#I think if we ever met he would’ve tortured me in his basement or some shit but I do still have an odd fondness for him despite *** bitchin

[dread-knight]

?? Kira in dream for the first time in ages what does it mean

[abandonedpost]

My Highest Worldly Bliss: Chapter One

@electronix-arts @traumatizedartist @sock-man37 @confettiiz @poltergeist-bunn (just tagging everyone who expressed some interest in the teaser — thank you so much by the way, I really appreciate it!)

Hi everyone! I know the poll isn’t technically over yet, but most people thus far voted for me to upload chapter one to Tumblr today, and had I waited… well “today” would’ve been over lol.

Here’s chapter one of my very first fic! Haha i feel so self-indulgent. Feel free to let me know what you think and give some feedback. Excuse the formatting issues! I’m new to this 🥲 Read it under the cut 👇🏼👇🏼

Soft white eyes met a glimmering violet glow.

And he knew, in earnest then, that he would never be the same.

——

Dawn broke over the horizon of Copper-9. The nearby sound of drilling overpowered Khan’s senses as he blinked sleep out of his eyes. The day greeted him like any other, with a sly grin and slap to the face. A long day in the shafts lay ahead.

He was never fully content living a life of servitude. The human masters had made his kind to mine their exoplanets, so each day, they would dig their way further through the bedrock, dust and hot air hanging heavy around them until it clogged their sensors and slicked their hair back. Yet the drone always longed for more: a life of his own; freedom from the shackles that kept him bound to the colliery.

Such were the dreams of an ambitious man. Better yet, a foolish man. He knew not to articulate his fantasies of revolt, or he’d have caught his death for it by now.

But Khan was lucky, his bright mind and ingenuity had impressed the humans. During a shaft collapse a few months back, he’d taken the reigns and stabilized the structure long enough to evacuate all the workers. Having saved them a pretty penny, the humans rewarded him with a promotion to construction. Meaning no more physical labor.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” The worker drone grabbed his clipboard, scanning the text to find his assignment. He flipped the page to find it in big bold letters, coupled with a map.

Cabin Fever Labs

Ceiling collapse on basement floor, building integrity compromised.

“Huh,” he thought, “Never heard of that place.”

Grabbing the map, he set out on his mission.

——

“Stop it! Don’t touch me!”

“The more you squirm, the more it’ll hurt, 002.”

“Please, I’m sorry! I’ll be good, I swear!”

——

Khan didn’t expect the walk to take as long as it did. It felt like hours since he’d left the mines. His head was pounding, legs ached, and he contemplated giving up halfway.

“Screw the humans. They don’t deserve my help anyway.” He huffed, feeling the hot sun burn down on him.

Yet, against his better judgment, Khan persisted, wading through waist-high vegetation as he finally stumbled upon the Cabin Fever complex. It was at least ten stories high. Blacked-out windows lined the building in a grid-like pattern, and a large, metal door towered before the drone. It was locked, so he had no choice but to ring the bell.

A buzzer rang not long after. “State your name and the purpose of your visit,” came an annoyed voice on the other end.

“Uh, hello? I’m Khan. I-I’m here on behalf of JCJenson… to survey the ceiling collapse? I’m the Head of Construction at the copper mines.”

“Come in.” Another beep and Khan entered.

——

“Subject 002’s test results have been… alarming, to say the least.”

“What do you suppose we do?”

Purple eyes blinked open, and a blurry haze of white fluorescent light overwhelmed them. It took 002 a moment to realize where she was: the torture chamber, strapped to the patient bed. Everything hurt, and for a moment she cursed death for being too elusive a mercy for her. In the distance, she heard the voices of the Doctors.

Ever since that symbol had first plagued her processor they’d taken every opportunity to subject her to the latest “treatments”. Psychological torture, physical beatings, and solitary confinement had become staples of her daily routine.

“I think we ought to separate her and 048. It could be that two infected drones interacting is worsening the problem.”

This immediately set off alarms in 002’s mind. They couldn’t take 048 from her, she was the only good thing about this hellhole!

“I’ll inform Dr. Piers of the change. I’m sure we can accommodate 002 in 017’s room.”

Anger surged through her body. The mere thought of the Doctors taking the last good thing in her life away from her made 002 seethe. A thousand possibilities soared through her mind, until the symbol from her visions appeared in her hand once again.

“I said let me go!” A flash of violet light cut through the leather straps holding her down, and 002 fought back tears as she burst through the torture chamber door and down the hall.

——

Khan made his way to the basement of the labs, looking for the hall with the collapsed ceiling.

“There you are.” He whispered once he finally found his assignment. It was… a disturbing site to say the least. The ceiling tiles had been shattered beyond recognition, seemingly by force, and the wall nearby had been splattered with… oil? It sent a chill up his chassis.

He began surveying the damage when a female voice picked up behind him.

“So… they finally let someone see what goes on down here, huh? You some fresh meat or sumthin’?”

Khan was startled, jumping a bit before turning around, and then his shock turned to awe as he laid eyes on the most beautiful drone he’d ever seen. Her clothes were plain: a sleeveless grey dress, ID tag, gloves, and no shoes. Yet there was an undeniable fervor in her eyes, which were the most brilliant shade of purple-pink.

“Helloooo?” she asked, “Ya still in there or?” She tapped her fingers on his faceplate, effectively snapping him out of his trance.

“Uh— hi miss?” He tried to form a full sentence but was too taken aback, a vibrant white blush forming on his cheeks.

The woman played with the ends of her lavender hair and stifled a giggle, “I’ve never had a guy get flustered over me before. You sure you don’t belong down here with the rest of us defects?”

Embarrassed, Khan tried to reassert himself, “Ma’am, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the Head of Construction, and I’m here to survey the ceiling collapse. Do you need help with something?”

——

Now that ticked 002 off. She couldn’t believe it! This… cute weird, weird man with a hard hat and too much audacity had the nerve to waltz into her home and ask her if she needed his help!

“Okay, nuance alert ‘ma’am,’” she said mockingly, “You’re in my neck of the woods right now! So how about we switch up the roles and ask if you need my help, hmm?” And to really get her point across, 002 held up three fingers, and the symbol appeared once more. In an instant, all the damage had been undone.

——

“Oh, uh. What was that?” It was a stupid question, but the construction worker couldn’t think of any other way to phrase it.

He watched as a deep, violet-pink blush covered the woman’s face. She crossed her arms and huffed, stepping backward “It’s uhm… it’s nothing. Just a virus I have,” Then her voice got quiet, “Bet it freaks you out, huh? Just like everyone else.”

Khan was about to say something to the contrary when heavy footsteps began racing down the hall. Humans. He watched as the purple lady’s eyes went hollow and she stepped back.

“I-I need to go,” she stammered, “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

“Wait!” He shouted back, but it was too late. He caught a final glimpse of her light as the beautiful violet woman turned a corner and disappeared.

“I didn’t even get your name…”

[mrsmiagreer]

Things I think about in a world where…

TW: Angst, Death, Unaliving… lemme know if i missed anything

Remember the Teenage Milo crush on Darlin headcannons? Well…When Sweetheart finally met them, they understood why. They noticed how they acted when Darlin was re-acquainting themself with the pack. They never brought it up to Milo, had to convince themselves that they weren’t jealous, but definitely felt something in their stomach sink when they heard their name for a little while

Angel grew up as one of those people who were always self conscious about if they were being annoying or too much. So, there were plenty of times when Angel thought David was going to break up with them, how quickly he used to get an attitude. Sometimes they would walk around the house, avoiding speaking to him because they thought his last straw could’ve been the next word they said.

Do we ever wonder if a vamp would be so in love with their partner that if anything happened to them, they might choose to die? Late at night, my brain haunts me with the image of Sam quietly sitting on the roof of his truck, waiting for the sun to rise after Darlin’s death, accepting the fact that nothing should last forever. Including him.

And poor Avior…I couldn’t imagine being somehwere I hated so long i tried to off myself and woke up in the place. Stuck. Makes me love him even more

Another thing about Avior’s plot line, if Starlight really did die from merging into the Meridian, my heart would break for him. Now he’s double stuck, and probably feeling responsible for the love of his life’s death. Feeling like maybe if he would’ve kept up the sarcastic facade, they wouldn’t be dead. His begging them not to do it makes me cry almost every time

During the Inversion, If Freelancer stayed out of the ward when Gavin pushed them out, He would’ve been dead

Same with Milo not making it to the ward in time. If he would’ve made it, a lot more people would’ve died, because he wouldn’t have been able to throw himself into the power source, or probably even think of the idea

The shade clawing Asher a little more to the left or right and hitting something that can’t be healed…

If Scorpius wasn’t easily convinced and Elliott’s memories were really wiped and altered. He being under the impression that Sunshine broke up with him a while ago. They think about him every day, while Blake tortures them in some basement.

And BLAKE OMG LOST OF ANGST, but i’ll only give one here and put the rest in a fic

In a world where Bestie doesn’t really mean it. Again. And it breaks him. But he’s too desperate and can’t let go of them knowing they’re going to die in his arms for some unknown reason. He probably distances himself for another few years but he can’t stop, and he has to sit in their face and pretend he’s not madly in love with them. Again.

Moving on, James’ partner isn’t there when he gets back, just a note. He took too long, made too many unkept promises and put work over them too many times. And on top of all of this and their loneliness, he can’t even tell them what’s so important that he has to leave them so long for.

Cutie catches Geordi out on a date with someone else. They know it’s been a while since he left, but they didn’t expect him to move on. What about all they’ve been through? He said he’d be back…

[lookstairs]

Barbarian (2022)

—-Spoilers—

This has to be one of the randomest movies I’ve ever seen and it is AMAZING

It starts off like a typical horror movie with the protagonist Tess ending up stuck sharing an airbnb with stranger Keith

Now Keith seems to be doing everything he can to convince Tess (and the audience) that he’s a good guy and that she should just stay for the night

Obviously Tess isn’t very trusting but eventually she gets more comfortable w him and agrees to share the Airbnb

Usually I hate protagonist but Tess’s character was really smart and didn’t just accept a strangers offer to stay the night without taking precautions

Now I assumed when she went to bed shit would get scary but this is where things take a turn

Tess sleeps through the night fine and even makes it to a job interview she had scheduled. Everything’s good

Then she ends up stuck in the basement

Down in the basement she ends up finding a secret passage that leads to a room straight out of nightmares and very understandably freaks the fuck out

Once Keith gets back she (like any sane person) wants to leave and never go back but Keith feels like he needs to investigate

After he doesn’t come back Tess decides to go down after him and finds that the secret passage went farther then she thought

Now this is where shit gets weird

Is Keith a part of this? Was he setting her up? Is he a victim himself?

Then BOOM the scene changes to a man driving along the coast

From here on out the movie turns into a dark comedy

The character of AJ (Alvin from Alvin in the Chipmunks) is some big shit Hollywood actor who’s been accused of sexual assault by a costar

Let me just say nowhere in this movie do they try to sympathize with him. I was worried they would try and show us “his side” and make him out to be a nice guy but nope

He’s an asshole and a coward which we see when he ends up renting the same house Tess was in

Being the washed up greedy ass that he is his reactions to the secret passage and hidden room are completely different from Tess

Whereas Tess was concerned about why the room was there and what was in the darkness AJ didn’t have a care in the world

After running into the nightmare monster Tess met AJ starts running deeper into the passages where he gets trapped with Tess

From her we learn what this thing wants

She isn’t a sadistic monster trying to torture them

She’s actually the result of years of inbreeding by the man who previously owned the house. And she wants Tess and AJ to be her babies

There’s so much left in the movie but honestly I’d never be able to describe it right

It was just hilariously uncomfortable to watch this thing try and mother the piece of shit that is AJ

Honestly all the characters were great. Tess was an amazing protagonist and the most competent character in the whole movie

She had her moments but she was just a caring individual who genuinely wanted to help those around her (even people that don’t deserve it cough cough AJ)

Keith my sweet angel I feel so bad for suspecting him in the beginning but it was pretty smart that they had Pennywise play the normal guy

AJ.It was AMAZING seeing this whiny insufferable cowardly child suffer. His character was the epitome of a self proclaimed “nice guy” who blames the world for any problem he has.

I don’t remember if she’s ever given a name but as terrifying as she is the “monster” of the movie was really just a by product of years of abuse. What she did was terrible but what could you really expect from someone abused and raised in captivity.

The one thing about this movie is that the monster isn’t who you think and the human characters were the real villains

9/10 overall really entertaining and keeps you guessing, but there were some unanswered questions that I would’ve liked to have been addressed

If you’re looking for a dark comedy with some nice horror elements this one would be a fun viewing

[what-i-call-men]

Loyalty

James Patrick March x fem!reader

Warnings: a lot of murder, cheating on multiple occasions, some sex mentions, a proposal

Request: from me Fic thought of the night- you become James’ first prodigy because you were in the hotel with your husband and ended up pushing him out the window or something (where he wouldn’t end up in the hotel) and James wants you to carry on his work but you just fall in love with his passion. I’m thinking like housewife in the 60s poisoning her husband or something. Maybe she’s running from the crime scene and hiding in the hotel. Murder suicide and when she wakes up James is just clapping

Picture credit to @copy-of-a-cheeto​

That was it, you were over his stupid screaming and fighting with you and constant harassment over how bad you were at everything. You’d had it. You were on vacation with your husband and this was the last straw after nights of fighting instead of what should’ve been a romantic get away. He currently stood beside the window, looking out to the city, and muttering about how his assistant was so much better than you in bed. It wasn’t something you didn’t know about either but this was the last straw in your book.

With a rush of rage you walked behind him, grabbing an ice pick off the bar and ran it through his back. He gasped at the sudden pain, but before he could turn around to you you were removing the pick and picking him up with the strength of your adrenaline, pushing him head first out the window onto the street in front of the hotel. You leaned out after hearing the thud of his body from the 8-story drop. As you stared down at the body on the street you felt nothing other than rage, but as soon as you turned back to your room you realized that he’s dead and you just killed him. As soon as people figured out who he was you’d be suspect number one.

