#Anti acts like a cat
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Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("
Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(
And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.
And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.
What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.
And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.
But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.
#I just wish people could be more critical of this#And im not entirely anti-retcon. Mind you#But I am here because i think these retcons make them WORSE characters. It's BAD for a character to GET a book with a redemption arc and--#Then they don't change at all and act like totally different people later in the timeline#And Leopardstar is the worse one between her and Blackstar BECAUSE she has sooo many active choices here#Im confident in my choice for BB the more I think about it. Leopardstar's dismantling of the bonehill was good#But it works better as a tragedy imo with the rest of the series in mind#That for a brief moment. A fleeting whim. She could have changed.#But she never did.#And Blackstar who was FAR less repentant at the time DID eventually turn around.#At the end of the day one of them appointed Hawkfrost as codebreaking deputy.#And the other did not.#And I think it's fucking bullshit the way that Leopardstar's retcondemption implies that Hawkfrost was just so tricky he mislead her#The old and experienced leader who had been fooled by a tiger before and was soso sorry for it. Just got tricked.#Like fuck off. She never had a redemption. Stop trying to tell me she did 15 years later#She's a girlboss who empires too close to the sun in pursuit of power and drags everyone down with her#Not a sad weepy smolbean#Bone babble#Warrior cats analysis
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… i'm sorry what?
catra didn't go with adora when she asked her to, what makes you think she would have gone if she had gone with adora to find the sword?
unlike adora, catra didn't try to see things from a different perspective. she never stopped to consider the idea that she was in the wrong. and she never took responsibility for her actions, not even in s5.
why is adora being blamed for catra's actions? oh wait. that's nothing new in the fandom.
here's the fixed version. you're welcome.
#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop criticism#spop discourse#she ra#anti catra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#antic//a#anticatra#anticatradora#i swear they act like adora is supposed to be older than catra#when they're the same age#stop infantilizing your kitty cat#its not cute#anti stans
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i have an idea for a character design but what animals are usually associated with medicine??? the most common answer i got was snake, but i also thought of lab rats/mice, rabbits etc
#snake has the longest history with medicine especially since its shown on the rod of asclepius and the myths around venom#i also didnt know this but their shedding skin is referenced as symbols of rebirth and growth while their appearance resembles an#umbilical cord which gives it a really strong connection to health in some cultures.. although if i had to think abt modern medicine and#pharmacies the first thing i think of is white lab mice like pinky and the brain. for some reason i also thought of rabbits#bc of how its used for anti animal testing logos but thats more loose. however i did learn that the jade rabbit is shown to#use a pestle and mortar to create medicine in some stories so that could work...???? but its not as well known i think#i also thought of possums but that was more of an irony thing. same for bats but both are ironically really resistant to disease and act#as carriers. a death symbol like vultures or ravens/crows might work with a plague doctors mask but i feel#like that isnt the vibe im going for. black cat would be interesting considering superstition but im also on the fence abt that#actually what else is associated with medicine?? normally its stuff like pills crosses bandaids syringes etc#doctors coats and gloves.. especially plague doctor masks or medical masks in general but not much else huh#hand sanitizer and tissues.. pill bottles... blue nurse uniforms.. gauze and casts with signed names... hmmmm/.........#nurse dresses..??? sure?? i also see scalpels and knives but thats more for like. horror doctors for scary stories#im going for cute maybe even regular ass doctor vibe. like harvey sdv. or tony tony chopper#yapping
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My very chaotic long haired Anti sketchbook page.
He just likes to act like a menace to society, doesn‘t he?
#TW: Dead Animal/Bird#jacksepticeye#jacksepticegos#jse egos#antisepticeye#jse anti#art#fanart#Headcannon: Anti acts a bit very much like a cat#He just gave me the vibes
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sorry but no one can convince me that t is giving buck head. he'd be like. 😐🫤 evan, your dick is too big, can't i just give you a handy instead? and buck being the little people pleaser that he is would just be like. 😟😔 yeah...yeah okay that's fine...
#strong believer of the buck is not sexually satisfied with t#like once the novelty of being with a guy for the first time wore off#hes just not getting much of their relationship anymore#obviously he like being with a guy and discovering all the new acts and feelings and positions they can do#like okay t said hes just trying to keep up with buck in that deleted scene right#but idk man i fully believe thats buck figuring out he loves giving bjs and being like can i suck you dick hey hey can i suck your dick rn#or getting fucked (im a taylor pegged him truther but shhh) and hes just eager to do these things a lot because hes never done them before#i really dont think that that means t is matching his energy (because when has he ever)#like okay sorry im subjecting yall to this#but i imagine buck basically writhing on the bed like a cat in heat and t is just like uhhhh 🧍♂️ i can fuck you ig#(shhhh ik t is a gay man but yall be so serious the daddy kink is like the freakiest thing he could ever do and that aint even freaky)#these tags are all over the place#basically#t would try to give buck head like once and be like sorry evan i cant but hey ill do x instead#eddie on the other hand would try to give buck head and buck would be like hey...hey dont hurt yourself most people end up not being able to#and eddie would proceed to happily choke himself on bucks dick#anti tommy kinard#yeahh#me thinks
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Ariana Grande, Doja Cat, & Selena Gomez are those celebs who’s music I love but other than that, I find annoying af.
#poorni speaks celebs#I like Doja’s old music but l this ‘demon’ era is just…#attention is good but that’s it#paint the town red is annoying af#and I don’t care to listen to the rest#ariana is self explanatory at this point#Serena annoys me in the way that a lot of her fans act like she’s the victim and baby her#news flash she’s over 30 years old she can defend herself#*Selena#anti ariana grande#anti selena gomez#anti doja cat
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Outdoor cat defenders don't realize how annoying they are and that people hate them so much because they act like the universe revolves around them and they and their kitties are the most specialest things in the world that being asked to do better is some affront on their rights
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Evil Kotaro Mita be like: Fuck Akito Shinonome, I hate him and his stupid ass singing
#pjsk#prsk#going in those tags because i’m npcposting#kotaro mita#mita kotaro#guys i love him#just a shit post before i head off to bed#like a time traveller from the past could have kicked a rock#that hit sega in the head#that would have made Kotaro an akito anti#like a rival or antagonist to vivid bad#sabatoging the vivids as an act of selfishness and greed and for himself#rather than because of doubt and trying to help the BAD DOGS#LIKE ANTAGONIST KOTARO WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD#like he’d know akito like the back of his hand because of how much he’s seen his growth#enemies to lovers akitaro fr#AND TO ADD ONTO THE VIVIDS THING#HE TRIES TO PIN THE BLAME ON BAD DOGS#but can’t because he can’t bring himself to do that plus akito took the blame first#idk i love soaking wet cat guyfail kotaro#but antagonist guyfail kotaro would have been cool#simping for akito very gayly but like in an antagonist way instead of an ally way#THAT’S ALL
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I suggest this (rather a lot of) of the mostly stupid miraculous fandom re watch every episode not featuring Lila Rossi closely. That should inform that the Lila threshold of the main thing or maybe two or three things the stupid fandom will pin her for is not as strong to mald upon as it seems or loses water. At most a waste of time. But I suppose deciding distractions and predestination seeking are really strong to proxy and then justify if things go as predicted, theorized, or speculated against/
#Amusing how Lila Rossi appeared for like about a season within 5 seasons (and how the greatest distraction destroyed many viewers)#This hot topic makes Gabriel Agreste universal collapsing album seem like child's play#Delulu viewers be acting like Supreme would come to Lila to ask her to sign an autograph#It's only gonna get worse#even when the accursed series ends#You'd have to RECREATE This fandom for any speck of hope#Could be worse (Like a few fandoms I know of)#Anti Miraculous Ladybug Fandom#Anti Miraculous Tales Of Ladybug and Cat Noir Fandom#Anti ML Fandom#plumsaffron
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🔥 the cats vs dogs debate
literally cats all the way 100% no question. the lengths i go to in my life to avoid dogs are !!! stupid and dramatic some would say. to the point where i'm never walking inside somewhere first bc if there's a dog i'm Not getting jumped on.
i have been drooled on and jumped on and knocked down and fussed at by other people's dogs more times than i've ever been inconvenienced or annoyed or grossed out by my cats.
and it's so fucked up that nobody like?? respects that?? i Don't think they're cute or charming or silly or whatever. "oh she just wants you to pet her" "you just have to sit with him" ok i'm not doing that though.
send me 🔥 and a topic and i'll tell you my opinion on it!
#and genuinely the way some people act with dogs makes me sick. why are you letting it eat off your plate and lick your face and do all that#and for some reason all dogs i meet are obsessed with me... go Away! go to literally anyone else around!#had the worst experience nye when i was with some family friends and they have two dogs and were so Pushy about me playing w them and Upset#that i didn't want anything to do with them like. this is not new information yall have known me my entire life and i have never once#Enjoyed being near a dog.#anyway. i realize this is more anti-dog than pro-cat but i can't help it i'm a certified dog hater sorry .#ask game#local80sghost
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pt.4 SILLY LITTLE BAT
pairings ⸺ Yandere! Platonic! Batfamily x Anti-hero! Fem!reader.
synopsis ⸺ In a Gotham steeped in darkness, Bruce Wayne confronts a past resonating with secrets. As he uncovers the identity of an enigmatic antiheroine, he will discover hidden truths that will stain his legacy. Blood, a symbol of betrayals, intertwines with his fate, revealing that darkness dwells within him as well.
warnings ⸺ Dark Themes, Dead, Religion, murdering,Disturbing Content, Unhealthy Obsession, tw.noncon, Discrimination, Street Fights, Gaslight, Violence, Blood, LGBT Content, Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Implicit Sexual Content, Mental Illness, Addiction, Torture, Corruption, Isolation, Trauma, Phobias, Paranoia
Chapter guide! Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3
A/N — English is not my first language—Spanish is— I took a long time because I went on vacation, I wasn’t inspired, I had a lot of things to catch up on, and blah blah blah. The good thing is that I brought part 4, and just so you know, there are about four or five more parts of the story, maybe more.
I'm dirty, infinitely dirty,
this is why I scream so much
about purity.
Bruce sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the weight of the memories and the silence that now inhabited that room. Every corner of that space reminded him of his daughter's presence, a presence that had been fragile and ephemeral, like smoke disappearing between fingers. He looked at the diplomas and trophies on the shelves, those small proofs of her effort and dedication. He caressed them with the same reverence he used when going through old photographs, searching for something, anything, that would tell him he had done enough, that he had been a good father.
But he only saw the same emptiness in her eyes that he had known since childhood. She resembled him more than he would have imagined. In her dull gaze, in her absent smile, he recognized the same pain that had accompanied him after his parents' death. He realized, almost bitterly, that this darkness was an inheritance, a shadow he had left in her without realizing it.
Bruce ran his fingers over an old photo from her first birthday after losing his mother. That day, Alfred had secretly taken her to Metropolis in a desperate attempt to give her some happiness. But even at the amusement park, where laughter and noise were contagious, her face remained a vacant mask. She wasn’t really smiling, as if something inside her knew she would never have the normalcy that other children enjoyed.
With a heavy sigh, Bruce rested his head on the pillow that had been hers, wanting to cling to the scent of his daughter. But there was no trace of her aroma left. Alfred, in an act of rigor that Bruce couldn’t understand, had eliminated any trace of her, perhaps trying to close a wound that Bruce was unwilling to let heal. He had reproached Alfred for hours and hours for erasing that last vestige of his daughter. But Alfred’s look, serious and filled with silence, told him what he already knew: maybe he didn’t deserve to keep those memories because he had failed to protect the person he loved most.
He closed his eyes, sinking into the pain of each thought that emerged from that dark room. Everything reminded him that, somehow, he was responsible for his daughter's disappearance, as if his own shadows had consumed her. In his mind, images of what he could have done differently began to surface, a parade of possibilities where he was a better father, more attentive and less blind to her suffering.
Suddenly, Titus and Alfred the Cat entered together through the door, coming in silently, as if they understood the weight of that moment. Titus approached Bruce, resting his massive head on his knee, while Alfred the Cat jumped onto Bruce's lap, purring softly. Bruce petted the dog and the cat, finding in them the only comfort that seemed left to him. His voice trembled when, in an almost delirious tone, he confessed to them:
"Maybe I’m the real killer here. What kind of father lets his daughter get lost in the dark? What kind of monster was I that I never saw her pain? If she’s dead… if my little girl has left this world… then I am the only one responsible."
He paused, breathing heavily, as the words he wanted to suppress escaped his lips in a bitter and disturbing whisper. "Sometimes I wish I had… had stopped her mother. If she hadn’t been… if I had raised her from the beginning… I could have saved her from so much pain."
The words, though spoken in a barely audible murmur, weighed heavily in the room. He caressed the pillow, almost pleading for the past to change, for every mistake to be undone. The cat purred softly, as if understanding the pain Bruce was trying to stifle deep in his chest. Titus looked at him with eyes full of loyalty, without judging him, but not offering the redemption he desperately sought.
"I would give anything for a second chance," he whispered, his voice broken. "I would give my life to undo every moment that made her drift away. I would give anything to see her smile again, even if it were just once… even if it were just to tell her how sorry I am."
The house was silent, and in that instant, Bruce understood that there were no words, no time, no strength that could change the past. He was trapped in an abyss of guilt, with only shadows and memories now haunting him, reflecting his own empty and broken face.
Finally, he could no longer contain himself. Feeling the emptiness in his chest, tears began to fall onto the pillow, soaking it with his pain, as if the weight of his own guilt slid out in every sob he tried to stifle. His face was buried in the memory of his daughter, lost in the pain that tormented him with an intensity he could no longer bear.
It was then that Damian entered, dressed as Robin, with his katana stained with a dark red liquid that could be nothing other than blood, with a sharp and direct arrogance, breaking the silent mourning of Bruce. Coldly, he looked at his father and pronounced, almost with disdain, "No matter how much you cry like a whore, Y/N won’t come back."
Bruce looked up, surprised and hurt, but before he could respond, Damian continued with the same hardness. "While everyone was out in a gang like a bunch of lowlifes and came back empty-handed, I found something you didn’t even bother to look for while lying here like a cheap whore." Damian looked at him with a mix of disappointment and reproach, as if he couldn’t understand how his father had let so many signs slip by.
"Did you know? I had a relationship with Ivy, that old woman who had the indecency to date my little sister while being an old hag. Plus, she worked as a waitress in some bar wearing little clothes to survive. Like some common bitch. And the last time, she was seen in the subway, with a strange man with psychiatric crazy vibes... surely another one that slipped away while you were lying here." Damian’s words were blows to Bruce, each revelation a testament to how much he had let slip away.
Damian continued, each phrase laden with resentment and questions. "Why did she have to work? Why did she, the daughter of the renowned multimillionaire Bruce Wayne, the masked hero of Gotham, have to depend on a miserable paycheck that didn’t even cover the end of the month? And the subway, father, did she really have to take the subway like any unknown person in this city?"
Bruce looked down, unable to respond. Each of those questions was a dagger reminding him how far he had been from understanding his own daughter. He had ignored, or perhaps never wanted to see, the sacrifices she made to survive, the paths she took in search of something he had never given her. Now, with Damian's words filling the silence, Bruce realized he had condemned his daughter to the same fate he was trying to combat on the streets.
Damian watched him, his gaze cold and critical, as the room filled with a tense silence. For the first time, Bruce understood that perhaps he was never the hero he thought he was, and that in his attempt to protect everyone, he had failed to protect the one who needed him the most.
Bruce felt anger bubbling inside him, intensifying with each word that left Damian's lips. "How dare you come in here and say that? You weren’t a brother to her, you weren’t there when she needed you the most," he shot back, his voice echoing in the room like dark thunder. The image of his daughter intertwined with his rage, each contained tear now fueling his fury.
Damian frowned, unrestrained. "That's how I show my affection; you should be used to it," he retorted disdainfully, recalling that moment when he arrived at the mansion, he had stabbed Y/N with his katana. "I did what I had to do, and I don’t have to accept your reproaches. Everyone failed Y/N, even you."
"Don’t try to blame others for your own failures!" Bruce shouted, frustration filling every corner of his being. "You weren’t there, Damian. You can’t always hide behind your arrogance."
Damian crossed his arms, his defiant attitude unbreakable. "And what if I wasn't? At least I didn’t hide behind a mask of sadness. Better stop reproaching me and listen to what I have for you." He stepped closer, pulling out a half-open old cardboard box. "I brought you a gift."
Bruce looked at him suspiciously. "What is it now?"
"I went looking for Selina, but she slipped away like a scared kitten," Damian said, mocking the situation. "A waste of time, but I found Ivy in Arkham. She said little about Y/N, which annoyed me, so… well, here you go." He opened the box slowly, revealing Poison Ivy's head, the fresh blood still dripping from the edges.
Her face, once beautiful, was now serene, with pale skin and a touch of green that evoked her connection to nature. Her normally vibrant red hair now fell messily around her face, while her eyes, closed forever, seemed almost at peace, as if she had found a breath in the chaos she once inhabited.
Bruce felt as if the world had stopped. There was no horror in his gaze, only an emptiness where anger and sadness collided. "What have you done?" he murmured, his voice barely a whisper, but resignation permeated every word. The life of his daughter, the decisions he had made and what that meant now overwhelmed him.
Damian shrugged. "She was a monster, just like all of us. What matters is that now you have something tangible, something you can show."
"What kind of family are we?" Bruce let slip, feeling defeated. "This family is a failure."
"Oh, so it turns out we’ve been a family all this time?" Damian replied, scornful, but his tone was less certain.
Bruce closed his eyes, feeling the discomfort of the situation. "Take me to the apartment where she lived," he said, his voice enigmatic and cold. It was a request that resonated with the gravity of what he had lost, an echo of what he had failed to protect. As Damian looked at him with surprise and a hint of concern, Bruce knew that the truth he would face in that place was beyond any form of redemption. The darkness that had invaded his life was about to be confronted, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for what he would find.
As Bruce and Damian prepared to leave, Titus and Alfred the Cat watched them from a distance. The dog remained alert, his ears perked, as if he could sense the tension looming in the air. His instinct told him that something grave was about to happen. Alfred, with his wise and sharp gaze, seemed to share the same unease, his eyes fixed on the men who were heading toward the dark fate they had chosen.
As Bruce and Damian headed for the door, Titus stepped forward, his expression a mix of concern and determination. It was as if he were trying to convey a silent message, a call to reason that his owners could not hear amid their emotional turmoil. Alfred the Cat, with his elegant stride, approached Bruce and rubbed his head against his leg, seeking comfort for the hero who seemed on the brink of losing himself even further in the darkness.
Turning around, Bruce felt a pang in his heart. He looked at his animals, those innocent beings who had always been there to offer him companionship, and realized that they were aware of what was about to come. In a world where violence and betrayal lurked around every corner, their departure was the beginning of something much darker.
With one last look, Bruce found himself in Titus's eyes, reflecting a mix of loyalty and worry. It was as if the dog knew that the decision they were making would not only affect them but would also drag others into a chaos from which they could not escape.
Damian, impatient, had already crossed the threshold, but Bruce paused for one more moment. "I’m sorry," he murmured, although he was not sure to whom he was really addressing: whether to the animals who looked at him with eyes full of wisdom or to himself for the path he had chosen.
However, it was already too late to turn back. With one last glance at the room where it all began, and at the animals who looked at him with concern, Bruce stepped into the dark world that awaited them, unaware that soon, everything would get worse. The air was charged with ominous anticipation, and the feeling that tragedy loomed over them like a shadow, deep and inevitable.
You lay on the bed, your body still heavy from the forced encounter, thoughts fluttering in your mind like butterflies trapped in a net. The room was enveloped in an unsettling gloom, the air thick with a tension that could not be ignored. Beside you, he breathed with a calm that contrasted with the whirlwind inside you. There was no name, no face to remember; it was just him, the one who had kidnapped you and made you his own, a figure who had taken your life and distorted it at will.
As you stared at the ceiling, the silence became a mirror of your thoughts. Rage and hatred toward your family surged within you, feelings that had once seemed so distant. They didn’t understand you, they hadn’t been there to protect you, and now, in this strange intimacy, you found yourself wishing to be with him more than with them. Confusion engulfed you; on one hand, there was a part of you longing for affection and acceptance, while on the other, there was a strange pleasure in the situation, a desire to escape the life that had caused you so much suffering.
Despite everything, you missed your mother. Her laughter, her hugs, the way she always knew how to calm your fears. But that maternal figure was slowly fading from your memory, drowned by the anguish of betrayal and loneliness. You found yourself trapped between the desire to remember the good and the hatred toward the past that had brought you here.
As the room remained silent, a dark and almost self-destructive impulse took hold of you. With trembling movements, you picked up a sharp object and pressed it against your skin, feeling a sting that was both physical and emotional. In that moment, you thought about the irony of your situation: you had lost control of your life, and in seeking an escape, you chose to hurt yourself.
The duality of your feelings was heartbreaking. On one hand, you yearned for freedom, to reclaim your identity and the love that had been taken from you. On the other, there was a part of you that felt alive in this new relationship, a twisted connection that kept you captive. The internal struggle manifested in every thought and every action, revealing the complexity of your situation.
You remembered moments from his life, the wounds he carried, and the pain he had faced. Had Bruce ever been so lost, so filled with sadness that he had to do the unthinkable to feel something? The idea that the man you admired could also have been vulnerable struck you like a revelation. You wondered if he had ever cried in solitude, questioning his place in the world, if he had ever felt so trapped in his own life.
As you touched your stomach, an old pain resurfaced. There, beneath the skin, was a scar, a reminder of the time Damian had hurt you with his katana, an act that had been both an attack and a cry of desperation. The brush of your fingers over the wound, although healed, still brought memories of suffering and betrayal, a deep connection intertwined with the pain you felt now. The scar was a metaphor for your life: a wound that would never fully heal, a reminder that pain is part of your existence.
Tears fell more forcefully as you thought about how your family’s decisions, rivalries, and chaos had influenced your life. Bruce, with his constant struggle against the shadows of his past, was a reflection of what you could have been: strong, determined, but also broken and lost. In that moment, you felt just like him, entangled in a cycle of suffering and confusion.
You allowed yourself to cry, feeling that perhaps in that vulnerability there was some freedom. It was a relief, an act of resistance in the midst of the oppression that surrounded you. As the outside world faded away, the pain of the scar became a reminder that, despite everything, there was still a part of you yearning to break free, wanting to escape this darkness. And amid that sadness, one thought grew stronger: perhaps, just perhaps, there was a way to find your path again.
