#HOW DO HUMANS LIVE … how do you make a place for yourselves in this world … | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

keferon · 27 days ago

Text

My hands are shaky and my head is refusing to work properly! But! I made it!

The Blurr chapter for Mecha au >:D

Blurr's job is not to fight for humanity.

Blurr's job is to smile for the camera and take the applause of people who praise him for his bravery and sacrifice. Blurr's job is to sell his face, his voice and his skills to millions of viewers. He must impress investors, show off advanced technology and make a determined face saying that to save mankind he is ready for anything. And then get in a luxury car and drive off to some expensive place to burn a whole bunch of zeros out of his paycheck.

He's not someone who stays after work to help his coworkers. And he's not the one who spends his nights trying to save as many people as possible. He signs autographs, makes big statements, and promises people he'll protect them.

And people believe him.

And they love him.

Swerve is sick of this spectacle. Swerve is sick of this man.

Under the cut

————————————

Nobody likes Blurr.

Okay, if you think on a large scale, everyone loooves Blurr. His face is on every poster, his brand is in every possible store, his voice and is in every cool commercial. You literally can't exist without knowing who Blurr is, or at least seeing his face once. It's a “Luke I'm your father” level phenomenon. How massive a rock do you have to live under to miss something like that?

Everybody loves Blurr. You can go buy a t-shirt with his face on it. You can go listen to his interviews or purchase a tiny replica of his action figure. There are incredibly many ways a Blurr fan can blow a hole in their budget.

Swerve knows, because he's done it many times. And recently, it's stopped being something he's proud of. To be precise, it was exactly four days ago when Blurr first stepped into his office. Swerve had just finished his shift and was finishing his tea when his boss suddenly appeared in the doorway, with the best racer in the world right behind him.

The tea was instantly dropped, adrenaline was released, and the brain was turned off.

In that moment, Swerve thought that this is what it must look like. The moment when all your good karma comes together in one pile to reward you for all the times you dropped a sandwich butter side down or missed a deadline.

Both of which happened with annoying regularity. Swerve is unlucky. Sometimes things seem to fall through his hands.

It started out great.

Swindle, their boss, showed up in the office space one day looking simultaneously jubilant, nervous, and very inspired. Usually on such occasions, Swerve could almost see the dollar signs reflected in his boss's glasses.

“Attention everyone. We have an important guest arriving in an hour.”

Swindle expressively pushed his glasses down on his nose and looked around the room

“I promised him a tour and I expect you all to behave yourselves.”

He meticulously looks around the floor beneath his feet

“Send someone to clean up all the trash. This place is unbelievably filthy. The floors should be sparkling in twenty minutes! And, oh! Hey you, go buy some good drinks.”

Having finished inspecting the floor Swindle hurriedly runs off, probably to say the same thing to the neighboring department.

Swerve stretches his neck out curiously, listening in

“Is the president coming to see us?”

Walking by, Jazz shrugs

“When the president was coming Swindle said the floor was dirty and made him wear boot covers.”

It's not the president

Swindle gestures generously to the entire office at once and looks overall like a bird trying his best to primp up

“And here we have the engineering department offices. In the next building is the assembly plant, that's where the mechs are put on their feet so to speak. And this is where all the computing, design, and planning happens.”

Just over his shoulder stands and looks around at none other than

Oh, dear God.

Swerve's tea flies to the floor next to his thought processes.

He's seen Blurr countless times, but never in person. How can this guy look as good in person as he does in expensive retouched-until-squeaky-clean photos? Mystery.

Blurr's gaze slides lazily over the simple office setting and for those two seconds when it's directed at Swerve it feels like sheer madness. He tries to look normal. He's not sure he's succeeding, but he's making an effort.

Swindle waltzes through the office, heading for the next door

“Come on I'll show you the mech hangar.”

Blurr grins.

“A highlight of the show I suppose~”

His voice is like a needle bursting a ball of stunned silence. People begin to rise from their seats and scramble to say hello. Someone asks for an autograph, others ask for a bunch of selfies, a couple people in the corner hastily fix their hair, one of the employees just pulls out his phone and shamelessly starts filming.

Swindle looks at the this with an unchanging commercial smile, but his gaze promises all kinds of punishment.

Perhaps if it had been the president, the buffoonery would have been smaller.

______________

For the next few days, Blurr is the big news and the center of all discussion.

Officially? He's becoming one of the pilots in the Mecha program.

In fact? Swindle's greedy soul couldn't get enough of the idea that the Mech concept could be monetized.

The dust is blown off Blurr and his boots are licked. He doesn't go to general training, he doesn't participate in ordinary or overly dangerous missions. He's allowed everything and a little more. His job is to look pretty on camera, speak his lines, smile and wink. He's a walking advertisement and Swindle's incredibly powerful tool in negotiating with investors.

Swerve once saw him called to a negotiation in the middle of the night, and even sleep-deprived and exhausted after a full day of filming, Blurr had the strength to pull that charming expression on his face and flawlessly play along with Swindle wherever he needed to.

His mech was a work of art. And that's not even an exaggeration. Usually the main purpose of mechs is to be efficient and practical. Blurr's Mech was made separately and so many people worked on its design that it could have its own end credits. It's beautiful, sleek, shiny and show-offy. It's designed to be awe-inspiring, but not so decorated that it's ridiculous.

When Swerve looks at its specs, he almost feels sick. Maneuverability, mobility, everything is absolutely top-notch. But most importantly, speed.

The technology to accelerate Mechs to incredible speeds has been around for some time, but the average robot doesn't reach even half of the technically possible maximum. Because even the fastest machine can't outrun the human brain.

After a certain threshold, pilots are no longer capable of controlling their own Mech. Human reaction speed is simply not enough to maneuver without crashing into anything or losing their orientation in space. And. Well. Without losing consciousness.

This has led to Mech manufacturers sort of tacitly agreeing on a rough speed limit and tending to stick to it. Just to make the technology safer and more suitable for everyone.

Regardless. Everyone except Blurr apparently.

Because the numbers across from his Mech's speed specs are horrifying. Swerve looks at the blueprints and thinks it's either freaking awesome or absolute suicide. Maybe something in between. Can a human being have reflexes like that? What about this turning mechanism? The numbers tell him that these levels of g-force make a large percentage of pilots just pass out.

Is Blurr really going to pilot this death wagon??

To achieve that kind of speed and mobility, they'd have to cut off half the armor or make it very light. Which would almost be like inviting a dangerous injury.

But if the Mech is made primarily to flaunt rather than fight...well... it probably makes sense.

Swerve's inner fan is sliding down the wall.

Blurr is incredible. And what's even more incredible is that he's kind of sort of almost Swerve's coworker now.

It only takes him a couple days to realize.

Everyone loves Blurr.

But the one who loves Blurr the most is Blurr himself.

The rose-tinted glasses are breaking slowly but surely. On the first day, Sverve walks up on shaky legs to get introduced. He tells himself that this is definitely not an attempt to get an autograph. They're coworkers. He's just...uh...greeting a new employee.

Blurr looks slightly bored.

“You're from this department....uh.. What's its name, whatever.”

Swerve clutches his hands in front of him so he doesn't accidentally drop anything

“OH.Uh yeah. Swerve! Engineering Department. You were there on a tour the other day. I usually work in the assembly plant, making armor for Mechs, developing new alloys. But I design too! I, uh.

(Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. Don't talk about Blurr. He'll think you're a crazy fan. Don't talk about Blurr.)

Blurr starts to get sidetracked by his phone.

Swerve swallows awkwardly.

“I'm uh. I'm a big fan of yours. Sir.”

(Good job...)

Blurr chuckles softly and offers out his hand

“Well, nice to meet you.”

Sverve's hand is shaking like crazy, he hopes he isn't squeezing too hard. Working in the assembly has made his hands rough. Blurr's narrow, soft palm is almost sinking in his grip.

“ 'Nice to meet you, yes. Nice to meet you sir! If you, ah, if you have any problems or questions or uh, well. You know, if you need help with your Mech or upgrades or or.”

Blurr chuckles.

“I'll be counting on you~”

Swerve feels like his soul is about to break away from his body.

The next, day when they cross paths in the hallway Blurr waves to him.

“Hey you. Whatever your name is. Can you tell me how to get to Block D?

Swerve stops awkwardly.

“Ah. Of course! I'm Swerve sir. Come, I'll show you.”

Blurr smiles a beautiful, ad-libbed smile and follows him in

“Thank you darling.”

From this point on, the entire program gradually learns a simple but unpleasant truth.

Blurr is an asshole.

And nobody likes him.

He always has everyone at his beck and call. You rarely get to see him on his own. There's always someone swirling around him with a guilty or annoyed face. A sort of serve-get-show-explain designated poor guy.

Swindle treats Blurr like a precious antique vase.

Blurr treats people like his servants.

The whole world is in love with the glittering cover, the image polished to a squeak. Until recently, Swerve was doing the same thing. Now it feels more like an embarrassing crush.

Blurr still doesn't remember his name. He actually remembers at most three to four people by name, and calls everyone else “hey you” or “ darling”. After Swerve reintroduced himself to him for the fourth time he just sort of...stopped trying.

On the field, Blurr is incredible. No one can deny that. The tremendous speed of his Mech leaves all the other pilots in the dust. Whoever said human reflexes weren't fast enough? HA. When Swerve sees his reports and results, he gets dizzy.

The combination of such incredible speeds and light armor means Blurr simply can't miss. If he hesitates, if he falters. If he gets confused. The whole metal thing will smash him to smithereens.

And yet Blurr comes back untouched time after time.

Swerve's no longer inclined to think it's just because of his mad skills. He knows that Swindle is paying Blurr a lot of money for his cooperation. No one would let Blurr fight on the front lines, no. It would be too dangerous. He has to do just enough so that Swindle can record a commercial and in it call Blurr a badass pilot without adding small print to that statement.

Blurr's job is not to fight for humanity.

He's not someone who stays after work to help his coworkers. And he's not the one who spends his nights trying to save as many people as possible. But he is the first person every citizen would name if asked to say something about the Mech program. He signs autographs, makes big statements, and promises people he'll protect them.

And people believe him.

And they love him.

A month later, he still can't remember anyone's names and sometimes calls people by the colors of their clothes, laughing as if they should take it as a cute joke.

Swerve is sick of this spectacle. Swerve is sick of this man.

That's okay.

It's not like fanboying over Blurr is Swerve's only passion.

He gets upset.

Then he gets mad and rips down all the posters.

Then he has no time to be angry because Swindle wants to launch Mechs into outer space and damn it, Jazz flies off the planet and doesn't fucking come back. The engineering department stays up nights trying to figure out where he's gone, but they can't.

Unlike Blurr, everybody loved Jazz.

Unlike Blurr, Jazz deserved every ounce of that love.

The ground beneath his feet is starting to shake.

At first, all that happens is panic. Everyone starts making a confused noise, someone assumes an earthquake.

A voice on the speakers says that everyone needs to evacuate immediately, but no one hears it because huge mechanical tentacles start coming through the windows and the whole building starts shaking, creaking and crumbling.

Sverve has seen the monsters humanity has to fight many times. But never this close. And their size leaves him absolutely terrified. These things are huge, they take up all visible space. And what's most damning is that they can break down the walls around Swerve like a fucking cookie.

He's gonna die. Oh god he's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die here under this stupid rubble or get eaten or turned into one of the ugly bloody stains on the wall. His heart is doing a million beats a minute and his eyes are starting to sting. He tries to get to the emergency exit, but the door is blocked by one of the huge toothy creatures that is actively trying to get in.

Next to him, Swindle is shouting to someone on his comm, trying to sound louder than the rumble of the collapsing building and the hungry aliens.

The floor tilts at a very disturbing angle and Swerve grabs one of the interior doorways to stay in place. A second later, he reaches out and pulls Swindle, who has already slowly begun to slip toward the monster's huge hungry maw, to the same doorway.

Swindle grabs onto the frame of the door and Swerve at the same time. His glasses are cracked and his usually neat expensive coat is all dust and debris.

“It was a trap.”

Swerve can't hear a word over the grinding of breaking structures.

“What?”

Swindle almost slips and falls, but Swerve grabs him by the scruff of his coat and puts him back on his feet. Working in an assembly shop gives a man strong arms and right now he's very grateful for it.

Swindle makes a second, louder attempt

“It was a trap!!! All available pilots are now on the other side of the country! I've called for backup, but who knows how fast they'll get here.”

A smooth, silky voice comes from a walkie-talkie strapped to his coat.

“Ouch Swindle. So little faith in my professional skills?”

Swindle rounds his eyes

“Blurr??! Where are you!”

Blurr's voice sounds...not quite as it usually does. It's missing the habitual lazy note. The one that makes him sound like the whole world owes him money.

“Give me another minute and the answer will be 'here'.”

The building shakes again. Swindle swears so eloquently that Swerve can't help but admire it.

Swerve can't stand Blurr's smug face, but when he spots the first glimpse of blue metal in the window, joy floods his brain.

He usually associates Blurr with dumb nicknames, dismissive treatment, and commercials.

Now he watches the sleek, fast Mech lunge fearlessly at the monsters surrounding the building and thinks that. Fuck this. He's an asshole, but if he buys Swerve enough time to evacuate, he'll bring him a thank you card or something later. Though it's unlikely Blurr will care about that of course.

Swindle continues to shout instructions over the walkie-talkie. Swerve basically drags him outside by. He jumps up probably a full meter when very near him one of the monsters falls to the ground.

Blurr's Mech stands proudly on top of the fresh corpse and looks...actually really bad. Swerve knows that this particular robot was not built for rough, open confrontation. Its armor is too thin. Designed for speed and agility, not strength. He assembled it himself, after all.

Many of the plates are crumpled. Some are torn off. His legs are intact, but one of the joints sparks funny.

Blurr quickly looks around and Swerve unwittingly follows his example. The whole place is on fire. Office buildings are in ruins and a huge column of black smoke rises above the assembly plant.

Blurr's Mech drops to the ground and gets down on one knee. The plates on its chest are pulled aside and Blurr sticks his head out of the cockpit while simultaneously opening the visor on his helmet.

“Everyone okay?”

Swindle clutches the walkie-talkie

“The office areas are empty, but there still could be people left on the lower floors of the assembly plant. But we have no access there!”

Blurr drums his fingers quickly on the metal plate

“Fire?”

Swindle shrugs his dusty shoulders

“Something exploded at the bottom of the building. It's a real smelter down there.

Even if we send a Mech, it won't last more than a minute before it overheats. Or make the building collapse.”

Blurr's gaze becomes focused. Sharp. Swerve has seen that look many times on tough front line fighters like Jazz. On Blurr, never.

“'That's enough time for me.”

Swindle waves his hands

“Are you crazy?”

Blurr slaps his palm against the armor of his Mech

“This baby is light. Lighter than anything you've got! If anyone can do it without dropping the building, it's me. They make Mechs in the assembly hall, it's got high ceilings right?”

Swerve wants to snap. He wants to throw his hands up angrily and yell something along the lines of “you were literally there!”

Who else is down there on those lower floors??? Tailgate? Maybe Wheeljack? If something exploded, Wheeljack was definitely there. And probably closest to the explosion.

Swindle curses furiously, but retreats and runs off to give orders to someone else.

“”Be a hero if you want, but I'm not going in there. For all I know there could be melting metal in there instead of a floor! It's just not reasonable.”

Swerve's brain stumbles over that statement. Why...Swindle is acting like he's being forced to climb into that building too...?

Blurr looks nervous.

“You know what. Fine. I got it. Hey, you--”

And there it is. The good old namelesness.

Blurr pays no attention to Swerve's frowning face, nor his hands shaking with fear

“ You're familiar with those buildings. You know who was there and where to find them right? I need you to walk me through.”

Swerve feels the urge to snap again and this time doesn't hold it back

“If you cared about something other than yourself, you'd know this damn building and the people who work in it too and !”

“I don't fucking remember!” Blurr interrupts him.

Swerve doesn't have time to put anything in after that. Though a sarcastic comment is begging to be made.

Blurr quickly takes off his helmet and wipes the sweat off his forehead.

“I don't remember okay! This isn't a fad or posing or whatever else you think of me. This is what an accident can do to you if you miss a turn! I can't remember shit, okay?! Do you need a medical report?!”

Swerve just...stands there with his mouth open and probably looks like an idiot.

Blurr nervously tucks back his disheveled hair. The longer he talks, the faster he does it.

“Now. I know you don't want to die in a pit of fire. But I need your help to save them. Don't do anything, just take the map. I promise I won't let you die.”

He sounds determined. And holds out his hand to Swerve, silently inviting him to climb up onto the Mech.

His face is stained in sticky dust, his hair is an absolute mess, and his narrow palm is covered in streaks of soot. It's as if he's been dragged face down a muddy road.

He's. Very Handsome, Swerve thinks.

He takes his hand.

Blurr helps him up, pushes him into the space next to the pilot's seat, and closes the cockpit.

“Been inside a working Mech ever?”

Swerve clenches his hands nervously on the back of the seat

“No.”

The lights of the consoles around him come to life as Blurr puts on his helmet. The space around him hums. It's a strange noise. At once unsettling and calm.

Mech feels alive, he thinks. Then corrects himself. Blurr is mind-linked to this Mech. This Mech can technically be considered alive in a sense.

Blurr moves one of the monitors toward him and opens the map.

“Just mark the path here. Don't touch anything else. And hold on tight. I won't be going too fast anyway, but it'll be shaky.”

Swerve swallows nervously.

“Understood.”

After that, everything turns into motion. Watching the Mech work while being inside is mesmerizing.

Blurr doesn't say much, concentrating on the controls. His hands aren't shaking anymore, Swerve notices. Not even a little.

He steers the machine forward confidently and smoothly, dodging falling debris and avoiding the biggest pockets of fire without panic or hesitation.

He's also strictly following the path Swerve is laying out for him.

The air filtration system is doing well so far. Swerve can feel the smell of burning and the heat slowly creeping up, but it's bearable for now. For now.

They find a man on the nearside of the emergency exit.

Two more people a floor below. A small group stuck in the elevator.

Wheeljack's on the doorstep of his lab.

Blurr pulls them all out. Picks up the first group of people and carries them outside, goes back into the fiery furnace, finds more survivors, pulls them out, goes back, searches, rescues, goes back, searches, rescues.

The heat is coming up. Swerve can feel it. The plates around him are getting hot. The air smells like burnt wires.

Blurr’s Mech wasn't designed for this kind of thing.

His Mech was made to flash for the camera and accelerate to impossible speeds. To deceive and confuse the enemy. Its armor is thin and cools easily in the air, which usually helps it avoid overheating.

This also means that this Mech heats up very quickly as well.

Now, with the air around him feeling like a red-hot frying pan, Swerve regrets not saying anything back then. He regrets that he didn't make any changes to the blueprint.

More and more warnings pop up on the screens. The map stopped working correctly some time ago and Swerve is forced to give directions verbally.

He nervously grips the back of the pilot seat with one hand and, without noticing, Blurr's shoulder with the other.

Blurr carries two more people outside and hands them to the rescuers. Then turns back to the building again and. OH FUCK. Right in front of him, a huge crack begins to creep along the structure. This thing is on the verge of collapse. The roof is already starting to fold down in a very bad way.

Swerve clenches his grip fearfully and hears Blurr hiss through his teeth.

Suddenly, the cockpit opens. The fresh air of the street feels like a cold sledgehammer blow after the heat and stuffiness of the lower levels.

Swerve is about to ask something, but doesn't have time because Blurr uses Mech's hand to gently but quickly pull him outside and set him on the ground.

“You were going to mark another spot.”

Swerve nods hurriedly.

“Tailgate is still there.”

Blurr wrinkles his face.

Swerve corrects himself and clarifies

“Bright blue uniform. Short. Considering all the places we've been, I think he's in the staff quarters. It's...”

He chews his fingers, trying to remember numbers and directions without a map

“...two floors down, left, another floor down and straight ahead.”

As he speaks Blurr bends over the side of the open cockpit and spits...blood on the ground. His nose is bleeding, Swerve realizes. That's not good. It's a clear sign of a malfunctioning neural connection. Or damage to his respiratory system? Possibly both.

Blurr doesn't seem to notice his worried look

“Two down, left down then. Shit. Wait. Two down, left then down, straight ahead yeah?”

Swerve nods.

Blurr keeps repeating these directions like a mantra. A very fast and creepy mantra.

His gaze roams strangely and his breaths sound hoarse. His teeth and chin are covered in blood and his face is streaked with soot.

Swerve understands. He's about to do another go.

Two down, left, down, straight. Two down, left, down, straight. Two down, left, down, straight.

Alone. He's going, and he's going to fry himself alive in there for a stranger he doesn't even remember.

Swerve doesn't have time to say anything. What's he gonna say? Stop? But he wants to save Tailgate? Go on, I believe in you? But it's certain death.

Swerve rarely has nothing to say, but this time he can't find the right words.

Blurr wipes the blood with his sleeve, wrinkles his nose, and storms off, heading back into the flaming mess the plant has become.

Not twenty seconds later, the roof collapses, spewing a huge cloud of smoke, ash, and fire into the sky.

Swerve wrinkles his shirt nervously in his hands.

The walls are still in place, right? If the roof is gone but the walls are still standing it's... it's. It's.

Damn it. He's trying to remember the blueprints. It means the ejector will work. It means Blurr can still get out through the top. That--

Blurr's not getting out. As the small, bright blue escape pod appears above the falling walls of the building, Swerve feels his brain stop. Remember the blueprints, remember the damn blueprints. The Mech is light, the design is compact, the space in the pod is for only one person.

In the capsule lies an unconscious Tailgate.

Swindle grasps the radio

“Blurr? BLURR!”

Swerve looks at the smoke and ash and feels numb. He doesn't want to be here anymore. He has to know. He doesn't...

He feels weird. The same kind of weird as when objects fly seemingly through him. Everything just stops being real.

The thought comes out of nowhere. You don't have to obey the rules. You can see more. Just look.

He's not sure how or why he's doing it.

No one around him is paying much attention to him. Everyone's busy with survivors and damage assessment or just stunned by the chaos.

And him? He disappears.

And then he appears at the bottom. Under the rubble.

All around him is ugly, molten and red-hot chaos, but he doesn't care anymore. He feels like whatever is happening is about to end and he just has to be in time. Time for him to find out.

Blurr's Mech lies crushed by the fallen roof. Its cockpit is open. A gaping hole where his chest was, the place where the escape pod had undocked.

Wall debris has pinned him in a crooked, grotesque pose.

Blurr is here. His legs are wedged between crumpled metal plates inside the cockpit, leaving him hanging upside down. His suit is charred. Half of his face is destroyed. It looks like a horrible bloody and burned mess. It's ugly and gruesome.

Blurr opens his only working eye and gives Swerve a cloudy look.

“I must be seeing things...”

Swerve shrugs in daze. He knows he shouldn't be here.

Blurr spits up a mouthful of blood

“I'm sorry I hurt you uh...”

“Swerve.”

“Yes. Swerve. It's hard for me to remember things unless they're...akgh...hell... not in my face all the time.”

Swerve moves closer and frowns

“You know, that explains but doesn't excuse you.”

Blurr closes his eye and coughs. That sounds really bad.

“No...I guess not.”

He huffs off the blood again. The burned half of his face is oozing with it. The blood runs down his forehead, collecting in a small puddle on the floor.