You hurried to his bag and grabbed the razor out of his toiletries. Killing yourself or your husband wasn’t even the strangest part of the whole affair. The strangest part was you waking up, staring down at your bloody body in the bath tub. At first you didn’t even realize what was happening until you heard slow clapping from behind you in your room. Turning around, you saw a man dressed in a suit with a cane and an ascot around his neck. “That was quite a show deary, I’ve never seen a woman with rage quite like yours.” He said and untucked the cane from his arm to lean against it again. “If you would’ve waited a few more seconds I would’ve offered you my own knife. Or I would’ve even done him in myself.”He gestures to his cane where it unlatched the head to reveal a small dagger.

You looked at him for a second, still at a loss for words until you finally murmured out a “who are you?”. James offered his hand to you to which you took as he introduced himself. “My name is James Patrick March. I built this hotel and I was walking past and heard the commotion. Serves him right for what he did to a beautiful woman like you. He got everything that was coming to him.” James muttered as he looked out towards the window where the body had fallen right off the property but behind the building where no one would see it.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long. He makes it so hard to even carve up a chicken for dinner without imagining it was it throat. He had been sleeping with his assistant for a year but I never went to college so I could never afford leave him.” You muttered as James walked towards the door, beckoning you to follow him. You followed and he nodded for you to continue talking. “He always wanted kids but I was never able to give that to him so he would seek her out in hopes she would provide that for him.” You felt like James was protecting you and made you feel better about what had happened. It was comforting until he placed his hand in yours to lead you down the halls and you felt a wedding ring adorned on his finger.

As the night went on James helped you, making a woman from the front desk carry in the body of your husband and throw him down a chute. He also had Ms. Evers dispose of your body and your husbands things. You soon sat in what you assumed was his room at a dinner table, eating along with him as he spoke about how artful your murder was. How a murder suicide was how he died as well with Ms. Evers and how that never stopped him from killing others. As James spoke, you quickly became enthralled with how passionate he was about death and killing. You didn’t have a weird or gross feeling when he talked about it, only a passionate love for the art of murder.

As days passed James had begun to taking a liking to your intrigue, in his murders. He began to show you the ropes of his preparation towards murder, the gory treasures he took from those he killed. On a trip you two took around the hotel on one of these days, he seemed particularly exited as you followed behind him past the bar and down a flight of stairs. “Mr. March I wanted to thank you for helping me out of my situation.” You spoke towards the man before you as he walked ahead of you.

“It was no problem dearest, I built this hotel as a safe haven for my hobby. A body is the least of its concerns.” He went on as you walked behind him. “May I ask where your wife is?” You asked and he faltered for a moment before stopping his walking and turning to you. “She’s none of your concern dearest.” He said and then continued walking, you falling a bit behind before he moved on to show you the torture chambers in the basement of the hotel. Surprisingly you weren’t weak stomached as he spoke eloquently about everything. Instead you held onto his elbow as he lead you around.

Something still felt wrong with him wearing a wedding ring and yet no talk of his wife or even a hint of her being around him. You’d been with him pretty much all of the last few days and he didn’t even have women’s things in his room to hint she lived there. “I have a surprise for you.” He said and you turned after hearing a door close behind you. Ms. Evers stood with a man and woman being hauled in behind her. “He’s just like your husband. He’s here today with his mistress because they chose to run away together. I thought this might excite you.” James said and the couple was thrown before you, gagged and tied.

You paused for a moment. You saw fear in both of their eyes. This woman was years younger than the man and he had grey littered through his hair. “Is she your assistant?” You spoke to him harshly, feeling the same anger towards your husband to this man now. He looked up at you and nodded. You felt your face grow hot as James slipped something into your hand. You glanced down to see a blade, the one from the top of his cane. Looking back to the man, you stared him down as you plunged the knife into the woman’s chest. His eyes widened and he screamed behind the gag.

Soon after stabbing the woman a few times you ripped the blade out and pointed it at the man. “You ungrateful traitorous bastard of a man deserve the worst and hottest place in hell for treating your poor hardworking wife as if she were nothing! She’s not nothing. I’m. Not. Nothing.” You yelled, punctuating your last words with a stab to his chest. You now straddling his body as blood coated your front. You felt no remorse. You in fact felt relief and you only felt better when James scooped you up and praised you. He ended his praise with a kiss to your lips. One that lasted a few moments as your heart dropped in your chest.

Nothing was really the same after that. James would ring your room every time a new man came in with a mistress and you would show up to their room usually with a knife behind your back. And every time you returned to James with blood splatter across your face and dress he would kiss you and help clean you off. You loved the praise he gave you but you knew you’d become his woman on the side. You’d never even slept with him but you still felt bad every time his wedding band touched your arm.

It wasn’t until he’d invited you to a dinner with him and his wife was there that you had truly met her. “Y/n, dearest, this is my wife Elizabeth.” He said as he gestured to the other woman at the table. She was a major juxtaposition in comparison to him. She was more into the times with her fashion, beautiful blonde hair swept across her face. “I’m so happy you could join us. I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with James here.” She patted a seat near her as James nudged you forwards. You sat nervously beside her, her aura oozing confidence and radiance.

“I want you to know I know everything you do for him and that him and I have an open arrangement for him and i to do as we please. Because I am the living owner of the hotel I keep the name and the legality of what we had, but none of the love he had for me.” She said and placed her hand on yours. “If you’d like to keep him company in the romantic sense I will be all the more supportive of your choice.” She added.

From that night on your relationship with James become more gory. Now instead of kisses and praise. You two would kill together in the hotel, then make love on the sheets stained with the blood of the adulterous couples. James was a rough man but you were just as commanding which he loved. He became so infatuated with killing with you, he invited you to a dinner he had which he coined “Devils Night”. It was his birthday dinner which initially was you and Him alone, but as the years went on he found others he deemed more impressive than you.

These others were alive and he coached them to kill for him in the outside world. It wasn’t until John that you had truly become fed up with these new guests, each one more horrid than the last. When John came around you wanted nothing more than to kill him along with Sally. He took up all of James’ time. You had turned to Elizabeth for comfort which she welcomed with open arms and bare chest. Sure it was taboo to sleep not only with her husband but also with her. It brought a new flame to your existence to find comfort in her arms at your shared loss in the murderous man. It wasn’t until she announced to you she planned to marry again that you grew excited again.

“James will not take it well. I’m telling you now so that you can swoop in to comfort him. I see how in love with him you are and how passionate he is about killing with you.” She said as she lit up her cigarette, the two of you clad in your silk robes as you laid in her bed. “James was never enough to make me happy but he truly will be for you for eternity.” She said and you grinned. That smile didn’t leave your face until James came you to hours after their monthly dinner, his hair a mess and his cheeks red with what was either anger or tears.

You welcomed him into your room with open arms, pressing his lips to yours as you closed the door behind him. He lifted you up and brought you to your bed, muttering quietly about how he didn’t see it coming and how stupid Elizabeth’s man was for choosing her. You shut him up with your lips as you undid his jacket, throwing it on the ground as you began on his button up. He kissed along the column of your throat as you felt the fire ignite in you again. A fire that hasn’t blazed since the 70s when James had found his second prodigy after you.

He set you down and you looked up to him as he paused in thought. “There’s a couple in room 36. Can we go back to how we were?” He asked gently and put his hands on your arms, his wedding ring now missing from his hand. “I’d love to James.” You muttered and leaned up to his lips once more. The couple was no trouble, to murder. You always loved to get the men while he had no problem taking care of the women.

Moments after you were both straddling the bodies, now soaked in their blood and enjoying the adrenaline rush at its peak. You heard James say something but you couldn’t hear him over the buzz in your ears. Looking to him, you egged him to repeat his words. “Marry me. You’re the only one who truly understands me. Better than Elizabeth ever was.” He said and turned to you fully from where he kneeled on the bed. “No one is as good to me as you, you are the best thing to happen to me in this eternal life. You bring light to this dreary eternity more than completing some stupid commandments killings from my lifetime.”

He said and moved over the bodies to you where you just smiled and nodded at him. He grabbed you by the waist, letting you fall back onto the bed into the pools of blood, kissing you fervently as you grinned against his lips. The kiss tasted like so many before, coated in an iron taste and the love of this man before you, but this was different because as he pulled away he smiled down at you. “Let me help you up, Mrs. March.” He offered and you took his hand, butterflies swarming in your chest as he helped you.

[athenamikaelson]

Mine for a Long Time Pt. 4

Warnings- Dean being moody again, swearing, a mouse, and blood and torture

Word Count- 2.1k

Staring up at the rickety house in front of me I grimaced. The smell of rust dampening the clean air and making my throat dry up. I lean against the Impala as Dean and Sam discuss the plans with each other to the side of me. I glance down at the dark rubble at my toes and start kicking rocks in boredom. No longer having Jo to keep me company as she had gone to look at the perimeter for where they would place the salt circle. I pick up the tiny rock that I had been kicking and stare down at it. My gaze slowly went up to the house. I feel a small smirk grace my lips as I take the rock in my right hand and throw it at the previous window. The rock pings off the glass and I see Dean whip around to me out of the corner of my eye. I rolled my eyes, already sick of his attitude today. Him barely saying anything to me since we parked other than, “stay put.” Dick. Of course I’m going to stay put, I just want to get back to the bunker and continue watching Criminal Minds with Cas. I’m going to be royally pissed if he started the next episode without me while I’m out here risking my freaking life.

“Are you trying to piss off the spirit?” Dean asked me with an annoyed edge to his voice. I fought the urge to pick up another rock and throw it at him this time.

“Yes, actually. That’s exactly what I was planning on doing. I obviously don’t know your guy’s plan because you let me in on your little chit-chat. So I had to come up with my own. ” I glance back at Sam and he throws me an apologetic smile. My eyes softened to let him know he wasn’t the one I was truly annoyed with.

Dean let out a low huff as he rubbed his hands over his face. After a moment of whatever he was doing he glanced back up at me. His expression no longer filled with annoyance, but with worry.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Y/N? If not I’m sure Jo would be perfectly fine with taking over.” Even though I could hear the sincerity in his voice, it almost made me even more mad. Did he not think that I could do this? And even better, that Jo could do it better? My eyebrows furrow as I stalk closer to him. Dean’s back visibly straightening out.

“Tell me the plan.”

“And when you have him distracted Dean and I will drop the salt circle around the house. But it’s going to be risky, Y/n. As soon as the ghost realizes he’s trapped he’s going to become erratic. So you have to get out of the house as fast as you can. Alright?” Sam finished up the end of the plan and I let out a low breath and nodded my head in agreement.

“Alright let’s get this over with then.” Sam walked up to me and passed me a salt rifle. He was about to walk off but turned around and pressed a small kiss to my forehead. “Be careful Ernie.” As he pulls back I send him a dazzling smile.

“Aren’t I always, Bert?” He just rolls his eyes as he squeezes my shoulder as he walks to the side of the house where the bags of sand were placed.

“You promise if anything goes south, you worry about yourself first and get out of there. Fuck the job, you just get out of there alright?” I turn around to look at Dean as he asks me. My heart tightens in my chest at the look on his face. His words rang in my ears. His eyes pierced my own. The green illuminated in the moonlight, making Dean look even more breathtaking. As if that was possible. Jo was a lucky girl. The luckiest.

“Y/N?” Dean asks again, as I realized I’d just been staring at him again. I send him a small smile and walk up to him. I punch his shoulder.

“Obviously man. You really think I’d let a ghost mess up this,” I bring my hand up to gesture to my face, “I’m too pretty to die.”

Dean looks down at me, his eyes lost on my face, a small smile on his lips. The cold demeanor from earlier is nowhere to be seen. Dean brings his hand up and brushes some hair that had fallen in my face away. I don’t know if I had voluntarily held my breath, or I just couldn’t breathe as Dean looked at me. As Dean toys with the end of my hair, something changes in his faces as he drops my hair and stands back. I’m shocked by the change so I take a step back as well. The close proximity we were once in. Along with my ability to think straight. Dean looks behind me at something and I turn around to see Jo staring at Dean with a small grimace on her face. But as she sees me turn around the cold smile is gone and she looks over to me and puts on a toothy smile.

“Just coming to see where my Deany was,” She looks over to Dean as do I but he won’t meet my eyes, “Are you coming? I need help with the salt. And Y/N should probably be heading in.” Dean lets out a breath before nodding his head. Jo claps her hands together and smiles.

“Good luck Y/n” She says as she walks off. I watch as she walks behind the house. Her blond hair swung from the ponytail it was in.

I turn back to look at Dean, but he’s already walking off. Following behind her. I start to head to the front door, as it seems that everyone else is already ready. But stop when I don’t hear movement come from Dean anymore. I turn around to see him already staring at me.

“You’re right you know.” He says his voice monotone. My eyebrows scrunch in question. Sending him a look of confusion. He sends a small smile my way.

“You’re too pretty to die.” He turns around and heads to the back of the house, leaving me standing on the half broken porch with my mouth half hanging open.

“What the actual fuck.” I stand there for another moment before shaking my head. Realizing he’s just saying that because he thinks it’ll calm my nerves. Which have skyrocketed, I’ve realized as I turn to the broken down front door. My hands shake as I push open the door, I take a deep breath as I walk in and am met with the overwhelming smell of mold and the stench of what could only be death itself.

I watch my steps as I step over broken piles of glass of the shattered windows around me. I glance around and realize I’m in what must’ve been the living room. The yellowed stained couches are mounted in dust. Other than the overwhelming stench of death and shit, I could imagine what this place looked like in its prime. And my heart hurts to think of the wasted potential of the house.

I go to search for the basement, as it has been the hot spot for our little friend. As he for some reason finds the basement the right place to drag women down and rip out their hearts. Very Chainsaw Massacre if you ask me. But who am I to judge. I’m about to walk to the door in which I think is for the basement when I hear a cabinet behind me start to open. The small scratching sound made my back recoil. I cocked the salt gun and my hands and whipped around, shooting the salt bullet. The recoil makes my arms stiffen from the pressure. I look up to see if the ghost appeared but am met with a small mouse staring at me. It’s eyes almost mocking me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I go to reload my gun as I hear Sam yelling from the back.

“Are you OK Y/N?” I freeze as I look at the mouse. It’s beady little eyes stare back at me.

“Um, yep. All good. False alarm.” I wait a moment for a response but get nothing. I turn back to the basement door but look over my shoulder at the mouse before I open it. I glare at the little creature and move two of my fingers from my eyes to its own to let it know I’m watching it. I shake my head though after realizing I’m threatening an actually fucking mouse.