The man let go of your cheek and, with a casual gesture, lit a cigarette, the smoke dancing in the air like shadows in the dim light of the room. His eyes, fixed on you, had a dangerous intensity. "Do you see this?" he said, exhaling the smoke slowly. "Now you are stained, like Gotham. You’ve been in the mud, and it’s your duty to clean yourself up. This is just the beginning."
He looked at you with a twisted smile, an expression that mixed amusement and dominance. "You have to understand that you can’t escape from what you are. The city is a reflection of yourself. And like Gotham, you too need to be purified." With a sudden movement, he offered you the cigarette. "Smoke. It will help you forget the tears."
You hesitated, but his eyes challenged you, a clear message that there was no room for denial. With a mix of fear and despair, you brought the cigarette to your lips, feeling its bitterness touch your tongue. "Don’t make me repeat myself," he said, his voice a cold whisper. "I want you to feel the poison, just like the city does. You are part of it now, and you must accept your role."
The pressure of his words overwhelmed you, each syllable a reminder of your distorted reality. "But why me?" you stammered, feeling desperation twisting inside you. "Why do I have to be part of this?"
"Because there is no choice," he replied with disdain. "There never was. Every day, every decision you made has led you here. Weakness is not an option. Look around you; Gotham has no place for the weak. If you want to survive, you need to get your hands dirty. And believe me, there is a lot of blood to clean up."
Your heart raced as you inhaled the smoke, the burning filling your lungs and leaving a feeling of emptiness. "What do you want from me?" you asked, feeling the power he had over you strangling you.
"I just want you to accept your new place. I want you to understand that in this world, death and destruction are inevitable. There is no redemption for the stained, but you can try to fix it… in your own way."
He trapped you in a dark cycle of thoughts, where each of his words echoed in your mind like a terrifying echo. You knew he was playing with you, manipulating your emotions. "If you don’t clean yourself, you will suffer the consequences. And if you cry for her again, I promise you will pay for it," he said, tightening his grip on your arm.
As the smoke dissipated into the air, the feeling of being trapped became more palpable. You found yourself between acceptance and internal struggle, but deep down, you knew you had to find a way out. However, the darkness around you grew more intense, and each of his words was another chain binding you to this fate you had not chosen.
The air thickened as he exhaled smoke, the room filling with a gray fog that seemed to reflect the chaos in your mind. He looked at you with an intensity that overflowed with obsession, a strange mix of affection and dominance that enveloped you. Despite the tears running down your face, you felt no sadness or fear. You had passed the stage of terror; now you felt strangely alive, almost liberated in your pain.
"My dear," he said in a soft yet authoritative voice, "you must not see this as a punishment. It is a purification. Gotham needs someone who understands its pain, and you are the chosen one." He leaned closer to you, his hot breath on your skin. "You are like a spark in this darkness, and together we can illuminate it. You just have to let the poison flow through you. With each tear, you are cleansing the city."
As he held you, the contact between the two of you was electric, and a part of you began to understand his madness, the way he had woven his dreams of greatness and purification through your own desires for belonging. "Did you know my mother was in Arkham?" he continued, as if sharing a special secret. "She was stained too. In her mind, she fought demons that no one else could see, just like you now. And look where she ended up: trapped in her own memories, in her own shadows."
The revelation hit you. A fragment of pain resurfaced, intertwining with the new knowledge. "What… what happened to her?" you asked, your voice trembling. It wasn’t sadness you felt; it was curiosity to know that story that had remained hidden.
"She got lost in the darkness of Gotham, just like everyone else," he said with contempt. "But that doesn’t have to be your destiny. You are stronger. My mother let herself be consumed by her madness, but you… you can take control. Let me guide you."
You fell silent, contemplating his words. The tears continued to fall, but now they were just a part of you, a manifestation of the internal struggle. You knew you were trapped in a dangerous game, but there was something in his promise of power and control that began to seduce you.
"So cry if you need to," he said, caressing your cheek with a touch that was both gentle and threatening. "But don’t let those tears weaken you. Every time you feel the urge to cry for her, remember what you are. Remember that the city needs someone like you to cleanse it of the filth."
"How can I do that?" you asked, feeling the echo of his words resonate in your mind. "How can I clean something so deeply rooted in darkness?"
"With determination," he answered firmly, his eyes shining with a mix of fervor and madness. "You must learn to see the beauty in chaos. There is power in pain. With every action you take, with every decision you make, you will be purifying Gotham of its own decay. And I will be by your side, guiding you. Together, we will be unstoppable."
As you absorbed his words, a strange sense of purpose began to take shape within you. Although his love was perverse, there was something in his vision that resonated with you, as if you were destined to fulfill that role. As the smoke from the cigarette faded into the air, so too did your fears, leaving only a cold and clear determination: you were going to take control of your destiny, even if it meant losing yourself in the process.
"No! I don’t want you to go!" shouted little Y/n, clinging to her mother's handbag with the desperation of someone who knows something important is about to slip away.
Her mother, a blonde woman with a tired gaze, let out a sigh of impatience. Y/n couldn't quite remember her face, but she knew it hardened at the tug on her bag, and without thinking, she pushed the girl, causing her to fall to the ground with a dull thud. Y/n looked up from below, her big eyes reflecting a mix of fear and pain.
"Stop being silly, Y/n," her mother murmured, struggling to hide the tremor in her voice. She leaned down, trying to smile, but the coldness in her eyes betrayed her. "You know I have to do this... for both of us. Everything I do is for you, even if you don’t understand it now."
The girl nodded slowly, but inside, she felt the truth—that repeated phrase was just a curtain. She knew there was something broken in her mother, something she was too young to fully comprehend but sensed in every harsh gesture, in every bitter word that hung in the air. Something that made her feel alone, even when they were together.
Her mother straightened up, adjusting the bag as if it weighed tons. She raised a hand in a mechanical farewell, and without another word, she left through the door without looking back.
Days passed in a haze of silence and dry tears. Y/n had no idea how much time had passed since her mother left, leaving the echo of her footsteps as the only reminder of her presence. Hugging herself, she spent the nights waiting for some familiar sound that never came.
When she finally opened her eyes, she realized her surroundings had completely changed. She was no longer at home; she was sitting in a cold, unfamiliar room, with gray walls and flickering lights dimly overhead. In the distance, she could hear whispering voices.
"How is it possible that someone left such a small child alone?" It was the firm, serious voice of a man. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she distinguished a police badge on the man's uniform. It read Commissioner Gordon.
Next to him, a red-haired woman spoke in a low voice. "Dad, you can't be sure. Maybe it was just a lie. You know how her mother was: a history of psychiatric hospitals and drugs at home. How do we know she didn't make up the story about Wayne?"
"Barbara, we have evidence that doesn't lie," Gordon replied coldly, his tone tinged with disdain. "We know the paternity test is real."
The girl felt the world sway around her. She listened to every word and felt each comment like a dagger sinking deeper into her chest. Those adults, figures of authority and trust, spoke of her mother as if she were little more than a mistake, something despicable that had left scars on her life. Sitting there, hidden behind a wall and hugging her knees, tears returned to her eyes, a mix of sadness and a terrifying understanding of what it meant to be alone in the world.
"Do you really think someone like that should have had a child in her care?" Barbara said from her wheelchair, her tone full of contempt. "She was probably just looking for easy money, manipulating everyone she could."
Commissioner Gordon frowned, clearly uncomfortable. "Barbara, that's not fair! Even if she didn’t lead the best life, she was still a citizen like anyone else, and she had the right to rebuild her life. No one is perfect."
From her corner, Y/n tried to cover her ears, but Barbara's words were impossible to ignore.
"I can't believe it, Dad. How could anyone in their right mind have left a child in the hands of that woman?" Barbara said with a cold, almost poisoned voice. "Someone who clearly had drug addiction problems and who was in and out of psychiatric hospitals. I bet she didn’t even know who the real father was."
Each word made Y/n's chest tighten even more. Her mind screamed silently: Stop! Please stop saying that about her! Her small hands trembled as she remembered the moments she had spent with her mother. Her mother, who although had those dark days and her brusque manner, had fed her, tucked her in, and cared for her as best as she could. Despite her mistakes, she had been her mother, and that was all Y/n could understand.
But Barbara’s words kept filling the room, like a storm of resentment. "I don't know how Bruce can even be involved in something like this. That woman was a burden to everyone. I can't imagine anyone worse as a mother."
Y/n squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to block it out. It's not true. She’s not bad. She took care of me. We didn’t have much, but she always tried to be there for me. But no matter how hard her thoughts tried to silence the pain, Barbara's words left deep scars, increasingly difficult to heal.
As Y/n remained there, her tears already dry, her thoughts twisted in her mind like threatening shadows. She heard the echoes of Barbara's cruel words and Gordon's, and a silent resentment grew in her chest, almost like a slow poison. She tried to remember the good moments with her mother, but the dark thoughts seemed to drown them out. She was good, she was good... No, you can't say that about her... But those same thoughts tangled with hate and confusion, and the pain grew stronger.
Suddenly, everything turned white. The walls, the voices, the cold metal chair beneath her legs... everything disappeared into a blinding void that enveloped every corner of her mind. And then, there was only her, standing in that white abyss, with a strange weight on her shoulders and in her hands.
She looked down and saw a white armor, shining as if made of shards of moon and shadow. It covered her body completely, with firm, polished plates that fit like a second skin, protecting every part of her. The gauntlets were solid, with sharp and detailed edges, and in her hands, she wielded two katanas whose blades reflected that void like deadly mirrors.
The design of the armor was imposing and terrifying. The helmet resembled a bat, with long pointed ears extending upward, and a dark V-shaped visor that barely revealed her eyes. The lines that ran across her chest and arms formed the silhouette of folded wings, as if that bat awaited to unfold at any moment. The chest was engraved with fine black details, resembling veins radiating dark power. In the center, a small emblem in the shape of a black teardrop contrasted with the radiant white of the armor, like a mark of pain and sacrifice.
In the dim light of the void where she stood, Y/n felt the weight of the katanas in her hands as if they were extensions of her own being. In that moment, the white armor fit her like a comforting embrace, a reminder of the power she now possessed. She looked at herself in a non-existent reflection, feeling that every part of her being was ready to act, to reclaim what she had lost.
With a tremor of emotion and a palpable obsession, she held them to her chest, hugging them tightly. Words flowed from her lips, laden with a burning, almost manic desire: "Soon you will be mine... I will go home. I will be my little girl again."
The echo of her voice resonated in the white void, vibrating with the intensity of her longing. In her mind, an image formed of a home, a place where shadows no longer lurked and where her mother, though imperfect, would be able to embrace her once more. The idea of being together again, of transforming her pain into power, filled her with a fierce determination.
"I will come back for you," she whispered, her voice choked with a mix of tears and a crazed smile. "Nothing will stop me. I promise." The choked laughter turned into a murmur of echoes, resonating in the abyss like a sinister promise, as the world around her began to fade again, leaving her alone with her obsession and her new identity.
In the silence, whispers began to rise, soft at first, but increasingly insistent. One word repeated, muted yet burning, like a spark in the shadows.
K
e
r
o
s
e
n
e
The word reverberated in the void, growing more intense, like a kind of dark mantra. And when Y/n could barely bear the weight of those voices, one final phrase emerged, chilling and final:
"Death is the ultimate prize."
You walked through the halls of the old apartment block, your white armor shining in the dim light, like a bat defying the embrace of the night. The echoes of your heels resonated, a dark song reverberating in the solitude of the worn walls.
Your figure, sculpted in gleaming metal, was a silhouette of elegance and mystery, as you hummed a forgotten melody, slipping between the shadows like a whisper of the forbidden. Each step was a heartbeat in the silence, a chilling reminder that there is still life in abandonment.
The portraits on the walls watched you, empty eyes that seemed to come alive, as you moved with the grace of a specter, a macabre dance of light and shadow at dusk.
The doors, worn and creaking, whispered secrets of past stories, and you, guardian of those forgotten tales, advanced fearlessly, seeking what was left behind.
You were an enigma, a reflection of the lost, a shadow walking, dressed in white, in a world clinging to its demons, where the past and present intertwine in a lethal embrace, and the night waits, eager for your return.
You paused before the door of one of the apartments, its frayed wood opening like an abyss, a dark invitation that defied logic. The silence became thick, almost palpable, and the echo of your humming faded, leaving a void that swallowed the darkness.
The threshold awaited you, a portal to the unknown, and a cold breeze, laden with whispers, caressed your skin like a lost lover. Inside, the shadows seemed to come alive, a palace of echoes and laments, where time had woven a web.
Your heart raced, a mix of adrenaline and challenge, as you gently pushed the door. It creaked in protest, like an old ghost, and when it opened, revealed an abandoned world, furniture covered in dust, with withered memories.
The remnants of a past life crowded every corner, and a scent of decay floated in the air, but something more, a glimpse of presence, urged you to enter, to explore the hidden. You peered in, and the dimness embraced you, as if the apartment claimed you as its own.
Each step on the creaky floor was an act of daring, and the walls seemed to murmur forgotten secrets, stories of betrayed loves and lost souls. In the center of the room, a dark, diffuse, and shadowy figure formed among the shadows, like an echo of your own existence, a reflection of what could have been.
You stood still, breath held in the abyss of the moment, the half-open door, a threshold to your destiny, and the silence, now laden with promises, stripped you of fears, leaving only the certainty that in that space, you faced the echoes of your own darkness.
As you advanced, your eyes fixed on a dusty, worn wooden box resting on the small dining table. Something about it drew you in, as if it held a dark secret. You approached and, with trembling hands, opened it. Inside, horror was revealed: the head of Poison Ivy, the green hair still vibrant, a gaze frozen in time. You didn’t cry, but a slight tremor coursed through your body, a mixture of surprise and disdain for the brutality that had taken place in that space.
"Normally you enter through the window," you murmur to the air, with an ironic smile on your lips, as if addressing a presence you hoped would appear.
And then, as if the night itself had responded to your call, Batman emerged from the shadows, his dark figure silhouetted against the dim light coming through the window. The air became tense in an instant.
"Who are you?" he asked, his grave voice resonating with a mix of distrust and anger. "What are you doing in the apartment of Bruce Wayne's daughter?"
You laughed, a laugh that echoed in the empty room, filled with irony and knowledge.
"His daughter?" you mocked, your eyes shining with a mix of challenge and amusement. "So Y/n is your daughter. Isn’t it curious how things intertwine in this city?"
The silence grew heavy, and you felt his gaze intensify, evaluating every word you had spoken. He knew you had crossed a line, but the revelation had ignited a spark of playfulness in you.
"How do you know who I am?" The question slipped from his lips, but there was no fear, just an unsettling curiosity.
"Gotham has its secrets, Bruce. And I, like you, am part of this darkness. The identity of a hero or heroine is just a game of shadows, and in this game, you and I know how to move between the lines."
You stood firm, the tension between you palpable, as the echo of laughter still resonated in the air. Batman's figure, always imposing and enigmatic, seemed to waver at the revelation that in this dark labyrinth, he was not the only player.
The tension intensified, and Batman took a step forward, approaching you with an intense gaze.
"How do you know about my daughter?" he inquired, his voice brusque, each word laden with frustration. You remained firm, crossing your arms, letting the silence settle between you.
"Oh, Gotham speaks, even in whispers. The city has a way of revealing what heroes prefer to hide," you replied disdainfully. "Your life, your secrets, are more exposed than you think." He frowned, anger crackling in his eyes.
"What do you know about Y/N?" he demanded, his voice low and threatening, as if waiting for you to throw down a challenge.
"I know you didn't want her. That you left her in the shadows while you dedicated yourself to your personal crusade," you replied, irony dancing in your tone. "That girl grew up without a father, and you, the great hero of Gotham, preferred to be a myth."
Rage etched itself on his face, but there was something more, a hidden pain surfacing behind the armor of his anger.
"It's not that simple, and you have no idea what I've done for her," he retorted, his voice tense, each word like a blow.
"Really?" you asked, flashing a mocking smile. "What have you done? Cut off her partner's head, the only person I love, just to extract invalid information? What a great father."
An uncomfortable silence settled between you, as the air vibrated with unspoken emotions.
"You are not one to judge me," he declared, his voice tense. "You know nothing of what I've sacrificed."
"Maybe not, but I know enough about the void you've left," you replied, undeterred. "And I know Ivy was there for her. You, the hero, vanished while others took on the role of father."
The anger shone in his eyes, but there was also a spark of recognition. He observed you, assessing the courage that led you to challenge him.
"And who are you to come and point fingers? A lost anti-heroine in her own struggle?" he shot back, his voice laden with contempt.
"I am what Gotham needs," you replied, confident. "A reminder that even heroes like you can fail."
The discussion turned into a power struggle, both of you clinging to your truths, while Poison Ivy's head remained a sinister reminder of the choices you both had made.
Suddenly, Batman's fury exploded like lightning in the darkness. Without warning, he seized you by the neck, lifting you with surprising strength. The air became scarce, and the pressure on your throat made you feel vulnerable, although the mockery never left your expression.
"Where is Y/N?" he demanded, his voice charged with rage and desperation. The shadows moved around him, intensifying his figure, which seemed more monster than hero at that moment.
Despite the iron grip, you kept your gaze fixed on him, challenging him, feeling the adrenaline pulse through your veins.
"Are you that worried about her whereabouts?" you replied, a mocking smile barely hiding your disdain. "Maybe she's hanging from a hook in a slaughterhouse, who knows? That would be an ironic twist for a girl who grew up in the shadow of a hero, don’t you think?"
His eyes narrowed, anger and helplessness battling within him. You leaned in closer, feeling the pressure on your neck, but that only fueled your defiance.
"Don't laugh about this!" he roared, tightening his grip slightly. The fury in his voice was palpable, but something deeper kept him on edge.
"Me? Laughing? You, the great Batman, scared for your daughter's life?" you shot back, never breaking eye contact.
The tension was becoming unbearable, but there was something fascinating about the game you were playing. He was caught between rage and fear, and you, in your shadowy game, fed off his anguish.
"Do you know something? You're losing yourself in your own legend," you continued, while he held you in the air. "I'm sure you once dreamed that she would have died in that alley with her mother."
In that instant, something in his expression changed. The anger slowly faded, giving way to a deep concern, though he still held you firmly.
"I warn you," he whispered, his eyes locked onto yours. "If you lie to me, I won't show mercy."
You laughed again, though the risk was imminent, as your heart raced.
"And what will you do?" you challenged, your voice trembling but resolute. "Threaten me with your dark past? I'm here because I know the truth, and I do not fear your shadows."
Bruce's patience evaporated like smoke in the heavy air of that apartment. With a sudden movement, he hurled you towards the table, the impact resonating with a crash that reverberated through the walls. Your katanas slipped to the floor, leaving you defenseless. The furniture creaked under your weight, but adrenaline kept you alert, your instincts sharp.
You quickly rose, shaking your head to clear the confusion, while the anger on his face transformed into determination.
"I don't have time for your games, Kerosene," he shouted, stepping forward, ready to fight. "If you know Y/N, tell me!"
You steadied yourself, smiling defiantly as you positioned yourself, preparing for combat.
"Do you really think you'll throw away the only one who can help you?" you replied, feeling the pulse of challenge coursing through your veins. "I'm offering you a chance to know the truth, and you choose to fight. Very typical of you."
With a swift movement, he lunged at you, throwing a direct punch. You dodged, making an agile turn, but the atmosphere became a whirlwind of force and speed.
You charged at him, hitting him in the side, feeling how his tense muscles responded to your attack. It was not just a physical fight; it was a clash of wills, an explosion of repressed emotions.
"You’re an idiot if you think you can scare me!" you yelled at him while he tried to immobilize you. You twisted and managed to sidestep him, landing a blow to his jaw that made him stagger.
Bruce quickly regained his footing, his eyes blazing with fury. He advanced again, his movements precise and calculated, while you played with speed and agility.
"Stop!" he roared, his voice echoing in the enclosed space. "I just want to know where my daughter is."
"And I just want you to stop living in your hero fantasy," you replied, with a defiant laugh as you dodged another attack. "The truth hurts you, Bruce, and you prefer the fight over facing it."
The exchange of blows continued, the sound of fists colliding and the creaking of breaking furniture filling the air. The room became a battlefield, with the table as the central stage of your struggle.
Bruce, with a mix of skill and strength, cornered you against the wall, but instead of giving up, you seized the closeness. With an agile movement, you pushed him back, making him lose his balance.
"Are you going to keep this up? Destroying what’s left of this city?" you said, breathing heavily but not yielding. "Or are you going to listen to what’s really at stake?"
His eyes were now inches from yours, the fury and frustration of his search fueling the spark of the battle. Both of you were willing to fight, but deep down, you knew there was something deeper at play than just physical strength.
The battle continued, becoming increasingly intense and violent, like a whirlwind of unleashed fury. You launched at him, landing a blow that hit his chest, but Bruce responded with a punch that made you stagger; the force behind his blow was terrifying. The rage emanating from him was palpable, and with each attack, both of you took the struggle to a new level.
The apartment walls vibrated with the thud of bodies colliding and furniture being dragged. The sound of shattering glass echoed in the air as you crashed into a table, breaking it into pieces.
You got back up, a piece of wood in hand, and threw it at him. Bruce dodged it, but the fragment smashed against a lamp, exploding into a million shards. The light flickered before going out, plunging the place into an unsettling darkness.
Both of you moved like shadows through the chaos, and sweat and blood began to mix, the air filled with a metallic smell that only intensified the battle. Bruce landed a punch on your jaw, and you tasted blood in your mouth. You didn’t stop; with a cry of defiance, you responded with a series of rapid blows, each one stronger than the last.
You darted to his side, using your agility to hit him in the ribs. The impact made him stagger, but before you could capitalize on the opportunity, Bruce spun around and kneed you in the abdomen. The air escaped your lungs, and the sharp pain made you fall to your knees. However, you didn’t give up.
With renewed determination, you got up and threw a direct punch to his face, hearing the crack of his skin upon impact. Blood spurted from his lip, and the fact that you had hurt him only fueled his fury. With superhuman strength, he pushed you back, slamming you against a shelf, which gave way and collapsed on you. Books and personal items scattered across the floor, covering the place in even greater chaos.
But there was no time to stop. You rose amongst the debris, feeling the adrenaline pumping through your veins. With a leap, you charged at him again, landing a blow that left a mark on his face. Rage and pain intertwined in the air, and both of you were on the brink of madness.
The room had turned into a battlefield, with blood staining the floor and walls. The apartment’s decor, once a refuge, lay in tatters, as if Gotham itself had decided to yield to the brutality of your confrontation.