“It was better than letting everyone know what's wrong with me. I can't even begin to think about the amount of messes I'd be dragged into.”

Swerve notes that the fire seems to be getting closer.

This whole bit of dialog is so unnatural. Who even talks about that kind of stuff before they die. On the other hand. Well. Character development?

“So you think it's better to have everyone assume you're a jerk than that you got your head screwed on?”

Blurr wrinkles his nose.

“ You're a very specific kind of ghost.”

Swerve shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away

“I needed to know. Before you die.”

“That's ...akghhh...ha....it's good to know. Can you tell me something Swerve? As..agh...

As a last wish?”

Swerve shrugs again. He stares at the dripping blood. At the ugly, bubbling burns. At the burst vessels in his eye and the paths of blood from his bleeding nose. He looks at the broken and scorched and dying bloody mess.

He looks at Blurr.

And he thinks, until today, he didn't really love Blurr. Not with the posters and figurines. Not with the disdain and dislike.

He loved an image. And hated an image.

He reaches out and tries to touch Blurr's hand, but goes through it.

“I'm sorry. But we're both not really here. And I have to go.”

He can feel the cold metal around him, which is strange because he's standing in the middle of smoking and burning ruins

“But if it makes you happy, I guess you're my favorite character after all.”

Blurr doesn't answer. Swerve isn't sure he even heard him.

The feeling of metal around him grows sharper.

Someone shines a flashlight in his face.

Swerve blinks stupidly and tries to move away.

The unknown Autobot medic standing over him smiles happily and puts the flashlight away

“Welcome back. You've been in a coma Primus knows how long.”

The other medic to the side frowns

“You have zero tact.”

Swerve blinks his optics puzzled, raises his servo and for a while just stares at it like some movie character. All around him is an Autobot medbay. Metal walls. Metal instruments. And him. Metal.

Yes. Seems so. That's the way he's always been. That's right.

“Doc, you won't believe what kind of weird dream I had.”

___________

Swerve feels like he's going crazy.

He's standing in the middle of a hallway on one of the Autobot ships, and he's staring. shamelessly.

There's Prowl standing at the end of the hallway. And on his shoulder is...

“ JAZZ????”

Both bot and human turn around abruptly at his scream. And both look equally puzzled.

Jazz waves his hand

“Do I know you?”

Swerve is definitely going crazy. It's Jazz. The same one. From his...dream??? But he's real and tangible??? Sitting on Prowl's shoulder, talking and breathing and being seen by everyone not only Swerve????

“You're...real...?”

Jazz raises his eyebrows

“I am. Yes. Really Mech, you sound very familiar.

But I can tell you for a fact that I have not been friends with any Cybertronians before...”

This can't be, this can't be, this isn't....

It was a dream. The spawn of his TV series-addled mind. A hallucination. It wasn't real. It wasn't, was it?

But Jazz is here. And he disappeared from Earth. And now he's here.

And.

What the..

Swerve blurts out something like “sorry-sorry-see-you-later-now-I've got to go” and runs off.

“HEY DOC????”

The autobot, already familiar to him, flinches

“Primus...Swerve? Is something wrong?”

Swerve realizes that everything is about to either make sense or lose it completely.

“Tell me...is it possible to project a holoform...like...very far away?”

The Doctor tilts his head.

“Depends on power consumption. If you channel all the energy available in a frame, you can go very far. But that would send you into a...coma...if you...tried...Swerve, is there anything you'd like to tell me?”

“Doc do you know where Earth is?”

“Wha...no?”

Swerve chuckles nervously and bites his knuckles.

“I don't either. But I think I've been there...”

#tf mecha universe #Blurr #Swindle #Swerve #Jazz #Tailgate #Wheeljack #maccadam #Prowl #Jazzprowl happens for like two seconds #mecha writing #mecha bs writing #mecha kef writing

1K notes · View notes

mistleaneous-chaos · 6 months ago

Text

How Shadow Of The Erdtree Portrays Hate, and The Tragedy of trying to Escape

Elden Ring Spoilers(Hey! Been a while since i did this)

I’ve gotten further into the DLC and this might just be one of the best stories of how Hatred is just a cycle that repeats which consumes innocent people in its wake.

This DLC has done so much to make us understand why Marika did the things she did. She lived in a peaceful village, only for people she loved and cared about to be taken and put into jars. And why is that? Because their bodies meld well with others, something she can’t control since she was just born with it.

And so she becomes the new God of the Lands Between, imposing her new order onto others, and having her own son be the one to lead it. But when the fire fades and the ash settles, the one who suffers of the two of them is Messmer. She leaves him in the Shadow Realm because he doesn’t fit in her new order, representing so much of what is considered “Sinful”. And he is left alone, because of something he can’t control since he was born with it.

And then, as years pass and she makes a family again, she has twins! She can finally begin to rebuild, to move on from the hatred she felt!… except, she can’t. Because of the fact that her children have horns, just as her oppressors did. And so do multiple families in the Lands Between, with this seemingly “cursed” blood spreading, she has a choice to make.

Let go of the hate, try to accept her sons and the Omens.

Or hold onto it, persecute them, cut off their horns, and drop them into the sewers, out of sight out of mind.

We know what she picked.

And it’s this hatred that sparka another ambition just like hers. Mohg.

Imagine you’re Mohg. You have no family save for your brother. You live in the sewers while only ever being able to watch the outside world with happy familes and children with parents who love them. But all the while, what do you have? Nothing. All because of something you can’t control because you were born with it.

And so you decide to build your own order. Away from it all. Your brother wants no part, he clings to the hope of being accepted by that damn tree. But it’s fine.

You take some of the other Omens with you, and get to work. You even have help from an Outer God, so higher powers must want you to succeed! Others shave their horns but not you, no you proudly grow them out, even if it impedes your vision, because they are a part of you.

You take in all kinds, Humans, Omens, even Albinaurics, who had no home before. You give your fellow Omens real clothes, regal clothes. They’ve never had clothes after all, so don’t they deserve the best? You build and you build and eventually you have a beautiful part of the Underground to yourselves, you did it, you’ve won!

Mohg could have broken from the cycle, stayed in Mohgwyn, as he did even when chaos reigned above. People were strong under him, and had a home even if they were shunned in other places.

But that choice was taken from him.

Miquella used him to accomplish his own goal of godhood, robbing him of his own agency. Just like his brothers, Mohg was used by his family, but unlike the others, he wasn’t even aware of it. No matter how far he ran, no matter how much he tried to cut himself off from it. The hatred of his mother reached him, in the form of someone else using him to break away from the consequences of it.

Now I’m not saying Mohg was perfect. His group was no less sadistic than some of the others in the lands between.

But he was robbed of a dream, and told it was never his to have.

#elden ring #elden ring spoilers #elden ring lore #miquella #mohg #mohg the blood lord #morgott the omen king #morgott #queen marika #marika the eternal #marika #elden ring dlc #elden ring dlc spoilers #miquella of the haligtree #miquella the unalloyed #messmer the impaler #elden ring messmer #elden ring omens #omens elden ring

759 notes · View notes

bearotonin-international · 1 year ago

Text

hi friends. since the formation of bearotonin international, the team has been extremely intentional and diligent about the kind of content we display on our blog. we decided early on that we would not reblog anything current events, political, fundraisers, social justice, or anything else going on in the real world, because we wanted bearotonin to be a single place of refuge from the terribleness of the real world. we wanted our blog to be the one small place everyone could all come to to escape from whatever horrible sad things were happening in real life.

we know firsthand how overwhelming life is, and we know how overwhelming and stressful it is to constantly see upsetting things in life and online, where you are constantly asked to do more, feel a certain way, give more. so we created bearotonin international to be a little safe haven from all of that. where everyone could come to escape life and just enjoy bears, regardless of who they are, where they are from, what they believe in. the team has worked hard to make bearotonin international a positive and welcoming corner of the internet that makes life just a little bit more bearable for everyone.

the team are all politically and socially active in our professional lives, our personal lives, and on our personal blogs. and we thus have felt alright allowing bearotonin to remain entirely free from real world events and tragedies. however, the team have been so thoroughly disturbed by the lack of care or even conversation for the human rights atrocity going on in front of our eyes, that we cannot stay silent on what’s going on right now.

we do not feel this is in any way a polarizing post, but we know some people will likely take it to be one, and we are okay with that. just know that the bearotonin team loves and cares deeply for all human beings, and never condones hatred, bigotry, or violence of any form. the team loves ALL human beings and are saddened by any violence and loss of human life.

however. we must speak out against what the israeli government is doing to gaza and the innocent civilians who live there — half of whom are children. we cannot turn away from the atrocities and the genocide that is going on before our eyes and that many of our governments are not only condoning, but are actively funding. we cannot be silent, and we urge all of you not to be silent either.

please take the time to educate yourselves about the history of palestine, and the history of gaza, and the oppression, violence, and crimes perpetrated against its people daily for the past 7 decades. please do not be silent about this atrocity. and please take action to stand against ethnic cleansing and to stand against genocide.

we know we are going to receive hate for this post, and we know some people will be upset by us posting this. but the team cannot and will not turn a blind eye to genocide. but we could not live with ourselves if we were silent and allowed this genocide to happen without saying a word against it.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

please note: we will not be changing the content of bearotonin, and it will continue to be a refuge and haven from the real world. our doors and arms are open to all people, no matter where they are from or what they believe in. bears are for everyone and we will continue to provide a safe corner of the internet where we can all come together to escape the awfulness of the real world and enjoy and appreciate bears.

#free palestine #gaza #palestine #🇵🇸#not bears #please speak up about what's going on #please do not be silent friends

763 notes · View notes

doitforbangchan · 1 year ago

Text

All Bark and No Bite : Meet the pack

Helloooooo! Welcome to my new series titled All Bark and No Bite. Before the series officially begins I want to give a quick overview of the SKZ pack members and their roles within the pack! This is how I view the pack dynamics working and my own personal thoughts. I have sorted them based on where I think they would fall. I have also included what tendencies I think some of them would have. I am also including a small background for the story. Please let me know your thoughts as well! I’d love to discuss :)

Disclaimer: The names and faces used here are just that, names and faces, and in no way reflect the real people the characters were designed after. The views and actions of these characters do not reflect the real Stray Kids in any way shape or form. This is all for fun let’s keep it that way please.

My content is always for 18+ ONLY. If you are not 18+ please see yourselves out thanks

Background info: This story takes place in an alternate universe where people eventually present as one of three presentations: Alpha, beta and omega. Omegas are incredibly rare and many people have never even seen an omega in their lives. The new tradition is if an alpha does get an omega then that Omega does become the packs, though they will mainly ‘belong’ to the main alpha of the pack. Due to the submissive nature of the omegas this has turned many alphas and betas very misogynistic.

Next Series masterlist Masterlist

Bang Chan aka Chris -Pack Main Alpha

Chris is the head alpha of the SKZ pack. He is strong willed and carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. Head of the pack and also unofficial head of the neighboring town has taken its toll on Chan mentally and emotionally. He is known as a strong leader who would and has done anything to protect his people. Other packs have heard of him and know better than to challenge him… Mostly anyways. The stupid few usually don’t make it home after coming for Chan. He is used to obedience and expects it in all aspects.

Lee Minho -Beta

Minho can be hard to read sometimes, he gives off such a serious vibe but once you get to know him and how he interacts with the pack it’s clear he really cares for them. Minho is very blunt and will tell you exactly how he sees it. Even though he’s a beta he is still Chan's second in command in the pack. Minho is often there to remind Chan that he’s allowed to be a human and not a machine. Main cook for the pack.

Seo Changbin -Alpha

The main muscle (other than chan) of the pack. He takes pride in his strength and his ability to protect the pack as well as offer a shoulder to cry on. Changbin is often the one the pack goes too when they are down and just need a hug. According to them he gives the best hugs. Also really good for a laugh as he never stops joking around.

Hwang Hyunjin -Beta

Hyunjin is a true romantic through and through. When he’s not helping out at home with the pack you could usually find him painting out in a field somewhere or in town helping the townsfolk. He can often be found running errands for the elderly in town. He is a true artist and loves to do portraits of his fellow pack mates.

Han Jisung -Beta with Omega tendencies

Precious Hannie, always so helpful and supportive. It was a surprise to his family he didn’t present as an omega growing up given how submissive he can be. He just wants to please the people he cares about! He can be a little introverted and shy around new people but once he warms up to you he never stops talking or joking around. Sunshine boy :)

Lee Felix -Beta Omega tendencies

Felix is another ray of sunshine for the pack. He is very dainty like a fairy and dances around like one too, despite his deep voice! His bubbly personality is contagious and anyone he meets is enamored by him. He can often be found in the kitchen baking during the day and singing along to whatever song is stuck in his head. Sometimes the pack wonders how he didn’t end up an omega.

Kim Seungmin -Beta with Alpha tendencies

This boy is very smart and is one of Chan's right hand men in the pack. He pays attention better than anyone else to small details and is good with strategy. He can come off as aloof and rude when you don’t know him yet, but once his shell is broken through he is actually a very caring person. He always tries to do right by his pack and would stop at nothing to protect them.

Yang Jeongin -Alpha

The youngest member of the pack and newest to present as an Alpha. He is very easy going and doesn’t have many responsibilities yet as he’s still trying to find himself as an alpha. He really looks up to the other members, especially Chan as he is a prime example of who Jeongin wants to become. The least experienced of the pack. One thing about him is he is very quick on his feet and even though he is young he knows he would die for the pack’s safety.

If you got this far thank you :') I am not the best writer but I do enjoy it and hope you do too!

©doitforbangchan

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taglist

@ihrtlix

#stray kids #stray kids x reader #straykids abo #skz smut #stray kids smut #bang chan #lee know #han jisung #changbin #jeongin #felix lee #seungmin #hyunjin

561 notes · View notes

wandanatsgf · 5 months ago

Text

Lovers, Vampires, Strangers Part 1

Pairing: Vampire!Wanda Maximoff x Vampire!Reader

Word Count: 1182

Summary: This story starts in the year 1850. You and your girlfriend Wanda are happy together. You have everything you could ever want, until she secretly turns you into a vampire. After a horrible accident, you leave her and that life behind. Now 173 years later, she's come to ask you for help.

Author's note: I tried a different style of writing, I hope you like it! This was originally posted on my old account. It was going to be a multiple part fic, but I never finished it. I am hoping to finally finish it now!

Part 2

Part 1: 1850, the Shittiest Year of My Life

This story starts in the spring of 1850. The year my life went to shit. AKA the year Wanda came into my life and ruined everything. Now I know what you’re saying dear reader, how am I alive if I was born so long ago? Well the truth is, I am a vampire, and no not the kind from twilight. We don’t sparkle in the sun. In fact we’re the same as you, except we have to eat blood to live and we have a few extra supernatural abilities.

Anyway, back to the story. The year is 1850 and I am eighteen years old. At this time I am living in France in my parent’s manor with my two siblings and best friend, Sebastian. I was normal then. I was human. My life was like any other person of nobility. It was full of balls and glitz and glamor. I would dance and be merry every night with my best friend by my side. I thought nothing could go wrong, and then it did.

I remember the exact day things changed. It was April 12, 1850. That was the day Wanda entered my life. She was an orphan, or so she said, and my parents took her in. She was the same age as me and she was beautiful. She had long brown hair and piercing green eyes that could stare into your soul. She was kind and elegant. She was perfect. Little did I know how dangerous she truly was. I was blinded by love and by infatuation. I knew not of the monster that lurked in her soul, the same monster that she made me. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Before I knew who she truly was, I spent all of my hours with Wanda. She slowly became my confidant, my lover and then my everything. Sure it was considered wrong back then, but in my heart I knew something that felt this good couldn’t be anything but right.

We would hang out by the mangroves near my house, making sure no one saw us. I would kiss her like my life depended on it and she me. I loved her with every fiber of my being, but that love burned out when she killed me.

She had asked me one day, “Don’t you want to be together forever Y/n.”

“Of course I do,” I had said, oblivious about what was to come. “That is all I wish for. I want to be with you forever and live in a world where we don’t have to hide.”

Wanda had smiled at this and handed me herbal tea we had brought with us. I took a sip and placed the glass down. Wanda had placed her hands around my neck, like she was going to kiss me and I leaned in. Her face gets within inches of mine, and then she snaps my neck.

I awoke a monster, but I didn’t know that then. I thought I had just fallen asleep in the arms of my girlfriend. I didn’t know I was a vampire, something that defies all the laws of human nature. I was something that shouldn’t exist, yet here I am now, writing all of this down.

The night I turned was the night of a ball in my honor. I foolishly attended, not knowing what it would lead to. The feelings that began to bloom within me were terrifying yet exhilarating. The power was tasty, and I was hungry. I was blinded by this and…well I’ll flashback and let you read what happened for yourselves.

“Can you fasten this around my neck?” I ask Wanda as she helps me get ready. I was putting on the finishing touches to my outfit, but I couldn’t manage to get this clasp.

“Of course Y/n.” She fastens the intricate gold and gem necklace around my neck.

“You look beautiful,” she says. My face heats up at the compliment.

“Thank you,” I look down, unable to look her in the eyes and accept the compliment.

“Hey I mean it. You’ll be the prettiest girl there tonight.” She places a soft kiss on my lips and when we break apart I can't contain my happiness.

“Now let’s go to that party and have the time of our lives,” Wanda says. I place my hand in hers and we walk that way until we reach the ballroom. We break apart when we enter the room and suddenly my senses are overwhelmed. All I can hear are the sounds of people’s heartbeats. All I can feel is hunger. My senses were overwhelmed and I didn’t understand what I was doing until it was over.

I walked up to Sebastian, my dearest friend. I didn’t mean to do it. He was my bestest friend and I just thought being around him might calm me. However the closer I got, the more tempting the feeling to rip his throat out was. I couldn’t resist it anymore and I sunk my new found fangs into his neck. He didn’t even have the chance to scream before he was dead.

People around us began to scream and I took a step back and realized what I had done.

“Sebastian,” I breathed out, coming out of the trance I had been in. People rushed past us, desperate to get away from the monster until it was only me, Wanda, and Sebastian left.

“Please no no no,” I cried. I shook his body, begging for him to wake up. All I could think was, “What have I done?”

“Come on please,” I beg. I lightly slap his face and I get nothing. Not even so much as a twitch.

“He’s not going to wake up dear. He’s dead,” comes a voice from behind me. I jump up and charge at this figure.

“This is your fault. You did this to me,” I screamed in the brunette’s face. I had her pushed up against the wall. “It was that tea wasn’t it? You did something to me, you changed me,” I cry.

“I’m sorry but I did this so we could be together forever.” She changes our position so that I am now the one pushed up against the wall.

“I did this because I love you.”

“You made me a monster,” I cried out. I could feel tears falling.

“No I didn’t honey. You’re beautiful like this.”

She gently caresses my face with her fingertips and I wince at the contact. I could feel fangs protruding where my teeth had once been. I could feel my veins popping out around my eyes and I could feel the blood that covered my face. It was sticky and wet and it belonged to my best friend. I was disgusted with myself and I could hardly breathe. I ran out of that house, with speed I didn’t know I had but that I now possessed. I left that house, that life, in the dust. I never saw Wanda again, until now. 173 years later here she is at my doorstep and I want nothing to do with her.

#vampire!wanda #vampire!wanda x vampire!reader #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #scarlet witch #scarlet witch x reader #marvel #mcu #fanfic

218 notes · View notes

mitsua · 2 months ago

Text

Silvery orb, I love his golden orbs

Warnings: none Genre: slight angst to fluff

Series: Obey me! SWD? Words' count: 0.71k

Pairing: Mammon × GN! Y/N

You've felt very uncomfortable since you were brought by force to the Devildom. Never expecting to meet angels and demons and not just any sort of demons or angels—but some are the ones that are biblically spoken of.

Some were very kind towards you while some weren't, as in every new classroom each new scholar year. By your age, you've come to terms with not getting along with everyone and just ignored them.

Not like you weren't afraid enough to even talk to them anyway.

Excepting the one who has been in charge of you since the beginning by Lucifer—the oldest of the brothers.

Mammon.

Just as you weren't expecting to meet demons and angels, you weren't expecting to befriend one. But here you are—laughing your ass off as Mammon shows you the latest scam he's gotten involved in.

There you are—feeling anger for him when he's unable to stand up for himself when his brothers talk badly about him.

There you were—taking care of him after his older brother had beaten him down for breaking the rules once more.

You couldn't really recall how many days or nights you've spent doing it anymore—not like there was any sun to call day.

You've craved to take Mammon with you to where you used to live before this cursed place and never come back again.

You knew he wouldn't accept because as much as he loves you and has told you so after building a romantic relation with you—you see how much he loves his brothers as well.

So you propose him to visit the human world with you, just for a day and a night.

You're aware Mammon has visited it hundreds of times, but you've never gone together as a couple.

You spent the day at your beach house, teaching Mammon about some human things that you'd sometimes only got to spoke about at the Devildom but weren't able to exactly show him how they function.

As the sunset came, you finally went out of the house to bury your feet in sand and play in the sea—explaining him that at that hour you've got a secret spot for yourselves until the next evening came.

So you stand there, peacefully watching the big shiny circle at the horizon come down and let the rising orb called moon bathe with its white, gentle light.

You missed this, Mammon could see it. The nostalgia in your eyes was too much to hide and it made his heart hurt.

You've spoken about moving to the human world with such an excitement that he's never noticed he's done that when giving you rational arguments to stay with his brothers.

—You know what Mammon?—you talked after so long, gusts of wind hitting your face and making your hair go along with it,—after today I've realized two things will forever stay the same for me.

Mammon gulped, awaiting for you to tell him that you want to stay in your world and that you're better off without each other. He of course didn't want any of that, but his nerves were starting to get into the surface just as the dolphin you watched hours ago jumping and splashing around.

He stayed silent, rather letting you break the subtle silence between you two and the uproar of boats passing ever so far,—I love you and after sunlit days, rises the moon in here.

You glanced at him,—I'll be wherever you want to be—. You clarified after noticing the hint of confusion on his furrowing brows, laughing softly.

Mammon had never felt so tranquil than after hearing you say that and seeing your alluring smile. He hugged you tightly and you could swear you heard him sniffle on your shoulder.

—Oh MC, I've also accepted something,—he revealed, keeping his hands on your shoulders to look you in the eyes. —You're the one I want to spend my life with, and if that comes with us having to move from the HoL, I'll go wherever you are too—.

Such fools in love you two were, weren't you?

But finally, you've come to an agreement to spend time wherever you want to that you both feel comfortable in.

—I love you to the moon and back—.

Tried out a new format!

139 notes · View notes

ineffably-human · 1 year ago

Text

We're going to scream about Nandermo all week, but right now I need to talk about Baron Afanas. Because the Baron's arc, so to speak, always felt like a big part of the series DNA for me - and oh fuck did this episode deliver on why.

I think we can agree: in the show, vampire society is fucked up, right?

Vampires on their own have plenty to deal with that can make them crazy. They have to live by killing. They lose everyone from their old lives. They have to find new reasons to keep going on, forever, so shit can get decadent really fast.

But holy shit, what that's turned into in vampire society? Where you actively put cruelty over mercy, and violence over solving your problems? Death cults and scam artists roam free, but if someone has depression the best thing to do is ignore them. Someone can get their mind wiped or be locked up for centuries, and that's just what you do to your species.