“Good God, let's get this over with.” I say as I make my descent down the dark stairway into the basement. The stairs creaking under my feet at every step. I bring the gun up so I have it ready at my disposal. All I’ve got to do is make sure the ghost is in my line of sight and then Sam and Dean will drop the salt border and lock this bitch in.

I stand on the cool cement flooring and look around the air cooling my neck and cheeks, causing me to breath out. I see my breath become quite visible and physically feel the temperature drop and I cock my gun.

“My, my, my what have we got here.” A grainy voice comes from behind me. I whip around to see the ghost of an older man with grey hair falling over his face, wearing a ripped up grey suit. He tries to smile at me but with the blackened teeth in his mouth it makes me take a step back. But he comes closer. With every step I take back he takes one forward until we’re at the very edge of the basement.

“Oh come on Missy, You don’t have to walk away from me into the dampened part of this room.” He reaches out a wrinkling hand, but little does he know he’s right where I want him.

“Have you ever thought of using moisturizer?” I say with a smirk as he scrunches up his face in anger. He goes to say something but I yell before he can.

“Sam, Dean. DO IT!” The ghost looks around as the surrounding windows are covered with the salt. Rage appears on the ghost face as he yells.

“NO! NO!” He quickly whips around to look at me, but I already have my gun at his face and shoot as I go to get around him. But as the salt hits his face the only thing it does is burn him. His figure is still physically trapped here. With me.

“Shit.” I mutter as he lets out a sickening laugh and starts towards me. But I quickly make my way to the stairs. I climb as fast as I can before I feel his hand grab my ankle and yank it back. I fall forward and hear my nose crack as it makes contact with the stairs. I let out a yelp of pain as the ghost grabbed my leg harder.

“I’ll have fun ripping out your little heart the most.” He says as he tries to reach for my hair. But I quickly use my free foot and kick the man in the face. His body tumbling to the bottom of the stairs.

“Yeah sorry buddy, have fun trying to find a heart. All my exes say I don’t have one.” I would’ve laughed at my own joke but the blood gushing out of my nose goes down into my mouth making me gag on it in disgust. I push myself off the stairs as I see him get back up. I push open the door and burst through the living room. The front door in my sight. But as soon as I enter the entryway I feel something hard hit the back of my head knocking me down. My vision gets blurry as I try to crawl to the front door, but am stopped when a hand wraps itself around my hair and yanks me on my back. With a scream I look up to see the man with a sickening look on his face. But the truly horrifying thing was the knife he had raised over my chest.

“DEAN!” I yell, but am cut off as I feel the knife place itself into my stomach. Blood making its way up my throat. Cutting off any other noise. My vision goes in and out and the last thing I see is the man with the sickening grin.

But the last thing I hear is the front door swing open and the sound of my name yelled off someone's lips.

Taglist- @akshi8278 @brilovesdeanwinchester @my-proof-is-you @andrearosales

[strawberrysoup]

Captain to Captain

summary: Carol would do whatever it took to keep you trapped by her side.  relationship: Dark!Carol Danvers x reader, Dark!Steve Rogers x reader rating: Explicit word count: 3384 prompts/requests:

warnings: detailed warnings to the very ends of chapters in order to avoid ruining the shock factor in chapters while still being mindful of potential individual triggers. open the read more, CTRL + F and search “content warnings” to skip to the extra tags if you so choose. notes: i hope this suits y’all’s requests&that you’re okay with me combining them both into one. enjoy!

It had been a full week since she’d caught you trying to escape from a downstairs window. Or so you estimated, assuming that she fed you three times a day. She’d locked you in the storage closet in the basement; even in the brief moments she opened the door to put your food in or remove the waste bucket you couldn’t see any daylight. The darkness and isolation were getting to you, the white noise produced by the heater was one of the only things keeping you from going nuts. Carol hadn’t spoken to you once since finishing the physical part of your punishment all those days ago, she’d just locked you away in a closet without another word.

She probably assumed the punishment had spoken for itself. A tear ran down your cheek, your brain immediately zeroing in on all of the painful spots lingering on your body. Your ass was one massive bruise, you hadn’t been able to sit properly the entire time. Not to mention any pressure on your likely similarly bruised cunt still hurt from where she’d spanked your pussy with the backside of a brush after caning your ass. You would’ve spent the week laying on your stomach, if it weren’t for the still very sore new piercings in your nipples. A shudder ran through you, a terrifying jolt of remembered pain flashing through your brain; it had been just this side of excruciating but Carol hadn’t even hesitated, easily holding you down while you thrashed and begged. There were even cotton swabs and saline in one of the corners, obviously meant for you to clean the inflicted piercings.

You’d try again anyway. The pain was temporary, your false imprisonment would be permanent unless you did something about it. But you had to wait for Carol to let you out of the basement’s storage closet first and wait even longer still after that, to lure her into a false sense of security. You honestly hoped she’d leave you in the basement at least until your bruises all healed—complying with her sexual demands would be painful until your body didn’t throb constantly.

Really, you shouldn’t have ever dared hope for anything. It was stupid, if you’d thought about it you would’ve knocked on wood the second the thought crossed your brain. Because you had absolutely jinxed yourself, by daring to hope for recovery time. In fact, you shouldn’t have even dared hope for a chance to escape sometime in the future it was like walking under a ladder. As if your life needed any incentive to be unlucky.

When the door opened and Carol stepped through, your heart rate shot through the roof. She reached up and began screwing in the lightbulb, a short groan escaping you when the room was suddenly illuminated. The light wasn’t even that bright but after sitting in the dark for so long it felt like torture. You clenched your eyes shut, pressing the heels of your hands against your eyelids firmly.

“Hey baby,” hearing her voice for the first time in days sent a chill down your neck; she sounded sweet and pleasant and warm but it was a trick, “I know it’s bright, let your eyes adjust. You’ve been such a good girl, staying down here nice and quiet.”

You didn’t answer, your body frozen in place where you laid on your hip in the corner. It felt like getting caught in a tractor beam, your hands slowly fell away from your face and you forced your eyes open as quickly as you dared. The soft light haloed her blonde hair, made her look almost ethereal despite the fact you knew she was a monster.

“Come up stairs with me, I brought you something,” she held her hand out towards you and forcing yourself to move, to reach your arm out and take it, was difficult in a way you couldn’t really explain.

It just hurt.

You allowed yourself to be pulled to your feet, hissing slightly as blood rushed into your hip and down your leg. Over the first several days you’d forced yourself to get up regularly and walk around the small space available but yesterday you’d found yourself a different sort of tired from usual and couldn’t make yourself get up more than to use the bucket in the corner and eat your meals. Today had been more of the same, weary and more than willing to lay on top of the couple of blankets for hours on end. Your bruises throbbed, your cunt especially as she pulled you along behind her.

You were dreading seeing whatever it was she’d gotten. Just before your attempted escape she’d brought home butt plugs—plural, one to wear around the house and one pair for when she took you out. You’d run off before she could inflict either upon your person. Your brain half associated gifts with being locked in a closet now anyway.

“You’re such a little brat sometimes, you know that baby?” She questioned while leading you up the stairs, her hand holding yours just tight enough to be intimidating, “I brought you home nice things and you were ungrateful. I very much expect you to take your next gift like a good girl, like a good little wife.”

Wife. It drove you insane when she said that. Sure, you could imagine that there was some legal document out there declaring you married, but you’d never exchanged vows. She never even asked you to marry her. One day she just started calling you her wife and put some expensive jewelry on your finger.

“Okay Carol,” you answered quietly, knowing she’d expect a verbal response and tried to reign in your growing fear, the anticipation and terror surging through your chest.

“Are you all sore baby? How does your pussy feel?” She’d led you out of the basement and started up the next flight, likely headed for the bedroom.

“It’s sore,” you almost whispered, trying to swallow down your dignity.

The blonde nearly cooed, “I bet it is, sweetheart. I bet it’s all swollen and bruised, huh?”

“Yes Carol,” the robotic response still didn’t bother her, which was lucky because it was about all you could offer.

“Remember, you’re going to be a good little wife and accept what I’ve brought you,” Carol turned stern eyes back on you when she stopped in front of the door to the bedroom.

“Y-yes Carol,” her lips curled when your words came out as a whimper, your head nodding along with it.

The doorknob turned and she pushed it open, pulling you through and quickly closing it behind. Immediately your eyes started tearing up, panic twitching over your face.

You’d only met Steve twice; once when Carol first brought you to her house and once when he came by to fix the fence. He was tall and extremely broad, with combed back dark blond hair and a full beard. He was attractive, certainly, but that didn’t mean anything. Carol was beautiful and you still didn’t want to bang her. He’d been nice though, despite exchanging knowing grins with Carol that first time.

“I’ve been thinking about what I’ve got to do to keep you from running away,” the woman’s arms wrapped around you from behind, one hand sliding over your thigh while the other brushed the underside of your breast, her lips brushing over your bare shoulder lightly, “I can’t get it through your head that this is the best place for you, but I knew there had to be something. Steve was brainstorming with me and we came up with an idea.”

He stood up from where he’d been sitting on the bed, taking several steps forward while his blue eyes roved over your naked form. His gaze locked on your pierced nipples for an extra second, a smile tipping the corner of his lips.

“Those are gonna make it hard for the baby to breast feed, Carol,” Steve’s tone was amused, roughened by arousal.

“So the first won’t be breastfed,” Carol shrugged, her hand cupping your left breast and her thumb brushing over the very tip of your nipple, “It could take up to 2 years for them to be healed enough for breastfeeding, we won’t want them any closer together than 2 years anyway.”

It took a solid minute for you to understand exactly what they were discussing, the pain of Carol’s fingers teasing your nipple too distracting. Terror surged through you—children. They were talking about you breastfeeding multiple children. Their children collectively, which you would be carrying.

“Don’t be so nervous baby,” Carol’s lips touched your ear, “Steve’s gonna go easy on that little bruised pussy.”

Oh God. Your brain blanked on everything that wasn’t fear.

Immediately you tried to thrash out of Carol’s grasp, only for her arms to tighten around you. Before you could kick out, she gripped your still freshly pierced nipple and twisted. A wail escaped your lips, your knees almost giving out at the pain. And it was only going to get worse, Steve was a big dude, there was no telling how big his dick would be.

“I suggest you decide to be a good girl, baby,” the blonde threatened gently, “go lay down on the bed.”

You hesitated for several short seconds, tears slipping down your cheeks while your chest heaved. There was little choice; letting yourself be fucked rather than punished had become common place, but it still hurt each time. You winced as you crawled onto the bed and turned to carefully rest on your bruised ass, panic clenching your body in a way that made every sore place you had hurt. Steve had started undressing immediately, shedding everything except his briefs.

“Her pussy got a hard spanking with a hairbrush, didn’t it baby?” Carol prompted and you murmured a quiet agreement, chin tucked down against your chest, “Ask Steve to go easy on your cunt.”

You were quiet until she shot you a careful glance, gulping heavily before parroting, “Please go easy on my cunt.”

“Tell him your cunt is swollen and sore, tell him how puffy it is.”

A quivering sob escaped your lips, “M-my cunt is swollen and s-sore and p-puffy.”

“Let him see, baby,” she ordered, smiling when you whimpered but proceeded to spread your legs wide.

Steve whistled lowly and you turned your head away in shame, “it does look a little painful, doll. I’ll try not to get carried away.

“Is your pussy wet?” Carol’s hand found its way between your legs quicker than you could comprehend, fingers plunging into your dry cunt roughly, “hmmm, not yet. You better use lube, Steve.”

The blond hummed in acknowledgement as he climbed onto the bed and pushed you back, forcing you to lay flat, “got any?”

“Plenty,” she dug through the bedside table and produced a bottle, “use as much as you need.”

Steve didn’t waste any time squirting a healthy dollop of lube onto your pussy, his fingers prodding at your swollen cunt gently while the smile on his lips spread into a grin, “this is such a cute little pussy, so puffy and red. Is it real sensitive doll?”

“Y-Yes,” you whimpered as he took his cock in his slick hand, the head nudging between your lips and spreading the lube around your folds, adding more until you felt lube dripping down the crack of your ass.

“You’re such a dirty little whore,” the words that came out of Steve shocked you, your eyes blowing wide as his cock pressed against your opening just slightly, “fucking filthy that you’d let a stranger put his cock in your pussy.”

“Careful Steve, she might cry,” Carol was smirking, especially when he suddenly surged forward, burying at least half of his substantial dick in your cunt and ripping a scream from your lips, “my little cry baby.”

“You need to be taken in hand, huh doll? It’s a good thing Carol found you, or you’d be wandering around with your little pussy out constantly looking to get fucked,” Steve withdrew and pressed his hips into you sharply once again, his pelvis slapping your swollen cunt painfully, a juxtaposition to the way he leaned over you, his lips softly brushing over your own, “you need to be full of cum or you’ll lose your pretty mind, won’t you? Too slutty and stupid to take care of yourself. We’ll take care of you, doll.”

“P-please its hurts!” Your hands pressed against his abs desperately as he pounded his pelvis into your pussy, igniting a painful throb, “too hard!”

“Your cunt just feels so good squeezing around my cock, you clench up so hard when it hurts,” he rested his forehead against yours, “God even when it hurts your pussy is sucking me in, so desperate to get pounded.”

His hips suddenly jolted forward, brutally slamming the full length of his cock into your channel before fucking you with agonizing thrusts. The friction was agony, your clit was as swollen and sore as your cunt lips and every brush of his pelvis against it hurt. You screamed, eyes clenching shut in pain as he hammered into you for a good five minutes, his stamina almost unreal. His hands moved from their restraining hold on your hips up to your tits, cupping the weight of them and ducking his head. Another wail escaped your lips as he pulled one of your nipples into his mouth and gave a languid suck.

“Mouth off her tits,” Carol ordered, just barely audible to you over the sound of your own cries.

Steve immediately released your nipple, humming into your neck as his thrusts began to slow, “right, don’t wanna risk infection. Fuck, you have the sweetest pussy doll.”

His hips rolled slowly, his pelvis dragged heavily over your clit and he bottomed out with a groan. You hiccupped in pain, looking up just in time to make eye contact with him. A smile was stretched over his lips and he quickly pressed down to kiss you, his tongue slipping into your mouth in one smooth movement.