Bruce, with his determined gaze locked on you, lunged at you again. Both of you were exhausted, but the fight was a necessity, an uncontrollable impulse that kept you standing. His fists and your movements were a wild dance, and amidst the chaos, both of you knew that the outcome of this battle would not only define the present but also seal your fate.
You charged at him, landing a direct blow to his stomach, and when he bent forward, you took the chance to hit him in the face once more. Blood spilled from his nose, but he countered with a knee strike, and the impact resonated in your bones.
The fight continued with increasing ferocity, the room transforming into a wreckage. Every blow exchanged resonated like thunder, but it was the moment when Bruce landed a punch to your side that made you fall to your knees again, gasping for air. The pain was intense, but there was no time to lament; rage and frustration drove him to push onward.
Seeing the opportunity, Bruce lunged at you, and with a rough movement, he lifted you off the ground, holding you by the neck and raising you into the air. You struggled, feeling the pressure increase, the air escaping your lungs. The room blurred around you as you began to lose control.
"Tell me where Y/N is!" he shouted, his voice echoing in your mind like a refrain of desperation and fury.
You were on the brink of passing out, your eyes clouding, but amidst the confusion, you managed to maintain lucidity, though it was becoming increasingly difficult. Bruce's hands were like a yoke around your throat, and the feeling of suffocation intensified with every passing second.
The pressure was unbearable, and you fought to free your neck, to breathe, but it felt like trying to break chains of steel. Your hands struck his arm, but he wouldn’t relent, becoming more focused, more desperate.
Finally, with a titanic effort, you managed to reach your helmet, and in a twist, you pushed him back, but the pressure of his grip was too much. It was then that, in a last-ditch attempt to free yourself, the helmet slipped off your head, falling to the floor with a dull thud.
The light of the apartment filtered back into your vision, and it was at that moment that Bruce, seeing your face, stopped dead in his tracks, the expression of his fury transforming into horror.
The face before him was not just an adversary; it was a reflection of his own daughter. The reality crashed against him like lightning.
"...Y/N?"
A/N ──── I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT YES, WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN THE DOCTOR AND Y/N IS REAL. And yes, it's necessary; you'll understand why by the end. Furthermore, Ivy's death has always been planned. In the next chapter, a female character will appear who, I warn you, will be a victim of the Waynes, and the scene will be a bit graphic and very grotesque.
I want to add that this chapter is very, very, veeeery weak because I’m very tired, not very inspired, and dealing with other things. I’ll try to do better for the next one and bring you a chapter of better quality.
And a warning for those on the taglist: if you’re already on it, please don’t ask me again and again to add your name because I end up getting confused and repeating names.
Also, there are some that I can’t add for reasons I don’t understand.
If you requested to be on the taglist before and you're not, please ask me here or send me a message; I don’t bite.
Feel free to ask me anything if you’d like.
Take a bath!
Tag list! ◇ — @amber-content @toast-on-dandelioms @feral-childs-word @sweetconnoisseurgardener @victoria1676 @toasted-cat18 @nosyrobin @beeaskewwrites @yandere-enthusiast @telltaletoad @dhanyasri @vanessa-boo @m3vl0vesu @jellypotato66 @midnightgrimoire @cherryxxxxyoongi @plsfckmedxddy @h0neysiba @mybones537 @erikasurfer @sheepintherain @pix-stuff @yan-rai @uniquecutie-puffs @arlandvery @theblonde777 @alishii
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@redkarmakai @the-rouge-robin @twismare @wizzerreblogs @beeboopneep @mistfire1999 @delfinadolphin @expctron
Inspiration: @acid-ixx with his Again & Again series, @gotham-daydreams ' work, @i-cant-sing 's work and @klemen-tine 's work, be sure to check them out!
#x reader#yan blog#fem reader#yandere#yandere x reader#dc x reader#yandere dc#yandere dick grayson#yandere batman#yandere male#yandere bruce wayne#yandere batfamily#yandere batfam#yandere batboys#yandere damian wayne#yandere robin#yandere red robin#yandere red hood#yandere tim drake#yandere jason todd#yandere nightwing#yandere barbara gordon#yandere cassandra cain#yandere stephanie brown#yandere alfred pennyworth#yandere x you#yandere platonic#neglected reader#neglect#yandere dc x reader
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Good News - June 15-21
Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $Kaybarr1735! And if you tip me and give me a way to contact you, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week!
1. Victory for Same-Sex Marriage in Thailand
“Thailand’s Senate voted 130-4 today to pass a same-sex marriage bill that the lower house had approved by an overwhelming majority in March. This makes Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia, and the second in Asia, to recognize same-sex relationships. […] The Thai Marriage Equality Act […] will come into force 120 days after publication in the Royal Gazette. It will stand as an example of LGBT rights progress across the Asia-Pacific region and the world.”
2. One of world’s rarest cats no longer endangered
“[The Iberian lynx’s] population grew from 62 mature individuals in 2001 to 648 in 2022. While young and mature lynx combined now have an estimated population of more than 2,000, the IUCN reports. The increase is largely thanks to conservation efforts that have focused on increasing the abundance of its main food source - the also endangered wild rabbit, known as European rabbit. Programmes to free hundreds of captive lynxes and restoring scrublands and forests have also played an important role in ensuring the lynx is no longer endangered.”
3. Planning parenthood for incarcerated men
“[M]any incarcerated young men missed [sex-ed] classroom lessons due to truancy or incarceration. Their lack of knowledge about sexual health puts them at a lifelong disadvantage. De La Cruz [a health educator] will guide [incarcerated youths] in lessons about anatomy and pregnancy, birth control and sexually transmitted infections. He also explores healthy relationships and the pitfalls of toxic masculinity. […] Workshops cover healthy relationships, gender and sexuality, and sex trafficking.”
4. Peru puts endemic fog oasis under protection
“Lomas are unique ecosystems relying on marine fog that host rare and endemic plants and animal species. […] The Peruvian government has formally granted conservation status to the 6,449-hectare (16,000-acre) desert oasis site[….] The site, the first of its kind to become protected after more than 15 years of scientific and advocacy efforts, will help scientists understand climatic and marine cycles in the area[, … and] will be protected for future research and exploration for at least three decades.”
5. Religious groups are protecting Pride events — upending the LGBTQ+ vs. faith narrative
“In some cases, de-escalation teams stand as a physical barrier between protesters and event attendees. In other instances, they try to talk with protesters. The goal is generally to keep everyone safe. Leigh was learning that sometimes this didn’t mean acting as security, but doing actual outreach. That might mean making time and space to listen to hate speech. It might mean offering food or water. […] After undergoing Zoom trainings this spring, the members of some 120 faith organizations will fan out across more than 50 Pride events in 16 states to de-escalate the actions of extremist anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.”
6. 25 years of research shows how to restore damaged rainforest
“For the first time, results from 25 years of work to rehabilitate fire-damaged and heavily logged rainforest are now being presented. The study fills a knowledge gap about the long-term effects of restoration and may become an important guide for future efforts to restore damaged ecosystems.”
7. Audubon and Grassroots Carbon Announce First-of-its-Kind Partnership to Reward Landowners for Improving Habitats for Birds while Building Healthy Soils
“Participating landowners can profit from additional soil carbon storage created through their regenerative land management practices. These practices restore grasslands, improve bird habits, build soil health and drive nature-based soil organic carbon drawdown through the healthy soils of farms and ranches. […] Additionally, regenerative land management practices improve habitats for birds. […] This partnership exemplifies how sustainable practices can drive positive environmental change while providing tangible economic benefits for landowners.”
8. Circular food systems found to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, require much less agricultural land
“Redesigning the European food system will reduce agricultural land by 44% while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by 70%. This reduction is possible with the current consumption of animal protein. “Moreover, animals are recyclers in the system. They can recycle nutrients from human-inedible parts of the organic waste and by-products in the food system and convert them to valuable animal products," Simon says.”
9. Could Treating Injured Raptors Help Lift a Population? Researchers found the work of rehabbers can have long-lasting benefits
“[“Wildlife professionals”] tend to have a dismissive attitude toward addressing individual animal welfare,” [… but f]or most raptor species, they found, birds released after rehabilitation were about as likely to survive as wild birds. Those released birds can have even broader impacts on the population. Back in the wild, the birds mate and breed, raising hatchlings that grow up to mate and breed, too. When the researchers modeled the effects, they found most species would see at least some population-level benefits from returning raptors to the wild.”
10. Indigenous people in the Amazon are helping to build bridges & save primates
“Working together, the Reconecta Project and the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people build bridges that connect the forest canopy over the BR-174 road[….] In the first 10 months of monitoring, eight different species were documented — not only monkeys such as the golden-handed tamarin and the common squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), but also kinkajous (Potos flavus), mouse opossums (Marmosops sp.), and opossums (Didelphis sp.).”
Bonus: A rare maneless zebra was born in the UK
June 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)
#hopepunk#good news#lgbtq#gay rights#gay marriage#same sex marriage#thailand#lynx#big cats#cats#endangered species#endangered#sex education#prison#peru#conservation#habitat#religion#pride#faith#pride month#lgbt pride#compassion#rainforest#birds#nature#climate change#wildlife rehab#wildlife#indigenous
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Danny gets mistaken for Superman 24.2.23
DP x DC. Danny Phantom, Superman, Batman.
A group of villains attack an event they know the JL is going to be investigating undercover. They're looking for secret Identities amongst the crowd, and Danny, long since a full-fledged adult, happens to be attending as well.
Danny, unlike Clark, does not dress to conceal his physique, or hide behind glasses, or hold himself to seem smaller or bumbling.
He gets wrongly picked out as Superman within moments.
And Danny, who can fly, who has mild superstrength, who can tell where kryptonite is because it radiates like all food-quality ectoplasam, who's not as concerned about being discovered since the meta rights act overturned the anti-ecto acts, and who's only become more of a gremlin as full fledged adult, figures 'Sure, why not, I can be Superman :)'
Batman is not the only person who is blindsided when "Superman" leans over and eats the kryptonite right out of the man's hand.
"That was rock candy." Not-Superman gave the man a cheshire cat grin. "You might want to double-check your supplier."
"That was definitely kryptonite," Superman informed him over the com, his voice flat with the kind of flabbergasted disbelief Batman had thought they both left behind a couple of world-ending-disasters ago.
Day (634/100) in my #∞daysofwriting @the-wip-project 24th of Feb
Edit: @omnicrafts wrote this!!! (In a matter of hours, somehow??? I am in awe): look here! Edit2: They added a second part!!!
#dp x dc#Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne also look almost exactly like eachother —just to add to the confusion#Danny Phantom#Superman#Batman#Danny eats kryptonite#DP#DC#scribblings from the deep#∞daysofwriting#fix tags later
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I want Uther to be the kinda guy who isn't actually homophobic, but his anti-magic laws made it so impossible to change any law that he ends up having to act like he is. (He'd lose his credibility otherwise that the magic laws cannot be changed, cause duh, they are law, lol.)
This results in him having to manage his bi-sons behavior by pulling him aside every time he says something outrageously gay.
The thing is, Arthur is oblivious to the whole thing.
Arthur: Merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?
*imagine Uther grabbing Arthur by the collar like a cat and facing him*
Uther: son, no.
Arthur: but-
Uther: we talked about this. No flirting with boys.
Arthur: i'm not flirting with him, i'm threatening him. Here, see? "Merlin, i could take you apart with one blow!"
Uther: *facepalms*, oh my god.
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Hey hey!!! Saw you opened asks- so I wanted to send my love and appreciation for everything you do💕💕
Maybe a reverse of “You Blurt Out Who’s Your Favorite” , where the chain accidentally say that reader is their favorite? Silly pining ensues. (You don’t have to do this as always. Have a good day 💕)
Sure thing, Anti! I hope you have a good day too! <3 :D
Masterlist
Immediate Reader, boys under the cut!
"I am the best!"
"In your dreams!"
"The greatest!
"Uh-huh."
You snorted as the boys all ragged on each other. Typical sibling behavior.
They were all playing the game of 'Who is the greatest? Certainly not you.' And you were trying really hard to not make it seem like you were paying attention to their shenanigans.
"Well, Malon likes me more!"
"No way! I'm her favorite."
Screw it you're joining this.
"I am the favorite!" All eyes turn to you as you smirk.
"....I doubt that."
You laugh and cross your arms. "I have yet to be proven wrong."
"Well you're certainly mine."
***
Legend
Legend crosses his arms as he rolls his eyes. He sees the group look to him and huffs. "I mean, honestly- Hello? Have you met them? They're easily the odd man out here."
"Ok." You deadpan. "Rude."
"Which means-" Legend flicks your forehead non too gently. "-that you're not as annoying or willing to throw us all off of a cliff."
"That was one time!" Wild shouts from the back.
"Well regardless, I can trust them to get the work done with out having to pick up the slack." Legend admires the ring on his fingers, acting nonchalant about the whole thing.
Some of the boys all seem to shuffle nervously on their feet. they seem to know what he's talking about.
This catches your attention. "Wait- hold on. When was this? What happened?"
Legend grins, looking like the cat that caught the canary. "A while ago. You were too busy doing your part to notice that we had been left to get rid of the rest of the monsters."
That last part was pointed. And you don't think his bombastic side eye was helping matters.
Ok. So Legend was holding a grudge. That's good to know.
You cleared you throat and rubbed the back of your neck. "So... that makes me your favorite?"
"Especially so." Legend turns back to you. His expression almost changes in a full 180. Before it looked at if his glare could have set them all ablaze but now his gaze is almost... soft. Tender, even.
Your breath gets stuck in your throat and you're shocked that you're even beginning to feel flustered by it. "....Don't mention it."
"I haven't." Legend winks and you bite your lip, losing your nerve and looking away. "But I don't mind bringing it up that you've been most helpful."
"Ugh, gross, he's flirting." Wind groans and shoves his way between the two of you, breaking the moment in twain. "Get a room! We don't need to see it!"
"I wasn't flirting-"
"That wasn't-"
'Yeah, yeah..." Wind blows a raspberry, making some of the others boys snicker. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."
Twilight
"Thank you." You grin and happily start walking with a spring in your step.
Twilight seems to pause, letting his words sink into his head. The others rapidly catch on that he hadn't intended to say that out loud, but you seem none the wiser and actually quite pleased with this revelation.
You skip ahead and even go as far as to loop your arm with his. "I think you're pretty neat too, Twilight."
He coughs and rub the back of his neck with his free hand, letting you hold his dominant arm hostage. It's not like he's complaining. "I'm glad."
Hyrule snickers on the side lines and Twilight finds it in himself to send him a particularly nasty look. Over your head, naturally, so you don't see and don't get the hint that some of the other boy seem persistent to drop in his stead.
You drop your grip on his arm to hold his hand instead, swinging your hands together as you all walk. "Good to know that I'm the favorite over all."
"That can't be it." Legend says with a smirk on his face.
Twilight growls. "Shut it-"
"Twilight said so. You all heard it." You fire back, ignoring Twilight's words. "I am the favorite."
"Mhm." Time hums in agreement. "I don't see why not."
"Old man." Twilight stresses the nickname, pleading as wordlessly as he can to let the subject drop and let him live.
You finally look up to him with a tilt of your head. "Were you lying?"
Panic stabs his heart and he rips his hand away from you in shock as he tries to salvage the situation. Whatever it is he's trying to salvage anyway. "What?! No! Of course I wasn't lying! I think you're incredible!"
"Ok!" You grin as if nothing had happened and grab his hand again. "That's a relief. I wasn't going to say anything but you're my favorite too. So it all works out in the end."
Twilight flushes as you begin to drag him forward on the trail. "....I beg your pardon?"
"You're pardoned!" You start swinging your hands again. "Let's go!"
Time
You trip over your feet and snap your head to face the old man who hadn't even bothered to look in your direction.
Surprisingly, it was Twilight who spoke next. "...Well that doesn't very fair."
Time snorts but comments no further.
Part of you wants to beam in joy. And to rub it in the rest of the boy's faces.
That's high praise coming from Time and you all knew it.
There's a sudden pep in your step as you keep walking forward. "Ha! I'm Time's favorite. Na nana na~"
Time smirks and watches you with an amused smile. Wind groans dramatically and launches himself onto Time's arm. "But come on! We're all cool and nice and how come I'm not your favorite?"
"It's not that you're not my favorite." Time explains gently, chuckles as he pries Wind off of his arm with a particularly rough hair ruffle. "It's that they-" He points to you. "-don't make it their life mission to give me grey hairs before my time."
"You don't need our help to get grey hair, Old Man." Legend teases.
Time swipes at the hero playfully, letting him easily evade his grasp. "I'm fully aware. And yet you all seem keen on making it happen."
You laugh, feeling more proud of yourself than you probably should. It feels good, even if there's a little voice in your head that's telling you Time only said you were the favorite to tease the other heroes. Even if that were case, you can't bring yourself to mind it. You can tease the others about it as well!
Twilight seems particularly put out and you make it a point to stick your tongue out at him out of childish pettiness.
Twilight catches on and pouts harder, sticking his tongue out at you in return- right for Time to clock him in the back of his head. "Easy, Pup."
"They started it!" Twilight cries petulantly.
"I'm ending it." Time gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Besides, I didn't hear them arguing with you lot about who was the greatest among you."
You put your hands on your hips. "I am quite awesome though, aren't I?"
Time sighs. "A mark of a true hero is humility." He flicks your forehead. "But yes- you are awesome."
Sky
"Awww... Sky, that's so sweet!" You put your hand to your heart and grin at the suddenly bashful boy.
"Ah- well... You're welcome."
Hyrule laughs and slugs him on the shoulder. "You didn't intend to say that out loud, did you?"
"Nope." Sky scratches the back of his head.
"That's ok." You pat his back, feeling a little better about your own ego. "I think that makes it all the better."
"...Right..." Sky smiles a little tensely, seeming a little more nervous than he's willing to let know.
"Wait-" Warrior raises an eyebrow. He says your name questioningly. "Who's your favorite?"
"Oh! Hyrule."
"Huh?"
"Yup." You give Sky a wink while the other boys start rapidly firing questions. Not because they want to know why Hyrule, but they want to know why not them.
You know, like the children they are.
Sky relaxes a little bit when you walk forward to keep the attention of off him and onto yourself, giving him enough time to collect himself and then wonder if you wee serious or not.
So... you didn't technically help him despite your efforts, but you don't have to know where his head space is at.
"...You were serious, weren't you?" Hyrule says in a quite voice. "Did you mean that as in more than just being a favorite?"
"...So when I say I didn't intend to say that out loud-"
"Sky, oh my god."
"I know."
"You even looked them in the eye-!"
"I know!"
"..."
"..."
"....My condolences."
"Don't remind me." Sky groans, hiding his face in his hands.
Warrior
Everyone freezes before all heads slowly turn to him.
Your jaw drops in total shock. Of all people to say something in this context, in that manner, he was would have been at the bottom of the list.
Warrior raises a cool eyebrow, daring to smirk as the cherry on top.
No body makes a move, almost afraid to break the tedious atmosphere around the group and once rowdy boys.
You clear your throat, garnering the attention for yourself against your wishes. You however, keep your gaze on Warrior. The son of a gun winks.
You flush and feel the need to clear your throat again. You were trying to be sarcastic and facetious. You weren't expecting a genuine response. At least you think he's being serious. The silence certainly doesn't help you get your nerve back.
"Moving on." Warrior turns on his heel and begins to walk away, leaving you all in the wake of his cutting sentence.
You try to meet the eyes of the other but they're all looking at you for your reaction instead.
You throw up your hands in a desperate attempt to get the attention off of yourself. "I didn't tell him to say that!"
"Of course not." Warrior has the gall to speak once more on the topic. "But that doesn't make it any less true."
"You-!" You shout, unintentionally being louder than you intended. "SHUT! Not a peep out of you!"
Warrior gets a gleam in his eye that spells trouble for you later. He grins even wider and blows you a kiss.
You have half the mind to throw something at him.
Wild leans up next to you and bumps your shoulder with his. You turn to him in a desperate attempt to hide your shame. His eyebrows dance in a knowing fashion and you give completely. Shoving the Champion as far aware from you as you can, you also begin to get a move on for the day.
The others boys laugh quietly around you, amused at the turn of events.
"I hate all of you."
"No you don't!" Someone gleefully calls back to you.
"Why don't tell that to Warrior?" Four teases.
You plan revenge on him specifically. Instead of following through with that however, you speed up to catch up to Warrior.
"Am I really your favorite?" You find yourself saying before you could stop yourself.
Warrior chuckled. "Of course. Have I ever lied to you?'
"Well..." He has a point there. You take a deep breath. "No."
"Well, there you have it."
Four
"Are you serious?" Wind pouts. "I thought it was Time."
"Nope." Four puts his hands on his hips. "And unlike some people, I'm not afraid to speak my mind. I said it and I'll say it again. They're my favorite person here. Any one that disagree has to come up with some pretty convincing evidence to make me change my mind?"
You beam and feel yourself bubble up with happiness. You bounce on the balls of your feet and clap happily. "Yay! I'm Four's favorite!"
You turn to Sky excitedly, pointing in his face. "Eat it!"
He gives you a startled look before he starts laughing under his breath.
Four snorts and shakes his head. "Any objections?"
Most of the boys shake their heads, amusement twinkling in their eyes. Four grins as well and shrugs. "I guess we're done here."
You giggle like a maniac as everyone starts falling back into line, the conversation ending then and there with Four's declaration.
You on the other hand, feel like that you've gotten the ego boost of a life time. You're not entirely sure why. Being Four's favorite went straight to your head and elevated your mood to a whole other level.
"This is the greatest achievement of my life." You say, not entirely sarcastic as you wanted to sound. "I think I can die happy now."
"I didn't think it would make you this happy." Four noticed you bouncing on cloud nine. "Do you think I'm that special that it's so important to be my favorite?"
You pause and blush softly. A beat passes with all eyes on you and you decide to bite the bullet. "Of course I do. You're also my favorite person."
"Person?" Wild catches your slip up.
You snap your head to him and stick your tongue out. "Don't even start. I said what I said. I won't take it back."
You turn back to Four and see him giving you the softest smile. Your heart starts pounding in your chest. Oh. That's new. You finds yourself smiling back.
"Get a room!!" Warrior drops his hand to your head, nearly throwing you to the ground as he ruffles your hair. Twilight does the same to Four, ruining the moment.
"Hey-! Get off!" You shout and shove the hero away.
"Twilight, watch it!"
