#I knew I KNEW the sniper wasn’t gonna survive

[yesneverno]

Me: omg how come I can never avoid spoilers

Also me: *scrolling through the tag on tumblr*

[tired-night-owl]

Blood Runs Cold

Fandom : Star Wars The Bad Batch

One shot ?

I tried to write a small fic about Crosshair and Omega in the new promo that’s been released because I can’t wait to see them together in the new season even if I know my heart is gonna get crushed by Dave Filony again… Hopefully I am the opposite of last season and I am soooo wrong and they will all be reunited as a big family where no one dies or sacrifice themselves for the others ! Anyway I hope you enjoy :) 

Word count : 866

Summary : Crosshair has much to think about in his new conditions, what doesn’t help is when a far too bubbly and optimistic teenager comes and ruins his peaceful self pity moment.

Notes : brief mention of torture I guess, small but graphic description of tech’s death, Siblings!crosshair x omega, Spoilers for the new promo clip !

He noticed it a while ago, when they first started their wicked experiments on him. He tried to keep it under control mostly for his pride because seeing as with such a condition, his (now rendered useless) talent would be even more so wasn’t helping his morale. Crosshair didn’t mind it too much for now because not one clone in this cursed facility was in any shape or form to judge him in his misery. That is until the girl showed up. 

That child has been the sole cause for any misfortune he had to live though in the last couple of months he thought, but scolded himself to at least not make it show. She has enough to deal with too at the moment without having to suffer his endless wrath and sorrows. Still she cost him everything. His family, in more ways than one, his station, attempting to save her branded him a traitor and a VIP ticket to Hemlock’s test table and —

His mind went silent 

His brother Tech…. He had to give his life for hers. Skull smashed to pieces because they didn’t heed his warning. There's no way the batch can survive without its brain now. 

His mind whirled with thoughts like these locked in his dark cell all day. Some would say they were enough to drive a man insane but Crosshair already knew insane, and it wasn’t by his choice. Now he sees it, the effect that damn chip has had on him. How it made him turn on the only people who ever cared for him. He couldn’t turn on this one now. 

« Crosshair… »

« Crosshair ! I tried to come earlier, but there are too many guards watching me…»

He tried to calm his usually snappy tone for the sake of the girl who must be as terrified if not more than he is at the moment.

« You shouldn’t be down here at all » he tried to make her realize a little harsher than he wished.

It was foolish of her to put a target on her back by snooping around, on THEIR backs. In a situation like this where there is no hope, it’s best to comply and hope you die as painlessly as possible. Though that seemed unlikely for him at the hands of that sick scientist. But there might be hope for her yet if she stopped escaping her quarters.

The girl continued with her misplaced energy and optimism.

« How else are we gonna plan an escape ? »

An escape ?! Had she gone insane? Did she not realize they were in the middle of no where, in an unknown imperial playground, surrounded by guards with no moral compass except loyalty to the credits they earn at the end of each shift filled with screams of tortured people. Better to kill that idea in the egg before she gets too altruistic. 

The sniper resumed his usual cold and unapproachable attitude, hoping the girl would realize that planning an escape in a place such as this with only 1 ally was foolish already but with no one, it was simply stretching your neck to help the executioner do his job. 

« There is no WE, and there is no escape… I’ve already tried. » 

The young clone didn’t budge.

« Every stronghold has a weak point ! Maybe I could convince Emerie to help, she’s one of us. »

His brothers has taught her well he could tell, and by that he meant by filling her head with useless idiotic tactics and informations for a obviously changing galaxy. Besides if they shouldn’t trust one person in this Sarlac pit, it was HER. That double crossing scientist woman. Testing on people was bad enough but on her own « brothers » that was being a plain sociopathic hypocrite. 

« Not every clone is your ally ! » The sharpshooter reminded her.

« You trust too easily… »

He expected a reply and one sounding similar to that one too, so he doesn’t know why her words struck him so. 

« Maybe you don’t trust enough. » Omega replied with that same misguided hope as earlier.

An uncomfortable silence surrounded the two and then it started again : the shaking.

The stupid shaking he couldn’t stop. The best sniper in the whole GAR with quivering hands, how ironic. He felt uneasy having her see him like this. It was as if his own brothers could see how low he had fallen and for a prideful man like Crosshair, it was not an easy feat to overcome. 

« Crosshair ? »  The young girl asked after her gaze fell upon her brother hiding his hands from her. 

Not so long ago he would’ve snapped at her for simply seeing him in a state like this, desperately trying to steady his once reliable hands but now, he just didn’t have the heart or the energy to do so…

« Just… Go. » he simply said. 

« Before you make things worst for both of us… »

In this moment he came to the conclusion that yes, he didn’t want to be punished for the girl’s misbehaviour but he also mostly didn’t want her to suffer because of him. 

Knowing Hemlock, he wouldn’t even do it to punish Omega… but he would do unexplainable things to the girl to make HIM suffer. 

[cheemscakecat]

Missing In Action 4

Chapter 4: Passageway

During Scout’s tour of Spy’s crusty smoking room, he and the new guy discover a secret passage.

Hey, Maybe they were gonna keep the new guy if Spy stayed gone! The thought felt half-good, which was better than mosta the thoughts he’d had in a while. Jeremy led the new guy to his old man’s smelly hideaway and waited for him to catch up. Medic had given him a survival kit or somethin so he’d have a blanket and stuff like that. It was weighing him down, so the little thing musta been stuffed.

It’d been seven months since Scout stepped foot in this place, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He stretched up against the wall sleepily; that one good dreamless sleep felt great, but it didn’t do much. New guy came up, hunched a little cause of the kit in his hand.

Shame mosta his stuff was lost. Sniper gave him a smelly bandana to wear, which he put on without hesitation. But he didn’t leave it on his face for long. Sniper peed way too much, and that bandana reeked of the stuff. Still better than anything Soldier mighta given him.

“This is where our old Spy used to stay.” He started. God, it was hard to talk about. Scout opted to just open the door and talk from there. The smoking room was still dark and stinky. The fireplace hadn’t been lit for weeks, but the wall lights turned on without a hitch. “This part’s the smoking room. There’s a bathroom behind that door..” He walked in and started pointing stuff out.

“Don’t know where the bedroom is, probably hidden. Sorry about that. And y’know, I’m sorry about that awful cigarette smell and these dumb*** paintings too.” He blurted that last part out. But it was true. Spy had all these dumb paintings with his mug smacked on top of the others. And people called Jeremy a prideful ***.

New Spy looked around curiously at the paintings. He glanced at the one over the fireplace, then did a double take and went over to it. Scout followed him. “Why is fruit painting here?” “I dunno. Why, you like it?” It was the only one without Spy’s face painted on it.

“Why is it so different from ze others?” Scout looked at it, then at the other pictures, then back at it. He noticed something else. “Hey, it’s kinda crooked, isn’t it?” New Spy reached up to adjust the lopsided painting and stopped quick. “There is something… em… caught behind on ze wall.”

Jeremy cocked his head and put his hand on the new guys chest. “Let me look. I dunno if he’s got booby traps.” “What is booby trap?” …It hadn’t crossed Scout’s mind that the new guy might be bad at English since it wasn’t his first language. Kinda like Heavy. Maybe that was why he talked funny when he got interrogated. “It’s like… you know how Demomen put bombs down for people to run into later?” “Oh, is like hiding bomb behind wall.” “Pretty much, yeah.” Not really, but Jeremy wasn’t gonna make another guy feel bad for not getting English. He sure freakin didn’t.

He slowly turned the painting the same way it’d been tilted when they noticed. Eventually, he uncovered a keyhole that’d been hidden by the bottom side of the frame. The duo stared at it, and then at each other.

“I wonder where ze key is.” “Wish I knew, too. I’m curious now.” It couldn’t be the way to Spy’s musty bedroom, he’d hide it better. Actually..

“Hey, ya think it might open a door to the kitchen?” “Do all members on ze team have their own?” Newbie asked. “Nah, we got a shared one. But uh, Soldier isn’t allowed to use it since he brought roadkill-“ He remembered new Spy wan’t good at English. “Uh, dead animals off the road to cook.” Jeremy almost burst out laughing at the offended face the new guy made. “But anyways, I never saw our old Spy use it. He might have a pre-tent-chee-us kitchen in here.”

New Spy looked around the fireplace. The marble didn’t have any fancy moldings to hide junk in. But Newbie looked at Spy’s armchair funny. “Is this em… his place?” He gestured at the chair vaguely. “You mean his spot? …Come to think of it, yeah! I ain’t ever seen the others use that one.” Scout decided that the new Spy might take that as a rule he should follow. “But he’s not gonna be around to get mad. You sit wherever you want, man.”

The Newbie sat down and shifted around a little. He looked lost in thought. “Hmm. Am I the same tallness as ze other Spy?” Jeremy nodded. He got up and moved off to the side. “You try sitting in his chair.” Scout stared at Spy’s spot for longer than he wanted to before willing himself to shrug and do it. He plopped down on the red leather and-

“Ow! What the heck?!” He got back up and rubbed his lower back, cause something hard poked him. “I knew it! I knew there was secret pocket!” The new guy said. “How?” Jeremy was confused. Newbie gestured to his own back, which curved in a little more at the bottom, since he was tall. “Other Spy would not want ze secret pocket to bother him when sitting.”

Scout looked at the chair and felt around the cushion where it hurt. It felt like there was a box under the back cushion near the bottom seam. New Spy crouched down and tapped the wooden bottom of the seat until it sounded hollow. “Help me put this on its side.”

In the light, they could see a snug little rectangle of wood on the bottom of the chair. Newbie took his knife -one of the only things that he still had- and stabbed the edge of the rectangle until he could pry out the box.

Inside was a silver key, and when they put it in the lock it fit like a glove. New Spy crossed his fingers and turned the key. The bookcase to the right of the fireplace slid aside, and there was a dark passageway. They nearly smacked their heads together from rushing to look at the same time.

“Should we… go in?” Newbie asked. “It’d be lame to stop now. But watch your step, I guess.”

————————-

The duo carefully tiptoed through the hallway until they reached a door with a bar instead of a regular knob. Scout tried pulling the door to the left and it didn't work, but pulling it to the right did.

Wherever they were, it was dark as hell. Jeremy felt around for a light switch. He got blinded real bad when the Spy suddenly found it. It was on the side of a cabin-net that was at a real comfy height for him.

The kitchen actually didn’t look like some pre-tent-chee-us fancy restaurant; it looked like a magazine picture though. Kinda girly, like Ma’s kitchen if she didn’t have 8 guys makin messes for 20 years in there.

New Spy wandered around, somehow not bumping into anything even though he didn’t look where he was going. He stopped suddenly by a weird cabinet door in the wall and frowned.

“Something is rotten. Other Spy must have had food out!” Scout made it over just as he threw open the door. There were a buncha rotten vegetables and fruit growing mold. New Spy pre-zoom-uh-blee started cursin up a storm in French. “Gross!” Jeremy plugged his nose.

The new Spy stalked over to the sink and dug around angrily; he came back wearing elbow long rubber gloves, carrying bleach and garbage bags. He kept muttering in French as he dumped the mess of goo and mold into the bags.

Scout didn’t exactly wanna do nothin, so he went and got a wet rag and a bucket of soapy water. But by the time he came back, Newbie had already pulled the sloppy juice into the bag using the long gloves. “Can you pour ze bleach on that, please?” Jeremy nodded and did it while Spy threw out his nasty gloves and put on some new ones. It smelled horrible even to a guy who had bathroom duty with 7 brothers.

Spy used the rag on the leftover chunks of dead fruit and veggies, scrubbing like he was getting years of anger out. Again, Jeremy found himself standing aside while their guest cleaned with the soap bucket. “You’re really good at this.”

“It’s what must be done. I was taught better than to keep a dirty kitchen. That is how you make someone sick.” It was kinda weird that such a young guy was this strict about cleaning, but this was a nasty mess. Oh. Speaking of that…

“Do’ya think there’s more rotten crap in that fridge?” Spy stopped and stared at it like a cat about to start a fight. He groaned and stomped over to it, ranting in half English, half French about “****ty salmon-ill-ah.”

Scout hoped that meat juice wouldn't leak out onto the floor, or Spy’s clothes.

Thankfully, everything was wrapped in parchment paper or tight plastic. There were like 12 or 13 chickens stuffed in there though. Spy pulled off his gloves and looked at the tag on the nearest chicken.

“Some of these are not good. We will need to throw them away.” Scout looked at the tags and threw out the ones that matched that first one. He used a different bag to keep the plant slop off the floor. “Sorry for lettin ya do all that yourself man. I mean, you just got here.” Spy shrugged. “Well, I don’t mind. I do not want ze black mold to grow on this room and make ze team sick.” Scout nodded and accidentally pressed the back wall of the fridge. Which opened another little door.

“Another one?! Really?” New Spy looked at the dates on the other chickens. “Ah, these are still good. Ze other Spy must get new ones every two weeks. Ze newest ones are only 2 days old.” Jeremy looked at the secret fridge door. “So he’s been gettin food shipped here and crammed through these doors?”

The Spy opened the freezer and it was full to the brim with meat, and plastic containers of random crap. “Oh my God, why does he have all this?! It’s not like he even shares!” Scout realized a little too late that he shouldn’t have gotten mad. New Spy looked at him with concern.

”You and ze other Spy. I feel you do not get along.” Jeremy tried to be calm and say something normal next. “Well, I don’t think he’s coming back to be honest with ya.” Good. Not too many details for this new guy to know. But the Newbie stopped and went quiet for a minute. “You think he is dead?” He said it with sympathy. “What? No- dude. I just-“ Scout sighed. “I think he abandoned the team. He and I were fighting, and he ran away so he didn’t have to fix things.”

Spy lowered his head sheepishly. “I am sorry for assuming. If he really did leave all this to rot, he must not have been a very nice man.” Truth be told, Jeremy was having trouble figuring out why Spy would leave all his food hoard to go to waste himself. “It’s fine. I didn’t say it clear enough.” They both kinda stared at the fridge without looking at anything.

“Well, I should find a use for ze Cornish game hens in this fridge. I do not have room in my stomach, and ze freezer does not have space either.” “Yeah. I’m gonna take out this rancid trash. You cool with me leaving you alone now?” Spy nodded, but he was still staring at the fridge looking unhappy about the wasted food.

What Jeremy didn’t understand is that Spy bought 6 Cornish game hens in one week instead of 4. Why’d he get extra if he wanted to leave?

————————

Antoine sighed and got the showering supplies from the survival kit. He was grateful that the other Spy had a usable bathroom with a shower that was not hidden away.

He hadn’t been planning to cook for himself, much less a strange team. Not so soon. But that good hen was going to go to waste if he didn’t cook it in a few days. First though, he needed to get any rot water off of himself, and clean the desert sweat from his clothes. It was not right to cook in such a dirty body either.

[vampsquerade]

Ooo I’ve had this idea for a while: Phillip Graves x GN!Reader where the reader is a member of Shadow Company and they’re like his bodyguard n shit and the reader save Graves from some sort of danger on a mission and they ✨fall in love✨

this is a really good idea, i hope i can do you some justice for it! thanks so much for requesting anon :,) i hope you had a lovely holidays and re raring to go into the new year soon! also heads up for spoilers right here before the post! also wow this one is kind of weird i don’t know why i went this route for it

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Graves x GN!Reader: The Snake’s Guard Dog

Trigger Warnings: angst, spoilers for the CoD:MW2 reboot, slight angst, assassination attempts, pining, slight implication of Stockholm’s Syndrome, gunshot wounds, obsessive affections

Phillip Graves; a man as deadly as he was charming. With a gruff yet alluring southern drawl to his voice, he was able to convince many that he had their best interests in mind despite him having the capacity of having any single particle of a person be completely wiped from existence. But in being his bodyguard, practically his right hand man, you’ve seen how easy it was to get under his skin and recklessly utilize that bite of. However, it wasn’t as good as yours. The best of the best always needed someone better, and that someone just so happened to be you. Despite having a rough childhood and practically making a living on the streets, you’ve seen the worst of the worst and it’s shaped the intense and deadly training you went through. Hell, you’ve even committed the worst of the worst just to be able to survive, as much as it hurt you. But those feelings meant nothing, the only feeling you ever needed was the desire to protect and ultimately survive.

You were seen as nothing but a loyal dog.

At the moment, your mission with Phillip was to secure intel on Ghorbani’s next location by entering an AQ convoy and stealing documents. With cover provided by stealth operators in your beloved PMC, Shadow Company, it was going to be quick and easy—or rather, should have been. After piecing some things together, you figured out that there were AQ snipers providing overwatch and they were silently picking off your cover. Eventually, that laser sight hits Phillip’ forehead as he’s looking down at the intel he’s got in front of him. “Sir, get down!” you exclaim as you tackle him. A shot fires through the window and right into your left shoulder, causing you to pull Phillip right over you due to the force.

Crying out as the entirety of his weight crushes your freshly injured shoulder, you let go of him so he can scramble off you. For a moment, the two of you just stare into each other’s eyes before Phillip realizes the gravity of the situation. “Shit!” he exclaims, carefully turning you on your side while prone. He checks the rest of your body to see if there was anything else wrong, and once he got to your ankle and heard you practically growl in pain, Phillip knew it was time to get the fuck out of there. Gathering what he could, he clutched it tight before looking around the room to figure something out. “Everyone, we’re going loud! Get rid of those damn snipers! I’m gonna need a few of you to come rendezvous with Executioner and I to help get us out of here!” Phillip yelled into the comms. “Sir…we can leave through the back door…I have two smoke grenades…” you say through gritted teeth. “Toss it now then cause we’re about to take more fire than that shot you just took for me!”

Nodding, you grab the grenade from your belt and pull the pin. Smoke immediately fills the room and you struggle to stand, slightly falling over upon standing on your shattered ankle. Phillip grips your safe hand tightly, helping support you this way to get the hell out of your now compromised position. You were tempted to just tell him to leave you, as you were losing a hell of a lot of blood, but you had a feeling Phillip wasn’t gonna take any of that lip and save your life. “Phillip…fuck…” you groan with a dry and gruff voice. “I know baby, I’m getting us the fuck out of here. Don’t you worry.” Phillip mumbled. For whatever reason in your painfully cold heart, a small sensation of warmth fills you when you hear yourself addressed as such a word by your superior.

Phillip said that all the time, but why was it so different this time?

Eventually, the both of you make it to safety and the area is effectively clear at the cost of some men who were now either severely injured or actually dead; yourself included. “Get them some damn help, now! I don’t need my right hand dying on me!” Phillip yelled. You were in and out of consciousness at this point, so you made a last ditch effort to grab at him and tell him something. “See me eventually…” you mumble. “You know I will. Once I get this report to Shepherd, I’ll go and see you.” Phillip’ promised. “Good…” you say. The blood loss eventually takes hold and causes a fun little side effect called “passing out”. Limbs now completely limp upon losing consciousness, you let go of your vice grip on Phillip’ arm. He gently holds your hand on his own accord for a moment before bringing it up to his lips to kiss your fingertips, knuckles, and the back of your hand. “Get well soon…”

An entire day would come and go where you’d remain unconscious, waking up in the middle of the afternoon another day later. “Mornin’ sunshine, glad to see you waking up…” you hear a familiar voice mumble. “That you sir..?” you ask hoarsely. “The one and only. How you feeling? Need anything? Medicine, water, food—just tell me and I’ll have them bring it to you right away.” Phillip said. “Got any morphine on you, sir..?” you ask, trying to sit yourself up only to remember your fucked up shoulder holding you back. Phillip is quick to carefully help you sit up however, hushing you softly upon hearing you wince. “I’ll be back with some morphine. Don’t you move a muscle darlin’.” he said. Phillip stood up and began to walk away to get a nurse, only to stop and turn around to look at you, “How bout you start callin’ me Phillip from now on? No need to call me sir so often.” he suggested. Feeling yourself get flustered again upon hearing you’re finally on a first name basis, you just give him a silent nod before turning away out of embarrassment.

Phillip smiles and leaves the room to go get you a nurse that can give you the proper dose of morphine you need, and you just sit there by yourself and begin contemplating why you’re feeling such a strange emotion. Every time Phillip spoke to you, it’s like your heart was nervously breaking down in front of him and caused you to do the same. His voice sounded different and was a lot sweeter than it was before, and it made you wonder what the fuck happened after the other day that caused you to be like this. Was Phillip having the same thing happen to him? You didn’t know and no matter how desperately you wanted to, the thoughts and feelings were forcefully buried down as much as they could be.

The door to the room you were in opened and you turned to see Phillip was back with a nurse, as well as a plate of food with a bottle of water for you to intake. There was a warm smile on his face, and it just made your situation worse. No matter how hard you pushed down the sudden feelings you had towards Phillip, they would always float back up. “Thank you so much, Phillip…” you mumble. “No, if anythin’ it should be me doing the thankin’ here. You saved my damn life the other day, takin’ that sniper bullet for me. How is it that you continue to impress me despite the two of us workin’ together this long?” Phillip praises. You want to turn away but you can’t, that southern charm taking a deep hold to your body as your heart takes over your logic. “I’m…not too sure myself, but I appreciate it a lot Phillip…” you say softly, the nerves getting to you for once.

Phillip smiles more than he had previously, placing the plate of food on your bed before handing you the bottle of water. “Thank you…” you say softly. “Anythin’ for you. That nurse is gonna get you the care you need until the doc can come in and see your shoulder. Bit of a shame you won’t be there with me when we finally catch Hasan.” Phillip says. “Those docs we got had all the intel we needed? I’ll be damned…” you say, laughing softly as you take some morphine provided by the nurse. “Wouldn’t have gotten them if it weren’t for you having that smoke grenade and pushin’ me to the floor. I’ll be back later, rest that shoulder up okay?” Phillip says, gently rubbing the safer part of your back. “Before you leave…” you say, looking up at him. “Yes, Y/N?” he asks. “How…long have you been sitting there..?” you ask. “Well after having a briefing with Shepherd the night we got back, I came here and waited until it was safe to go in and see you.” Phillip said.

Your eyes widen upon hearing that he was practically there the entire time, waiting for you to wake up. It was never a thought in your mind that someone was so dedicated to you, platonically or not, and wanted to see that you were truly okay. It screwed your mind up more than it was at this point, and you were beginning to confuse platonic feelings for romantic ones. But how was it even possible to feel what you did, especially for your own superior? To even know what love felt like?

You needed more. So much more from Phillip.