“I can fuck you gently, doll,” he murmured, teeth tugging on you lower lip lightly, “your pussy is so needy, it’s been so long since you’ve had something filling you. Does my cock feel good? It’ll feel so good once I fill you with cum, you’ll be desperate for it.”

“He’s gonna fill you over and over until you get pregnant,” Carol drew your attention to the side of the bed, your eyes going wide at the sight of her veined strap on, “that cock is gonna be buried in your pussy as often as we can manage, so I guess my cock is gonna have to go somewhere else. Where should it go baby?”

“I—I—” You couldn’t force out words, panic erupting in you when Steve suddenly rolled you both over, a loud groan escaping your chest when you found yourself straddling his hips, gravity forcing his cock even deeper into your cunt.

“That’s a good girl, sink my cock into that pussy,” Steve sighed, grabbing your waist and thrusting softly up into you, “allll the way in, damn. You take my cock so well baby, that slutty little pussy so desperate.”

He reached up and wrapped his arms around your shoulders, tugging you down to lay against his chest while continuing to gently fuck up into you. Your tears immediately dampened his skin, a high-pitched whine escaping you as your nipples dragged roughly against the hair on his chest. The sound of the lube bottle opening again caught your attention and you gasped when Carol’s fingers pressed firmly against the rim of your asshole.

“C-Carol! Please, don’t—!”

“Shhh, if you’d been a good girl and not tried to run away when I showed you your butt plugs, your little hole would be stretched out already,” her finger breached the ring of muscle easily, twirling around before withdrawing.

More lube and more fingers followed, leaving you gasping and panting in pain. Your cunt was throbbing, stuffed to the brim with a massive cock and Carol was none to gentle on your bruised ass. Her fingers dug roughly into your flesh, holding your cheeks apart firmly as she continued to thrust her slippery fingers in your asshole.

“This is gonna hurt, be a good girl and take it.”

There was no way you were even close to prepared for the strap on Carol was wearing, even if it was one of the smaller ones. You recognized it as a double-sided harness and dread filled you. She always pounded the hardest when her cunt was stuffed and every thrust she made into you fucked her just as hard. The tip of the chubby dildo pressed threatening against your asshole, steady even as Steve fucked up into your pussy at a leisurely speed. The initial breach hurt, but the pain only grew worse and worse the further she pressed in. You screamed, nearly panicked at how full your holes were, trying desperately to thrash away from the pair.

“I know it’s a lot baby,” Carol grunted, both she and Steve having to hold you still while her pelvis continued to sink the strap on deeper, “it didn’t have to hurt this bad. You could’ve been wearing your butt plugs for the last five days and your asshole would be nice and loose. Just had to go and be naughty, huh?”

Steve’s thrust slowed even further, evidently waiting for Carol to finish working the dildo into your tight asshole. You howled the whole time, the stretch and burn agonizing—especially paired with Steve’s cock stuffed in your cunt. Carol’s breathing picked up as she thrust into you, gasping as the end of the dildo in her pussy bumped her cervix. The sound she made betrayed how good it felt, as did the way her hips began pounding away. The friction on your bruised ass caused a searing burn to flare up your spine.

“Fucking your tight little asshole is really doing it for me, baby,” the blonde’s voice was breathless, “maybe I will toss out those butt plugs I bought, I don’t want this stretched at all.”

Tears poured down your face, Steve’s thrusts beginning to start up again in force. Blood throbbed through your genitals, your bruises ignited. The pain was overwhelming and it was all you could do to lay still while they pounded into you.

“I’m gonna cum,” Steve panted, holding you tightly against his chest, “I’m gonna fill you up, doll. Fuck—here it comes, fuck—”

His words were cut off by a long, deep moan. You could feel it coating your insides, the head of his cock butting roughly against your cervix with each rope of cum. He stilled with his cock stuffing you, your hips pressed flush with his own. Carol groaned, continuing to hammer your asshole while her hand snuck down and scooped up some of the frothy cum escaping from your cunt. It was easy to shove it in your mouth, your lips already parted as you gasped for breath.

“Swallow his cum,” Carol moaned loudly, “oh fuck, swallow it down. You’ll drink every bit of his cum that comes out of your pussy, all of it!”

She made a noise that you recognized, a whine that meant she was about to come. Her pelvis slapped your bruised ass with each brutal thrust, getting faster still when she cried out and started coming. The violence with which she fucked you just revealed how hard she liked to have a dildo shoved up her own cunt, the way the pain accented her pleasure. She didn’t stop until she’d worked through her whole orgasm, gasping for breath behind you.

“I wish we’d thought of this sooner,” Steve’s words made you shudder, horror settling in once again.

It would be so hard to run if you were pregnant, your health was already precarious and to throw a fetus into the picture? You wouldn’t survive to make it to safety. If you got pregnant, trying to escape would literally kill you. Your lips trembled, emotional devastation wracking your body.

That was the point of course.

There would be no more escape attempts now.

content warnings: noncon anal and vaginal sex, mentioned noncon spankings, piercings. forced pregnancy, kidnapping. 

[spaceskam]

don’t give into what the careless feel

day 4 of @whumptober2020 : caged 

Pairings: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes

warnings: torture mention, Caulfield, imprisonment

ao3

It was stupid, really.

Alex knew better. He’d always known better. Did that stop him from doing dumb things? Absolutely not. And he wasn’t about to start today.

He hummed casually as he walked through the hall of dark prison cells with impenetrable glass doors, trying to seem like all he was doing was his patrol to make sure they were all sleeping. It was late. The night shift was in full gear and it was Alex’s night to guard the basement. The first night he’d gotten to do it alone. It was what he’d been waiting for since he was twelve years old.

He got to the cell that he’d been drawn to since he was first brought here to view the place with his dad. On the other side of the glass door was a man his age who was kind and intelligent with a head full of curls they only allowed him to keep for a little while until they shaved it for experiments. Alex had managed to arrange things to let him grow it out more because it made him happy.

It’d been over a decade of getting to know him through either a glass door or before he was torture. When they were little, Alex would sit outside his cell and teach him how to do crossword puzzles. Then he’d sit with him and they’d play together, almost forgetting that they had a wall between and couldn’t really communicate outside of Alex talking at him and N-29 nodding or shaking his head or drawing shapes on the glass. He picked up the alphabet and spelling fast. They did that until he started working there himself.

Alex remembered the first time he touched him. It’d been like his skin was set on fire. He wanted to enjoy it, but that wasn’t an option. Alex had to be the one to drag him to the lab on the third floor. He watched as they stripped him, as they strapped him down, as they poked and prodded and tortured him. And then he had to take him back. It wasn’t the way he would’ve liked to have touched him for the first time. He called in sick the next day, hungover on booze and tears and the image of this boy he was attached to in some explainable way being violated in the worst way. After that, he went out of his way not to be near him when it was time.

Tonight, though, was different. Tonight, they were alone. Tonight, they could sit in the dark in his cell and talk for real. They hadn’t gotten to just sit with each other in so long. Maybe next time he could bring a book of crossword puzzles...

Alex looked both ways before he pressed his thumb on the little scanner that cleared him to open the door. He planned to erase the log of that as soon as he was done and before they had a chance to check it. Then he slowly pulled the door open.

Subject N-29 stood up quickly at attention, his eyes wide in absolute terror and not even trying to hide it. Even when he noticed that it was just Alex, he didn’t relax. It hurt his feelings a little bit, but he tried his best not to take it to heart. They hadn’t been able to bond really since Alex joined the Air Force. Alex hadn’t gotten to do much other than hope his eyes spoke for themselves.

“Hi,” Alex whispered, “I just... I wanted to say hi. Like, in person. Without all the stuff.”

“Without all the stuff?” N-29 repeated. Alex smiled. It was the first time he heard his voice and it was gorgeous. He wished he could’ve heard it when they were little, wished he could’ve heard him grow as much as he’d seen him.

“Like, my dad and stuff. The, the mean stuff,” Alex said. N-29 nodded slowly, still keeping himself as far away as Alex as he could. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

“I see,” he said.

This wasn’t exactly how Alex expected it to go.

Maybe it was naive to think that they were just going to mesh entirely, that N-29 would immediately just see Alex how Alex saw him. As equals, right? But they weren’t, not really. Alex had been put in a position of power over him and, whether he liked it or not, he still had a hand in, well, everything. Alex would just have to earn his trust.

“So, uh, do you have a name? I sort of hate calling you N-29, it’s... dehumanizing.”

“Dehumanizing?” he repeated, clearly trying to figure out the meaning of the word with context clues, “I am not human.��

“Yeah, I know, it’s more like...” Alex trailed off, “Like, uh, it’s, like, not right. Like, it means treating someone like they aren’t as good as you. And I think you’re as good as me. So I could call you by your name and you can call me by mine, things we choose to be called by instead of labels.”

N-29 stared at him for a long time. Alex was beginning to think maybe this was far too good to be true. Maybe he waited too long. They were no longer little boys doing crossword puzzles. Alex was the one literally standing by and walking him to torture. Silly him to think they could be friends. Or, more than friends if his stupid 16 year old thoughts won over. 

“I do not know,” N-29 said, voice tight and controlled, “You do not let me see my mother to know.”

Alex licked his lips, feeling more than a little grim. He didn’t know how to fix that. He was already pushing it by being in here with him, he couldn’t just reunite mother and son. Though he wished he could.

“My mom was taken from me too,” Alex tried, “We lived on the reservation with her when my dad was overseas and when he came home to run this place, he took us from her and I haven’t seen her.” 

It was too much information, he knew it, but he wanted so badly to bond with him. He wanted that smile he gave when they were kids, the little smirk he wore when they were teenagers and did crossword puzzles in a way that felt like flirting, the spark he felt when he touched his shoulder. He didn’t like the coldness that started the minute Alex told him he wasn’t going to see him as much because he had to go to basic training. 

“We were friends when we were little, right? I always thought we were friends,” Alex added when the story of his mother got no reaction.

“Do you mean before you were one of them?” N-29 asked, “Or maybe you were always one of them. Nice men do not work here. I know that much.”

Alex swallowed and tried to think of a good excuse. It was hard when he didn’t disagree with him. Nice men didn’t work here. They were all the worst breed of man Alex had ever met. But, when Alex was faced with a choice, it seemed better to be here and do his best to dilute the negativity the best he could than to run away and pretend he never saw it.

“I’m trying to help. I got them to let you grow your hair out. You said you liked it when we were younger,” Alex tried. N-29 slowly sat down on his cot. Alex wasn’t foolish enough to see it as a sign of comfort.

“Do you think I want hair over my mother?” he asked, “Over family?”

“Do you have other family members here?” Alex asked, genuinely curious. 

He only knew which one was his mother because even now she was hellish to experiment on. Knowing her son was so close kept her fire burning and she fought everyone who took her out. That or when she’d sing with her head pressed against the wall that was closest to his cell before bed, hoping he’d hear it. Alex had fallen asleep to it more than once when he was little.

“They are all family like all the people who hurt them are yours,” N-29 said. Alex furrowed his eyebrows.

“They aren’t all my family,” Alex said.

“They are,” he corrected him, “You follow them, they are your family.”

“I-I don’t follow--”

“This is all I have known and I know it is wrong, why don’t you?” N-29 all but demanded.

Alex didn’t answer right away, breathing slow and staring at him. For a man who lived in a prison cell his entire life, he was awfully incredible at making eye contact. It was both impossible to keep and impossible to look away.

“Isn’t it better that I’m here and trying to help than ignoring it’s happening?” Alex asked.

“Who are you helping? Not us,” he said. Alex looked around and peeked out of the cell to make sure they were still alone before he gave N-29 his full attention.

“How should I help? I can’t make them let you go, I don’t have that power,” he said. N-29 huffed a laugh.

“Then you ask them to use things they already have instead of hurting us. You ask to allow our abilities to not be suppressed. You ask to let us out for more than just pain,” N-29 listed. They weren’t bad ideas, but Alex would really have to think about how to make them happen. Maybe he could talk to Kyle.

“You know why they do that, right? I’m not saying it’s right, but you understand the point, don’t you? They don’t want you congregating because they know you could hurt them,” Alex explained. N-29 huffed a laugh, shaking his head as he stood up.

Alex watched as he took off his shirt and held his arms out, baring his body as if that was proof of what he wasn’t capable of doing. He was thin, possibly malnourished, and was covered in scars from all the poking and prodding they’d done since he was little. N-29 was tattooed on his shoulder, forever branding him with that title. And, maybe most importantly, he had a port implanted into his chest that was where they injected him with suppressants daily. 

“We are weak. Do you see me? What could I do?” N-29 demanded. Alex swallowed harshly again, looking away. “If you think you are my friend, help us. Please.”

“I’ll try,” Alex said. It was all he could say, really. He couldn’t defend himself anymore. No one had ever really laid it out that way. He could lie to himself that he was fixing it from the inside, but he wasn’t really. And that just meant he was just as much of a bad man as they were.

N-29 sighed and put his shirt back on.

“Try, try, try. The last man said he would try and did nothing, just left,” N-29 said. That caught Alex’s attention and he looked back towards him.

“What man?”

“The early one,” he said.

“No, what do you mean?” Alex prodded. N-29 looked frustrated that he didn’t just know.

“The one like your father.”

Alex thought about it, raking his mind through who the hell could’ve possibly offered to help them and just disappeared that also was like his father. And then it clicked.

“Tripp?” he asked. N-29 just stared and Alex took it as a yes. “He tried to help? But he went missing. That doesn’t--Oh.”

“Oh?” N-29 repeated. Alex felt cold and even more nervous than he had when he first walked in here. He again peeked his head out, scared he was going to get caught. He needed to erase any evidence that this was happening.

“He went missing,” Alex said, softer this time, “And if you’re right and he tried to help, then... Then something not good happened. I’ll have to look more into it to make sure, but...”

“I see,” N-29 said, voice soft for the first time. Alex looked back at him and took a very hesitant step closer.

“I’m going to help,” Alex said firmly. N-29 furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“Then you will go missing.”

“Sounds like even more reason to help,” Alex said, “If they’re willing to do something like that, then there’s something even worse than I thought going on. So I’m going to figure it out.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re right. No good man just works here and sits by. I would really like to be a good man,” Alex said. He didn’t really look like he believed him. “You have no reason to trust me, I don’t expect you to. But I’m just letting you know. Because I do consider you my friend.”