Wind
You snap your head in the direction of the voice and feel a wide grin cover your face. "Well thank you very much, Pirate."
You reach over and ruffle his hair roughly, playfully throwing off his balance as he yells and tries to fight you off without making it into a legitimate fight.
"Ok, ok, take it easy you two." Time steps in, taking your hand off of the boy with a light chuckle on his breath.
"That's it." You say, meeting the rest of the group with a wild gleam in your eye. You aim to start trouble. "Wind is officially my favorite too. The rest of you stink."
"Oh, come on. Be nice." Wild snickers, throwing his arms round your shoulders to shake you just as playfully. "We all have our good moments. Why does Wind get the sudden promotion?"
"Well you literally stink." You jokingly, pinch your nose and throw him off of you. "Come on, Wind."
You turn around, sticking your tongue out at all the other as they snicker at Wild's offended face. Wind was laughing loudly, happily taking your outstretched hand when you offered it.
"Let's go to the front of the group where all the cool kids hang out."
"Ok!" He giggles, swinging your hands together as you start to walk a little faster to get ahead of everyone else.
"Are we just going to let them get away with this?" Wild shouts, having his pride wounded by your throw away comment.
"I mean..." Sky shrugs.
"Seriously?!"
"They're not wrong." Warrior snort, gently knocking the back of the Wild's with the heel of his wrist. "Maybe change your clothes every once and a while."
"You're one to talk." Wild grumbled, taking out his sheikah slate to look for something to wear. "I am not that bad."
You bite your lip to keep your amusement at bay and shrug as well. "If it's any consolation, Wild, you're not as bad as Twilight."
"I heard that!"
"You were supposed to!" Wind calls out for you and laughs loudly once more, pulling you along before taking off in a sprint. You looked behind you to see what happened, only to see Twilight chasing after you both.
"Wind, run!"
Hyrule
"Rulie', you gotta warn people before you say things like that." Wild chuckles as he knocks the Traveler in the back of the head in your stead while you stood staring at the boy agape.
"Sorry." He blushes and rubs the back of his head. "I couldn't stop myself fast enough."
"Wait- hold up." You find yourself saying. "....You mean it. Like... really really, you mean it. You wouldn't react that way if you didn't."
Hyrule coughs and bite his lips, bravely meeting you in the eyes. Goodness- you didn't think you have a thing for him but that particular expression has all cylinders firing off in your brain at once. You didn't even know he could pull that kind of look off. And he's not even trying!! It's not that kid fo context!
"Yup... I uh-... Well, there's nothing wrong with admitting it, right?"
"Rulie' I thought we had something." Legend dramatically put his hand to his heart, falling with his full weight onto the other hero. "The betrayal is deep Hero of Hyrule."
"Get off of me!"
"Just twist the knife deeper while you're at it!"
You snort and quickly cover your mouth with your hands, horrified that sound escaped you so easily.
It catches Hyrule's attention easily.
In an attempt to clear yourself of the embarrassment, you lean heavily in your bravado and wink at the hero in front of you. Hyrule manages to throw Legend off of him but he suddenly can't look you in the eye.
Hey- it was to save yourself from the embarrassment, not him.
"Of course there's nothing wrong with it." You find yourself saying. You continue to lean into your bravado and put your hands on your hips. "You're my favorite too, Link. So don't worry about it."
"Wait, really?" He looks up back to you, with a light dusting of pink over his cheeks.
"Um- they said Link." Warrior throws his arm on Hyrule's head, using it as a head rest. "Clearly they meant me."
"They did not!" Wind jumps on Warrior's arm. "They meant me!"
You start laughing again and when your eyes meet Hyrule's once last time, you wink again for good measure.
You both know who you meant.
Wild
"Whoops, did I say that out loud?" Wild laughs awkward, bringing his hand to the back of his neck. He scratches it, worried about how all of the people in the group turn to look at him.
"Yes." Sky tilts his head, trying (and failing) to keep the smile off of his face. "Yes, you did."
"My bad." He coughs, clearing his throat in the process. He does nothing to clear the blush on his face.
"Really?" You whisper, feeling your heart swell.
Wild bite his lip, turning on his heel. If he was trying to play it off and be inconspicuous, he's doing a horrible job of sweeping it under the rug. "Of course. Now- where were we?"
"No nono no no-" You grin wider and begin to chase the resident wild child. "You're not running away from this."
He actually takes off in a sprint.
You squawk, as do some of the other boy in the group before you decide to call his bluff and chase him as well. "Wild, get back here!"
"No, I'm good!" He shouts over his shoulder.
You nearly stop as you process your words before you decide to pick up the pace. You don't respond at first, too focused on closing the distance. You watch the hero as he runs, watching the steps he takes to copy them and not trip over the unfamiliar terrain.
He's not familiar with it either, but he seems to assimilate to any climate faster than anyone else you've ever seen.
Until he starts to slow down and looks behind him to see you running at him at full speed.
The scream he lets out is nothing short of comical and the brief second it took him to process and react to what he was was enough to allow you tackle him.
It doesn't work. He's too strong to be knocked over that easily but an attempt was made.
You laugh, feel as light as feather and very much out of breath. "Am I really your favorite?"
"Why did you chase me?!"
"That doesn't answer my question." You smile cheekily.
Wild pants and puts his hands on your shoulders, pushing you away from him so that he could look into your eyes. "...Yes."
"Perfect!" You kiss his cheek and start to run back to the group before either of you could get into trouble. "See you back at the group!"
"....What does that even mean?"
#linked universe#linkeduniverse#linked universe x reader#lu x reader#this got harder and harder to do as i worked down my list#i worked on the boys out of order fyi#four and wind were a *struggle*#legend fought me at first but i eventually figured it out#and i am *not* proud of Sky's#just take it DX#I tried man
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⠀⠀THE DEVIL'S ANESTHETIC. ⠀⠀⸺ ⠀⠀blade.
syn. you were just a doctor, at the start of it all. then came the chaos, the knife, the bits and pieces of madness and coming horror. and in the center of it all, stood him ( a gentle cruelty ).
TW. ⸺ yandere + smut and dark content ahead. reader is south asian coded, blade is a little fucked up and inevitably fucks the reader up a little too. murder, corruption arcs, medical terminologies i only half know, breaking of medical ethics, the reader is a pathetic wet cat, gang violence, death, manipulation, angst, acts of murder and mentioned dismemberment, suicidal ideation, dub-con, non consensual kissing, hatefucking, blade having violent thoughts, the reader is not daijobu, blade getting off on being killed.
LOG. ⸺ this is another repost of this fic after my old account got deleted on accident. this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.
"you can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."
— FRANZ KAFKA.
I. DEATHBED
“We have another one.” The receptionist echoes out from the front desk.
Another one. The words still the twitch in your muscles, the incessant cleaning and arranging and scrubbing away blood from medical chairs and forceps that should not be here. There are thoughts in your head. They’re dangerous ones, lingering in places that are grimy and soaked in something tarred. They should not be there.
Another one and that’s enough to coat your stomach with ugly, stifling coldness. You don’t reply, keep your eyes down and let the man walk in.
There were never any faces to your clients. They had hands, ringed, tattooed, scarred. Some had suits. Some stank of iron. And they all had guns, or bats, or rusty crowbars and attitudes that were knife edged and brutally coarse. This one is much like the rest. He tells you he was shot in the waist and his voice is static and white noise and discord leaking out of your ears in droves till —
“— will you get moving?! It fucking hurts.”
“Yes.” you choke out. “Yes of course.”
It comes easily to you now, after months of repeating it over and over with varying degrees of perfection and prompt. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the —
( Your thoughts unravel and they’re a mess in your hands like several bits of coloured petals. The scent has washed away. They almost seem to wither, bit by aching bit. )
You step away. “Done.” you tell the suited man and ask for no payments. Your receptionist does not either when he strides outside and it’s smart because patience was a whim when you reeked of viscera. That brazen naivete was drilled out of her a long time ago ( and you too ) and the rules were set forth, rules that must never be broken. You’d seen too many zipped up body bags scattered in the gutters to dare to. You do not want to be one of them.
( Coward, that spiteful half of you snarls and you know it’s right. )
Only he does reach in and throw some loose notes against the counter. You shuffle up to her, nails crusted with brown and red and count fifty kaas. It’s peanuts. It will do.
You were a doctor.
Or at least you’re certain you were. You’d spent the better part of your decade rooted within a small university where standard IPC dialect was taught as a secondary language and the fans hadn’t been replaced for the last thirty years. It was torture during the summer and the hospital adjacent had patients who spoke in tongues you didn’t quite understand. But you manage. You tried, you graduated.
You were a doctor. Your license reads you specialised in paediatrics. Children were all you needed to deal with, some too loud to listen to their parents' chides for silence. Some so young they were small enough to fit in your desk drawer. Some of them liked to talk too and ask questions during checkups and vaccine appointments ( nerves, you reason and you answer the questions ). It wasn’t much. It was peaceful. It was alright. This is your clinic, something you'd built from sleepless nights and mountains of referral literature.
Then you’d see less children and more of those suited men as the streets grow with a cacophony you can’t call safe after this. The carpet was worn down by blood and heavy footfalls, over the thread work and your mother’s faded name in the bottom.
You weren’t treating children anymore.
Still, you hold it together. This is yours, all of this. This is yours and it's a feeling locked away in your beating heart.
When the man returns — and you know it’s him because the birth mark on his hands were hauntingly similar — he brings company. The company in itself would have seemed unassuming, and they were, lingering by the doors speaking in words too fast to comprehend till the gunfire rang out and the windows shattered.
A part of you is thankful that it’s so late, where the streets are silent and the bustle is calm. The files you were rearranging fall to the floor. You duck beneath your desk and stay there, enclosed within tumult, within chaos, within something you wanted no part of ( and you grip your hands tight, quietly wondering if that persistent cat would be fed, if your father would care to know what happened to you ).
You hear glass break, fall, fall and hit the floor with a sadistic sort of tinkling.
You hear frantic footsteps thundering up by the door.
You hear the screaming.
( You hear your heartbeat. You want it to stop. )
Something crashes into the storeroom. It was large, heavy, clothed and it let out a strangled cry before iron clogs up your nose and heat and cold fizzles up and hammers into every crevice and pore and turns your chest inside out. The man tries to shift, to get up and out of the way, shoulders knocking against the shelves in panic that feels painfully palpable. He’s crying. You see that when you bundle into a corner, eyes burning.
His body jerks and is dragged to the door.
“Don’t,” he begs till the desperation chokes his reasoning and it meters into panicked threats. “You’ll be torn apart by this, I swear, you’ll be hunted down — ”
He’s pulled at again, his limp form slipping out of sight. You hear a sick sound — a squelch, the dripping of blood and viscera and the gamey crack of bones. Your teeth dig into your cold fingers. The stinging is numbed, dim and distant, while you press against the wall and try not to wail.
There is only a single set of footsteps now. It paces like a starved animal, like a caged beast. Leave, your thoughts scramble and correct themselves. Just leave. And it repeats, over and over like a maddening chant. Please leave, leave, leave. The footsteps stop at the door followed by a slow scrape against marble. A shadow falls over the doorway. That’s when you see him.
You think he could have been pretty. But there's terror beneath that veil of frozen numbness. You don’t think he’s pretty now, when he’s stalking into the room, bloodied sword in hand ( it’s mired and cracked and mended like kintsugi but twisted and terrible ). He walks like a man who’d been broken and sewn together and he reeks of death and a sickening sweetness.
His gaze meets yours for that fleeting moment.
( it felt like that throbbing helplessness. Of everything going wrong. )
One of the suited men had not died. Not yet, in some inane act of stubbornness. He’s tackled down immediately and you flinch back and finally scream, watching the writhing pile of bodies smack each other down with ease. The swordsman ends it. There’s a chilling disparity in strength with how his bare hands tear into flesh and rips his opponent’s arm off. He’s laughing, laughing like a madman and the insane hysteria sparks a primal instinct nestled in your mind.
You’re moving before you realise it, when you spot his fingers twitch for his fallen sword. Your hands close around metal. You’re surging forward, taut at the edges. That part of you screams into the void, stripping away morality, reason, the simpler parts of shame that could have stopped you then and there.
When your fractured mind pieces together and lets the spinning room rest into clinical stillness, you’re aware of the hysterical laughter that man trembles into. He slumps against your legs, weighted, boneless. He’s still laughing, like the world had whispered a funny joke into his ear and left him to rot.
The dislodged pole slips out of your hands. You watch him crumple down onto the floor, staining the tiles. A swing, a hit to the back of his head, a break to the vertebral artery, a medullary haemorrhage, a stroke, neuron death —
You spend the next hour tucked away in that storeroom, watching the swordsman’s body convulse, then his breathing still and his body run cold.
II. NEWLY DECEASED
Once upon a time, you told yourself that you could get by. You could get by and let yourself think you were a good person despite the ugly cracks tucked away and the bated disappointment breathing down your neck. It’s the human experience, a conditioned way of convincing yourself, a way you wish to live in the quieter corners of you.
It’s a lie. A lie. A lie.
The body does not move, as dead bodies usually do. As a frame of reference, dead bodies don’t do much to begin with. You stand back up and feel nausea coat the back of your throat, then wordlessly stumble to the man. Your fingers press against his pulse. Nothing.
A part of you wants to laugh at yourself for hoping.
The police take it all away. They don’t know what you did. Or maybe they do and care so little they swat that detail aside. Death is so natural here, so common and where is the sympathy for the damned when the damned were everywhere and your kindness wears thin?
( You’re left to pick up the pieces. The cracked photo frames, the toys and magazines salvaged, the bowl of tamarind candy tipped over. Bits and pieces gathered together and sewn back together. There was a heart in these walls. The pain was always there, but a dogged part of you loves this place. )
You answer what questions were asked and let them walk away, knowing they’ll do nothing about the situation to begin with. They never do. Most policemen were tucked up in the pockets and played dogs to gang members. Some lost themselves to apathy. Money could buy loyalty in droves. It was an open secret.
You get back home and let the hot water run into your bucket. You feed the visiting cat. You wipe the counters down and unearth some food from the previous night. You turn the water off. You bathe. You eat.
( “I’m fine.” you lie to Aleena when she calls you, frantic, scared. More frantic and scared than you present yourself to be. You don't tell her you’re a murderer.
“I don’t think you should go back tomorrow. I’m not saying this to get off of work or anything but after all that?” she falls silent.
“Maybe. But I need to keep the income coming in somehow.” )
Walking into the bedroom feels harder than it should. Lead bleeds into muscle as you patter along and try to keep yourself steady against the walls. For a moment, you stop and lean your forehead against it and tell yourself not to cry ( because cowards cry, and idiots cry and it was a pointless endeavour anyway because nothing — nothing about this would change ). Your degree falls into your line of sight, framed up against the wall.
You are a doctor. You are a doctor. You are a doctor.
That guilt knocks you in the knees. The guilt, the disgusted guilt that comes from killing a man.
( It’s engulfing, like tar and cloth pressed up against your face. The breathlessness, the storm rattling against the window, the messiness of it all. You’re screaming at the pillow. You’re clawing at it. You swipe till your arm bleeds and the cacophony dies down. )
The veneer shatters and the frame is clenched and thrown to the floor. The casing cracks. You heave, look at the mess at your feet and think to yourself :
What were those eight years for?
You killed a man.
You killed a man.
You killed a man.
A gasp tears through. It's painful, heavy and it's glass and shrapnel. The voice in your head whispers. Nothing. It's all for nothing.
Another one crackles through the muffled distortion, straining and rattling. A clear “I told you so.” grating past the chaos, disappointed, smug, knowing.
You shut your eyes and dream of jasmine and marigolds.
( You listened to Aleena when you passed the register and took a day off in the end. It’s the one kindness you let yourself have.
You did not eat for most of the day. Your gut gnaws. Your limbs feel weak. But food, as delicious as the thought seemed, invoked a visceral response. Of corpses and blood and things that you thought yourself too far removed to disgust you. A caved in skull did all this. A caved in skull made you retch and empty your stomach out into the toilet.
You think you deserve it. )
Your watchman stops you when you head back out again a few days later for a grocery run. "Are you alright?" he asks, peering through sleep. The cat curls round his legs and he gives it a gentle pat. You can hear the content purr it lets out from where you stand, and you venture a little closer.
"A little." you reply, smiling a little. The watchman tilts his head in consideration. You'd lost count of how long he's been here. Some of the older tenants mention he'd settled in over a decade ago, when the building still had four floors instead of five and a little more space to park out back.
"You still seem scared is all." he glances over at you again. It's the worry in his furrowed brow that makes you give pause. He reminded you of your grandfather then, strong jawed, stern eyed before that softness pervades through when he'd let you scoot over next to him to sneak a look at the newspaper ( cricket scores and stock prices were all he looked at. And the Sudoku ) .
You shift in place, tugging at the hem of your jacket. "It was a little jarring. The sudden attack, that is." you admit. You don't tell him about the death, the way deceitful monsters do.
The watchman shakes his head. "Horrible thing to go through, I agree. Especially for one as young as you." The cat slinks pat his legs and under the bed. he leans forward, tire heaving at his bones and his joints. A decade. One would assume he'd retire at this point given his age. "Try not to let it wear down on you, is all."
"It's easier said then done." You mumble.
"It is." the watchman snorts. "I told my daughter about you though. She's taking medicine too…Oncology. I scraped together every Kaas I had to pay her tuition fee off." he flexes his arthritic hands. You keep listening, that sliver of curiosity winning out. "She hasn't met you…but she knows about your clinic. the children your helping…suited men aside. It gives her a bit of spark at least. So you keep going too."
You feel gutted, eyes stinging a bit. He puts too much faith in you, you realise. But there is a small touch of warmth against the rattling cold. "Thanks…" you nod. The watchman leans back.
Keep going. What a mess, really.
You return to your clinic, the day after. You decide it's the last time you'd let reckless hope bar the instinctive tearing in your gut.
There is a woman sitting on the waiting room chairs with a dangerous smile. She’s dressed well, like those elegant omen-bringers or dapper businessmen. She’s dressed like the coming consequences and it’s there, that sadistic delight, hidden behind that lazy tilt to her head.
“Good morning.” she greets, like she hadn't broken into your clinic. “Hope we’re not intruding.”
You look to her companion next to her.
The dead man ( and he was dead. He was supposed to be — you were certain ) stares right back.
“Do you have anything to drink?”
“There’s a coffee machine…”
“Hm, never mind. I was never too fond of the instant stuff. What do you think Bladie?”
'The man named ‘Bladie’ does not respond. You’d have laughed a little — if your nerves weren't frayed. You’d have laughed over a silly, inconsequential nickname slapped onto some scary looking man, then gone on your way. But the scary looking man was a murderer. And you were certain, so certain, that he was dead.
( His blood coated your hands days ago. You can’t have imagined it — not something so innately ingrained within your psyche like some sadistic firebrand.
How is he alive? How is he alive?! Why is he — )
“I could pick up some tea.” you suggest, because playing meek was the way of a coward and you were that in the end. You still had to open your clinic in another half hour. There are still parts of the storeroom that need cleaning and a window that needs replacing. The woman laughs. She looks at you like you were an adorable specimen. A pet…or perhaps a bug to be stepped on.
( It’s a cruel sort of beauty that edges her face. You’d hate to admit you were staring a little longer than you should be. )
“There’s no need for that.” she looks to the side for a moment. “Bladie was here a few days ago, you know.” you flinch, perhaps knowing the ugly scene to follow. “Got into a bit of a tussle. Of course, I wasn’t worried…he’s got a knack for seeing things through, you know…” She’s staring straight at you now. “And he’s good at not dying, one could say.”
“That’s nice.” you mumble, shifting uncomfortably. Your cheeks are cold. Don’t look at me, you try to tell the should-have-been-dead swordsman. Like that would have worked ( he keeps staring ).
The woman continues. “It's funny though. After that affair at your clinic, I had to pick Blade up at some hospital’s morgue of all places. Quite the detour if you ask me.”
You still.
She knows.
Fuck. She knows.
“I…I see.” you play into stupidity, wring your hands a bit and force a far away smile. “I wonder how that happened.”
“Yes.” she nods, solemnly flicking dust off of her velvet coat. The playful lilt to her tone is back, delicately poking and prodding away and you feel the walls close in bit by bit. You can see the man tilt his head. You want to disappear. “I’d think you know though…so how about you tell us?”
You don’t look at her. You can’t, with that horror filtering through and spotting your vision.
“Now….listen to me.” she stands, saunters up to you and you stay rooted. Your mind fogs over with cotton wool and the aftertaste of wine blooms through your mouth. There is consideration there, her pointedly dragging her eyes across your figure and taking a sick pleasure in the fear that trembles at your fingertips. A tiny part of you that still remains too torturously aware recoils. “Were you the one who killed Bladie?”
“Yes.” you reply and it isn’t you. You wouldn’t have said that. You wouldn’t have.
Her lips curl. “How did you kill him?”
“I hit him on the back of his neck.”
Her face glows. “Good girl.” she pats your cheek. “We have a favour to ask you. How about you hear us out?”
She gives your shoulders a squeeze and you’re gasping for air. “That wasn’t so hard.” she grins. The cotton wool strangles and is caught at the edges, whisping, grasping, stubbornly trying to stay. You still pull at it incessantly while you back away from her touch. It burns. What did she do to you? What did she fucking do to you —
You’re pulled closer. It’s just a tug, a simple coil of her fingers round your arm. “I’m sorry.” you blurt out. “I’m sorry. I never meant it.” There are cracks against the surface, a spiderweb and it keeps going and going and going the more you talk ( you need to shut up ).
“There there.” She coos. “How about we sit down, hm? Bladie, think you could make some space?”
You don’t want to sit down with them. You try to pull back, to run because that’s what you should have done in the first place; instead of entertaining a pair of strangers with that stupid, naive hope of safety. She pulls back. Bladie catches your wrist when you try to squirm free and you’re half dragged onto the seat between them. “Honestly. A drink would have been nice. Oh don’t worry. I could hardly blame you for that.”
The woman fixes her sleeve. “I take it you don’t know who we are?”
“No.” you admit.
“Ah. the IPC influence here isn't as deep, huh? I heard there was an overhaul a few decades ago. The revolt drove most of them out…I wouldn’t count on it staying that way.” She passes you a measured flash of her teeth. It’s all good manners and etiquette you can’t return. “But we’re not here to talk politics. I’d like you to babysit Blade for a while.”
Blade seems to be expecting it. He does not mirror your dismayed shock.
“Why — ”
“Can’t say. It’s all a part of some very important work.” She holds a finger to her lips. “Would you be a lamb and do it?”