Six months would come to pass and you’d heal up well and found yourself to have spent more time with Phillip whenever he had time to see you while you had been recovering. He began doting on you a lot, pampering you and making sure you were okay in the end. Your physical therapy didn’t last too long thankfully, and you were put back in the field in no time. You were about to meet the men from Task Force 141 for the first time and it made you anxious. You had no idea what their motives were and why you had to work alongside them, convinced you and Shadow Company were the only things needed. Time was also taken to settle yourself emotionally, still finding yourself to be pining after your own superior.

But unbeknownst to you, Phillip was feeling the same thing. That look the two of you exchanged when you saved his life before realizing and remembering you had been shot downright forced him to, out of fear of losing the you as you were the only person he was closest to and didn’t know he had been in love with, do everything he could to make sure you were safe. Sure Phillip had had his attractions to all sorts of people, eventually finding himself sleeping around when he could. Despite this, nobody ever came into comparison for the way he did you. He took you under his wing and saw how damn near animalistic it was to witness you take the lives of his enemies; it was so much that it practically excited him. Phillip needed you, just as much as you did him.

Gearing yourself up alone in your private quarters, you sense a presence that didn’t feel as familiar and you froze up and waited to see what was to happen. But before you could even attempt anything, you were pinned to the wall and your arms were held to your back. After a bit of a power struggle, you broke out of the mysterious person’s grasp and swiftly pinned them to the wall. You finally realize it was Phillip that had pinned you, and you could see the wild lust and adoration in his eyes. “Ain’t nobody can do that better than you can, baby.” Phillip said. “I suppose I could say the same about you, sir.” you say. Phillip puts an idea over your lips, shushing you before he speaks, “Address me properly as your superior, Captain.” You momentarily look away, flustered by this sudden entanglement, “I could say the same to you, Commander Graves.” comes out in a whisper. “Good job.” Phillip says.

He leans forwards and catches your lips between his. Your eyes wide and staring into his own, as they’re pointed in a harsh and cruel glare, you see a sense of an animalistic danger. Phillip then pulls away, slowly leaning close to your ear, “Have I ever told you that I’ve had a deep, obsessive love for you?” he whispers. Heart thundering in your ears, you shake your head, “No, Commander Graves. Never heard it from you.” you say firmly. “Then let me tell it to you now; I love you so much that it hurts from how bad I need you. Nobody’s ever been at my level the way you are and it fills my heart with a warmth I can’t contain.” Phillip whispers. Physically weakening, your grip on him goes limp and he takes this as a chance to flip your positions once more. “Commander Graves?” you ask softly, staring into Phillip’s eyes. “What is it, Y/N?” he asks. “I feel the same way. Ever since that night, I’ve felt an emotion I never thought I could. But…what are we now?” you ask nervously. Phillip chuckles and shakes his head.

“We’re partners now. Not just in the field, but also behind closed doors.”

[bots-and-cons]

Arcee and the sniper femme: after a run-in with the cons, both of them have to stick together to survive until the Autobots arrive to rescue the two.

There are two previous parts to this, which are both HCs. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here. This time I wanted to do a scenario though and so I did, because I freaking can and I have enough energy left for it today. I decided to finally give the sniper femme a name, Ballista, because it’s the name of a sniper rifle and I feel like it just fits. So I guess another sort of OC to add to the list. I'm not gonna tag this with an OC tag, since I feel like she's just gonna be a reoccurring character for this specific thing, and I'm not gonna develop her outside of that

Arcee found herself separated from the team on a scouting mission, and while she was on guard she wasn’t really worried. The woods were quiet aside from the nature noises, and there were no decepticons on sight. Arcee was actually quite enjoying herself, but she knew she had to find the others, in case something did happen. She did realize her surroundings seemed familiar, but she wasn’t sure why.

Arcee saw something move next to her from the corner of her optic. It was silver and seemed to be moving quite slowly.

“Hey…” came a familiar voice.

“Are you following me?” Arcee crossed her arms over her chest as the sniper emerged from the woods.

She smirked and leaned against a nearby tree.

“What brings you to my part of the woods?” she asked, totally ignoring Arcee’s question.

Arcee realized why her surroundings had seemed so familiar a moment ago, she’d been there before. It was months ago, but it was approximately the same place, near that blown up energon mine.

“I’m on a mission…?” Arcee trailed off, not really knowing what else to add.

“Ah of course, you autobots and your missions, so busy” she snickered teasingly.

“Do you live here or something? Because I can’t come up with another reason why you would still be hanging around here”

“I’ve made a nice little hideout for myself nearby, it’s pretty cozy to be honest” the sniper said. “I’d offer you a tour but I think it’s better to be kept a secret for now. Wouldn't you agree, Arcee?”

“You seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours, feels a bit unfair” Arcee noted.

“Oh yeah, that’s true” she nodded. “Then allow me to introduce myself, I’m the famous sharpshooter, previously associated with the decepticons, called-” she was cut off by the sound of jet engines above her.

“Not again” Arcee rolled her eyes as she prepared herself for a fight.

“Yes again. It seems we’re fated to get each other out of bad situations” the sniper smirked.

Her rifle wouldn’t be much help in such a close combat situation and as the vehicons dropped from the sky into the woods around them, she brought out her blades and readied herself for what was about to happen.

“I need back up at my coordinates, now” Arcee basically yelled into her comms, just as the vehicons surrounded the duo.

The two were standing back to back with each other.

“It’s Ballista, by the way” the sniper whispered to Arcee.

“Your name? Good timing you’ve got” Arcee shouted as the vehicons started coming at them.

The two fought well together, they were in sync and watched each other’s backs, covering each other's blind spots as best as they could. It wasn’t long before the autobots showed up to help, and the situation was completely taken care of. It’s not like Arcee and her sniper acquaintance were having much difficulty, but the numbers weren’t really in their favor.

After the whole commotion was over, Ballista didn’t disappear into the woods this time, Arcee expected her to, but she stuck around instead.

“So, you’re Arcee’s team huh” Ballista said as she let her eyes wander over each of them.

“A friend of yours?” Bulkhead asked.

“Sort of” Arcee rolled her optics, and gave the other femme a little side glance.

“I’ve saved your aft so many times that I should have earned a medal for it” Ballista smirked.

“You’ve saved my aft? I’m the one who saved you” Arcee argued.

“Yeah sure, let’s go with that” Ballista chuckled and grabbed her rifle.

“Disappearing into the woods again? That’s becoming a trademark for you” Arcee noted as the sniper started walking away.

“Call me” Ballista smirked mischievously as she walked backwards into the woods.

“Sure” Arcee rolled her eyes, but she was smiling anyway.

Ballista wouldn’t be able to get that smile out of her head for days.

[modern-inheritance]

Fäolin: A ramble post about the fallen member of the elf squad and why he wouldn't have remained one

While writing Reunion and realizing how much Arya and Glen care for each other as friends, I realized that I have done very little writing with Fäolin. Since then I established that he was the more lighthearted one of the group, confirmed he was their sniper, reestablished that he and Arya grew up together as kids and were friends long before Arya even left for the Varden, and confirmed that he and Arya were in love. 

That last bit, though. That last bit is what’s throwing everything up right now. See, Paolini said during some interviews that Arya and Faolin were indeed romantically involved, but in a way it was more for convenience (???) and they never were ‘romantic soulmate/true name’ material for each other. He has said several times that Arya wouldn’t have stayed with Fäolin as romantic partners had he lived.

And honestly? Thinking about him in MIC and how his character has (loosely) developed in my mind, I agree.

And I don’t think that, had he survived along with or instead of Glenwing, he would have returned to the Varden with Arya for the Battle of the Burning Plains and to officially become one of Eragon and Saphira’s bodyguards. Something would have changed. And I don’t think Arya could really accept it.

Here’s where I’m coming from. Fäolin agrees with Arya and Glen that the elves need to be doing more for the fight against Galbatorix. He believes in it, would fight for it, and did, but there’s something different. We’re gonna go like…way more in depth than I’ve gone before and again, this is a ramble, so don’t expect much to make sense. 

Let’s go back to The Medic, Glen’s first official appearance in MIC storylines. Glen was born in Ilirea and lived there for about 15 years before the 5 year war of the Fall of the Riders began. His mother and father both died in the final conflict at Ilirea while Glen was spirited off to Du Weldenvarden, possibly fighting alongside Evandar himself. He was old enough to see the world he knew falling apart around him and know why it was falling apart. He wanted to fight to get it back and knew he could make a difference. So he left.

Arya, meanwhile, was around probably 6-8 at the time the war ended. She grew up with war on the horizon and infiltrating everything. It was all she knew. Her father would explain everything to her he could, why he was leaving so often, why her mother was frequently sad or angry, explained Galbatorix to her. Rhunön swore up and down about the Wyrdfell and the injustices being committed, the insanity of it all. She grew up with this knotted feeling of anger and frustration at what was lost and what was being thrown away and fury that she was left without her father and, in a way, without her mother because of the war. She hated hearing how people were being hurt and dying when the elves could be out there making a difference. And damn it she knew she could make some difference. So she left.

Fäolin is different. He wasn’t as close to the conflict but still was affected by it. He wasn’t the son of a king or great warriors and healers, just regular elves who were drawn into the war. His father remained behind to watch him while his mother joined the fight out of a sense of duty. She fell during the conflict, and his father, unable to cope with the loss of the entire world he had known, his mate of centuries, and unable to look at his son who was so much a reminder of his loss, left Fäolin in the care of their village and disappeared into Du Weldenvarden’s depths. Fäolin was more shielded from the war than the others, and while he too grew up with an itch to change the world outside the forest, and to fight Galbatorix and his Forsworn, he didn’t feel the urgency that Arya and Glen did. He didn’t feel he had a reason to actually leave Du Weldenvarden. He had a whole family, his village, providing him with the attachment that the other two had difficulty feeling due to their circumstances. And he didn’t feel like he needed to leave until about 30 years before the first book, and only then because he felt that his friendship and feelings for Arya were what drove him. 

Arya and Fäolin were very, very close friends. Different from the way Arya and Glen were close (Arya frequently explained it as ‘Once you trust someone enough to hold your literal guts in while there’s bullets and blades and fire around you, and they’re not moving until they can move you despite all that, you get closer than any of that romantic crap could get you.’), they were childhood best friends. Fäolin was a bright spot that Arya felt the war would never touch, and while she wanted him by her side she absolutely did NOT want him joining the Varden. But he did, and he was still bright and the sun and he never lost that quirky little smile. He was, in a way, everything she was fighting for, the people back in Du Weldenvarden, the free races, Alagaësia, the innocent people who didn’t really choose this fight. 

I think they both loved each other. I think they loved each other romantically and I think, in a way, they loved each other because they needed each other. I can’t put it into words properly but that’s the vibe I have. It doesn’t change the fact that they were in love. 

When Arya was captured, Glen was distraught. After healing and adapting to his prosthetic he tried to leave Ellesméra and Du Weldenvarden to do two things: Find out if Arya was alive (and if so, get her back), and rejoin the Varden. Arya or no, he would have left anyway. The only reason he hadn’t by the time everyone got back was because Gilderien wouldn’t let him on the Queen’s orders.

Fäolin, though. He would have stayed. Maybe he would have had a reason, maybe he didn’t want to question if Arya was dead or alive and the implications of her living through the ambush and not being found, maybe he just couldn’t take any more of life in the warzone, maybe he had soured on the rebels when it was realized that someone in the Varden had to have leaked their location for the ambush. He would have given up on her being alive and possibly given up on defeating Galbatorix altogether. 

And despite his reasons or his lack of them, no matter how he would have or not have tried to explain it to Arya when she returned with Eragon and Saphira and Brom in tow, I don’t think she could have accepted them. I think she would have seen that he had changed, and she had changed. The changes from her time in the Varden had been gradual and more in line with who she was as a person, but the changes after her imprisonment, more hidden though they may be, are sharp and sudden and I don’t think Fäolin would have been able to cope with them either. They would have remained friends, still laughed and joked around, but there would be a noticeable distance. And they would just…drift apart. 

I don’t think Arya would have even asked him to come with her again. She would have just said goodbye. 

So. 

Yeah. 

I can’t think of anything else but that’s what it’s at right now. 

[devilherself666]

Back into the past

Master List

Jimmy was eighteen and out on a late-night walk to go get something to drink from the all-night bar, when he heard moaning. Normal Jimmy would have kept walking without a care in the world. The moans threw him off though. They didn’t sound feminine enough to be a woman, or deep enough to be a man. It was the pitch of a child, as he slowly walked backwards. He looked into the alleyway, seeing a black haired thirteen year old child, riding a grown man's cock, and snorting a line of angel dust off the man's nipple, the sight alone made Jimmy sick. 

Jimmy walked into the alleyway, pulled the child off the man completely and kicked the man straight in the left cheek, breaking his jaw off and huffing. “You are fucking a child dumbass!” He spoke and sadly enough Jimmy already knew the man knew that much. You would have to be super high not too. “Hey! You just kicked my lunch money!” The teen huffed out. Jimmy looked down at the teenager and nodded. “Well you are coming with me and I don’t want to hear your bullshit about it.” He scoffed out. 

Jimmy walked back to his house and pushed the boy into the bathroom. “Shower! Wash that shit off you before you get an infection!” He spoke sternly, as the boy did just that. Washing himself and when he was out Jimmy threw a shirt at him. “You will stay here, you will NOT! Take your clothes off for anyone until you are Eighteen or at the most sixteen!” He spoke bluntly, and the black haired boy nodded. “Yes sir.” 

As the time went on a few months Jimmy had learned the boy's name was Callum. Jimmy didn’t stop the boy from doing drugs, or anything else other than sex. Jimmy could deal with everything else in his name, but a pedophile wasn’t one of them. In time, two more kids showed up. Their names were Roux and May. 

Jimmy was doing a job and got a call from Chester. “There is a hit out on you, be cautious.” He spoke sternly and Jimmy hummed deeply. “Always.” He hung up the phone as he played it off as he looked at his phone like he was looking for a place or an address. When he saw the shine of the light, the sniper on the building on the right. He walked around the block at first and then went into that building, up the stairs to the roof and there he was. Right behind them. “So, you failed.” He spoke deeply and both of them went stiff. Jimmy wasn’t gonna kill them of course not they were just kids, doing the job they were given. “Give me your boss's name, and you can work for me instead.” He spoke deeply. “What makes you think we want to work for you?” May barked at him.

Jimmy couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “Well, a roof over your head. Respect, free food, all the showers you could want.” He spoke and both of the kids looked at him before May could protest ,Roux stood up and nodded. “Deal!” He spoke and May looked at him with a shocked look. “Roux?!” She protested. “We survive, nothing else matters but staying alive.” He spoke sternly, and May nodded. Jimmy smirked deeply, as he took them home.

Again Jimmy was not a parent, Jimmy taught these kids on how to be real criminals not the cheap kind, and learn what real life has ahead of them. Jimmy had three Minions as he called them for a year, before he met Jason. He was the oldest out of all of the Minions and a year younger than Jimmy, He was Eighteen when Jimmy met Jason. Jimmy being Nineteen. Jason was a sniper for the army, but he got booted out for his mental health, but it was one of those things where he wasn’t ready to leave so he took the job upon himself, killing the bad people. Jimmy being one of those bad people of course. Jimmy knew nothing about Jason until a shot was fired at him in the middle of the store. Jimmy glared, as he hummed deeply looking around, and Jason was great at hiding. As a bullet hit his shoulder as Jimmy moved right in time. “Fuck! That hurt!” he scoffed, as his phone rang, he picked it up. “What chester!? I just got fucking shot, now is not the time for a catch up call!” He spat out, as Chester grumbled. “I know who is after you, and I know how you can get him to surrender.” He spoke, and Jimmy listened closely to Chester. 

When Jimmy learned Jason was Callum's older brother, Jimmy held Callum. “Hey asshole! This is how you treat the man that took care of this little shit?!” He asked with a deep scoff. Jason instantly realized it was Callum, even though he had a few new piercings, he jumped down from top of the wall where he was hiding and ran to Callum, hanging him, but that only lasted a minute before Jimmy snatched his gun and broke his knee caps into the pavement. “You think you can shoot me and live after words, you stupid bastard.” Jimmy clocked the gun, ready to shoot Jason. “Wait, please. I just found him.” Callum protested. “Let him join us, it's clear he has good aim.” He protested once more. Jimmy thought about it, Callum was one of his most loyal Minions. Jimmy put the gun down and helped Jason up. “Your brother just saved your life, in return you do as he said, and work for me, or I fold your shit right here.” He pointed the gun to Jason’s head. “Alright. Alright.” He spoke. “I’ll work for you.” 

Jason was surprisingly very loyal, maybe it was the fact Jimmy stood up to him, or maybe it was the fact Jimmy took care of his little brother. Jason respected Jimmy. For whatever reason. 

As the time went on, two more Minions were recruited into Jimmy's mafia. Alice. She wasn’t used for combat but she had an attitude, one Jimmy liked. She was a stipper at a club, and she had a manager named Remi. They were so opposite from everyone else, quiet, shy, timid, and had the worst anxiety Jimmy had ever seen. At first Jimmy wasn’t going to take them in, but Alice wasn’t going with Jimmy without Remi. “Alright fine, but the second their pussy attuide pisses me off they are gone.” He spoke bluntly. “Deal!” She spoke.

They've been working together for awhile now, years down the line, here they are. In the same room as Jimmy's brother he had been searching for. What seemed like years. It was. “Wow! You are Jimmy's brother?!” Alice asked as she laughed excitedly. “You two are so different it is crazy!” She spoke and Callum nodded. “They really are!” Jimmy scoffed as he rolled his eyes, as he didn’t say anything about their excitement, because he felt as if it was reasonable at the moment. “Thank you?” Kaida spoke confusedly, not understanding anything that was happening. “You are welcome!” Alice spoke.

[yougottalovebuckybarnes]

May I ask for a Bucky x reader: When a mission goes sour, the guilt was thrown upon her like a ton of bricks! It had been readers first time in the field, but still a comrade had been hurt due a stupid mistake! She knew that they blamed her, that she was a failure, a matter of no worth or their concern. When the public scolding was done, reader was told to stay in her quarters. After packing all her stuff in her suitcase, and cleaning the room and locking the door, she simply ties the noose , that was gonna solve all the teams problem- her spot in the team would be replaced with someone better. At least that was a comfort- that everyone would be alright, after she was gone. Because no matter how they despised her now, she loved them all with every ounce of her being...

Forgive Me (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

A/N: Thank you for the request! As a person who loves to write angst a lot, this was an interesting challenge for me! I changed a few things that were in the request, but they are fairly minor in terms of the overall plot. This is pretty intense, especially in the middle, but it does have a happy ending! Hope you all enjoy! :)

Word count: 4.4k

Warnings: Angst, Steve being a complete d*ck, dark themes (suicide)

=======

“You never learn, do you?”

A hand grasped my shoulder, and I spun around to find the honorable Steve Rogers seething in anger. His jaw was clenched as he glared down at me. “Why can’t you ever think about anyone other than yourself?”

“I wasn’t being selfish. I thought I had the shot!” I shoved his hand off of me in a matter of seconds but stood my ground. “It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know that there was another sniper above us.”

“No? I thought you were all about being the hero.” Steve snapped, taking another step closer to me in a way that almost felt threatening. Almost. But I did not dare even blink as the super-soldier invaded my personal space. “Isn’t that what all the papers have been saying?”

I tried my hardest not to wince at his words. Truthfully, I had no desire to interact with the press at all. It was just my misfortune for a stray reporter to find me as I was coming back from my morning jog and demand a statement from me. At the time, I found no harm in it. I simply told him that I enjoyed my job and that I loved being able to help people for a living.

They asked a question or two about working with the others, and of course, I tried to answer as honestly as I could. I loved all of them, and this had by far been the best job that I had ever had. At most, I jokingly commented about the hours being intense. But of course, that greasy-haired reporter decided to twist the truth, and the story spread like wildfire.

Now, I was the egocentric bitch who couldn’t work well with others. The disconnect from the others happened fast. First, it was Natasha who had stopped replying to my texts. Only days later, Wanda was giving me the cold shoulder and it was all downhill from there. It had been hard to gain their trust at all, and now it was all gone. Despite being on the team for quite a while now, they did not want to hear a single word I had to say.

Well, all of them but one.

And that was, of course, Bucky Barnes. The man who I had married in secret just under a year ago, and the only person in this whole tower to trust a word that came from my mouth. He believed me with no hesitation and tried his hardest to convince the others of the truth. But after those efforts failed, Bucky just tried his hardest to make sure we all could coexist, even if that meant only seeing each other when we needed to leave for a mission.

And god, did it hurt to live this way. It did not feel like living, just merely surviving. I could hardly focus on my work anymore, and after watching my husband's body drop with a bullet lodged in his shoulder only an hour previous, I did not know if I could handle it anymore. I certainly wouldn’t if they could not save his life.

I felt my jaw begin to clench as I glared up at Captain America with as much anger as I could muster. Fear was beginning to consume me, and I refused to let any of them see it. “I did not ask to be the hero, but I had to pull him away to safety. What did you want me to do?”

“What did I want you to do? I wanted you to have taken the bullet instead!”

It felt as if Steve had backhanded me across the face. Honestly, I would have preferred that. It would’ve hurt less that his words did. My eyes tore away from him, and bounced around the room, watching the others just simply stare in silence. No interference, no sympathy, no emotion at all except for the same anger that Steve had.

It felt as if my heart had split in two. I loved all of them like they were my own family, and now… it was like I was just another stranger on the street at best, and a nuisance at worst. Either way… my life did not matter to them.

“Well…” My throat grew thick with the threat of tears, but I fixed my gaze on Steve, praying that they remain hidden. “I’m sorry that I can’t take his place, Steve. I’m sure it would’ve made things a lot easier for you.”

Steve remained silent, his expression still hard and cold. And as I glanced at the rest, I was greeted with nothing more than a scowl. Perhaps I had hoped that my tears would at least bring some sort of emotion to them, but they did not. And I did not expect them to.

I turned around and began to walk away, ignoring the piercing eyes that followed each step I took. After rounding the corner, I felt the first tears begin to fall. But I refused to let myself fall apart, not when Bucky’s life was still at risk. After a handful of minutes of walking, I approached the med bay, watching silently as the doctors began to bandage his shoulder. Removing the bullet took less time than I had anticipated, and I finally let myself release a breath of relief as I watched them lay him carefully on the bed.