So: the Baron's arrival is the first conflict of the whole show. The joke is about an ancient powerful creature of pants-shitting terror, vs three lesser vampires who just want to live their lives and not get murdered for being too lazy to conquer humanity. There's a lot of talk about how to please him: do you keep to the old ways, or pick up some new traditions? Decorate with flayed skin, or with glitter? And the Baron says: who cares, you're all soft and useless. All that matters is getting more control over this world, until people are cattle and we have no reason to hide anymore.

But later he confesses: that shit stopped mattering ages ago. He's not even real nobility, he's literally impotent, and he talks about doing horrible things because he doesn't know what else to say. He's angry and half-crazy from boredom. And admitting that, owning those feelings, means suddenly he has three new friends and a whole new world of things to enjoy.

There's the Baron the rest of the vampire world knows, but for one night we see the ancient, unknowable terror was just a guy. Maybe he's always been just some guy.

That fun puts him in a vulnerable position, and he's killed by the most unwitting vampire slayer in fiction. But Baron Afanas is changed. He sucks dirt for a year and still comes out of it with a new lightness and joy to him. He saves the Sire, another ancient terrifying monster everyone was eager to kill or send away. They adopt the hellhound. They get cozy and give advice. They make popsicle stick houses and go on walks. They live.

And that seemed like the end of the story until last night - when the Baron suddenly felt like the butt of a joke everyone knew but him. Spurred on by someone else who feels lonely and ignored, the Baron felt vulnerable. And he snapped back to how he lived for centuries.

'What the hell are you all doing, enjoying yourselves? We're supposed to be unhappy. We're supposed to live centuries of unhappiness, bringing pain to everyone in our path, and we're definitely not supposed to cheer up our friend who's sad.'

Nobody liked the Baron before Guillermo killed him, not even other powerful vampires we meet; they saw the Baron as a crazy far beyond their own crazy. But this is also how vampire society values you. It's how they measure Nandor's worth when they think he's dead, too: how old and powerful you are, how much you've been able to conquer and kill.

Vampire pods are both cliquish and aren't expected to last in the first place. If someone dies, you literally paint them out of your lives and forget. Everything we see discourages feelings, sincerity, or even basic companionship. The only way to earn respect is to be cruel. The more cruel you are, the more powerful you are. The more powerful you are, the more feared you are - the lonelier you are, the crazier you are. It's practically designed to create the Baron, or worse.

But new vampires don't behave that way. And the vampires we follow in the show don't behave that way - because they have each other, because they've been encouraged to have each other, often by Guillermo. (Holy shit, Nadja saying maybe she'd be fine dying, and Nandor immediately asking if she's okay? Nothing changes in this house, except everything does. They're not going to almost lose one of their own ever again.)

The vampires in the heart of vampire culture never seem happy to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this.

The Baron doesn't become a tyrannical monster for long. Because he never actually was one - and because he spends two evenings and a fireball to the face, watching Nandor and Nadja fight for Guillermo. Watching them plead and cling and defy, seeing Guillermo's earnest feelings in spite of his bloodline and the mistakes he's made. Seeing Nandor's perfect trust, and then his grief, the way he insists that Guillermo was never 'just' anything. The Baron can't find real fulfillment in hurting someone (because that ship sailed ages ago). He can't deride them for caring, because he's cared for a long time now.

And when the Baron admits that's who he is, when he says it out loud, he only gains more in his life. He finds new depth in the happiness he'd felt for a while now, because he's admitted and allowed himself to be happy. And now he has the children he's always wanted. Living together, the Baron and the Sire are still ancient and powerful - and they're also family, finding real joy together in a world that was ready to dispose of them.

"I suppose with the right company, it can be beautiful, this eternal existence."

There's an inherent selfishness to being a vampire, taking from someone else in order to live. But there doesn't have to be inherent cruelty, or lack of love.

They're all ready to admit they care. The Staten vampires have all cared for Guillermo or each other in their own ways this season. And Guillermo doesn't lack for flaws, but loving his monster family has never been one of them. (When he and Nandor work their shit out, they're gonna be insufferable.)

Now they just have to let the Guide in. Because she's absolutely starved for love, and vampires get pretty fucked up when they're on their own.

#fandom: wwdits #what we do in the shadows #wwdits #i am a meta gremlin #baron afanas #tl;dr i am a sucker for choosing love #especially when the world around you says it's stupid or you're not allowed #but love was always in you so it happens anyway

758 notes · View notes

misguidedasgardian · 6 months ago

Text

Wild Cats (part V)

V. The need

MASTERLIST

Summary: Even though you just escaped death, you couldn’t count yourselves as saved yet

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Zombie apocalypse AU, living dead, zombies, guts, blood, guns, injures, cannibalism, reader eats a squirrel (after they cooked it of course), you know what this is about.

+18, MINORS DNI

Notes: Carol gets in the mean machine a bit

You guarded them, Rick, Carl, Michonne, Tyrell, Carol, Maggie, Glenn, Sasha, Bob, Tyresse and Daryl, you kept watch as you heard them make a list of everyone that was in the prison, and everyone that was accounted for, or you guessed, didn’t make it and they saw it go down

Apparently, as Carl had told you, they had been living in a prison for half a year, it was the perfect place against the new world, you’d think, as you could easily protect it, but some psycho tried to take it over with a tank, attacking the prison, destroying it in the process, and vanishing Rick’s community from there. At some point there were like forty people living in it, and in front of you is what was left.

A haunting thought

They were seeing if there was any chance someone else might still be out there, and they got to the conclusion there wasn’t, well, except for… Beth

She was Maggie’s younger sister and she was taken, when she was Daryl before you met him, before the thing with the claimers.

“New here too, right?”, asked Tara, you smiled and nodded, “I just met Rick, MIchonne and Carl a couple of days ago, after they escaped the prison, how about you?”, you asked her

“I was part of the group that took the prison”, she said with a horrid expression on her face.

“Oh”, you didn’t know what to say

“Our leader lied to us, made us do it”, she said shortly. One thing you’d learn in the apocalypse, is that is was like it was in prison, you heard very few stories, and shorter ones, nobody liked to talk about “before”

You also had a good story to tell, but… alas… nobody asked you either.

“We should get going”, said Rick

“Where are we going?”, you asked softly. He looked back at you, he didn’t have a plan, neither of you did.

“For now we keep walking until we can find someone to lay low, regroup, replenish our strength”, he said, and you nodded, that sounded like a great plan, you only hoped this place existed.

You noticed something else too, Daryl was always hanging back, measuring, watching, his crossbow always ready to release. He often walked away from the group in thought, just to come back a few hours later while you walked.

The night came quicker than you expected and to your surprise, Daryl came in with dead squirrels for dinner.

You had never eaten squirrels before.

It was… tasty, tasted like chicken. After he set a fire and cooked them himself. You always felt his eyes on you, when you looked back he seemed to be analyzing you, testing you, as you tried the squirrel and then ate it.

“Good enough for ya’?”, he asked as he munched on his

“it’s great”, you said, of course at first you were not convinced.

You couldn’t hunt for shit, and in that period when you were alone you saw some gray days, but you always managed. You had eaten so many expired canned things you were pleasantly surprised that you haven't gotten poisoned yet.

You took turns to sleep, there were fifteen of you, so you took turns. You realized that in the -adult- close circle, those being Michone, Rick, Carol, Daryl, Maggie and Glenn divided themselves into the five groups to take guards, they didn’t trust you, or the trio, or Tara more, but you understood it.

You were just almost eaten by humans who promised you sanctuary

Daryl kept watch with you like at three AM, and also Abraham, who wouldn’t let Eugene do anything of substance.

“What did you both do before all of this?”, he asked, which wasn’t fair, it was clear what he did. You looked at Daryl who didn’t answer

“Does it really matter?”, you asked

“Hell yeah”

“What I can tell you is that I didn’t do anything special”, you said simply, “nothing that could have helped me survive this anyways”, you said quietly, but you still felt both gazes on to you, “I’m a designer mayor”, you concluded, “just finished my masters when the crap hit the fan”

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here”, he said

“I’m not”, you said, but you were not willing to answer anymore and he seemed to understand it.

“And what about you?”, he asked Daryl in turn, you looked back at him expectantly, but he only mumbled something under his breath

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?”, you asked, “we are all different people now, and it’s not like we need CV’s”, you said softly.

“We are going to fix this”, he said, all convinced

“That’s just bullshit man”, muttered Daryl. You didn’t want to get your hopes up, you really didn’t. A scientist that could stop this? on their way to DC with these militars? that sounded so, so strange, but again, this had become a strange world

“I can use some people like you in the team”, he said, looking at you both. Daryl just shook his head

“You said you are going to DC?”, you asked, he nodded, “how do you know someone is there still?”, finding people that had a similar plan to yours was… endearing, maybe you weren’t so wrong after all.

“Well, we did lose contact a few weeks back, but there were still people there”, he said, “the last ones standing”. Someone created this virus, you were sure of it, and as easier someone could change this back, this was a virus, you really did hope there was a way back.

Although things were irreparable now. But at least, people didn’t have to keep coming back to life as flesh-eating monsters, and furthermore, people didn’t have to keep being eaten.

“You too”, encouraged Abraham, you raised your eyes from the fire to look at him

“Why me?”, you asked him

“I saw you wielding that ax”, he said nodding proudly, you weren’t better with an ax that Daryl was with a bow, “you both should be there when we save the world”, Daryl only chuckled, mockingly, and then stood up to go for a walk around the camp. You both joined him, because you didn’t want to have another “claimers” situation, one where the group sneaked past your round, so you went in all different directions.

“You’re with me”, muttered Daryl, you just walked towards him silently, and submerged yourself into the woods.

The moon helped you, also, the sky was clear so you could see once you adjusted your eyesight. You watched where you were going, last time you tripped he snapped at you, when you were slow he also snapped at you.

You got it, he was this tough, tracker, hunter guy, but still, he seemed to be always looming over you,watching your every move

You didn’t care, something made you want to please him, to prove yourself worthy to him, you didn’t know what it was.

You are focused so much in your “quickness” and being fast that you didn’t watched much when you were going, especially since it was pitch black, you tripped and fell on your face, and you would have been embarrassed, if it wasn’t because you didn’t trip because of a branch or something, something grabbed you.

You heard the growls and you knew you were fucked, truly fucked

“Ah!”, you screamed when you kicked and hit the walker in its face, you turned around and you could barely see the silhouette. You grabbed your ax but you were so afraid to hit yourself, it lodged in what it seemed to be it’s shoulder

You saw and heard its mouth snapping open, he was going to get you, his boney body over your other leg, not allowing you to kick him

And then, an arrow lodged itself in the middle of its forehead, stopping his movements at once.

“It’s a wonder you haven’t been killed ye”, he mumbled, coming to you, grabbing the arrow from its head, and grabbing you, getting you on your feet, “did he get ya?”, you grabbed onto him, shaking your head

“Thank you”, you said, trying to hold on into his thick arm, as you took foot on solid ground

“Be more careful will ya?”, he asked and walked away from you, releasing his hold on you.

“Sorry”, you said, catching up to him, “thank you I thought it was gonna get me”, you were shaken up, you felt your heart thundering. He didn’t say anything as he kept walking forwards, you walked stuck to his side, creeped out of your mind. Soon your round was over and you came back to the bonfire.

You didn’t understand why Daryl was so angry at you all the time. And furthermore you didn’t understand why he was hovering over you, as he sat right by your side, and slept right by you too. He wouldn’t stop checking where you were or what you were doing, you didn’t understand at all. You stole a glance at him and saw him staring into the fire. He had some beautiful eyes… the bastard, and underneath all that wild hair… he was sort of handsome, in a… special, wild way.

He caught you staring so you looked away quickly, and soon, you woke the others up and it was your time to rest.

. . .

The next night found you in the church of the priest you saved from three walkers. He gave you the creeps. You believed yourself to be a good judge of character and you did not like him at all, but you needed sanctuary, food, water and a plan, so you should be fine there for a couple of weeks. If Rick trusted him, so could you, besides, there was fifteen of you, and one of him.

There you had more time to get acquainted with the rest of the group. You’d learn that baby Judith was a badass, and super quiet for a baby. She was such a cute little baby.

You’d learned so many things from the rest of the group, how Tyresse was certainly the most intimidating-looking but a gentle giant, Bob was… odd. Carol was very reserved and if Daryl gave you judging looks he’s got nothing on her. She barely even talked to you.

Eugene was a bit of a weirdo, he was, he tried to “came onto you” multiple times and you’d reject his lewd advances quickly, and Abraham and Rosita would laugh at him. It was sort of comical, he was lacking very esencial social skills. But Abraham, Eugene and a couple of more were hellbent on fixing a broken church bus to get them to DC, and the rest of you were just trying to get supplies to keep going, or figure out what to do next.

You were not impressed by the town or its surroundings, but you were asked by Rick to stay near the church with Carl, baby Judith and the others, and you did, happily.

As you had a time for yourself, you sat in one of the church’s benches and peeked at a map you had of Georgia and the surrounding states, of the plan you had made when you got out of Atlanta, of the island…

Rick sat by your side and peeked, you looked at him, he had baby Judith in his arms

“This would have come handy before”, he chided gently

“I forgot I had it, I thought it was in my backpack, but it was in one of the zippers in my jacket”, you explained softly, there was some scribbles in it, Rick read them

“What was this?”, he pointed at your “plan V”

“Plan Vacation Village”, you said, he chuckled, “it’s an island on Lake Lanier”, you said softly, he looked at you wide-eyed, “I thought to go seek refuge there, an island right? easy to protect”

“What happened?”, he asked

“Never found out”, you said sadly, “never got to”, he looked at you funny

“This could work”, he said, “we should be close enough”

“I’m sure I’m not the only one who came to the same conclusion”, you said surely, “that islands were the safest way… it could backfire, there could be walkers trapped in there…besides, it’s big, very…”

“Maybe…”, he said. He looked ahead, at the group getting ready for dinner, “why won’t you go find Daryl and Carol? we can discuss this at dinner”, he said softly, you nodded. He treated you like you were a little girl sometimes, but… Carol and Daryl were in the watch team, they preferred it so. You walked outside and realized it was already night, pitch dark, you were going to tell Rick to fetch them yourself, you didn’t want to go at night, but there it was again, the need to prove yourself, so you went out there anyways.

You seemed to catch a glimpse of Daryl out there, so, you followed him, you didn’t want to call out for him, so you tried to move quickly. you ended up a few yards away from the church when you catched him, he was with Carol.

“... you seemed pretty cozy with her last night… the new girl”, said Carol teasingly

“She is just another dead girl”

“Rick wants us for dinner”, you said, they both froze and looked back at you, and you cursed yourself because your voice broke in the last second

They looked back at you wide-eyed

“I walk pretty stealthy for a dead girl”, you said bitterly

They were going to answer, but the three of you almost ducked when you heard an engine, a car, it passed right by you, it was black, Daryl went out of his way to catch a glimpse of it, and when he did, he was quick to grab the bow and smashed the back lights of the car they were preparing

“What are you doing!?”, asked Carol

“That’s the car that took Beth!”, he said quickly, “get in! Both of you!”, he said, and wouldn’t take no for an answer

“What?”, you asked, but they both jumped in, and rather than being out here alone, with a sigh, you jumped into the car too.

Damn you and your need to prove yourself.

#misguidedcats #daryl dixon #twd daryl #the walking dead daryl #daryl x reader #daryl fanfiction #twd daryl dixon #the walking dead daryl dixon #daryl dixon the walking dead #rick grimes #michonne #season 5 TWD #twd season 5

118 notes · View notes

snaccpopstudios · 11 months ago

Text

From the River to the Sea.

The staff of SnaccPop Studios wanted to reach out to our fans regarding our stance on the genocidal acts committed against Palestine. Though the conflict thrived well before 2023, these last few months have shown an escalation of cruelty that has become impossible for the rest of the world to ignore.

To state the matter frankly; we stand by Palestine. We acknowledge that blood is not only on the hands of the Israeli government, but also the American, British, and other world governments who have and continue to enable Israel's actions. Any government, company, or corporation that attempts to accommodate "both sides," or inadvertently shows support through inaction is equally complicit in creating a climate in which this genocide is allowed to take place. It is for this reason we feel compelled to speak out and condemn these acts for what they are; genocide, theft, ethnic cleansing, and mass-murder.

We believe that all those responsible for these innocent deaths must be called for and prosecuted as murderers in the first degree, regardless of status. But we also acknowledge that this will likely never happen.

In light of this, what can we do? We believe that it is not the citizen's burden alone to end this genocide, and yet we must call upon every individual person to reflect on this matter and do what we can to make things right. An initial step for many of us would be to seek to educate themselves on this matter. We must learn from history to avoid unwittingly contributing to further oppressions. We will be providing a few trustful sources for you all to further educate yourselves and donate to, if you are able to.

We must also ask everyone to remember that these lives are irrevocably lost. Children who are now without parents, families separated and lost–these people's lives will be permanently affected by these events, if they survive. Their pain and trauma will impact the future for everyone on our planet. It is vital to acknowledge this and treat it with the gravity it is due. It is so easy to distance ourselves from these events, to compartmentalize the trauma of people we don't know, people who live so far away from many of us. It is easy to get caught up in the narrative disseminated by mainstream media, to detach ourselves from the real human suffering, to view it as a story that has nothing to do with us. We must perform due diligence to discern the truth and act accordingly. Acknowledging the suffering and remembering all that has been lost is vital to holding Israel accountable for their genocidal acts.

We must also use our empathy to realize that this is one of the great injustices of humanity; by allowing it to happen now, we further enable it to happen to other disenfranchised groups in the future. None of us are truly safe if we allow this brutality to wage unchecked. We cannot allow our governments to believe that we will tolerate or condone this, now or ever.

Links:

Care for Gaza. Providing distribution of cash, food, or other supplies needed like medicine or clothes to displaced families in Gaza. https://www.gofundme.com/f/careforgaza. As of writing this, the GoFundMe is no longer accepting donations, but their PayPal in their Twitter (https://twitter.com/CareForGaza) still is.

Pious Projects. Providing menstrual/hygiene kits to those who menstruate in Gaza. https://piousprojects.org/campaign/2712

eSims for Gaza. Helping those in Gaza remain connected to the outside world, stay connected with families, and show what’s happening within Gaza. https://gazaesims.com/

History of Palestine and debunking myths spread: https://decolonizepalestine.com/

PDF Booklet provided by Bisan on her Instagram. Advocating for Palestine that recounts Israeli propaganda and how to spot and debunk them. https://sites.google.com/view/advocatingforpalestine/?fbclid=PAAaZtxfP5EBAZSRP6h15wi96-dnCuOgOlE0aXKVB8gCtQbokaSE9N1nxzkuA_aem_AaIBVrty_hSHN28vgu0T-rJly_eLH5YAFKxLcCLLBNBXl8QZiUe4fvR-pkBV_8x6UyM

Boycott, Diversity, and Sanctions (BDS) website: https://bdsmovement.net/

Please note these aren’t all of the available resources out there, but a few collected, trusted ones. Take the time and effort to look and reach further yourselves, as we will continue to do so ourselves.

SnaccPop Studios 🍉

#snaccpop studios

204 notes · View notes

neonnoir-ao3 · 1 year ago

Text

Caine and Pomni falling in love in the Circus and making it out together only for Caine to realize how warped all their personalities were compared to who they actually are in reality, but especially Pomni’s.

Okay literal train-of-thought word salad from here on out, prepare yourselves accordingly.

• Like he knows Pomni as an anxious little jester but they love each other and she’s cute and funny and affectionate and all that fun stuff. But once they’re in reality he follows her like a lost puppy because he has no idea how this place works and gets to see how she actually lives.

• Pomni is basically an accidental femcel when it comes to vibes. A complete girlfailure, if you will. (socially isolated, chronically single brunette with glasses, you get the idea)

• A “nice relaxing night for her” is playing a random YouTube video essay that’s like three hours long while lounging on the couch and not wearing pants, eating an entire bag of chips and probably hitting her bong. She gave up on dating in college due to failure after failure so she’s accepted that she’s gonna die alone… or rather she says she has. (She read that “I’m not doing to be loved in this lifetime, am I?” quote in a TikTok slideshow and proceeded to down an entire bottle of wine that night while sobbing)

• She wanted to get a cat to ease the loneliness, but she doesn’t feel good enough— a cat deserves more than just a shitty apartment with a wreck of an owner in their mid-20s.

• He goes back to her apartment— it’s dingy and shitty but it’s the closest place to the office that she can afford. Her half of her pantry is ramen she bought in bulk. She’s medicated to high heaven and her kitchen counters look like a pharmacy.

• Pomni is either so fucking embarrassed when Caine sees how her life is in reality or the Human Depression™ in her Human Body™ has already set back in by the time they get there and she’s just miserably accepting of it. There is no in-between.

• She showers for the first time since The Incident (she didn’t need to bathe in the DC, her clothes were literally attached to her body there/hygiene was a total nonissue in that world) and she just breaks down and spends a good 30-40 minutes taking a scalding hot shower (as all the depressed girlies do) while sobbing her heart out. It’s cathartic as fuck to be able to lose her shit for once without the threat of abstraction, but it also hurts so fucking badly at the exact same time.

• Something about mental illness in real humans versus their digital avatars really messes with Caine. At the very least he could create a zany adventure to get their mind off of things, but then there’s some days where Pomni just stays in bed all day and doesn’t say a word. This world is so harsh and dull and colorless in comparison to the world he was made for, and there are fleeting moments where he wonders if it would’ve been better if they had both stayed there.

#ANGST ANGST ANGST #might reblog this with a quick fluff chaser so check back soon #caine x pomni #pomni x caine #showtime ship #showtime tadc #tadc showtime #showtime

319 notes · View notes

medlarmeadows · 7 months ago

Text

The Best of Us, The Worst of Us (The Last of Us)

q!Charlie Slimecicle x fem!reader

Synopsis: In the midst of the zombie apocalyptic world of The Last of Us, you and Charlie stumble upon a little girl who became the light of your lives for the rest of her life.

Warning(s): blood, swearing, violence, mild gore (descriptive scenes of wounds and blood), main-character (?) death, HEAVY angst, mild-suicidal ideation, physical threatening, panic attack, bittersweet ending

Word Count: 6.6k

A/N: The last sentence in my notes for this fic was “This is angst we ball”. I am so sorry.

masterlist

Surviving in a zombie apocalyptic world was tough. If you weren’t fighting off zombies or other survivors, your next problem was finding food and shelter.

Luckily for you and Charlie, you both knew how to be resourceful.

You’d both done things you weren’t proud of. Between sneaking up on survivors and picking them off one by one so you could loot the bodies and the location, and savagely tearing apart the bodies of the undead without even blinking an eye, you could safely say the apocalypse had changed you both.

Whether that turned you into the worst versions of yourselves, you couldn’t say.

“Hey Charlie,” you had asked him on a rare day when you had simply relaxed by a brook. It had been a peaceful day, one without any scavenging runs, or even run ins with zombies or other survivors.

“Yes, my love?” he replied.

Despite yourself, you feel your chest warm. Ten years since the world turned to shit, but your boyfriend never failed to find a way to make you feel loved.

Too bad you would be the one to break that mood.