You grip at the metal armrests hard. The room is a blurred scape, a watered down stain ( ink tracked against damp paper ). “I won’t.”
“Come now. After that stunt you pulled with him, it’s the least you could do.”
It settles hard. “I told you I didn’t mean it.” you snap. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you.” Your unravelling seeps into something dangerous. You try to step back. To keep it together. It tangles, knots, frays and snaps and tangles again and the foundations crumble. You cannot think despite the clarity slowly creeping and the fog metering out. You cannot think because the man you killed is alive and right next to you and dead men don’t just come back to life.
The woman forces you to turn her way. “You didn't mean it?” she repeats, inquisitive, amused. “Doctor please, any normal person would have gone for the head. You made a very calculated move there…and I'm sure that pretty little brain of yours knows the consequences that come with it.”
It’s a coveted part of you that dies there, withering, burning, clipped away and cast aside and you shake your head as you’re retrained. “Don’t touch me!” you scream. “Don’t touch me!”
Because humanity despises the naked truths in the world. They’ll deny, deny, deny what stares them in the face for those fleeting, selfish little comforts skewed in ignorance. Better the downy coverlet to the thin blanket, better the sweeter lie that bitter sincerity. You’re no different. Not really. You’re not different at all.
And that woman was not a liar.
III. DISTENSION
Aleena doesn’t take well to a strange man lurking within the backrooms. Her eyes always flit to the doors and her shoulders stay tense as she directs a few straggling patients to the waiting room and updates their details into the salvaged computers. “I don’t like the look in his eye.” she whispers hurriedly. “Doctor. Have you seen him?”
“Yes . I have.” you reply simply. “Could you pull up the files from a month ago? We have a follow up due today.”
She hums, and you nod to the messy clattering from the keyboard. “He’s not from here, is he? His clothes aren’t local.” her voice dips. “Is he an outworlder?”
“Yes.” You flit through a case history. The ink has run a bit, the edges flicked a dirty red. Bile and acid sears the edges of your mouth. You don’t think throwing up here and now would be professional. And your receptionist has a very nice shawl on. “Have the police called?” you add, helplessly rubbing away at the browned stains.
“You know they won’t.” she clicks her tongue, wrinkling her nose to the injustice of it all. You bite back your tired humour. She might descend into an angry little ramble then curse those men in three different tongues. You were guilty of listening in ( it’s amusing, and she had plenty of anger for the two of you, and then some more for the smaller things ). “They’re too busy sipping cha at the local angadi.”
She keeps tap tapping away. “Do you want me to send a soft copy? Or will you directly look into the logs?”
You cease flipping through the files. “Just send me a PDF.” you mutter. “You still have a few cases to input from yesterday right? I won’t hold you up.” Another report is pushed your way. Two more patients, two more medical histories to pore over. The throbbing in your forehead is incessant and stubbornly clinging on.
Gang activity in your neighbourhood has stifled from its initial raucous to a cautious thrum. There were still glimpses and the ignored nods, and that delicate rope-work still standing strong despite men from their brackets dying some terrible death. They don’t suspect you. It would be stupid to ( because you could hardly hold a gun in their eyes, or fight back. Your claws are chipped and your fangs blunted. It’s not a mystery ).
It does not stop the occasional loitering goon up front as parents grow a little braver and a little more desperate to bring their sick children in.
You settle with your work email, tapping your foot against the faint buzz from the streets outside and the waiting area. There is the occasional loud call. Kids being kids, shushed by mothers and fathers with warnings of naughty ones being fed the nastiest medicines for bad behaviour. You’re not cruel enough to do so maliciously, but it quiets them down amidst the worried ogling.
A ping pulls you from sinking further into your pit of thoughts. The document pops up in your inbox and Aleena slows her typing to two finger taps. “Can I take a week off?” She pipes up, nervously picking at her fingers. “Next month, that is.”
“For the agelu?” you guess, a new sort of weariness settling. “I suppose you can.”
Aleena stifles away a relieved smile followed by a : “You're not going?” She looks a little surprised, then lets her eyes sweep across the clinic. “I mean…yeah I guess you won't, given the state things are in right now…”
You wince. Your father had sent a text in. He asks for you, in his own, distant way. Maybe he misses you. Maybe you miss him beneath the hurt and the anger. But feelings were messy, scary things and it was better to look away and stick your head into papers and books and words that could be read. “I’m not sure.” is the soft admission. “It's a little early, I think, for me to make a proper decision.”
( Going home feels like a fever dream now. You’d almost come to loathe the smell of marigold and incense smoke. )
That and you can't be certain if Kafka would pick your guest up any time soon. She never gave you a timing, or any sense of clarity and control in this mad scramble. Blade was to lurk in his little window in the backrooms with all the year-old files for as long as he should.
“Besides.” You finish with a hint of good humour. “I'll take full responsibility for any ancestral hauntings after. Maybe my great grandmother could make a nice home on my couch.”
Aleena purses her lips. It’s says enough. A little more if you squint hard.
“Okay that wasn’t very funny.” you admit.
“No. It wasn’t.” She tilts her head sympathetically, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the edge of the desk, half pushing up against hardwood and paper. “I have plenty to say…but you’re my boss and that would be unprofessional.”
You bite back that twitch to your lips. “A wise choice. Take care of yourself now…and don’t forget about the rest of the reports.”
Primal fear rear its ugly head and scrapes at the bars when you meet Blade’s gaze.
“I have two patients due in the next hour.” you manage to pull out, turning your heel immediately after. Any inch for a quick escape, really. “So don’t come out. You’ll scare them.” you add for good measure, like he’s a child himself, or a feisty dog muzzled and chained up.
( The kind of dogs who bite at anything and everything. The kind who quietly bare their teeth at cruel hands and kind. You aren’t certain of Blade’s stance here and now, if he was pleased with his arrangements — stuck in a room too small for him, with someone who clearly didn't want him here.
Because you don’t. There’s something about you and your face and the way it’s a traitor. It gives away your thoughts, your heart, the things you want to keep tucked away at the back but seep under the doors and stain the carpets. And your displeasure seeing him is on full display.
His corpse comes to mind. Still, dead, cold took the touch with the beginnings of rigour mortis settling when he was hauled over the stretcher and wheeled away. )
He says nothing back, unsurprisingly. He didn’t even bother speaking out as much when Kafka came in and dropped him off with all the unceremonious sneaking and threatening. You think he’ll carry on with his silence, letting whatever this delicate little semblance of distant amiability stay within its stagnant state. An untouched web.
You turn. Keep walking. You really don't want him here, you think miserably. The paradoxical warmth in his body now, when for a moment there was none. His gaze, unsettlingly intense. You don’t want him here at all.
Still, you turn once more. You speak. “Is there anything else you need?” be polite. Be polite.
Blade considers it. He looks at you. You fool yourself into believing the hunger simmering beneath harsh vermilion does not exist.
“No…” he finally relents. His voice is coarse, heavy, the whisper of a growl.
( You leave faster than you should have. )
He follows you home after the day is done ( you wish he didn’t ).
Blade keeps you within his line of sight — just within reach and just close enough to feel that faint prickle of body heat against the back of his neck. It’s an uncomfortable itch. It’s unwelcome. So you turn your head back to his silent figure and test your fingers against your bicep.
“Could you walk in front of me?” you ask.
Blade seems to consider it. “No.” he finally decides with finality edging every word. “You might run.”
“I don’t think you’d let me get very far to begin with.” you mutter under your breath. His footsteps are heavy, kicking aside loose concrete you avoid. Blade still stays an unwanted spectre behind you, treading in a way that is too soft to be human.
“I won’t.” he agrees, sounding sure of himself. Bored even. There is a scuffing sound, cloth against cloth. You’re tense again, anticipatory ( and yet, you don't dare to look back, to look at him ). “It saves inconvenience. That is all.”
You decide you’d like to be an inconvenient annoyance. That should drive him back to wherever he came from.
“I still don't think you should walk behind me though.” You repeat. Your fingers curl. You wish you had a taser. Your last bottle of pepper spray was spent as is on a few other thugs the past couple months. “You look like a creep. And a stalker. You might mug me.”
“I won't.”
“How do I know that?” You keep rambling, hysteria trickling down. It's a leaky tap, that anxious mess in your chest.
Blade blinks. “Kafka told me not to.” ( like it was the most obvious thing. You might be imagining the heavy condescension oozing through ).
That does not make you feel better. Kafka seems as reliable as a tsunami, or a flood, or any natural hazard creeping into its first few stages of utter destruction. It shows on your face, that muted mix of disbelief and horror. Blade's gaze is sharp, not quite the disconnected distance it held before. Kafka was suffocating as is but blade feels like rubble bearing down, down, down. You hate it.
“And it would be pointless, trying.” He continues. “Killing you would change nothing.”
You wordlessly rub at your knuckles, at the pulled skin of your hand. You do not talk to him for the rest of the walk. You should be more polite, you tell yourself. Be more polite. You killed this man, watched him die as his brain slowly collapsed in on itself. The least you could do after those fifteen and a half dumpster fires is extend some basic human decency, right? Be polite.
A scream ringing out gives you another thing to focus on. They're normal to hear, even as it wrenches open your viscera and leaves something sick on your tongue. It continues, growing increasingly hysterical, then stops.
( You almost run for the source, You want to. You do not. )
By the time you slip into the parking lot of the apartment and head for the elevator, you’re half hurrying Blade along. There’s nothing glamorous about the place — a standard five storey tall building just like the other projects lining most lower middle class neighbourhoods. The watchman was found out back, half passed out from his shift and stinking of beedi smoke, leaving the dog that frequented the neighbour's doors to rip into any intruders.
You don't think Blade is wholly impressed as he nudges at him with his foot. The watchman jolts with a huff and a startled snore, then passes out, head lolling to the side a little. The dog does not bark, simply trotting up to accept a few pats on the head. And indignant annoyance flares up. You sharply tug at the hem of his sleeve.
Blade jolts. The vermilion of his stare burns you.
"Leave him alone." you warn, giving his sleeve another tug for good measure. Blade's lips purse, his displeasure a quiet shift on his face for the most part, burying away immediately into the corners and crevices where things were never brought up again. "I hope you like cats." you add. "I have one who visits sometimes. She's a terror and a half…"
He grunts, stepping to the side as you fiddle with your keys, pulling away the string from your key chain and getting your door open. It’s a welcome ritual, feeling the cool breeze from your apartment filter in after a while. The cat is passed out on the balcony floor, cracking open a single yellow eye in greeting when you shuffle forth to take a peek.
“Hello, pretty girl.” you coo, feeling that heavy warmth in your arms and the softness of her fur against your palms. It eases you just enough to face Blade again.
Be polite, you tell yourself because you killed him, because he could snap your neck in two, because you think that the last thing you need is pissing off a pair of seeming psychos. “You won’t mind tea, right?”
Blade leans against the wall, maybe trying to make himself as small as possible within the cloistered rooms. “It’s a waste.” he replies, ignoring everything else; the hum from the streets below, the occasional flicker from the lights, the cat settling on the couch and sleeping an arm’s length away.
“Okay.” you mumble and set down two cups anyway.
You do not like Blade’s silence. His silence means he’d rather think about something and him thinking could involve certain death. There is a disturbed sheen glossing over his gaze. He does not look wholly there, the less he talks. Most conversions your parents had with guests were about the weather, then delving headfirst into some obscure gossip about a family three kilometres away.
Another fleeting glance at Blade has you reason that he’s not one for gossip.
( You let this silence settle in. It’s still a suffocating thing, an unwanted presence and an unwelcome guest. You think of the suited men and the gangs amok in the dirty corners and you think the silence looks like them. )
“So…our first meeting wasn’t…wholly ideal.” You speak up after a while, handing him his tea. Blade looks vaguely surprised when he takes it. “I don’t think ‘ideal’ would be the right word for it…”
“You killed me.”
You swallow. “Yes.” your voice shakes. “I killed you.” Your legs are drawn a little closer to you before you talk and you lower your voice, all that shame and guilt subduing the last bits of that cocktail of fear and tumult and annoyance. “I’m sorry for killing you. Even if you’re still alive…somehow…it wasn’t the best course of action, to be fair — ”
Blade’s lips twitch. He takes a sip of his tea, letting you stew there with your fumbling, your shame. It still goes unspoken. That damning ‘how are you still alive’. You don’t bother asking it. He can’t stay dead — Kafka said so herself. The very notion feels like an existential terror moulded to the shape of a man and you want it to stay far away from it.
“Four days.” he finally utters out, inspecting the last bit of tea staining the bottom of his cup. “I was dead for four days.”
Oh. Oh that stung.
“I’m sorry.” your voice cracks and your eyelids start to prickle. Stupid. Stupid stupid, you curse at yourself, claw at the offending load inside.
Blade snaps his head towards you. There is a twitch in his hands, slow, dog-like in the way strays jolt in alarm. You do not comment on it, awkwardly pressing at the surface of your cup while the tears are quickly wiped away and smudged against your cheeks. There's no use crying over it, you scold yourself. Grow a spine.
“Spare yourself the pity. It is not an uncommon occurrence.” is his uncomfortable dismissal. The words are nonchalant and his forehead crinkles to match the perplexed hitch to his shoulders. He probably wants to say more, speak more, tear you apart. Or he was just too put off by how pathetic you are.
“You’ve been killed before?”
“Yes.”
Horror stirs deep in your gut and a small sliver of morbid fascination shunting beneath the murky waters and glimmering up in those seconds of resurfacing.
( Can he not die? He’s still here after dying from a stroke. Does he regenerate? How does he do that? Do his cells simply have a faster metabolism? That means his neurons can too despite their limited replication in most normal people. Does he — )
The tear tracks are drying. Your face feels stiff.
“I was trying to protect myself.” you even talk like a guilty person ( it does not help. It’s subdued, the way you speak. Beaten down, half hearted. You wonder if you even want to protect yourself at all ). You don’t want to look at him anymore.
“I don’t blame you.” he replies. It’s soft, missable, sympathetic and you know that can’t be the case. Blade blinks slowly, setting his cup aside. “Would you do it again?” he asks solemnly. His hands twitch again, out of its usual bent stiffness. Beneath the dim lighting, the paleness of his skin is a corpse like macabre; greyish, sallow. He seems starved. “Would you kill me?”
Your lips part. Bile and acid burn your throat. You shut it again and shake your head and the desperation, you assume, is enough. No, no never again. You don’t want that nausea. You don’t want any more of the griping aches in your stomach and the incessant pound of your capillaries.
Blade straightens up and gives you a long, thoughtful look. He steps back and returns to his stony silence without a word. The air is restive, poisonous in how it melts away the peace.
You really should pray to that nameless god, to soften that blow. You really should pray because nothing good ever comes out of this. There’s that brush of scale against your foot, the shrinking courage when faced with dour vermilion. It’s wolfish; its jaws bear down. The cat cracks open an eye again, letting out an annoyed mewl.
No, never mind that.
IV. EXUDATION OF BLOOD
You should have prayed. The questionable existence of a god or not, maybe you'd have given yourself that tiny bit of assurance.
Even your ancestors would have done well enough. What would your grandmother say?
( Her old spirit's possibly disowned you, if she hasn’t already. She must have burned your seat in the afterlife and spat on the ashes. Bringing a man into your home, no matter the circumstance would have incited all the wrong reactions. )
You learn quick enough that Blade never sleeps. The third night after spent between lurking within the stuffy storage space and wedged next to old folders, you’d spotted him sitting upon the couch in the middle of the night. “What are you doing—” you croak out after the initial scream. He scrutinised you with clinical indifference, sweeping over your bare legs to your face. You tamp down the urge to pull your shirt down, cheeks burning.
“Thinking.” he says. There is no further elaboration to it. Blade turns to peer outside your window and the dead streets below. There is a faint echo of the strays barking trailing behind the occasional hum of a passing car. Your little town was far sleepier than the cities, where the traffic continues on, long past the morning calls and the reedy music from 24-hour bars.
“You scared me for a moment.” you purse your lips, picking at your hands. Blade blinks. “I mean, you're just standing there.” You try to justify it, fumbling a bit and coming across as far more slow than anything else. Blade tugs at his sleeve and smoothens over the damp spots.
“I'm not trying to kill you.” he reasons.
You dig your thumb down into the thicker skinned parts of your palm. It reeks of iron. He always reeks of iron. “Startled me, then. I thought you were asleep.”
Blade considers it. “I do not need sleep. Not more than what is necessary.”
Uneasiness filters in. Your throat bobs with it, unsure. “Everyone needs sleep.” you stumble out. Blade shifts, tracing along his nape with a purposeful look. His regeneration. Yes, his regeneration. Tissue rest and repair would be unnecessary with that, wouldn't it? Sleep, food perhaps, the little necessities taken for granted — peeling that away and pulling back the blinds to peer down that gaping hole, it's strange.
The grislier parts of his curse seemed to strip away those human needs. It likes to gnaw out any sense of humanity from his bones, in fact, scavenging away the bare ligaments and swallowing it whole.
“So…you’re just going to stay there then...” .
“Yes.”
Blade’s shoulders are set into its perpetual hunch. There’s something unfettered about him, roiling within deeper confines with a sense of wildness and entropy. You take your cautious step back and steel the nerves you have left ( there aren’t many to begin with — you still try ). It’s far from the moodiness he usually holds himself with and the cyclical introspection. “Could you be less…disturbing, then…?” you ask.
Silence. “Disturbing.” he echoes, tasting every breadth of the word on his tongue. You feel metal coming to rest in your mouth and dig into the insides of your cheeks. There’s a flicker from the apartment across and sterilised white shines upon the side of his face. He looks worn down, worse for wear. The darkened spots on his clothes are dyed red round his torso and dried blood crests across the rim of his fingernails. Red. Red on his clothes. Red on the floor. Red on your couch. Red —
“Did you leave this room?” it’s not a question. You’re not asking questions.
“No.”
You don't quite realise it, the scrambling and the frantically locked doors till the cold nip from your room settles against your skin and your shaky hand holds up your phone. It takes a moment for the buzzing numbness to fade to a tumultuous undercurrent and for you to dial down that emergency contact, seconds away from calling —
— a notification.
It's an unlisted contact, and a single message.
Unknown. I wouldn't do that if I were you.
A moment of pause. You don't move, balking at the sight of it.
Unknown. There's a good girl. I hope Bladie isn't giving you any trouble. If he's made a mess, just help him get cleaned up, please.
You. Is this Kafka?
Unknown. Look at you playing detective! That's cute. It is, by the way.
You. How did you get my number..
Unknown. Oh I have my ways. And I wouldn’t call the police. I can’t say I’ll stay quiet and pin the blame on you. It would be easy, hiding a few bodies in your storeroom. I like Bladie, you know. Can’t have him getting arrested and all.
It feels like you’re grasping at ice, with the way it feels cold. Cold, so cold and uncomfortably harsh against your cheeks. You want to tear into something, into your pillow, into yourself. You want to throw your phone across the room and scream till your lungs are hoarse. You want to call the police anyway and shove that into Kafka’s face. You want to cast them out into some forgettable void and be done with this fear and this painful grip in your stomach and…
…you do none of that.
Some small defeated part of you whispers its comfort. You ignore it, cast it aside, call it a fool. You’re gutless, maybe a little brainless and honestly, you half consider going back to your hometown and — no. You will not think about that. Not now. Not ever. You broke that life apart, stepped over the fragments and let your bloodied footsteps lead you here. All that hurt is not worth the quiet defeat.
The door creaks open. You peer back out at Blade. “Sorry…” you mumble. He glances up at you. “I just…i was shocked…there’s blood all over you.” You think about what you should say next. You chose your words carefully. “Did you…”
You don’t get to finish. Blade leans back and shakes his head. “I did not kill anyone.” A wry little tug twitches at his lips. “Not now at least.”
It takes a tentative step, then another for you to exit the room completely. Blade doesn’t look bothered, content in his solitude where sits. You look down at the tiled floor trying to summon forth whatever blind insanity you had. It takes a special sort for this, for this specifically where the cracks fissure into the sides and down down down to the foundations. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” A lie. There’s blood on him for crying out loud.
Still, you do not pry. “Should I…” you stop. It takes some struggle, reaching down deep and wrenching the words out into something stringed and legible. “Do you want to clean up?” you offer softly, motioning to the bathroom. “Just…a shower, I guess. I can get those washed.. Blood’s really hard to get off after all and they’re nice clothes…from my personal experience at least…”
Blade watches you, tilting his head a bit. He does look a little like a dog now, one with a wrinkled muzzle and dark, serious eyes. “Fine.” he relents after some consideration, impassively getting to his feet. He follows you to the bath, delicately sidestepping your frame to enter. You let the water heat before letting it run into the bucket, offering him a pitcher and some soap.
“You’ll have to make do with the towel…I might have some spare blankets around.” you add, because you will not have a naked man walking around your house. There’s so much your ancestors might allow at this point. This would be toeing the line from possibly being dragged into the afterlife.
He spares a grunt in response while bandages come undone. You chew against the inside of your cheek, inhaling stale metal and collecting blotched brown linen from him. He’s hesitant, letting you close, but it takes a quick turn of his wrist for you to pick out the worst of his wounds. These ones do not heal away the rawness and the sick pink of flesh. These ones still bleed.
“Can you manage?” you peep out. Blade stares at his hand, at yours grasping his.
“Yes,” he says after a while. His fingers brush against the inside of your palm as you let him go, and you take that shaky step out of the bath, leaving behind a clean roll of bandages and antiseptic at the door.
V. PUTREFACTION
The woman beside you looks tired, worn away at the eyes and around the edges of her face. “Stay still.” she whispers hurriedly, stuffing her phone back into her purse as she gathers the skirts of her seere.
The boy on the bed does not stay still, tapping his fingers away at his lap as you shoot him a reassuring smile. There’s plenty of nervous energy stuffed away in the cracks and crevices of that tiny body of his, and it barely abates with the ticking second hand from your analog clock. “Are you nervous?” you offer, taking a knee beside him. The boy purses his lips, brown eyes focused wholly onto the floor below.
“No.” he decides to be brave and squares his shoulders up. You appreciate the effort as you press at the inside of his arm.
“That’s nice.” you nod. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes. I know how scary needles can be.”
“I’m not scared.” he insists. He challenges you, looks at you dead in the eye with the most determination he could pluck away at his reserves and gather together. “Last week I chased a ghost away from my room. I turned the lights on and screamed at it.”