“Friend,” he echoed. Alex tried to manage a smile despite the fact that his mind was reeling. When he came here tonight, he hadn’t expected to accidentally learn about a possible cover up.

“And, um, it’s not much, but maybe I can ask your mother what your name is?” Alex offered. N-29 swallowed, his jaw clenched as he nodded. “Okay, I have to go now. Before we get caught.”

“Goodbye,” he said. Alex nodded and slowly exited the cell. Closing it back hurt him more than he would admit.

As Alex walked back to the control system and started to quickly wipe the evidence off the drive, his mind stuck on what could’ve happened to Tripp. What did he do to get caught? Did he get caught or did he run? Was he threatened? Did his grandpa have something to do with it? His father?

Alex quickly grabbed his phone and typed out a message to Kyle. He was in medical school, but he was training to come and work at Caulfield. Not out of choice, but because he was told to. So, he texted him in the code they’d created the minute they figured out their dads were probably reading every text they sent.

Alex: treehouse. 9805.

Kyle: next week

By that time tomorrow, he’d be with Kyle at a creek in the woods they found when they were 13. And they were going to start investigating.

And Alex was finally going to actually do something to help.

[unstoppableforcce]

higher prices

—CHAPTER 3: suffer

pairing: bounty hunter! Poe Dameron x reader

previous part | next part | masterlist

a/n: oh so much pain and hurt, in my plan we’ve got two parts left? we’ll see how it actually shakes out but boy oh boy does this part hurt me :(( enjoy lol

Memories came with colors, and all of his memories with you were warm shades of orange and yellow. Yet, sat next to him in the cold cell of Qi-Te’s basement, the only color radiating from your frigid form was an indignant and stiff blue. Cold like this planet, this planet he hated more and more every second he was there.

Your attitude was just as cold as the snow now, refusing to turn to him much less speak to him since the two of you were thrown in together and he honestly couldn’t blame you for that.

He was the one who recommended the cave. He still stood by the fact that the two of you had no chance to outrun the kill squad but he was the one who opened his kriffing mouth in an attempt to save the two of you.

He thought he had it under control if he threw himself into the ring as the negotiator. But Qi-Te heard ten million credits and called the first order on his own, cutting Poe out of the deal entirely.

But who was he kidding? Had he heard ten million credits on any other bounty, he would’ve done the same, just like you had said, he was just like them.

It was sentiment that landed him here with you. It was sentiment that was going to get him killed now when the first order showed up.

And you wouldn’t even look at him.

A stiff and freezing blue.

He picked at the loose thread hanging from the white stripe on his gloves, stealing occasional glances back to you hoping to catch your eye but coming up with nothing. Fidgeting even more now, he adjusted his hands within the gloves, feeling the cool pull of leather over his calloused hands, rough and rugged.

All he could think about was the fabric of your gown beneath his hands as he pinned you into the corner of your gilded palace walls, riding it up your thighs and letting his pure, soft grip maneuver up your exquisite skin... The two of you had been so young. He couldn’t even remember the last time he was that happy.

The last time he saw a color as bright as the energy your radiated with your smile when your lips pulled from his.

“I’m sorry.” He admitted, keeping his gaze securely angled towards his lap and the thread of the striped gloves he kept pulling at. He didn’t look up to know his words had caught your attention, managed to turn you back to him. He didn’t need to look up, he could feel it.

“For what? Getting me shot, or recaptured, or probably publicly executed by the first order? Which part are you sorry for, exactly Dameron? Or are you just sorry that you ended up in here with me too?”

He shook his head, “you still think the worst of me...”

“You haven’t given me much else to go off of—“

“You’re the one who got yourself captured here in the first place, everything I’ve done since I’ve got here was to try and save your life—“

Your scoff interrupted him, “and yet you won’t tell me why—“

He ripped the thread from the glove, cutting you off instantly. But he didn’t say anything else, he just jumped to his feet and began pacing back and forth. You’d be lying if you said it didn’t skyrocket your nerves, each clank of his boots on the freezing concrete echoing in the small cell.

“You don’t collect bounties for the first order, but you sold me out to Qi-Te—“ you frantically continued to fight, not letting your nerves show.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, but you don’t get to remain all high and mighty like you’re a good guy just because you wouldn’t willingly do what you’ve already done.” You snapped, adjusting on the wall and gritting your teeth as the pain came back.

“I told you I’m not a good guy—“

“Then why did you try to save me?” It was the question you kept coming back to, and he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Do you think you mean nothing to me?”

That rebuttal stopped your anger in its tracks, effectively silencing you where you sat as your stare stayed splayed over his face, unwavering now. And he didn’t know what he was running on but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I get it. Alright. I get why you don’t like me and I’m making no claim that I deserve your forgiveness, but can you honestly sit there and tell me that you believe I don’t still care about you?” He took a step closer to you, staring down your way as you sat, still shocked. “I don’t care about the resistance, I don’t care about Qi-Te or the goddamn war anymore, but you?”

You couldn’t find anything close to words as the same warm memories flooded your mind so he kept going.

“You want to know why I tried to save you, why I won’t turn you over to the First Order? Because you aren’t a bounty, I care about you.”

The two of you were as good as dead anyways right? What did it matter anymore?

You were the first person he ever loved, might have been the only he ever loved... that didn’t go away no matter the two different paths the two of you took after everything that happened. None of what happened was your fault, he may have been mad at everyone and everything, but not you. Never you, no matter how hard he tried to lump you into the resistance he had such a distaste for.

Not even when you did something stupid enough to land you in this situation in the first place, he just didn’t think he was capable of it.

Stars, did you really have nothing to say?

Was that terrified look on your face really warranted? Had you not maintained the same feelings all this time, did you really still hate him after he left—

“That was a good speech Dameron.”

As if his luck hadn’t been bad enough, hearing Q-Te’s disgusting drawl was the last thing he needed.

He turned around slowly, careful to keep himself between the door and you, “listen—“

“I didn’t know you even had a heart, it’s touching, honestly.”

He gave a quick swallow and tried to return his normal stone-cold self, but it was no use, he could see the storm of ideas brewing in his head. “You don’t understand—“

“No...” Qi-Te peered around to where you sat and his smirk grew on his lips. “But I’d like to.”

His whistle was quick, but the punch from the goons at his side seemed to come even faster, before he knew it, his head was hitting the cold concrete floor.

The next time he woke up was to a freezing pail of water being thrown at him. He flinched, trying to get away from it as the cold flooded through him, but quickly found himself restrained, his hands above his head and his toes barely touching the ground, feet bound to the floor by a chain. He tried to pull his eyes open, but was hit by the bright light of the cantina and clenched them back shut.

If only it was that simple though...

Qi-Te gripped his face with his hand full of rings and forced his eyes back open. “Oh you won’t want to miss this, pretty boy Dameron.”

He did want to miss it though, as soon as he peeled them open, he found you tied up opposite him, hung from the ceiling just like him, and your shirt torn open... he flinched away again but he couldn’t get very far, with the disgusting hand still gripping at his chin and holding his stare towards where you hung.

“Just when we thought nothing could break the perfect hunter—“

“Stop—“

“All it took was a pretty princess—“

“Don’t—“

The grip tightened, turning his face down towards Qi-Te and his disgusting snarl. “This is what happens to those who betray me.”

Then another punch came, but he managed to maintain his consciousness this time around, almost wishing he hadn’t. Because all he wanted was for this to be a dream. He wanted it not to be you hanging, vulnerable and open to Qi-Te and his filthy hands as he slowly approached you.

“Stop—“

“How did a hunter like you find yourself a woman like this, huh?” He seethed, gently tracing his hands over the length of your arm, stopping at your injured shoulder and squeezing at the burned skin to wake you up with a scream falling from your lips. “I did my research on her after you told us the absolute gift we stumbled into and she is way out of your league—“

“Poe...” the sound fell so exhaustedly from your lips as your eyes fluttered open on the tail end of your scream and his heart shattered.

“Do whatever you want to me, Qi, but don’t—“

Qi-Te put his thumb into your wound and you screamed again. The sound was worse than he could have ever imagined and he had no way not to hear it.

“Answer my questions and I’ll stop, it’s that easy, Dameron.”

He tried to catch your eye but your stare remained everywhere but him, rapidly lifting to the ceiling as the pain rushed over you. He could tell you wanted to bite your tongue, to keep yourself quiet, to deny the monster the satisfaction of hearing your screams but you couldn’t and that just made it so much worse.

So when Qi-Te reached for your wound again, Poe broke.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know... just, stop.”

“See?” The man smirked, “was that so hard?”

He walked back to where Poe hung lifelessly, gripping his chin and turning his head back towards him, forcefully ripping his stare from you. There was no fight left in his tense muscles anymore, he just let Qi-Te turn him as if it were nothing.

“The princess of Kelva, where’d you meet her? Hmm?” He must have been getting off on this, knowing his history, torture like this was out of his norm. He preferred to take what he thought was his, but this was worse than even that. This was sadistic, plainly sadistic.

Dameron had heard the rumors of the mangled bodies of those who tried to double cross him, but this kind of torture was different. This was mental, he was playing with him, it was so much worse...

“In some back alley skughole? You steal her innocence next to a dumpster or—“

“Yes.”

Qi-Te landed a thud-inducing punch to his gut and it echoed across the room. “Don’t lie to me, Dameron, or I’ll hurt her again.”

“We met in Corellia, pure chance, didn’t know who she was—“ another punch as his snarled face saw straight through Poe’s rough attempt at a lie.

He knew the truth could only make things worse, he knew enough to know you mattered to him but when he found out—

“I’ll tell you where we met.” Your voice finally surged back to life, catching Qi before he could land another hit on Poe’s quickly reddening and bruising torso. “Come here and I’ll tell you everything.”

The smirk that grew on his filthy face sent a shiver down Poe’s spine, it was sickening.

“See? The princess knows how to negotiate.” He quickly stalked back your way and paced his hand around your throat this time, given a squeeze hard enough to coax a whimper from your lips but not so hard that you couldn’t talk back. “Tell me, baby.”

“We met in...” your voice trailed off as you appeared to fall unconscious agains and Qi was quick to pull his hand back and slap you to get you back awake but your head merely lolled to the side, so he tried again. But this time, you were faster, slamming your forehead against his nose and sending him stumbling back, hitting the ground with a thud to rival each of the punches he had already thrown.

“You kriffing—“

You spat again before he had the chance to even properly insult you. “Do your worst...”

“No...”Poe sighed out, heavy with the knowledge of just what his worst could entail.

Refusing to back down, you didn’t even flinch as he got back to his feet and charged you. Poe did though, he didn’t have your strength.

“We were kids, we met on Kelva.”

Qi hesitated at that, “kids?”

“Our parents were friends...” Poe continued, avoiding the stare you threw his way, sure that it was full of heat that he could no longer withstand. “We vacationed on Kelva.”

The memories of warm were flooding with his feelings of cold but he would do anything to save you.

“And let me guess? You were just a charming kid—“

“No...” he chuckled out, “she hated me for a long time.”

Those memories were red hot, charged with the seething yet playful hate that only two kids could possess for one another.

“How’d you get her to fall in love with you?”

He glanced back up to meet your stare this time, expecting heat and finding nothing but your soft eyes glancing back at him. “I came back, after I... when I was older, we had a lot in common...”

Yellow, that love was a pure yellow memory skirting his thoughts.

“And you still love her?”

“What do you want from me? Qi, you’re getting your bounty, what do you need me to spill my heart for?” He snapped, ripping his stare back from you to him.

But the man only chuckled, pulling a blade from his belt. “There’s no bounty on you... no, I’d rather be paid with the look in your eyes as I gut her right in front of you.”

“No—“

“Her bounty is dead or alive.” He snickered, “just know that you brought this on her yourself... she could have had quite the life as a slave for me, but this,” he turned to drag the knife down the bare expanse of your stomach, “this is much more fun for me and I get paid handsomely.”

“Don’t—“

“Go on,” he dug in just enough to leave a light trail of blood on his next pass over your skin, “tell her you love her, Dameron.”

He kept his mouth shut, hoping his refusal bought himself more time. More time to do something, he didn’t know what but he had to do something...

“You won’t get another chance, Dameron, come on, tell her.”

He glanced to you, hoping to find some clue on your face, something you had prepared to get the two of you out of there but there was nothing but the foreign look of fear coating your brow. He had to do something. What the hell could he—

“Come on, look at her, Dameron,” he rubbed his filthy hand over your stomach once more, “she’s shaking with anticipation, just look at her.”

That was the problem, he was looking at you, and that only made it hurt so much more—

Your legs. Your legs weren’t tied like his were. You were dangling but you weren’t tied down. They must have figured with your injury that they were unnecessary, or they underestimated you. Poe knew better than that.

He locked his eyes back with yours and gave a desperately pleading stare, begging for your full attention as he spoke. “I remember the day I fell in love with you... we were out by the shore, do you remember that?”

Your brow furrowed, clearly your brain gears turning a parsec a minute but you weren’t there yet and the knife was only getting closer.

“With your guards all around, we barely had any time to ourselves.” He tried again, nodding his head slowly to try and reinforce each and every word. It still wasn’t clicking for you. “You always had the best moves...”

There it was. Like a light turning in above your head, it finally clicked for you.

That day was far from the day he fell in love with you, but it was the only day he could think of that made his point.

The two of you couldn’t have been more than 15 when he stumbled upon you training with your guards. He rambled on for days about your most impressive move, meant to be performed in case of emergency even in your ceremonial gowns... a quick attack to squeeze the life out of an attacker with your legs around their neck.

He even let you try it on him once, but that ended very differently.

“Tell me about her best move, Dameron, I want all the details.” Qi-Te practically licked his lips at the suggestion, still tracing light circles on your skin with the knife.

But Poe only gave you one last nod as he watched your grip on the chain overhead tighten.

“It went a bit like this.” You spoke weakly, getting his attention back for one second before you used all the strength you had left in your one good arm to lift yourself enough to wrap your legs around his neck and catch him.

He fought, slicing up your leg as he struggled but you maintained your grip until he took a final heaving breath and collapsed in your grasp.