“Are we bad people?”

There was a beat of silence as Charlie registered your words. You see him frown from behind the old sunglasses he had picked up from an abandoned mall (“You can’t stop the drip, even if you might get bit!” “Charlie, if you wear that and we get ambushed, you are most definitely going to get bit.” “But I will look cool during it.” “And also dead.”), the sun reflecting off the lenses and shielding his eyes from your view.

“Sure, we’ve done questionable things,” he starts slowly, as if he was processing every word before he said them. “But I don’t think that makes us bad people. I think that just makes us survivors.”

It’s your turn to frown as you mull over his words. The dead leaves on the ground rustle as Charlie shifted, leaning over to hold the side of your face gently.

“We’ve been doing this for ten years,” he murmurs. “What’s got you thinking about this now?”

You worry your lip as you lean into his touch, his calloused hands bringing a striking contrast to his gentle hold. It grounds you in the midst of your busy thoughts.

“I don’t know,” you reply softly. “I guess, I’ve just been feeling a little sentimental recently.”

“Oh yeah? I get that too.”

You snort, before grabbing Charlie’s hand in yours and placing a kiss to the back of his hand. He responds by pulling you towards him into a cuddle on the forest floor.

“I guess that just shows we still have a little bit of humanity left over,” he murmurs as he places a kiss into your hair.

“I guess so,” you reply as the two of you drift off into a comfortable silence, interrupted only by the soft burbling of the brook.

Camping out in the forest was always a gamble, no matter how peaceful it seemed to be. Without four walls to protect you, you could be easily ambushed by survivors and zombies alike.

You were up the second you heard the sound of empty tin cans crashing to the ground. Charlie shot up from the bed roll moments after you, eyes wide and alert.

The two of you had set up camp behind a couple of large logs, large enough to obscure most of your view of where your campfire had been (Survival tip number 1: never sleep immediately next to your campfire, and always put it out before you sleep) so you couldn’t immediately see whoever or whatever had knocked over your trash.

Reaching for your shotgun that was always within arm’s reach of you, you mouthed to Charlie, “I’ll approach, you flank.”

With a thumbs up from him, you make your way to the source of the noise as quietly and quickly as you can. The moment you step out to face the culprit, you aim the shotgun at them, ready to fire if need be and –

“Oh my god.”

The moonlight just barely illuminated the figure before you. Standing before you, in clothes torn, tattered, and muddied with both dirt and what must have been dried blood, was a girl who could be no older than eight years old. She was on her knees, seemingly having just tripped over the small pile of tin cans in the darkness, and you notice that one of her shoes was missing.

The girl is frozen for a second, eyes wide and staring at the shotgun. The pair of spectacles slips down her nose just a little, enough to draw your attention to it. One of the lenses was cracked.

Charlie appears behind her just a second later, moments away from tackling what he had probably thought was a lone adult survivor. She senses him behind her and turns, mouth falling open.

In a split second, Charlie has the girl in his arms, one hand pressed over her mouth to stop her from screaming. You drop the shotgun on the ground and run to them.

“Calm down,” you try as she wiggled in Charlie’s grasp. Her chest rose and fell in panic.

This wouldn’t do.

“Charlie let go of her,” you hiss at him, keeping your volume low to avoid attracting any potential threats.

“If I let go, she’s going to scream,” he hisses back.

You let out a deep sigh and try to put on the most kind and genuine smile you could muster.

“Hello,” you say gently. “I’m Y/N. We’re not going to hurt you, but we need you to calm down and not scream. If you scream, the zombies will come, and everybody is going to get hurt.”

The kid’s eyes widened just a fraction, darting around the darkness to look around. You reach for one of her hands and rub your thumb over the back of it in hopes to help soothe her.

“There’s no one here except for us, for now. You can relax, try to calm down.”

After a few seconds, the child’s breathing slows down, and she seemed to relax in Charlie’s arms a little. When he was sure that she wasn’t going to scream, he let go of her and moved to kneel beside her on the ground.

“Hey,” Charlie says softly. “Sorry for grabbing you like that, I’m Charlie. What’s yours?”

The girl raises her hands and starts to gesture shakily. Confused at first, Charlie turns to look at you, but you realise quickly that she was signing to the two of you. Your mouth opens slightly when you realise.

“– I – P – P – A. Juanaflippa? Did I get that right?” you ask.

The girl nods excitedly, a smile spreading on her face in contrast to the panic she had been in just moments earlier.

“It’s nice to meet you, Juanaflippa. What are you doing out in the forest?”

She starts signing again, but soon realised that you were reaching your limit of your sign language knowledge. You exchange looks with Charlie, who was equally lost. Then, Juanaflippa was gesturing again:

“Oh! Pen and paper!” gasps Charlie. “I think we might have scrap paper and a pen somewhere, let me find it.”

As Charlie rushed back to your bed roll, you move closer to Juanaflippa to help her stand up. She stumbles a little and leans a little into your side.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt somewhere?”

She nods, lifting her foot with the missing shoe.

“You hurt your foot?”

As she nods again, you feel something in your heart shatter for her. Why was a girl so young out in the forest all alone? Why did she have to suffer in this world that would never be kind to her?

You almost whiplash. You weren’t sure when was the last time you felt compassion for someone other than Charlie.

Pushing down your bubbling, confusing emotions, you say, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you patched up. Come on.” And you gather her up in your arms and carry her over to where your bed rolls were.

The remainder of the night was spent patching Juanaflippa up. By the time you had finished wrapping her foot injury – which luckily seemed to just be a sprained ankle – with some bandages and wiped the dirt off her face, the little girl was sound asleep in Charlie’s arms.

Cradling her gently, Charlie looked up at you. His wide eyes met yours, and you immediately knew the question which was on his mind.

“Charlie,” you began softly. “It could be dangerous.”

“But – ” you wince when his voice cracked slightly “ – she’s just a child. God knows what she’s already gone through alone, we can’t – we have to – ”

“We won’t,” you say firmly.

You place a hand over one of Charlie’s which had started to shake over Juanaflippa’s shoulder. Intertwining your fingers with his, you lean over to place a chaste kiss on his cheek. Strong emotions start bubbling up again from your chest, this time towards your boyfriend with a heart of gold. Charlie had already set his mind on taking in Juanaflippa, and you knew you would follow his lead in a heartbeat.

“We’ll protect her, I promise.”

You and Charlie had only planned to camp in the forest for one night, so you were going into the nearest town in the morning. As per yours and Charlie’s routine, the plan would be to scope out a potential camp for the night, preferably in a secured building, then search around for loot. If you were lucky, you would be able to sneak around zombies and survivors alike. Most of the time, the two of you would be able to make it through the day without anything more than a minor scuffle.

Truth be told, you and Charlie enjoyed the adrenaline rush that came with a fight. You didn’t push you’re your luck often, but what was life without a little risk? However, with Juanaflippa to take care of, the two of you had to be more careful than you were used to.

The little girl was a good sport, even with her injury. But even then, the three of you moved slower than usual.

“We should probably set up camp, then one of us stays with the kid, the other goes and scavenges,” you had suggested in the morning.

“Are you kidding?” came Charlie’s worried reply. “We don’t ever split up. That’s like the worst decision ever. Besides, the kid’s gotta learn how to survive in this world.”

“Yeah, but maybe when she’s got some food and healed up,” you shot back.

“Fine, fine. But once she’s recovered, I’m gonna teach her how to shoot a gun.”

“Charlie, no – ”

“Hey, Juanaflippa! Wanna learn how to shoot a gun?”

That conversation had ended with Charlie and Juanaflippa jumping around you excitedly. You sighed exasperatedly, but it had been hard to hide your fond smile.

Luck seemed to be on your side because your plan for the day went smoothly. You managed to find an old video game store (“Oh my god, Dying Light! I loved that game!”) and secured it as your camp for the next few nights. Once that was done, Charlie had slipped out to gather some food and medicine, returning safely before night fell.

The three of you took things slow, slower than you and Charlie had ever done things in the past ten years. What was routine and almost second nature to the two of you became teaching opportunities for Juanaflippa.

And she had the best teachers.

“Okay, Flippa – can I call you Flippa?”

Juanaflippa nods at Charlie, bouncing on her toes excitedly.

“Awesome! Alright, here’s how you hold a gun – ”

Just at that moment, you emerge from the store to see your boyfriend and Flippa standing side by side, Flippa clutching Charlie’s handgun awkwardly in her small hands.

“What the fuck, Charlie – ”

“Don’t curse around the baby!” he exclaims, shooting you a look and covering Flippa’s ears dramatically. The young girl just looks at you innocently, eyes wide behind her cracked glasses.

Dumbfounded, you set down the water you had brought out for them.

“You’re admonishing me for cursing, but you’re teaching her to shoot a gun?”

Shaking your head at them, you march back into the store to retrieve your shotgun, coming back out to stand watch for them in case any runners or scavengers got attracted to the noise of a clumsily fired handgun.

A few days later, you find yourselves back in the woods after getting chased out of the town by some stray runners that had caught you off guard. The moment the sound of ambling limbs and uncoordinated footsteps drew near, Charlie had scooped Juanaflippa up in his arms and raced away while you covered their backs, occasionally letting a gunshot ring when a runner got too close.

After ensuring you were no longer being chased by the pack of zombies, you and Charlie decided to set up camp in the woods. Charlie insisted on bringing Juanaflippa with him to collect firewood (which you knew was a poorly disguised excuse for bringing her aside to teach her how to kill some small woodland animal probably) but you quickly denied the man, offering to teach Juanaflippa how to set up camp instead.

“So, Flippa,” you asked as you teach her how to set up the tarp for shelter, “how did you come to find us in the woods?”

Flippa worried her lip, setting down her side of the tarp to take out the notebook and pen you had managed to scavenge for her. After scribbling down a few words, she turns the notebook to you:

I was left behind. We were attacked. I couldn’t find anybody.

“Oh,” you breathed shakily.

Flippa nodded before hanging her head. One of her hand lifts to wipe at her face as her shoulders start to shake.

“Oh, baby,” you whisper, before gathering her up in your arms. Her arms come to wrap around your neck, squeezing you back tightly as she buried her face into your neck.

“Flippa, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” you say as you rub circles into her back, “but we’ve got you now. Charlie and I will protect you, I promise.”

Juanaflippa takes a minute to calm down, and when she does, she pulls away slightly and brings one of her hands up to face. Opening her palm, with her pinkie facing you, she taps her thumb twice on her chin.

Curious, you tilt your head and ask, “What does that mean?”

A grin starts forming on Flippa’s face and she starts signing the letters to you. You feel tears well up in your eyes as you recognise the four-letter word as:

“Mama,” you choke on your words. Sniffling, you nod vigorously at the girl, gripping her tighter. “Yes, I’ll be your mama sweetheart. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect, but I promise that I’ll keep you safe.”

Charlie returns to see the sobbing mess that you are, and a grinning, slightly teary-eyed Flippa. Knowing it took a lot to get you to cry, Charlie drops the bundle of wood he had collected and rushes to your side, holding the two of you and barraging you with a series of questions:

"Are you alright? What happened? Are you both okay?”

Flippa interrupts him by signing at him, making the same gesture as before but this time tapping her thumb twice on her forehead. Charlie frowns, confused and worried.

“What does that mean, Flippa?”

She manages to wriggle out of your grip slightly to pick up the discarded notebook and pen to write down one word:

Papa.

If you were emotional, Charlie was downright inconsolable. The three of you sit there on the forest floor, wrapped up in each other both physically and emotionally. Juanaflippa is sandwiched in a hug between the two of you, content to just be between the two humans who had decided to love her unconditionally that night in the woods.

By the time you calm down, the sun is starting to set, and you and Charlie both get to teach your daughter how to start a fire.

(“Charlie, please control your pyro tendencies,” you plead with him out of Flippa’s earshot. All you get is a non-committal “No promises.” and a wink.)

You make a couple days trek out of the woods and into the next town to search for more supplies. By this time, Flippa’s ankle had healed, and she was wearing tightly laced shoes Charlie had found in the last town. She was armed with a small knife (you had refused to let Charlie give her a gun) and walked between you and Charlie at all times.

Given that Juanaflippa was better equipped now, you and Charlie decided to take the chance and go on supply runs together as a family. It was a hard-fought battle between Charlie’s insistence and your anxiety, but he eventually reasoned it out with you, proposing a game plan.

Whenever you entered a new area, Charlie, being at the head of the group, would keep an eye out for potential hiding spots for Flippa, signalling them to you. If things went south, one of you would shout “Flippa, hide!” and point to one of the hiding spots for her to go to.

It was a fair plan, and the only way for him to convince you to let all three of you go on supply runs together.

Quietly, the three of you were sneaking into an abandoned grocery story in hopes you could scavenge some canned food, one of the supplies which dwindled the fastest now that you were a party of three and not two. The sliding glass doors were frozen half-open, allowing the three of you to slip through with no issue.

It was early in the afternoon, but the sunlight didn’t reach far enough into the grocery store for you to be able to see well inside. Electricity certainly didn’t work anymore, so after walking deeper into the store, the three of you took out your flashlights.

Too bad you didn’t notice the clicker first.

The sound of three flashlights clicking on at the same time was enough for the clicker to turn its gruesome, fungal head in your direction. The three of you freeze, breathing shallowly as the grotesque creature made its disturbing clicking noises. Charlie motions for the three of you to back away quietly, and so you do.

Too focussed on the clicker in front of you, you don’t notice the clicker that had crept up behind you until it clicks in your ear.

You side-step the clicker before it can take a chomp out of your neck, but not quick enough for you to avoid getting pulled down to the ground by it. There’s a high-pitched scream in the background, and you put all your strength into your hips and arms to quickly overpower the creature, rolling the two of you over and stabbing your knife into its neck. Mercilessly, you drag the knife, ripping it’s throat out in a spray of blood and gore to ensure it was dead.

The noise had prompted the clicker in front of your party to charge, and you could see Charlie engaging with it, dodging its arms, and slicing its jaw with his machete. Quickly, you turn your gaze to where Flippa was, ice seeping into your veins when you don’t notice her figure between yours and Charlie’s.

A second high-pitched scream rang out from your right.

Whipping your head further down the aisle, you notice a squirming mass on the floor, barely illuminated by the flashlights which had dropped to the floor. You sprint over to wrestle the third clicker off of Juanaflippa, yelling for Charlie to get Flippa out of the store. As your boyfriend scoops Flippa into his arms and runs out, you manage to climb onto the clicker’s back.

You’re briefly winded when the zombie knocks you into the shelf, but you quickly retaliate by plunging your knife deep into its chest several times, uncaring of how your hands were dripping in its blood. It finally drops to the ground, unmoving, and you sprint out of the store before any more unseen clickers or runners came looking for the source of the noise.

The first thing you saw was Charlie patting Flippa down, fussing over her and checking for injuries. You approach them after sheathing your knife, panic slowly dissipating seeing them out of danger.

“Are you both okay?” you ask, patting Flippa down quickly before turning to Charlie.

He pulls you in tightly and kisses you deeply, quickly pulling away when he remembers the small child watching. You catch his gaze briefly, noting his pupils still wide from adrenaline, before sweeping your gaze over the rest of his body to check for injuries.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly, “Adrenaline rush. I think that’s the most action I’ve gotten in more than a week.”

You nod in agreement. Your right hand shakes slightly from leftover adrenaline, and you glance down to notice it soaked in blood that wasn’t your own. Nonchalantly, you wipe it against your pant leg.

“It was a little fun,” you admitted, but turning to Juanaflippa, you feel a stab of fear in you again. “But Flippa, oh my god, I’m so sorry, we should have been more careful.”

You scoop her up in your arms, hugging her tight. You can feel the erratic beating of her chest against your own, and your squeeze her a little just to remind yourself that she was okay. Pulling away from her slightly, you check her again.

“Are you alright? Did you get hurt?”

Juanaflippa shakes her head, holding up an OK sign. Satisfied, you ruffle her hair and stand up.

After that run in, neither you nor Charlie were in a state to go on another supply run, so you found an abandoned house to set up camp in. In a stroke of luck, you managed to find some leftover canned goods in the kitchen.

As you prepared dinner, you notice Juanaflippa draw into herself, doodling or writing something in her notebook. Worriedly, you turn to Charlie who was checking how much ammo you had left.

“Charlie, could you check on Flippa again?”

He looked up from your supplies, eyes darting over to where Flippa was before looking back at you.

“I checked on her just now,” he assures you. “She’s alright, just shaken. Said she needed some time alone.”

You hummed, not quite content with his answer, but accepting it. You hear a sigh, then footsteps, and a pair of arms was wrapping themselves around your waist.

“You’re worried,” Charlie mumbles into your hair.

“Of course I am,” you bite back, your gaze remaining focussed on the beans you were heating up on a makeshift stove.

“Love, you know it’s not your fault, right?”

You give a heavy sigh, gripping the spoon tightly.

“But she got hurt. We weren’t careful enough.”

“She’s alright, we checked her over multiple time.”

“She could’ve gotten bit.”

“But she didn’t.”

“But she could’ve,” you shot back, mindful to keep your volume low so that Flippa wouldn’t overhear your conversation.

The arms around your waist hug you tighter, and Charlie presses a kiss to your hair (which was dirty and slightly bloodied from the fight, but of course your boyfriend had to be a sweetheart).

“She’s okay,” he insists. “We all got a little roughed up, but we’re all fine. We’ll be more careful next time. And if anything happens, we’ll fight our hardest to make sure she’ll get out of it unscathed.”

A gentle hand reaches for your jaw, tilting your head towards him and giving you a light, reassuring kiss. You revel in the safety of being in Charlie’s arms, and in that moment, you feel as though you were sheltered from every horror the world could throw to you, both physical and emotional.

A tug at your pants draws your attention to the small girl who had made her way towards you two, giving you a cheeky grin as though she knew she was interrupting a moment. Letting out a playful sigh, Charlie picks her up and places a sloppy kiss on her cheek, which she protests by batting at his face.

You shake your head softly at them, turning your attention back to the food to ensure it didn’t burn. Your attention, however, was split again when Flippa and Charlie start launching double attacks on you, trying to outdo each other on the number of kisses they can sneak on your face as you cook.

(Charlie has Flippa in his arms, giving her an unfair advantage as he purposely sways her closer to you. He doesn’t acknowledge this when she cheers and raises her hands 5 to 2, signalling her win, but you shoot him a knowing look.)

As the night drew to a close, you tucked Juanaflippa into bed, placing a soft kiss on her forehead.

If anything were to happen to her, you swore you would burn the world to the ground.

Everything was going to shit.

The three of you had decided to make a supply run the next day. You had banked on the hope that things would be more chill after the scare the previous day.

Of course, luck chose to run out on you today.

You had made it barely ten minutes into stuffing cans into your rucksacks when gunshots were ringing in the convenience store. Semi-automatic gun shots.

“Fucking Fireflies!” hissed Charlie as the three of you took cover behind the counter.

Your eyes scanned around, looking for a way out that was not blocked by the Fireflies. You notice the glass-less window by the counter.

“Charlie, roll your pipe bomb the other way, then sneak out with Flippa. I’ll give cover,” you whisper frantically.

Charlie nods at you before doing what you say. The bomb goes off, clearly taking some of the Fireflies down by the sound of pained screams, and the three of you are off. You whip out your shotgun and fire on the Fireflies nearest to you, taking down another two more before following Flippa and Charlie out.

Another series of gunshots ring out as you’re pulled down behind an abandoned car.

“Why the fuck is a whole squad here,” you curse.

“Hell if I know,” Charlie shoots back. He peeks up from the car to fire off a few shots from the semi-automatic rifle he had, cursing when empty clicks come out after only a few shots.

“Fuck! I don’t have anymore ammo for this stupid gun,” he says as he swings the gun over his back, pulling out another pipe bomb and throwing it at the Fireflies.

Between the two of you, Flippa is crouched with her hands over her ears, eyes wide and darting around. You wrap an arm around her shoulder, squeezing and trying to offer as much comfort as you can to the distressed girl.

“We’re going to get you out of this, Flippa, I promise.”

There’s another spray of bullets, then the sound of thundering footsteps. Gunshots start ringing again, but this time directed away from the three of you. Poking your head up from the car, you realise that a hoard of runners was attacking the Fireflies, clearly having been attracted by all the noise.

“Retreat!” one of the Fireflies yelled.

“Let’s go, now,” hissed Charlie, taking advantage of the chaos.

You follow Charlie as he leads the three of you through the chaos, ducking behind another car. However, it seems that the hoard was much bigger than you had realised because stragglers were starting to approach you too.

With your cover blown, you aim your shotgun and take down as many runners as you can, ears ringing slightly. As you reach into your pocket to grab more shotgun shells, you curse when you realise your pocket was empty.

“Fuck! Charlie, I’m out.”

“Your handgun?”

“Ran out of ammo in the store.”

“Fuck.”

You share a quick look of panic before he tosses you his machete. Turning to Flippa, he grabs her hand in his.

“Flippa, we’re gonna get you out of this. I’m gonna put you in a hiding place, okay? Don’t come out unless one of us comes to get you, alright?” he says, before glancing over at you.

You give him a short nod, before turning your attention to the runners. By now, you couldn’t hear anymore gunfire and you presumed that the Fireflies were either all dead or had fled.

One less set of problems for you.

You lunge at the nearest runner, slashing at it with your machete. You keep yourself between the runners and your family, trying your hardest to stop them from getting anywhere near where Charlie was trying to hide Flippa.

You let your mind fall back into the routine of combat, slashing and hacking at the runners with practiced ease. While Charlie’s machete weighed a little heavier on your hand, it gave you better range than your knife did.

In the corner of your eye, you spot Charlie return to the fray. He’s firing at the runners, landing lucky headshots, and taking down runners quicker than you do with the machete. You refrain from asking about Flippa, too high strung and tensed from the combat to break out of your hyperfocus.

One by one, the runners go down, but not fast enough. Your concentration breaks slightly when you hear a yell from Charlie. You turn around in time to see him get knocked down by a runner who got too close for him to shoot.

“Charlie!”

You try to rush over, but a pull at your pants holds you back. On instinct, you swing your machete without looking, turning to look right after the blade hits flesh with a heavy crunch.

Your blood runs cold when your gaze drops below your eye level to make eye contact with Juanaflippa, her eyes wide with fear.

Your gaze drops lower.

The blade was lodged right into the crook of her neck, blood spurting from the wound at a horrifying rate. Her blood seeps into her clothes, and what isn’t absorbed by the fabric drips down her arm.

The knife she was holding drops to the ground, right before her knees give out.

“NO!”

You barely register the scream you let out, focussed on catching Flippa in your arms to bring her softly to the ground. The machete drops to the floor the moment you let go, causing the wound to gush even more. Frantically, your hands press against Flippa’s neck, desperately trying to plug the wound.

Your world tunnel visions to just Juanaflippa. You feel words tumble out of your mouth, but you don’t register any of it. You don’t remember how to breathe.

Someone is shaking your shoulders. Muffled words rise to your ears. The person stops shaking you and you see arms enter your vision, reaching for Flippa –

“DON’T TOUCH HER!” you scream, one arm pulling her closer while the other still tries to stop the gushing wound. The fog lifts slightly and you finally hear Charlie’s voice saying:

“We need to go! More runners are coming.”