“Ms. Y/L/N?” I pulled my eyes away from Bucky to see Dr. Helen Cho approach me, a small but confused smile on her lips. “I’m surprised to see you here. Any injuries you need to be attended to?”

“No.” I shook my head gently, glancing at Bucky again. “I’m here to check up on him. “

“He is going to be fine. The bullet was removed and he just needs a few days of bed rest at most. The serum certainly helps with the healing process.”

“Can I sit with him?”

“For the time being, I am only letting family in.” She gives me a sympathetic smile. “But I will let the rest of you come in after he wakes up. It shouldn’t be too long.”

I couldn’t imagine having to run into the others while visiting Bucky, not after our last conversation. It would be a disaster, and although I knew how important it was to him that we kept our marriage a secret for my safety, I had to see him.

“I’m his wife.” I finally admitted, almost laughing at the surprise on Dr. Cho’s face. “We got married last year, and haven’t told anyone else yet.”

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” She smiled and gestured for me to come in. “I wouldn’t expect him to wake for a while, though.”

“That’s okay. “ I walked across the room to where he lay, my heart aching at the sight of his bandaged right shoulder. “I just needed to see him.”

If she had said anything else to me, I did not hear. All my focus was on Bucky, my heart aching even more as I saw the bruises that were speckling his face, including a nasty black eye. I leaned down and gently kissed his forehead, feeling my lips tremble against his skin before pulling away.

I took a seat in a chair next to his bed, gently taking his right hand in mine as I simply watched him sleep. Despite the relief in knowing that he would recover, the ache in my chest remained as painful as it had only minutes previous. Perhaps Steve was right… it would’ve been easier if I had taken the bullet instead of him. It would’ve certainly been a much smaller funeral.

“Oh, baby…” I could barely manage to murmur, my tears finally beginning to fall free as I sat next to him. “You have no idea how badly I wish it would’ve been me. I would trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could.”

The words felt so broken and bitter, but I knew them to be true. There was nothing that I wouldn’t give to have traded places with him at this moment, regardless of how Steve or the others felt about me. After all, Bucky had gone through, he deserved to live a full, happy life. And I would gladly sacrifice my own to make it happen.

And perhaps it would be for the better if I did. Bucky would still have Steve and the others. He would still be happy here. And that was all that I ever wanted for him.

“I had to tell Helen that we got married… that was the only way she would let me in.” I sighed softly, already imagining the look on his face when he found out. “It was a little funny how surprised she was. I suppose it makes sense. How did a girl like me wind up marrying a man as wonderful as you?”

I could already hear Steve’s voice echoing down the hall, and I closed my eyes, preparing for yet another confrontation with him.

“I have to go, Bucky. I love you so much.” I stood up and gently kissed his forehead once more before making my way towards the door leading out of the med bay. I turned once more, glancing blurry-eyed at my husband’s unconscious figure in bed before moving into the hallway. “I pray you will forgive me one day.”

The words felt heavy, and truthfully, so did my soul. It was my fault that he was here, and that guilt would follow me forever.

The moment I stepped out into the hallway, Steve Rogers had just begun to round the corner to approach the med bay. He paused, his eyebrows furrowed, almost questioning why I was there in the first place. But he just shook his head, bumping past my shoulder harshly before entering the room where I was only a minute earlier. I closed my eyes, praying that I would not start crying for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

“Glad to have you back, Buck.”

My eyes flashed open, and I turned to see that my husband had finally regained consciousness, smiling brightly despite having been shot in the shoulder only hours previous. I felt both Wanda and Natasha brush past me, not nearly as harsh as Steve had but still as dismissive. The giggles and good-natured laughs between all of them made my heart ache even more but reminded me that I was right.

He was surrounded by so much love, so many familiar faces. It seemed that all Bucky knew these days was laughter and happiness, and the thought of that made me smile. The pain from his past was finally beginning to disappear, and this new chapter in life was beginning.

Bucky would be okay.

Without looking back into the med bay, I began to walk toward the elevators, wanting nothing more than to escape this tension. It wasn’t until I reached my room and had turned on the water to my shower that I realized how tired I was. The person looking back at me through the mirror was indeed a shock.

Strands of Y/H/C hair wildly sticking all over the place, a solid bruise painting the skin of my jaw. It had been a rough day, and I looked like I certainly had an awful one. But it was my eyes that truly took me aback.

It wasn’t the red that rimmed them or the soreness of my eyes that caused me to freeze. It was the exhaustion and hopelessness that they held.

The women before me in the mirror appeared to be broken, shattered. And I certainly was.

Not even the warmth of the water or the scent of my favorite body wash comforted me. My tears had ceased, but the emptiness inside remained. I quietly pulled on some sweatpants and a t-shirt before climbing into my bed. It felt oddly empty, considering that I shared a bed with Bucky most nights. But I eventually found some sort of comfort, laying quietly in bed wrapped in blankets while staring at the ceiling.

My last conversation with Steve played over and over again in my head, particularly his last words to me.

“What did I want you to do? I wanted you to have taken the bullet instead!”

I slowly rose from the bed and walked into the bathroom, greeted with a much more presentable image of myself in the mirror. With shaky fingers, I opened the mirrored door, finding all of my familiar toiletries inside. I slowly pulled the bottle of painkillers from its place on the shelf and shut the door. I leaned against the opposite wall, and slowly sank to the floor, my eyes closing once more to prevent tears from falling.

Perhaps a bullet was more of what Steve had in mind, but death did not care which way we came to lose our life. And quite frankly, neither did I.

=======

Bucky’s POV

The first thing I remembered after starting to regain consciousness was the sound of my bride's voice. Her words were soft murmurs, almost as if my head was underwater. “Oh, baby… you have no idea how badly I wish it would’ve been me. I would trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could.”

Y/N’s voice was broken, tears lingering behind her words that she desperately tried to hide. She carried guilt that did not belong to her and I wished so desperately I could get myself to wake up completely and hold her.

It was my fault we hadn’t noticed the sniper above us. The entire mission was chaos before this had happened, bullets flying and more HYDRA agents appearing by the second. Our target was only a couple dozen feet away and Y/N did not hesitate to step forward to shoot. The sniper had been fast, but I had been faster, able to push her out of the way and take the bullet directly to my flesh shoulder. I couldn’t remember much after that, just the sounds of my wife crying as she tried to drag me to safety and then the voices of the others that boarded the jet.

“I had to tell Helen that we got married… that was the only way she would let me in.” She sighed softly, but with a hint of a laugh emerging in her next sentence. “It was a little funny how surprised she was. I suppose it makes sense. How did a girl like me wind up marrying a man as wonderful as you?”

If I had been fully conscious, I would have rolled my eyes at her last statement. It was quite the opposite, as much as she tried to deny it. Before Y/N, I had never imagined this life. Falling in love, getting married, perhaps a few children a few years down the road. I didn’t think I deserved this happiness, but I was thankful to have it.

“I have to go, Bucky. I love you so much.” I felt her soft lips against my forehead, and I knew I was only seconds from fully regaining consciousness. “I pray that you will forgive me someday.”

Forgive her? There was nothing to forgive. Sure, this had been a terrible day, but I made that choice. She did not deserve to carry that pain with her. But with that, her voice disappeared and I heard new voices grow louder. I slowly opened my eyes, wincing at the brightness of the white lights above me.

“Glad to have you back, Buck.” Steve Roger’s face came into my line of vision and I smiled at the sight of my closest friend.

“I guess I got lucky this time, eh?” I couldn’t help but joke about this now, knowing that I had survived what could have potentially been my last day on Earth.

“Lucky would’ve been you avoiding the shots, to begin with,” Steve replied, and I rolled my eyes. Before I could speak again, Natasha and Wanda came into the room, friendly smiles already lighting up their faces.

“I guess the Winter Soldier isn’t completely invincible, huh?” Natasha teased.

“I suppose not.” I laughed, looking at both of them brightly. “Thanks for coming to visit. Although I shouldn’t be here much longer today.”

“IF your shoulder is healing well, Barnes.” Dr. Cho’s voice chirped, stepping close to inspect the bandage. “You will be on bed rest for a few days, though.”

“I can live with that,” I responded, accepting my fate of time off. It couldn’t possibly be that bad.

I frowned, looking around and not seeing her face anywhere. “Where’s Y/N?”

The three of them looked surprised at my question, not expecting it.

“I’m not sure. She may have gone to her room.” Steve shrugged, seeming indifferent to this conversation.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Steve’s voice was defensive, and his brow furrowed. “Why are you so concerned about Y/L/N?”

“Why have you continuously treated her like she doesn’t belong here with us?” I snapped, feeling uneasy about what had happened between the four of them when I was unconscious. “She earned her place here as much as I have.”

“The way she has spoken to the press about us and her job has made it hard to be all warm and friendly with her, Bucky.”

“You would rather trust a nosy journalist over your friend?” I scoffed, unsurprised that Steve was holding this grudge still but worried that things have gotten worse. “That speaks more about you than her.”

“Y/N does not belong here, Buck. “ Steve shook his head slowly, essentially ignoring my words from only moments ago. “She certainly did not belong with us on that mission today. That was abundantly clear.“

I froze at his words, understanding the implications behind what he said. Steve blamed her, and by the looks that Natasha and Wanda were giving me, he was not the only one.

“Don’t.”

“Bucky, she was being arrogant. She-“

“This was not her fault, Steve.” I glared at him, ignoring the slight throb in my shoulder as I moved to sit up further. “She had the shot. We didn’t see the snipper in time, and I pushed her out of the way. This is on me.”

“Bucky…” Natasha sighed and parted her lips to speak, but the sharp look I gave her silenced her immediately.

“No, I don’t want to hear it. The way you have all treated her is absolutely disgusting. And most of that has been when I was around. So, tell me, Steven, why isn’t Y/N here right now?”

The room went quiet, the three of them glancing at each other uneasily.

“Bucky-“

“No more bullshit, Steve.” I snapped, nearly seething with anger as he continued to dance around my question. “Tell me what happened.”

Steve looked at me, his eyes beginning to water and his mouth beginning to open to speak. But the sound of FRIDAY chose the perfect timing to interrupt.

“Sergeant Barnes, your wife is showing signs of severe distress. She is currently located in her room on the third floor. “

“Your wife?” Steve’s voice was nothing less than shocked and even sounded a little disgusted. But I did not wait around to address him again.

It took only a matter of seconds to make it out into the hallway, despite numerous protests from Natasha and Dr. Cho, and took what felt like an eternity to make it to Y/N in our bedroom. Each step felt heavier than the last, my pulse racing as the last words she spoke to me rang in my mind.

"I pray that you’ll forgive me someday."

The door hit the wall with a loud smack, but I frankly could not give a damn about what potential damage it inflicted on the wall. “Y/N? Doll, where are you?”

Soft sobs echoed in the bathroom, and I immediately opened the door leading inside it. My heart dropped as I found Y/N collapsed on the floor, a bottle of pills loosely grasped in her hand. The lid had been popped off.

“Baby.” I sank to my knees in front of her, taking her face in my hands urgently. “I need you to tell me how many you took.”

Y/N’s bottom lip trembled, and she tried to look away. But I refused to let her, gently pulling her back to look at me. “Doll, how many-“

“I couldn’t do it.” Her voice was weak, tears still steadily falling down her face. “I-I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” A wave of relief rushed over me at her words, but the sight of my wife falling apart on the bathroom floor only made my heart ache more. “Can you give me the bottle?”

Her eyes flickered to her hand holding the bottle, fingers tightly clenching the plastic. But Y/N nodded slowly, lifting her hand to place it in my grasp. The moment it touched my hand, I placed it on the counter and gently moved to pull her into my arms.

Y/N’s body trembled as she cried into my chest, and it took everything in me not to do the same as I whispered repeatedly into her ear. “You’re going to be okay, baby. I promise.”

=======

After some time had passed, I quietly moved the two of us back into the bedroom, placing her onto the mattress before climbing in next to her. She lay quietly for a few moments with her head resting against my good shoulder before she lifted her head to look at me. The soft Y/E/C eyes that I had fallen in love with were red with tears, filled with a pain that nearly broke me in two. “I’m sorry, Bucky. “

“Sssh.” I gently pressed my lips against her forehead. “You don’t need to apologize.“

“I do,” Y/N mumbled, sniffling softly. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. You getting shot, and then you find me here. It should have been me.”

“Baby, stop. It wasn’t your fault.” I shook my head at Y/N’s words, gently tipping her chin up to gaze down at her. “You can’t blame yourself for this. I made that choice. I will always put you before me.”

“It’s not just me who thinks I’m to blame.” Her voice was a broken whisper. “The others, Steve - “

“What did Steve say to you?” I interrupted, already feeling tense at the mention of his name.

“He told me that I was selfish…” Y/N finally admitted quietly, her eyes looking everywhere except at me. “He thought that I was trying to be the hero, dragging you back to the jet after what happened. And he thought… that it should’ve been me.”

The hurt in her voice did not even compare to the expression in her eyes. It was as if she believed them, accepting the terrible things they said without a second thought. And I had not been there to stop this from happening.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“No, you are not.” She let out a small snort of amusement, giving me the same reassuring smile she had given me thousands of times before that only served to mask her pain. “That man is your best friend. How could you function in the 21st century without him?”

“This isn’t funny.” I scolded gently, my eyebrows furrowed as I gazed down at her. “You are my wife. I do not care if it's Natasha or even Steve who says these things. You do not deserve to be treated like this, especially because of things you never said.”

���Bucky, I have done everything I can to try to convince them that what was printed in that article wasn’t true.” Y/N’s smile faded as she took my left hand in hers, squeezing gently. “They will never believe me. And I realize now that this is how things will be. “

“No. It cannot be like this anymore, doll. “ I shook my head, my own tears finally bubbling to the surface at her words. “Look at what happened today… it nearly destroyed both of us. “

“What if Steve was right?” Her blunt response tore right through me. “I was hurt when he said that he thought it should’ve been me, but… at least things would have been easier. No one here would care if I came home or not. “

“Do you have any idea how devastated I would be if something happened to you?” I whispered brokenly. “My priority, always, is to keep you safe. I will take a hundred bullets to the chest if it means that you are safe, and you are alive. “

“Your happiness should be a priority, Bucky.” Y/N sniffled, sitting up and resting her back against the headboard. “They make you happy. Steve, especially. Who am I to stand in the way of that?”

Out of everything that she had said, this stung me the most. Of course, I was happy around everyone else in the tower. I had become good friends with most of them and was the closest with Steve. But nothing would ever compare to the happiness that Y/N had given me. I had never expected to find love, and I honestly thought I did not deserve to. But falling in love with her was so easy, and it brought me more joy than anything my life in the 40s ever had.

“You make me happy.” I sat up next to her and took her hand in mine again. “Always. I have loved you since the day we met, and I plan to spend the rest of this life with you. If they can’t accept that, we can spend it away from here.”

“Bucky…” Y/N sighed, the wheels in her mind clearly beginning to turn.

“I’m serious.” I gently place a kiss on the top of her hand and smiled at her. “I promise you, I won’t be giving anything up. You are my happiness, doll. Wherever you go, I go. “

She nodded slowly, her eyes beginning to pool with tears. But for the first time this evening, her eyes were filled with hope and happiness.

“I love you.”

I smiled and cupped her face, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to her lips. “I love you too, doll.”

========

A/N 2: I was conflicted on the ending. I wasn't sure if I wanted to have Bucky confront Steve, but this was already over 4k words lol. Anyway, if any of you are interested in a part 2, let me know. I think this works fine, but I think I kinda suck at writing endings. XD.

-M <3

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

(This is the reunion scene from my Splinter Cell au. It got away from me, so be forewarned: looong post incoming)

Of course there had to be another problem the moment they got back from the race. It wasn’t enough to just let them savor a victory for once. Or, Precursors forbid, let them actually rest. It was always something.

"Radar is picking up a craft headed for the island!" Vin's nervous voice crackled over their radios.

"What size is the aircraft?" Tess asked, shedding her weariness to take command.

"That's the thing...it's not an aircraft at all! There's a ship headed for us! I estimate it'll reach us in, er, er, 3 hours!"

"A ship?" Jak frowned. That was a little unusual.

"Could be Brutter," Daxter suggested, "His fishing boat has to come back for repairs sometime, right?"

"Maybe."

Tess sounded doubtful.

"Can we get some snipers down here? Just in case. We're gonna need em anyhow once the Baron figures out we swapped the Stone for a fake."

"I'll hang around and keep an eye out," Jak volunteered.

With a faint frown, Tess shook her head. "You can tag out, Jak. It's fine. You just came off a mission."

Jak snorted and kicked at the sand. "Mission? Tess, I was just racing! I do that for fun! You and Dax are the ones who actually did all the work."

He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms, fully intending to patrol the beach until the craft either pulled up or passed by. Sure, he was a little tired, but they couldn't afford to get complacent just because they'd stolen back the Precursor Stone. Besides, the entrance to the Babak settlement wasn't far, and Jak had no intention of leaving it unguarded.

Tess caught up to him in two swift strides. She made sure he'd seen her before reaching out to grab his shoulder.

Unexpected touches were not welcome. She'd been around the block a few times: she knew to announce her presence.

"Hey, no. Don't do that brushing-off thing with me." She stopped in front of him, giving Daxter the opportunity to hop from her shoulder back to his.

"Jak, listen. I promise, I'm saying this because you're my friend and I care about you, not because I doubt you. But every time you have to be in the same vicinity as Errol, that's a trigger. I'm not putting you on any new assignments until you're ready, mentally and emotionally."

Jak laughed harshly. "Errol? Oh he's dead. He's super dead."

Surprise stretched Tess's face, then it slackened with relief. "Did you-?"

The boy looked away for a moment, then shook his head. "Nah. Wasn't me. He tried to run me down with his zoomer after he lost the race. Wasn't that hard to dodge. He crashed face-first into a month's supply of eco."

A dark vein pulsed in his temple, and one of his canines showed, sharper than usual, when he smirked.

"He never was much good against opponents who weren't chained down."

Daxter's comforting weight on his shoulder grounded him, steadied his erratic pulse. Jak focused on the sensation of paws on his shoulder, feet braced against his back. He was here, he'd survived, and this time Errol couldn't taunt him anymore. There was a part of him that was angry. Furious, even. It was a quick death, and Errol had deserved far worse. He'd deserved to be chained to the same injection chair that had seen Jak's worst moments, left to the tender mercies of the needle and Jak's own darkness. But now the sadist was beyond his reach.

"Wait." Daxter leaned into his face. "You're telling me that old Coloring Book Face -- the famed racer, the one Krew bet on -- in front of his adoring fans, crashed into tanks of eco like a moron?"

He hopped once and hooted with laughter.

"He blew himself sky high and took his reputation down with him? What a dumb way to go! It's perfect!"

Jak wouldn't have called it perfect. But he could appreciate the level of humiliation Errol had unwittingly dealt himself.

Tess still looked at him with that terrible knowing in her eyes. Sometimes, Jak thought the older girl could see right through him. It was unnerving.

"How are you doing?" She asked, and for once, Jak couldn’t bring himself to lie.

"I'm...here. I don't want to be around a lot of people right now. I..." He shrugged. "I need to focus on something else before I get angry again."

Satisfied, Tess nodded. "Okay. Do you want to be the one watching for the ship?"

Honestly, he did. Jak had a lot to process regarding the death of his abuser. But at the same time, the adrenaline of the race, and getting to challenge Praxis right to his face, still vibrated through his body. He really needed somewhere for all that energy to go.

Sentry duty was quiet, but required focus, and movement. Sig had been right about him needing that kind of activity.

"Yeah. Um, yeah, I got this." Jak stretched and swung his rifle off his back. "Could you just...uh, could you let Sig know I'm okay? I kind of had to blackmail him not to come to the race and snipe Errol when he passed the stands."

"Fair," Daxter observed. He stretched lazily across Jak’s shoulders feigning flippancy. "That woulda been way quicker than he deserved."

Tess shifted her weight and sighed, resigned.

"Okay. I'm gonna get this stone locked up somewhere safe. You let me know if you guys need any food or anything out here."

Jak agreed without really meaning it. The Babak settlement was right there, after all. If he really got hungry, he could just ask Brutter for some scraps. Of course, that was more an excuse to see Mar than anything else, but who was going to tell on him?

With Errol dead, finally dead, that was one less threat to his little brother.

Or at least, it should've been. It didn't feel real yet. Everything had happened so fast-

What if the explosion hadn't actually killed him?

What if some people were actually too evil to die?

Stop, stop it. That blast took out three guards that were just near the eco. Errol went right into the heart of it. If he lived, it wasn’t for long. He can't get me he can't get me he can't get me-

"Jak?"

Jak inhaled sharply and straightened his shoulders. "I'm gonna post up on the ridge over the caves. Keep me updated about the boat's progress, yeah?"

Daxter grimaced. "Uh...Jak, Tess already went inside. You zoned out there for a minute, bud."

Jak winced. "Sorry," he muttered.

His best friend shrugged it off. "Let's get to Our Spot, huh? I think we still have some candy stashed up there that Junior hasn't found yet."

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

The smog that perpetually surrounded Haven city was, just this once, a blessing in disguise. Thick and oily, it hovered over the water, hiding the boat from sight and muffling the sound of propellers. Rags wrapped around gunstaffs and rifles added to the muted quality of the infiltrators; they weren't here for invasion. It was not yet time to reveal themselves to the city.

Drake shifted the rudder and eyed the monolithic factory rising from the smoke. Ominous looking thing.

Not as ominous as the figure standing at the prow.

Every Wastelander there knew that for the king to leave the city, something had to be earth-shatteringly important. Damas hadn't spoken a word since boarding the vessel, not once during the eighteen hour voyage had he explained their mission. He just watched from the prow with hard eyes, tensed and ready to fight at a moment's notice. There was an air of anticipation about him -- not the look of a man waiting on the edge of battle, Drake reckoned, more like a man waiting for something to begin. Waiting for something important.

A glint of light caught the Wastelander's attention, up near the silhouettes of palm trees near the upper levels of the factory.

Drake tapped the bulwark twice, catching his silent companions' attention. With a hand signal, he indicated "light" and "gun scope" before pointing in the direction he'd seen it.

Damas stepped down from the prow and moved silently to the stern to crouch beside Drake.

"Where?" he mouthed.

Drake raised his arm straight, pointed to the glint that was still appearing from time to time.

Abruptly, the tension melted out of Damas’s shoulders.

"Just where Sig said he'd be," he breathed.

Damas patted Drake's arm. "Take us in. Stay out of sight of Haven. I'll handle the rest."