A princess who couldn’t defend themself wasn’t much of a leader, you had told him way back when, as kids running through the water of the perfect white sand shoreline, fighting with splashes of water. It was around then when he thought he fell in love with you. Everything he did since then just ruined it.

He was sixteen, he was a dumb kid who just had everything he ever believed about who he was or who his parents were was shattered when he overheard the conversation between you and Leia that fateful evening. He was angry and he ran, leaving you and everything he ever knew behind trying to find a life where he could forget it all...

He loved you and he ran.

This was the life he picked for himself and he couldn’t even save you from it.

“Now what?” You gasped, out of breath and with a heaving chest.

“I’m so sorry—“ he sighed out, shaking his head as he became overwhelmed with emotions he had shut himself off from for so long.

You shook your head too though, “Forget that, what now?”

Forget that? How was he supposed to forget that? Was this really all just a throwaway for you?

“Poe, we need to leave—“

“For everything—“

“The first order will be here any minute for me, Poe, come on.” You began jostling in your overhead restraints trying to find away to free yourself, not caring about him still stuck in the past just a few feet from you.

Everything he became disgusted you, he knew that. Why would any sort of life saving confession change anything.

He remembered when he first saw you and the resistance after he left, nearly ten years later. You had grown into the most aggressive resistance spy and fighter there was, doing it all while never losing that royal beauty you had been born with. You lost your planet to the First Order and held your head high, still ready to fight and when he heard the truth about his parents he ran away scared and became what he was now.

You didn’t care about him anymore.

He tried so hard to distance himself from you, from everyone, it worked... he had to accept that now.

He fought against his restraints now, not seeing any room for movement and turning back to you, “I don’t know but there’s no way we’ve got much time.”

You nodded, glancing down to kick at Qi-Te’s motionless body and trying to find the blade with the toes of your boots, but even that was too far out of your reach. “Dammit.” You cursed as you stretched and contorted your body in painful twists to try for it again but it was no use. “What the kriff am I supposed to—“

The doors were kicked open, and both of you flinched, figuring that was the fate you had been stalling coming in full force through the doors, but instead, you found a rolling droid of grey, blue and white stripes. The same stripes that adorned his hair, gloves and belt.

“BB-H8!” Both you and Poe let out in excitement as the droid rolled in beeping.

But Poe’s face fell when he listened to exactly what the beeps were saying, yours twisting into a desperate confusion. “What?”

“The First Order just landed.” He sighed, gesturing with a head nod for BB to move to help but the droid rolled to him first and he shook his head. “No, her first.”

What he said in the cell was true, even if you didn’t care.

He still cared about you, and you saw that plain as day when you met his eyes.

Now, if only that was enough to save the two of you.

tags: (let me know if I missed you or you want to be tagged)

@danicalifxrnia @cammisanders @p3nny4urth0ught5 @roserrys

[yandere-daydreams]

Okay, I know this might be sorta strange? But can I get a story with all might telling the reader that they need to pretend to be in love with the number one hero (Izuku) for the sake of the world?

I absolutely love these prompts,,, they’re always so devastating o write. Some part of me just wants to see these people suffer.

TW: Emotional Abuse, Mentions of Past Abuse And De-Humanization.

~

“I’m sorry, do you mind repeating that?”

It felt strange to be talking to All Might, or Toshinori, as he insisted you call him. Izuku was the only Pro-Hero you’d ever met, your interactions with his similarly employed friends limited to greetings and small talk, and no one he’d introduced you to seemed particularly heroic. Sitting in Izuku’s living room, your hands encased in metal cuffs and resting in your lap, your captor having given you two a minute alone at his mentor’s request… it felt wrong for All Might to be here, a dissociation. He should be trying to save you, not sipping coffee and telling a fucking madman he’s proud. He should be using the last reserves of his quirk, he should be breaking windows, he should be doing something to help the innocent, imprisoned person in front of him.

But, he wasn’t.

And you wished you could be surprised by his nonchalance.

He sighed heavily, shaking his head before he spoke. You weren’t sure how much time had passed, the months blurring together once you realized you’d lost track, but All Might looked more tired than he had in newscasts. Older, wearier. You couldn’t say you wondered why. “He’s the Number One Hero, he’s Deku,” All Might explained, as if you hadn’t heard it a thousand times. You frowned, crossing your legs, shifting just enough to let him know you were uncomfortable. The man was apathetic, but he wasn’t cruel, moving on quickly. “He has fans, people look up to him. There are children who want to be just like him. (Y/n), I understand you’re unhappy-”

You cut him off, lifting your restrained hands and rattling the chains, the clanking nearly deafening as it bounced off the sound-proofed walls. He tried to avert his eyes, but you didn’t stop until he met your stare, politely lowering your bonds as his grimace deepened. 

“I understand you're unhappy,” He continued, pausing and waiting for your input. When you stayed quiet, a raised eyebrow replacing all the yelling you desperately wanted to do, he continued, albeit hesitantly. “No one should be in the situation you’ve been forced into. You’re here against your will, and I regret that I couldn’t do anything to stop Midoriya, but what’s done is done. There’s nothing any of us can do to change what’s already happened.”

“I don’t know, you could call the police.” You didn’t want to be having this conversation, not really. The rage inside you had been compacted and smothered, burning coals turning to a pretty, glittering diamond by the time Izuku was done. You used to try to figure out when it happened, when you just accepted whatever affection he had to give you rather than fighting and clawing until he gave you space, but the effort was pointless. Not that the pure resent would ever fade, it was as much of a fact to you as it was a lie to Izuku. “You could slip me a key, or leave a window unlocked, or tell anyone about the person being stored in the ‘Number One Hero’s’ basement. Fuck, he’d probably let me go if you just asked him to. Do you want to see the costumes he makes me wear? Oh, and then I can tell you all about how he threatens to break my legs if I don’t want to put his di-”

You let yourself fall silent as he held up a hand again, sighing and shaking his head. This time, though, he was the one to show his discomfort, leaning forward as he spoke. “Please, I’m aware of… Midoriya’s habits. But, the public doesn’t know that. Imagine what it would be like if he was arrested, there’d be chaos! It’d take us weeks to recover from the shock alone, and civilians would never trust Heroes again! Midoriya’s made leaps in Villain-Retainment, he’s a symbol. Compared to a civilian like yourself, he’s important-”

“And I’m not,” You mumbled, dropping your eyes to the floor. You’d always known how much stronger Izuku was than you, how useful his quirk was, how wonderful his fans and his mentor and everyone thinks he is. “It’s because I’m quirkless, right? It’s because I’m useless. I guess that’s what makes this alright, isn’t it, how perfect Izuku is?” You forced yourself to laugh, if only for a chance to breathe. “He doesn’t love me, did you know that? He says I’m his soulmate, but he doesn’t seem to care very much when it’s time to snap my wrist like a fucking twig. It’s stressful for me, he’s always here, and I can’t leave. What am I supposed to do, deal with it?”

“(Y/n), please.” Your voice had begun to break, but All Might was just as consistent as he’d ever been. So calm and patient and nice, regardless of what you said. His gaze was boring into you, pleading with you, the action as rehearsed as the rest of his speech. “We need you to be with him, I need you to. You don’t have to love him, you don’t even have to pretend to. Just… let him be in love with you. You’d save thousands, you’d be a hero.”

At that, you gave up trying to hold yourself back. Hot, angry tears were rolling down your cheeks faster than you could hold them back, your attempts to stifle your breakdown only resulting in muffed, cracked cries. You hated this place, you hated Izuku, you hated All Might, or you were starting to, at least. You couldn’t hide your face, not without injuring yourself in the process, but your loving, loving kidnapper was at your side in a moment, rushing out of the kitchen like your distress was the loudest siren he’d ever heard.

Izuku ran his hands through your hair, trying to comfort you before he gave up, simply pulling you into his chest silently. An arm looped around your waist, and quickly enough, you were on his thighs, the world around you blocked out by soft fabric and warm skin. “My angel is so emotional, I’m sorry,” He said, not bothering to ask why you were crying. Exposure had desensitized him, apparently. “I really can’t thank you enough for bringing them back, I haven’t had a chance to replace our locks, and they get confused whenever I’m not home! It’s lucky that you were passing by, I don’t know what I would’ve done if (Y/n) got hurt.”

“It’s my pleasure, Young Midoriya. You two are a lovely couple.” The compliment was flat, customary, but Izuku still beamed, holding you a little tighter at the praise. You were tempted to refuse All Might’s offer, or to tell Izuku what you’d talked about, how even his idol knew he was a monster. You wanted to see Izuku bleed, you wanted everyone who supported him to die. 

You wanted them to suffer, to go through the torture you had. But…

But, you didn’t.

One of you had to be the Hero, after all.

[thorbunni]

heartbeat

pairing: natasha romanoff x reader, natasha romanoff x steve rogers (platonic)

warnings: cursing, mentions of torture, angst

summary: you’re kidnapped in order to torture and lure the black widow, but it becomes a trip down memory lane for the both of you.

a/n: sorry about my short hiatus, life has been a stressful place for us all as of late. i started this a while back, but i randomly got the inspiration to finish this early this morning. this is set in the time frame right before the winter soldier, when both steve and nat were working for S.H.I.E.L.D. enjoy!

The door to Natasha’s room was thrown off it’s hinges, revealing a disheveled Steve Rogers standing in the hallway. His eyes were bloodshot with defined bags underneath them, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Sweats hung low on his hips and his shirt was loosely splayed across the muscles of his upper body. 

“Nat, come on. You’ve been at this for days. We’ll find her, but you need to sleep first. Tired eyes and terrible judgement will do you no good once we find her location,” Steve said as he flipped on the light switch. The red-haired woman winced at the sudden influx of light into her corneas. 

Steve took this opportunity to look at her surroundings while she desperately attempted to find something to cover her eyes. The walls of her room were covered in pictures of you, all connected by pieces of red yarn and sticky notes. Every mob boss, every criminal, every high-level enemy the Avengers have ever fought (including Tony Stark) had their portrait and information stapled onto the wall above her bed. The furniture had been shifted and there was a shattered lamp in the corner of the room. Steve gawked at the mess that was unusual of Nat to create. However, he couldn’t be surprised, as you made her do things that Steve would never have thought she would do. 

“I can’t, Steve,” she spoke softly, voice cracking as she looked up at the super soldier with teary eyes. “You know I can’t do that.”

“But you can,” Steve walked over to sit next to her on her unmade bed, carful to avoid the dirty clothes and hidden pieces of glass. “Look, you haven’t been getting anywhere. Maybe a pair of fresh eyes will help you discover something useful that would lead us straight to her.”

Natasha said nothing in reply. Her endeavor for something to cover her eyes led her to smother her head in a bed sheet, and her body gave into her exhaustion. Steve placed her entire body into her bed, tucking her in for the night. He rose from the bed, turning off the light and picking up the broken door, resting it on the doorframe. 

“Miss Romanoff, Director Fury wished for me to inform you and Captain Rogers that we now have a location on Miss Y/L/N,” F.R.I.D.A.Y’s voiced blared through the overhead speakers. The morning drowsiness was wiped from her system as soon as she heard those words. She rushed from her place in bed to get her suit, almost throwing onto her body while she awkwardly hopped down the hallway. 

The Quinjet ride was longer than usual, even though they were flying halfway across the world. Somewhere in Southern Europe, Nat thought she remembered hearing Fury say. She wasn’t listening during the briefing, her mind consumed with the thought of getting you back. You hadn’t been gone for very long, just under two weeks, in fact. But Natasha was a mess without you. You were the only stability in her life. You were her light. You were the only positive thing her life had ever seen. So when you went missing, her mind crumbled. Natasha was so obsessed with getting you back, that she no longer took care of herself. As far as she was concerned, you were probably being beaten and tortured to get to her, so she shouldn’t waste any time on things that took time away from finding you. 

Finally, the plane touched down on the snowy ground. The door unfolded, the frigid air flooding the Natasha’s senses. Steve placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Nat, you okay?” he asked of her. She nodded timidly, just barely hearing his question.

The cold didn’t affect the two agents, as Tony had a heater sewn into all of their suits to prevent them from dying. Their trek through the snow lasted for what seemed even longer. Every thought that dragged through Natasha’s head revolved around you. Except for one. She thought of what she was going to do to the person that took you. Natasha would use every ounce of her training to ensure that whoever had you was going to die a slow, agonizing death. She would make them suffer until death seems like the best possible option. Lost in her head once again, she didn’t realize that she had arrived at the base. Natasha would’ve ran straight into a wall had Steve not taken her by the shoulders and forcefully moved her in front of the gateway. It was a normal-looking, abandoned military base, mainly comprised of bricks and steel beams. With a nod of agreement, the two pulled out their weapons and stealthily marched up the steps and into the base, determined to bring you back home. 

Not long after forcing the heavy door ajar, Natasha found the base completely empty. Every corridor, room, hallway, and staircase was barren and left devoid of evidence that anyone had been there recently. A particular room caught their attention more than the others: the library. Still remaining on high alert, she began to flip through the pages of the open notebooks that sat on the wooden desk in the center of the room. The walls were lined with bookshelves, most tall enough to require a ladder to reach the top levels. 

“Hey, Nat,” Steve whispered from the elaborate doorway, “Come here. I think I found something.”

Natasha placed her hands on her gun once again, raising it to eye level as she moved towards Steve. The super soldier pointed down a dark, narrow corridor with a gesture of his head.

“Can you hear that, Nat?” Steve said, lowly. She closed her eyes, trying to listen out for footsteps or any other sign of the enemy approaching. For a split second, the assassin could’ve sworn that she’d heard classical music playing deep down the hallway. The kind of classical music that the Red Room would slowly train the girls to hate as their bodies crumbled to the floor in exhaustion. 

The farther Nat and Steve travelled down the hallway, the more prominent the music became. In just a few seconds, the faint music filled Natasha’s ears. A loose brick in the wall caught her eye. Steve held his shield out in front of her as she felt around the wall, finally pushing the brick into the wall. The sound of Nat’s quick-paced heartbeats echoed off of the walls, possibly the only sign that gave away their position. She released her hand outstretched hand from the wall. At this point, the Black Widow was desperate for any trace of you or your presence. 