“Flippa, oh god – ”

“Fucking move Y/N!”

With incredible strength, Charlie picks Flippa up, balancing her on one arm while the other pulls you to your feet and drags you along with him. You don’t register where you’re going until you hear the door close behind you, and you realise you’re in a building.

Charlie softly puts Flippa on the ground before rushing back to the door to barricade it, ensuring you were safe from the zombies. But you barely notice his actions, your focus tunnelling into Flippa again.

You drop to your knees beside her, hands shakily pressing into her neck once more.

“Y/N stop.”

“No – Charlie – she’s bleeding, I need to stop it.” Your words come out in stuttered gasps.

“Y/N – ”

“I need cloth, gauze, oh my god where’s my medkit – ”

“Y/N, she’s – ”

“Charlie shut up! Help me, please – ”

Hands grab yours and tears them away from Flippa’s body. You protest with a cry, wrestling in Charlie’s grip as he forces one of your hands to Flippa’s chest.

You don’t feel a heartbeat.

You stop struggling.

“She’s dead,” says Charlie.

Your mouth opens and closes, but no words come out.

You stare at Flippa’s lifeless corpse.

Your hands slip from her chest to her upper arms limply, and you notice a scabbed over wound on one of her upper arms. Lifting the sleeve, you finally notice the bite mark.

Suddenly, you’re shoved away from Flippa’s body.

“Don’t you dare,” hisses Charlie, his demeanour changing like a switch turned on in him as he scoops Flippa’s body into his arms, shuffling away from you. “Don’t you dare touch her, you fucking murderer.”

You think your lungs stopped working. You think you’ve gone mute. But all you can do is stare.

“How could you!” he screams at you, tears spilling over. “She was our daughter!”

Numbly, you try to crawl towards them, but you’re stopped when Charlie draws his knife at you.

“Don’t come any fucking closer,” he heaves, one arm tight around Flippa. “I’ll kill you.”

That snaps you out of your stupor.

“Charlie – ” your voice cracks. “I – ”

“You don’t get to make excuses. This is all your fault.”

His eyes are blown wide, his entire frame shaking. Before you wasn’t your boyfriend, it was the horrifying consequence of your actions.

“Flippa – ”

“Keep her name out of your fucking mouth!” he shouts at you. But his attention draws to the girl in his arms.

Flippa’s eyes were still open, devoid of life and the playful glint that never seemed to go away. Her body was limp in Charlie’s arms, which now curl around her protectively, knife forgotten on the floor.

“Flippa,” he wails, holding her close to his chest, uncaring of how her blood stains his clothes or the fact that her body was growing steadily colder.

You watch the two of them, your greatest loves.

You look down at your bloodied hands.

You want to cry, but you can’t.

You stare.

You and Charlie spent the night in the secured building, neither of you having the energy to move, much less fight through a horde of runners your dead daughter in your arms.

(“This was her hiding spot,” scoffed Charlie as he cradled Flippa’s body in his arms. “But I guess she wanted to come out and help”.

He glances at you from across the room. While you hadn’t moved from your spot, Charlie had shuffled himself and Juanaflippa’s body as far away from you as possible.

“I wish she hadn’t thought you worth helping,” he spits.)

The next day, once you were sure the runners had drifted off somewhere else, the two of you exited the building and brought Juanaflippa’s body to a nearby forest.

You buried her body by a tree, marking her resting place with a small stone that Charlie had carved her name into.

(Charlie finally notices the bite mark on her upper arm. You could see the gears turning in his head, questions welling up in his mind. But he heaves a heavy sigh, and you gather that he probably reached the same conclusion you did:

It didn’t matter anymore.)

You each speak your final words to Juanaflippa. Charlie casts loathing glances at you the whole time.

You camp near her grave for one night. You move on the next, survival instincts pushing the two of you back onto the monotonous routine of kill-scavenge-camp.

You and Charlie don’t speak to each other unless it was necessary, and even then, Charlie’s voice is laced with a poison you had never heard from your lover before. The animosity drives you to sleep apart from each other, never coming within two metres of each other.

Some nights, you wonder if you wouldn’t wake up at all.

Some mornings, you wish you hadn’t woken up at all.

Five days after Juanaflippa’s death, you’re taking stock of your shared supplies. As you pour out the contents of your rucksack onto the carpeted floor of the abandoned house, a folded note drops out along with the metal tin cans.

Unfolding it, you immediately recognise Flippa’s chicken scratch handwriting.

“Charlie,” you croak out, voice rough from disuse.

“Fuck off.”

You glance over to wear Charlie was laying by the opposite wall. You gesture the paper at him, knowing he could probably see it in his peripheral vision.

“It’s a note. From Flippa.”

He turns towards you slightly, and you can tell he’s debating whether or not to come over. His anger clearly trumps over any other emotion because he says:

“Read it, I’m not coming over.”

You open the note fully, and begin reading:

Dear Mama and Papa, thank you for being there for me. You saved me in that forest, and you taught me so many things. The past elaven ellen eleven days have been the best of my life. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the bite. I know what it means. I’m sorry that I’m going away soon. But I want you to know that it was not your fault. I love you both very much. Please live well. Love, Flippa.

You don’t realise that you’d begun crying until your tears clouded your vision. Shakily, you put down the letter, scooting away in case Charlie wanted to come over to read it.

You swipe your hands over your eyes, but nothing seemed to stop the tears from falling. You let out a whimper that turns into unbridled wails of despair you’d kept bottled up over the last five days. Burying your head in your hands, you shake and cry.

You don’t hear Charlie move until arms wrap around you. You flinch away from him, a warbled apology coming out from your mouth, but he holds you tighter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you repeat over and over, hands shaking as you try to pry yourself from the man you know hates you.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, and you can hear him holding back tears.

“IT WAS MY FAULT. I promised I would keep her safe and I KILLED HER,” you yell back at him, hands reaching for your hair to pull and pull because you deserved all the pain from the same hands that tore Juanaflippa away from this world.

Charlie’s hands reach for yours, prying them away from your head and holding them by your side. You try to wrestle them out from his grip, but he holds your wrists tighter. His legs and arms cage you in, holding you close to him as he whispers apologies and words of comfort between his own tears.

Finally, you stop fighting him, and you sob into your boyfriend’s chest. Charlie lets you breakdown, lets you finally come to terms with everything that had happened, and comforts you through it all.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeats.

One of his hands comes up to wipe your cheeks.

“I’m sorry for the words I said.”

He presses a kiss to your forehead, and you can feel how his cheeks are wet with his own tears.

“I still love you.”

Charlie holds you until the tears run out. He holds you until you stop shaking. He holds you even when words start tumbling out of your mouth again. He holds you as he counters every self-deprecating apology with apologies of his own and whispers of love.

In the abandoned house that was once possibly home to a loving family, a broken one reconciles over the shared loss of a beloved daughter.

Weeks pass. You and Charlie heal together and move on together, but Juanaflippa is never forgotten, always held close to your memories.

As you lay by a brook, taking a break from supply runs to simply relax, you turn to your boyfriend and ask:

“Charlie, are we bad people?”

Your boyfriend turns to you, grasping your hand in his and kissing it, before pulling you into a warm hug.

“Maybe we are,” he says, holding you close. “But just for those twelve days, I think we were the best of people.”

The End.

61 notes · View notes

daughterofninemoons · 4 months ago

Text

i need some of yall to understand the political situation in america. THE. SYSTEM. IS. RIGGED. both candidates are bad, both are asshole rich people who dont care for the people, but since so many Americans are engrossed in the propaganda machine they wont vote for a third party.

Yes i know Kamala Harris is a shit human being but her campaign says “yeah you can exist” vs Trump whose campaign is all about being racist and doing genocide.

No I cant leave the country all of my goddam stuff is here and the other English speaking countries are worse

No I cant not vote because I want to make sure Im not actively hatecrimed when I leave my house

Yes I know Kamala supports the genocide in Palestine and thats a horrible opinion, but every fucking candidate does

Yes I believe that the system needs to be washed in the blood of revolution but too fucking many of you are dividing yourselves and THE ONLY WAY WE WIN IS TOGETHER SO STOP FUCKING WHINING AND START FIGHTING BECAUSE THE ONLY LANGUAGE THEY KNOW IS VIOLENCE

No I dont support the genocide in Palestine for obvious reasons, and those who do and ignored it will have their shit rocked in due time

Yes I know im white and thereby have significantly benefited from the system and that there other people more deserving of where I am, I know so many bright and dazzling minds deserving of cultivation and a place that matches them be stamped and crushed beneath the heel of the system but my whiteness doesnt mean im against them

Yes I help where I can but my funds and mental capacity are limited by school

No I dont fucking want to live here

im begging you all instead of crying on tumblr about how both candidates are shit human beings, at least vote for the shit human being whose campaign is accepting everyone.

I hold the core belief that the world is a good place and each and every person can be reformed to see the error of their ways. I was once one of the trans hating misogynists but then I reformed myself.

I want to be able to love the man I love without either of us facing persecution

I want to be free

THE ONLY WAY WE WIN IS TOGETHER

- a soul of love

#lgbt #politics #America #the rats in my brain post yet again #lgbtq #lgbtqia #trans #transgender #transfem #transmasc #gender fluid #intersex #kamala harris #fuck trump #eat the rich

33 notes · View notes

thecohenpazo · 3 months ago

Text

Reasons The Minecraft Movie Will Be Terrible:

*LIVE ACTION*

This is the first mistake Warner Brothers made. Minecraft is a game that is known best for being an open, desolate world, without human life to interact with. What little of the world is made for you is ruined and abandoned. To see people here is to discredit the heart and soul of this game, which is that there is no one. You make the rules, you create the story.

*VISUALS*

Not only did they pull 0 real textures, geometry, lighting, colors, world generation, *anything*, they made it look like one of those, "Minecraft Realistic TexturePacks". The lighting changes between different shots of the same scene. The creatures look nothing like the games.

*AUDIO*

Minecraft is not a loud, booming game. It's a quiet, lonely setting, where you explore and build to settle yourself into a world. The music is absent most times, and when it fades in it makes one feel like what you've done has meaning. When you find a music disc, suddenly you have control over the noise around. The ambience of cave noises scared you when you were younger. The iconic sounds of mining, placing blocks, ring out in the minds of half the world.

The protagonists, don't need to speak. In fact, it detracts from the story if they do. Steve could be anyone, he tells all of our story's. Put a voice in him, and now he's just Jack Black.

*PLOT*

-Jokes: Usuallly, in a trailer for a movie, the humor can be quite telling of the whole experience. If two of the only trailer worthy jokes are animals making funny sounds, what does that mean for the rest? Minecraft isn't a funny game. It can be, of course, but for the most part, it's about finding some semblance of self in a world of no one.

-Cast: Piglins, in recent years, have become a sort of mascot for Minecraft as an antagonist. However, we've had far better antagonists that fit with Minecraft's design much better. A quiet, taunting menace. One who's been here from the start; Herobrine. The spiders and skeletons and creepers and zombies. The loneliness of the big world. The claustrophobia of the caves. The friends we lost along the way.

-Characters: Not very long ago, there were but two characters in Minecraft: Steve and Alex. But now there is a whole slew of misfits to include. I think something key about all these characters is, none of them need a voice. You don't need a celebrity actor to play Steve (sorry Jack). You can just have him be, show his emotions by how he interacts with the world.

-The True Story Of Minecraft: It's quite simple really. It's whatever you make of it. Sure, there are puzzle pieces, ruins strewn about, audio in discs, a poem at the end of the game, but truly, there is no real end. When you decide you've done what you came to do, you log out, and that's that. A movie about a silent character, moving through a world empty of kinship, creating something beautiful that others may never see. Or a movie about a group of friends, working together to make a mark on the land. Whatever it may be, *that*, is Minecraft. Minecraft is a story built on common experiences. Remember breaking a painting over and over to get the one you want? Remember trying a million ways to craft things? Remember believing in herobrine, trying to summon him?

This movie is just a cheap cash grab, meant to capitalize of the youths inability to judge a quality movie, and a lack of understanding of what this game means.

Go fuck yourselves, Warner Bros.

If you want some good alternatives, check out DAWN - A Minecraft Fan Film from Skyminer, Minecraft Anime Opening from DinxieMintie, Minecraft From The Mobs Perspective from Jackson Field, and many more!

#minecraft #minecraft movie #warner bros #movies #film #essay

26 notes · View notes

emisprocrastinatingbywriting · 7 months ago

Text

Alone and Forsaken

Chapter 11 Summary:

After leaving Cooper back at the house, Paul takes you back to the one place you hoped to never return to. Hoping to persuade you, he takes you on a trip down memory lane but you aren't the woman Paul thinks you are anymore. Instead of a docile wife, he gets Joel fucking Miller's mate. (Good fucking luck pal) With Joel racing to get to the abandoned camp, can you keep Paul from doing anything brash before the love of your life can get to you? More importantly, can you keep your own anger from getting the best of you?

Warnings: Past Trauma Came Back to Be a Current Trauma, Reader Faces a Toxic Ass Ex, Violence, Threat of SA, Reader Needs a Fucking Hug, Joel Needs a Hug, Panicked and then Happier Reunions, Bits of Joel's Past Trauma Make Him Lose His Shit, Read with Caution

A/N:

Hey y'all! Aaaaand, we back! Hope everyone's week has been good. It is 4am and I have to get on a plane to Spain today at like 7, so let's jump right in.

So, this week is heavy on the violence. Reader is back at her old camp with Paul and they have a bit of a throwdown. Also trigger warning for, because it's Paul and he fucking sucks, threat of SA. Except this time it is definitly realer so, watch it if that is a problem for you. As always, take care of yourselves. Either way, reader and Joel DO reunite in this chapter. It just isn't... how you hope they will. And that is all I will say about that! Enjoy!

Chapter 11/20

Chapter 11: The Breaking Point

When you were five years old, the world had been turned upside down. That day haunted you for many reasons as it changed the trajectory of not only your life, but of the lives of the entire human race as well. However, that wasn’t what kept the day consistently fresh in your mind. Selfishly, it was the afternoon before the shit hit the fan that stayed with you even twenty years later.

The day had been warm. It was your first year in kindergarten and you loved every moment of it. Learning new things and playing with other kids was everything you could’ve dreamed of. Being an only child, sometimes it felt that the only friends you had were your parents. Despite the usual worries about fitting in, you were quickly taken in by fellow classmates and were beginning to get comfortable in the new environment.

Nevertheless, you had immediately ditched the group of new friends when your father had rolled up to the curb during recess in his beaten up Nissan. Running and shouting for him, you launched yourself face first into the driver’s side window and were met with boisterous laughter. After settling you in the front seat beside him, a treat that he had made you promise not to tell your mother about, he had taken you for an impromptu ice cream date.

Even as a fully grown woman, when you remembered that day you could still taste the sweetness of the bubblegum ice cream that had made your hands sticky. Your father had listened to you babble about toys, games, the other kids in your class, and everything that a child’s brain experienced in the run of a day. Never once did he interrupt, other than to comment on the side characters or to agree with some point you had made. For a five year old girl, the day was perfect.

That was until the sound of a slap had drawn your attention away from the tasty treat that dripped down your hands. Peering over from the picnic bench, you watched as an alpha gripped his mate’s arm hard and berated him in front of the ice cream truck. The omega looked a little afraid but mostly, you noticed that the poor guy just looked exhausted. If anything, you had been more afraid than he.

In your five years of life, not once had you ever seen an alpha act like that. Your father was a sweet man who spent his time designing the layout of people’s dream homes in his office. When he wasn’t doing that, you had vague memories of him cooking and slow dancing with your mother when she got home from work. Not once had he hit her, nor anyone else, which meant that the sight of another alpha doing so was terrifying.

“Stay here metuka, I’ll be back in a second,”he mumbled to you, rising from the table to diffuse the situation.

An argument had broken out between your father and the frightening man, leading to the cops being called and the alpha being taken away in handcuffs. Your father had stayed with the shaken omega, comforting him until an older woman came to pick him up. The entire time, you watched the situation unfold. Half in awe, half in terror, the ice cream in your hand had melted entirely by the time your father returned.

The vibrant pink treat was stuck to nearly every inch of your skin and clothes. Your father wasn’t mad, he never was. Instead, he had made a joke about it and brought you home for a bath. You remembered how the air was filled with your father’s words as he washed the stickiness from your skin, with him trying desperately to change your mood. It was only when he had moved to wash the suds from your hair that you finally piped up.

“Why would he hit his mate like that papa?,” you whispered.

His hands paused before they resumed their work. The shampoo he used was your favorite, boasting no tears for the kids that used it. However, anytime you tried to wash it out yourself, your parents would have to comfort their crying child as it burned your retinas. It was for that reason that you weren’t allowed to use it by yourself yet. Shielding your eyes from the watermelon scented suds, your father gently rinsed it from your hair as he pondered the question.

“Sometimes alphas can be… Well, they can be mean. It isn’t right but they think they can act like that because they think omegas aren’t as good as them,” your father explained carefully.

The notion of a world where one was above the other, where omegas were somehow lesser than, was new to you. Growing up, it had been your mother with the high paying job as a lawyer, while your father stayed home with you in lieu of daycare. It was only once you were enrolled in kindergarten that he had returned to his job as an architect. Although, he still only did it part time. With the money your mother was making, there was no need for him to jump back in right away and he preferred to spend time with you anyways.

“But why?,” you pushed him, still not understanding why an alpha would hurt their mate.

He hummed as the water finally ran clear, urging you to sit up so that he could wring the errant drops of water out of your hair. After pausing to think for a moment, your father had answered you in a voice so soft that you barely heard him.

“People are only mean to other people to make themselves feel better. Alphas like that, they feel like they have to be scary or else they won’t be seen as strong. It has nothing to do with anyone but themselves.”

You had blinked at that, unsure of what to make of such a statement. It was too big of a topic for a five year old. The idea of someone pretending to be anyone other than themselves was too large for the mind of someone who didn’t even know who they were yet. Still, you tried to understand as your father toweled you off, straining against the confines of a child’s mind to grasp the concept.

“But…,” you paused before trying again, “But you aren’t mean papa.”

He had laughed at that, looking up at you as he dried off your feet. Watching as his curls bounced against his forehead with his laughter, you felt as though you might start laughing alongside him. He always had that effect on people. As an adult, even as the lesser memories faded, you always remembered how talented the man was at drawing people out of their shells and making them smile.

“Well thank you bubs but that’s how it’s supposed to be,” he chuckled.

Reaching behind himself to grab the clothes on the sink, he continued to speak as he clothed you.

“Promise me one thing, okay? I don’t know who you’re going to be when you get older, alpha, omega, beta, whatever, but just promise me you won’t be that guy. Or, if you present as an omega like mommy, promise me that you won’t be with someone like him. Okay?”

His eyes had looked at you hopefully, hands pausing their efforts to roll your Little Mermaid socks on. You smiled at him.

“I promise papa.”

He nodded, “Good. Kindness isn’t something that I ever want you to opt out of. Whether that be how you act towards someone else or how someone acts towards you. Choose to be kind and choose to surround yourself with people who are kind to you. Do you understand?”

You had nodded at his request and he smiled, leaning forward to blow a raspberry on your cheek until you giggled.

“Papa! Stop it!,” you squealed.

His smile had widened. The look on his face turned mischievous as he proposed, “Come on, let’s see if we can find any of mommy’s sweets before she gets home hm?”

You remembered the excitement you had felt at that, racing after your father to raid the not-so-secret, secret hiding place where your mother hid Reese’s Pieces and Kit Kats from her family. The next few hours had been perfect, binging snacks and playing with your dad until the world quite literally ended later that evening.

Even then, it was still okay for a while. Sure, you had been scared at times but your father always held his head high, which made everyone else around him feel like everything would eventually be okay. Despite the impossible odds and grueling circumstances, your father was still making his family laugh well into the first few months of the apocalypse. It was too bad that he had only lasted about half a year before getting bit.

Unbeknownst to him, even as other memories of him had faded away, the advice he gave you that day remained clear and unaltered. Perhaps it was the gravity of the day, it being the final moments of civilization, but you didn’t think so. No, it was the lesson itself. Through every moment of your fucked up life, the people in it had been judged to that standard.

Sometimes it was easy, with people like Josiah or Paul being clearly placed on one side of the spectrum, but other times it was harder. It had been hard for you to judge Joel at first, with his crankiness and inability to open up. Nevertheless after a few days with the man, you placed him easily on the opposite end as them.

Joel might have been hard to get to know, but the wait was worth it. He was soft underneath it all and actually put in a real effort to make you happy. It was everything you could’ve wanted and you knew your father would have approved of the match, despite the age difference. However, somewhere along the line you had begun to wonder whether he would have approved of you.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the shitty car, next to the man you hated most in this world, you couldn’t see yourself in any of those people. The alpha who had hit his mate did so out of a need for dominance but that wasn’t you. And the omega who had taken the abuse had done so out of duty but you didn’t feel like that was you either. Maybe it had been at one point, when Josiah and his crew had scared you into obedience, but not now.

Even your father, the standard for what it meant to be kind, was not someone you saw yourself in anymore either. He had been too tender for a world like this one, having literally thrown himself in front of infected for a woman that he didn’t even know. Meanwhile, you had slaughtered the majority of a town to regain someone that had been taken from you. You tried to imagine a world where your father would do that but couldn’t. Acts of violence simply weren't in his wheelhouse.

That meant that you were something else entirely. An elusive fourth category that you couldn’t quite grasp, despite your attempts at identifying it as the car turned off the road just before the I-80. It was not for dominance, or duty, or for the desire to be good that you had slashed through Paul’s men. None of those reasons held any value to you.

The fierce protectiveness over the man you loved had propelled you into action back at the cabin. Yet it was an inherited rage that trickled down to you from generations of people who had been taken for granted that kept you going. How dare anyone take him. And how dare they assume that you would lay down and let it happen because of some bullshit myth about biological inferiority.

Rumbling down the snow covered road, you held your breath, trying to calm the rage that still burned within as Paul carefully followed the tire tracks that led to the old camp. Returning to the place you had spent a good portion of your life in was strange. The homecoming fell flat, with nothing but ghosts to greet the two of you as the car neared the gate.

“Why here?,” you wondered aloud.

The question seemed to catch him off guard, you having been silent since the squabble that had taken place just an hour before.

“Because it’s where this all began, angel.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “Wouldn’t just shooting me be easier? Why take me to a place filled with infected? Kinda overkill if you ask me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve already cleared them out. Knew I’d get my sweet little wife back here at some point. Thought that a nice trip down memory lane might be what she needs to remember her place,” he said pointedly.

You tried not to gag, staring at the bruise along his jaw before you turned back to the window with a huff.

Tried as you might to fight Paul, he had tripped you up at the very last moment and managed to tie your hands together. Rather than kill you, as you had hoped he might, the man decided he wanted to go on what he called “an adventure”. It frustrated you. The thought of dying was way more preferable than having to take an impromptu road trip with Paul.

As the trees receded, you watched as the skeleton of your old camp was revealed. The gate was wide open, beckoning the vehicle onto the empty streets. After passing through the first few homes, you tried not to cry as you passed Jake’s aunt's house. The tiny home where the two of you had swapped contraband books and chattered about teenage crushes was ruined. The majority of the building had been destroyed in the flames.