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

Up on the cliff, high above the rough waters, Jak watched the boat through the scope of his blaster. He counted at least six figures, though he couldn't make out any details yet.

"Well, it's not KG," he murmured into his radio.

For some reason, it felt wrong to speak above a whisper.

"Is it metalheads?" asked Tess.

"Nope."

Jak squinted. The figures vanished in a patch of smog for a second before reappearing.

"They almost look like-"

With a jolt, Jak sat up. "Sig," he realized.

"Huh? What do you mean they look like Sig?"

"No, I mean-" Jak jumped to his feet and snatched up his gun. "Get Sig! I think he might know these guys, they look like Wastelanders!"

His heart hammered painfully in his ears as he picked his way down the ridge, Daxter clinging to his shoulders for dear life. Wastelanders. In their waters. There was a chance they were on a job for Krew, but this soon after Sig contacted Mar's people?

It couldn't be coincidence. Jak had learned the hard way not to believe in coincidence.

A wrong step nearly rolled Jak’s ankle, and he cursed. Where's your head, Jak? Don't get sloppy.

The truth was, he was afraid. He was eager to find allies, and desperate to find people he could trust around Mar. But he was terrified of inevitably having to justify his existence to Mar’s family. Just the vague possibility of meeting an alternate timeline version of his own father -- a complete stranger -- made him want to throw up.

"Jak?"

Daxter's ears were pinned back against his skull. He was clearly agitated, though Jak couldn't work out whether it was because of him or the boat.

"Are you sure about this?"

Ah. Him. Daxter was definitely upset because of him.

Jak gripped the spiny trunk of a palm to steady himself halfway through their descent. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, like Sig made him practice. In...out. In...out. It wasn't a very impressive attempt at calming himself, but it was better than nothing.

"I...don't know if I want to meet them or not," Jak confessed.

His throat was dry.

"Today was...a lot. Y'know? I can only take being called a freak so much in one day."

Daxter stretched himself to his full length to wrap around Jak’s shoulders. He didn't say anything; there were times when words just weren't enough.

Cognitively, he knew Jak didn't blame him for leaving him to rot in that hell for two years. He even knew that such a thought would never even have crossed Jak’s mind. But that didn’t keep it from haunting Daxter.

For at least a little while, in the latter half of their separation, he'd had a roof over his head. A warm bed. A job, for Precursors' sakes, working for a man who treated him like a person! And that whole time, Jak had been enduring a nightmare Daxter wouldn't have even wished on Gol Acheron.

Guilt ate away at Daxter constantly. What kind of friend was he, living the mediocre life while his best and only friend was being treated like a lab rat? Jak was the only person who'd ever cared about him -- well, before Tessie and Brutter and the Kid, at least -- and he'd left him behind like a coward. Daxter owed Jak so much. The least he could do was be here, now, to watch his friend's back, physically and emotionally.

"Listen, pal," he quipped, hoping Jak couldn't hear how forced it was, "Insulting Orange Lightning's sidekick is a crime punishable by...well, not...not by death, exactly. A very stern talking to- and a wet willie!"

He nodded in satisfaction. "And I'll...I'll...I'll bite their nose! And you know I hate biting. I don't make offers like this for just anyone, y'know."

A little thread of comfort unfurled in Jak’s chest. Daxter hated fighting, and getting dirty, and anything even remotely scary. Knowing that, Jak couldn't help but acknowledge that Daxter didn't run from his darker half. The boy turned ottsel generally stared down his murderous fangs with a look that said "Is that the best you got?" Whatever else happened, at least he had Daxter.

He swung down onto the stairs to the beach and set the morph gun to Vulcan. If things got ugly, he'd need rapid fire.

Maybe, just maybe, things wouldn't get ugly.

But when had Jak ever been that lucky?

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

He was there.

Damas could see him clearly now, watching them from the beach.

His heart clenched painfully in his chest, and it was all he could do to keep from diving overboard and simply swimming to shore. For the entire voyage, he’d prayed to whatever force might be listening that Sig wouldn’t be wrong. That his – their – hopes wouldn’t be dashed. Having had the possibility of a much longed-for second child placed before him, Damas had struggled with a fear that it was too good to be true. That it was selfish to be hoping for more when it was a miracle that Mar had been found at all.

But now the boat was close enough for him to see the wiry boy, standing with his rifle ready like a second, smaller edition of his own self.

Oh look at him! He’s all me!

An untimely bubble of mirth rose in his chest. He and Phobos had always debated over which of them Mar would turn out looking like the most. She always insisted Mar would look like his father, and he’d always been sure Mar would look like his mother.

Phobos had just won a bet they’d thought would take ten years to settle.

“That’s far enough!” shouted the boy, raising his gun. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

Damas laughed.

“Friends of Sig!” he returned through cupped hands, “He called us in!”

The boy – Jak, Sig said he’d named himself Jak – spoke quietly into a small radio, probably seeking confirmation from Sig. Just waiting that long made Damas antsy, and whatever made him antsy made the Wastelanders antsy. Well, not Phobos. Phobos didn’t do “antsy”. She was simply ready.

Then, to their surprise, the orange furry thing around Jak’s shoulders raised its head to shout at them.

“Alright! Come in nice and slow, no funny business!”

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

Jak wanted to bolt, but his boots were frozen to the beach.

This wasn’t just a party of mercs Sig knew. That man with the spikes or horns on his brow-

That was the bloody deposed king of Haven!

That was Damas son of Arez!

For all intents and purposes, in another life that had been his father!

And the poor guy probably had no idea. He was here to save Mar, to take him home at last. He didn’t need to know Jak was connected…right?

But then, Jak knew in his heart that he would never be willing to let Mar out of his sight. Not after everything they’d been through together. Maybe he could convince them to take him on as a bodyguard or something. Out in the wastes, maybe there wouldn’t be as much dark eco. Maybe he could suppress the Hunter inside him, and no one would have to know.

“Whoa, hey, what’s Spike doing?” Daxter demanded.

Jak shook away the spiral of thoughts in time to see the ex-king swing himself out of the boat. He landed waist deep in water and pushed forward, leaving his fellow Wastelanders behind. In a distracted sort of way, Jak noted that the man must have been incredibly strong to march through the deep water with no more resistance than a field of tall grass.

His eyes found the man’s face, and he lost his train of thought altogether.

The man was looking at Jak as though he feared Jak would vanish the second he blinked. Like it was Jak he’d been searching for, and not little Mar.

He looked at Jak as if he already knew him.

“Um,” said Jak eloquently.

Now that Damas was out of the water, there was no mistaking him for anything but a warrior. He wore wicked looking mismatched layers of armor, scuffed and worn with much use. Much like the armor, his skin bore thin, silvery scars wherever visible, telling stories of survival. Unconsciously, Jak’s hand drifted to his left arm, where needle tracks clustered like foul constellations. Here was a man who probably had as many scars as he did!

Jak’s pulse hammered away in his ears, so loud that he almost missed it when Damas breathed, “So it’s true!”

Completely at a loss for how to greet a king – let alone a man who might’ve been his father if fate had been kind – Jak stuck out an awkward hand in a half wave.

“Uh…I’m Jak. This is Daxter. You’re…friends of Sig?”

A smile split the king’s face, so wide it threatened to touch his ears. His fingers twitched oddly, like he was trying to hold himself back from something.

“Hello, Jak,” he said. His voice cracked and bounced with each syllable in a herculean effort not to break. “I- we’ve been…waiting to meet you for quite some time now.”

The boys exchanged a bewildered look.

“Me?” Jak stammered, “Don’t you mean M-”

Then he could hold himself back no longer; Damas reached out and clapped his hands to Jak’s arms.

“Just look at you!” He laughed and blinked back a slight glimmer in his eyes. “Look at you! You have my eyes-!”

Tongue-tied, Jak stared numbly into a pair of eyes that were indeed similar to his own. The shade was more violet than blue, but their shape was as unmistakable as the bronze tone of the skin surrounding them.

Why in the name of sanity did this man sound so pleased by the resemblance? Jak was a complete stranger to him! They did not have years of shared memories – like we should have, his mind whispered – and really knew nothing about each other. He wasn’t- He wasn’t the right Mar! He didn’t even look exactly the same as Mar!

“How old are you, boy?” Damas asked him with a weirdly friendly smile, “Fifteen, or sixteen?”

“I…think I’m seventeen?” Jak managed.

But then, he was calculating his age based on Samos’s guess of Mar’s age. And Mar claimed to be four, not five. He could’ve been mistaken, but then, Samos thus far hadn’t been the most reliable of narrators.

“Uh…how old is your son?”

Damas looked taken aback for a moment, but recovered quickly. “Mar is four,” he answered.

Daxter tallied out a few fingers. “So…sixteen, huh? Welp. Turns out you’re not old enough for a driver’s license after all, pal.” Then his eyes lit up. “Hey! This means I am older than you!”

“Wh- no!” Jak pulled an arm free to smack at Daxter and missed. “If you tell Tess-!” He let the threat hang in the air, unsure how to finish it.

The other Wastelanders beached the boat and splashed ashore, good-naturedly grumbling at their king for not waiting.

Wait- they still thought of him as a king?

Jak began to wonder if some Wastelanders were exiled supporters of the House of Mar. Had Mar spent his first years surrounded by people who had chosen the life of a Wastelander over Praxis? That might explain the kid’s seeming lack of self-preservation if this is what he was used to. He hoped they had no expectations of him, because they were bound to be disappointed.

“Come! Come, my friends, come and see!” Damas waved them closer, still grinning broadly. He moved to stand beside Jak and gestured between them. “Look! Who would you say this young warrior looks like most?”

Of the four men and five women in the band, only two managed to overcome their bewilderment enough to speak. The first, a burly man with a drooping handlebar mustache, stumped forward and squinted at Jak.

“I’ll be,” he huffed. “You been hiding another ankle-biter out here, lordship? How’d you keep Praxis from findin’ him when you got exiled?”

The woman, a stern looking fighter with one eye, pursed her lips and folded her arms.

“Well aren’t you just a chip off the old block?” she snorted. “Nice to know Sig isn’t losing his touch.”

This seemed to embolden the others, and in a matter of seconds, Jak was surrounded. Nobody touched him, for which he was supremely grateful, but he was still very uneasy with all these strangers in his personal space.

“Ha! He can’t grow a real beard either, eh, Lordship?”

“Oh don’t you start with me, Kleiver.”

“Now there’s a fighter if I ever saw one. Hey kid, what’s your favorite ammo?”

“Blaster-?” Jak answered in confusion.

“Oh, good choice! Sig teach ya how to use a Peacemaker yet?”

“Of course not, dummy! Look at him! He ain’t even old enough for Arena trials yet, I reckon.”

Jak was getting overwhelmed, and that was never a good thing. When there was too much input at once, when new sounds and faces surrounded him without giving him a chance to process, his grip on the dark eco tended to weaken.

Not here, not now! He pleaded silently with himself.

Noticing his tension, Damas suddenly waved the Wastelanders off. “Give him space! Give him space, all of you!”

He took a step to the side as well, leaving Jak with a ring of emptiness around him as a buffer.

“I apologize, Jak. We’re just…very eager to meet you. Sig has told us much, but I needed to…to see for myself.”

Jak gulped in deep breaths of air, doing his best to slow his pulse before something happened he couldn’t take back. They acted happy for now, but once they saw The Hunter-

Daxter leaped off his shoulder and stood in front of him like a guard. “Alright, alright, one at a time! I know we’re amazing, thank you, thank you. But our boy here functions best with a little thing called personal space. Eesh!”

He pointed at the Wastelanders. “No crowding the heroes, got it? And no insults! Any and all job requests must wait three to five business days for consideration. And under no circumstances will there be any pinching of cheeks!”

One of the older Wastelanders pushed to the front of the crowd and squatted to examine Daxter with some amusement. “You’re a feisty little one,” she said, and poked his midriff with a bony finger. “Not familiar with your species. What are ya, kid? Some kind of talking dogat?”

Daxter shied away from the older woman with a startled yip. “No touch-a the merchandise!” he squawked, and scrambled back up Jak’s leg and torso to sit on his shoulder. “And I’m an ottsel, for your information!”

Through the whole ordeal, one of the Wastelanders had remained silent. She merely stood there, studying Jak intently as though she wasn’t quite certain what to think of him. It was the only sensible reaction of the lot, and that drew Jak’s attention. What held his attention was her hair: coils and spirals of green tinted gold, exactly like his own. Jak had never seen anyone in Haven with hair even remotely similar to his! Hers, of course, was well maintained, and not the unkempt mess his own had been before Sig finally caught him long enough to cut some of it.

Her face was round and smooth, the same deep tourmaline that Jak saw every time he looked at Mar. He saw the curve of Mar’s jaw in hers, and the same solemn quirk in her brow. Jak’s stomach flipped, then dropped with dizzying speed. In his heart, he was fairly certain he knew who the woman was. But he didn’t want to even acknowledge it in his mind. She wasn’t here for him, after all.

He watched her turn towards Damas with an expression of intent. For a moment, they seemed to be having a conversation with just their eyes, much the way Jak used to with Daxter. And then, without warning, the hard look on the woman’s face melted away. She looked back to Jak with something disturbingly bittersweet in her gaze.

“Phobos?” Damas asked softly.

She moved towards them as if in a trance, only stopping when she was mere inches from Jak. She pointed to the chain around his neck.

“Is that your amulet, or your brother’s?” Phobos demanded.

They know! Oh Precursors, what now? What do I do?

“…mine…?”

Phobos nodded, suddenly shaky. A glance to the side revealed that the ex-king was looking a little shaky as well. What the-?

“You were him, in another world. Weren’t you?” she asked, much softer.

Jak swallowed hard, and his eyes dropped. He couldn’t meet her gaze for several seconds. “…yes.”

There were tears in this woman’s eyes when he looked back up, and Jak instantly felt a surge of guilt.

“S- sorry-” he started, but it was drowned out by a somewhat wet chuckle coming from the woman.

Jak would have understood tears. He’d probably cry too if he had to have a monster like him for a son. But under the wetness of her cheeks this woman was smiling. She reached out to steady herself against Damas’s shoulder, and she laughed. A deep, full thunder, rolling up from some holy place inside her as she wiped her eyes again.

“Damas, look at him. He’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, and reached a hand out to gently touch Jak’s face. Rough, calloused fingers traced the curve of his cheekbone, then brushed an errant coil of hair from his face. 

Beautiful?

In the whole of his life, Jak could safely say that no one, not one person, had ever called him beautiful.

As he stood frozen, speechless, Daxter took it upon himself to speak for him. “Well thankee kindly,” he piped up in a ridiculously exaggerated country drawl, “You’re not too bad yourself, missus!”

This had the intended effect of breaking Jak out of his shock. He slapped a hand over Daxter’s mouth in horror.

“Dax no!”

The older woman who had greeted Daxter before burst out laughing.

Jak did not share her amusement. “I- I’m sorry, Dax is just- Gah!” 

He yanked his hand away from Daxter’s mouth and shook it. “Did you just lick me?!”

“That’s what you get!” Daxter snickered.

“Gross!”

Damas chuckled -- it was a warm sound, without any of the bitterness Jak had come to expect from laughter

[queer-charming]

FO4 Deacon fic because brain-rot

Title: To Learn To Love Again

Rating: M~ish (Nothing serious in here, maybe next chapter)

Words: 4.8K

Warnings: Mentions of sexual situations, Mentions of miscarriage, kinda angsty if you squint, more angst in next part

this was supposed to be much shorter but here we are, nearly 5k words in, it was also supposed to be a oneshot, but I think I’m gonna add a second part to it, maybe get a little spicy, who knows. Anyway, for this story I used my SS Kate, who worked in intelligence for the US Gov, pre war and was in deep cover as a lawyer when she was married to Nate, just for some context. 

If you had told Kate that she would smile again after what happened to her family, she would have punched you. After Nate’s death, and Shaun’s kidnapping, she was in a dark place, barely surviving, the only thing keeping her alive being her overwhelming need to find her baby, to find what little family she had left, to find the most precious thing in the world. When Kate had first stepped out of the vault, had first found herself in this barren wasteland that used to be a world she knew so well, she didn’t expect much, she certainly didn’t expect to find a world, not so dissimilar to the one she’d left. Sure, it was significantly more irradiated than she remembered, but all in all, it was still full of people just trying to survive and to have a life, raise their families, make a living, she had been surprised just how familiar it had been. 

The second she stepped out of that vault, her survival skills kicked in, she needed to get to shelter and out of the open quickly, the ruins of Sanctuary would work enough. She hadn’t been expecting to find Codsworth, but thinking back to it, if she hadn’t, she’d probably be dead. Codsworth had done a good job at keeping her alive, defending Sanctuary from raiders, making sure she had the resources she needed, he’d protected her cache of weapons and armors after the bombs dropped, it also had all of her old passports and fake IDs, not that she’d be needing those anymore. 

It had taken her a while to find her footing, but when she did, boy did she make an impact. She made a name for herself, she made friends among the Commonwealth, traveled from settlement to settlement, kicked ass in the best way she knew how, and she knew, from the moment she stepped out of that Vault, that she was being watched. By whom, she hadn’t the slightest idea, but she could feel it when their eyes were on her, she’d been trained to know. She also knew not to let her observer know that she knew they were there, no, she needed to let them get comfortable, think that she didn’t suspect anything, and eventually they’d slip up, get too close. 

Little did Kate know that the person who had taken such an interest in her, would be a man who would change her life forever. He was good, talented, she hadn’t even suspected him when she saw him for the first time in Diamond City, he just looked like any other guard, but when she saw him in Goodneighbor, and then Bunker Hill, she recognized him immediately, really it was the sunglasses that gave him away, too consistent. Of course, he probably wasn’t expecting her to know what to look for. This was her onlooker, her guardian angel it seemed, were the times a raider had gotten a little to close and had miraculously been taken out by a friendly sniper anything to go by, she couldn’t say for certain that it was him, but she had her suspicions. Still, she couldn’t approach him, not yet, she didn’t know why he was tailing her, and as helpful as he’d been, she still didn’t know what his motives were, so she found herself secretly looking for him, everywhere she went, and to his credit, he was very good at sticking to the shadows, he probably hadn’t expected her to be so good at seeing in the dark.

The Freedom Trail had been random, she’d heard a rumor from a random merchant who heard it from customer, but it had peeked her interest. An underground organization who specialized in saving synths escaping from the very place that Kate knew, from her albeit short but revealing conversation with Kellogg, had her son. Even if the Railroad ended up being bullshit, she had to try, wear out the lead until she hit that dead end. 

Luckily, there was no dead end, she found the Railroad, and managed to make quite the impression on them if she did say so herself. She hadn’t been expecting to find him there, her guardian angel, the man who’d been keeping an eye on her for the better part of year. His name was Deacon. To say that he wasn’t what she was expecting was an understatement, he was funny and laid back with a sense of humor that rivaled Kate’s own and had a way with weaving bullshit like a professional. 

Kate wasn’t expecting to get a partner when she joined the Railroad, but Deacon quickly became hers, no longer sticking to the shadows and pacing himself behind her, instead, he took his place by her side, watched her back. He became her best friend, and she became his, nearly every op, they did together, and they made waves, gave the Railroad the foothold they needed. 

It’s been almost a year since Kate and Deacon had formed their dream team twosome, and tonight they were working. Deacon’s cover was John Dalton, a wealthy caravan owner attending a party of sorts, a party reserved for the wealthiest of the Commonwealth, make business deals, fight over territory, the fun stuff. Kate’s role was of Emily Dalton, John’s very beautiful and very flirtatious wife. Realistically, Deacon could have done this op on his own, he had the skill and the patience for it, but when Kate learned that their target had a weakness for trying to seduce the wives of his competition, she knew she had to go.

Their target was Joseph Warren, another caravan owner, he was notorious for this bad attitude and promiscuous nature, he was also believed to be helping The Institute in their task of retrieving liberated synths, transporting them in his caravan to pickup points, where they’d be returned to their life of servitude. 

Kate certainly played her part well, she was dressed to the nines, a beautiful long red dress, a cut in the side that went just under a little too high, the sturdy bodice bringing attention to her chest in all the right ways, off the shoulder sleeves, her long dark hair pulled half into an up do, the rest cascading down her exposed back like waves, she was enchanting to say the least, she’d grabbed the rooms attention the second she walked in, including the attention of Joseph Warren, who took an almost immediate liking to her. guests started introducing themselves to Deacon almost immediately, and Kate had to admit, Deacon sure did know how to clean up, she had no idea where he had managed to find a tailor in the wasteland but the suit he wore fit him like a glove, Kate had had a hard time keeping her eyes to herself when she’d seen him, much to Glory’s amusement. He’d reluctantly foregone his sunglasses, they clashed with the suit too much, which meant, if Kate wanted to, she’d have an unobstructed view of Deacon’s eyes, she didn’t know what she was expecting, but she certainly wasn’t expecting them to be so blue. 

Kate isn’t sure when her view of Deacon went from strictly platonic to... something a little more, was she going to sit here and say she was in love with him? No, despite what Glory says, but she had to admit that she was attracted to him, the way she could feel his eyes on her, even behind his sunglasses, the way he’d occasionally brush his hand against hers when they were walking side by side on their way back to HQ after a particularly tiring op, the way he’d keep her up at night, just to talk to her, tell his dumb jokes which never failed to make her laugh... okay maybe she was just a little bit in love with him, but she certainly wasn’t to admit that to anyone except her internal monologue, and she certainly wasn’t going to admit it to Deacon. 

Glory had been the first to realize that maybe Kate’s feelings had expanded a little past just platonic. Calmly, she had come to sit down next to Kate, while Kate was writing up a report on a recent op to hand in to Dez. 

“So, you and Deacon fucked yet?” The words had come out so nonchalant, like the question she was asking didn’t just upend everything Kate was doing and send her into a sputtering mess of ‘What the fuck, Glory’. 

“Please,” Glory had continued, eyeing over Kate’s shoulder to get a peak at the report she was writing. “You two have more chemistry than Tinker Tom has in his chem station, it’s kind of gross actually, watching you two check each other out every time one of you isn’t looking.”

“I have no idea what your talking about,” Yes she did. “I do not check him out.” Yes she did. 

“My money is on Deacon, I bet he’ll make the first move.” Glory acted like this entire conversation was normal, and thank god Deacon was away at the time or Kate might have actually spontaneously combusted on the spot. “But he’s patient, so who knows really.” 