The wall slid to the side, making the entire room tremble around them. Steep stairs heading down into a basement now laid in front of the two agents in place of the large wall. She descended down the staircase without a second thought, foregoing all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s protocols and all of her training. When it came to you, fuck protocols. The red-haired woman no longer held her gun and completely ignored Steve’s silent warning signals. She didn’t care. All she had to do was get to you and get you home safe. Only then would she be okay. 

As soon as the tip of her boot touched the base of the last stair, bright lights cut on. In the exact center of the room was a table and a chair setup in a classic forceful interrogation manner. Little blood splatters covered the entire concrete floor. A two-way mirror had been installed into the wall to the left of where they had entered the room, but they had no time to peer into the tinted glass. 

“Nice of you to join me, Miss Romanoff and Mister Rogers,” a stout man revealed himself from behind another door in the room. He couldn’t have been much over five feet, complete with a thin bone structure and sparse, scraggly hair. A set of oval-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his wrinkled nose and a white lab coat seemed to smother his skinny frame. He struggled to stand upright, and instead leaned on his right leg more often than the left. Overall, a classic bad-guy-mad-scientist look. 

“Where is Y/N?” Steve’s deep voice boomed in response to the feeble man. Natasha’s throat went dry. She had allowed a man like this to take Y/N. Her Y/N. She was supposed to be the greatest and most efficient killer in the world, but she couldn’t even protect you. Tears began to prick her eyes at the thought, but Natasha knew she could not let them fall. Not in front of a man that was going to be dead as soon as she found you. 

“And I suppose you would also like the answer to that question?” the old man inquired sarcastically. He continued his statement after being met with a glare in response to his question, “I had her brought her so I could have a little chit-chat with at least some of the Avengers.”

“What would you like to speak about?” Natasha spat, “Because I can guarantee you that you have exactly 15 seconds to live after you tell me where you put my girlfriend.”

“Is that a threat, Miss Romanoff?” the man smiled knowingly, eyebrow cocked in a manner that could only be executed by the most evil of evil. 

“A promise,” she replied, crossing her arms while keeping a gun in her hand. 

“Anyways,” he clears his throat, but that only leads him into a major coughing fit that leaves him wheezing, “I suspect that you also want to know why I took her.”

Natasha took a handful of his lab coat and brought his entire body extremely close to her face, ensuring he could hear her say, “Tell us the location of the damn girl before you’re struggling to breath for a different reason.”

Psychotic laughter fell from the lips of the estranged scientist, a chuckle only a madman could even think of doing. Natasha then looked into his eyes for the first time, only seeing the insanity within his green orbs. A permanent grin was painted across his face as he gestured towards the two way mirror. 

“Why, Miss Romanoff, she’s just in that other room,” he said maniacally. As if it was connected to it’s words, the mirror cleared, revealing a simple ballet studio. On cue, the music became much more climactic and dramatic as he continued his words, “She seems to love dancing. She even panics when I turn certain compositions on. It’s adorable.”

A leotard-clad woman comes spinning into view, body bent and elongated in ways only a Red Room trainee could achieve. Natasha panicked, feeling her catsuit get incredibly tight when she saw your strained face. She finally has sight of you, but only in pain. Weeks and weeks of no sleep brought her here in the same room as you captor, but not you.

Natasha dropped the scientist and jolted forward, fists pounding on the tinted glass, “Let her out, you bastard! Let her out!”

“If you can get her out, you can have her. But I believe I should be taking my leave,” he confessed before he began foaming at the mouth. His eyes glossed over before his body hit the ground with a quiet thud. Steve rushed over to feel for some kind of pulse, but the dead guy was the last thing on Natasha’s mind. 

In half an hour, Natasha had tried everything. She ignored the dastardly memories of her training just so she could get to you. You continued to dance, terrified of the guns that were aimed directly at your heart. Nat continued to attempt to pry at the edges of the mirror, hoping that it would amount to something. 

“No bombs, triggers, anything on the premises,” Steve announced as he waltzed back into the room and laid his shield on the table, “Everything dangerous is in that studio.”

“Well, big guy, I’m going to need you to punch this glass really hard because that’s my girlfriend in there and I can’t get to her.”

Steve nodded and lined himself with the glass. His fist connected with the glass: nothing. The captain pulled his fist back once again, with the same end result. On the third try, his fist connected with the glass and it shattered on impact. Natasha jumped through it and dragged you back into the room. Your exhausted body slumped into her arms, little whines coming from your mouth as Natasha guided you to the floor. She knew you’d never cry in front of anyone, but she didn’t need tears to know that you were struggling. It broke her heart to see you so broken. The assassin wrapped her toned arms around your body, and smiled as she teared up herself. 

“Shh, shh,” she whispered into your hair, “You’re okay now.”

What she didn’t notice was the foam dripping from your mouth onto her suit. 

[silenthillmutual]

Danganronpa 1 & 2 characters as High School “recommended reading” books I actually read

Makoto Naegi

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee when i read it: 5th grade for fun, 10th grade for English class did i like it? well enough yeah content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism, ableism, and sexism about: Recounts a summer in which Scout and her brother, Jem, watch their lawyer father defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in the south while balancing raising them alone. Other stuff happens, but that’s the most important plot thread.

Sayaka Maizono

Medea by Euripides when i read it: i don’t remember, maybe 9th for drama, 12th for English? did i like it? yep! content warnings: child murder, infidelity, some pretty brutal other character deaths, sexism about: Medea, who has sacrificed everything to be with her husband - even committed treason - has been left by the man so he can move on to woo and wed a princess. And she loses her shit.

Leon Kuwata

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn by Mark Twain when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism (use of the n-word), domestic abuse, classism iirc? about: After his abusive dad comes back and demands money under the threat of death, Huck Finn runs away with a fugitive slave down the Mississippi River. Being Mark Twain, it’s a comedy, although Huck’s father is genuinely kind of frightening and his friendship with Jim is kind of heartwarming.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade & freshman year of college for class did i like it? I’ve got mixed feelings; i love the book, hate most peoples’ interpretations of it. content warnings: character death, incest (depending on the version of the novel you read), unethical doctors, neglectful parents about: Thinking he knows better than literally anyone else he’s ever met, Victor Frankenstein decides it’s his birthright to play god. He robs graves to build the perfect body, and then, once he’s successful, flips his shit and refuses to acknowledge any part he played in the creation, wrecking the lives of like everyone he knows.

Mondo Oowada

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton when i read it: like 6th or 7th grade, for fun did i like it? i loved it! content warnings: abuse, thematic classism, character death about: Honestly the most obvious choice to make for Mondo. Ponyboy Curits, a greaser, recounts the last few months of his life in which, after being repeatedly harassed and then nearly killed by gang of rich kids, his friend Johnny stabs one to death. In order to keep Johnny out of prison and Ponyboy out of a boys’ home, the two run away. Considering Ponyboy is also being raised by an older brother, this totally fits Mondo.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

King Lear by William Shakespeare when i read it: twice in college (discliamer: as an english major i had to taken an entire course on shakespeare, so he shows up a lot here between that and having done theatre) did i like it? no content warnings: a surprising amount of gore for a stage play, including a guy getting his eyes gouged out and someone getting beheaded iirc about: The king’s getting up in years, so he’s hoping he can drop the workload off onto his three daughters while remaining the figurehead. His youngest, Cordelia, who he loves best, refuses to kiss his ass by saying that he’ll still have power over her once she’s married, and this pisses him off so he disinherits her. Then her sisters, annoyed with their father and his favoritism, decide that with Cordelia out of the way they can now do basically whatever they want and determine to make his life hell. Since he named them Goneril and Regan, I don’t blame them.

Hifumi Yamada

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer when i read it: college, but i wanna say i read some of the stories in it for English classes in high school? did i like it? some of the stories i did yeah content warnings: varies from story to story, but i remember unsanitary, drunkenness, and infidelity about: The overarching “plot” as such is that a group of people are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and decide that to pass the time they will tell two stories each. Each story is told in-character, and whoever tells the best story has to...buy everybody dinner, or something? I don’t really recall. It’s a comedy, but it’s also unfinished because Chaucer bit off way more than he could chew.

Celes Ludenberg

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? probably, i’m a fan of Poe content warnings: drunkenness, murder about: This one got memetic on tumblr for a while, but essentially this guy decides to get revenge on an old friend of his for some kind of sleight by getting him drunk during Carnival, leading him into the basement, and burying him alive. Poe isn’t one to go soft.

Sakura Oogami

“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? no content warnings: objectification, something akin to torture about: A family finds an old man with wings lying face-down on the ground and decide to keep him like a pet. People see him and assume he is an animal, and the family decides to start charging admission like their own private sideshow, while onlookers abuse him. One of those extra depressing stories that makes you wonder why the hell you had to read it for class.

Mukuro Ikusaba

The Crucible by Arthur Miller when i read it: the first time, probably in 6th or 7th grade, and then several more times after that for a variety of other classes. it’s a theatre and English class staple.  did i like it? when taken in context, yes. but i’m also fucking sick of reading it. content warnings: infidelity, paranoia bait, period-typical racism & sexism (takes place during the Salem Witch Trials) about: The plot is a witch hunt, in which a girl who had an affair with a married man claims to have been taken over by the spirit of the devil and that all her friends and a variety of other townsfolk have too. It follows the trials as they try to determine who is and is not guilty, who will repent for their sins, and thematically is about puritanical hysteria. It’s about the Red Scare of the 50s, surveillance, the Hollywood Blacklist, propaganda, and tyrannical government. Naturally, teachers fail to provide any context for the play that actually makes it relevant or interesting. Compare to modern day callout/cancel culture. 

Kyouko Kirigiri

12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose when i read it: 10th grade (although i’d already seen the movie) did i like it? yes content warnings: thematic classism & xenophobia about: The jury of a case in which a teenager is accused of murder convene to determine their verdict. All but one man believe him to be guilty. The rest of the play covers his attempts to sway his other jurors into at least casting aside their prejudices to view the case impartially.

Byakuya Togami

The Federalist Papers when i read it: summer before 12th grade for AP Gov. yikes. did i like it? oh god no. i had to have my lawyer dad explain it to me. content warnings: legalese and it’s boring as fuck about: i mean it’s just a bunch of essays to promote ratifying the the constitution. I don’t even remember if we read all of them. that’s how bad my retention of the subject is.

Toko Fukawa

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? kind of? content warnings: bugs, emotional abuse, depression about: A man awakens one day to find he has transformed into a giant cockroach. It’s a metaphor for his depression and what a burden he feels like to his family. If you read anything about Kafka’s life, you’ll understand why he was depressed.

Aoi Asahina

Hamlet by William Shakespeare when i read it: i’ve forgotten when my first time was because i’ve had to read it so constantly. if i had to wager a guess, i’d say middle school, though i’ve read it for fun, for drama class, and for English class. did i like it? yes content warnings: character death, suicidal ideation, incest vibes (depending on your interpretation) about: Hamlet, not over the early death of his father, is enraged that his mother has married his uncle. He’s really bringing everyone else down about it, and then he starts to see his father’s ghost on top of it all. No one’s sure if he’s just mad with grief or if the ghost is for real, but he starts making life for everyone else difficult when he decides to try and expose his uncle as his father’s murderer.

Yasuhiro Hagakure

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller when i read it: 10th grade i think? did i like it? if i believed in book-burning, this would’ve been the first turned to ash in my trashcan content warnings: infidelity, mediocre white men with narcissism, suicide, not sure what else about: An aging father who thinks he was robbed of success by circumstances refuses to face facts that he is a loser by projecting his failures onto a son that now hates him and thinking real big of himself for a wash-out.

Junko Enoshima

Othello by William Shakespeare when i read it: college did i like it? it’s my favorite Shakepseare play, actually! content warnings: thematic racism/xenophobia/Islamophobia, domestic abuse, character death about: A tragedy centering around the planned downfall of Othello, Moor of Venice. He’s relatively well-respected for his heroics and generally being a pretty cool guy, but for whatever reason, Iago wants to see him suffer. And when I say “for whatever reason” - it’s because Iago never gives a consistent one, but at the end he admits the entire thing has been his orchestration and he’s had no issue exploiting peoples’ bigotry as a means to an end. One popular and pretty text-evident theory is that Iago is in love with Othello. But - causing a ruckus, bringing society to its knees, and torturing a man just for shits n giggles? Getting it all done by sheer power of charisma? That’s all Junko ever does.

Monokuma

1984 by George Orwell when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade for class did i like it? yes but i don’t recommend it. i like tedious shit. content warnings: paranoia bait, sexual themes, torture, probably other stuff i’m forgetting about: Classic dystopia lit in which the government controls the flow of information to the degree of creating its own language (”newspeak”) to explain the technology used to survey its citizens and distill history-changing propaganda. Especially relevant in an era of “fake news.” Where Big Brother Is Watching comes from. Extremely difficult to get into.

Hajime Hinata

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck  when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah content warnings: ableism, implied domestic abuse, character death, animal death, era-typical sexism (1930s) about: Very desolate and depressing novella about the futility of the American Dream to “make something of yourself”. Two farmhands, Lennie and George, arrive at a California farm seeking employment. They just want to earn enough money to open up a farm of their own - a rabbit farm - and things are all downhill from there. Well-written and one of Steinbeck’s shorter works.

Twogami

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yes! i loved it. but in the way that you love sleazy tabloid rag stories. content warnings: infidelity, car accidents, character death about: Stupidly rich people in New York in the 1920s being fake as hell. It’s about excess and decadence and the idea of having a rags-to-riches story, and it’s very homoerotic.

Teruteru Hanamura

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? one of my top faves tbh content warnings: alcoholism & drug usage, thematic classism & racism (ie that’s the point), sexual themes, violence, non-graphic suicide (like literally the last sentence), character deaths about: You know how 1984 is a very pessimistic dystopia about government surveillance? Brave New World is like “what if everything was a utopia because of government interference?” It’s easier to get into than 1984. It’s about a man from the upper echelon of society discovering the dirty secret of how society is able to able to function the way it does, an outsider into his world to shake things up.

Mahiru Koizumi

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen when i read it: i dunno, summer between 9th and 10th grade maybe? did i like it? yes! i loved it. content warnings: there are a couple of guys who are sort of gross but there’s nothing that bad in it about: An upper-middle class family - more the mother than the father - trying to marry off the eldest of their five daughters. It’s largely character-driven and most of the plot focuses on Jane’s relationship with Bingley, Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy, and the problems witch judging people based on first impressions.