You crack a smile. “Is that so? Did it try to come inside?” you entertain the thought, poke away at his imagination till you find the faint blue of a vein. You see how his mother bows her head down, looking a little sick. The boy doesn’t seem to catch on in the way his eyes light up and he draws himself up. You don;t think she wants him to see. Sometimes there are instances where you see parents squirrelling away those bits of childish innocence like uncut diamonds; biting down at grimy hands that try to snatch it away.
You cannot fault her for wanting him to be happy. He was only four.
“Yeah. I was all GRAAAAAHHHH’!” you flinch at his spirited demonstration. He’s pleased with the audience and the invoked emotion as his mother winces and tries to pull at his ear to keep him quiet. It’s too late given his excitement, ducking down to continue his babbling. “And it went ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH’! Then it left and I went to see if amma and appa were alright. They were and I hugged them to make them feel better.”
“That is brave.” you nod. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t stop hugging your amma and appa. I’m sure they love your hugs.”
“After this, can I have the chocolate at the desk?” he asks, batting his lashes. He flashes you a cherubic grin, and you might have caught yourself smiling a little wider. It’s a rare instance of silly happiness after the mounting strain on your shoulders and the urge to rip your eyes out bloody and raw. “The one in the big bowl.” he adds for clarity; because adults, he might be thinking, needed plenty of that.
You look over your shoulder to the door with a thoughtful little hum. “It’s not chocolate. It’s tamarind candy. The sweet kind. But it’s sour too.” You admit. “Do you still want some?”
The boy draws his lips back. “I’d still like some. I like tammy-rind.”
“Well, listen to your amma and stay still, okay?” he does, his small hand reaching out to grasp at her seere’s pallu. She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging at her fingers, then her thumb as the nervousness slowly trickles in and scrunches away at his brow and nose. “Don’t get all stiff. Deep breath in…deep breath out. You can tell me about things you like if it helps…what games do you like playing?”
“I like football.” he offers. “My cousins say I'm a baby so I can't play with them. But I'll grow big and tall one day and I will kick their legs and show them.”
“Don’t start there.” his mother warns. “You’re not kicking anyone.”
The boy makes a face just as you give him his shot, then yelps a moment at the pin prick. His eyes squeeze shut for a second, his grip white knuckled till you finally pull the needle out and pat his cheek. “Done. That’s his DTP vaccine done with. He’ll need to get his booster next year as well so keep a reminder on for that.” His mother nods, handing in the little booklet as you scribble away the recommendations and mark away at the sheet.
The boy grumbles, poking at his arm. “Do I get the tammy-rind now?”
“Of course. The brave kids always get an extra one too.” you appease, walking them out.
“Great.” he’s mollified at least, wiping away any residual tears with a discreet turn away. “And i think you’re brave too. I saw a ghost here. In the door at the back.”
You freeze up a bit. “Did you now?” you’re feeling your voice crack a bit at the end of that question. Even the mother glances over, unsettled. You shake your head and the reassurance returns. It’s nothing, nothing at all, you try to say.
“Yes. He looked super scary. But he just looked at me and told me to go back to amma.” the boy sighs.
“I’m sure that was just one of the boys who helps the doctor.” his mother reasons, her words taking a sterner edge. She’s bustling him out, putting away at his back as she straightens her pleats and fixes her pallu. “It’s not nice saying things like that now. You’d better apologise to that man if you said that to him.”
“I didn’t say anything.” the boy insists as you pause by the door and see them off after handing him his hard earned candy, ( “thank you, doctor. Say thank you to the doctor auntie.” the mother urges. The boy echoes it drolly then slips back into his stubborn insistence, pulling at her arm ). Their voices fade into the faint music playing at the lounge and the chatter in the waiting room. Aleena turns to call for the next person, peering down at the files.
A hush filters through. One of the men stands over the row of seated people. They draw some of their children closer, muted shock and fear splayed across and you feel flayed open. “Tell the clients to leave.” you mumble. She nods and sends the word out. Some of them seemed to catch on quick and pack away their folders and gather their companions. A line of men and women mill out, leaving that sole frame standing, arms crossed in wait.
You keep your eyes down as you motion to the doors. Aleena hides away as she usually does ( you’d torn into her when she’d gotten too mouthy, too brave the last time ).
“Is something wrong? I’m sure I paid off the fee two weeks ago.” you test out.
The suited man doesn’t reply yet, sinking into the backdrop of static and the panicked thudding in your ribs. You vaguely remember Blade hiding away within the archives and hope he doesn’t wander back out again. He takes his time, dragging out the seconds as he idles past your framed degree and a few photos from your childhood home.
“A few weeks ago there was an…altercation in your clinic, correct?” he states more than he asks it, rubbing at his chin.
Oh shit.
“Yes…” you nod when you sense his wait. Your nerves wither away and you lose your sense of touch.
“Some of the men on my side died here. I was sent in to get to the bottom of it all.” His narrowed gaze settles on you. “It’s funny. We know there’s a third party involved but his body went missing from the morgue before he could be ID’d. Any footage of him? Wiped clean, and aeons forbid the police trying anything when it comes to getting witnesses to speak a consistent story.” His footsteps are an echo in the back of your mind, too loud, too distracting. Blade, dear lord, his presence here is a mistake. “Now, I'm here to ask if you had a hand in it, doctor.”
“No.” you choke out. “I don’t.”
“Were you working with that man who killed them?”
“No — ”
“Did you see him?”
You're too slow to respond and it takes him grabbing a fistful of your hair to rattle it out faster. “No I did not!” you insist, squeezing your eyes shut. You recall what you tell the boy, and the empty words about bravery. You feel like a liar steeped in bitter hypocrisy. It makes you want to rip your insides out and claw at your viscera.
Nails dig into the softer parts of your cheeks as your face is slammed into the wall. It draws out a choked, gasping wheeze from your ribs and white hot pain screaming at your skull, your muscles. The small, scared animal in you is crying, crying, crying away into bleak emptiness. It tries to run, eyes blown out and mouth hung open. It tries to make you run before you’re gutted clean through. “Are you lying?” the man asks quietly.
“No. No I didn’t.” You stutter it out, pressing your fingertips into the chipped paint. “I was hiding…I-I was hiding till t-they took the bodies.” The pressure against your head builds, builds till you yelp and struggle, terrified of him digging down hard enough to cut away at your airflow and snap your neck in two. For a moment, you wonder if he’ll do just that when he finally, thankfully, lets you go…
( Your eyes flit up, desperate, moving things and you look at him, actually look at him and the cold death in his gaze. You never assumed someone could look like that — empty and scooped clean of any humanity lingering at the edges. He’s hollow, and angry*.*
You made your mistake. )
…You’re slammed back in. The scream in muffled into your wrist. “You saw nothing?” he repeats, guttural in how he addresses and enunciates every word. It’s like reasoning with a man eater. You nod, nod because it’s all you had. “Nothing at all? No faces?” another nod and the man slips back and lets you crumple to the floor with that warning.
“You better not be lying.” he tells you, slipping to the speedy notes of your local tongue. “There will be hell to pay for that.”
You’re lucky, you think, for getting off that easily. The buzz in your mind builds and smothers you against your spot and you shift a bit when Aleena presses a hand to your shoulder. Blade is right behind her and she’s flattening her lips.
“You’re a nuisance.” you tell him, annoyance and anger and all that frustration meandering and stubbornly oozing through the cracks. Blade fixes you with a glare, drawing his mouth back to a half sneer.
“Who did this?” he asks, voice dipping to trembling danger, entropy brewing underneath all that. “Who did this to you?”
“None of your business.” you snip in turn, wobbling to your feet. Your coat is blotched red around the collar and the shoulders. You didn’t realise you were bleeding till your fingertips came away sticky and wet ( you feel like you’re careening off of the edge of a cliff, in a car you have no control of ). “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” you add, croaking through your words and the buzz and the annoyance. “So just leave. Leave, tell her I can't babysit you if this…this is what I have to deal with.”
Blade narrows his eyes. “I cannot.” he states and leaves no room for argument as his hand grabs you at the scruff and half tugs you alongside him. You’re not spared any more dignity around him, and he treats you like a wet cat nipping and scratching at his arm. “You.” he adds, turning to your receptionist. “She needs to be tended to.”
Aleena mumbles something under her breath but seeks out the first aid kit. She swats Blade’s hands away once she approaches you again. You appreciate it. You don’t want him touching you and the crawling chilliness of his body invites an ugly sort of desperation that blocks away your throat and nudges at all the parts of you you’re less than proud of.
Blade does not leave. He never does, on that bitter note, looming over the two of you by the wall, that beast twisting in his eyes like a snake.
He unsettles you with the way he stalks the emptiness of your apartment rooms, pressing his body to the wall with shaky breaths. You watch him from the crack of your door and wonder if this is what unravelling sanity looks like. If it is the face of a man ripping open his chest and screaming through the guts until that beating heart is carved clean from the cavity.
Blade is more animal than human in how he walks. The room smells strange too. You do not know what it is, in its pungent notes and the unpleasantness of it all. It’s not rot, you’ve smelled rot before, and tasted that stench of decay lain thickly on your tongue.
This is more rancid, like regurgitated food and butter. You spot a single leaf on the floor, fan shaped and dipped in sunlit gold. Then more at his feet.
His form flickers by, rustling past your door. He’s at the balcony, then he’s not. You pad out and scan the dark streets, spotting his hunched frame nestled within the alleyways tucked at the side. There is a glimpse of purple from Kafka’s hair as she presses her lips to his cheek, whispering something to his ear.
Blade seems to melt and you watch on, half transfixed from the scandal, cheeks warming when Kafka leans to the side and waves, a playful grin curling on her face. She whispers something again and has Blade turn too, and you think you’re almost drawn in, dizzyingly close to the edge of your balcony rails till reason snaps you back and you return to your apartment.
( “Bladie…” Kafka coos at him, her gloved fingers pressing up against the seam of his lips. Blade tries to hide away the dry hunger in his stomach and his mouth. “Do you like this one?” she asks.
He thinks about it. The release of death. The warmth of your hands. The tears. He thinks of the man sawed apart on the concrete, down to tendons and bones and muscle and flesh. He thinks of the scattered limbs and the bruise and your blood.
Her hands press to his cheeks. “Listen to me. Push the mara down…we don’t want to keep upsetting her now do we?” she asks, teasing in how her teeth flash. Kafka feels like a dream lost in the haze of it all. He leans into her touch and lets the flowering roots in his chest rupture and decay.
“No.” Blade admits, surreality dragging him under. He does not spare her a reply to that question. Kafka already knows. )
VI. DISCOLOURATION AND DESICCATION
“Tell me who did it.”
“No.”
Blade looks annoyed, scraping and haunting the walls of your apartment as he follows you through the kitchenette like a ghost. The brewing…whatever it was…from the past couple of days seemed to have cowed after that visit from Kafka, nothing more now than a placid beast ( as placid as a rabid mutt could be ). You clench fist into your knife’s handle a little harder than you should have.
She could have taken him back, her little lover boy guard dog and his strange balcony crawling ass —
Blade hovers close, so close. There’s an absence of heat beside you. He’s always cold, colder than a man, warmer than a corpse. That in-between he seemed to linger in. His limbo. “He hurt you. He will do it again. Tell me who it was.”
“Absolutely not.” You state, voice flattened against bemusement. “You'll just kill him.”
He stills, his eye letting out something of a neurotic twitch. He might just strangle you now, carve you open with that sword, eat your insides…maybe. “He suspects something. He must die.” He says it slowly, irritation budding through the dryness of his countenance. Your nose wrinkles at this.
“That's nice and all but you stink of death enough, and ‘enough’ is still far too much.” You angle your knife, pressing into the tender outer layers of the onion till you slice through it. The blade shudders against the impact and your hand strains into it. You bite back a curse.
( You're thinking about too many things.
You're thinking about Aleena turning in her resignation letter, and her apologies. A marriage, she'd said. And how could she turn down her parents’ demands after everything? They care. Despite the pain, you knew that too. It's that painful kind of love where you'd hurt and hurt and keep hurting them when the choices seemed so sparse. Better a bloodied knife, they'd try to say. Better a few cuts than being torn apart.
She only just found out, she admits. There was an uncomfortable shift in her body. She looked ready to crumple into herself and shatter into a million pieces. She's meant to meet him during the agelu. It's been arranged for.
How did you? you'd asked. You were afraid to ask. You shouldn't have asked. That meant looking ugly things in the eye through to the nauseating technicalities. Aleena swallows. She looks more distressed than she should. You let her weep a little and nurse those gaping cuts. Your bruises don’t smart anymore. You’d forgotten they were there.
She shows you a newspaper. And you stare on with an empty kind of apathy as you spot her details within the bridal adverts, down to her college degree and the colour of her eyes. )
( You were reminded that there's a kind of love fuelled by bitter hate. You were reminded of the sight of her shrinking back and fading into the walls of your clinic, like a collapsing black hole. It's how daughters and duties were here, a little better than the north but broken in a way where broken things couldn't be fixed.
You've seen it in a mirror once, hollow and void and dead in your eyes, and your mehendi stained hands tearing apart the the jasmine in your hair. )
Blade tilts his head and angles the knife just a bit before you could cleave a finger straight off. “I’m being reasonable. He won’t hurt you if you let me.” he tries to reason, playing clumsy diplomacy. But Blade still pauses between his words with that perplexed unsureness. He didn’t know what to tell you when you were sobbing on that couch. He doesn’t know what to say now, when your insides were burning away your peace.
You brush him away and viscerally visualise grinding him to a bloodied pulp with your grandmother’s mortar. The violence in your head helps a little.
Blade keeps watching you, turning his head away from the spattering chillies and the sour notes of tamarind staining your hands. The onions are still a bother. You think it can't quite get worse at this point, with stubborn tunicated bulbs and a dull blade. The over-stimulation you're half subjected to feels like claws on a chalkboard, gratingly demanding every bit of your attention.
“Give it to me.” It's not a request. He takes the knife before you could really mutter out sneering ‘no’. He slices through the onion, passes you a pointed look and keeps slicing ( why does he make it seem so easy? Why??? ).
“Give it back.” you try.
“No.”
“Please…?”
He nudges at your shoulder, towards the stove. Your shoulders sag and a frustrated lump gathers at your throat. At least he’s helping, you reason. You shouldn’t be so angry over this. A normal person wouldn’t want to throw a fuss over a stolen chore and a stubborn wraith. You light the stove and gather what you’d prepared. Blade was done with onions. It’s only been a minute.
…You decide to not question that.
( Please don’t kill me, you add in your mind for good measure. )
There’s something therapeutic in indulging with this familiarity. Your old home smells like this, like comfort and nostalgia in the idyllic sorts of memories. They’re the ones you lock away in a box, nestling that key deep inside your ribs. Even so, that horrible weight swells up like a tumour. It could burst any minute. It’s wearing you down and frying the ends of your nerves.
“Aleena is leaving.” you blurt out. Blade blinks. “My receptionist.”
“She told me.” Blade nods.
“She’s getting married.” you continue.
Blade considers this. “She is…young, yes?”
You nod. “Twenty four.” you swallow. Your throat is parched. “Some families do marry their children off at this age. Not all of them, of course…and not every arrangement is all that bad…I've seen some good ones.” He keeps listening, you know it in the way his head tilts ever so slightly to you. Your senses are clumped together, messy, messy, messy. “It’s none of my business.” you add feverishly. “I shouldn’t be getting upset.”
“...why aren’t you?” the question is sudden. You feel your confusion knock away reason. Blade tries again. “Married. Why aren’t you married?”
“That’s a very impolite thing to ask.” you reply quickly.
“I see.” he struggles, pondering over his next few words. “I will not push further.” You purse your lips, the conversation delicately fraying and fading out. You let the silence stagnate, hovering by the stove with your vessel-full of coconut milk.
Something inside you tugs.
“I was supposed to be.” you mumble. “He was a nice guy, was working for a stable job and had plans to buy a house close to the beach. The kid you’d see in movies, you know?” you laugh a little. “And maybe I was a little swept up. But then we talked and we both realised that…we had dreams of our own. Things we weren’t willing to let go of, a relationship he was serious about.”
The chicken goes next, as the gravy settles into a shade of brown-red. Blade is staring, something in his face set in an odd way. He looks off putting. Hungry, like those night spent pacing through your living room.
“We parted ways. There weren't any dramatic rejections…he seemed just as pleased with it, to be fair. I hear he’s settled nicely with his boyfriend…good for him.”
“So you came…here…” Blade works it out.
“Quite. Those choices weren’t wholly supported by my family. They kept trying to find someone and I kept pushing it away…I was scared I guess, and people got angrier and insistent and I started feeling less…human.” you take a deep breath in. “So I left one day. They never contacted me. My father only started again after my grandmother died. And I opened this clinic up…”
The room is blurred out. All you see are splotches of colour and a blemished, dark blue whee Blade stands, rimmed by the sunset.
You wipe the tears away.
“It’s all I have now.” you whisper, a painful crackle coating the peaks. “All of it. And it’s a nice place…I used my grandfather’s photo frames in the reception…my mother’s carpet too. It was a souvenir from the north. And…and some of the toys were my own. It took some digging and cleaning and repairing but they’re just as good as any other…” It’s flaking at the surface. You aren’t a strong person. It’s always been so easy to crumble with the weight ( like a paper doll ). “So please…please just leave before you make it worse.”
Blade regards you. He always is, watching, watching, watching, like there’s nothing else that could tug him away, take up his mind when he’s not snapping necks till they shatter.
“I cannot.” His brows are set, pulling together just a little.
“You can.” You insist, feeling stupid, childish. Its pointless trying to convince him otherwise anyway, Not without feeling hacked down and near helpless beneath his looming shadow. “You can leave. You and Kafka can, it's not that hard.”
“We have work to do and it must be done.” driven finality settles deep. He feels so far away, repeating words like a robot. It's hard to think of Blade as human in times like these, where he's either too robotic or too animalistic. It feels scripted, all wrong, all twisted up and chewed apart. “You wouldn't understand it. Leave it be.”
“I won't, if it's my business you're intruding on.” You set the coconut milk down, the steel vessel striking polished granite with a sharp ring. Your teeth grit together ( you hate feeling angry. You hate the cloudiness that comes with it ). “What if I run then?”
Blade's glare is cutting. “You will not run.” He asserts, scruffing you so easily, tugging you just a little closer. You fight back the urge to swat at him. At least you could think a little. At least you still had a tiny hand digging it's claws into your self control. “I'll drag you back. I will keep dragging you back till you cease this foolishness.”
( How were you being foolish? All you have are fragmented snapshots, the lingering sense of dread, the knowledge of something sinister brewing beneath the surface. You have a man in your house, a murderer. You have a man in your house you swore you killed. You have a man in this house who doesn't die.
How were you being foolish? You want to scream at him till your vocal chords fray and your arytenoids collapse. But Blade has probably never felt fear. You can't imagine his sympathy.
And you still killed him though. You stop. The guilt is back, and the anxious Turn of it, and the seething edge of your rage burning, burning, burning. )
“Did Kafka tell you to do that too?” poison burns holes into your words. You and Blade are sinking deeper and deeper beneath it, boring holes through your skin.
( You need to stop. You need to stop talking. )
“She wouldn't be as kind.” He asserts simply, rolling his eyes at the mention.
Defeat comes for you from the corners. You huff. “Let go of me.” your arm is shoved back, elbowing his ribs. Blade doesn't flinch, but his grip loosens and he dips his head down in acknowledgement. “Are you ever going to leave me alone?”
“When we collect what we need, yes.”
“...get it over with quickly then.” You mutter, stalking away from him. “Tell me when the chicken is cooked. Leave me alone till then.”
Blade takes a moment. “Alright.”
“Bladie, you're upset.”
Is he? Blade doesn't quite see it. But there is an ache where his heart should be. It's been there since you'd locked yourself away and he’s left to stare at the curry bubbling at the edges. Kafka laughs from the other end of the line, light, airy; she's probably wiping blood away from her swords.
“You are. Has the doctor been softening you up?” She's playful, prodding, poking, stringing along her words. “Cute. Is she why you’re calling?”
“She’s asking questions.” he steadies his phone. It’s so easy, how it slips between his fingers. It’s not the firm immovability of his sword hilt and it’s slippery, almost unusable with his twitching. Blade hears Kafka hum against his ear, kneading away at the issue before her voice picks up again.
“You know you can’t give too much away, right? We need to follow the script and if she meddles too much…”
“I know.” Blade cuts in, apathy sinking deeper. The script, yes, the script. There’s that flash of familiar awareness. The script is something to be followed, right down to the bare details. If pinstripes needed to be worn, then pinstripes must be worn and if Blade must cut a hand off, that hand must go. But even he knows of the variables being difficult, breaching at destiny’s thin skin.
“And she’ll only get hurt, Bladie.” Kafka coos it out gently, placating the tenseness building in his shoulders. “It’s unfortunate how scared little things tend to bite more. Listen to me, try appeasing her a little, yeah? I’m sure a treat or two should keep her from stepping too out of line.”
“How much longer do I have to stay here?”
“You want to leave so soon?”
Blade does not. He can feel the roots tugging at his feet, fixing him down here, leeching, leeching, leeching. The fluttering ache in his stomach has grown worse. Blade fears never slipping away and that won’t do. Wolves aren’t to be leashed. That fractured memory, the writhing ocean in those eyes…there is no place for him here.
( Destiny, destiny, destiny. The unattainable, the inescapable…Kafka whispers something else. He wants to break his wrists. )
And still, Kafka knows. He can practically see the cheshire curl to her lips. “Cute.” she repeats, drawling the word out. “I’m almost done. Just a bit of the usual…we’ll have the stellaron collected in no time and we can head out. Till then, lie low and be a doll for me before I come to collect you, okay?” he can hear the faint echo of her footsteps echoing past empty hallways. She might spare a visit soon, he realises. “And again. Try not to upset the doctor too much, yeah?”
Blade dips his head down, mollified. “Alright.”
The phone cuts away. You’re still in your room, cut away from most of his conversation. The chicken looks cooked so he turns the stove off and gropes about absently till he feels a plastic handle. Then he knocks on your door.
It takes you a moment to open it for him. “Is it done?” you ask. Blade stares down at your wide, tired eyes. “Yes.” he replies, dizzy and blotted out in the centre all at once. He can’t quite stop it, the rapid undergrowth, the rustling call of mara, that need to seize you by the face and tear into the softness of your cheeks, to bite, to taste blood, to break your bones and devour you. To feel the dig of your nails against his arms, something sharper, you scooping out his chest, his ribs and his heart till it’s beat ceases and he curls into your warmth —
“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly, unwavering. Its swelling. “Do you want me gone?”