That conversation replayed in Kate’s head on a regular basis, the thought of Deacon being as attracted to her as she was to him, there was no way, right? Deacon had made it pretty clear after he’d told Kate about Barbara that he wasn’t ready to love again, to get that close to someone again, and Kate understood that, because she hadn’t been sure she’d ever be ready for it again after Nate died, and it took her a long time before she could tell herself she saw Deacon as anything more than a friend. Deacon lost Barbara going on 16 years ago, and Kate knew that to him, that scar still bled sometimes, and she absolutely was not going to push him. people grieve in their own ways, and if Deacon was still grieving so many years after, then Kate would let him. She was content just being able to be by his side, to be his best friend, and she never wanted to do anything to jeopardize that. 

“Earth to Charmer,” Deacon’s voice pulled Kate out of her head, she could feel his heat behind her where he stood, his hands had come to rest on her bare shoulders, the calluses of his fingers rough on her skin, she loved when he touched her, it was so rare. Instinctively, one of her hands came to rest on top of his, giving it a light squeeze before she turned to face him, she was supposed to be pretending to be his wife right? So there was nothing out of place about the gesture. “You seem a little out of it, you okay?” Deacon whispered, close enough for her to hear, his breath on her skin sending a shiver down her spine, one that she worked hard to conceal. Of course he’d been paying attention to her, he was always paying attention. 

“Of course, why wouldn’t I be.” It was weird being able to look Deacon in the eye, usually she was staring at her own reflection in his dark lenses, she liked this. 

“Just making sure you’re not going all space cadet on me.” Deacon joked. 

“Well I doubt Mr. Warren would like a brainy woman, so I’m just playing the part.” Kate joked back, earning an amused chuckle from her partner. When he smiled, it reached his eyes, and for a moment, Kate was struck speechless. 

“Good evening.” The voice broke the moment, turning, Kate was greeted by the very man they were here to see. Mr. Joseph Warren. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” Warren extended a hand toward Deacon, who immediately responded to the gesture in kind. “I”m Joseph Warren, and you are?” 

“John Dalton, and this,” Deacon gestured to Kate. “Is my beautiful wife, Emily.” Kate extended a hand to Warren, who took it gratefully, bringing the back of her hand to his lips in a greeting. 

“Beautiful indeed,” He said. Joseph Warren was a man, maybe a few years older than Deacon, early to mid 40′s perhaps. He was dressed smartly, with a well fitting suit and a top hat that screamed superiority. His eyes were green, and Kate found she liked looking at them significantly less than she liked looking at Deacon’s beautiful blue ones. “It’s a pleasure to meet the both of you, do tell me if there is anything, and I mean anything,” He geared his eyes toward Kate. “I can do for you.” Warren took his leave, going greet other guests who’d recently arrived. Kate felt Deacon’s hand flat on the small of her back before he leaned down close to her ear.

“Bingo.” Was all he said, before he went to continue mingling with the other guests, pulling as much info as he could before the night was over. Deacon weaved through the crowd like he belonged there, putting up the perfect facade of an accomplished business man, Kate did her best to appear passive, approachable and most importantly, seducable. She wanted Warren to think he had a chance with her, and from the way his eyes kept finding her over the course of the night, she’d say she was doing a pretty damn good job of it. It wasn’t until most of the attendees of the party had been properly liquored up that he made his move. 

Kate was conversing with another party goers wife, spending the conversation bullshitting stories about how she and Deacon, sorry, John, had met and fallen in love and had this whirlwind wedding, she as having a good time, convincing his lady that Kate’s father had forbade her from marrying him, and so she snuck out of the house late one night, married him anyway, and never looked back. a real Romeo and Juliet story, just without the death at the end. The woman was completely entranced, then Kate felt the hand on her back, a hand that was distinctively not her fake husband’s. 

“Am I interrupting?” Warren’s voice said, all too close to her ear, and despite the ice in her stomach, she put on her sweet smile, turning her attention toward him.

“Of course not, Mr. Warren.” She may or may not have put an extra little lilt in her voice when she said it. 

“Please, Mrs. Dalton, call me Joseph.” The look in his eyes made Kate’s stomach churn, not that she’d let him see that. 

“Call me Emily, I insist.” Warren’s hand slithered around her waist, pulling her ever so slightly closer, he was being so forward, she really must have played her part well. 

“Well Emily, would you care to join me for a drink? Perhaps in one of the back rooms?” Kate knew where this was going. She’d worked enough of these types of ops before the war, she needed to get the info and get out, before Warren decided to get too handsy. In the back of her mind, she wondered if Deacon was watching, was seeing how Warren had his hands on her, standing just a little too close to be friendly, she wondered what he was feeling while he watched, she wanted to look, to meet his eyes, but if she did, she might make Warren reconsider his actions, and she couldn’t afford that. 

“I’d love to, Joseph.” 

Kate’s plan was simple, join Joseph for some drinks, get him maybe a little more tipsy than he needed to be, people like to loosen their lips with alcohol, she’d learned years ago. As she walked through the crowd with Warren, she felt his hand slip down her back, reaching her waist, and then continuing lower, if he continued anymore, he’d practically be groping her, the thought put ice in her veins. 

Warren likes bourbon, Kate had come to learn. They were nearly alone, only the occasional stray guest wandering in, but typically finding their way out again soon. Warren poured glass after glass, drinking it like it was water, though most of Kate’s drinks were enjoyed, quite thoroughly, by the fake house plant behind her chair, she didn’t like bourbon, as well as a sober mind kept the lies crisp on her tongue. 

Boy if lying were an Olympic sport, Kate would have won gold tonight. She spun tale after tale as she talked to Warren, telling him about growing up in Boston and meeting John, unlike the tale she told the woman in the main room, she didn’t make this one nearly as magical, telling a story of only getting married because she got pregnant, but lost the baby soon after, but John was successful and wealthy, so she stayed, although she was getting quite bored in her marriage of convenience. She wanted Warren to think he had even an inkling of a chance with her, that maybe he’ll have the privilege of getting her into his bed tonight, and with her story, she made sure he kept drinking, egging him on with teasing touches to his arm, walking her fingers up his arm or stroking the back of his hand, to the outside onlooker, it would look like she was the one trying to get him into bed. 

It wasn’t long before Kate had Warren singing like a canary, once he was drunk enough, he was quite happy to brag about his work, protecting the Commonwealth from the evil synths, soon, the ice in Kate’s veins turned to fire, anger sitting deep in her belly, but she needed to keep her cool, at least for now, this guy would be getting it later if she had her way. She’d gotten her intel, now she needed to find a way to extract herself before Warren decided it was time to take her back to his room for the evening. Somehow she’d managed to coax Warren back into the main room under guise of asking him to humor her with a dance, and as much as she would have enjoyed watching this drunk man embarrass himself by trying to dance with her, she fully intended to lose him in the crowd, she needed to get back to Deacon and tell him the Op was done, she had the intel and they needed to leave. 

Of course Deacon was one step ahead of her, he always was, so it really shouldn’t have surprised her that he was there to great she and Warren almost immediately. She tried to convey as well as she could with her eyes that they were done and they needed to get out of there, a look that she knew he would understand, she’d given it to him multiple times, so when he made a show of pulling her, quite forcefully mind you, into him, snaking his arm around her waist to hold her flush against him, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body beneath his suit, the hardness of his chest under her fingertips. He had an iron clad grip on her, she didn’t think she could break it if she wanted to, not that she did. 

To onlookers, she knew what this looked like, a jealous husband, marking his territory in front of a man who threatened to steal his wife. “There you are,” Deacon started, shooting a passing glance to Warren, who if Kate were honestly, looked like he was about to fall over. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, honey.” Kate felt herself being pushed closer to his body. 

“Oh, Mr. Warren and I,” Kate intentionally stopped. “Sorry, Joseph and I, were just having the loveliest of conversations, dear.” Deacon eyed Warren again, he was deciding how he wanted to play this, did he want to put on a show for all to see, become the jealous husband trying to keep his wife out of the hands of a known womanizer, or was he going to end the op quietly, like usual.

“Oh I’m sure, tell me honey, did he offer you a place in his bed as well?” Jealous husband it was, it would seem, she could role with this. 

“Of course not, John,” Kate may have raised her voice a little higher than she needed to, but hey, they were causing a scene weren’t they? Make it big. “You always get like this, I even dare to talk to a nice man and you get all up in a huff about it!” They had an audience, and Kate could see Warren rapidly sobering at the prospect of being the center of such negative attention. 

“Well maybe if my wife could learn to keep her hands to herself, I wouldn’t have to make such a huff!” Kate gasped, if only to disguise what would have been a laugh. 

“Well maybe if you would take me to bed more often I wouldn’t feel so lonely as to seek company!” Kate felt herself blush at the prospect of Deacon taking her to bed. She saw when Deacon nearly broke cover, disguising his would have been laugh for a well placed offended scoff. With that, Deacon wrapped a firm hand around Kate’s elbow, tight enough to get the message across, but not so tight that she couldn’t break away if she wanted to, but she caught on to what he was doing. 

“That’s it, we’re leaving,” He fussed, tugging Kate with him. “And Warren,” Deacon threw a glare at a horrified looking Joseph Warren. “I’d advise you keep those filthy hands of yours  off of my wife.” And with that, Kate was being tugged through the crowd of onlookers, leaving a flustered Warren behind to deal with the aftermath. 

They’d gotten around the outside of the building when Deacon finally let go of Kate’s arm, she was about to make a clever comment about his performance when she saw something, out of the corner of her eye, barely enough to make her look, but she knew what she was looking at. It was one of Warren’s guards, no doubt instructed to follow Kate and Deacon out, she didn’t know if Deacon had seen him too, but she needed to do something before their cover was blown. Thinking on her feet, Kate grabbed Deacon’s hand, making him turn to her, she hadn’t though about what she was going to say, so she just let the words spill from her mouth. 

“Oh, John, honey, you know I wouldn’t have let him take me to bed, don’t you?” Kate pleaded, in quite remarkable character she might add, and before she could give Deacon a chance to respond, she pulled him into a hug, burying her face into his neck in a way that made sure any onlookers couldn’t see her lips move. “4 O’Clock.” She said, quiet enough that only Deacon could here. Kate felt Deacon’s arms wrap around her as he glanced over, presumably clocking their eavesdropper. He pulled her closer as he spoke into her ear, the feeling of his lips on the shell of her ear forcing goosebumps to the surface of her skin. 

“Play along.” Was all he said before he pulled away, moving one of his hands from her waist to her jaw, tilting her head up to look at him. “Honey, you know I just worry sometimes, I didn’t mean to shout at you.” His thumb stroked her cheek, and she shut her eyes at the feeling, before opening them up again to stare into those blue eyes, and what she said felt all too truthful, and she hoped Deacon couldn’t tell. 

“Baby you have nothing to be worried about,” Kate made a show of dragging her hand up Deacon’s chest over his suit, bringing it to rest on his shoulder. “The only man I want taking me to bed is you.” Kate felt the acid in her throat at the words, they were the most honest thing she’d said that night, and they burned. She was about to mouth if their onlooker was still there when Deacon did something she certainly hadn’t been expecting. 

Kate couldn’t help the embarrassing squeak she let out when his lips crashed into hers, and it took her brain what felt like a full minute to realize that Deacon was kissing her. She wasted no time in tangling her arms around his neck, pulling him down as close as she could get him without toppling them both over. His hands, which had started on her waist, moved down her body, painfully slow, until they reached her hips, pulling her forward until her body was flush against his. Despite Deacon’s laid back attitude and good time seeking personality that he showed most people, he was all muscle, completely solid against Kate’s body, and it did dangerous things to her. 

When they finally pulled away, Kate was properly out of breath, and Deacon sounded like he was too when he spoke. “Well in that case, how about I take you to bed properly, just like you want me to.” And with that, Deacon took Kate’s hand and lead her off in the direction of Hotel Rexford, where they did actually have a room, and it took Kate the entire way there to regain her composure. She wasn’t sure when their follower had dropped off of their tail, but even so, she clung on to Deacon’s arm like a lover, leaning her head on his shoulder all the way until they reached their room at the Hotel Rexford. To say Kate was disappointed when they walked into the room and Deacon didn’t shove her against the door and kiss her again would be an accurate statement, but she had known from the beginning that the kiss had been part of their cover and that was all it would ever be, as much as it made her heart hurt. 

Pushing those feelings down, Kate walked into the room’s bathroom, working on getting her dress off, as beautiful as it was, she was beyond ready to have it off and have her comfortable sleep clothes on. She was still a little flustered after the door closed behind her. The kiss hadn’t even been that intense, a press a lips and nothing more, relatively chaste compared to what it could have been had they really been lovers, but she still felt the effects of her breath being stolen away from her so swiftly. She let out an audible sigh of relieve when the dress slipped to the floor, stepping out of it and pulling on the pair of shorts she had packed, along with the shirt she may or may not have stolen from Deacon’s stash of disguises, it’s not like he’s going to miss it, he’s got plenty, and if he wants it back, well she guesses he’ll just have to take it off of her won’t he?

When Kate exited the bathroom, Deacon was already sitting in bed, leaned back against the headboard, book in hand as he read in the lamp light, she noticed he still hadn’t put his sunglasses back on, without them, Kate could see just how tired he looked. She knew Deacon didn’t sleep well, traveling with him for the better part of a year had made that painfully obvious, but it wasn’t until moments like this, when he was settled, as off guard as he could be, which if she was being honest is not very off guard at all, that she saw just how tired he was. His eyes darted up to meet her when she emerged, his blue ones meeting her green eyes, but only for a moment before he looked down at what she was wearing, a puzzled look taking its place on his face. 

“Is that my shirt?” He asked as Kate climbed up the bed to lay next to him. Sharing a bed with Deacon was normal, they always did, even with her feelings for him, never once did it feel awkward. 

“Of course not,” Kate lied, obviously. “What would ever make you think that.” She settled in next to him, pulling the blankets up over her lap, leaning back against the headboard to read over his shoulder. 

“Of course,” Deacon played along. “How ridiculous of an assumption to make.” Kate felt a sense of warmth in her chest, and she was sure the fondness in her eyes was perfectly obvious, but this felt right, next to Deacon in bed, reading over his shoulder as they settled in for the night, playful banter between partners, this was where she belonged... this was home. 

Yes, Kate was in love with this man, she could admit that to herself now, but she could also admit that she was okay with giving Deacon the time he needed, one day his scars would stop bleeding quite so bad, and one day, maybe he’d be in a place to love again, but until then, Kate was content with just being in his corner. 

To be continued...

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Hi!!! Hello!!! How are you, hope you're well!!!!!

Before I request, I just wanna say I love you're writing!!! You're really talented and I hope you know it 💞💞💞💞

As for my request could I kindly request (Poly if it's not a problem) Tankman/John X NB! Reader x Steve? Where Reader is a Spy and had to go on a dangerous mission to enemy base and at some point the mission goes wrong and they lost contact with them for some long time. So it's all sad and crying and they make a funeral for Reader.

During which Reader shows up really injured but still alive and is like "WHAT'S UP BITCHES?!?!! DID YA MISS M- ....What are ya crying about??" Cuz I think everyone loves some good angst with comfort

"Remember the mission, [y/n]-"

"Yeah, yeah..gather intel and interrogate whoever the fuck I gotta to get it. Also, you can call me "sweetheart", ya know. It's not like it's a big secret."

"You'll do great, sweetheart!!" Steve cooed as he leaned towards John's radio, pouting as the latter pushed him away slightly. But he returned to his station.

Being a spy meant you had to take on dangerous missions, which often worried your two boyfriends--the leaders of the tankmen. Though they both had faith in your skills, as you've helped them gain an advantage over the enemy countless times.

And, in turn for your hard work, you were treated well by them on your days off.

John promised that after this especially difficult mission, he'll let you take a week's worth of vacation. Simply because he loved you--though he wouldn't give Steve the same break.

They kept talking to you throughout your infiltration, with you informing them of enemy routes and eavesdropping on conversations.

But somewhere along the way, you accidentally fell down a hole. "Oof! AH! OW! Son of a bitch!!"

"[Y/n]!" Steve panicked.

"What the hell happened? Are you alright?" John was growing worried as he heard your grunts of pain. Usually you were careful, but for all he knew..you could be walking right into well-placed traps.

"Y-Yeah, I'm just ducky.....oh..oh no.."

"What is it?"

"I...I-I don't think I can move. Damn that was a long fall."

"Should we send someone to help?" Steve asked.

"No, no." "I'm stuck way down here..you'll be shot in the dick ten times before you found me." You sighed, fearing that this was the end for you. "Steve..John..i-if anything happens...I lo-"

"Don't start saying that cliché sappy shit." John warned. "We're gonna get you out of...[y/n]?! Come in!" He began shouting, realizing the signal was breaking up.

Usually a captain would always keep his composure, but he was rapidly losing it as he lost you. 'No, no, no..why did it have to be right now?!'

Everyone else tried their best to reestablish contact with you, but to no avail.

All of the sudden, a loud boom erupted, making the ground tremble, and they turned to see the enemy base being blown to smithereens. Soldiers went flying and the watchtowers crumbled all around it, flattening the entire area within seconds.

"Fuck, man...." Sniper looked through the scope of his rifle to see the damage. "Maybe they'll turn up! [Y/n]'s a tough motherfucker-"

"No..I..I-I think they're gone.." John's voice began to crack as he and Steve stared at the rubble, realizing what had happened. "Nobody coulda survived that.""

.........

Although they had hope you'd somehow come back alive, several days have passed and your boyfriends had to accept the painful truth:

You died in that explosion. In a mission gone horribly wrong--but at the same time it was a success, given that the base was destroyed.

To honor your sacrifice, the tankmen hosted a funeral where only "good guys" were allowed. Everyone was crying around the makeshift grave they made you: Sniper, Bill, and...especially John and Steve.

They couldn't believe they failed to protect you, especially when they knew that in war..anybody could die.

It made them wish they never got attached to you, fearing this exact scenario would come.

Never again will they get to cuddle with you. Or passionately make out with you all night. Or watch sad movies with you comforting their sniveling-selves. Or-

"Hey fuckers, I made it!! H-Hah! Didja miss me?"

With a gasping sob, John's eyes widened as he dropped his helmet, recognizing the source of the voice. Steve did the same, before he found you limping over the nearby hill.

You were alive and..badly injured, with a damaged suit and crutches supporting you.

But by some fucking miracle you were alive.

The two shouted your name in unison as they ran over, nearly tackling you to the ground and hugging you tight. You were dazed for a moment, although when you heard them crying their eyes out, you dropped the crutches and hugged them close, leaning on them for support.

"Jeez, and you two say I'm a needy bitch." You chuckled. "There, there..I'm alright."

"H-How did you survive that?" Steve whimpered. "That explosion..i-it couldn't have-"

"I rigged it, I meant to activate the timer and get the fuck out but the fall nearly smashed the detonator to bits..it was fine, though. My radio wasn't so lucky." You explained. "I did..get us some intel so the mission didn't go to waste."

"W-We..can get intel from anywhere.." John sniffled, pulling away to look at you, while Steve still hysterically sobbed into your shoulder. "But..w-we only get one of you. You did a hell of a job, though, b-babe.."

You just smiled, glad to be back with your two clingy boyfriends.

"Now..how about the three of us take a vacay?"

"C-Can we, cap?" Steve looked at the other tankman, snot and tears dribbling down his face.

"You know what, screw it..I think we all need it." John nodded in agreement as he smiled as well. "We're gonna get a shit ton of ice cream."

[kiwikipedia]

Lepidoptera

Chapter 1: Papilio polyxenes

Fandom(s): Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Rating: T (Language, violence, death, possible inuendo)

Summary: 

There exists a creature that spans across many planets in the galaxy, with an unthreatening appearance and reputation. Their bodies are simplified to the utmost limit.

Simplicity is therefore flexibility. Simplicity is therefore tenacious. That is the Caterpillar. A simple insect dropped into the Box.

Cad Bane had thought she was retired, known she was. Because, after all, Sylv Rex was a well-known Bartender on Coruscant now. And hasn’t donned her moniker in ages.

Extra Notes: Cad Bane/OC/Embo Established Relationship, Deception Arc AU

AO3

[First Chapter] || Next >

So yeah the Guard fic was sorta a fail and is on hiatus until I get motivation/people get interested I guess? lol, but I’ve been thinking about these three for a while now and eh why not right? I really am enjoying doing more with Sylv as of late so what the hell? 

Oh yeah, just a general TW for anyone who has Entomophobia— There will be bug talk throughout the fic. Sylv’s entire fighting style and abilities are based off of caterpillars because i totally did not get inspired to give her more flavor aside from being a sniper while i was reading the Aarachnid Manga, nope.

But yeah, there’s gonna be a lot of bug/caterpillar talk.

To begin with, Cad Bane had expected to get paid when he touched down after delivering Eval to Count Dooku. He hadn't expected to be roped into whatever the hell this was— some sort of competition that the Count had made, for what reason he didn't care. Probably his own amusement.

Bane was a man who planned things out, so he had to be careful with the unexpected details and plan for those while knowing nothing about them. But were a number of things that Bane had expected from this little competition of Dooku’s— the one that he had been told about upon arrival with Rako Hardeen.

He would later look back and find that he was annoyed with how much he had actually predicted— wasn't the Count supposed to be crafty? 

The first on his list was Dooku, was as predicted— annoying as ever. And he had yet to pay him at all.

Bane only liked working for him because he payed well— and using the word like was a far stretch. But other than that, the Count could shove his noble attitude and haughty behavior up his ass. If he knew he'd come out alive, he'd have riddled the old man with blaster bolts for pissing him off a while ago— but he didn't gamble with lethal chances, not on that scale at least. He'd be stupid if he didn't take note of the sheer authority that Dooku held and the red-bladed lightsaber on his hip.

If he wanted to kill Dooku, he'd have to plan that at a later date.

Moralo Eval was also annoying, too, and overly confident to boot. Well, at last that hadn't changed just beacuse they were with Dooku now. He really was someone that Bane would be glad to just kill on a whim, if possible, but apparently he was needed and he had spent too much time getting him out of prison to just kill him off so soon.

And Hardeen was weirdly clingy. Annoying fucker felt off to him still, but who was he to judge? Regarding almost everyone with suspicion kept you alive and thats how he would like to stay.

On top of those three annoyances, waiting for nightfall had been a bore. Bane couldn’t even catch a few hours of sleep, or even a godsdamned wank if he wanted to— not with Dooku lumping Hardeen in the same room as him while they waited. He didn't trust the bastard not to murder him in his sleep— and would've been weirded out if the sniper didn't. It was the lack of privacy that pissed him off more though.

