss has been using and substantially cooking by bouncing them off of the force field to show the rest of them where it is, considering she can hear it. He has no reason to believe otherwise; there’s no evidence to indicate she’s lying, but Finnick doesn’t buy that she can hear it just because of her hearing aid. If that’s the case, why hasn’t she mentioned it before now? He has no reason to call her out on it, so he won’t. Any advantage they have in the arena, the better. 

He can feel the water evaporating out of his body like a sponge being wrung dry. He feels like a beached whale. They can’t have been in the arena for that long, but the heat—it’s not the kind he’s used to. The sun in Four has nothing on this. He’s never been so thirsty before, not even in his previous Games. They all perk up when she comes back down, hoping beyond hope that she’s seen drinkable water. That hope is crushed when she shakes her head.

“The force field…it’s a dome. We’re at the edge of the arena.” She wipes her sweat-slick hair out of her face. "I couldn't find any signs of fresh water.”

They all sit in dehydrated silence. The human body can only go on for so long with no water. Food, while an amazing plus, won’t be a real problem for weeks. And between the nuts and all the fish they could catch, it’s a problem with a simple solution. Without water, however, they will almost certainly die in five days, with their organs starting to shut down in three. He's seen it back in Four. Dead men brought back from sea shriveled and arid. He always imagined it must be torture to be surrounded by all that water and unable to drink any of it. 

Now, it looks like he might find out.

And with that depressing thought, Finnick moves forward. “It’s getting dark soon. We’ll be safe with our backs protected.” Knowing the consequences of touching the force field, they’ll be able to use the arena itself as a weapon. “We should set up camp. Take turns sleeping. I can take first watch.”

“Not a chance.” Katniss scoffs.

He tilts his head.

He knows the heat is just making everything worse, only fueling his irritability. But he is so over her and this teenage snippiness. Peeta’s so easygoing that he honestly doesn’t mind his company; he can see how the two of you became such quick friends. But Katniss? She is a remarkably hard person to like. 

How much longer will she treat him like a criminal? As far as he’s concerned, the only thing he’s guilty of is giving her the impression that she has any authority over him.

Burying the blunt end of his trident into the ground, he uses it to leverage himself up.

“Honey,” he mocks, his voice long-suffering and chiding, like he’s explaining something that really should be common sense to a child who's a little behind the curve. Which, honestly, doesn't seem too far off. “That thing I did back there for Peeta? That was called ‘saving his life’. If I wanted to kill either of you, I would have done it by now."

He holds her eye before he rips his weapon out of the ground. He’s too tired to have a stupid argument over this, so he nimbly picks his way over to Mags so they can start making camp. 

-

When the Capitol anthem blares throughout the arena and the insignia projects across the sky, Finnick watches with rapt attention. He inhales sharply, watches, and waits.

Portraits of the dead flash beside the full moon. The man from Five that he killed, the man from Six, both from Eight, both from Nine, the woman from Ten and then…it stops. There’s the Capitol seal again and then nothing. No more portraits light up the sky; your portrait doesn’t light up the sky.

You’re still alive.

You’re alive . He knew that. He did. He did . He would have known, he would have felt , otherwise. After all, you had promised him, hadn’t you? In those scant few hours in the early morning before the Games, you both promised to do everything in your power to get back to each other. Promised to see this through, knowing what future waited on the other side—a future together.

He knew you were alive, but the confirmation is—

He lets out the breath he’s been holding, tension easing from his shoulders. 

“Seven,” Katniss says.

“Mhm.” He acknowledges.

Seven victors. His brows furrow. The two from Eight, Woof and Cecelia. The male morphling. All dead.

But he’s still alive. And so are you.

SECTION 1 (12:55 am–3:26 am)

In the white, spectral fog of the jungle, Johanna smacks something big and hairy off the back of her hand. Are the bugs even real?  

She wouldn’t put it past the Capitol to mutate them—control the mutts to crawl all over them and kill them in their sleep. But that’s too boring a death, too kind. Plus, it doesn’t make for good television. And eating bugs would probably make the audience more squeamish than child murder.

Thanks to you, they at least had something to eat. Berries, mushrooms, and, oddly enough, leaves. Not much, but it was something. But there was still the water issue—meaning there was none. They hadn't stumbled upon anything they could drink. No ponds, no rivers. Not even a fucking puddle.

She and you both agreed that there had to be water in the trees; it was too humid for there not to be. But with no way to collect it, they were shit out of luck. Luckily, depending on how long it takes to get here, they’re expecting a rain cloud. It was the only logical assumption after they heard lightning strikes not too far off. Makes sense. Short of a sponsor gift or the magical ability to make salt water drinkable, there’s little for the victors to do in terms of battling dehydration.

If this rain doesn’t pull through, she’ll be tempted to tell you to bite the bullet and request a spile or something. Though she understands why you haven’t done so yet. Just the thought of begging those simpering morons to empty their pockets to help keep her alive makes Johanna shiver and she doesn’t even have the same history with them that you do. Knowing your fans, they’d probably get off on you debasing yourself.

Johanna knocks her head against the tree she's leaning on. She offered to take the first watch because she needed time to think. It was smart of Katniss to want you as an ally. It's easier on Johanna's part too, because at least you can take care of yourself.

And, had the rebellion not been afoot, it would've guaranteed Finnick as an ally too. Maybe Peeta is the one who picked you because Johanna doubts the girl on fire is sharp enough to think that far ahead. Or mature enough to pull her big girl pants on and notice anything around her that didn't actually revolve around her.

Johanna is woman enough to admit that she's jealous. Jealousy is nothing to be ashamed of when it's entirely warranted. Katniss doesn't have to worry about losing her family, not really. Because the Capitol just adores them. Katniss doesn't have to worry about losing her self-autonomy, her dignity, her innocence while in bed with a stranger. Katniss hasn't lived with the grief of what she's experienced long enough for it to turn her bitter.

And yet, here they are, protecting her even if it kills them. No, Johanna reminds herself. They're protecting the rebellion. Katniss just happens to be the face of it.

It’s almost pitch black. Without the sun to shine through the dense tops of the trees, the moon could hardly pull its weight. But it’s been dark for so long that her eyes have adapted a bit. They slept closer to the force field than she would have liked, but she understood your logic. No one can sneak up on them from behind with the force field at their back.

She digs the sharp metal part of her axe into the dense ground, pulling it out, and hacking away again.

She looks over to where the others are sleeping, Nuts and Volts guarded on either side by your and Blight's sleeping bodies. At least they aren't completely useless.

Even if Katniss hadn't wanted them as allies, they would've had to guard them anyway. Haymitch made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they're the brains of this operation. Or at least Volts is. She zeros in on the spool of wire he clings to in his sleep.

She isn't one hundred percent sure how they plan on busting them out of the arena, but it probably has something to do with that. Or at least, it better. He nearly lost his life trying to get it. And she nearly lost her head trying to get him.

They need to meet up with Finnick, but she has no idea where his group is. It's not like they can just bury their heads in the sand and wait for them to show up. The plan rides on them all being together at the pickup point.

A drop of water wets her scalp and then another. It, like everything else in this place, is uncomfortably warm—bordering on hot. But beggars can’t be choosers. The drops of water feel heavier, but that could just be her imagination.

Rain? Finally.

She’ll wake the others up once her vocal cords stop feeling like she’s starting a fire every time she talks. It slowly but steadily picks up—drops landing on her forehead and dripping down her nape. She tilts her head back and opens her mouth and the dry, cracking chasm that she used to call her throat trembles in anticipation of the oncoming relief. 

When it touches her tongue, she recoils. Thick, bitter, and metallic. It's only then that Johanna realizes the warm liquid isn't water. She holds out her hand to catch a drop and it stains red.

Blood.

And, as if the Gamemakers were waiting for her reaction, the sprinkling of rain turns into a downpour.

“Get up!” She screams, scrambling to her feet. “Get up! Get the fuck up!”

You wake up, alert, with your weapons in hand. Springing to attention like you were never asleep to begin with. When you see no enemy you can fight, your vigilance gives way to confusion. The other three are slower to rise until the blood starts pelting them like coins.

They stumble up, much like she did, but they don’t know. They don’t understand what’s falling from the sky.

“Don’t drink it—!” She tries to warn them and gets a mouthful of tacky, festering blood for her troubles. It’s thick and greasy and viscous and slippery, so the remnants of it stay behind when she tries to spit it out. It coats the back of her throat, creeping its way up her nose and slicking in between her molars. 

“Blood!” The last thing Johanna can see before her vision goes red is your blurry face going from stark relief to abject terror as her words fully sink in. “It’s–it’s blood!”

From then on, there’s no room for coherent thought. Instead, Johanna gets stuck in a cycle of gagging on blood, spitting it out, and heaving in the fucked up, muggy, contaminated air, only to start it all over.