“You weren’t there when the dumbasses brought out the molotovs huh? Fucking mess, half of them missed the horde and it ended up destroying most of the town,” Paul commented as he followed your gaze towards the wreckage.

You looked away from the scenery as the car neared your old home. There was no part of you that wanted any more memories of that place. You had escaped. It didn’t matter that you were at the camp again, it would never have the same hold on you. And neither would Paul. For the remainder of the drive you kept silent, locked within your own mind as he neared the edge of camp.

“Okay, we’re here,” Paul announced as he parked in front of the old chapel.

One side of it had been blackened by the flames but besides that, the place where Josiah had preached his poison remained entirely untouched.

Shame , you thought. If there was one place that deserved to burn, it was the chapel that had sponsored nothing but hatred for years.

The steeple still held the cross that loomed over visitors, making you feel uneasy as the shadow of it slid across the side of the car. The shutters on all of the windows were shut, though a few of them rattled against the window panes with the breeze. With the snow shoveled off the steps, it looked just as it always had on the evenings when you were forced into prayer circles or grueling all night confessionals.

Paul wrenched the door to the driver’s side open, pulling you from the chilling thoughts as he stomped around the front of the car. An involuntary yelp fell from your lips as he opened the passenger side with such force that it shook the car. Before you could think to resist, he yanked you from the seat. Fingers pressing into the blackened indents he had left days earlier, your already damaged wrist creaked under the pressure of his grasp.

“Fucking watch it,” you hissed.

Paul smirked but ignored your protests, tugging you alongside him as he climbed the stairs. His long strides made it impossible for you to catch up. Stumbling behind him, you fought against the zip ties to free your hands. The plastic restraints left reddened indents on your skin but barely budged despite your struggle.

The smell of the dusty building made you sneeze and it echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Stone floors gave way to a huge wooden cross hung near the altar. An emaciated man looked down at you from it, wincing at the nails driven into his hands as he hung there. You had always found the display jarring. If people loved this guy so much, you never understood why they thought it was a good idea to depict his death in nearly every place of worship or even with the jewelry they wore. If Paul stabbed you to death today, you didn’t expect Joel to start wearing a blade around his neck tomorrow.

You laughed at the morbid thought, drawing a confused look from Paul that you ignored.

No, that would be weird. If anything, you hoped that when Paul killed you that Joel would simply take care of himself. That he would continue to eat, sleep, play his guitar, carve things, and above all, for him to not close himself off again. Maybe Joel would even go live with his brother in Jackson, rather than resigning himself to solitude again. It was a pipe dream and you knew it, but it didn’t stop you from manifesting it into existence.

Paul stepped before you and swung the basement door open, nudging you towards the dimly lit steps until you haphazardly stumbled down them. The space was as you remembered it, with discarded boxes and books everywhere. You half expected to come across Cooper tucked away in his corner, twiddling his thumbs in the quiet room while the rest of camp busied themselves elsewhere. But Cooper was nowhere to be found, leaving you alone with his terrifying brother.

The only new edition to the space was the candles that covered nearly every inch of the floor. Some were even placed upon the stacked books. Melted wax stained the paperbacks before it dripped down to the awful carpet below. Half of them were scented, leading to a cacophony of smells that sparked a dull ache in the base of your skull. The only consolation was that the stifling mix of fragrances almost covered Paul’s sickly sweet stench entirely.

Stepping around a row of bookshelves, you noticed that two chairs and a table were placed in the middle of the room. Wine glasses were set out, accompanied by what looked to be one of the treasured bottles of whiskey that Josiah used to hide amongst the clutter. It seemed that you weren’t the only one who had figured out where he had stashed the liquor before the place fell.

“I thought I was the only one who knew where he hid it,” you blurted out.

Paul smiled at you. His eyes were flat despite the expression on his face and the wink he gave you made your stomach drop.

“I thought a nice night was in order. This is going to be our first night together as man and wife after all,” he sighed dreamily.

Scoffing at the implication as he led you towards the table, you glared at him while he tucked you into one of the seats. Paul leaned forward and you grimaced as he flicked open his pocket knife. He grabbed your hands, making you hold your breath until he slipped the blade against the zip tie and snapped the plastic.

“Be good and maybe I’ll keep these off, got it?,” he said, pressing the knife to your throat for emphasis.

The blade was cool against your skin and goosebumps formed around it. Despite the desire to grab at the hilt of it and drive it into his chest, you refrained. Swallowing your pride, you nodded. Paul pressed it harder for a moment, making you tense up before he finally set it down. Chuckling as he walked to the other side of the table, you watched as he took his seat.

Silence filled the air as the two of you stared at each other. Paul’s gaze was sinister, while yours was pointed with rage. With you sat in front of him, he looked like a beast that had finally caught its prey. It made you even more annoyed.

“Well this is… something,” you mumbled cheekily.

Paul laughed, showing off his crooked teeth as he threw his head back. You recoiled at the sound, the last thing you wanted to do was give this man any bit of joy.

“My, my, how you’ve changed angel,” he chuckled, “Knew you were a bit disobedient before; the preacher’s sweet stepdaughter who pressed the line when nobody was looking. It was cute, sexy even. But now, you’re downright insolent.”

You cocked your head. Paul had no idea what kind of insolence you were capable of.

“You’re goddamn right I am,” you agreed.

The air was thick with tension. A darkness settled across Paul’s features and you sat back against your seat, waiting for the inevitable torment that he planned to inflict. His eyes raked over your form before they landed on your neck. The mark that adorned it was uncovered, standing proudly against your skin despite Paul’s attempts to sear it off with his gaze.

“I always knew that your kind were desperate little things but I genuinely thought you were different. That was my mistake, thinking that you understood the rules. I let you prance around until I decide that you’re ready, then you were supposed to be mine for the taking.”

The words lit a spark in your chest and heat radiated out into your limbs, making your fingers twitch with frustration as you listened to him speak. What Paul was telling you was sick. There was no prancing around the camp, and you certainly didn’t feel the need to apologize for not knowing the rules to some twisted game he had envisioned. You were a child when you arrived at the camp, not some prize for him to win once you reached a suitable age.

Paul hummed, cocking his head at your silence, “Nothing to say? That’s alright, we’ve got all night for confessions.”

Rolling your eyes, you sighed, “What do you want from me Paul?”

He ignored the question and reached forward to uncork the bottle. Despite the strained silence, his hands were steady as he poured the amber liquid and pushed one of the glasses towards you. A bit of it sloshed over the side, staining the perfectly white tablecloth below. Paul huffed and covered the spot with a napkin. He dabbed at it for a moment before he nodded at you to take a sip. The casualness of his actions annoyed you to no end.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me. I hope you know that.”

Paul grinned, “Doesn’t it?”

“No. Joel is mine and I am his. You can hurt me. You can kill me. Shit, you can even do the same to him but it won’t matter. You. Lost. Nothing can change that,” you snapped at him.

The words irked him, hardening the lines in his face as you leaned in for emphasis. You laughed and it filled the air, making him flinch despite his attempts to keep his face schooled.

“Joel is the one who gets to have me. He gets to take care of me, touch me, fuck me, anything he wants and fuck, is he good at it. See, my mate doesn’t need to overcompensate for anything,” you sneered, flicking your eyes up and down Paul’s body as he fumed under the scrutiny.

Paul leaned forward, smelling of rotted candies and sweat as the air crackled with energy. The proximity made you nauseous but you refused to pull back first.

As if his soul sensed your discomfort, Joel’s presence on the planet made itself known when the mark on your neck throbbed almost painfully. It was unlike any of the other times, when he had been unwittingly calling out for you from his imprisonment. This was sharper and unrelenting, with a deep ache sending jolts of agony all the way to your jaw as you tried to keep your cool.

Joel was somewhere and he was scared. No, not scared. Joel Miller was fucking terrified. Instincts going wild from the unseen threat poised towards your mate, the muscles in your back tensed as your body readied itself for a fight. It was pointless. There was nothing you could do for him from here. That was all you could think of as Paul stood from his seat.

He grabbed his glass, lifting it in the air as his malicious scowl pierced through you.

“A toast then, to Joel Miller! The man who turned my perfect, pure wife into a fucking stupid slut. May he rest easy,” Paul chuckled darkly.

You shifted in your seat, hand cupping where Joel had staked his claim. The corners of your vision blurred as your heart pounded in your chest. Beads of sweat formed along your hairline, the droplets rolling down your face as he smiled down at you.

“So you do feel each other? I’ve always wondered if that was a myth or not,” he mused, words half muffled as he leaned in to sip his drink.

That got your attention. Dread hooked into your heart, pulling you back down into a darkness that you had only recently discovered in yourself. With the bond thrumming with Joel’s despair and your adversary leering at you from behind a whiskey glass, you let it take hold of you. It calmed the shivers that racked your frame, slowing your shallow breaths until you were calm enough to grab the glass Paul had poured for you.

He watched as you downed it in one go and slammed it back down. It burned the entire way down but soothed the hunger pangs that you had been ignoring for days. You hummed at the taste of it, smacking your lips at the notes of caramel and spice.

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?,” Paul teased, “Bet he’s dead before I even get done breaking you open on my knot. The old man looked pretty banged up when I saw him earlier. I think-”

“Is this bourbon? I thought it was single malt but no, it’s too sweet to be that. What is it? Woodford Reserve? I bet it is, Josiah loved that shit,” you cut in, dampening the twisted smile on his face.

Paul blinked, “Is it - What? Did you hear what I just said?”

You nodded and reached forward, pouring yourself another glass as he sputtered before you. The second glass slid down easier and warmth flooded your face. Emboldened at his surprise, you poured another but left the glass on the table, letting it breathe as you leaned back and stared at the alpha. Paul was furious. A vein popped out of the side of his head as he clenched his fists together tight.

“He’s going to fucking die, do you hear me?! That fucking prick is dead and you are going to do as I say!,” Paul roared as he launched his glass against the wall behind you.

It smashed somewhere amongst the candles and papers but you gritted your teeth, remaining steady as warning bells went off in your head. Taking a subtle breath, you simply cocked your head at him as he fumed from across the table.

“You know, you’re right Paul, I can feel him. Which means that I know that he’s still alive. So threats aren’t really going to cut it unfortunately,” you said.

Nostrils flaring, Paul rounded the table. Stomping towards you angrily, you gulped as he pulled your chair sideways to face him. Looming over you, his eyes desperately tried to penetrate the barrier you had formed around yourself since the day Joel was taken. You didn’t blame Paul for trying, it used to be so easy to make you scared.

You sucked in a breath as his thumb dragged along your lower lip, pressing down against the pillowy skin before he let his hand drop. The grotesque mixture of sweat, blood, and dirt caked his fingers, leaving behind a smear of filth that made you gag.

“What are you thinking, angel? That you can beat me and then go get him all by yourself?,” Paul chuckled and shook his head, “Little superhero are we? Be reasonable.”

Instead of answering his taunt, you plucked your drink from the table. Taking a long draw from the glass, you sucked back half of it before you looked back at Paul. Splotches of red crept up along his neck, discoloring the already bruised skin with rage. It made you smile.

“Is this fucking funny to you?,” Paul hissed.

You nodded, grinning wider at the way his face scrunched up even further. Nevertheless, the amusement was short lived as one of Paul’s hands reached down to his belt and worked it open menacingly. His gaze was fixed on you when your eyes snapped to his face. There was nothing behind his eyes as he ripped the leather from his belt loops and it was terrifying. With his belt flung somewhere behind him, Paul twiddled with the top button to his jeans.

“Think it’s time for a lesson, wife.”

It was now or never.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, husband,” you agreed.

Before Paul had a moment to register your words, the half emptied drink in your hand was slammed against his head. He cried out in pain as the glass tore open the skin of his forehead. The amber liquid dripped down his face, burning his eyes despite his discoordinated attempts to wipe them clean.

With Paul occupied, you launched off the chair. The force of your body knocked him over an errant box and sent the both of you tumbling to the floor. The impact of the fall was lessened by Paul’s body but your head knocked against his harshly. The both of you grunted at the collision but it was him that managed to right himself first.

He flipped you over, slamming you back against the cold floor as his fingers crept up your torso and squeezed your trachea. You tried desperately to pry his hands off. A cough wiggled up from your burning chest but it was halted by the brutal grip. Panic set in as his fingers expertly pushed into the blood vessels, cutting off the supply of oxygen to your brain. Dizzied and weak from his hold, it began to feel like you were fighting against air.

“Aw, my sweet angel, can’t believe it’s to come to this,” Paul squeezed harder, “Thought it could be like it was before but no, you need some harsher lessons for this to work.”

Fingernails scrabbling against his arms, neck, and face, you fought as hard as you could. Tears blurred your vision, making it impossible for you to track his movements as he moved one of his hands down to fight with the zipper of his jeans. Paul bared nearly the entirety of his weight against your neck as he worked himself out of his pants until it felt like something inside of it might burst. Crushed beneath him, you could barely react at the feeling of his hardness poking your thigh.

“Been waiting years for this, since the first day I met you. Such a sweet little fucking tease, can’t wait to fuck any trace of him out of you,” Paul rambled.

He spoke only to himself. You weren’t even in the room. Floating somewhere between life and death, your head lolled to the side as he released himself from the confines of his boxers. This was it. There was nothing you could do. You blinked deeply, slowly letting the dark edges bleed into your vision. It would be easier this way. Unconscious or dead, at least you wouldn’t have to feel what Paul was about to do.

A palm cracked down against your cheek and your face snapped in the opposite direction. You coughed as the pressure on your neck ceased. The air was acrid as you sputtered and wheezed beneath Paul. The thickness of the scent coated the back of your throat and tickled your lungs. Despite the grogginess, you worked against the fog to pinpoint the smell but it was nearly impossible as another round of smacks were rained down against your face.

“Oh no angel, you don’t get to check out for this. I want you to remember everything,” he laughed.

While the breaths were difficult, with your throat swelling and aching from the abuse, you greedily sucked in the putrid air. There was something off about it but soon your vision cleared and you managed to get your bearings. It only took five seconds after that for your eyes to land on the source of the smell.

Flames grew from one side of the room, spreading out from where Paul had thrown his glass against the wall. The liquor had acted as an enabler for the flame to tear through the disorganized mess of candles, paper and cardboard. The fire spread at an alarming rate, eating up anything in its path as you slapped Paul’s chest with a renewed sense of vigor.

“F-fire,” you wheezed, barely intelligible.

With his length bobbing menacingly between his legs as he worked to pry open your jeans, Paul only hummed at your attempts to warn him.

“Hm? What’s that? Let me guess, you were trying to say fuck you. Is that it?,” he jeered.

Shaking your head wildly, you slapped at his shoulders harder as smoke began to force water from your eyes. With the fire slowly taking up chunks of the basement, it seemed the alpha was only focused on one thing.

The broken, “N-no,”you called out was lost in another round of hacking as Paul ripped the pants clean off of your legs.

You silently thanked every force in the universe that you had not forgotten underwear. The thought of him seeing a part of you that you had only ever felt comfortable showing one specific person was too much. He reached for the frilly fabric, dodging your legs as you kicked at him.

“F-fucking idiot,” you gritted out.

That halted his assault. Reaching down, Paul pinched your face in one of his hands and you winced at the fresh bruises that formed from the grip.

“What was that slut? Any last quips before I take back what’s mine?”

You cleared your throat, fighting against the smoke that threatened to clog your lungs to spit out a raggedy gasp of, “Fire.”

With his hard cock in his hand as he surveyed the room, you watched as the realization dawned on him. Paul’s mouth opened and closed at the sight. The majority of the room was covered with flames. You could tell that he was awestruck at his own blindness and it angered you. This moment of weakness was due to his own sick need to dominate you, and for what?

Using all the strength you had left to flip him over, you were sobered at the realization that this rage was not new. It had not been born out of your mate being taken from you. For years it had simmered under the surface until it finally boiled over following Joel’s abduction. The anger you felt was more than anger, it was a purely feminine wrath that had been building since you were old enough to understand the incident at the ice cream truck 20 years earlier.

With your mouth filled with blood and your lungs burning, you snatched the knife from Paul’s belt and slammed it into his shoulder. He screamed in pain and you twisted it around before yanking it out. Obscenities poured from his mouth as you slashed at his cheeks but you ignored them. Blood splattered against your face, covering you in red as you pushed the blade into the other shoulder. Paul choked on his breaths as the blade sunk deeper, his hands trying to slap you away as you ruthlessly sawed it back and forth before pulling it from him.

This wasn’t just about you or even Paul. It was about the omega who had been slapped that day years before. It was about your mother, the law firm partner who ruled the courts and came home to a loving husband who was morphed into an obedient housewife. It was about Jake and Cooper who, despite their apparent relatively decent bond, had been forced into their roles nonetheless. It was about the generations of people - alpha, beta, or omega - who had been made to obey someone else’s word, regardless of how they felt about it.

You screamed out, letting years of bottled up rage explode in Paul’s face as the room around you began to collapse. He coughed, eyes unfocused and rolling in their sockets as he twitched at the blood loss. The wounds on his body spurted out short jolts of blood, turning the carpet below him crimson.

“Please,” he begged pitifully.

Disgust was all you felt at the state of him as you dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor near his head but he didn’t reach to grab it. You weren’t entirely sure that he was able to anyways. Standing from the floor, you sucked your teeth at him. Paul’s head was split open from the glass, cheeks slashed and bubbling with red as his cock laid pitifully against the outside of his jeans. The wounds on his neck and shoulder gaped and pulsed rivulets of blood that added to the stains on the floor. His desperate attempts to staunch the flow were mediocre at best, he was much too weak to cover the holes in his skin effectively.

You looked down at him with tired eyes as the room burned around the both of you. The ice in Paul’s gaze melted, making him look like nothing more than a scared little boy as you glowered at him.

“I don’t know what happened to you that made you this way, but fuck you. You will die here and I am going to keep living. Do you understand me? I am fucking done with all of this shit,” you said coolly.

A loud crack broke through the moment and you looked up, watching as the ceiling began to concave with the flames licking at the foundation of the building. You needed to get out of here, lest you burn to death in the god forsaken chapel alongside Paul. Sparing him one last look, you shook your head at the pleading look in his eyes.

“You. Lose. Goodbye Paul.”

With the last word uttered, you scurried off towards the stairs. The flames roared at you from all angles, closing in as you ran as fast as your damaged body would allow. Just as you reached the bottom step, the building itself started to shift. You froze as the structure groaned.

“Oh shit,” you swore.

Flying up the steps, you took them two at a time until you launched yourself through the basement door. The air on the ground level was worse, with the entirety of the sanctuary cloaked in thick smoke that irritated your throat. You gagged, dropping down to your knees as you choked on the poison. Retching against the stones, sweat and tears tracked through the soot that covered your face as all of the whiskey in your stomach was purged.

You groaned at the way your abdominal muscles ached, trying to force out vomit that didn’t exist. With nothing left to purge and no end to the endless smoke inhalation, exhaustion wormed its way into your body. The comfort of the end beckoned you, luring you in with its promise of rest but you ignored it. Crawling on all fours to get to the door as you hacked up black, you were shocked at your own will to live.

Despite the lack of evidence, you knew you needed to get outside. There was no reasoning behind this incessant need to get to freedom. It would be easier to give up. Less painful for sure, given the state of your body. The reason for your determination was unfathomable but it pushed you the last few inches.

Fresh air shocked your system, launching you into a fit of forceful coughs that knocked you off balance. You cursed Paul as every ice covered bit of concrete jammed into your ribs on the way down. However, the embrace of the snow was welcoming as you landed in a heap at the bottom. The cold bled into your legs, soothing the burns that you didn’t even realize that you had acquired.

A voice called to you from far away. It was deep and honeyed with a familiar southern twang. The voice beckoned you to stay with him. You smiled at his request, burrowing yourself deeper into the darkness. Joel was calling to you from the other side, you were sure of it. He sounded so desperate, sobbing as he screamed your name and pleaded. It would’ve made you cry too, had you not already begun to heed his request.

It was funny. Before today, you had never believed in an afterlife. It was too big of a question and you refused to let it rule your life, preferring to find out when the time came like everyone else. But as Joel Miller begged desperately for you to come back to him, you comforted yourself with the belief that this was your afterlife. You would be with him forever. It didn’t matter that it was through death that the two of you would see eachother again. You would follow Joel anywhere.

Sinking further into the black, you sighed and let yourself be carried off into the wind.

- Joel -

Joel had screamed.

The volume of it alone forced the birds from their nests in the surrounding trees. It was a desperate and strangled cry, something that he didn’t even know he was capable of until it left his mouth.

Joel had raced down the poorly shoveled road, tearing through town after he spied the smoke blackening the air from the gate. It was only when he reached the burning chapel that he realized just how bad it was. The building looked to be on the verge of collapse, swaying as the fire tore through every bit of material holding it in place.

Ripping himself from the car, Joel sprinted towards the door. Before he could reach the steps, he was met with the sight of you stumbling from the building in a fit of painful sounding coughs. The sight of you had comforted him for a moment, seeing you alive despite the odds stacked against you.

Joel rushed forward as you fell back against the snow, skidding to a stop and reaching down to gather you in his arms. Your breathing was strained and he begged you to follow his breaths. A sigh was all you responded with. Joel felt it as your body stilled against him and his soul broke open. A hoarse cry reverberated in the open air, heard but nobody except himself.

He felt like a wild animal as he tore through his mind for any medical miracles he could think of. Suddenly, it dawned on him. The act would probably not work, he knew that, but he had to try. With hot tears streaming down his face, Joel tore your sweatshirt down the middle with his bare hands.

He started the compressions, choking on anguish as forced life back into your body. Heart pounding in his chest, Joel called for you endlessly.

“Come on baby, come back to me. It’s okay, we’ll b-be okay. Please, please, please…”

Joel felt his hands crack through your ribs and he could’ve sworn his chest ached alongside you. It hurt him to do this, to break open your ribcage in order to get to your stilled heart, but he kept going. He tilted your head back, pinching the soft part of your nose as he blew two lungfuls of air into your mouth.

For some reason, he had hoped that the oxygen would miraculously rouse you and he cried out when your body didn’t respond. Restarting the compressions again, more panic seared through his every nerve ending. The rest of the world faded away and it was only your lifeless body, him, and flashes of the other people in his life that he failed to save.

You couldn’t die. Not like this, not now. It felt like the world had ended again, only this time it felt even worse. It was like one of his limbs had been chopped off. The mark on his neck burned as he pushed into your chest and Joel’s heart sputtered at the feeling. The presence you had on this earth was stored somewhere in his instincts, making him feel you everyday despite the distance but now, he felt it no longer.

“Please darling, please, please, please! I can’t do this again, I need you. D-don’t go, you said you wouldn’t go…,” Joel sobbed.

No response.

Another round of breaths and he was back to cracking your ribs under his hands. He felt like he was going to puke. It was all too much. Joel needed you to live but the longer you remained still, the further away that possibility seemed to be. What was there left for him to do? Even the most avidly trained medical staff before the outbreak would have been hard pressed to bring you back.

The realization that this was it, this was the end for you, slowed his compressions. Tears welled up in his eyes at the sight of your lifeless body as he stopped altogether. How could this happen to him… again? What was the point of it all, if this was how it was going to end? Rage bubbled up from deep within his heart and he exploded.

“FUCK!,” Joel roared, slamming his fist down hard against something solid yet squishy.