But when night did finally fall and all the Hunters were called down to the court yard. Well, once again, there were both unexpected, and expected, factors down there.

There were too many bounty hunters for it to be a simple ‘everyone survives but we’re testing you anyways’ sort of gimmick— and even those ended in death because fuckers didn’t know when not to be trigger happy. Not like he could complain— if it annoyed him, it was dead, simple as that.

It didn’t take Bane long to put together that everything was an elimination game as he glanced around subtly.

Good.

The so-called upper ring of Bounty Hunters was getting far too congested.

Best this, best that, second to this, second to that— for fucks sake, the Guildmaster's Proxies and clients might as well start handing out participation trophies at this point.

Still, there were some familiar faces, much to his annoyance as he walked with Hardeen down to the others. An expected factor, because Bane knew almost every Hunter— kept tabs on most of them too, best to make sure none of his rivals got too close to him in kill count.

Onca and Bulduga, never separated and always together, of course were there, and Bulduga had a nice hat that Bane knew he could use as an excuse to kill the damned Ithorian. Maybe he’d get a shot off at Onca too. Derrown was there too, in all of his multi-legged glory, Sixtat and Twazzi as well and Mantu and Kiera Swan— all annoyances in his books. Good killers, sure, but anonying.

Still, as he walked past Derrown and Sixtat he was pleased to notice that there was a more than familiar face there. 

Looks like the giant bastard was here too, though Embo had left his damned Anooba at home it seemed. It was probably for the best.

And Hardeen was still fucking talking to him— asking him about whatever the Count was planning.

Like he knew what the old man wanted from them.

Bane resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he tipped his hat to Embo, giving the annoying Sniper some sort of answer he didn't and wouldn't rememebr— the Kyuzo did the same in return, though there was some amusement in those compound eyes of his. The damned bastard could probably pick up on his ire.

He saw him nudge the fourth in the group of Hunters that he was standing in and Bane felt a headache coming on as the person turned around.

A hood over the figure's head concealed any of the noticeable features on first glance, with fur on the edge making it hard to see even a fucking face. It made sense that he didn’t recognize the figure at first, though. They had been standing in the shadows that Embo and Derrown cast, and had their back to him as he and Hardeen walked past. But the sniper case slung on their back whould have been a give away— he saw the damned every other month at least, sitting in a storage closet.

There were no words exchanged as the figure turned around fully, a half finished cigarette between her teeth.

Dooku had somehow gotten the famed Sylvraius Rex, the famed Caterpillar Sniper, out of retirement.

The thing about every caterpillar that Bane’s had the pleasure of seeing is that they looked relatively harmless, and they usually prefered not to start fights— though it was split thirty-seventy on that matter, he’d noticed and had read. 

So it was more like seventy percent of the caterpillars were docile on a galactic sense.

Sylv was much like a caterpillar, that was what she had been made to be like anyways. An Adaptive Mutant— A Human experiment.

She rarely would start a fight but sure as hell could end one. Docile until provoked, and a lot more violent than one would expect.

Simple, yet dangerous.

If she was here, and out of retirement, things just got a whole lot more interesting— not just now, but as a whole.

He was pulled out of his thoughts as he drew near Onca and Bulduga.

The two had gotten in his way more than once when he was chasing down a big target and it pissed him off to see them there.

A big issue with the Guild was that half of the proxy-masters didn’t know how to do shit, even though the Guildmaster did. Half the orders didn’t get filtered down, and really, it was Cradossk’s fault. The old Trandoshan got what had been coming for him, though. Last he heard, he was at the lowest rung of the Hunters ever since the new Guildmaster took over.

The Guildmaster who was standing over there with a cocky smirk on her face, as if she hadn't spent over ten years off of the field.

But that was besides the point.

The point was that the two brothers had taken bounties form him one too many times— and doing it once in and of itself was a serious offense in his book. Repeated offenses? Well, they might as well have signed their own death warrants already.

Bulduga was the bigger issue over Onca, he pissed him off, for one, and he knew he was the smarter of the two— but he could easily use the hat as an excuse to kill the older one off.

Petty, but on brand, he supposed. If anyone gave him shit for it, they'd be next too. And by anyone, he meant Hardeen, who kept protesting everything he was doing.

The two Ithorians turned to him and Hardeen as they approached, and he knew that there was recognition in those eyes of theirs. Who wouldn't recognize him, after all? But, it was more than just that, they knew what they had done. Knew what was coming for them— they wouldn't have been the first to have gotten a face full of blasterbolts for taking his Bounties, after all. 

“Nice hat,” Bane drawled, pushing hand Hardeen’s hands away from grabbing him. Bulduga’s own hand moved towards his blaster at that, the Ithorian trumpeting lowly in warning.

Bane didn’t bother, simply continuing to advance on the two, stopping only about a meter or two away from them. Probably less.

“Where’d you get it?”

There was a split second of silence before Bulduga, quicker than a lot of others could say they could, drew his blaster and made an attempt to get off a shot— but Bane was faster.

There were few that could claim to be faster than Bane in a Quick-Draw, and Bulduga was not one of them as he shot the Ithorian square in the chest. The Ithorian went down with a low groan and the hat that he donned drifted up as he fell— and then right into Bane’s own hands on the way down.

Onca stared at his brother’s corpse, still smoking from the shot, before back at Bane as he tossed his old hat onto the corpse with a click of his tongue.

“What’re ya lookin’ at,” he grunted as he turned, feeling not just Onca but also Hardeen and everyone else’s eyes on him. “’t’s a nice hat.”

Hardeen looked ready to say something but held his tongue.

From the corner of his eye he saw Embo shake his head and Sylv chuckle a bit as she let out a puff of smoke, flicking the ash from her cigarette. He should ask her to bum him one later, he didn't have any on him— that damned supplier barely had anything in the first place, cigarettes, let alone deathsticks.

His attention was drawn away at Dooku’s arrival, all of them turning and seemingly moving at one towards the Count. Moralo Eval was next to him, and a few droid-guards flanking them as they stepped down into the courtyard. And with the rest of the hunters, they had all created a loose sort of semicircle.

“Welcome to Serenno,” the Count said, gesturing to them all.

Bane glanced to his right, catching Sylv’s eye as she looked past him at Hardeen. There was something in her gaze that made him bristle a bit. Curiosity, interest.

He didn’t like it.

Bane was, to an extent, a possessive man.

While he wouldn’t call whatever he had with the woman and Embo love, it was certainly something and it was something that was his. And he didn’t like sharing— Embo was the exception. He liked the giant bastard, and Sylv did too. He did not and would not allow Hardeen in.

(Logically, he knew the Hunter-Turned-Bartender wasn’t his to own, to possess, to keep. She would rather gut him than listen to him say anything like that, and then gut him again if he tried to cage her. But it still pissed him off.)

Embo was glancing down at them both from the other side of Sylv, brow ridge raised a bit and Bane scowled before looking back at the Count, making a silent vow to kill the other sniper if anymore interest was taken.

“You have been invited here because you are the best bounty hunters in the galaxy,” the Count continued, gazing to each of them individually. “Kiera Swan, two-time winner of the Obsidian Sphere.”

The Weequay woman looked smug at that, smirking to herself as Dooku moved on to the next one of them.

“Derrown, known simply as the exterminator.”

The Parwan just blinked, bobbling up and down a bit.

“Sixtat, the Outlands Butcher.”

The Sakiyan nodded as he was addressed, seeming just as smug as Swan. Dooku moved on, gazing at Embo, who gazed back with ease.

“Embo, your bounty tallies were second only to one last season.”

The Kyuzo hummed lowly, glancing back down at Bane. He simply adjusted his hat as he was addressed next— hiding a smirk in the shadow it cast. Embo was the only one who could dare get close enough now days, not that any of the others really had the skill to.

“Cad Bane, who needs no introduction.”

Damn right he didn’t need one. He had garnered enough of a reputation in general to bypass any flowery titles— hell, his name was one. Bane. It hadn't been his original name, but that had been lost to time anyways. He was Cad Bane who needed no introduction, and that's all that mattered.

“Rako Hardeen, the marksman of Concord Dawn.”

Hardeen looked up when addressed and again, and again, Bane felt as if something was off. He didn’t know the sniper well enough to gauge it for certain, but very few bounty hunters didn’t take pride in the names and accomplishments they garnered.

Embo was one of the few that that he could think of off the top of his head— and it was mostly because of his temperament. Embo had pride, but wasn’t prideful. He wasn’t chatty, and prefered quiet company save for certain occasions. Embo didn't have, and didn't need, a title or introduction, so he had no need to become smug or prideful when introduced.

But for someone as chatty as Hardeen, though? It was a strange reaction to not react when his moniker was given.

Bane’s thoughts snapped back to Dooku as the Count continued listing names off.

“—Sinrich, inventor of the holographic disguise matrix, Mantu, your people were once a peaceful race. How far they have fallen...”

The Count’s gaze turned to Sylv who was partially hidden in Embo’s shadow, and partially hidden by her hood still.

“And finally, Sylvraius Rex, the famed Caterpillar Sniper. It is good to see you out of retirement.”

Sylv smirked, teeth flashing in the shadows as she exhaled smoke again, and there was a bit of confusion among the hunters present.

Those who didn’t know the title were likely wondering what the hell was with the caterpillar part of the old moniker. Which was understandable, he would never admit it out loud, but he had been confused as well.

Caterpillars were known as being simple creatures, ones often ignored because of how harmless they seemed. Emphisis on the seemed part, because with simplicity there was flexibility. Simplicity was thus tenaciousness. Bane knew better.

The ones who did know were confused on why she was there. She had retired without a word ages ago, and many knew that she was simply a bartender— their bartender now— usually.

But again… Hardeen had little reaction.

Embo and him made sense, they knew Sylv well, very well, actually. A ‘live-together-but-not-really’ kind of well, a ‘fucked-more-than-once-and-have-a-weird-domestic-life-Bane-wouldn’t-ever-admit-to’ kind of well. 

Their lack of reactions were normal. They knew her now and they had known her from before she had retired and vanished off of the grid.

Hardeen though?

He had to wonder. It wasn’t normal. And Bane knew that Rako Hardeen had to have heard of the Caterpillar Sniper— every sniper he had met had known about her.

“In a few moments,” And Dooku was talking again. “All twelve of you will enter what we call The Box.”

The man gestured to the large structure that was behind them, and he wasn’t alone when he turned to look at it. It was true to its name, at least, a giant, cube structure that towered above them.

“Some of you will not make it out alive. For those who do, we are looking for up to the six most skilled among you. Any additional survivors will be eliminated,” the Count continued, gazing at them all as they turned back around. “To preserve the integrity of the job that awaits you, place your weapons here.”

With a flick of his hand, two of his droids marched forwards with a cart of sorts and the Hunters began to slowly place their weapons on it— the visible ones at least.

“For those we choose, you will, of course, be paid most handsomely. But more than that, you will be a part of an operation remembered as a turning point in the Clone Wars.”

Bane drew both his blasters, flipping them over as Hardeen set his rifle on the cart. Though he put the twin blasters down as well, Embo dropping his bowcaster down without a word, and Sylv setting her own sniper rifle case down next to his— but he knew damn well that the three of them had hidden weapons on their bodies.

Bane still had his boots and gadgets on, and the number of knives hidden on him was enough to convict him of any crime if he got caught. Embo still his hat as well, and just as many blades most likely, and by the hells, Sylv’s entire body might as well be a weapon.

Dooku really should known better— that or he did and he was hoping that some of them would just out right murder one another anyways. Either outcome was fine in Bane’s book.

“And when we succeed, we will bring the Republic to its pitiful knees.”

At least he was finally done talking.

Eval stepped forwards then, one hand clasped behind his back and the other being used to gesture at them.

“Listen up,” the Phindian ordered. “The Box was designed by me, Moralo Eval, to simulate certain situations that might happen on the job. Go now.” 

And Bane couldn’t help but scowl as he turned towards The Box, he really hated Eval’s tone of voice.

“Enter The Box… If you have the courage…”

He caught Sylv rolling her eyes as she snuffed her cigarette out on the heel of her boot before she stepped forwards, hands in her coat's pockets.

Bane adjusted his hat, and fell in step with her and the others as they approached the Box.

Certainly, things were about to get interesting.

I'm gonna have Sylv's character sheet out on my tumblr soon enough, I just gotta figure out how I want her coat to be styled, but there's a few things already in the OC tag for her here.

Papilio polyxenes or the Eastern black swallowtail is one of the more common butterflies in the United States. I think every chapter title will be a latin name for a caterpillar/butterfly.

Also yes, I do subscribe to the bounty hunter hat duo bang idea, how did you know?

[readsrealm]

happy birthday Ussop

24th July 2002

"Okay, what did you want to tell me Banchina?" asked a man with black curly hair. He didn't look particularly strong, but he had slightly defined muscles.

"Well...how should I explain it to you...okay I'll just say it...I'm pregnant..." said his wife, who had a long nose and black straight hair. She also had a pale face if you look closely.

The man who went by the name of Yassop was shocked. He would be a father?! "I'm going to be a father...it can't be! Not that I don't want the kid, it's that I know I wouldn't be a good father," he thought to himself before seeing his wife look at him nervously. Suddenly he saw how Banchina got tears in his eyes. He wanted to say something, but noticed how he started to cry himself. He started laughing and hugged his wife with as much love as he could give.

"We'll make it! I know we'll make it!" he said in a tearful voice to his wife, who laughed through tears and agreed with him by nodding several times.

They would make it

1st April 2003

"AHHHHHH GNN AHHHH", Banchina screamed as she laid on her bed trying to get her baby out with the help of midwives. And I think we all can image how painful it is, but she wasn't alone, her husband and the father of the kid, Yassop were there too holding her hand.  He looked more stressed that his wife. Finally after a hurtful time the baby came out and you could already see that he has the nose from his mother.

Both parents were holding the baby with happy tears in their eyes. After a moment Yassop asked her what name she thought of.

His name is...Ussop

Someday 8 years later

"Pirates are coming! Pirates are coming!", screamed a little boy who has dark skin with full lips big black eyes and curly black hair but most important his long nose.

He opened the door to a house where many doctors were standing on the bed of his mother, Banchina, who had gotten an unnamed disease. All of them knew that she couldn't survive that everyone accepted it...everyone except from his son.

"Mama! Pirates are here! I bet dad is came home for you!" he shouted. "Ussop, stop he isn't he doesn't come back. Your father lives his dream out there. And I couldn't love him more than I do right now. Please fulfill your dream like you father did ok..." said his mother which were her last words before dying. In this moment his series as a liar began.

It was his birthday and he was alone...he was gonna be eight but he didn't really care because why should he if he doesn't anyone to celebrate with. Of course he had his little gang and Kaya, but Kaya wasn't allowed to go out the house and the parents of the gang didn't really like him...what could you expect being loved by people even if you are the biggest liar and the son of the sniper of the red hair pirates. And the captain is close to be on of the yonkos. Well he was lucky that most people just ignored him. Sure there were people who were kind to him but it was only because of pity. He felt so alone. With the age of five he had only his mother...now three years later he had nobody...

Present

He didn't know why he remembered this now. Probably because tomorrow would be his birthday. But he didn't really care; he was used to be alone. But know he wasn't  he didn't care about his birthday because the only thing he always wished was that he wouldn't be lonely anymore.

With the others

"So is everything ready for tomorrow?", Nami asked the crew minus Usopp. "How you it wanted Nami-Swan~ The cake is in the freezer and I bought all the ingredients for his favorite food.", said Sanji. "Sugeee! I can't wait to see his face and all the MEAT!", said Luffy while smiling his knowing smile. "Let's hope he will accept this.", said Robin in a tone as if she knew something. "Yohohoho then let's do it!"

After that everyone went to sleep for the special day tomorrow

Next day

Ussop layed on his bed sleeping peacefully. Unfortunately it didn't long last because of a Luffy jumping on him. His eyes widened as he woke up. He needed a minute before he could speak with an angry voice: "Wtf! Luffy, what was that for?" "Huh? Did you forget you own birthday?", Luffy said with a confused voice. Ussop groaned. The last thing he wanted is wanting to do something on his birthday. "Luffy, I hate my birthday so leave, please" Luffy looked at him with confused eyes. "Why not? We prepared everything." "Just leave me alone ok?" said Ussop while turning around and putting his blanket over his whole body.

After a moment of waiting, Luffy went out the cabins with a sad face.

Sanji: "Luffy? Where is Ussop?"

Luffy: "He didn't want to. We need a plan."

Zoro: "What should we do?"

Robin: "I think I know what to do..."

Robin told them her plan and the smiled at them. It was Robin what did you thought?

Again Luffy came in the cabin and looked at the hiding Ussop with serious eyes: "Ussop, stand up." Ussop groaned and he said: "Why? Do you need me for something?" "Yes, for your birthday and you don't have a choice it's an order." , Luffy said with a stern voice. "Fine.", Ussop said while getting up. "And what now." "Come with me."

Ussop went out the cabin and saw the crew standing in front of him. He was curios of they wanted to do but he knew they wouldn't leave them alone.

Ussop: "What is it."

Nami: "What is wrong with you?"

Ussop: "Excuse me?"

Nami: "Well, you being really shitty to us even if we just want to celebrate with you. We prepared everything for you and everything you do is laying there an doing nothing! That's kind of ungrateful."

Ussop: "I never ask for it. You know what, Nami? If you just ask what I wanted you wouldn't have to spend all your precious money!"

Sanji: "Hey! Stop talking like that to our precious Nami-swan."

Ussop: "Then just leave me alone! Did you call me to say that I'm ungrateful? If yes then congrats you did. Can I go now because if you really want to make me a present just leave me the fuck alone!"

The rest looked at him with shock. It's not typical for Ussop to talk like that the last time was with Merry and we all know how furious he was.

Ussop sighed: "Guys, I'm sorry. Ok, it's not because of you...it's just I hate my birthday and just want to forget about it. Can't we just chill...?

Chooper had tears in his eyes and hugged Ussop: "IF THATS WHAT MAKE YOU HAPPY, ILL DO IT!"

Ussop smiled at him and laughed: "Thank you, chooper."

Robin: "I don't mind, but you should maybe tell us why. Maybe we can help with you iusses."

Zoro: "She is right. We are nakamas. We aren't supposed to have secrets from each other."

Sanji: "Marimo is right as nakamas you should trust us. We won't judge you and I hope you know  that."

Franky: "Yeah, it would be SUPER if you told us."

Ussop: "......it's just......the times that you are lonely can hurt more than every scar...people leave each other...for their dreams...for other people...for the others sake...and even if they doesn't want to leave...someday death will get them. Death will be always the reason why someone leave you or you leave them."

With that Ussop headed in the kitchen leaving everyone even Robin.

Who would've thought that Ussop was able to say something like that...

Well, after all that they fulfilled Ussops wish and just chilled  and Ussop was very happy about it

[problematicfavesareproblematic]

You Can Just Stay (Under This Weight)

Joe Toye x Reader One Shot

Requested?: lol nah fam. I’m just a sucker for soft intimacy in the middle of violent conflicts

Warnings: potty words, a messy attempt at describing hair brushing, a most likely shoddily written Joe Toye, like a skosh of angst, 90% just wish fulfillment and fluff (sorry) 

Ya girl listened to Lullaby by Mary Glenn while writing this nonsense, a perfect song to sway to alone in the dark (but like in a dreamy/fun way?)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With a final grunt of frustration, you threw the paddle of your broken hairbrush across the room, causing Perconte, Bill, Luz, and Joe Toye to startle as it clacked loudly to the ground.

 “Gees, Y/N,” Bill snapped, hand on his chest as if he could manually slow down his racing heart. “Don’t do that shit- fucking thought we were under attack—”

You didn’t bother to listen to the complaining sounds of upset coming from the men sitting to your left, snatching up your gun and bag before storming out of the room and heading towards the bedroom you and Joe had been assigned to for the night.

Part of you felt bad for scaring your friends by your childish outburst. The logical part of you knew that throwing your broken hairbrush had been unnecessary and needlessly disruptive and loud.

But the other part of you- the part that was sick of feeling like a goddamned invalid since you’d been shot in the hand?

Well, that part of you wanted to cause much more destruction than that.

When you got to the room dropped your stuff unceremoniously to the ground and grimaced at how loud that was, too.

The whole thing was ridiculous, and if you weren’t so frustrated with yourself you probably could’ve kept your immaturity in check.

But, after catching a stray bullet through some of the meat of your right hand from some ammo-wasting sham of a shooting competition between some drunk NCOs, you had found yourself in a bad mood that not even Luz and Liebgott could shake you from.

You were a sniper, your whole life was tied to your right hand and it’s steadiness in the field. Having that taken away, even for a little while, just served to remind you that that was about the only thing you were good for:

Shooting, reloading, firing. 

Without your gun, you were just another mouth for the mess officers to feed.

Just a stupid woman, in the way of the ‘big, brave men’ of the Airborne. 

Looking down at your bandaged hand, you sighed with defeat.

Roe had already been on your case about taking it easy, adamant that you shouldn’t push yourself lest risk further injury.

But tonight, you hadn’t even attempted to do anything high risk.

All you’d tried to do was brush your hair- something you had been attempting (and ultimately failing) to do for the past four weeks. Tonight you’d finally managed to get your hair out of it’s matted braid, your left hand managing to finger comb the three knotted sections apart with limited assistance from your right.

The moment you had tried to detangle the mess you’d realized you were going to need to utilize your right hand more. Of course, when it became painfully clear that your hand wasn’t yet up to the task of even holding on to the ratty ends of your hair, you’d allowed all of the frustration to boil over- lashing out like some toddler being denied their juvenile demand.

Now you were stuck with your tangled hair hanging around your face, unable to either brush or rebraid it.

 You hadn’t realized that someone had come in until you hear the click of the door as it closes, and when you whip your head around you realize that you’ve started to cry.

“What?” you asked harshly, voice softening at the last moment when you came face to face with Joe Toye.

He had an uncomfortable look on his face, and quickly you brought your left hand up to wipe the evidence of your tears away.

“Oh, sorry Joe,” you muttered, sniffing pathetically before clearing your throat and moving towards the spot on the floor you’d claimed earlier to be your bed for the night. “I'll get out of your way—”

“Y/N”

When you turned back to look at him you saw him holding up the still-surviving paddle of your hairbrush, a tight smile on his lips.

You grimace, looking away for a moment before meeting his gaze once more.