She tries to shield her eyes, but the blood creeps underneath her hands like its goal is to take out as many senses as possible. The sound of it sliding off the top of the canopies and hitting the ground is deafening; it almost drowns out your attempts to call out to Johanna. But calls for each other are only answered with blood.

They all flounder about, tottering around on unsure feet. Johanna wipes her eyes and tries to squint around it. But it’s no use. Even if her eyes weren’t compromised, the blood falls so thickly that it curtains everything around her.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t realize she’s only seeing three red silhouettes instead of four.

She gives up on her eyes and works to save her lungs instead. She cups her mouth and nose, coughing and hacking so hard that it feels like her chest is on fire. She breathes through her nose and immediately stops when it burns her nostrils. She breathes through her mouth and it’s somehow worse to taste the sickeningly sweet iron-rich mist. She gags and breathes and gags again. 

She still can’t see, but she crouches down low, hands hesitant as she pats the ground. Trembling hands feel around for her axe, but, apparently, everything feels like an axe handle if your eyes are closed. She can’t afford to let another victor catch her in such a vulnerable position. She may be blind, but she refuses to be defenseless.

She doesn’t find it.

They must stay there, stumbling around fully blind and half-mad for hours before a masculine shout accompanies the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground. So loud it overtakes the sound of blood that isn’t hers rushing in her ears, the sound of the rain. They must have flown before they crashed, must have been thrown back to be that loud—the force field.

“Blight!”

A cannon fires. And then. It stops. All of it. The rain, the yelling, the torture. The heat and the smell remain, if not made worse by each other. Johanna can’t figure out which one is making her stomach roll more.

“Everyone—” she gathers the blood in her mouth, along her cheeks and tongue, and spits it on the ground with disdain. She can feel the frothing, light pink saliva, and drool dripping down her chin from doing the same thing three dozen times already. “Everyone alright?”

Surprisingly, the voice that calls back first is Beetee’s. 

“I–I managed to hold on to Wiress. Blight, however…”

She knows not to expect Blight’s voice and that’s a pain too tender to prod at yet. You, however, don’t respond. And, unlike Blight, there’s no reasonable explanation for your sudden silence. She calls your name, but there’s no reply. There is, however, a spark of panic in her chest right next to her heaving lungs. Johanna only heard one cannon.

She doesn’t know if the heat encourages it or keeps it at bay, but, just that fast, the blood is starting to congeal. Johanna pries her eyes open and it’s almost like they’re still closed. Now impossibly darker, the jungle is a nightmare. Made even worse by the fact that you aren’t here. She lurches up to spin in circles, shouting after you as Wiress keeps mumbling something. She staggers around, cutting herself off by coughing up the blood that’s managed to get into her chest. There’s nothing, no sign of you or where you could have gone. You are not here.

It’s like you disappeared.

A spotlight shines down on them—No, on Blight. On his cooling body. The hovercraft claw descends open-mouthed, dipping down to pick him up. Beetee pulls Wiress away before she can wander closer. Johanna watches as they take him away. 

Blight is thirty. Blight is a burly man with a big beard to match. Blight has a wife, a son. Blight’s from Zone Q, the same zone kids used to make fun of for the funny way they talked. Blight had always been kind to her.

Blight now hangs limp, covered in blood. Skin singed and smelling of burnt hair. This is the last thing he will ever be.

He’ll never see the culmination of the rebellion he was willing to give his life for. He wasn’t the sharpest axe in the, well, anywhere. But…it would have been nice to give him the District Seven sendoff he deserved.

She gives herself a shake. They need to find you.

“Come on, get up.” She waves the remaining two up with her axe. “Let’s go."

“Tick, tock.”

“Where?” Beetee attempts to look at her from under his blood-smeared glasses.

“Tick, tock.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our group has been dramatically cut from five to three—”

“Tick, tock. Tick, tock!”

“—And what the fuck is her problem?!”

“I think she might be in shock.”

“Right. Of course. That’s just fan-fucking-tastic.”

There’s an odd clicking coming from the right and some hindbrain prey instinct warns Johanna away from it. She practically drags her damsels in distress behind her as she scours as much of the jungle as she possibly can in the dark in her search for you. Down to where the sand starts, back to the edge, and then off to the left—away from the clicking. They can’t be as quiet as she would like to be, considering Beetee’s heavy steps and Wiress’s insufferable mumbling. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, fucking tock.

How the hell did she get stuck with Nuts and Volts, of all people? You and Blight have left her alone and now, Nuts is even nuttier than before, and Volts—

“I can’t—I can’t go on. I must, I need to rest.” Beetee gasps. She glowers over her shoulder at his weak form. He raises a hand before falling on his ass. She groans, stomping back to stand over him. Even in the low lighting, he’s a sorry sight. Alarmingly pale, even for someone from Three, he looks like he might faint at any moment now.

“And what the hell is wrong with you?”

“My wound—I believe I’ve lost a fair bit of blood.” He gestures minutely behind him, and she squints at his back. He grunts as she positions him a bit better in the moonlight and his entire left flank is warm with his blood. The wound hadn’t seemed that serious earlier, long but superficial. What does she do if he’s losing more blood than any of them realize? She isn’t trained in medicine and it’s not like they can just request some kind of aid. If you were here, maybe. They’d have much better luck getting a sponsored gift if you were the one asking for it. 

“Great. That’s just lovely. You know, this is exactly what we need right now.” She paces. Kicks a rock. Hurts her toe. “Fuck. Fuck!” Johanna drives her axe into a nearby tree, yanking it out to only hack at it again. They’ve been searching for you for over an hour and there’s no telling where the hell you’ve wandered off to.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know! I don’t—!” She throws her hands up, not even bothering with rebuffing Wiress when she sways into her with her ‘tick, tock’ shit again. She groans, head hanging low. The plan has been monstrously derailed already and it hasn’t even been two full days yet. “I don’t know.”

Hopefully, you’re closer to finding Finnick than they are.

SECTION 2 ( 1:40 am-2:26 am)

You finally come to a stop, feet tripping over gnarled roots and fallen logs. You cough, blowing blood from your nose like snot. You’ve gotten far enough away from the rain that you can almost start breathing normally again. You look around you, turning in rough half-circles as you try to get your bearings. You’re careful to keep in mind the direction you’ve come from because the jungle looks the same as it has for the last mile and a half.

You want to rub at the stitch developing in your side, but you’re too afraid to take your hands off your weapons, even for a second. 

The blood rain was unexpected, cruel. You’d never seen anything like it. The Gamemakers must have gotten a real kick out of that, knowing how readily y’all were waiting for rainwater, knowing how thirsty you were.

The blood doesn’t behave like it should. It’s made your hair dense and heavy, almost oil-slick somehow, despite the frizz from all the humidity. It dries on your skin in thick, itchy patches. Not unlike the aloe vera paste used in Eleven to heal burns and the like.

There’s no telling if the blood shower is heading in your direction or not. Can you handle that again? That suffocating force clawing its way past your esophagus, into your stomach, into your lungs—hot and thick. The taste is still on your tongue and for a moment, you’re in the eye of the storm once more. Fighting to see, to breathe, to live.

You gag and you push it down, but the longer the taste of iron soaks on your tongue, the harder it is to stop it. You gag again, hard enough that your belly cramps up. Eyes watering, you rock forward, nails digging into the wood of the handles as scorching stomach acid claws its way up your throat. You throw up what little you’ve eaten, and you despair, because it may not have been much but it was something.

You stay that way, hunched over, panting open-mouthed as more spit forms rapidly in your mouth just to drip down into the puddle of sick you’ve already left. You’ll be even more dehydrated than before. Your chest burns with acid reflux, your nose runs, and your mouth pools with drool you can’t afford to lose. You want to cry. But you don’t have that luxury. You want someone to rub your back, but you don’t have that either. 

I wish Finnick was here.

You allow yourself that small moment of pity. You pull in a surprisingly cool breath before straightening up. You push your shoulders back, determined to march forward through whatever may be waiting for you because you know that on the other side, Johanna and the others need you. You walk forward, even though the idea of willingly entering that blood-filled hellscape makes your stomach lurch like a threat. 

The blood still proves to be an issue without the Capitol’s input. Some of it drips down your face and neck like sweat, damn near blinding you all over again. You can only wipe it away with the back of your hand so many times. You're still trying to find a way to keep the blood out of your eyes when you hear it.

It's like when a bug flies too close to your ear but louder. Buzzing and clicking that makes the hair on your neck stand, foreboding. 