Joel had aimed for the ground but missed, instead slamming his fist against your chest. He reeled back in shock, feeling absolutely disgusted with himself for disrespecting your body like that. Even in death, the thought of ever hurting you was too much to bear and he suddenly wanted to walk backwards into the burning building. However, the guilt was soon replaced with shock as you twitched.

Eyes rolling in their sockets, Joel watched as began to fight for air as you gagged helplessly on your back. He swore, flipping you so that you faced him on your side. With him petting your knotted hair and whispering encouragement, you puked up a pitiful amount of blackened bile.

Joel waited until you were done before he peeked into your mouth to ensure that there was nothing left to choke on. Despite the clear airway, uneasiness seeped into his chest as your body remained still. Joel moved his head down to press his ear to your chest, leaning in close to listen. After a second of readjustment, having to switch to his good ear to listen properly, he sighed as he heard the steady thump of your heart.

A sob of relief tore from his lips. He pressed his face into your chest, kissing the spot where he heard your pulse in thanks. Tears dripped from Joel’s face, landing on your face, neck, and chest as he hovered over you. As life rattled through your body once more, he tried his best not to shatter under the weight of your near death experience. He allowed himself another moment of anguish before he swallowed it down. Gathering you up in his arms, Joel hugged you to his chest and lifted you from the ground.

He was still crying as he walked towards the car, legs trembling as he slid into the backseat with you in his arms. For a moment Joel thought about driving off, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get far. Not with the way his hands shook, his heart pounding in his chest as he held you tighter. That was close, way too close. Your lifeless body, the way your ribs cracked from the pressure of his hands, it was all too much for him.

The second that the door was shut behind him, Joel ripped his coat off and covered you in the bulky material as best as he could. The bruises, cuts, and burns that covered your body were a lot to take in. You had stumbled from the burning chapel in nothing but a sweatshirt and underwear. Finger shaped bruises covered your body, making a pit form in his stomach. Multiple alphas had tried to hurt you in the days since he had seen you last. He wanted to kill them all but, it seemed you had already beaten him to it.

Looking at the marks on your thighs, dread descended over him. Joel felt absolutely helpless. He had no idea where he was, where any medical supplies were, what had happened in the chapel, or when you’d wake. Powerless to the situation, Joel rambled incoherent apologies and desperate pleas as he brushed soot from your body.

“Oh darling, I’m so sorry. I - fuck - I should’ve been better. Should’ve protected you, been there for you. Oh my god, fuck, this is my fault. I love you. Please, please, please,” he cried.

He didn’t even know what he was asking you for. Was it forgiveness? Joel kicked himself for letting this happen. The thought of it made him want to rip off his own skin and maybe he would’ve, had he not heard the softest whisper of his name.

Joel snapped his gaze back up to your face and gasped. Your eyes were red rimmed and glossy, but they were open. It was one of the most beautiful things that he had ever seen.

“Oh baby,” he cried out as he pulled you up in his lap.

You went willingly, completely pliant as he arranged you in his lap. Joel heard you hiss as he pressed you into a tight hug and he pulled back quickly. A pinched brow from the sting of his embrace formed a lump in his throat. Settling on holding your face in his hands, Joel watched as you slowly blinked your eyes open again.

“Ow,” you croaked.

The noise that came from his mouth was half a laugh and half a sob of relief but he smiled through it. His throat was thick as he pushed errant hairs away, kissing every inch of your face as he fought against the emotions that overwhelmed him. There were no words for what he felt in that moment and even if there were, you were in no shape to hear them.

The corners of your mouth quirked up when Joel finally landed a kiss on your lips and he did it again. Despite the blood and dirt that covered every inch of the both of you, the sight of your soft smile soothed every ache in his body. He knew that his headache was still there. The bruise on the back of his head was tender to the touch but at that moment, he didn’t feel it one bit.

Your eyes were open.

You were alive.

Nothing else mattered.

“M’tired,” you murmured and coughed, wincing at the effort before your eyelids drooped again.

Joel tightened his jaw as your face burrowed itself in his neck, huffing at him until you relaxed. He could tell that you were in a great deal of pain, his instincts sensing every bit of tension in your body. He needed to fix this, to care for you.

The problem was that Joel had no idea where he was, or where to get medical supplies in the half destroyed ghost town. Even if he could focus his mind enough to drive to the next town, there was no telling what he would find there.

He thought about going back to where he had left the group but he quickly discarded the idea. Your friends and family were nearly an hour away, IF they were still there, and likely didn’t have much more medical experience than him.

The cabin was too far and didn’t have half the shit you would need. And Jackson, with the time it would take for Joel to drive his injured mate there, was out of the question. That left only one option for him.

“Baby, baby wake up,” he called.

Joel spoke with the softest urgency he could muster, jostling you gently until you roused. Another groan accompanied the glare you flashed at him. In a different situation, he might’ve laughed at it. The exasperation on your face was painfully obvious. He didn't need to ask to know what you thought about him waking you. Are you fucking serious , was written all over your face.

“I know, I know honey, m’real sorry. I’ll let you sleep but first, you need to tell me where the camp kept their medical stuff. Pills, bandages, water, fuck - anything,” Joel urged.

You hummed, sighing as you scrunched your face up in thought. He knew it was a lot. Asking you questions about a camp you hadn’t lived in for sometime was ridiculous. Especially after he had literally just brought you back from the dead, but he didn’t have the time to tear through half of the homes to find what he needed. There was so much blood covering you and Joel was nervous to find out how much of it was yours. If it was all you, he needed to find the wound and stitch it up fast.

“Home, probably,” you guessed, “He kept it all at our house so nobody could get into it. If the stuff hasn’t been snatched up by raiders, it’d be there.”

Joel nodded desperately, “And where’s that baby?”

You whined at his incessant line of questioning and he hushed you, smoothing his thumbs over your cheekbones until you settled.

“Shhh, I know you want to sleep but you need to tell me darling. Where’s home? What does it look like?”

“Green house with yellow shutters. Fucking awful colors, worse than our kitchen,” you murmured.

The comparison made him huff a laugh as you slumped against him again. As your body stilled once more, Joel couldn’t help himself. Despite the fact that you had just spoken to him, he subtly brushed two fingers up your spine until they landed on your neck. Careful not to aggravate the bruising, Joel pressed his fingers into the side of your neck so that he could feel the steady beats there. She’s just asleep , he told himself over and over again as he readied himself to leave.

A green house with yellow shutters, he could work with that. Joel had been in too much of a rush to save you when he sped through town, but he was confident that he could find the ugly house. He needed to, so he would. The fear of what might happen if he didn’t spurred him into action.

As carefully as he could, Joel slid out of the backseat with you still in his grasp. He could have left you laid out in the back. It probably would have been less cramped in the driver’s seat, but he refused to let you go. With what had just happened, he wasn’t sure he would be able to ever let you go again. As he slid behind the wheel, Joel decided that he was perfectly okay with carrying you around in his arms until the day he died.

After spending an extra few seconds situating you so that you were comfortably cradled in his arms, he pulled out and drove through the quiet streets. Keeping one hand on your chest to feel the rise and fall of it, he kept his ears focused on your soft breaths. The sound of your breathing was the only thing keeping him sane.

Joel wanted to tear someone’s face off. He wanted to rain hellfire down on any surviving alpha he could find but that wasn’t what you needed. You needed caring Joel, not the Joel that had single handedly destroyed the fireflies. He swallowed all of the things that threatened to cloud his judgment; the desire to pull away, the fury he had for Paul and the other alphas, the guilt he felt for your injured state, all of it was inconsequential.

He pushed his own feelings away as he swerved around the corner, skidding a few inches before he managed to right the wheel. Letting out a cuss as he pumped the brakes, he held you close as the car drifted toward the poorly cleared driveway to your former home.

You were right, the paint was awful. It was chipped in many places, yet still somehow managed to be much too bright against the snow covered landscape. Aside from the paint, the roof itself was rotted in multiple places. There was simply no way that it sufficed during the rainier months and he grimaced at the black mold he knew likely lined the inside of the walls.

The front door flapped in the wind, making him uneasy as he gently tried to unwrap the limbs that were welded around him. He didn’t want to leave you here, but the potential dangers that could lurk inside left him with no choice. There was no way he was putting you in the line of fire again.

Joel sighed and doubled down on his efforts but it was no use, you were like an octopus. Everytime he managed to pry off one limb, another wrapped around him and pulled him even closer. You kept your eyes closed but he knew that you were awake. With no other option, Joel pulled your head from its place in the crook of his neck. The whine you let out was pained, only deepening the guilt he felt for leaving as he hushed your cries.

“I need to go check inside before I bring you in, baby. I’ll be right back, I swear,” he cooed.

He cupped your cheeks, stroking them until the line between your eyebrows disappeared.

“No,” you answered with a scratchy voice.

“But I need t-”

A soft pinch was all you gave him in response. With all the strength in your body depleted, it was nothing more than a tug on his side but he got the hint nonetheless. Joel sighed louder at your stubbornness but relented. Although your safety was his top priority, the thought of leaving you for a second was just as painful for him.

He bit his tongue as he lifted you from the car and trudged towards the entrance. Despite his efforts to shield your body from the wintry breeze with his jacket, goosebumps climbed up your legs and you shivered violently. Hastening his pace, Joel reached the front door and rushed inside. Frenzied from the prospect of cold seeping into your body, he knocked the door closed with his hip. The bang echoed throughout the house and he froze.

Joel held you closer as he held his breath, straining to hear for any indication of life. He clenched his jaw painfully tight, trying to calm himself as he imagined a horde infected sprinting from a hiding place somewhere within the home. When nothing came, he could have collapsed with the relief he felt.

With the threat gone, Joel worked quickly. Methodically sweeping through the quaint home, he raided the bathroom and storage closets for any supplies he could use. After finding the stash of supplies in the closet nearest to the master bedroom, Joel moved towards the door before he paused.

The scents of its original occupants were mostly gone, dimmed with the time that had passed, but notes of your mother and stepfather’s unhappy union remained. He shook his head, turning on his heel to find a more comforting place for you to rest. After pulling open an office and yet another room filled with camp supplies, he finally stumbled upon your old room.

Even if the walls hadn’t been soaked in the delicious aroma that was solely you, he could have guessed it was yours based on the decor alone. The walls were painted a bland beige but Joel noticed that you had gotten around this by covering them with pictures cut from old magazines, dried flowers, and colorful thread murals. Aside from that, there was a pile of clothes still unfolded on an armchair and pages of notes covering nearly every open surface.

As Joel carried you towards the unmade twin bed, he prepared himself for another round against his octopus of a mate but you relaxed against the sheets. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that finally eased your half conscious mind or perhaps it was the familiarity of your old home but either way, he could finally untangle himself. Soft as ever, he pressed a kiss onto your forehead and pulled the sheets up to your chin before he tiptoed out of the room.

Joel backtracked towards the medical supplies and tore through the boxes for everything he would need. He was impressed at the stash, yet slightly uncomfortable at the knowledge that these supplies had likely been kept from those that needed it by religious zealots. The upside was that he didn’t have to go far to find exactly what he was looking for.

Armed with the supplies, he hurried back to your room. You were laid in the same position he had left you, yet he didn’t miss the way your body sunk deeper into the mattress at his return. Joel knelt by the bed, murmuring sweet words as he pulled the blanket back.

The coat was open, revealing your beaten body to his eyes completely. Carefully, he peeled the sweater from your abdomen and it was hard for him not to scream at the bruises that stuck out against your ribs. Despite the damage to your ribs, he was relieved to find there was no broken skin anywhere.

The fingerprints embedded into your thighs and throat threatened to break him but were also not in need of stitching. Given the dark bruising around your eyes and the swelling along the bridge of your nose, there was no doubt in Joel’s mind that your nose had been broken. He ghosted a finger along the swollen bump, pulling it back when your face twitched at the soft pressure.

Joel shook his head and grabbed a cloth. After soaking the white fabric with the water, he carefully wiped the blood and grime from your body. The more that was revealed, the worst he felt. The darkened patches of bruised skin made his chest burn. You twitched when he dabbed carefully at your neck and he eased up, staying as gentle as possible while the filth was cleared from the top half of your body.

Steeling himself, Joel moved down to your legs. He sucked in a deep breath as he moved upwards, stomach clenched as he wiped the soot off of your thighs. Despite the bruising along your hips and thighs, he was relieved to find that the damage did not reach your most vulnerable areas. The relief was bittersweet, as it was clear that although they were unsuccessful, someone had clearly tried to harm you in that way.

Fucking Paul.

Joel pushed the disgusting man from his thoughts. He needed to focus on you. After delicately pulling the coat from your body, he was surprised to find a bone glaring at him from your wrist. Given the reddened skin, Joel knew it had been dislocated for days. The skin around the bone was taut and his stomach roiled at the pain it had undoubtedly caused you. How the hell were you doing anything with an injury like this?

Sighing, Joel scratched at his beard as he tried to make a game plan. He knew that the joint needed to be put back in place as soon as possible, lest the entire wrist remain damaged for the rest of your life. However, the pain that the process would involve tore at his heart strings. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to cause you any more pain. But, there was no other option.

With shaking hands, Joel dug through the pile of goods and pulled out the morphine. He stared at the syringe for a moment, debating again before he ripped open the package and stuck the needle into the vial. The needle sucked up the clear liquid, filling the barrel slowly but surely until a small squirt of it spurted from the tip. Joel tested the plunger and he sighed when it worked. He knew that he couldn’t hold it off any longer.

“This is gonna help honey, just relax,” Joel mumbled, mostly to himself as you were fast asleep.

You gave no sign of discomfort as the needle slid into muscle. The plunger was pressed down, administering what Joel hoped would numb the process. He waited a few minutes, letting it fully take hold of your nervous system as he continued to remove bits of debris and grime from your limbs. He knew you were ready when your head lolled to the side, with all of the aches in your body soothed by the morphine.

With the drug clouding your senses, Joel grasped your wrist with both hands. He breathed in deeply, calming his own nerves before he expertly snapped the joint back into place. A sick crack tensed his jaw as your wrist regained its shape and he waited patiently for your response. Aside from a slight shiver, you remained oblivious.

“That’s it baby, so brave,” Joel whispered as he wrapped the area in a makeshift splint.

Leaning forward to kiss your face, he murmured sweet words as he pulled the sheets up around you. He stayed in his place at your bedside, kneeled against the wooden floor as you slept peacefully beside him.

Suddenly, exhaustion pulled at Joel and he laid his head next to yours on the pillow. From this close, he felt every puff of air that left your mouth. Your even breathing was like the ocean, slowly pulling him into a meditative state. There was no possibility of him sleeping, not with a deep seated panic still lurking somewhere in his brain, but he let the obvious signs of life lull him into a false sense of security. You were right in front of him.

After days of being without you, he had started to think that the morning he was taken would be his last time ever seeing you. With you laid in front of him alive, there was no way Joel was taking his eyes off of you for a second.

Instead, Joel slid one of his hands into yours and focused on counting your eyelashes as you drifted in a sea of opium. He knew that there were so many things to do. There were antibiotics to be given. There was food likely stashed somewhere in this house that he needed to find for you. There were plans to be made regarding where the two of you would go. All of that needed to be addressed as soon as possible, yet Joel couldn’t bring himself to stand.

As the day turned to night, moonlight blanketing the room and dulling the hues of purple along your face, Joel remained at your bedside. His eyes were still fixed on you well into the early hours of the morning, continuing to trace over every mark until he was satisfied that you weren’t going to stop breathing.

- You -

Dreams bled into one another as you slumbered. They were warm, like the smell that carried you through each encounter along the way. The scent was familiar and you chased after it in your disjointed mind but it was always just out of reach. Plus, the scenery kept switching too fast.

First, you were lying against the soft ground near the lake at home. It was summertime and when you looked over, you noticed Miriam. It took you a moment to hear what she was saying but you realized that she was trying to teach you the melody of some forgotten song. You wanted to listen, it was nearly impossible to pay attention to her with the spiciness of Joel wafting through the air. His scent was everywhere, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Hey - Did you hear what I said or are we daydreaming today?,” Miriam jested.

Your head whipped towards her, “Uh yeah, no, for sure, I just… Do you - Do you smell that? Is that - Is Joel here?”

Miriam laughed but it was off.

“No, he’s not. Joel won’t be here for some time, surprisingly,” she chuckled.

Confusion struck you and you moved to get up, only for your wrist to pang as you tried to push up off of the ground. The day shifted, a soft breeze making you shiver as you tried to understand what was happening. When you looked back, Miriam was still smiling and before you could ask her, she was gone.

The wine that was poured into your mouth was bitter and you choked as it slid down your throat. The communion had always tasted tart but this was way off. It was like the sacred drink had been replaced with a mix of medicine. The bitter sweetness glued your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

As the cup was ripped away, you were met with the scathing glare of your former stepfather. You wiped the wine from the corners of your mouth and Josiah rolled his eyes. He looked just as he had the last time you saw him, with half of his face hanging off from the clicker that killed him. Blood oozed from the slashes in his face, dripping directly into the glass in his hands and you gagged.

“What did I tell you? If you would have stayed with the man I chose, maybe none of this would have happened,” Josiah sighed.

You blinked at his words, unsure of what to say.

“Paul was a fine young man but no, no you have to go and cause all of that trouble. And for what? For love? HA!”

Josiah cackled and you watched as it creased every inch of his face. A fear struck you. If Joel was here but you couldn’t see him, perhaps your stepfather had done something. You wanted to tackle him but it felt like you were chained. As you struggled against an invisible hold, Josiah lifted the cup back up to your lips.

“Where the fuck is he?,” you hissed into the glass.

The dangerous tone you used only made Josiah laugh. He shook his head and placed the wine glass down before he turned towards the rest of the congregation. Looking back, a sea of semi-familiar people lined the benches but their faces were blurred. If you squinted, you could guess who some of the former camp members were but most of them remained nameless.

Without giving you another look, Josiah began his sermon. As he preached to them, his words got more warped until you felt the ground shift beneath you. The sanctuary shook and you desperately tried to get anyone’s attention but your voice was gone. Bracing yourself for the worst, you squeezed your eyes shut as the world collapsed in on itself.

Instead of the death you had expected, when your eyes opened once more you were sitting in between your parents on the porch swing back home. The two of them had their bodies pressed into you and a children’s book was placed in your lap. You couldn’t see either of their faces as they read aloud from the page but you could hear them. They were both giving awful renditions of the characters, using silly voices until they broke into peals of laughter.

It was only when the breeze had brushed against your face that you smelled him again. Sandalwood and bergamot tickled your nostrils, pulling you from the memory. The scent shifted your dream and suddenly, you were a fully grown woman squashed between two other adults.

“Mom, Papa, did you see him? Is Joel here? Where is he?,” you questioned, voice desperate as the panic rose up from your chest.

Your mother’s face was blurred when you looked at her, just as the congregants had been. The sight of her warped features was just as terrifying as seeing her in person and you jumped back in your seat, only to be met with the solid expanse of your father. Scared at what you might find, you refused to look at him at first but fingers soon grasped your face and whipped your head around. Facing him finally, you were relieved to find that his face remained unscathed. In fact, he grinned easily at you.

“So grown up now bubs, I hardly recognized you,” he chuckled.

Moisture gathered along your lash line, threatening to spill over as you smiled back. A silent moment passed as you both examined one another. It had been so long since you had seen him in a dream, years probably, yet somehow you remembered every detail.

The wind kicked up again and you looked away, scanning the neighborhood for any sign of the cranky man you loved so much. Bits of the street were clear, like the sidewalk you used to play hopscotch on and the doghouse that held the sweet pitbull next door, but the majority of it had been blurred with time.

You wanted to get up and look for the source of the smell in the house but you had the feeling like moving wasn’t an option. It made you uneasy, to be so close to Joel without the ability to actually see him.

As if sensing the growing fear, your father grabbed your face. He pressed his palms into your cheeks and breathed in deeply, only letting go once you did the same. You smiled at the gesture, not realizing you even remembered him doing it until you released the breath. It was just like he used to do when he was alive.

He sighed, “My beautiful girl, it’s been so nice to see you. But he’s waiting for you, bubs. It’s time to wake up now.”

“What?,” you asked in confusion.

He leaned forward, brushing his lips over your forehead before he pulled back again. Your father’s eyes twinkled with a familiar mirth as he grinned at you.

“Alright, now get out of here. I don’t want to see you again for at least another fifty years, do you understand me?,” he jokingly commanded.

Despite your hesitation, you nodded at his request. Your father smiled widely and pressed his forehead against yours as the world shifted again. Your vision was blurred once more, making you feel slightly nauseous as you tried to hold to the man in front of you. He said something but it was muffled as you were ripped from his embrace.

Opening your eyes was harder than you thought it would be. It felt like the lids had been weighed down with bricks. Nevertheless, you could hear everything around you. There was snow persistently pelting against the window and howling wind made the structure groan before it settled again. However, it was the sound of someone speaking softly in the quiet of the space that lifted the fog from your mind.

“… Tommy was so mad. His hair was always HIS THING back in the day. Fuck, it still is. Took him ‘bout a week to figure out that it was me that put Nair in his shampoo bottle.”

The laugh he ended the story with was forced, making your heart pang as you slowly regained feeling in your limbs. The heat of his body was close but he wasn’t holding you like he normally would. It was annoying but you were too weak to voice any complaint.

As more and more of your senses came back, so did the pain. Joel’s hand coasted over your back, as if he sensed the deep ache that had settled there. Despite the stiffness there, you were forced to hold in a sob at the feeling of his rough hand on your body. It had only been a few days, but it felt like a lifetime. You hoped desperately that it wasn’t a dream.

No, you thought, it couldn’t be. Not when your throat was on fire. You tried to swallow but the muscles in your airway were tight. To make matters worse, the act of trying to suck in deep breaths not only aggravated your trachea but also the battered skin stretched across your ribcage. Each breath in and out was torture.

At least with the swollen airway and crushed ribs, you could barely feel the ball of fire that encapsulated your wrist. The fact that it laid still against the sheets made no difference, pain still skittered up your arm and wrapped around your right shoulder. As the agony wrenched you from sleep, you focused on the sound of your mate’s syrupy drawl.

“... I can’t think of what else to tell ya honey, m’real sorry. I don’t even know if me talking is doing anything but I just…”

Joel took a deep breath, his hand leaving your body to push his fingers through his undoubtedly unruly curls. The two of you were so attuned to one another that there was no need to open your eyes to know what he was doing. If you could’ve, you would have smiled at his exasperation. Contrary to Joel’s own worries about you not being able to handle his moods, the grumpiness was one of the things that made you love him in the first place.

He sniffed and your heart dropped.

“I don’t know if I was - fuck - if I was too late, just… Please darling. Please just open your eyes. I’m…,” Joel grunted, pausing to gather himself before he whispered, “I’m scared baby, okay? Please.”

The fear in his voice was evident, his usually even tone getting progressively shakier before it dropped off entirely at the end. With your stomach clenched at his distress, the need to soothe Joel breathed life back into your heavy limbs. The pain was brutal, but it was worth it to ease the mind of someone who had been haunted by loss for years. With sleep gluing your eyes shut, it took three tries before you managed to pry them open.

The world was bright, so bright that it burned your retinas. The sun poured in from the windows, making your head pound as the light flooded every inch of the space. Sun spots danced in your eyes and you blinked them away, sighing as the room unfolded itself to you.