“Great, thanks….”

When you step closer to reach for it he hesitates, moving the brush infinitesimally away from your reach and looking at you worriedly.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and when you open your mouth to dismiss his concerns he furrows his brows and shakes his head. “And don’t tell me you’re okay or fine or whatever you were gonna say, because I know it’s bullshit.”

You scoff, chest feeling tight. “Joe—”

He gives you an exasperated look, crossing his arms across his chest and peering down his nose at you. 

Great, the Toye Staredown. As if i didn’t already feel like a petulant child…..

“I’ve known you for two goddamn years Y/L/N. I may be stupid but I’m not an idiot.”

Holding his glare, you sigh heavily and wipe at your runny nose.

“If anyone in thisroom deserves to be called a stupid idiot, I think I’m the more fitting candidate.”

Joe’s glare turns into a look of concern. One of the things he’d first loved about you was your quick wit and your refusal to bend under his good-natured ribbing. 

Seeing you look so defeated scared him.

When you made to poinch the bridge of your nose, Joe stepped in and caught your elbow. At first you were confused until you realized that you’d been about to use your right hand.

You bark a humorless laugh, letting your head loll back in rueful amusement.

“For fuck’s sake….”

Rough hands find your cheeks and tilt your face back so you’re looking at him again, and he murmurs something under his breath when he sees tears reforming in your eyes.

“What’s going on, huh? Talk to me, Y/N/N—”

“I’m useless.”

Like some dam bursting, you find yourself weepily confessing how useless you feel you’ve become, how you were questioning everything you’d once assumed to be true about yourself.

How horribly painful it was to hear about the replacements who were dying in your place while you were being kept in the relative safety of the XO camp.

To his credit, Joe didn’t interrupt you once. 

He’d listened as attentively as he would during a mission objective briefing, emitting a small tsking sound whenever your voice broke with a fresh wave of tears. Through your senseless babbling, you realized that this was the longest you’d ever seen him go without interrupting someone.

You hadn’t been able to mask your embarrassed scoff when you admitted why you’d lost your cool earlier, face hot with more than just shame.

When you’d finally stopped, Joe had nodded and taken a deep breath. 

“What can I do?”

Closing your eyes, you shake your head. “No, no, no! Joe- that’s not why….I don’t expect you to do anything—”

His thumbs wipe at the tear tracks under your eyes before he whispers your name and cuts you off, quietly telling you to look at him.

Joe’s gaze is unbearably soft, more gentle than you’ve ever seen it.

“Go sit down.”

You furrow your brows, but when you go to ask what he was planning he takes one of his hands away from your face to point towards the pile of blankets the two of you had gathered earlier.

“Drink water while you’re at it, you’ll give yourself a headache.”

Aah, there he is. There’s the Mama Toye I remember from Toccoa.

When he gave you a look that made it clear that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, you sigh and walk over to where he’d directed you and sit heavily in the pile of blankets.

You sip from your canteen as you watch Joe shrug off his overcoat and pull off his knit cap. You couldn’t help but smile as he finger combed his dark hair back into place, finding yourself admiring how handsome he looked with it slightly overgrown and smoothed away from his handsome face.

 Ever since he’d kissed you in the middle of the Eindhoven liberation celebration, you couldn't deny that things between the two of you had ….changed.

Nothing had been established, nor had either of you spoken about it. Yet there was certainly a closeness that existed where there hadn’t been before- a sort of mutually understood agreement that you’d pair up for patrols and eat meals together.

Each night Joe would ensure that you slept by his side, and by morning you always woke up with him curled around you protectively. If the others noticed, they made no mention of it- which, considering Joe Toye’s fiery temper, was probably more for their sake than for yours.

And even if they did, you got the feeling Joe wouldn’t change a thing.

 He catches you watching him and smirks, shooting you a wink as he strides over confidently.

“At least buy a guy dinner first before eye-fucking him like that….”

You shot him a glare that only served to make him grin wider. “Thanks Joe, I’ll try to rein it in.”

He snorted a laugh as he came to sit behind you, his right leg kicked out beside yours while he scooted closer.

You turn to look at him curiously over your shoulder, unable to stop your cheeks from heating up when you see that he’s got your hairbrush in his hand.

“Uh, what’re you doing back there, Joseph?”

He leans to the side a bit so you don’t have to strain as hard to look at him, mirroring your curious expression.

“What does it look like? I’m gonna tame this rat’s nest you’ve been growing for the past month.”

You blush in earnest at that, mouth going dry when he picks up a knotted tendril and brings your brush to the ends.

With a gentleness that you hadn’t expected, he dutifully begins to patiently detangle the strands, pinching the hair’s shaft to ensure you don’t feel any tugging or snags.

Well…..This certainly was not how i thought things were going to go down tonight…. 

After sitting in stunned silence for far too long, you finally will yourself to speak.

“Uhh, you’re brushing my hair.”

He hums. “That’s right. Good observation.”

“But….you are doing it, um, well?”

“Wow, you shoulda been in intelligence- nothing gets past you.”

You huff at his snark and shoot him a baleful look.

“Joseph.”

His dark eyes meet yours with a slightly inpatient glint in them.

“Are you going to let me do something nice for you, or are you going to overthink and fight about it?”

Before you can respond he’s resumed his gentle brushing, and with another deep sigh you resign yourself to your fate.

It wasn’t as if you didn’t like it, or that you didn’t whole-heartedly appreciate Joe’s kindness- in fact, you were beginning to get anxious that you may enjoy it too much.

It’s just….you couldn't remember the last time someone had touched your hair, let alone brush it for you. Maybe childhood….? Certainly long before Toccoa. It felt so intimate now- nearly as intimate as that kiss you’d shared.

And, if you weren’t mistaken- Joe seemed to be aware of the intimacy as well.

Every so often his eyes would find yours and he’d look at you warmly, the small smile on his lips growing whenever you unintentionally shuddered as the brush scratched deliciously across your scalp.

When he finished brushing your hair out, he surprised you further by instantly beginning to resection your hair and french braid it.

“How did you….how long have you known how to braid?”

He chuckled at that, bringing a hand up to turn your head away from him before continuing to twist and weave your hair into what you suspected to be a pretty adequate braid.

“Well, i may or may not have figured it out while sitting behind you during lectures back in Toccoa, but don’t —”

“What—?!”

“....get weird about it….” he sighs, holding his hand over your shoulder palm up and wiggling his fingers impatiently until you gave him a hair tie. He wrapped the elastic around the ends before smoothing his hand down the braid, allowing his hand to drift to your shoulder so he can knead into the tense muscle.

The moan you emit is near pornographic, and a laugh catches in your throat when Joe curses under his breath like you’ve punched him.

“That feel good, Y/N?” he teases good-naturedly, but simultaneously brought his other hand up to massage at the other shoulder and made you groan again.

“Don’t know, ask me again in five minutes.”

The two of you chuckle before falling into a comfortable silence, the only sound being your quiet sighs of pleasure and his echoing hums of confirmation.

After about ten minutes of having his hands exploring your upper back you hesitantly sat back slightly so you could lean into the strong plane of his chest.

“Joe, thank you.” your voice is slow and heavy, and you feel more relaxed than you imagined possible considering the circumstances that brought you two together in the first place. “I….you are nicer to me than i deserve—”

He snorted at that, wrapping his arms around you and resting his cheek atop your head. “Shut up and let me enjoy this. It’s been too long since it was just us….”

You blush at that, glad he can’t see your face as you smile privately.

“Didn’t know you, uh, wanted there to be time with ‘just us’.”

Joe moved his hold on you so he could look down at you, a look of amused confusion on his face.

“What’re you talkin’ about? Course I do. You think I would follow you ‘round like a goddamn lovesick dog if I didn’t at least enjoy your company a little bit?”

You feel a dumb smile cross your face, and before you can reply he pinches your chin lightly and angles your face up a bit more so he can kiss you soundly on the lips. 

Just like the last time, everything around you seems to fade into insignificance, and all you can hear and smell and feel and taste is Joe Toye. You part your lips and deepen the kiss, carefully moving your injured hand up and over his shoulder so you can wrap your arm around his shoulders.

With a happy hum, Joe nibbles on your bottom lip and smiles.

“I’ll take this as a good sign, as far as the kissing is concerned?” he half asked, moving to twist your bodies so he’s leaning over you while simultaneously laying you down softly against the blankets.

You took a deep breath, looking up at him with so much love and affection it makes your chest ache.

“How observant you are, Mr. Toye. Should’ve been an intelligence officer.”

The look he gives you is wicked, and when he ducks down to kiss your cheek he lets his lips linger at your ear. “Maybe you’ll let me show you all the other things I’m really good at sometime, huh?”

Letting the fingers of your uninjured hand bury themselves in his dark locks, you croon a warm affirmation.

“Oh, you can count on that, handsome. Just wait till I get the okay to use my other hand, I’ll return the favor.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Or you could hold me now—”

He cuts you off with another overwhelming kiss that promised so much more.

“Ma’am….you’ve got yourself a deal.”

~ ~ ~ ~~ TAG LIST: @mrseasycompany​ @itswormtrain​ @mrsalwayswrite​

Per usual, thank you so much for reading my mess! Let me know if you wanna be tagged, or if you’ve got any requests (barring Perconte and Sobel)

[the-silentium]

Trial by Fire

Masterlist - Chapter 1

Fors is an Original planet. I do not give permission to people to use it for their own fics, the planet, the animals, the Nightmares, the lore or anything related to Fors. Thank you.

Pairing: Bad Batch x Reader

Words: 4020 words

Warnings: Blood, gore, monsters (yay).

A/N: Woohoo, action chap! From this point on, the will be blood on almost every chap. Be warned.

Taglist:  @haloangel391​ /  @lightning-wolffe​​ / @cherrydemon5​​ / @and-claudia​​

_____________________

"Something happened." One of the members spoke up, addressing the problem from his position at the end of the long table. "The planet is angry again." 

"Why would they come back now?" Another asked, finger nervously tapping at his tight. 

The man leading the council took a second, to release the armchair from his deadly grip, allowing blood to return to his white fingertips. 

"We all know how it started." He didn't know why they were back, but he certainly knew who was the cause. 

Whispers erupted from the dozen of people sitting at the table, accusations, hateful exclamations, worried questions, they all blended in a cacophony that beat at the leader's growing headache. 

"Enough." He barked, effectively bringing silence back into the closed room. 

"She's back and we need to find her. Send half of our available hunters into the jungle for a retrieval mission. No one is allowed back in until she's here."

"But Arlan," the head of the scouts paused, unsure of his own next words, "she's dead." 

No one dared to breathe, in fear that they may be chosen to venture the darkness away from the village's protection if they dared to make a sound to disturb the stillness of the room. 

"Apparently not." Arlan growled, frustrated that the thorn in his side was back. 

____________________

You took a deep breath in to calm your buzzing nerves, they couldn't control you right now, not when everyone's lives, your family, was in danger. They needed you strong and in control, something you hoped you could be long enough to get the whole group to safety. It was your only chance. You had your instincts, they were sharp and trustworthy so you had to rely on them and not let panic overflow again. 

You exhaled slowly, wiggling your fingers and toes to relax every inch of yourself. You could do it. You were an experienced hunter in these jungles and they were highly trained commandos with a flawless success rate. Let's not forget the fact that they had blasters. You were good with your knife, but it clearly wasn't the best weapon out there. Maybe the odds were in your favor. 

But they were used to droids, not unpredictable monsters that loved to tear beings apart limb by limb. Tonight would be your trial by fire. For all of you. 

"We need to be ready to meet them." You cracked your knuckles unconsciously, already picturing yourself in front of one of your nightmares. 

You acknowledged Hunter's comment with a nod, already walking to the nearest tree to stab it with your knife and insert your loyal tap into the hole.

"We all drink before it's no longer possible. It's gonna be a long night and this is our last chance to do it." You pointed to Wrecker. "You first." 

He obeyed in a beat, trusting your survival skills. You knew you'd need all the energy available and the sugary water would provide you just that. Also, you needed to be as hydrated as possible. 

"Okay." You turned towards the rest of them, all their visors fixated on you. "So, I don't know much about them. There are different species that are common beliefs in my village and other species that are proper to other villages. But they all have in common to eat whatever cross their path and to roam solely at night." 

Wrecker moved away from the tree, wiping his mouth with his wrist to make place for Tech who removed his helmet to drink. 

"This planet is a trap." The grey-haired clone grumbled at your unhelpful lack of information. 

"I know, I've lived here my whole life." You glared at him before concentrating again. "No one in my village ever came back from a night outside, so I don't know for sure what species are around. All I know is that there are Algax roaming around."

You signaled to Cross to take Tech's place. 

"They are taaaall creature, with dark blue-ish skin and really long arms and legs. They are shy," you gesticulated your hands around to find the right word, but couldn't find it so you went with the first word that came to your mind, "things that tend to hide along the trees and grab their prey when they don't look. They don't eat the prey, just crush it to death and let it there for the other things." 

You were losing time fast, the jungle was darkening with each passing minute and you were far from ready. There was too much to cover and so little time. Plus, there was the fact that what you knew wasn't 100% reliable. Beliefs change from people to people, from village to village, who knows what version of the stories these beasts really came from?

"And they're super sneaky and silent. Hunter your turn." You announced a tad too dryly, but no one called you out on it, maybe because they were as on edge as you were, mentally preparing themselves for what was to come as best as they could considering they didn't really know what was to come. 

"I'll do this quick so listen. And Tech, listen really really carefully. Rule number one, if you see a light, something cute, something scary, hear a sound or hear your name being called, you. Do. Not. Follow it." 

"They know our names?" Tech's hands stopped mid-air, his helmet almost back on his head, eyes wide in surprise. 

"The planet hears us talk. Of course they know." You almost rolled your eyes at the stupid question coming from the team's genius. Ears everywhere duuh. 

"Rule number two, don't eat or drink anything from now on. Can't have one of us puke their guts or get poisoned or paralyzed." Out of the corner of your eyes, you clearly saw a shiver shake the sniper's body. Lesson learned. 

"Number three, if I say run, you all run. In the same direction would be best, but if it comes down to it, you run and don't stop. We'll regroup afterward. You have trackers on us, right?" 

"If you keep your comlink on you, yes." You patted your pockets in reflex, hand closing around the small object to confirm its presence and alleviate your concerns. 

"Last rule, if I do this," the index, middle and ring finger of your free-hand closed to let only your thumb and pinky pointing to the ground, "you have to hide, absolutely don't run. Hide. Some of them are guided by movements and you'll only attract them." 

"Hide? But we can blast 'em!" Wrecker's enthusiasm didn't affect you this time around. It was a first. 

" 'm just no sure they'll stop moving if you do. Best to make our way around unnoticed." 

He grumbled his disappointment at having to be silent, it never has been his forte. Plus, he had the added difficulty to hide his imposing stature, so this would be a challenge. Thankfully their armors were almost entirely black, would they have been the usual white with color stripes, it certainly would have been even more difficult to blend in with the vegetation. 

It felt weird giving them orders, like you were totally out of place. And in a sense you were. The newbie wasn't supposed to command the trained soldiers. The newbie followed behind and shut its mouth. 

Well, at least that's what you've always been told and that's what you've always done. It was no use to fight with the other hunters. They were a group of dickheads that deserved hell, but they had more muscles than you. And they were outnumbering. Aaand they were watching each other's back, whereas you were alone without any backup. All that being said, it didn't stop you from making them pay for their hurtful words, harsh treatments, condescending tones and constant bullying, one way or the other. 

For the first time, people let you lead them and it was unsettling. A part of your mind waited for the inevitable low blow to hit you square in the face. You knew the commandos weren't like that, but you couldn't help it. It was a defensive reflex you developed over the years of trying to fit in a world that you were too different to live in. It was totally foreign to be listened to and not berated down, it felt good and terrifying at the same time. 

"Understood?" Your voice softened into an unsure tone, its once imperativeness melted under the weight of your anxiety of being listened to. 

One after the other, they all nodded, gazes full of determination and something else that almost made you sweat. They all showed their trust in you, even Crosshair who you thought didn't like you much, offered you his trust. It meant way too much and stressed you beyond measure. You couldn't let them down and have them killed. Any single one of them. 

Nodding in return, you walked to the tap beside Hunter and forced yourself to swallow the water, pushing down the lump that formed in your throat. You could do it. You could survive the night if you played your cards right. With your knowledge and their excellent combat skills surely you could defend yourselves. Right?

"Blasters ready gentlemen. We have to find a shelter as quickly as possible." You removed the tap from the tree and hid it back into a pocket. 

"A den should be alright or a small cave." 

With one last look at the four of them, you noded to yourself. 

"Good night, good luck." You told them as per habit and hope that the saying would somehow protect you all. Your usual joking self was nowhere to be seen, letting you wear a mask of complete seriousness.

They tensed, apparently getting on the fact that this was an important custom on this planet. 

"Good night, good luck." They repeated, one after the other, causing you to smile tightly at the gesture. 

You took North, continuing away from the ship and into unknown territory. You knew that after a while you'd eventually fall into Forsians hunting territories and then you'd have a better knowledge of the terrain, but those parts of the jungle were still hours away. Hopefully, you'll be able to climb up and make your way back to the ship before getting there. 

"Will you be alright to walk in the dark?" Crosshair's voice erupted from your pocket and you knew this wouldn't work. Each time they'd speak the whole jungle would hear. 

"I'll be fine. Like I said, the best mutate to survive." You winked at the white crosshair on the sniper's helmet. "I can see in the dark. Not full 10/10 on the chart, but enough so I won't ram into a tree."

You fished the comlink out of your pocket and showed it to Tech who was rummaging around in his utility belt pockets.

"Can't have it screaming my position every time someone spea-" 

"I know." He cut you off, presenting you an earpiece.

"This will do." He took your device to connect them together, or so you think. "There. You'll hear us through the earpiece but you still need the comlink to talk." 

He gave you back the electronics and you quickly put the earbud on, comlink returning to your satisfyingly deep pocket. 

"Thanks. We should continue to follow the ravine and hope that we can climb it at some point and return to the ship." 

Agreements resonated in your right ear and you got on your way. It got darker and darker until the only colors you could see were different shades of blue and black. 

The silence around was nerve-wracking, every tree seemed like it would turn around and jump at you at each and every step you took. 

It was nice to quickly fall back in your old habits, feet barely making a sound, eyes recognizing every scratches and marks on the trees let by multiple species marking their territories; Dire bears, Lacergans, Fu-

You almost jumped at the low rumbling whisper right in your ear. Thankfully, your scream stayed in your mind and the only thing jumping was your heartbeat. 

"Movement ahead." You couldn't hear shit, but you trusted Hunter's heightened senses. 

You stopped, the boys getting into their shooting positions at your sides. You could do it. 

"Smell like death." Hunter added with a grunt of displeasure. 

The new information registered like a cold bath, freezing every muscle in your body. The ice-cold bath that just fell over your head paralyzed any transfer of information between the neurons in your brain, leaving you totally helpless for a whole second. Your brain was still out of service when your body just moved on its own, already knowing what to do despite the lack of orders from above. 

The three middle fingers of your free hand closed, letting only your thumb and pinky pointing to the ground, clearly informing the clones of the course of action. Thankfully, all their gazes got attracted by your moving hand, immediately changing the formation. 

Twiggs broke a bit to the right, still far enough for you to dodge behind a tree undetected, soon joined by Tech who as opposed to you, faced the tree. His chest plate pushed on your torso to get closer to the tree, one of his blasters raised right next to your head, the other grazing your upper arm, caging you in a position that would be extremely hot in totally different circumstances and with a totally different clone. 

At the corner of your eyes, you thankfully noticed Wrecker's imposing form hiding as best as he could behind a particularly thick bush, Hunter standing behind a tree next to him, weapon pointed towards the sky above. Crosshair was nowhere to be seen, so you hoped it meant he found a good spot. 

Rustling leaves and moving grass made you freeze completely. No one moved as the footsteps got nearer and nearer. Of course, this was the first creature you'd encounter. Kribats were the worst creature one could run into. 

They were told to feast on human flesh like there was no tomorrow. They were starved, walking the jungle every night in hope of biting down on some stupidly brave human who ventured the night, but these times were rare nowadays. Almost no one got out at night, reinforcing their desperation for human blood.

It was told that they could paralyze you in fear at simply one glance to their wicked red eyes, allowing the beast to pound on its victims and take their life. It wasn't clear how it killed its preys, but all the versions were unanimous, it was a bloodbath. 

Fors really seemed to hate the Bad Batch. 

If it wasn't enough that the most dangerous monster was hot on your asses, Tech's recording light flashed to life, illuminating your position and burning your retina like a mighty beacon. With a fast but careful movement, you reached around his arm encasing your body into the tree to cover the red traitorous light. 

Blinking the tears away, you really hoped your glare got the message perfectly clear to the engineer. Forget about your hobby for one night, you dumbass!

The rustling grass behind Hunter's tree stopped your breathing, all senses focussed on the beast's movements to know if it detected your group or not. 

Tech's eyes visibly widen behind his visor at the ungodly sight of the creature's emaciated body, the skull of a cervid posed atop a male human body rivaling Wrecker's height was disturbing, but not as disturbing as the sight of all the blood covering its dark skin. There was so much blood that it pooled at its feet, leaving behind a river-like path in the grass. 

The low ragged rumble of the monster passed your tree, surprising you that he hadn't bounced on it to grab you from behind. You glanced at its retreating form and oh this is new. Your version of a Kribat didn't have a feathery tail trailing behind. Now, what could this be useful for? They couldn't fly, could they? 

The Kribat wandered deeper into the depth of the jungle, leaving its imprint on everyone's mind as well as on the jungle floor and all your noses and mouths. 

You waited for a little longer, just to be sure that it was far enough to not catch its attention before nodding to Tech. 

"Clear." He whispered through the comm. 

The first breath you took in almost pulled you to your knees. The smell was atrocious, grabbing you at your throat. Decomposition, blood, acids, they all mixed to form a rancid smell that you could almost taste. 

"What in the Nine Corellian Hells is that?" Crosshair stood from behind a dead trunk on the ground to join everyone at the dark trail. 

"Human blood, flesh and organs." The shredded pieces of meat here and there turned your stomach upside down. 

You were used to flesh and blood. Heck. You were a hunter and often butched your meals yourself. But this flesh was human and the state of it only left you to imagine was it must have felt like to be ripped apart. You didn't want to speculate if the victim was alive or not when it happened. 

"Kribats are craving human flesh but they don't have a digestive system. It gets in and gets out, so they're never satiated." 