You’ve never had much of a problem with insects, you weren’t allowed to. You can’t exactly claim ‘fear of bugs’ as a reason for not doing your job, even if you are six years old. After working around tracker jackers to pick various fruits, spiders climbing over you as you wade around the flooded cranberry fields, overzealous slugs as you pull carrots, to name a few, that fear dissipated. That’s not to say you love them, only that you’ve learned to work in proximity to them and ignore them if all else fails. You turn around, spinning in circles as the noise gets louder. You can’t ignore this so easily. You’re six again, trembling in fear as a peacekeeper directs you to a giant tree with an equally giant tracker jacker nest. That old fear makes a reappearance. It takes root, maturing from childish panic to fresh, genuine terror because something is coming toward you. 

You hear flapping, wings. Your vision is still blurred from the blood and you're in a particularly dark part of the forest with barely any moonlight, but you can see it. Some kind of bug hurtling towards you faster than you can run. It’s massive—mutated, most likely—close to the size of a wolf. You duck as it dives at you, bulky mandibles snapping.  

You’d rather fight the wolf.

It flies a few feet away before turning around and you curse the fact that you didn't pick up any long-range weapons. Where the hell is Katniss when you need her? 

You’ve trained for months. Your stamina, your dexterity, your core and upper body strength. But especially your hand-to-hand combat. Woefully, you consider how well that translates into fighting a giant mutt.

For a split second, you get the urge to hide. That animalistic impulse to find a small space to burrow into that the much bigger animal can’t get you and to find it fast. You’ve felt this before in Eleven and in the Capitol. It’s only fitting that you’d feel it here in the arena too.

It hovers in the air for a moment. It's almost as if it’s thinking. As you both regard each other, it begins to feel like it really might be thinking. Just how intelligent is this thing?

It’s a beetle; you can tell that much, which means an exoskeleton. You’ll have to go for the head, the eyes. There’s no indication that it’s about to happen, it just charges you. And you realize far too late that it'll be impossible to get a clear hit at its head. You lunge to the side, but you aren't fast enough. You yell when its pincer strikes you in the side. You pitch over, rolling along the ground. You barely manage the precarious balance of covering your head and keeping your blades away from your body.

It's not done with you. But down here, you have a better chance of avoiding its bite.

The blood makes your grip on the handles slippery. You flip the one in your dominant hand upwards and keep the other one face down as it gets ready to charge you again. You roll under it, slicing upward along its stomach as it flies over you. You're quick to stand up as it wavers in the air, wings stuttering the longer it bleeds.

You’ve both weakened each other, but neither of you is dead yet.

Your mind is quiet. Only one thought echoes in the abyss back to you.

The head. The head. The head. Go for the head. Go for the head. Take the fucking head!

It swoops down at you, wobbling in the air, but still clicking. You kneel down with your sickles turned outward and cross your arms in front of your face. You wait for it to get closer until you can see its head peeking over the gap your weapons leave and straighten your elbows, decapitating it. You close your eyes as black blood rains down on you and its head and body hit the ground with two distinct thumps.

Its body convulses on the ground and its head stays still, but you don't have time to check if it's really dead. Like the man from Nine. More buzzes and clicks come from your right and you're running before you even register that your feet are moving.

You don't look behind you, you don't need to. You can hear them, closing in on you. You just keep sprinting, lungs burning in exhaustion as you push yourself faster. You don't know where you're running to, but you know you have no way of fighting off more than one.

There's a hill a few feet ahead of you, and you prepare yourself to roll down. You throw your weapons to the bottom and cover your head as you tumble down, scraping yourself on stray twigs and rocks.

You scramble to stand up at the bottom of the hill and look up in time to see the bugs hovering at the top. They're stopped by what looks like a force field. But that doesn’t make any sense. You—you just came from there. Suddenly, they lose interest in you like you were never there to begin with and they turn around. They bump into each other as they fly away, probably on their way to swarm someone else.

A piercing scream comes from the direction the mutated insects flew off to. Better you than me, you think and regret it immediately. That could be someone you care about. Chaff, Johanna, Katniss, Peeta.

Finnick, your brain supplies. You shake away the thought. You don't have to worry about that because he promised you.

"He promised me. He promised me." You repeat to yourself in a whisper.

You stumble back into a tree, chest heaving.

Once the adrenaline rush passes, another problem presents itself. The blood on your body has grown cold, so it's surprising to feel a warm rush of liquid on your side. 

You look at where your jumpsuit is torn above your right hip. You stretch the fabric and see two holes about six inches away from each other. Twice the size of a bottle cap, one's a little above your hip bone and the other rests a little before where your back starts, both wider and deeper than you would like—but you don’t see muscle, which counts for something. They're rough, not perfect circles. Skin hangs haphazardly from them both, peeling away at the edges with jagged incisions going towards the middle. As if being punctured like a piece of paper wasn’t enough, they've been torn from the pincers still being buried in you and then violently ripped out after you fell.

Now that you're aware of them, they throb in sharp waves.

"Shit," you curse, breathing around the tears that bubble up from the pain. Your breaths are shuttered, halting. You're bleeding at a pretty steady pace and you won't last long with the wound out in the open. Especially if there's a creature out here that can smell blood. “Shit, shit, shit.” You whimper.

You scream as cramps rocket through your abdomen and the ability to be quiet is beyond your pain-addled mind, you can’t stop it. Luckily, it comes out of your dry throat more of a raspy croak than a real scream. You press a shaking, blood-soaked hand to your mouth anyway. You don’t know what other killer insects may be out here with you and you can’t afford to grab their unwanted attention just because you can’t control yourself.

Your medical knowledge isn’t extensive. Honestly, it’s a little below average for what’s expected in Eleven, but probably far more than what an ordinary citizen in the other districts would know. Not everyone can afford the services of doctors, especially if they live in the Shacks, so you were all taught how to help each other. You don’t know any of the fancy shit they probably teach in the academies, but you were taught how to heal with the land—old methods and practices passed down from before the Dark Days.

Your first thought is to clean it, but with what? You don’t even have clean water to drink. Your second thought is to pack it, if not with cotton then with aloe vera—it’ll ward off infection for a while, right? You have no way of disinfecting it, not by yourself and not with what’s available to you, so stopping the bleeding is the next best thing. 

This may not be your environment, may not be your plants, but you learned a thing or two while training Peeta in the Edible Plant section. This is the perfect environment for natural, as natural as the arena will permit, aloe to grow. But it’s still dark. You can’t go looking for it, not by yourself. And you aren’t desperate enough to start begging your sponsors for help. 

You sigh. You’ll have to settle for the bare minimum. 

You pull both of your sleeves down where they detach at the shoulder and even that little movement makes your stomach cramp again. You flinch as the muscles underneath the wounds spasm, pumping out more blood. 

You tie one end of both sleeves together, working past the hurt, and, God, does it hurt. But the pain is unavoidable. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s what you’ve always told yourself. You let your mind drift, taking you somewhere else.

The pain is unavoidable. The pain is unavoidable. The pain is unavoidable.

Sweat drips down your back, or maybe it’s blood, as you move the makeshift tourniquet around your waist. You lay a flat piece of the fabric on the wound and nearly black out as you tie the two loose ends in the back. You tie it again just for good measure, biting around a scream as you pull it tight enough to staunch the bleeding.

Your vision swims as you gasp in big gulps of air. Your hands shake from the pain and yet another adrenaline drop. Your legs feel weak, barely holding you up as you lean most of your weight against the tree.

You need a game plan.

Another canon fires.

You don’t know how long you sit there, eyes closed, head tilted back, pitying yourself. But by the time you decide to get moving, you notice something. Something’s…wrong. 

Everything sways when you move your head up. You blink nearly twenty times before your eyes can focus again. You feel warm. Not warmth from the humidity. Not warmth from exercise. But warmth from a fever, a sickness. Nausea creeps upon you and, fuck, please, you can’t throw up again—you can’t. An injury this nasty will certainly come with symptoms, but you shouldn't have this kind of reaction. You try to remember what kind of bug it was. You remember it was a beetle, but you rack your brain for what it looked like. Your muscles spasm around your wound, reminding you how open and exposed they are even when covered with fabric.

You’ve got two plugs taken out of your side, you’re covered in blood, both real and synthetic, you’ve been poisoned, and you’re alone.

Alone. There is no sound other than your labored breathing because you’re alone. That’s the worst part somehow. 

You’re slow as you lean down, wincing at the slightest movement, and snatch up your sickles. If just that is enough to sap you of your energy, then—

You can’t stay out here in the open where you’re vulnerable, no one to watch your back, no one to protect you. You’re an easy target, no help to the revolution like this. You take a few quick breaths to psych yourself up. You push off the tree, grunting as the smallest use of your abdomen aggravates the wounds. You hobble along, heading in the opposite direction of where you left Johanna and the others.

Hopefully, Finnick’s group is having better luck. 