You swallow, halfway out of your room. Blade wants to grab you, taste —
“I do.” you mumble.
Appease her. Kafka’s echo fades out once more in the back of his head. Blade presses the knife to your hand, holding its edge just over his stomach, pressing till he feels its prickle numb out. It’s where the fluttering was, unfettered when he tore his intestines out upon your couch and let the blood seep into the fabric ( you hadn’t liked that, so he stopped ).
He stops, gripping you just above the beat of your pulse. It speeds up, vivacious, so alive ( Blade is used to his steady thrum, slow, so slow unlike that of a human ). “You can kill me then.” he tells you. “If it pleases you.”
There’s a shift. The handle slips away and you snatch your hand back, face twisting to what he recognises as distress. Then you look angry, slamming the door back shut. “Don’t talk to me.” You scream through, muffled by hardwood.
Blade feels empty. He collects the knife and turns back into the kitchen, temptations spilling out when he lingers a little too long and thinks of sweet oblivion.
He muzzles himself as most dogs should be. His teeth are blunted, his claws filed.
He doesn't want to scare you.
VII. SCAVENGING
Aleena hasn't spoken much since she'd told you about 'the arrangement' ( you make it sound like some cold business deal. A travesty. Maybe you were being far too pessimistic with this whole ordeal, putting in too many chunks of those ugly memories into that basket. You could be wrong. You could be wrong about it all ). It's an all too familiar disconnect, a silent misery that you'd watch every day after. She's letting it fill out her whittled spaces, and it worries you. Worries you in the way your heart twists and your insides turn.
( Won't you be coming, he'd asked again over a messy phone call. There's a lot of things to catch up on. We'll lay off the insisting, we'll let you choose the groom this time. That would be far better, right?
And your father's words meter out to warbled static, spilling through your ears and onto the floor. )
Maybe you should put something out in penance. Let those ghosts keep to themselves and continue their silent vigils. You're not superstitious, and rituals like these feel more a far away dream since you'd moved away.
"Aleena…"
"Yes?"
"How about we go get some cha during our break?" you offer a kind smile, tired, a little neurotic but you think it will ache a lot more if you say nothing at all. That wound up and coiled-away thing in her, pulling at the set to her jaw and the firm stoicism she displays — it slowly lapses. She looks down at her feet, back up at you and blinks a long, slow blink.
"That sounds nice." she croaks out, pushing aside a stack of papers. You check the analog clock above the two of you. A lunch break was due in another fifteen minutes and there a few checkups and medical records to fill in for school diaries. You could finish soon enough."Is it at the local place? I like the one with the cardamom."
"Sure you can."
Aleena seems to think a thousand thoughts all at once. "Thank you." she whispers when you step back, trained down to the keyboard. She's not typing, tracing the plastic frame itself . You leave her be, let her stew a while before gently gathering her up and leading her to the closest stall.
( Blade was cornered in the stores. You tell him not to stir up any trouble.
"Where?" he asks.
"None of your concern. I'd like some time alone with her, please." He reaches out, curling his hands into the sleeve of your coat. His eyes look like smelted iron. You tell yourself not to flinch, to skitter away because you will not be a rabbit. For once you will not be a rabbit. "I'm going." you repeat with more purpose. "You can't tell me otherwise."
Blade lets you go. )
It's crowded as is, and you try not to let yourself be pushed out by the squeezing throng. Not until you and Aleena leave with your tea and a packet of glucose biscuits to sit by a roadside ledge beneath the tree cover.
She takes a few bites before she starts talking again.
"Sorry about the suddenness of it all."
"The marriage?"
"Yes." She picks away at some of the crumbs.
"It's okay." You pat her hand in assurance. "I was wondering if you were doing alright
Aleena seems to ponder over it. "A little. I know him. We went to the same school…so it's not all bad." She drains the last of her tea, throwing the Styrofoam cup into a dustbin. "I'm just…angry I suppose."
"At your parents?" You guess.
"Yeah." She swallows. "They've been pestering me since my second year in college. I had to keep telling them that I wanted more stability…a job. Something. I can't just keep relying on my spouse for money and all that, you know…my parents said I could do that after. That I was being selfish for putting it off."
You purse your lips. "It's good to be stable." You agree. "Sometimes it's easy to point fingers and blame it on unnecessary worry and paranoia…but from my experience, marriages like these are a gamble. You can't be too sure, even with people you think you know." You must be rambling. Embarrassment floods into your cheeks. You have the grace to look a little sheepish.
"Right! And I told them that and…" She shakes her head. "They don't get it, I guess. I mean…I don't mind settling down, really, but they keep pushing me and rushing into it and then they just put up that advert without saying anything and..." Her wide eyed hysteria is palpable. You might want to hug her, steal her away. Familiar pains tend to do that, stinging at your soft insides.
"Am I not a good daughter?" The fragility spotting it aches, unfurling, spreading forth. You shut your eyes.
"I'm sure you are." You tell her honestly. And she is. You know she is.
Aleena's face stretches, pained. "It feels the exact opposite. I might be making it all more difficult…I should be grateful, shouldn't I? They care about me, I know that and…this…" The words are turned over, thought upon. Her hands twitch, gesturing at the air with wild frustration. Aleena is shrinking by the second, cracking at the corners. "What do I do?"
Your throat dries.
"I don't know. I ran away from mine and now my family refuses to talk to me." You tell her. "There's a lot of different ways this could go. Parents react in different ways…all I can say is…you need to trust your instincts."
"I don't want to lose them." She admits shamefully, wiping away a tear. "I'm a coward."
You purse your lips. "I think we all are." You sigh. Your tea has cooled against your fingertips. “But…but I'd say it's better than being miserable the rest of our lives. It's selfish, I agree…” you feel defeat trickle down — defeat, hopelessness, a cocktail of too-many-things-at-once.. “it could work out too. It could work out and it will be alright after that. But there's a lot more before it all as well…I'm sorry. I'm not very good with advice.”
Aleena shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. "It's better than people telling me that I'm being a nuisance."
"You said you knew him too." You add.
She scoffs. "He might have changed. The most I remember is him pulling at my hair and calling me ugly."
"Oh. Hopefully for the better, then."
Aleena rubs at her knuckles, humming softly as a trill of birdsong echoes above the two of you. "Thanks for taking me in." She says, and it's spoken so softly you almost miss it. "I learned a lot working under you.and you were good to me. Better than some other bosses I had…hopefully I should still be able to work after…" She breaks away.
A gooey sort of warmth trembles inside. It's the sort that cracks you open. "You're welcome."
She kicks out her feet, letting her footwear flap shutter against the balls of her feet, then stands back up. "We'll head back then? I don't think I'd want to leave you with unfinished work on my last day…"
"That would be terrible." you agree, cracking a grin.
Aleena veers the subject away to the common pleasantries. She talks about the weather, the new park in the better parts of the city and the flowers there. She talks about the old lady who invites her to feed the pigeons. You listen as you do, till you slip back into the clinic and start the afternoon shift again. Clockwork, familiar clockwork. Still, you ache. It's selfish.
"Blade." you call out when you step back into the stores. You're greeted with silence. You're greeted with emptiness.
"Doctor? we have another checkup!" You straighten up, smooth away the frazzle, the jumbled nerves and the frayed ends. There is a time and place for panic. Not now. Not when you have work to do. So you work. You work till the minutes and hours bleed in and the sun spills past the concrete rises. You work till the night falls and you realise the silence in the storeroom seems to have grown past the occasional rattle from the shutters and the wind.
You heave in a breath. Aleena has left, pulling you into a final hug. You find yourself looking for him.
( Where is he? )
It's Kafka who drops by after closing. The anxiety nips at you, your face, your hands, everywhere, between Blade still not making a reappearance and now…this.
You hadn't met her face to face in a while and you've almost forgotten the weight she carries. She'd turned you around before you could walks away any further, her gloved hands snaking round your waist and her lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "Sorry for the visit, doc." she speaks out, like you're old friends. "Had some work to look into."
You hunch your shoulders, cowed of any initial annoyance. Something in you draws back, scared around her. It's the cat-like preening, the way Kafka smiles so emptily at you. "Right." you mumble.
"Bladie's been treating you well? I told him to be on his best behaviour."
"He's…he's alright. If you're here to pick him up…well he's been missing since this afternoon. I…i swear I didn't — "
Kafka shakes her head. "Oh no, I sent him on a little errand." she assures you, sitting down in the waiting room. She pulls you down next to her. "I've noticed he's been doing his best around you too…granted I'm sure some of his habits are a little…of putting." That smile is back, razor edged.
"It's fine." You try to say.
"Mhm. If you say so." Kafka crosses a leg over the other. "I've been souvenir shopping between work and all. I might pack up a larger haul after this final matter is dealt with. So many things to do…" She trails off, drumming his fingers against her chin as if deep in thought. "Have any places you recommend visiting? I've heard the silks here are to die for."
You hadn't known that either. "That's…nice." You lower your head, that far away beeping growing louder and louder against the chills clawing up your spine. You breath in, feeling the point of her nails press up against your cheek and turn you around to face her.
"Oh dear. I don't think you're very happy to see me." she coos. "Bladie hasn't been very good to you, has he?"
You open your mouth.
"You don't have to say anything." she cuts in with what seems to be kindness. You were almost fooled by it, set adrift, running straight into that tangle of webbing. Kafka feels predatory the way Blade does, and in ways that doesn't feel like him either, spinning you around and around in circles for those simple little amusements.
"He scares me." you blurt.
"Is that so?" Pity weighs in her sentence, cloying it together like resinous amber and sundew. She looks delighted.
"He does." you nod, feeling helplessness undo your seams. Kafka leans in close, close enough for the warmth from her breath to spill over your jaw. You want to push her off — you should, given who she is. But she clings so close, drinking it all in with strange euphoria. She's still holding your face, and Kafka was far stronger than she presents herself to be.
"You poor lamb. I hope he didn't bite you too hard." She smiles, caught in a trance as you sink further into magenta and pink and the smell of her perfume. "Then again, Bladie's always rough with the things he likes. I'm almost tempted to take you with us."
You shutter, blank out, flail about internally before all reasoning bears down with the impact of a comet. "I don't want to go with you though." You squeak, the words sinking in so quick and it shocks you.
Kafka considers you, tilting her head with assured grace. "Are you sure?" She asks again, thumb pressing up against the apple of your cheek. "It complicates things quite a bit for you. I'd say you'd be more miserable staying here than giving in, no? For one…" She's enjoying herself, her lazy gaze scanning the clinic again. "…you'll be loosing all of this."
You seize up. "…What — "
"This." Kafka repeats. "All of this. It'll be gone soon enough. Bladie and I have dipped into businesses that most should keep out of…I'll spare you the details, really…though you might just have more popping up in that little head of yours." She taps a nail against your temple.
"What are you talking about." You croak out, falling into a gaping bit. The vestiges of horror start taking root in your lungs. Kafka bites her bottom lip, playing coy.
"Oh dear, I've said too much. May as well let you in on it then." She croons. "The IPC don't have much of a hold here, do they? No wonder…granted it made going through this operation far easier." Kafka lets you go. You lean back, back away from her, sputtering. "To keep it simple, we were here to collect something. A very important something…and out of all the possibilities we had…your little route happened to give us the least amount of grief to deal with."
You grip at the armrests hard. "I don't…I don't understand…" You choke every syllable out with a tongue that feels like lead. "I don't understand." you repeat, the mania arching your higher notes. Your clinic, this clinic, the only thing standing between giving up and going back and…Your clinic ( You remember the money, the scraping together and the loans upon loans and that less naive part of you still folded into the walls and corners ).
Kafka shrugs. "I don't expect you to. You've been a tucked away and coddled into this peace your planet has blanketed you with. There's plenty more in this universe you can't quite comprehend; and there are plenty of big bad things out there that Bladie and I could hardly hold a candle to…" She grins. It's a vicious, predatory thing. Your fear is a feast to her, one lazy bite after the other.
"I don't want this. You're lying — "
"In another five minutes…" Kafka begins. "Bladie will come back , dragging a little friend of ours along with him. He'll have sustained a hit to his head, half healed. The hem of his coat will be ripped off." Her gaze darts to the clock. "Tick tock. I'll be busy after that so you'll need to be quick with what you have to say."
You're stunned to silence. Blade. An associate. It's a nightmare in the making. strangling every bit of air from your lungs. Kafka seems terrifyingly sure, watching the way you move, scramble, feeling disjointed and not all there or all quite present in your body.
"I don't want this." You tear up.
She kisses your cheek. "I know, sweetie." Kafka gives your shoulder a condescending squeeze. You may as well be stabbed in the stomach too, revulsion burning your throat, jerking you away from her. It makes you want to grow claws, to make her hurt somewhere, anywhere. "It's too bad, really. Maybe if you were a little braver, a little more gutsy, we might have struck you from that list." She laughs. "Honestly, I find it adorable. You're like a scared little stray…"
A sickening thunk suddenly echoes out back, soft against the tile, and moving trough whimpered struggles. Kafka's eyes narrow. "That seems to be our cue." she comments lightly. You look at the clock. Five minutes.
Your voice is stolen away, a failed note against the hand crushing your windpipe. You feel dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, almost stumbling over the chair. Kafka is drunk off of it, shoulder brushing against yours. It's just her, those footsteps, the smell of her perfume. "So…" she whispers. "What's it like?" Her touch sears at your wrist, edging higher. "Being scared?"
Blade steps between the two of you. His hand coming to grasp at your arm, smearing a brown, bloodied stain against the expanse and dwarfing your wrist ( he can break it so easily ). He stinks of iron and rot and you don't dare to face that monstrous view of him, just like that first day, feeling his pulse recede and the massacre he left behind under the fading colour of his eyes.
( And still, you feel guilty. Because Kafka is right. You are a coward. )
"Kafka." Blade utters, a warning stained against his stressed inflections. "Leave her be."
Kafka's lips pull at the corners, serene, seemingly innocent. She doesn't even try to hide the deception. "Jealous much?" she snickers, letting you go. Blade feels agitated, the beginnings of a riptide streaking beneath a still surface. He yanks at you, fingertips pressing at your cheek, the spot between your ear and the column of your neck. It's the most he's touched you.
( Has she hurt you, he wants to demand. Has she? )
"Don't touch her."
Kafka holds her hands up in surrender. "Okay." she relents, content and entertained with the way things seem to be. From the corner of your eye, you see a mass…something close to human, move. A scream is lodged in your pharynx. Your nails dig into Blade's hand, a hoarse, wheezing sound heaving from the depths of your lungs. The mass stretches, tries to move away. You see red plaster the white tiles beneath it.
Blade's gait shifts to awareness, sharp eyed, watching the man try to escape.
"You didn't break his legs?" Kafka asks.
"I did. This one is stubborn." Blade snarls. He looks dog like, wolf like, fangs borne between a drooling muzzle. Your eyes sting as you try to tug away, away from him as Kafka stands and saunters over to the body, that elusive little smile still present.
"Well, we have plenty to ask of him. He still has a few details to give away now, doesn't he?" She hums a little tune, yanking the man by the hair till his broken whimpers turn to miserable screaming. "Come on Bladie, I need help. And you…" She fixes that stare on the man. "Listen to me. You can't speak anymore, or scream, or cry. Not till I tell you to."
The man's cries fade out into open mouthed gasps, his face a bruised and bloodied mess of tears and snort. Blade was not kind in handling him, not with his torn tendons and the unearthly jut his legs were angled at. Your skin crawls at the sight. You reach for your bag, your phone, shaking past the initial terror to give a final call for help.
Blade looks at you. It's enough to completely shatter it, unwinding, undoing, pressing down harder against the fragile cracks in your walls and letting that mess slip away past the desperate grasp of your arms and down away on the floor.
You shut your eyes and tell yourself you saw nothing.
VIII. SKELETONIZATION
You don't hear much of the man, save for Kafka's questions muffled behind the walls. The whats, whens, wheres and hows that you can't keep track off without giving too much of yourself up ( you're afraid you do, a thousand different things will split. You tell yourself there's nothing there ). You focus in the clock instead, watching minutes after minutes pass beneath the incessant sound of it ticking, ticking, ticking.
Minutes after minutes after minutes.
There's a final exchange of words. You hear a tumble, a body hitting the ground. Kafka walks out, hardly bothered in the slightest and pristine save for that dampness of her gloves. She shoots you a charming smile, taking in how you'd tucked into yourself. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes. Scared, lamb?"
You're scared of a lot of things now, of the woman in front of you and the man outback and the man whose words they stole and the impending aftermath predicted. You're trapped in your own burning house, doors jammed shut and the window too high to take a jump. You'll suffocate in here, choke till your lungs collapse and your organs scream and fragment.
Kafka cups your cheek. "Hm, a pity. Scripts have to be followed though…sorry about that doc." She draws away and you let out a wet little sob. "Don't be too sad about it." She coos, patting your cheek. "On the bright side, I'll be leaving soon. Stay close to Bladie, okay? Can't have you running off and throwing a fuss now."
Dear lord no. Not Blade. Not Blade after all this. It feels like a joke and a half, an empty attempt at drawing out any laughter from an unenthused crowd of blank eyed faces. You stay seated, wide eyed and insistent. "No." you choke for good measure. Kafka's expression glows.
"No?" she echoes, a hand resting against either side of the armrest. You try to make yourself small, edging away from her farther and farther till her knee slots between your legs and you nearly cry out and kick her off. "Come on now." She coaxes, hand tugging at your waist, sitting you up proper. "Don't be too difficult. Bladie's not half bad."
You shake your head, blanking out through her crooning as your struggle intensifies. "Stop it." you repeat, shaking your head, seized and maniacal till your nails dig in. Kafka doesn't flinch. She's still smiling. "Don't you dare tell me I'm being —" You sob. it's messy, so messy and that pain in your chest only grows, spreading across like blooming rot. " — that I'm being difficult." You spit. "After all this, I'm allowed to. You're both insane, you fucks, I — "
Kafka presses a thumb over your lips. You bite, hard.
"Listen to me." She keeps talking. She won't stop. "Stop crying."
You stop crying. Your mind is empty white and fuzzy static stretching out like elastic. You feel her laughter against you. "Good girl." She praises. "Now, go on along with Bladie, okay? He'll do a good job looking after you."
You claw at the walls, trying to protest as your body lifts, padding out back, trapped within the long winding of corridors that didn't quite look like that once. "Kafka." you hear Blade echo again, his hands resting heavy on your shoulders. It sounds exasperated? Why? You're fine. You think you're fine. You see a magenta blur flutter around you and words spatter apart and stitch back together into nonsense and noise.
Blade takes you by the arm. You're half leaning against him, the soft, shaky breaths against his ribs and his heartbeat ( it's a slow, faint sound ). He seems to linger in place, letting you be as your nose screws against the smell of blood spotting his clothes. Then, he's leading you along the less crowded roads, shuffling past the harsh blaze of streetlights. Vaguely, you remember where this route takes you and you try to join the pieces — the memories feel so far, far away.
The mass tucked under Blade's arm moves. You look the man straight in the eye and do nothing. Your mind, your ribs are barren spaces.
You smell salt, hear the sea, the waves, the wind. The man in his arms struggles ( you're not here ). You see the panic stretched across, the way he pales to what looks like ash grey ( you're not here ). You watch Blade turn your face away, annoyance sparking in his eyes ( you're not here ). You look on anyway, as his fingers claw at his throat, so easily tearing apart soft flesh and tendon and muscle till his hands are stained warm red ( you're not here ). You're lain bare to those death throes, a wheezing from a broken windpipe, the yellow of subcutaneous fat and the ruptured arteries ( you're not here ).
"You should have looked away."
Blade's voice pulls you out. You finally breathe. Take it all in again as the cotton and the fuzz and the silk web is untangled from your notches. The man falls to the sand, nothing more than dead weight at this point.
( This could be you. )
You take a good, long look at him, at that tear stricken, marred face, that distended jaw and the awful angle to his limbs. The sand is already soaking up beneath him — he was alive once. You didn't know this person, you'd never met him and…
( You let him die. You're a doctor and you let him die. )
Blade's brow furrows when you take a shaky step back, two clear words; 'do not'. You look around you, spot one clear rout of escape amidst that hopeless need to collapse, the world spinning faster and faster and fraying and burning away at the far extremities. You try to run.
He doesn't lie when he says it's easy to catch you again.
You're drawn close, your back practically colliding against his chest before you could make it too far. That rabid, scrambling beast in your snarls and you sink your teeth into his wrist, kicking wildly till your foot connects with his shin. Blade grunts, and you slip away just a little, an inch, one more. But he's bigger, bigger and stronger and it takes a moment for you to fall to the floor, swiping into the buzz and feeling his heaving chest pressed against yours.
His hold closes round your throat. "No — " You burst out,. "No, no don't — "
Blade doesn't move as much against your kicks, face drawn to stony apathy while you try to pry his fingers away, vision blurring against tears and snot. His thumb presses down against your thyroid, breaths unevenly paced to an animalistic rhythm. He doesn't seem all there with how he seems so steeped in madness and…
…fuck it, you're terrified.
Your hand gropes to the side, closing round the uneven surface of a stone. You drive it into the side of Blade's skull, a faint crack ringing out. He falters, wide eyed as one hand presses against the wound and comes away wet. You take a gasping breath in, pushing yourself up but Blade drives you down hard, down to your back till it hits something soft, and still and dead —
( No no no nono no no no NO NO. )
The vermilion of his gaze burns you ( just like all those nights ago ).
It's already started to heal, collapsed parts of his skull scraping and pushing itself back out, repairing damaged bone and muscle. And Blade looks half drunk, sunken into rapture and starvation, his hand sliding up from your throat to press at your cheeks. You freeze, ceasing your assault to his chest and stomach.
He curls over your form, shrugging and swatting away your hands to pin you down proper. There is a wet squelch against your arm pressing against that open wound. "Stop…" You whine, trying to tug him back. "Blade. Blade stop — "
He presses his lips to yours. You slam your fist into his sternum, tasting his blood in his mouth. His teeth come next, biting against your bottom lip, taking, taking, taking. It feels infecting, like a disease, like something that shouldn't be there and you squirm. Blade's fingers tangle into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You feel your back press against the corpse's shoulder, practically crushing you against it.
He's not gentle. Blade can't be gentle with the violence that comes with him. It's too deeply embedded into the crevices of his bone and marrow and in his veins and blood. It's the oxygen he breathes in, the lead that poisons his alveoli and files away at the pliable parts of his abdomen.