"So this one just ate?" Wrecker approached behind you. Now faced with what these beasts were capable of, his enthusiasm disappeared somewhere, letting him wary and if only a little bit scared. 

"It looks like it." You fixed the blood, deep in thoughts. Why were there humans out tonight? 

"I thought no one was supposed to be out at night." Tech inquired while disconnecting the red light on his helmet. 

"They're not supposed to be. It means that something's wrong." You sighed. Tonight couldn't get any better. The planet was throwing a tantrum. 

There was nothing you could do about it, so you focussed back on the present. You swallowed to keep yourself from puking as you dropped to your knees before the red river. 

"And what are you doing?" Crosshair asked, not daring to approach the thing himself. 

"Camouflaging my smell of a juicy living being." With shaky hands, you plunged your fingers through the sticky mixture. You gaged at the feeling but covered your sleeves nonetheless. 

"You guys should cover your armor too. Lucky bastards." At least it wouldn't touch their skin. 

"No way." Crosshair groaned as Tech walked over asking "Why?" 

"Because I want us to survive the night." You deadpanned. There was no time to explain the how and why. 

You stopped breathing for a second to cover your torso and pants, cringing at the warm wetness soaking the fabric. You allowed yourself a second to mourn your once perfect clothes that you loved so much. You'd have to burn them after only one day wearing them. 

At your sides the boys reluctantly followed your lead, grunting in disgust every two seconds. 

You decided to forget your face, this would end badly for your stomach. 

Turning around as you wiped your hands on a clean spot on your pants, you noticed Hunter's clean body leaning on a tree for support, head tilted down with a hand over his heart. You didn't need to be a Jedi to feel his distress at the overwhelmingly nauseating smell. 

"You okay?" His visor lifted to meet your eyes at your worry. You controlled yourself and refrained from pulling him in a hug, you'd only make it worse. 

"Yeah." But he sounded far from okay. 

"We have to continue, but if you stay close, we all should be able to hide your smell without rolling you into the stuff." He grunted in agreement. 

Tech, Crosshair and Wrecker joined your sides, covered in the mixture. 

"Okay. We continue." 

Hoping that your sergeant would get used to the smell, you took the lead once more. You didn't know if his mutation would allow his brain to stop registering the smell after a couple of minutes like everyone else. You mentally crossed your fingers for him. 

The trees seemed taller into the dead of night. The occasional moon rays passing through the leaves made the heavy ambiance slightly more bearable. 

You wondered what a night outside looked like on another planet where no monsters crept their way around. Where you could lay down and watch the stars, not through a tiny crack in the rock like you used to in your village and fully admire the high sky, illuminated by a sea of sparkling orbs. You deeply wanted to experience it with your team who would definitely think you stupidly simple. 

But they would understand. After tonight, they would. 

Your progression was steady for a while, every ears and eyes were focussed around to detect any unwanted creature lurking in the shadows. 

Back to his collected usual self, Hunter finally seemed used to the smell plaguing his nose. To add to the good news, you spotted a mature tree, particularly large. At first glance, it looked like it reached the top of the ravine.

Excitement flooded your veins, a hand lifting to stop the group who tensed in alert. 

"I think this one could get us up." You whispered to them, pointing at the tree.

"It definitely could." Tech scanned the tree, the others still watching the surroundings. 

"I'll go check." You broke away from the formation to get to the closest branch. 

"Wait-" A hand caught your upper arm. 

"Hunter, I'm the best climber here. Plus, you guys will make too much sound for a recon with your armor. I'll make it quick." Your determined eyes met his visor, not willing to get back on your position.  

"Be careful." He released you to position his team around the tree. 

You send him a quick salute before pulling yourself up the tree. You kept your knife in one hand and climbed up several branches. The next one was pretty high, too high for you to reach it without jumping. Your knife found its home at the side of your boot and you focussed on your jump. Crouching slightly, you suddenly extended your legs and pushed with considerable force. Both hands grabbed the top of the desired branch before letting your biceps do the rest of the work. 

"Are you okay?" Hunter called through the comm. 

Leaning on the trunk, you reached in your pocket to retrieve the communication device. 

"Yeah, had to jump to continue. Think I'm almost at the top. I'll be down soon." You answered, looking up to the thinning branches where more moonlight pierced the darkness. 

"Copy that." 

Your comm returned to your pocket to free your hands. Up. Up. Up. In the same minute, you made it to the top. The moon was still low, not fully visible above the line of trees obstructing your vision. 

Now, you noticed that the edge of the damn ravine seemed barely close enough for you to jump there. Maybe Wrecker could throw you there. But how would he reach the top? Checking under the edge, the lack of roots keeping the ground stable was highly disappointing. Even if you were to jump all the way there, the chance of the dirt crumbling under your fingers was too high. 

Quickly, you grabbed your comm to let the boys know that you were coming back. 

With a grumble, you started to descend, moving gracefully from branch to branch without making a sound. The gap you jumped looked pretty big from above, causing you to hesitate for the shortest of seconds. The need to get down was more pressing than your unease so you braced yourself and pushed yourself off your perch to the one below. 

You landed perfectly, both feet on the hard surface, hands wrapped around it tightly to not move further. 

For a second, you were perfectly stable. The next you were falling through the air, propelled by the body hitting you full force. Wood painfully came in contact with your shoulders, arms and back, emptying your lungs before a scream could escape your lips.

[actress4him]

Bonus Whumptober Content Part 2

Original Whumptober fic here

Bonus Content Part 1 here

Find it all on AO3 here

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Thanks for all of the support on the last chapter! I appreciate each and every one of the likes and reblogs and follows I’ve gotten.

Tagging @outtacommission again because Keith would not have been resurrected from the dead without his bribery.

Here is chapter 3 of this fic... see you next week for the conclusion!

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Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Warnings: referenced amputation, blood mention, referenced broken bones, self-esteem issues, suicide ideation, death mention, nightmares, abandonment issues

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When he woke again, he was lying back down on the pillow, staring up at the blank white ceiling. For one, blissful moment, he didn’t remember the events leading up to him passing out again. But it all came crashing down on him an instant later, taking his breath away.

My leg.

My leg, my leg.

My arm, my face, my leg.

“Keith?” Shiro’s voice was quiet, tentative. Not like him. “Are you awake?”

He wanted to roll over on his side and ignore him. Close his eyes, maybe go back to sleep, pretend that the world and this nightmare didn’t exist for a little while longer. The only reason he refrained was because he wasn’t sure if his stupid, wrecked body could actually manage it.

“What did you do to me?” It was only a whisper, and as slurred as it was, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it was impossible to understand.

Shiro’s breath hitched audibly. If Keith had been looking at his face, he was sure he wouldn’t like the anguished expression that he would see there. But at that moment, he didn’t have the capacity to care.

“Do you want me to...explain...how it...happened?”

No. Yes. He didn’t know. He needed to know why him losing a leg had been the best option, but at the same time he wasn’t sure if he could handle hearing about it. In the end, he just lifted one shoulder - the one that actually listened and responded right away - in a shrug. 

Shiro shifted in his seat, leaning forward so just the tip of his white bangs were in Keith’s periphery. “I already told you that you...died. On that planet. So when we got back to the Castle, you dying again was a distinct possibility. We...it’s like Fallenta said. We had to get you into a pod, even though your...your left arm was broken, and your knees, especially, were a mess from where the console landed on them.”

He paused, rubbing his palms together. “We didn’t know what would happen. I was scared to death that some of those breaks wouldn’t be able to be fixed after the pod. I mean, we were headed to Tellima, but…” His head dropped. “We had no choice. That hole in your stomach...you were dying.”

Keith could almost imagine it - the frantic atmosphere in the infirmary, the blood everywhere, the desperate conversations escalating into shouts as they debated on what to do. He had no doubt that he really had been dying, that they had made the choice they thought was best. He just wasn’t sure if he agreed with that choice. 

“When you came out of the pod, once the stomach wound was healed enough for you to be stable, Fallenta started working on re-breaking the bones so that they could be set correctly. It was...awful.” The shudder was obvious in his voice. “I’m glad she was able to do it, of course, but I’m also glad that you were unconscious the whole time. Your arm was relatively easy. Your left knee...it took her hours. It was in so many tiny little pieces. And your right…”

Automatically Keith flinched at the reminder of what was no longer there. Of the scarred, chopped off stump that lay just underneath the blanket, and the way his leg just...ended. He could see the void where the rest of it should have been even now, if he were to look down. He was purposely avoiding it.

Shiro heaved a huge sigh. “Unfortunately, your right knee was shattered in a way that had been blocking the circulation in your lower leg the whole time. The tissue down there was...dead.” He paused again. “Keith, I’ve...trust me, I’ve gone ‘round and ‘round in my head ever since we...trying to figure out if there was something I could have done differently. And...I don’t think there was. We did what we had to do to save your life. I’m just...I’m sorry that we couldn’t save your leg, too.”

His leg was gone. 

Would he ever be able to walk again? Could they find a prosthetic for him like Shiro had, that worked as well as the real thing? Even if they did, how long would it take him to get used to walking on it? Just walking, not even counting anything like running, jumping, fighting. 

Fighting was what he did. It was the one and only thing besides flying that he was good at. He was crap with a gun, he couldn’t sit up in a sniper’s nest like Lance. He needed to be able to move. If he couldn’t, even just for the time that it took to learn how with a new leg and an arm that only half worked...

They’d replace him. What good was a paladin who was crippled? Who couldn’t pull his weight? As soon as Red woke up and found out what happened to him she would realize that he was useless now. And the Princess, the rest of the team...they already knew it. They were probably already looking for a new Red Paladin. How long would it be until they dropped him off on Earth, or on some Coalition planet? Probably as soon as he was healed enough. They didn’t have time to keep taking care of an invalid, they had a universe to save.

They did. Not him. Not anymore.

“Should’ve left me there.”

There was dead silence for a moment.

“What?”

Keith tipped his head back further into the pillow, eyes roving over the featureless ceiling as if he’d see something new. “I tol’ you not to come. I tol’ you to leave me there. You didn’t listen.”

“And now you’re alive.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Keith…”

His hands fisted in the blanket, jaw clenched in sudden fury. “Don’t ‘Keith’ me. Why, Shiro? Why am I alive? What is the point? You know what all this means.”

It meant he’d be alone. And he couldn’t...he couldn’t do alone. Not again. Not when he found a group of people that he actually cared about for the first time in so long. Not when he was just finally getting used to always having people around, always having someone to talk to or distract him from the thoughts that tried to consume him. Not when he barely survived it the first time. 

He’d rather be dead than alone.

Shiro sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “That life is gonna be hard for a while? That you’re gonna have to work harder than ever to get back to where you were? Yeah, Keith, I do know. I know more than anyone else.”

Oh.

Shiro must think he was so incredibly self-centered.

He was self-centered.

He should have thought about how acting like losing a leg was worse than dying would seem to the man who had lost an arm and kept going. But instead he was all caught up in how he was going to lose everything he had grown to love and rely on. Acting like the self-absorbed brat that everyone at the Garrison except Shiro had accused him of being.

“That means I also know how hard it is to accept,” Shiro was saying. “It’s going to take time to adjust. But you will, I promise, and I’ll be here to help you every step of the way.”

Yeah, right. Keith didn’t know if he was lying to make him feel better, or if he just hadn’t yet realized or accepted that Allura and the rest of the team wouldn’t want to keep him around.

“Just...please, Keith. Please don’t say that we should have let you die. You don’t know…” His voice caught. “I’ve spent these last weeks hoping, praying that you would live. Scared out of my mind every moment of every day that you wouldn’t.”

Keith finally forced himself to turn his head toward his brother and saw him brush the back of his wrist across his eyes. Just that movement was enough to make his heart drop to his stomach. Shiro didn’t cry. At least not where anyone could see him. 

Slowly, he slid his hand out across the bed, palm up. A peace offering. It took only a moment for Shiro to take it, squeezing it so hard he thought a few more bones might break.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And he was. Not for thinking it, but for saying it. He didn’t want to cause any more pain for any of his friends. 

That’s why when it was time for him to go, he’d do it quietly. No fuss. Don’t let them see your fear or your pain - he had learned that long, long ago. He was good at it. 

Shiro gave him a shaky smile. “It’ll be alright, Keith. I promise.”

Swallowing down the words that sprang to his tongue, he gave a nod. “Okay.”

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The next morning Keith woke up to an empty room. In a way, it was a relief. They obviously didn’t see the need to watch over him and baby him twenty-four-seven anymore. But he was, for all intents and purposes, stuck. With no leg, he couldn’t just get up and leave the room whenever he wanted, head to the training room like he normally would in the morning. There’d be no training for him for a long time. 

Of course there was breakfast to think about, too, and he wasn’t sure whether to expect someone to bring it to him, or to bring him to it. Either way, he hated it. He had always hated being treated like he was helpless, and now it was even worse because he actually was helpless. 

He went ahead and made up his mind, though. No matter what their plan was, he had no desire to be carried through the Castle to the dining room where everyone would give him those looks of pity. Poor Keith. Can’t even walk by himself. It’s just too bad he can’t stay.

He was in the midst of pushing himself up off the pillows, trying to get his right side to cooperate long enough to get in an upright position he could balance in and trying to ignore the strange lightness of his leg, when the door opened and Pidge slipped in.

“Hey,” she said softly. Padding over, she perched carefully on the edge of the chair that first Hunk, then Shiro had occupied. 

Tucking his left leg up close to him - the knee creaking in protest at being used for the first time since healing - Keith cleared his throat. “Hi.” 

Silence fell, but it had never been awkward between the two. The introverted arms of Voltron. Pidge just gazed at him for a long moment, her eyes saying all the things he knew she would never actually be able to say with words. “It’s good to see you awake. I was really worried about you.” 

On the outside, she merely shoved her glasses back up into the bridge of her nose and sniffed. “You better not quiznakin’ ever do that again.”

Keith’s lips turned up at the corners for the first time since waking the day before. “Alright.” 

Besides Shiro, he thought he would miss Pidge the most of all. They got each other more than anyone else.

“So.” Straightening up, she whipped a tablet out of her hoodie pocket. “We’ve been working on a leg for you. The Tellimites have crazy good medical technology, so obviously we’re using their notes, but I’ve also been talking back and forth with the Olkari, because they’re, of course, crazy good with biological connections, and we’ve come up with a design that should communicate really well with your body and, essentially, work like the real thing.”

She launched into a detailed scientific explanation of how every inch of it worked, tapping and flicking through various diagrams that just looked like a plain prosthetic leg to him. He didn’t understand but a few words here and there, but he let her talk. This was one of her passions, and it was nice to let her be able to ramble about it for once without having to worry about being rushed. The way her face lit up was worth every second.

“So...what do you think?” Suddenly she sounded uncertain as she blinked up at him. “We definitely want your input on it. I mean, I suggested putting in a rocket booster, but Hunk pointed out that it would be difficult to control with only one. Lance wanted to add lasers that shot out anytime you stomped your foot, but that seemed pretty dangerous for like, running and stuff, so…”

It almost sounded like they expected him to still be fighting with this thing. Well, maybe he would. Eventually. After all, he wouldn’t feel right about just ignoring the existence of the war when the people he cared about were still out there fighting it, so he’d do his best to get back into shape. Maybe he could convince them to find a Coalition planet for him that had soldiers he could fight with someday.

It wouldn’t be the same as fighting with this team, his...his friends. But at least he wouldn’t be completely useless.

He met Pidge’s eyes and realized she was still waiting on an answer from him. Part of him wanted to keep his words to a minimum, not wanting her to hear his new speech impediment, but he swallowed his pride. “It, uh...whatever you guys come up with I’m sure will be great.” He actually hadn’t even been sure whether to expect them to work on it themselves, or put it off on the Tellimites or some other able species. It made sense, though, that Pidge and Hunk would want to jump on this opportunity to design something they had never gotten to do before. He forced a small smile. “But...yeah, let’s hold off on weaponizing it.”

Smirking, Pidge turned off the tablet and stuck it back in her pocket. “Alright, if you insist. Lance is gonna be super disappointed, though.”

“I’m sure.” He could hear the whining and complaining about how boring and unimaginative he was now. 

“So, I was supposed to ask you about breakfast…?”

Keith stared down at his hands. “Oh. Yeah. I don’...think I’m really ready to...try to move around yet, so…”

He was such a bad liar. But Pidge either didn’t notice or was being nice and pretending not to, merely nodding and standing. 

“Okay. I’ll tell Shiro, he’ll probably bring you a plate down here.”

“Thanks, Pidge.”

She turned back from the doorway and smiled softly at him. “No problem.”

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The nightmares came that night.

And the next. And the next.

Snippets of things he didn’t remember during the day, and wouldn’t remember again when he woke. Alarms blaring. Lights flashing. A horrifying crunching sound, then crippling pain and a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

And then...nothing. No one came. No one heard him calling. He stayed there, alone and bleeding in the dark, until the pain became too much and he slipped away.

He woke with tears streaming down his cheeks and a scream on his lips that didn’t quite make it out into the still air of the infirmary, not knowing what he was even crying about other than the nauseating loneliness that weighed him down, pinning him to the bed. 

Forcing his right hand to be the one to clumsily scrub away the tears - because it was going to work, dang it - he gritted his teeth and pushed against the weight to flop over onto his side. 

Get over it. Get over it, get used to it, stop being such a baby. You’ve always known that this wouldn’t last. It’s a miracle they’ve stuck around for as long as they have. If you try to hang onto them they’ll just end up hating you before they leave. 

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He got away with hiding in the infirmary for two days before Fallenta declared him well enough to be up and about, and Shiro and Allura showed up with the Altean version of crutches. They escorted him slowly down the halls of the Castle to the dining room, chatting amiably the whole way. Keith assumed it was meant to either distract him from his plight, or to keep themselves from staring and pitying.

“Hey, look who finally decided to join us!” Lance announced loudly as soon as he hobbled into the room. “It’s about time you were out of bed, Mullet-head.”

“What Lance means,” Hunk sighed, “is that it’s good to see you up, Keith.”

“That it is, Number Four!” Coran rushed to pull out his usual seat, and his smile was so bright Keith couldn’t even be mad about the special treatment. “You had us all worried for a while there, for sure!”

Swallowing, Keith fiddled with his spork, unsure whether he was supposed to respond. “Um...yeah. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Keith.” Shiro smiled at him softly, knowingly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He just barely kept another ‘sorry’ from escaping. Instead he nodded, picked up his spork with his left hand, and changed the subject. “So, uh...wha’s been going on lately?”

That was all it took for everyone to launch into tales of short missions in the Lions, repairs on Red, and alliances with Tellima. Keith barely remembered to keep eating his goo as he watched all of the animated faces and gesturing hands with a small smile on his face. It was good to be back among his teammates. They were so unlike him in so many ways, it was no wonder that he had never really fit in with them. But he cared about them anyway. They might not feel the same way about him, but he was so glad that they had become a part of his life. 

And now they wouldn’t be anymore. Scowling down into his bowl where no one would notice, he poked at the green goo. How did I let myself get so attached? Before Shiro, it had been many, many years since he had let himself care about anyone this much. He should have known better by then. Letting himself come to consider any person or place home was just setting himself up for heartbreak.

As much as he loved spending this last bit of time with them, he almost wished they would stop acting so natural, as if they weren’t getting ready to kick him out any day now. No one mentioned a search for a new paladin. No one said whether they were headed to Earth, or some other planet. 

He wasn’t going to be able to stand the suspense for many more days. They needed to just get it over with.

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Later that night, after waking from another nightmare back in his own room, Keith stared at the bare walls, so lifeless compared to the other paladin’s rooms. Maybe I was always prepared for this moment, after all. Or maybe he had just been kicked out and left behind so many times that the ability to settle in was impossible for him no matter where he went. 

Struggling to sit up, he groped for the crutches and pulled himself to his feet. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep anytime soon, and no one had expressly forbidden him from venturing out on his own - not that it would have stopped him even if they had.

It took far too long to make it down the four hallways between his room and Red’s hangar. Walking with crutches used a whole new set of muscles that he wasn’t used to accessing, and trying to force his right side to carry that much weight was exhausting. He had to stop and lean against the wall, panting for breath, several times along the way. 

But he made it, eventually. He paused once more outside the door, debating whether or not he was actually ready to see the damage done to Red, before he sucked it up and punched the scanner.

He wasn’t ready. 

The great mechanical beast was lying on her side, a position that somehow managed to make her look vulnerable despite her hulking size. Her legs were splayed awkwardly as if she had just been dropped there. She probably had.

The worst part, though, was that her face was nearly unrecognizable. What had once been her muzzle was completely smashed in, there were spiderweb cracks across one of her dull grey eyes, and the other was missing altogether. 

Actually, he took that back. The worst part was the cold and the silence. 

No purr in his head to greet him. No eyes lighting up in recognition of her Paladin. No warmth filling up his chest and spreading out to his fingers and toes. With Red, there was always some kind of heat. Now, though, a shiver shook his body.

Clenching his jaw, Keith forced himself a few steps closer, until he could reach out, balancing precariously, and lay a hand against her warped, dented nose. It was cold, too. 

Suddenly tears sprang to his eyes for the first time since his panic attack a couple of days before. “‘m sorry, Red.” He stroked his hand over the metal, feeling all of the bumps that shouldn’t have been there. “I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve it. You...you’ve always protected me, and…”

Tipping his head back, he took in the mess of a cockpit again, and this time he saw flashes of his nightmare. Something sharp pinning him to the chair. Blood dripping onto the floor.

One tear escaped, sliding rapidly down to his chin. “I don’t even know how I survived this. But if either of us deserved to survive, it’s you. Please, Red...if you can hear me at all...please don’t give up. I know I...I can’t fly you anymore, but…”

It hit him then, the brutal truth of that statement. He’d never fly her again. He might never fly anything again. He’d known it ever since finding out what had happened to him, but now it stabbed him through the heart, how much he was going to miss this semi-sentient alien ship. 

Before he knew it, he was falling none-too-gracefully to the floor, one hand planted in front of him while the other remained on her snout, crutches clattering loudly to the side. The tears came in earnest, then. “Red...Red I lost my leg. I...I can’t fight anymore, I can’t fly…I’m useless.”

He’d told her that before. That time, though, she had reassured him that no, he was her Paladin, he was a defender of the universe, not useless. Never useless.

But now there was no one to reassure him. Even if she had been able, Red would know the truth. He wasn’t her Paladin anymore, he wasn’t a defender of the universe. He was useless.

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