SECTION 3 (3:17 am-3:28 am)

Finnick is sure that there are certain moments that he’ll remember for the rest of his life. His reaping, the first person he killed, meeting you. These moments, these entries penned into the book of his life, define him. They’re all weaved into a tapestry, sewn into a quilt that illustrates his past and blankets his future. Who he is today, and who he will be tomorrow, is shaped by these moments. He’ll remain irrevocably changed by these events. 

He’s sure this moment will be one of them.

The fog creeps behind them and he’s suddenly so glad you aren’t a part of their group. A spectral wall of wispy gas that observes their suffering with the same indifference as the Capitol does. Peeta is a solid weight on Finnick’s shoulder and he’s thankful for it. It’s a reminder, the weight of what he’s defending. He clenches his teeth against the fog's stray tendrils and their poisonous grasp, increasing his speed even as pain licks at his heels. 

“Fhinnic’ , Fhinnic’!” He skids to a stop, looking behind him at Peeta’s slurred insistence. He turns in time to see Katniss and Mags crash to the ground. He rushes over to them. Mags sits concerned next to Katniss who’s beginning to blister.

“It’s no use,” Katniss says. He kneels beside them and he can see she’s feeling the effects of the fog. Her left leg is getting stiffer and her face has begun to droop. “Can you take them both? Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.” The confidence in her voice is interrupted by the grimace on her sagging face.

Mags has been touched by the fog less than the rest of them, if at all. Probably for the opposite reason that Finnick seems to have the most damage, she’s small. By this logic, it should be easy for Finnick to carry her along with Peeta. It should be easy.

“My arms aren’t working. My arms, they aren’t—” From his shoulder blades down to his fingertips, the muscles in his arms are ruined. They spasm sporadically, jerking uncontrollably as they hang limp at his sides. He’s even relying on Peeta to hold onto his trident for him. “I’m sorry, Mags. I can’t, I can’t do it. I’m sorry.” He apologies. He keeps apologizing to her and he can’t see why, too focused on the wave of white threatening to seize them. 

It’s all so quick. Mags has realized what Finnick himself is too stubborn to acknowledge. There’s a heaviness in his chest that he tries to swallow around but it only spreads to his throat. His throat gets tight. His senses feel heightened, his heart beating faster, lungs heaving harder, but he’s still trying to find a way out of this. His mind is moving at the speed of light, determined to fix it, determined to row this impossible boat upstream—thinking about everything but the only realistic outcome here.

They never talked about this. Never discussed the possibility. A situation where he would ever have to—it just never, never came to mind. He never thought to imagine it. And yet, she’s taking off the bracelet she’s wearing—his bracelet that she wore as a token for him. The same bracelet he made under her roof, under her knowing gaze. She slides it up his wrist, tightening it before grabbing his face between her weathered hands. She places a gentle peck on his lips and that’s when he realizes she’ll be leaving, whether he’s ready to say goodbye or not.

“Mags? Mags? Mags!” Tears blur his vision as she dodders uphill into the fog. Katniss grabs his wrist, stopping him from going after her. “Mags! Mags!”  

“Finnick!” He can see her silhouette just past the veil of mist, convulsing violently before—a cannon fires. He sits there, desolate. He can’t tell if the numbness spreading through him is organic or from the nerve damage.

“Finnick, we have to go. We have to get outta here.” He’s slow to turn around and look at Katniss. “We have to go.” 

Finnick climbs to his feet, accounting for Peeta’s weight, as Katniss drags herself behind him. He sniffs once, twice, three times. 

Later, he tells himself, there’ll be time for that later.

A/N: 1.) Blight's accent is the Canadian accent - specifically Letterman Kenny 2.) reckon the covey (Lucy Gray's group) traveled to the north from 11 to 12 during the 1st rebellion and got trapped in 12 after they lost. the Seam now has a distinct accent that sounds vaguely southern. 3.) i headcanon there's no singular southern accent in 11, using this map:https://fineartamerica.com/featured/vintage-map-of-panem-from-the-hunger-games-design-turnpike.html?product=art-print you can see just how much southern land it covers. So that's a mix of Creole, Irish, Mexican, and deep south roots. I'd imagine the mix of Creole, southern aave, and Spanish makes for a very particular accent. but if I had to pick one, it's closer to the southern drawl than the southern twang. 4.) the capitol accent basically the transatlantic accent 5.) You and Finnick think the same, since it was his idea to sleep next to the forcefield and use it as a weapon. yall literally think the same. also finnick wakes up the same way you do in the book when katniss screams about the fog. 6.) in the book, Lucy Gray is quiet but cunning. She doesn't have the "girl bossified quirky" demeanor she does in the movie and I blame Disney for that. As such, she doesn't have the "loud and proud/nothing affects me/cocky without a cause" attitude in my canon. What attracted Snow to her was that survivor instinct he saw in her that he felt he had. Everything that made Lucy Gray interesting to him can be found in Star (and Peeta.) I think Katniss personality wise is so much like Sejanus's that it pissed him off. close enough to District 12, but not exactly. district eleven has the exact background that Snow wishes he had with 12. He has more control over Eleven, they're easier to control/oppress as opposed to the free-spirited District 12. With Star, he strives to fix what mistakes he made with Lucy Gray. my beta reader said "i agree honestly like i think thats also why people are misreading snow in the movie bc they don't actually understand lucy gray and therefore misunderstand why snow even liked her" 7.) eleven is mainly a black and indigenous North American (Canada, US, and Mexico) population

[baiabay]

No Role Modelz (ATSV Black Cat Variant! Reader Insert)

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6: Current Chapter

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^^links 2 chapters!! this story is also on ao3, wattpad, and quotev under the same name

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Chapter Six: Bye Felicia!

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Fucking exhausted.

At this point you weren’t even thinking, just letting adrenaline drive your movements. But the thing about adrenaline, it runs out. And you weren’t sure how much of it you had left, or how long this mess was supposed to last. 

While dodging debris and hauling around citizens, you came to a realization. Unlike the others, you didn’t have powers. You were never bitten by a radioactive kitten, and neither was your father as far as you’re aware. You didn’t shoot out hairballs from your palms or have super-strength, you couldn’t claw your way up walls or always land perfectly on your feet, unlike the others, you were just human. And your human-ness was really starting to weigh down on you right about now, as you felt your feet slide out from under you, and your wrists start to ache while you did your best alongside Pav to keep a city bus from toppling over the edge of a broken bridge. 

You grit your teeth and groaned, nothing in your mind but fuzz, body fueled by the desperate willpower the screams of civilians around you provided. Squeezing your eyes shut, you felt the ground rumble behind you, deepening the cracks that formed around your feet. A pained shout of Miles’ name from Gwen sounded out. 

After what felt like forever, the strain on your arms had been slightly relieved. You cracked your eyes open, met with Hobie by your side, joining you in the upward pull of the city bus. After a few more hearty tugs, the bus was finally on solid ground. You heaved a heavy sigh, finally feeling the full weight of your adrenaline crash. Your mind spun and your stomach churned. Under you, your legs began to wobble. With nothing but exhaustion on your mind, you embraced the slump of your body that followed. Before you felt yourself hit the ground, a firm hand gripped your shoulder, steadying your unstable form. Besides you, an English accent mumbled some sort of consolidation your ringing ears didn't manage to pick up. Still, in your hazy state, you turned your head towards Hobie and shakily parted your lips. “...Is it over?” 

Before you could catch a response, you felt a new pair of arms wrap themselves around your form. You clamped your eyes shut in surprise, and by the time you opened them, the intimate squeeze that engulfed you was gone. In front of you, Pav stood with a hand on his chest, head lowered in a silent ‘thank you’. Despite everything, a smile crept its way onto your face. 

The tender moment was quickly cut short with more rumbling. But this wasn’t another signal of more destruction, it was different. This time it felt…warbled…time bending. In the direction of the noise, what looked like a giant, spider-shaped ship descended from a bright portal. It landed with a heavy thud, and opened its large mouth to release what looked like…more? Spider-people…? You let out a wry laugh. You were beginning to sense a pattern.

Walking first out of the ship with an air of authority, was a familiar face. “Okay, guys, secure the area, clear all civilians, and let’s contain this quantum hole.” Your mind flashed back to the night you and Miles jumped headfirst into this mess. In the midst of Spots’ destruction that night, her holographic form stood alongside Gwen. Just as you were about to turn to mention this revelation to Miles, he was already taking confident strides towards the pregnant hero. Not before grabbing a hold of your wrist and dragging you behind him, forcing you to join him in his determined trot towards the now-frowning Spider-woman. Of course.

Your brows began to knit together and a nervous smile plastered itself on your lips. “Hah…Miles, what do you think you’re doing,” You tried to tug your wrist away, which he did loosen his grip, but his stride didn’t falter once. Breaking your train of worry, he spoke your name. “Just trust me with this.” He replied with a shrug in his shoulders and a smile clear in his voice. “Trust me.” He squeezed your wrist before letting go and quickening his pace, now walking in front of you. 