His tongue peeks through, pushing past your lips to take a taste. There's that heady taste in you, disgusting, curling in your guts and just about threatening to batter out. You kick him again.
His eyes flash, dyed more red than orange. He comes away with spit and blood smeared across his lips. You heave, staring up at him, then break down, sobbing openly. Blade keeps you still, bending down to kiss you another time, just at the corner of your lips.
"Enough." You beg him, sounding small. You feel defeated, the load wearing down the bones of your shoulder till you're crushed and collapse. "Please."
Blade blinks. He sits up and sits you up with him, nestled between his legs. You look behind you, the man's larynx having come turn free from your struggle, hanging out a hairs breath and cushioned by fat and crushed muscle fibres. You croak, tipping your weight over and emptying your stomach out onto the beach; till all you are retching out is acid and bile. He pulls your hair back, halting your mess from getting caught in it.
"Done?" he asks, drawing you back close to him, his gaze lidded. You shut your eyes.
"I want to go back home." you whisper.
"Alright." Blade promises you, putting you back down on the sand. "Don't move." You don't think you can. Your limbs weight down more and more with the passing minute. Blade drags the body out into the ocean, for a moment, disappearing beneath the surface. He returns, of course. He can't drown, or die ( He's not human, never will be ). "Come." he tells you.
You allow it, him gathering you in his arms. You don't make a fuss, or shout. "Keys." he reminds you. You hand them to him, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your tears prickle beneath your eyelids.
He takes you back home.
You don't know how he'd avoided the security guard's questioning, or the neighbours, But Blade sets you down on the little stool, pulling the bucket beneath the tap to let the hot water run. You draw your legs to your chest, thoughts collapsing into each other, fracturing and splintering as your trembling grows worse. All you can think of is gargling till the taste of blood is gone and the memory of that kiss is gone.
Blade fixes his attention on you. "You need to bathe." He says, taking a knee. You're exhausted, too exhausted to protest, trembling when he pulls away at your jacket and your pants, letting it pile up by the door.
"I can do it myself." You mumble. You question the necessity of it. He won't listen, after all.
He unhooks your bra and tugs down your underwear. "You're tired." He states. "Your attempts will not be as effective."
"Does that matter?"
Blade hums. "Kafka mentioned the need for hygiene. You could fall sick. Besides, you are a doctor." Not anymore, you nearly snap. He moves on to himself next, unbuttoning his jacket. "Detergent?" he asks when you squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to see any more. The sound of his belt buckle is next and his trousers being pulled down.
"Cabinet under the kitchen sink." you mutter. Blade steps out and you lean up against the bucket, watching the water steadily fill till it reaches your fingertips. You hear the beeping from the washing machine and Blade's returning footsteps. He settles behind you
"Turn around."
You turn. You do not look down.
He spends a moment regarding you, then empties a pitcher-full of water over your head. It's warm enough and you let your eyes slip shut as he works on scrubbing away the blood and sweat from your hair. That rotten thing curls in your belly, ringing round like a centipede crawling.
Blade's thumb wipes away the smudge on your cheek with sandalwood soap and he tips his chin up. "Don't fall asleep yet."
"Okay." you passively reply, opening your eyes. he hums and continues to wash you, treating your body with clinical indifference. You don't know what's worse, the hunger or the distance. The act of being viewed as anything but human leaves a sour taste in your mouth. "What about you?" You ask, filling the empty space. You don't want to think about tonight. You don't want to think at all.
Blade hums. "You can help." He shrugs right after. "We will be done sooner at least."
"Okay." You echo, reaching for the soap. You come to realise that he does need the help. Pulling the bandages off of him was a hard enough task. They were messily strewn on, almost cutting away his blood flow and he sweeps it aside. His wrists and his forearms are next. You don't undo the one on his thigh, furiously washing the dried fluids off of him.
What are you doing?
A part of you laughs at the obscene humour. A few hours ago, you'd have dropped dead at the very idea of doing this, if the hopelessness wasn't torn away from you the reins and left you on the backseat of a crashing car.
"You can…turn around."
Blade grunts and turns. you spurt too much shampoo into your hands. Some of it spills over. "You're scared." He says.
"I am."
He bends down a bit. It's easier to reach his head this way. "You should be. You should have killed me." He states, severity weighing his words.
Your shoulders slump, fatigued. "Please. Just stop." Your voice dips into a whisper. "Just stop. I want to rest, alright?" Blade falls silent, knitting his brow together. He nods wordlessly as you rake your fingers through his hair, undoing some of the knot building up against the shampoo suds.
( Blade thinks you're still too gentle with him, in how you trace one of his scars. But he feels the shudder, the roiling beat under your skin, the fear. He sees how easy it is to bring the tears out again and turn that mind of yours off.
He turns a little, pressing his fingertips to the softness of your thigh, just in case you try to run again. )
When you're both done, he has you swaddled in your blankets and deposited on your bed, clothes in tow. It's horrible, this tenderness. You don't think he's used to it either, in how he shuffles and cautiously pads at your arm like you're a fragile little thing, like he wasn't the one who took the mallet to it in the first place.
"Will you hurt me?" You ask, dead eyed.
Blade's lips part ( sometimes he does, when the mara blooms forth florets in his chest and stomach and he wants to break something that breathes beneath his hands ). "Will you run?" he asks.
"If I do, will you hurt me?"
"Yes." he replies bluntly, his hand resting on your calves. You know what that means. You squeeze your eyes shut and nod, laying down on the bed and curling up into yourself.
"You're a monster." you tell him with a shaky, illegible slur. All this for a preordained destiny, for convenience, because you're a coward. All this and you'll be left with nothing tomorrow. You think of your clinic and what you'd salvaged before opening it. It's foundations and the grey walls of the empty rooms it once had. Your heart poured into it all. "Both you and her."
Blade lowers his head. "We know."
IX. DISJOINTING
You did not sleep at all, last night. Blade still stalks the hallways at the unearthly hours you wake at ( five thirty on the dot ). A man is dead, a man you barely know, whose body now below the ocean's surface. Maybe the sharks ate him. And your clinic…you curse it all, and you curse that compulsion that has you reaching for your phone.
It doesn't take long to find it after browsing the local news network. A few live footage of the collapsed interior and the busted furniture. Years of work torn apart ( At least Aleena quit. At least she doesn't have to see this ).
"Do you know why they did this?" you ask, your voice scratchy when Blade comes to linger by your door frame. He'd washed his clothes last night, having pulled his trousers back on with a loose fitted tank top. Kafka must have dropped by.
Blade looks away.
"You know." You spit out, fury bubbling up, clouding your eyes, painting it all red. "You know, don't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you do, you little — "
"The man." Blade cuts in. "The man who hurt you."
You grip the sheets. "What did you do?" you whisper, numbness taking foot and taking away more and more reasoning.
"I killed him." he passes you a sharp look. "Letting him live would have put both of us at risk."
You let out a mirthless laugh. "So it's your fault then. You…you come in and just assume I would be fine with you just…" You laugh. You laugh and laugh and laugh till your ribs hurt and your sides ache because it was so unnecessary, all of this. He must be sick in the head, him and Kafka, to twist apart your livelihood and step all over it. Monsters, the lot of them. Monsters.
"Oh god you're a fucking riot. Now what should I do? I have no job…should I go back? Maybe you could get a kick out of me being sold off again, right?" You flash him a bright little smile, mania at it's finest, and anger. So, so much anger it boils your body alive.
He narrows his eyes. "You will not be leaving. They'll come after you next."
You giggle. "Of course they would." You whisper. "Of-fucking course they would. Then I'll just die. Let my father douse my ashes, if there's even a body to cremate because that just seems the best way to go." You lay back down, tugging at your hair with frustration. The mattress dips as he lays next to you, lips drawn against your nape.
It's possessive, demanding of every little thing and every little part you had to offer.
"I won't be leaving." You snarl, feeling all that spite gather. "I can't because of you. remember?"
"I know."
You press your cheek against your pillow. You're tired again. You want to sleep. "You may as well just kill me at this point." You state flatly. "There isn't much use keeping me alive. I've served my purpose right? What was it, some glorified shield?"
His grip on you constricts. You're pulled closer to his chest. "You will not die." He tells you, his nose pressing up against your neck. Blade inhales, tangling his fingers into your hair. "And I won't kill you."
You bare your teeth at him. Then you stop, and press your face to the pillow again. "Enough." you tell him, feeling angry and tired and empty and more. You try to push Blade off of you, the small of your back brushing against him. Blade lets out a hiss, nails digging into your forearm and you freeze.
He's pressed up, half hard against you.
You throw yourself away from him.
Your eye sockets burn as you flinch and struggle. "Stop." He rasps his order, pressing you stomach down against the mattress as you curl over the edge, letting out a panicked whimper, a migraine searing through your forehead. It turns into an ugly sob, into cries that bleed into the sheets, tracking saliva down as you're dragged back.
His weight bears down hard on your back, his mane curtaining your line of sight. You try to elbow him off and he wrestles your hands down, pinning them behind you. He's panting, letting out a stray growl every now and then. The edge of his nails dig a little deeper into your wrists, just as the other hand fixes itself firmly against your thigh.
You shake. You don't try to hide the glassy eyed look. You only shake.
Blade's annoyances seem to mount, his forehead pressing against your temple. ( Appease her, Kafka's voice whispers to his ear. Blade feels too much of you beneath his palm, and it stokes a selfish hunger that comes down violently ).
He trails his hand upwards. You lay slack, surrendering to it with a tense form. It tugs your nightwear down, spreads your legs a little more. You cry a little, then give up on it, his fingers exploring the softness of your thighs and slipping to the inside. He lets your hands go and you come to grasp at the pillows, nipping down at your bottom lip.
"Blade…?" You whisper, unsure.
He traces the seam of your cunt, dipping a finger inside to toy at your clit and you squeak, grabbing his arm. "H-hold on that's — "
Blade turns you over, draping your legs on either side of his hips. You look at him, pupils shrunken down at the sight of him surveying you, his lips pressing over the curve of your knee, then further down. You squirm beneath him, movements stilled by a firm hand on your belly. Blade bites hard, tearing into the skin of your thigh, breaking capillaries and drawing blood.
He pulls away to witness the bruising and the wet wail you shudder out, soothing you with his tongue brushing over the wound like a dog. You slam your foot against his shoulder. Blade simply grabs it and hoists it above his shoulder.
"Let me…" he mumbles, groaning up against your skin, spacing your thighs apart some more. You're squirming, and he roughly pulls you closer. "Stay still."
You can't, you want to say. You can't when he's touching you like that and —
He stills. "You haven't done this before, have you?" he guesses. You want to sink, sink down into a place that was far away from here. Blade's eyes are unnaturally bright, burning like coals against the dim lighting.
"Shut up and get this over with." You rasp. There's nothing here, nothing between the two of you. Maybe a few sick feelings from his side. You want it to be done with and let the maggots eat away at your body after ( if that makes it easier for him in the end ). Blade huffs, vague amusement flitting past his expression. His cheek is smushed against your thigh.
"Your first…" he mumbles, a vague story playing out in his eyes. Your legs are pushed back, and he sits himself down before you, teeth grazing through soft flesh till he latches his mouth to your cunt and presses the expanse of his tongue over your bundle of nerves. You mewl into it, jolting under his touch as his hands come to massage circles at your hips.
You stay steadfastly quiet after that, as the assault continues and he licks a strip up your slit while gauging every little shift and twitch on your face. You could have fooled anyone else with the forced apathy, fooled Blade with you looking at anything but him. He suckles at your clit, rolling it over the tip of his tongue and you twitch, bucking your hips into the grind.
Blade demands. He demands and keeps demanding, eating you out half starved and at a pace you couldn't keep up with; feeling that appendage slip into you at some point of it all. You moan ( this doesn't feel good. It shouldn't. How fucking pathetic are you?! ) trembling at all the new feelings blurring out your mind.
You tell yourself to take it. Take it and let him leave you be after that taste of satisfaction. Blade nuzzles into your cunt, smearing your building slick against your outer lips till smelted orange meets the fatigue in yours.
"You're being stubborn." he comments, pulling away for a moment. You grit your teeth, open your mouth to snap back. Blade dips down then, a finger slipping into you, massaging your insides and pacing himself with more gentleness than you'd expected. Gasping and grasping at the sheets, your narrowed gaze fixates on his, fuming, fuming.
You push his face away when he leans in close and he persists, teeth latching over your neck, licking a delicate strip up the column of it. His chest seems to vibrate — it's not a purr. It rattles at you, it's unnatural.
"Make it quick then!" you sob. "Please."
His finger curls inside you and you curl your toes into the sheets, keening into his hair. You hate this. You hate this. There is a warmth in your insides that stirs and seeps through the cracks. Blade seems to notice and takes it in with a hunger that terrifies you. He presses his pads against that sweet spot, a thumb returning to your clit. You whine, shake your head.
"Good?" he asks. It feels like a taunt.
"Shut up." you grimace, rocking your hips in pace with him. It's little jolts of that buttery feeling that has your mind sink further and farther away. Blade kisses your neck, grinding up against your ass through it all. It's awful. It's all wrong, this facade of gentleness.
You mumble, grinding at his hand as another finger is added and he stretches you out a little, testing your limits with rapture. That heat grows, grows, grows bit by bit, tuned to the way his finger curls into that spot. A moan spills out, then another and you spa a hand over your mouthy, shaking your head. You want it to stop. You want this to stop now and —
Blade's digits nudge against your cervix and he bears down on your clit hard.
It snaps, that warmth. You tighten round his gingers, clenching, sucking him in deeper and his lips part as he watches you fall apart with a jumble of words and begging. You fall back into the sheets as he pulls his hand away, laving at your mess while he undoes the buttons of your shirt. It spares a peak of the sweet of your breasts, the soft expanse of your stomach. He's seen it before. There's nothing new to it.
He bites again, not as deep this time as he pulls his pants down. You spare a glance, snapping out of the afterglow when you catch sight of him. "That won't fit." You whisper.
Blade shudders, his cock resting at your stomach. It's hot, an angry res that makes you feel uneasy. You half expect pain when he slides down to breach you entrance, you expect tears and you expect it with hunched shoulders. Blade is slow instead, thoughtful, almost. He keeps his progress slow, watching you wince against the stretch before he thrusts in deeper, finally nudging his tip to your cervix and staying there a moment.
Somewhere between all that, his hand finds yours, pressing down at your palm in awkward assurance.
You can't take it.
"What are you doing?!" you demand, whining against how full you felt. It's strange, so strange and you think you see the mad ramblings from friends and gossip over how good sex felt sometimes. But this is Blade. Blade, with his violence and his slashed wrists and the way he stank of death.
Blade pushes some of his weight on you. "It's your first time." he replies.
Your first time. A rare consideration. An emotion that bud out too late for your tastes. "Why should you care then?!" You snap, grabbing his tank top. "For fucks sake, stop treating me like I'm your lover! I'm not! You're not doing this to me because you have feelings do you?!"
The question was wholly rhetorical. It's a harsh accusation, mounted by everything else he'd done wrong. Blade falls silent, eyes wide. You leer up at him, then chortle with disbelief. "Oh god, you are." You choke out, feeling violated in a way. Feeling more violated than you were already. Blade keeps staring at you as you cover your face, cackling. "Oh god, oh god this is just unbelievable! You like me? Me?!"
You feel venom drip into your words. You feel that ache, the urge to tear his eyes out then and there. Boys will be boys. The words keep echoing through and it makes you physically ill to think of it.
"You're pathetic. You're absolutely fucking pathetic!" you cut through, grabbing his hair and pulling at it. Blade grunts, annoyed. You don't care, ripping at his face, his neck, his shoulders. "Fuck! Fuck you! After all this bullshit, fuck you!" Blade hisses, trying to shift a bit, move some more but you kick out at his thigh.
"Do not." he grits out, his voice low and angry. "Your anger is an inconsequential thing. I've seen far worse."
"You think I want your guilt, you ass?!" you demand. "You think I want you begging and grovelling for forgiveness?!" Blade thrusts. You dig down, fight against it and the sweet burn it brings. You feel that storm brew in your chest and you spit at him, jarring Blade enough with wide eyed shock ( it's a satisfying thing to see ) to slam your weight into him and roll the two of you over, your hands grabbing at his throat.
He nudges deeper into you and you cry out, feeling his tip coax into your g-spot. Still, you hold on.
Blade still watches, gauging the sudden shift, waiting to see you move. When you take a moment to gain your bearings, he grasps at your hips, guiding you down his cock and you almost falter, feeling his free hand tweak your nipples. sputtering a little, you persist, your thumbs coming to press against his Adam's apple.
Blade lets out a gasp, snapping his hips up again, drawing himself out then back into you. You feel him grind against those sensitive spaces he'd gauged out earlier and a few flustered cries sputter out before your grip tightens round your neck.
He sets his speed, increasing that pace to a faster rhythm, grasping at what parts he could, letting you take from him for a moment. You double over, teeth tearing into his cheek. "I despise you." You tell him. "I hate you for taking everything away from me. I hate you for ruining my life." You pour it all in, all the vitriol and the fury. Blade's eyes shut.
"I know." he grunts, feeling you clench down on his cock.
"I wish you'd stayed dead." You add, feeling it all pile up into a raw mass that eats you alive. "Do you hear me?"
"I know." He repeats.
"I hate you." You sob out, your tears splattering against his jaw. Your thumb presses down harder. Blade moans, his tempo increasing and catching you in it's midst, hitting your sweet spot over and over till it tumbles through to make a mess between the two of you, the baggage and the tucked away harshness. "You're pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic."
It feels so fuzzy, the heat, the faint warmth from Blade, blocking out his airflow. His movements grow frantic, almost, his grip on you bruising your hips till finally, you find you release again, legs weakening below you. Still, you hold fast, dragging yourself over the expanse of his body as he keeps up with thrusting faster and faster to a brink of near over-stimulation, all of it animalistic grunts and grows and teeth nudging at your chest.
You press down hard enough and Blade finally cums, his release coming in spurts inside of you. The cartilages in his larynx give out and you feel tissue collapse into itself ( just like that man on the beach with his throat torn out, poetic in a gruesome sense ). You watch him struggle to breath and you push down harder, hysteria bursting as you bare your teeth and drive him closer to another death.
Blade goes still below you. He's cold as a corpse.
You sway a bit, lifting yourself off of his cock, falling into a haze of cotton wool and sick satisfaction, tipping into the space next to him. He's dead. He's dead.
You shut your eyes, and you feel nothing.
You have better to do now, the unsaid and the undone. The empty buzz of pleasure slowly recedes and you grasp your phone between your hands, tapping at the message app. You let out a soft cry, shoulders shaking. There was a life once that felt far too distant. Where you'd been tugged away and folded into silk and gold till you were shackled down and told to stay quiet.
( There are many things you want to tell them. Many angry things, many quiet, introspective things. Many with a little more love lining your words, a little more longing. They still wait for you, even after shutting their doors. You know this too. )
So, you start to type.
Dear Appa…
Blade wakes when the sunlight filters in, and his arm winds round you in the silence, listening to the rustle down below and the coming commotion. Then, he rises, buttoning his pants up proper and drawing the blanket over your head. "Stay here." he tells you.
You listen to the angry voices and the encroaching footsteps from the staircase outside. Blade summons his sword, stalking out of the room, dog-like, wolf-like, his violence returned to him after briefly being cowed by your venom.
The doorbell rings ( you know who it is, through the ringing metal and the acrid voices ) and you draw into yourself.
You are not here. You tell yourself. You close your eyes and open them back up, petrichor seeping through and your feet sunk into damp soil. You let yourself stay there, in the garden in front of your childhood home, away from torn flesh and the building agony.
You are not here.
📼 — AUTHORS NOTES + ETYMYOLOGIES //
MANY MANY THANKS TO MOTH FOR BETA READING THIS.
this fic was something that took me months to write ( and honestly it shows with the mess and the rush XD ). either way, tda does touch on a few cultural topics and reflects on some of the good old desi trauma when it comes to the arranged marriage scape, something i wish i could have explored more in depth. but with a fic nearly hitting 20k and my own set deadlines...perhaps another time. so here are some of the stuff i mentioned that were picked straight off of my own experiences :
the newspaper adverts listing out bride and groom details amongst other stuff is a pretty common sight here. within my own personal experiences, arranged marriages are a gamble to say the least, considering i only knew two within my immediate sphere that worked out pretty well. add in the stigma surrounding divorce and hooooo boi.
needless to say, there is a lot of shit to unpack with arranged marriage culture ( specifically down in the south where a lot of women and men are given the illusion of 'control' but are still heavily pressured into it ). it's not as overt or obvious to be fair, nor as deeply touched upon.
there's also the weird dynamics within our families where children cannot wholly cut themselves free from their familial unit, disownment and distancing aside. due to how community takes center stage here, family plays a pretty heavy handed role when we're raised. this is mostly due to assumptions of familial disownment being tied into 'questionable behaviour' in a sense. one of my friends was turned away during job hunting solely because some employers were unnecessarily quick to judge.
add in the sheer dependancy you grow into and how tight social circles tend to be and hoooooo b o i. ( you're dead if you live in a small town ).
the reader here does exist within these two spheres, half pressured into arrangements and a duty to be a 'good daughter' by proving financial stability. the clinic isn't just a ways of keeping her away from her family and the matrimonial expectations they have on her ( and trust me, it's not just the parents ) but also her own little act of rebellion by showing them that she can manage just fine.
some of the stuff are more in line with my own community's practices. the agelu is a feast laid out to pay respects to ancestral ghosts. cha is our way of saying 'chai' within my language.
blade in this fic was also initially supposed to be very unhinged. maybe a little more out there with far darker scenes. there was an instance where the reader was actually married prior but had a difficult relationship with her husband. the divorce was what incited the disownment.
she was also a liiitttlle more involved with the stellaron hunter's plans, but i thought the sheer disconnect and the painting of the hunters in this shadowed, unclear light made more sense XD. that and how i was sadistic enough to write a whole scene depicting aleena's marriage and a few unsaoury aftermaths.
anyway, thank you for taking the time to read tda!!! this fic took a WHILE to write out given my busy schedule so i appreciate it so very much!!!
TAGLIST ノ join the taglist. — @silentmoths @meimeimeirin @sleepynoons @vourfrede @endursent.
@jessamine-rose @ofoceansandtombsanew @chiyoso @4acoffee.
#📼 — entries.#blade x reader#hsr blade x reader#hsr blade#blade#x reader#reader insert#honkai star rail#honkai star rail x reader#yandere blade x reader#yandere blade#tw. yandere#tw. dead dove#tw. dark content
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