A quiet gasp came from your mouth. The bedroom that had aided in your isolation during the most formative years, in the home you hoped never to return to, was where you found yourself. Echoes of thinly veiled threats and constant disparagement rang in your ears as your eyes wheeled around the small room. A shiver racked your body as phantom fingers pinched at the softer parts of your body and gripped at your throat.

From the rickety bed, you saw that all of the decorations were still hung on the walls and the laundry was still stuffed in a forgotten chair. It was just as you had left it. For some reason, that made you hate being in it even more. It was like you had never left. Like finding your person, finding Joel Miller, had actually been the delusional daydream of the sad little girl that once lived in this house, but you knew that wasn’t true. Joel was yours, that part you were biologically incapable of forgetting, but you couldn’t remember why he had been absent for some time.

The past few days were a blur. All the blood, the fighting, the adrenaline, the fear, had numbed you to reality. If you kept fighting, there was no time to think about what you were doing. The only thing you were focused on was getting Joel back, no matter the price. He was the only person you absolutely couldn’t lose. The thought of his death was too much. After struggling for years, there was no way you were going to live in a world without him.

It was only when his teary face clouded your view that you were forced to remember.

The cabin, Joel being taken, the blood you had spilt, Allie and Cooper, and finally, the encounter with Paul. All of it came rushing back as Joel held your face in his hands. You could barely focus on the words, still too groggy and weighed down with chilling memories to fully listen as he rambled about how worried he was.

Joel gently caressed your face, looking down at you with so much love as he continued to speak earnestly. It was so sweet that you wanted to try for him, but the aching in your throat reminded you of how Paul’s fingers had dug into the skin. His rapid words were becoming more and more overstimulating as nausea crept up from your gut.

“... and I knew you needed rest but shit, you’ve been out for days. I didn’t know what to do and I-I’m not a doctor and I-”

Shakily, you reached up and pressed your hand against his mouth. Joel’s eyes widened, looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar before a deeper look of understanding spread out on his face. He nodded, lifting your hand to press a kiss to the bruised knuckles before he placed it back on the bed.

He reached out, his hands swallowing your left hand in a firm grasp as his big brown eyes looked down at you hopefully. A silence fell in the room but you were okay with it, taking a moment to take in the beast of a man that you had missed so badly. At first, all you noticed was his usual features. The strong nose with the scar across the bridge of it, the plush lips, the scruff on his cheeks, the bald spot on his beard that you loved to kiss, they were exactly where you had left them. However, after a few seconds reality seeped in.

Joel’s eyes were bloodshot and glossy as they analyzed every emotion on your face. His face was puffy, bruised in so many places that they seemed to run together. Some darkened his skin with a deep purple, while others had already started to fade into a light green.

“How-,” you stopped to clear your swollen throat, “How long have I been asleep?”

He sniffed again, hastily wiping at his puffy eyes before he said, “Four days.”

Four days? At first, your mind rebelled against the idea. There was no way you could’ve been asleep for that long. However, with the stiffness in your limbs and the fog over your thoughts, four days seemed likely. Your mouth was parched, lips cracked as you smacked them together unceremoniously. That flipped a switch in Joel and you started as he jumped up suddenly. He mumbled something about water, giving you a soft kiss before he jogged out of the room.

His heavy footfalls receded down the hall and you sighed. With Joel out of the room, the walls felt like they were closing in. The thought of being in this place had been bad enough, but with him gone it felt like a nightmare. Any bravery that had strengthened your resolve during the past few days was long gone, leaving you powerless as you awaited his return.

You waited a few seconds until he had turned into one of the rooms and was out of earshot. The last thing you wanted was to be in this room alone. With nervousness twisting your stomach, you mustered the strength to pull yourself up.

Black spots dotted your eyes as you heaved yourself up. Pain erupted from your neck, shooting bolts of electricity down your spine and you hissed. Clenching your jaw, you pushed against the mattress with your right hand. More lightning bolts erupted from your shattered wrist, making you let out a groan. The splint on your wrist did little to help with the pressure as you pulled yourself up against the headboard.

Despite the brief triumph of sitting up in bed, bile rose from the depths of your stomach and threatened to spew from your mouth. The thirst didn’t matter anymore, not with the way every muscle in your body screamed in agony. The corners of your vision were darkened and you focused hard on breathing. The room had just begun to stop spinning when Joel walked back in.

“Okay, so I’ve got - Shit! What the hell are ya doing?!,” he exclaimed.

You smiled weakly, knowing that this wasn’t a good look. A sickly sheen of sweat glimmered in the sun, illuminating the injuries that covered your body. Joel grimaced and marched forward, reaching to lay you back down the moment he got to the bed.

“What? No! I’m fine Joel, cut it out,” you grumbled, swatting at his insistent hands as he tried to pull you down by the legs.

He stopped, eyes ablaze as he sucked his teeth in annoyance. Crossing his arms over his chest, you tried not to laugh at how bitchy he looked with his knee cocked out and his eyebrow raised. Laughing at him when he was this angry would only make him more upset. Regardless of the fact that you found it amusing, you didn’t want to put him in any more distress. Slowly, you reached out for him. The weakness in your limbs still lingered, making you drop it back down to the sheets in an instant.

“Joel,” you sighed, “I’ve been asleep for days, I need to sit up.”

Joel looked at you for a while, mouth twisted to the side before he finally sighed and nodded. You smiled, noticing how the corner of his mouth twitched at the sight of it. He took the hand you had reached out to him, kissing the back of it as he sat down on the bed. The both of you let out quiet groans, the movement aggravating every ache that burned through your bodies. His eyes snapped up to yours and he frowned, looking heartbroken as he passed you a glass of water.

The cup was heavier than you expected and you fumbled it immediately. You tried to lift it up to reach your lips but the hefty drop of water that landed on the bed was the last straw for the alpha. Joel swiftly snatched the glass from your shaky hands, glaring at you when you tried to protest his coddling.

Gently, Joel tipped the glass into your mouth. Tepid water slid down your throat, soothing a bit of the scratchiness that burned so badly. Swallowing was still a harrowing task, but the drink still alleviated some of the pain. You drank a few more times, nodding to him once you were finished.

Joel placed the glass on the bedside table before grabbing your hand once more. Thumb brushing over the skin, his eyes were full of sadness and longing. He looked like a ghost of himself, with the light in his eyes faded from looking at the state of you. A lump formed in your throat and you fought hard to swallow any tears that threatened to wet your lash line.

You squeezed his hand, “Baby, I’m fine.”

He looked away, shaking his head aggressively as he mumbled something to himself. Joel caught your eye once more and underneath all the injuries, you saw a man who was terrified. The corners of his nose were reddened and raw from days filled with tears. You frowned at that, chest tightening at the knowledge that Joel had been crying over you.

“Thing is darling, you weren’t fine. I should’ve…” he paused and swallowed hard, “When you came out, you were bleeding and wheezing. And I was so happy and then you just stopped breathing.”

You barely remembered that. All you could remember was hearing Joel call your name through the fog of the pain and smoke. Guilt seeped in from the corners of your mind, making you gasp as you remembered the willingness you had to follow him into the dark. Believing that he was already dead, you had decided to give up, and now Joel was hurt because of it.

“Joel I-,” you stopped, unsure of what to say to him.

What was there to say? Sacrificing yourself to save him had come naturally. It was as easy as breathing when the other option was a life without him. Of course if he died, you would let yourself go on the chapel steps. What did he expect? But you couldn’t say that, not to him, not ever. He wouldn’t have it.

Joel closed his eyes and breathed in from his nose. The anguish he felt pinched all the lines in his forehead together and it pulled a sympathetic noise from you. His eyes snapped open at the sound of your whine, flashing with anger once more as he mashed his teeth together.

“They took me and you just… went after me? They told me you were killing most of their guards, is that true?” he asked cooly.

There was no point in lying, you knew Joel would see through it.

You nodded solemnly, “They took you from me. What would you have done?”

That shocked him. So much so that he dropped your hand on the bed and raked his fingers through his unkempt curls. The tension in the air grew as Joel tried to find a way to argue against your point. His jaw clicked from the pressure of his teeth grinding but he ignored, too focused on finding a solid argument against your point. The thought of bickering with him was so mundane that it almost made you smile but you held back in light of the circumstance. Instead, you decided to keep going.

“Alpha, look at me,” you whined.

It took a second for him to heed your request. Joel fought against his own instincts, looking away for as long as possible before the alpha in him took over. When his gaze finally landed on yours, Joel’s eyes softened and you weakly made grabby hands at him.

Joel sighed at your request, his anger melting away as he scooted into your space. The lines in his face smoothed out, making him look years younger despite the growing patches of gray in his beard and curls. As always, his body was warm and you hummed at the proximity. A wave of calm rushed over you, his presence making you more level headed instantly.

“Listen, we’re mates and they took you. I didn’t… Well, if I’m being honest, I didn’t know I had that in me but I’m not sorry. Those guys fucking sucked and they took the love of my life from me, okay? There’s no regrets,” you explained.

He winced at your words and you tried not to feel embarrassed. It was what he would have done, so why was this any different?

“What about putting yourself in real danger by getting that close to him? What about telling Cooper not to tell me where you ran off to? It’s like you were trying to die or something,” he spat.

The tone of his voice made you wince. It was true, you had told Cooper that, but the problem had been yours to finish. Paul coming after everyone was your mess, meaning that it was your job to clean it up.

The pelting of the snow against the window picked up and you dropped the smile from your face. Suddenly, the sound of a fire crackling and the smell of smoke pulled you from the conversation. Blinking once, then twice, you gulped audibly as you tried to forget the feeling of hands wrapped around your throat.

“I-I, uh-”

Joel continued, getting more worked up as he went on, “It’s supposed to be me and you, ain’t it? Me and you, nobody else. Sacrificing yourself is not a part of the deal sweetheart, that’s betrayal.”

You blinked, throat tightening for a whole other reason. His words stung but you understood his anger. If Joel had done what you did, you would have been pissed. However, the way he looked at you was too much. It was never your intention to hurt him.

“I c-couldn’t have you dying for me, or anyone else. It’s just - oh fuck - Joel, it didn’t matter what he did to me. I just couldn’t let him hurt any of the people I love, can’t you see that?” you cried out.

“HURT PEOPLE YOU LOVE?!,” Joel exploded, “DO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HURT ME?! IF YOU DIED! THAT WOULD FUCKING KILL ME! DON’T YOU FUCKING GET THAT?!”

A soft whimper was all you gave in response as tears poured down your face. You were tired, so tired of everything and he was being so mean. Sobs racked your body. The bruises on your ribs protested, aching with each breath, but you couldn’t stop. Not with Joel sat there in silence, biting his lip as he watched you break apart in front of him. That stung. You wanted him to hold you in arms, to kiss your face and rub your hip with his thumb like he usually did, but he was completely still.

“Joel, please,” you whispered pitifully.

He sighed and rubbed his face. Although Joel was inches away, it felt like miles as you waited for him to touch you. Looking down at the state of your body, you suddenly felt a wave of self consciousness. He had changed you into one of your old shirts, the formerly baggy material now taut against your chest and hips, but the rest of your bruises were clear in the light of day. More tears dripped down your face, splattering against the soft cotton as you chewed on the inside of your mouth in contemplation.

“He didn’t… I mean, he tried, but um… It’s still only you, if that’s what you are uh, worried about,” you mumbled as more tears fell onto the comforter.

You closed your eyes, not wanting to see if he looked at you differently with the admission. Alphas were territorial, you knew that, so you guessed it was that he was worried about. With your eyes still shut, you heard Joel move to get up from the bed. The sound of him leaving the bedside made your heart fall to the floor and shatter. The air in the room was suddenly stifling, making you breathe in sharply as the holes that had formed over the years in your heart widened. You wanted to sink into the earth, to let the cold dirt cover you until it silenced every thought or feeling.

As you spiraled further into misery, you were surprised to feel Joel move onto the bed behind you. His strong arms pulled you down onto your side, careful to rearrange you so that his face was inches from yours on the pillow. Despite the tears, his blurred face didn’t look angry, just sad. Joel stroked the side of your head thoughtfully before he leaned forward to kiss your forehead. With him seemingly not upset, you tried again.

“Please, I’m sorry. I just… I love you. I couldn’t let you die and he was going to kill not just you, but others. I didn’t want to go with him, I just-”

Joel cut you off, pressing his chapped lips to yours softly. You stopped, shocked at the contact at first but quickly melting into him. He allowed it to go on for a few seconds, softly pouring his love and devotion into the kiss before he pulled back. As his lips left yours, your dampened eyes fluttered open to see that his had softened.

“S’okay baby, don’t cry. M’not mad at ya for going with him. Well… Maybe I am a little but it’s not cus of that. You’re lucky you got out but if ya hadn’t, you know that wouldn’t have been your fault right? I woulda been madder than hell, but not at you. Never at you, darling. ”

You sniffed and nodded, scooching closer to him in search of reassurance. He welcomed your proximity, lifting one of his hands to scratch softly at the tangled strands on your head. It spooked you at first, the feeling of someone being so soft with you after days of all out war, but Joel whispered sweet words until you finally relaxed. As if on cue, his scent started to grow stronger to soothe the omega in need and it numbed the edges of the despair.

Joel nodded back and sighed, squeezing you closer as he mumbled, “I love you, okay? That ain’t ever gonna stop but I just… You can’t sacrifice yourself like that again, okay? Ever. I don’t care whose life is on the line, you ain’t allowed. This - I can’t - fuck… You can’t just do that.”

“I’m not allowed?,” you rolled your eyes, “Really?”

He cocked an eyebrow as you laughed at his request. You were about to roast his attempt at direction, but karma got to you first. Instead, the laugh made your throat burn so badly that Joel had to reach over for the glass of water. After a few sips, the coughing stopped and he set it back down. With the hacking at bay, the room grew silent.

“I wasn’t kidding,” he said quietly.

“I know,” you answered back softly.

Joel’s gaze was soft but there was a hint of desperation to it as he brushed his fingers over every inch of your body. It felt good, having him soften for you again. It was like seeing the skies open up with a downpour during a fierce drought. You tried to think of a compromise, anything to get him to back off but you knew he wouldn’t buy it. Joel needed you to say that you would let him die, if it came to it.

As the relationship between Joel and you had changed back in the cabin, you decided never to lie to him. There was no point, not when the man spent every waking second trying to make you happy and only ever wanted to be around you. Plus, he was a good listener, despite the fact that he forgot people’s names sometimes. However, the broken look on his face persuaded you to break the no lying streak. There was no way you were ever going to let him die for you, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Fine, no sacrificing. Scouts honor,” you agreed.

“You were in the scouts?” he scoffed, smiling wryly at the notion.

“In all honesty, I don’t know what the scouts are. It’s just something I’ve heard people say in books and movies. Is it something from one of those shows you’re talking about? Is that the MASH thing you’re always talking about?,” you guessed.

It was Joel’s turn to laugh this time and it was beautiful. You didn’t even mind the way it jostled the bed, making a few of your injuries smart with the movement. He looked years younger when he laughed and you smiled at him as boisterous laughter turned to muted chuckles. Carefully, you reached over and rubbed over the mark on his neck with your thumb.

He sighed at the feeling, “Fuck, I’m old.”

“Distinguished,” you giggled.

Joel snorted and kissed the palm of your hand. He moved closer towards you, resting his forehead against yours as he sighed. The feeling of him being so close was intoxicating. You basked in his scent, allowing it to draw you into an almost meditative state as you looked into each other’s eyes.

“M’not strong enough to go on without you darling. That’s not… I can’t do that again, alright? I can’t lose someone that I love again. Please, just… You can’t do that to me,” he whispered against your lips.

You felt every syllable, both from his soft lifts brushing against yours and in the burn that settled in your chest. Joel had been through so much, all he wanted from you was to stay alive. Of course you would try, but you needed him to live too.

“I understand Joel. Just… You can’t do it to me either, alright? I know that you’re gonna say that you’ve lived longer or something about being the alpha, but I don’t care. I couldn’t go on either baby. I wouldn’t want to,” you sighed, brushing the curls from his forehead.

His mouth twisted up and you heard his teeth clack together from the pressure. Joel squinted at you in annoyance, a red flush forming on his cheeks as he tried to work his way out the deal.

“Honey, I know you love me. It’s not that, I just - I’m 56 years old. I can’t just let you -”

“I’m not telling you to let me die Joel. Save me, but don’t you dare die. I don’t want you to die for me, I need you to live.”

During your time alone, you had missed life with Joel. It wasn’t just the rose he carved, or the meals he made, or the way he fucked you into the mattress, it was the mundane things. You missed the way he looked in the mornings, the way he let you hug him from behind as he cooked something on the stuff, the way he was constantly absent mindedly covering you with layers of blankets or sweaters. The life the two of you had together was short, but you needed more of it. The oasis you found in one another was a once in a lifetime thing, you felt it deep in your bones.

“No dying for each other, just… Just living,” Joel mumbled.

You nodded, giving him a small smile. Leaning forward, you gently kissed the side of his mouth. He sighed and pressed his nose into your neck, huffing at the skin there as you played with his hair. It hurt a little, with the area so bruised and tender, but you allowed him to scent you as he wished. Joel had clearly washed your skin the best he could as you slept, but it wasn’t enough to completely block out HIS scent. With your own alpha’s smell overtaking the sour stench that lingered before, a sense of calm filled you and opened the floodgates.

“I don’t think I want to talk about it yet. Not all of it at least,” you whispered, scared he might ask more about the slaughter or Paul.

He kissed the flesh below your ear, right over the indents he made with his teeth and you closed your eyes.

“S’okay darling, whenever you’re ready.”

Joel continued kissing over the bruises delicately as you cycled through your emotions. The smile at his sweetness quickly morphed into distressed cries but he continued. Your shaky hands grasped at the back of his head as he continued his tenderness, pushing him into your skin harder until his nose was squashed. If it bothered Joel, he didn’t say anything, clearly rathering to continue brushing his lips against every inch of your neck. He circled back to your mark every now and again, almost like a reminder each time the crying got louder again.

Grief, pain, disgust, fear, sadness, and love all brewed beneath the surface. So many conflicting emotions made your head spin as you tried to calm yourself. They were released in the quiet cries, until only the feeling of Joel’s scruffy cheeks tickling your skin remained. Although you went through the full wheelhouse of emotions, love was what you felt at him being near and your throat grew thick with it.

“I’ve missed you so much baby,” you choked out.

Joel pulled back, eyes shining as he pressed a longer kiss to your lips. It was still tame, the both of you too injured and traumatized for it to go anywhere, but it was passionate. You poured every ounce of love you had for him in it and in turn, he did the same. When Joel broke away, your face was flushed and he smiled at the way your lips mindlessly followed his.

He sighed, “I’ve missed you too honey, more than you could ever know. Never stopped thinking about ya.”

A grin split your face in two, making your cheeks burn as you snuggled into his chest. The thought of him thinking of you, in any context, immediately made you giddy. Without any prompting, Joel wrapped his arms around you and placed his chin on top of your head. Like a practiced dance, the two of you were tangled in each other in seconds. You pressed your face into the expanse of his chest, breathing in his spiciness until it was the only thing you could think of.

While you were slowly drifting off, lulled by his presence and smell, Joel was still wide awake. You could feel him gearing up to say something, despite the fact that you were slipping back into sleep.

“We’ve gotta get some food in ya baby, it’s been awhile since you’ve been awake. There isn’t much but some applesauce could be okay on your stomach, I don’t know if -”

Just like you had before, you reached up and covered his mouth to cut off his rambling. Joel made an indignant noise, trying to shake you off before he settled on licking your hand. The feeling of his tongue against your palm was ticklish and you chuckled, ignoring the jolts of pain that rattled in your chest as you kept your hand in place.

“Nice try, but you’ve literally spat in my mouth before. Pretty sure I can handle a licked hand,” you sassed, voice muffled by his chest.

Joel shook his head at your words, his chin brushing against the crown of your head with the movement. You smiled, knowing that his face was undoubtedly twisted into his signature scowl at your wording.

“Jesus darling, the mouth of yours is as crass as ever,” he huffed in amusement.

The nod you answered with knocked your forehead against Joel’s chin. The force of the collision was hard and you groaned in unison, which in turn made you both chuckle. He pulled back, looking lighter than ever as he studied your face.

“You need to eat,” Joel pressed.

You sighed and ignored him, pressing your face against his chest to ignore him. When he tried to extradite himself from the bed, you quickly buried your fingers into his hair. A loud, almost pornographic groan left Joel’s mouth at the circles you rubbed, making him ease himself back down again. He was a sucker for scalp massages and you knew it, having been crushed by his body multiple times after rubbing his head in bed.

Begrudgingly, Joel wrapped himself around you again and you smiled at the victory. Although he grumbled to himself, you could tell he was only half as exasperated as he let on to be. It was hard for him to act tough with your fingers working magic on the rubber band he found wrapped around his skull every day.

“I’ll eat,” you sighed dreamily, “Just hold me some more.”

How could he say no to that? Joel softened, pressing his nose into your hair to breathe in some of your scent as you burrowed deeper into him. The warmth of his body was intense. You had forgotten how much heat the alpha emitted and it was a relief to finally have your personal space heater back. For days, you had barely slept. When you had, it was brief and the truck didn’t hold heat long enough for it to be comfortable. Without Joel quite literally warming your bed, you weren’t sure you would ever have a good night’s sleep ever again.

“Feel like I’ve heard that one before,” he argued but there was no bite to it.

There couldn’t be, not when the two of you fit together so perfectly, despite everything. The bruises on both of your bodies hadn’t healed and there were definitely loads to talk about, but the feeling of Joel against you was enough for now. If he was with you, you were home. That was all you needed.

“I love you,” you whispered.

You waited, and almost said it again in case he hadn’t picked up on it, but all you got back from him was the start of a loud snore. Looking back up, Joel was out cold. His mouth was wide open, drool threatening to drip down the side of his face as he slumbered hard. He must’ve been awake since he found you, which would have been about four days. And who knows how well he had slept at Paul’s camp?

The realization hit you hard as you watched him sleep. Imagining Joel awake, fearful to sleep in case something happened to you was devastating. Leaning forward, you pressed your lips to his throat in thanks. His face twitched at the contact, arms drawing you even closer, but he remained asleep. With Joel’s body surrounding your own, peace washed over you. There was no confusion or fear or grieving, as it had been as of late, just complete tranquility in the silence of the afternoon.

As the day passed, you laid there and allowed him to rest while watching the shadows change on his face. Originally, you had promised yourself that you would stay alert for the sake of your slumbering mate. Knowing Joel, he probably made some promise to himself to never rest again in an insane plan to keep you safe. It was unreasonable obviously, but completely on brand. Nevertheless, as the day passed, you felt yourself drifting away as you saw the beginnings of a reddened sunset in the golden hue of his skin.

You called out to him quietly, bidding Joel goodnight as you slipped further into sleep with his arms still holding you. The simple act of bidding him goodnight, of pressing yourself against as he slept, forced a soft smile on your face that you knew would linger well into the night.

Joel was here.

You were with him.

You were home.

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x fem!reader #alpha!joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #omega reader #a/b/o dynamics #angst #tlou fanfic #comfort #reunited #violence mention #canon typical violence

38 notes · View notes