Similar to his determined stride, the cheeriness in his voice refused falter as he began to address the Spider-heroine. “Hey, I’m Miles, and uh, that’s Black Cat back there,” The pregnant hero jutted her chin into the air, walking with clear frustration thinly veiled with nonchalance. Despite her obvious display of ignorance towards him, Miles continued. “Uh- we all actually met before, when I was invisible and Cat-” A knot began to weave and tighten in your stomach as you felt the gaze of the older woman meet yours. She lowered her chin, looking at you through her eyebrows. She walked quicker now, towards you. You gulped. “I know who you are,” She mumbled, finally addressing Miles. “But you, Hardy,”

huh?

 She stopped before you, never once breaking her glare. She let out a deep sigh, letting her shoulders slump. You, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more tense. “You’re really not supposed to be out here.” 

How did she know my name?

“How do you know my-”

“Okay- wait, let me explain-” Gwen stepped between the two of you. “Miguel wants you back at HQ.” Gwen was quickly shut down before any sort of explanation could escape her masked lips. “Wait, where are we-” “All of you.” Your confused sentiments were quickly shut down as well, met with a quick sweep of the hand of the hero before walking off towards the ship. The knot in your stomach loosened. Only slightly. Beside you, Miles whooped excitedly. “I’m going to HQ?”

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I just can’t catch a break, huh?”

You shouted towards the rest of the group from the ceiling. Or was it the floor? Or maybe just a wall? This building made no sense to you. Granted, it probably wasn’t designed with Cats in mind. While Miles, Gwen, and Hobie walked comfortably upside-down, their feet sticking effortlessly to every surface they touched, you relied on swinging your form around via grappling hook. Occasionally, gravity would be on your side and you would catch yourself walking like normal across what you assumed was a floor, but just as you would start to get comfortable, you began to fall upwards. Or would it be downwards?

“It’s a bit much, innit?” Hobie mumbled back. “Pff,” You chucked. “More than a bit- SHIT-!”

Doubling over in pain, you let go of your hook. Screaming out, you tried to grab at yourself in an attempt to ground the sting that shot through your nerves. You tried to grab at yourself, but you felt nothing. You felt like you were coming undone. You were coming undone, you were falling apart, you were-

“Here.”

And as the pain was never there, it was gone entirely. A pressure on your wrist. Looking towards your arm you were met with  a bright blue rubbery band.

“It’s a day pass. Keeps you from…” You heard the same pained grunt from Miles, who now crouched beside you, face contorted in pain. “…doing that.” He snapped the band across his wrist, sending you a worried glance before helping you up. 

Continuing your trek through the HQ, you subconsciously felt yourself grow more on guard. You recognized this feeling, it was the exact same one you would always feel while sneaking past security during heists, the exact same feeling you would get slinking around CCTV cameras late at night. 

You were being watched. 

Glancing around the space, you easily confirmed that yes, you were being watched. Quite intensely too. As you trudged behind the group you instinctively rested your hand on the holster of your whip, noticing how the masked eyes of the Spider-people around you seemed to follow your every move. You lifted your chin, adjusting your posture to walk with a stronger, cockier air in your step. The staring turned to whispers, the whispers turned to murmurs. Your lips began to pull into a smirk. Once again, The Black Cat was watched, feared, the center of attention. 

Would it be wrong if you said you missed this feeling?

If you focused enough, you could decipher the mumblings that floated around you. And one thing especially kept on putting you off. 

…The Black Cat…Cat is here?...Black Cat…Hardy…Cat Burglar…Thief…Hardy…Cat.. Hardy?…Hardy…Hardy…

…Felicia?

They all knew your goddamn name. Your last name, at least. Fearful mumbles of ‘Hardy, Hardy, Hardy’ filled your ears, mixed with another name you didn’t recognize. ‘Felicia, Felicia, Felicia’. You tried to not let how disturbed you were show on your face. Lifting your head higher, you continued your strut.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Who’s in these lazer cages?”

You asked, eyes illuminated orange by the glowing prison before you.

“Anomalies,” Answered above you, a small, weirdly fashionable, digital avatar. “Folks who ended up in the wrong dimension. We kick their butts and send them home.”

Glowering looks were sent in the direction of the group as you and Miles curiously peered at the multiple caged anomalies in the room. Men with eight tentacled arms strapped to their backs, tall figures with crystal balls for heads, a man with the posture of a vulture, a literal vulture- the oddities were neverending. 

One in particular caught your eye. A leaner, more feminine figure stood with a cocked hip and arms crossed. The knot was back. Tightening, twisting, as you stepped slowly towards the orange enclosure. As you got closer, more features made themselves apparent to you. Thin heeled boots blended seamlessly into a skin-tight, grayscale suit. Crossed arms lined with white fur lead into ladylike hands, with long, pointed nails decorating their fingertips. A deep v-neck, prominent collarbones, red-painted lips, blue eyes, a tight, high ponytail-

Cat ears.

It seemed both you and the lady before you felt the same way about each other's presence, watching with wide eyes as hers widened as well. By now, the knot has doubled, tripled, tied around itself and every organ in your body. Whatever type of confidence you managed to muster in yourself earlier was long gone now. In front of you, plump, red lips parted to speak. 

“Felicia?”

That name again. Shocked still, you shook your head ‘no’. The lady let out a wry laugh. “I know a Cat when I see one,” The click-clacks of high heels sounded out as she stepped closer towards the edge of the cage, now crouching so her face was leveled with yours. She had an elegant, mature face. Her lips were stretched into a small, relaxed smile, but the pained scrunch that was knit into her forehead told you that relaxed was the last thing she was feeling at this moment. “But you’re so…young.” A sigh, followed by a feline-like stretch as she stood back up in her enclosure. “They’re not gonna like you in here, y’know. They’ll make you ‘Go Home’ as soon as he finds out who you are.” 

“Wait- wait,” You finally spoke up, breaking out of whatever trance the two of you were caught up in. “Who’s ‘he’? And who are you? And why do you look like me but not…really? And everyone in here knows my last name for some reason and it’s been driving me fucking crazy-”

“Let’s go!” Down the hall behind you, Hobie called out over his shoulder. Another sigh from the anomaly. “Listen, kid. Stay safe. Please.” “You’re not telling me anything-” “It’s too complicated to explain right now, kid.” “I’m not a kid-” 

“Felicia Hardy. Black Cat.”

“...you’re…but I-”

“And you’re not the first, or the last, that’s been in this place. Trust me, I’ve seen my fill.” 

“But…how?”

“I don’t know how. But I do know that you need to be careful, please. Knowing you, er- us, getting tangled in situations as big as this never ends well-”

“Cat, c’mon!” Hobie called out again. Felicia pressed her lips together, sending you a knowing gleam in her blue eyes and a slight nod. Backing up from her cage, you nodded back. A silent pact, a mysterious bond formed between the two of you that you didn’t really understand. Nevertheless, you trudged on.

“Coming!”

[jedineedlove]

LMK VS Legend

The Guardians of Knowledge

I know that in the show these two are just call the guardians of knowledge,but after an interesting find I THINK I know who that actually are and if this is true it might make season 5 more interesting or not be effected based on the shows perspective, hope you enjoy.

LMK:

In the show these two dont get much screen time they are not given names either. They act as both guardians and keepers of knowledge. They have the physical and vibe of a celestial being. But they actually seem to be more librarians they say that knowledge is for everyone you just need a card. (Hilarious)

Their home the cloud seeming to be a magical /technological connected place out in a desert it’s very hard to tell its location the cloud glitch and the place has a lot of sand around.

These two look like giants but don’t have the size they have the coloring of demons but no horn or fangs but they could be hiding it. They wear what seems to be celestial armor but Azure wore some two along with Peng and Tusk. so there demos that wore them if they worked for the celestial realm.

Legend:

Who, I think these two are actually interesting I think they are Qiānlǐyǎn (Thousand-Mile Eyes), and Shùnfēng’ěr (Wind-Following Ears).

Does this seem similar to anyone?

It's very similar to the door of the cloud. Two brothers in a special pose holding golden weapons and wearing golden clothes, One is red while the other is green. "One is usually depicted as a green demon with large all-seeing eyes. He keeps a weather eye on the horizon, scouring the sea for sailors in need of the sea goddess’s assistance." that is the main physcill description of each of them. They don't wear the right headband but that could be explained because the image of the statue is from Taiwan, not China The two are normally depicted wearing "flowing clothing or open armor to show off their muscular physiques. Apart from their divine sashes, they are commonly shown wearing golden armbands, bracelets, and/or anklets, as well as a tiger skin at the waist." These traits appear to be consistent with all other examples I've seen. Some of these missing parts could been the show's decision. Remember I'm just speculation not stating.

Qianliyan is a Chinese sea and door god. He usually appears with Shunfeng'er as a guardian of the temples of the sea goddess Mazu. Qianliyan's sharp vision is employed to help protect sailors at night and during fog and other inclement weather.[12] In some accounts, he is capable of seeing everything in the world. Qianliyan typically appears as a green-skinned demon shielding his eyes from the sun's glare.

Shùnfēng’ěrThe god's role in helping sailors distinguish favorable winds also prompts the translations "Fair-Wind Ears"[3] and "Favorable-Wind Ears" In some accounts, he is capable of hearing everything in the world, no matter how quietly spoken, and was therefore also worshipped as a witness and guarantor of oaths and contracts. Shunfeng'er typically appears as a red- or brown-skinned demon cupping a hand to one of his ears.

Both demons depicted in art have a hand raised to a part of their heads or faces which is also similar to the Guardians of Knowledge Door mural.

History:

The brothers "Thousand-Miles Eye in the disguise of a lovely girl, lures men into a cave and then devours them. When With-the-Wind Ear sees this, he starts a fight with Thousand-Miles Eye, but in the end the two monsters pledge to become sworn brothers. Guanyin, seated on Mount Potala, orders the Dragon’s Daughter to tell Mazu to subdue the monsters. With the heavenly warriors helping her, she was able to defeat the two. After that, the two become her loyal servants. First, they help Mazu fight a man-eating lion, and subdue the Evil Dragon Monster Later down the timeline of their legend they would reach the JTTW.

JTTW:

That's right these two were in the JTTW you might have recognized their names in the being for t eJTTW readers if you remember them great for those who don't they were the ones that announced Wukong or just Stone Monkey at the time of birth they were sent by the Jade Emperor to find out why his place got set on fire from two laser beams. They are depicted as personifications of the Jade Emperor himselfs' own hearing and sight. That was why I was saying it would maybe be entering in season 5 if the Jade Emperor is gone and they are a part of him does that mean that they're gone?

But then again the show might not have gone that route they have changed a lot of the mythology of the original novel. They could have changed that as well I could not see the Jade Emperor personification of two of his senses living on the mortal plane and as kind-loving librarians or ones that play video games.

Notes:

That along with their origins and roles originally based around the sea why in a Desert and Why Librarians, I could see the show editors taking more of the JTTW versions and seeing the beings that personified ears and eyes they must be involved in knowledge right. They can see and hear everything in the world they must be knowledge-based beings.

Also, everyone else in the show so far has some sort of JTTW connection somewhere. The two must follow that formula.

But if I'm right then these two were literally the first ones to see newly hatched Wukong. So many questions.

Thank you

Hope you enjoyed :)

PS: how I thought of this well I was watching VR gameplay of

The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend

And I saw the red and green statues of the two demons and thought "WAIT............ Hold up.........deja vu ......is that you?!"

[theteasetwrites]

Begin Again

Chapter 2: Ami ou Ennemi?

❧ Media: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon ❧ Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Female Reader ❧ Era: Season 1 ❧ Pronouns: she/her ❧ Warnings: violence, scary situation ❧ Word Count: 4.8k

❧ In This Chapter: On the road west, things take a turn when the first people you and Daryl come into contact with in France turn out to be a bit less welcoming than you'd hoped they would be. Meanwhile, a watchful pair of eyes just might be what saves you.

❧ A/N: Okay so this was going to cover the whole rest of the first episode but I didn't want to cram it all into one giant chapter, so here's a smaller (kinda boring tbh) chapter! This chapter is necessary because it leads up to the kick-off of the storyline in Chapter 3, which I promise will be MUCH more interesting (and have way better Reader x Daryl interactions, of course). But for now, please enjoy this chapter! I am having so much fun writing for the spin-off ahhh

Carried by a limp and an aimless hope still lingering in your heart, you walked.

In fact, you walked for days. About five total, you were sure. Well, you couldn’t be too sure. Everything was a blur, and you’d given up keeping track with the tally marks you’d scribbled on the edge of the map. All you could bother to rely on now was the natural movement of the earth, the sun rising on one shoulder, setting on the other. Then a few hours of sleepless sleep, then walking again, through what seemed to be a once sparsely populated countryside, amongst a collage of ancient ruins. 

From your navigation, you’d determined that the snow-capped mountains you walked just at the base of were those of the Pyrenees. For miles you walked along those foothills of thick green shrubbery and ever-expanding stretches of woods, through which a wide gravel road snaked and occasionally branched into small hamlets or mysterious medieval ruins you didn’t care too much to research. 

As your eyes squinted hard at the map you’d come to loathe the now taunting familiarity of, you felt your steps slow to a halt, crushing the ancient gravel underneath you with a dying enthusiasm. Daryl followed behind you, himself preoccupied as well, but by the wound on his arm, which had been festering for almost two days now. 

You’d been tending to it, of course. Daryl could’ve done so himself, but you hardly trusted him to be as diligent with the care of his own injuries as you were. 

The good news seemed to be that the burn did not inflict a fever upon him, or have any other kind of deadly effect. Still, as Daryl put so eloquently, “It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

You turned around, approaching him as he studied the burn, in the distinctive shape of a handprint. Taking his arm in your hand, you frowned at the festering wound, still a little too raw for your liking. 

It seemed to be healing a little, though, with only slight accumulations of yellowish fluid around the parts where flesh had been burnt. That was good. It meant the wound was draining properly, exuding serous liquid that would help the flesh to heal and eventually scar over. But the inflammation, the redness, worried you.

“It’s not purulent,” you said. “So that’s good.”

Daryl looked at you, eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t have to speak to convey his confusion at the SAT vocabulary word.

“There’s no pus,” you clarified. “No green drainage… But we should cover it up again.”

Nearby, you settled by an abandoned car, mangled and ravaged by time. It was a good cover for the moment as you sifted through a first aid bag you’d scavenged yesterday. Thank God you had, otherwise his arm might’ve looked much worse than it had.

As he knelt beside you, you set out a roll of gauze, then uncapped your canteen of water. Daryl couldn’t complain too much about you using the water to wash his wound now, considering how much it was beginning to burn.

The sting was worse than yesterday as you poured the cool liquid over it. You yourself winced at the sound of Daryl’s hiss, knowing full well that his tolerance for pain was much higher than anyone you knew, so that burn must’ve been agonizing. 

Spinning the gauze around his arm, you wrapped the burn tight. He sighed softly in temporary relief, but he could already feel the festering begin to return. 

The back of your hand situated itself against his forehead, brushing back the loose hairs as you did so. 

You swallowed down the lump in your throat. He was warm. Daryl always ran a little warm, of course. You’d often referred to him as a human heater. But this was off for Daryl, warmer than you were used to feeling. 

It terrified you.

The thought that this burn could be akin to a bite was one which haunted you the last two nights, keeping you ten times more aware of Daryl’s state at all times. 

You’d seen plenty of people in the process of turning. You’d known the signs. It was hard to tell now. Daryl didn’t have enough of a fever to render him fatigued, but it was enough to worry you. 

“How do you feel?” you asked, still brushing back the hairs that framed his face, as if fixing his hair could somehow improve his condition.

“Like shit.” He took a sip of water from your canteen. A small sip, of course, lest he leave you without enough water to keep you moving. 

“You just need some rest,” you said, watching as he began to lift himself to his feet, with half his body weight supported by the spear that had served largely as his walking stick. 

Clearly, he wasn’t going to be resting anytime soon.

“I’ll rest when the sun goes down,” he replied gruffly, while a gust of wind began to blow his hair in wild patterns across his face. You rose up, too, despite your body’s inescapable urge to sleep right there on the gravel. “We still got a few hours of sunlight… Best to keep movin’.”

With a strained grunt, he reached for his spear, pressing it into the dirt below as he started to lift himself, using the spear as leverage.

The day Daryl would listen to you when you asked him to rest was the day Hell would freeze over, but you couldn’t fight him. After all, you weren’t itching to stay put in any one place for too long. You had to keep moving, to try to find some kind of way back home. 

You raised yourself to your feet alongside him, reaching into your backpack to tuck the gauze and your canteen back inside. But there was a slight tremble in your hand, and a racing of your heart as your body reacted to the intense burn of a distant stare before your mind even could. 

Daryl felt it, too.

Practically in sync, both of you turned to face the direction of the stare. There was a cliff just ahead, surrounded by lush shrubbery. The distance was great enough to ease your paranoia, but still too close for comfort. 

There was a figure atop the cliff, looking down. Well, you supposed so, despite not being able to make out the figure’s face. What you could see was a reddish cowl encircling their head, but the rest was simply the shape of a human, standing still, watching. 

It sent a shiver down your spine, the inescapable fear of being watched suddenly taking hold over you. It was something you’d known since childhood, with frequent nightmares of a decrepit elderly man cupping his hands as he looked in through the window of your childhood bedroom, smiling wide at you. Despite your dream self’s attempts to escape, you couldn’t move, you could only cry as the man stared at you, watching you. 

But of course, that man was only a figment of your imagination, a childhood fear that stuck with you all through your life. You hadn’t thought of that man in years, but now, feeling the eyes of a stranger on you, you felt it again. Only this was real. Well, perhaps it was a mirage, induced by the emptiness in your stomach and the fog in your head, but it did not matter. There was nothing you could do. Maybe that was what was so frightening about it.

“C’mon.” Daryl’s hand brushed your forearm, dislodging you from that momentary stupor. Fortunately, he seemed much less perturbed by the mysterious apparition, though he couldn’t deny the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Keep movin’.”

So you did, following behind him by just a few steps, until he stopped abruptly shortly after, examining the road sign standing before him. On its pole, a small piece of paper was plastered to it, with handmade strokes of black paint spelling out three words: DIEU VOUS AIME.

Your curiosity piqued, you quickly shrugged off one strap of your backpack, reaching back to unzip the largest pouch and grab the French-English dictionary you’d so wisely picked up back at the boat in Marseille.

Looking between the pages and the sign, you flipped through the book, until the phrase appeared among the list of D’s. 

Daryl looked at you in waiting as you let out a slightly amused huff. 

“God loves you,” you said. 

“Pfft.”

An hour or so down the road, and the eerie light of the dying afternoon had begun its domain.

Sleep was the new objective, somewhere to hang your hats for the night that would soon be upon you. 

Just ahead, beyond a desolate field of tall, green grass, was a lone building, decrepit and overgrown, with a thick, swirling layer of fog rolling over the ground at its base. Not particularly inviting, but it could be a good place for shelter.

The place was dilapidated, to the point where you could hardly tell what it had once been, but there was just enough shelter to provide some protection from the elements, and the dead. It looked as though there had once been a fire, as the walls were blackened and opened up into a courtyard through a section of destroyed wall. 

As you stepped carefully, quietly, over fallen beams and overgrown twining vines, you set sight on a string tied between a bush and the wall, stretching across the walkway with rusty tin cans tied to the twine. Either someone had once called this place home, or someone still did.

Stepping over the trap, Daryl went first, with you following shortly behind, alertness as high as it possibly could be given the famished state you were in.

A rustling from your right startled you. Daryl moved somewhat quickly to peer around the edge of the wall into the open courtyard—a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, standing by an overgrown well and pouring the water from the bucket into a tin pail. 

Daryl didn’t get a very detailed look at the woman nor the area, but he could tell that he didn’t want anything to do with it. 

You weren’t so sure, however. People were exactly who you needed. You wouldn’t be able to get home without people, and maybe this woman knew English. She could help you, somehow. 

But Daryl backed up, too fast for you to notice that he was about to activate the tripwire just behind him. 

As the cans rattled together, making a loud clanging sound, you almost felt a bit of relief. 

Looking back towards the woman, you began to step forward, ahead of Daryl, who followed rather reluctantly.

Unsure of what to say as you met the woman’s gaze, coming further into the pale light of the diminishing day, you raised your hands up in a gesture of peace which you hoped was universal. Daryl followed suit, moving close behind you, despite his instinctual urge to stand in front of you. It took a great deal of willpower not to, but he figured you were possibly more friendly looking than him, with the huge spear he used as a walking stick.

“Bonjour,” was the only word you could make out, the rest was a blur of very beautiful-sounding gibberish. From an archway leading further into the building behind the woman came an elderly man hobbling in on a cane. So far, the first two French people you’d met turned out to be rather unintimidating, which was a good sign. 

The two of you kept moving forward, perhaps more out of confusion than curiosity, but a part of you just wanted some semblance of human interaction. As much as you loved Daryl and his company, it was a sight for sore eyes to come face-to-face with another woman, even if you couldn’t understand anything she said. 

But she seemed friendly enough, raising her hand in a wave as she carried the pail across the way, coming closer, but never too close. Finally, she spoke another word you could understand: “Madame? Monsieur?” 

You turned to look at Daryl, whose face looked confounded, bordering on worried.

As per usual, you’d have to be the more sociable one. 

“I’m sorry,” you began speaking, despite your fear that speaking in English might be a waste of breath. “We don’t understand you.”

On the contrary, the woman seemed… excited. 

“Ay!” she exclaimed, the old man now right behind her as they slowly but surely moved closer. “You Americans? And I speak English very good!” Her mouth formed into a wide smile. So far, so good. “What’s crackin’, noobs?”

Despite your slight confusion at her use of the colloquial term, one you had not heard since you were in college, you smiled back, nodding.

The woman spoke another French term, and waved her hand, gesturing for you to come closer. You did so, despite Daryl’s hesitation as he looked at you. He didn’t have to speak or even sign to indicate what he thought: I don’t trust them. 

But it didn’t matter whether either of you trusted them or not. They had food. They must’ve, as they looked to be pretty settled here, at least for the night.

He followed your lead, stepping faster to match your pace as you moved closer, further into the courtyard.

“My, uh… grandfather, he hurt the ankle” the woman spoke again, carrying her pail of water to a gently roaring fire. Around it were a few bags and crates used as seats. A modest setup, but comforting nonetheless. “Only… Only small English, him.” She gestured towards her grandfather, whose eyes were covered by a black cloth wrapped around his head. Still, he waved in your general direction, then started to speak.

“Hello,” he said.

You smiled, your heart beginning to soften at the sight of the poor elderly man. You always did have a soft spot for older people, one which Daryl feared would make you a little too eager to spare your medical supplies.

“Hello,” you spoke back. 

Daryl said nothing.

The woman’s face turned more serious now. “You got medical?” You did not answer, unsure of what to say. While you did have it, you weren’t so sure you’d give it away on a whim. You already had one old man to take care of—Daryl. “We trade you for apple or, um, uh… a rabbit, maybe.”

“Very good rabbit,” chimed in the old man.

Daryl heard rabbit, and suddenly he was walking past you, coming closer to the woman as he slung his backpack off his shoulders. 

The man was always food-motivated, afterall.

Setting his pack on the ground, he kneeled as he rummaged for the first aid kit. For a moment, he held it up, then tossed it underhand towards the woman.

“Merci,” said the old man.

“Merci,” the woman repeated, the first aid kit now in her hands. She pointed towards a wooden crate just a few yards away. “Food there.”

Daryl did not hesitate, hurriedly crossing over to the crate as if the offer would be taken away at any second. You followed suit, coming up behind him and taking the handful of shiny, red apples that he held out to you, while he himself bit into one and chewed it hungrily. 

“So,” the woman continued, but for a moment, you couldn’t hear her over the sound of your own chewing as you bit into an apple. “Where are you going to?”

This time, Daryl answered before you even had a chance to speak. The fact that they had given you food must’ve warmed him up a little bit. 

“Back where we came from,” he said matter-of-factly, looking up at the woman to address her, then returning to gathering as many apples in his hands as he could.

“Across the ocean?” questioned the woman again.

“Yeah,” Daryl answered.

As he stood up, you both looked curiously at the woman, who spoke something to the old man in their native language. They appeared to be laughing, too. You wondered, in that self-conscious way the two of you shared, if they were making fun of you. Not that it mattered terribly, since the idea of someone making fun of you was nothing compared to what most people in this world would do without any hesitation. If subtle ridiculing was the worst of what you got out of these people, you’d consider yourselves lucky.

With a huff, the woman sat herself down on an upside down crate, whilst holding the skewered rabbit that had been roasting over the fire. Your mouth practically watered at the sight, which must’ve meant you were truly on the verge of starving. It took a lot for you to want to eat a rabbit.

“I’m Maribelle,” she said with a smile. Next, she pointed to her grandfather. “Um, he Guillaume. So maybe we go together, you know?”

That piqued your interest, but Daryl moved behind you, taking the apples to his pack and almost hurriedly stuffing them inside. 

“Get somewhere safe, maybe?” Maribelle continued, and you wanted so much to say something, to say yes. Anything would help. Of course, you knew you couldn’t trust these people, and something about them, despite their friendliness, threw you off. Daryl must’ve felt it, too, because almost as soon as he settled in, he was ready to get out of there. “You can help us. We can help you find a way.”

Following Daryl, you knelt down beside him as he packed. You couldn’t speak much above a very hushed whisper. “They can help us get back.”

He looked up at you momentarily, a stern look in his eye. “No.”

“Hey, yankees.” Suddenly, Guillaume spoke up. You both looked his way.

Guillaume spoke more, but only in French. You turned your attention back to Maribelle, your eyes begging for translation. 

She spoke with a slight laugh. “All the time he talk about World War II.”

“La résistance,” Guillaume continued, like the ramblings of your grandfather. In fact, you recalled his stories from that war, how young he was when he was stationed in England. Not quite France, but close enough. “U.S. GI’s fight together. Your country, my country. Like friends.”

Daryl did not say anything, only turned his attention back to packing his bag. You stood up slowly, managing a smile. You weren’t sure if the man could see it, but you wanted to somehow convey to him that you appreciated his ideology. Afterall, you needed friends. 

But you couldn’t think of what to say. You knew Daryl was not going to budge, and it wasn’t your place to accept his offer of friendship. All you could do was think of something nice to say, but before you could, Guillaume spoke again, catching onto the silence that lingered for several moments.

“You are no friend,” he said, a tinge of vitriol in his voice. 

“There ain’t no countries no more, neither,” Daryl replied. 

You huffed, frustrated by his coldness. It wasn’t your favorite side of Daryl, his harshness, but you couldn’t entirely blame him—he was stressed, injured, and sad. You could tell, despite him never letting it really show. He held emotions inside, whereas you wore them on your sleeve. Still, you knew him better than anyone else, and you knew that this situation you found yourselves in was taking a greater toll on him than even he realized. You hadn’t pressed him about it much, but you knew: he missed your babies. 

He missed home. He missed your friends. He missed the life he’d devoted himself to creating with you. Ultimately, he was tired. 

Before you could try to talk some sense into him, though, you heard something that startled you: a distant roaring of an engine, coming closer. Fast. 

Daryl stood up quickly as a rather militaristic looking jeep came through the wide archway into the courtyard. Two men were sitting in the front seat of the uncovered vehicle, both armed with guns.

Upon the hood of the vehicle was some kind of symbol painted in white that you couldn’t quite make out without taking your eyes off the two men as they stepped out, their guns seemingly locked and loaded. 

Daryl kept a firm grip on his spear, you on your knife. Still, there wasn’t much you could do against a gun, especially in this open area. 

As the men came forward, you took note of their appearance: each were heavily armed and wore camouflage patterns. They looked like some sort of paramilitary group, and from your history with such groups, you were not looking to make friends. 

One of the men set his sights on you and Daryl, while saying something in French. All you could do was stare back at him, until he raised his gun, speaking again. This time, he spoke more commandingly. 

Your heart dropped for a moment, but Maribelle spoke quickly to the man, then turned to face you both. She held her hands up, as if in surrender. 

“Sit down, he said,” she said to you seriously. 

Daryl exchanged a quick look with you, somewhere between reassurance and a warning of cautiousness. In situations like this, perhaps you fell into that old trap of taking the man’s lead, but Daryl had had a gun pointed at him many more times than you had, and it was true that he looked much more threatening than you, so you followed his lead, walking several steps with him over to the crates around the fire that were being used as seats. If you were going to sit down for two French assholes with guns, you were at least going to be a little bit comfortable. 

Now sitting, each of you dropped your weapons, slowly raising your hands to match Maribelle. The two men seemed to trust you both much less than they did Maribelle and Guillaume, as both their guns were pointed towards you—one of you, one on Daryl. It was not quite reassuring.

One of the men began to speak to Maribelle again, going back and forth for a moment. The only word you could make out was American, which you weren’t sure was a good thing, given the way the man looked at you both suspiciously.

No, you did not like these guys one bit. 

And now, after a few more rather ominous sounding words in French, he came forward, taking Maribelle by the shoulder and tugging on her jacket, pulling her away to God knows where. Though you couldn’t understand what he had said, you feared for Maribelle, knowing the kinds of things men could do, especially to women… It boiled your blood, especially as she tried to get away, yelling something at him in French and struggling against him.

The other man, meanwhile, kept his sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun pointed at Daryl, but he looked away, his eyes focused on the scene as the other man struggled to drag Maribelle away. When he became frustrated with her reluctance, he backhanded her hard, the force causing her to fall down with a thud. 

And, with one look exchanged between you and Daryl, you knew it was time to do something… So much for making friends.

Daryl moved first, reaching for the knife he kept strapped to his leg and standing up to grab his spear with the other hand. He moved faster than you, and faster than the man who was supposed to be keeping an eye on you. 

He used the blunt edge of his spear to first hit the man’s leg, then, as he raised his gun to defend himself, Daryl disarmed him, then dropped his spear to raise his knife and puncture his neck.

You stood up, too, sprinting towards the gun that had been dropped on the ground, while Daryl held the dying man in front of him like a meat shield. If there was one thing about Daryl, it was that he was resourceful.

But just before you could get your hands on the shotgun, the other man came towards you both, shouting in French as he held his gun out. In a matter of seconds, he fired, shooting towards Daryl. 

The loud gunshot made you flinch and grab your ears as you instinctively flung yourself onto the ground, trying to dodge it. Immediately, though, you looked up, your sights setting on Daryl, himself on the ground, holding the left side of his neck and sticking out his right hand in surrender. The man did not seem so eager to show mercy, leaning down beside you to pick up the shotgun and point it towards Daryl. 

“No!” you cried out rather helplessly, crawling on hands and knees to Daryl’s side. If you couldn’t sacrifice yourself for him, you’d die together. At least you’d die knowing you tried to save him.

But Maribelle moved quicker, striking the man in the back with Guillaume’s cane. The blow was so hard that he fell to the ground, allowing Daryl to quickly stand up and grab the shotgun. As he held his bleeding neck, he pointed the barrel towards the fallen man.

“Stop,” said Maribelle, coming forward with a spear. “Save the powder.” She plunged the spear into the man’s chest, causing you to wince in slight surprise.

Maribelle turned to Daryl, uttering a simple, “Merci.”

Quickly, you stood up, coming over to daryl and removing his hand from his neck to get a look at the damage. Obviously, the bullet must’ve only grazed him, because if the bullet had gone just a bit more to the right, he might not even have a head right now.

“Just a superficial graze,” you said, taking off your glove and pressing it to his face as a bandage, but of course you’d need something more suitable. 

As you carefully helped him sit down on his knees, you called out to Maribelle, “Can you hand me the medical bag, please?”

All your attention, now, was on him, so much so that you didn’t notice how suspiciously silent it was, and how the two Frenchpeople did not seem eager to help.

But that was all peripheral to you, as you brushed back Daryl’s long hair to get a better look at the injury.

“You’re gonna be fine,” you said, with just a tiny curl of your lip to offer him some comfort. 

And it did, his tired eyes softening as he felt your hand caress his cheek. Despite the stinging pain and the feeling of blood seeping into the glove you held tight against his wound, he couldn’t help but believe you. If there was anything in this world he truly believed in, after all, it was you.

But there was a horrible sense of suspicion growing between you, a lingering threat that became more and more apparent with each step the man behind Daryl took. 

You raised your eyes, and Daryl turned to look at whatever had caught your attention—Guillaume.

His eyes were uncovered now, and beady with aggressive intent. But most startlingly, he held his wooden cane much too high for your comfort. He wielded it more like a baseball bat than a walking stick.

But he wouldn’t do what you thought he was going to do, would he?

Yes. He would.

The cane struck Daryl across the head, knocking him to the ground. Eyes wide as you started to lift yourself, you were met with the same fate: a strong hit to the head that sent you back down, reeling in pain. 

You weren’t unconscious, though. Neither was Daryl, who opened his eyes despite the intense blurring that obstructed his vision. He caught sight of Guillaume, rummaging through his bag, while Maribelle got to work rifling through yours, throwing out its contents with carelessness as she seemed to be searching for something more useful than the maps and blankets you’d collected along the way from Marseille.

Notably, though, you watched the blonde Barbie doll you’d carefully tucked away in your bag get tossed behind her back like a worthless piece of junk. It almost riled you into a fit of sudden strength, but your head swam too much to allow your legs to carry you. 

Your eyes became fixed on that doll, left abandoned amongst overgrown blades of faded green grass. Somewhere in your haze, as unconsciousness threatened to take over, was her voice, speaking the words she said to you before you left: “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, her small voice echoing in the dizzied cavern of your head. 

Just then, you felt a presence coming towards you, one which seemed both known and unknown. 

Turning your head, your heavy eyes focused as well as they could on the approaching figure, cautiously side-stepping into the courtyard. Though you could not make out their face, you recognized one thing: a red cowl.

“We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

A gunshot rang out, muffled by your fading consciousness. It had come from the approaching figure, and had seemingly run off Maribelle and Guillaume, which may have been either a good thing, or a bad thing. 

“Maybe when you get back, Wes will know some more words.”

Your eyelids became immensely burdensome, and with each blink, you found yourself unable to keep them open for much longer. 

“Yes… Robin…”

~

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