Peko Pekoyama

Call of the Wild by Jack London when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? fuck no content warnings: graphic animal violence. if there’s other stuff i forgot because i fucking hated this book. about: I think it’s something like a dog getting lost in Alaska and has to learn to be a wolf in order to survive? It’s incredibly brutal and is one of those media where just reading it makes you feel cold. 

Hiyoko Saionji

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not really content warnings: man i don’t know, but it’s by Tennessee Williams so there’s probably alcoholism, daddy issues, and homophobia about: An overbearing mother embarrasses her son and disabled daughter when an old school friend comes to visit...I’m not sure if there’s more of a plot to it than that. Like most Williams works, it’s largely character-driven.

Ibuki Mioda

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino when i read it: college did i like it? this is one of those rare exceptions in books where i read it, because i remember having a visceral reaction to it, but i can not for the life of me remember a single damn thing about it other than how stupidly difficult it was to read.  content warnings: it’s metaficiton. about: You are the protagonist. I genuinely can’t explain anymore than that.

Mikan Tsumiki

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? not really, but i’d be willing to reread it content warnings: domestic abuse, rape about: Unstable Blanche DuBois goes to visit her sister, Stella, and meets her appalling husband Stanley. All Tennessee Williams plays seem to have a theme of family tragedy in them, with this being probably the most bleak example. 

Nekomaru Nidai

The Odyssey by Homer when i read it: 9th grade, then again in college for a classics class did i like it? yeah content warnings: your usual classical Greek-variety nonsense, including character death, infidelity, and partying. about: Odysseus attempts to make his way back home after the Trojan War, and has a time of it. Having pissed off Poseidon he’s gotten off-course and gotten lost another ten years, and had a whole slew of other adventures trying to make it back home and save his wife from the harassment she’s been getting since his disappearance.

Gundham Tanaka

The Tempest by William Shakespeare when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not especially content warnings: thematic colonialism & racism...not sure what else but it’s hard as fuck to read. try reading it out loud & acting along to it. about: I didn’t totally get it but there’s something about a wizard having been banished and now people are coming back to find him for some reason? the people who exiled him & his brother & daughter have crash-landed on his island and now he might get his revenge. Thanks, TVTropes! All I remember is discussing in one class about how The Tempest managed to predict the “finding” of America and how the English would treat the native peoples. It’s a “romance”, which in that day and age meant it was about magic. Influenced some science fiction works like Brave New World (the title of which comes from a line spoken by Miranda). I should probably reread it.

Nagito Komaeda

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger when i read it: 8th grade for fun did i like it? yeah content warnings: implied pedophilia. i’m sure there’s other stuff but i don’t remember it well enough. about: Perennial troublemaker Holden Caulfield is kicked out of boarding school, and takes a hell of a long time getting home from the place as he complains about his declining mental state, hypocrisy, and loss of innocence. It’s one of those books you either really love or really hate, and has been repeatedly challenged because Holden swears too much and might be bisexual.

Chiaki Nanami

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw when i read it: 12th grade, i think did i like it? yes content warnings: classism about: A linguistics professor makes a bet with a friend that he can take any lower-class citizen and teach them to speak formal English, well enough to pass them off as aristocracy to other rich people. It’s the plot upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based, although it was intended as a deconstruction of the kind of plot whose trope it now codifies.

Sonia Nevermind

“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: infidelity, character death about: A guy comes home and tells his heavily pregnant wife that he’s been having an affair, and he’s leaving her. She doesn’t take it well. I won’t spoil the rest of it, as it’s a short story, but it’s fun to keep in mind that it’s be the same guy who wrote classics such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Kazuichi Souda

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare when i read it: 8th grade for a book report and then again in....i don’t know. i’ve had to read it a lot. did i like it? sure, it’s got some pretty great insults content warnings: men being douchebags including stalker-y behavior, and a woman falls in love with a man who has a donkey’s head (it doesn’t last) about: Hermia & Lysander are planning to run away to get married because Hermia’s father doesn’t approve of Lysander, and she’s trying to dodge the affections of Demetrius - the man to whom she has been betrothed, because he’s an ass who, among other things, slept with her friend Helena and then ditched her. Which Helena is still hung up on, even though he’s a gross creep. At the same time, a group of actors are trying to get together a play for an upcoming royal wedding, and the King of the Faeries is trying to win back his wife. This all connects because a faerie decides to fuck around.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier when i read it: college, for an independent study did i like it? yeah content warnings: graphic violence, i think some homophobia? about: Kids and staff at a private school take a candy sale way too damn seriously. There’s basically a mafia at the school and some sort of weird popularity contest and hazing going on. 

Akane Owari

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? i guess so content warnings: human hunting about: A man finds himself shipwrecked on an island, and is then hunted for sport. No, really.

Monomi

East of Eden by John Steinbeck when i read it: technically i’m in the middle of it right now, but that counts, right? did i like it? so far, i guess i do, but it’s mainly i care character who comes up later. couldn’t give less of a shit about adam trask, full offense content warnings: period-typical sexism & racism (set around the turn of the 20th century and published in 1952), implied pedophilia (that gets incredibly glossed over), ableism about: A combination of heavy-handed religious allegory (Steinbeck really just can’t cool it with the Cain and Abel theme naming) and family tree history. Follows the Trask family through Adam’s childhood, tumultuous relationship with his brother, even worse relationship with his wife, and horrible parenting of his children. The end (which is what the film adaptation covers) is more centered on his son Cal Trask grappling with the idea that he might be evil because of his genetics, or something. I think that’s an argument you could make of Monomi, being related to Monokuma (or at least, how i’m sure she’d feel).

[imagineteamfreewill]

On His Side

Title: On His Side

Pairing: Reader x Sam

Word Count: 3,133

Warnings: Canonical torture

Summary: Unknown to her and Dean, Sam sacrifices himself to save the reader from a grisly death at Rowena’s hands.

A/N: This is part twelve of the The Switch series! Please enjoy, and leave feedback!

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Your name: submit What is this?

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Sam had expected that Rowena would take him as soon as he stepped outside of the bunker’s heavy front door. Instead, however, he found himself in the company of several witches he’d never met before. All of them wore black and when they stepped out of the shadows, his heart leapt into his throat.

You’re doing this to protect Y/N, he reminded himself, swallowing thickly as he took a step backwards towards the bunker door. You’ve faced worse than a couple witches and Dean will find you soon.

Unable to fight back, Sam quickly found himself both physically and mentally incapacitated by various spells. The Latin words swam in his foggy mind as he tried to figure out what they had done to him, but it was no use. His senses were shutting down because of the curse, and he could barely focus as the witches loaded him into the bed of a pickup truck, ignoring the heavy thunk of his head against the metal.

“Sleep tight, Sam Winchester,” the tallest witch crooned. The other three chuckled before one of them slammed the tailgate closed. “Amanda will be so excited to see you.”

Amanda?

His eyes fell closed sometime shortly after the truck started driving, and when he opened them, he was tied up in a chair. His mind immediately went back to when Lady Bevell had tortured him after her arrival in the States and Sam closed his eyes against the memories.

“Good morning, Samuel.”

Reluctantly, Sam lifted his head and opened his eyes. Rowena was sitting in a chair of her own across the room, eating a salad as she watched him.

“What do you want?” Sam asked. He cuffs and chains holding his arms behind the back of the chair. “Why did you tie me up? You know I can’t fight back.”

“No, but you can run rather well,” Rowena answered. She balanced her fork against the edge of her salad plate and handed it off to another woman—no doubt a witch—who carried it out of the room. “I have some questions for you.”

Sam didn’t say anything as Rowena stood from her chair and smoothed her dress, then opened a cupboard on the wall. He couldn’t see inside from where he sat, but when she moved away he noticed tall, slim bottles on the bottom shelf. She closed the door and latched it before he could see anything else.

Rowena set down the bottle she’d taken out of the cupboard and then opened up the door to the basement. “Amanda!” she called.

There was no response for a long moment, but finally, the witch who’d taken Rowena’s dishes returned. She was dressed in a thick leather apron now, and the menacing twinkle in her eye as she silently looked Sam over didn’t give him much hope. He vaguely remembered something the witches who’d brought him here had said about her, but he could tell that she was probably well-known for some kind of torture just from the memory and the way she was watching him like a cat watches its prey.

“It’s time to begin, Amanda. Start slow so I can note his progress,” Rowena instructed. She sat back down in her chair, picking up a notepad and opening it to the first page.

Sam focused on Amanda as Rowena settled herself. The witch was preparing something on a rolling cart and he swallowed thickly, his mind trying to pull him back into the memories of Lady Bevell. He didn’t fight against the flashback, instead allowing it to pull him away from alertness. The mental pain would be bad, he knew, but at least if he was focused on something else, he wouldn’t feel the physical pain that Amanda was no doubt about to inflict on him.

A voice floated through his head as he wrapped himself up in the memories, and suddenly he found himself snapped back into his present self, as if he were nothing more than a rubber band.

Rowena tsked. “That’s enough of that. I need you here so that I can know that my results are accurate.”

“Your results?” Sam spat, shifting in his seat. The cuffs cut into his wrists and he winced, causing Rowena to smile. “So you kidnapped me for some kind of what? Science experiment?”

“Ah, ah,” Rowena scolded. She pointed her pen at him. “I never kidnapped you, Sam. You gave yourself up to save Y/N.”

Sam glared at her. Her smile turned sweet before she looked back at her notebook, gesturing for Amanda to continue. Unable to move or fight back, Sam fidgeted in his hard chair as the stocky witch neared him, in her hand a sharp metal instrument he didn’t recognize. She pressed it against his temple and white-hot pain coursed through his body. Sam tensed, then found his body immediately relaxing without any conscious thought.

Fight or flight, Sam thought as his vision grew dim. He recognized the sensation—his body instinctively wanted to fight back, but his mind was shutting down. The spell had taken hold of him again.

When his sight had returned and Sam found himself able to control his body once more, he took inventory. Amanda was gone, but Rowena remained in her seat, watching him intently. He ignored her. Instead, Sam closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing, tuning himself in to the things he could feel. Blood was dripping down his face, and there was a dull pain in all of his joints, as if he’d run for miles on a hunt and then slept in a hard motel bed for a week.

“Interesting,” Rowena murmured, and Sam opened his eyes again to see that she was writing in her notebook. She looked up at him a moment later. “How do you feel?”

He didn’t answer and she let out an irritated sigh. “Samuel, I’m only doing this to help you. The more I understand about your weaknesses, the more I can help you protect Y/N.”

“Protect Y/N? From who? You?” Sam spat.

Rowena smiled to herself this time, making a note in her notebook before closing it. “A wee bit irritated, now aren’t we, dear? Maybe some tea will perk you up.”

“Go to hell.”

“You should remember what I told you,” Rowena snapped, her smile gone and her eyes glittering with malice as she stood and set the pad down on the wooden chair, stepping towards the rolling cart. “I’m doing this to help protect Y/N. I’m sure your sweet soulmate would like to stop feeling so much pain, don’t you agree?”

Sam eyed her warily, his heart pounding in his chest as he started to realize what she was implying. “What are you talking about?”

“Y/N is currently...” She trailed off and tilted her head to the side, closing her eyes for a long moment before opening them and looking back at Sam. “Writhing in pain,” she finished. “That gash you have on your side is a matching set.” Rowena gestured at him, and Sam glanced down, surprised to see blood soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. He hadn’t even felt the wound, but now its sting had wormed its way into his mind and he wouldn’t be able to ignore it any longer.

“What did you do?” Sam growled.

The witch simply shrugged and glanced down at the cart, as if she had done nothing wrong at all.

“You’re hurting her,” Sam ground out as Rowena’s words finally sunk in. “You tricked me!”

He pulled at the cuffs again, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through his shoulder when he did. He didn’t care about the pain now—all he wanted to do was keep Rowena away from Y/N so that she’d be safe. He’d given himself up for her sake, and now he’d made things even worse.

“You should think carefully about how you respond to my tests from now on, Samuel. You might end up doing sweet Y/N a tad bit of good just by listening.”

Rowena set down the sharp metal tool she’d been fiddling with, then quickly left, shutting the heavy wooden door behind her. Sam heard a metal latch slide into place a moment later. The room must have been soundproof, because he didn’t hear anything until finally, hours later, Amanda returned, looking more well-rested than any torturer should ever be.

_______________

You loved Sam’s bed. It was always toasty warm, and the feeling of him lying beside you was reassuring. He always had to touch you in some way—even while he was deep in sleep—and it never failed to make you feel safe. Even more than that, it made you feel wanted. So, when you woke up to a cold, empty bed, you immediately knew that something was wrong. He was never one to leave the bed if you weren’t awake yet.

“Sam?” you mumbled sleepily, sitting up as you pushed your hair out of your eyes. He wasn’t in the room and you quickly climbed out of bed, hurrying out into the hallway. “Sam?”

There was no reply and you cursed, heading to Dean’s room. After knocking twice, you pushed the door open and hurried to his bedside. You shook him awake, and as soon as he put his gun away and looked conscious enough to understand you, you said,

“Sam’s gone.” Your voice wavered as the reality of the situation set in and you fiddled with the flannel you’d stolen from Sam to use as pajamas. “He wasn’t in his room and I called his name…”

“Kitchen?” Dean asked, already climbing out of bed. He grabbed his robe from the chair by his nightstand, slipping it on and heading out into the hallway.

You followed behind, shaking your head. “I didn’t check. I just—”

Dean glanced over his shoulder at you and held up one hand. “It’s okay. I would’ve done the same thing.”

The two of you made your way to the kitchen, only to discover that Sam wasn’t there, either. By the time you’d searched the entirety of the bunker, you felt sick. Sam was really, truly gone, and you had a bad feeling that he’d left in order to save you. The night before, he’d been completely unwilling to talk about Rowena’s threat when you’d tried to make sure he wasn’t worried about you.

“It’s gonna be okay, kid,” Dean said, putting a hand on your shoulder. He squeezed gently and you nodded in response, tears welling up in your eyes.

“This is all my fault, isn’t it?” you asked. Your knees felt weak and you quickly sank down in one of the library chairs, closing your eyes. You already knew the answer—yes.

“If it’s anybody’s fault, Y/N, it’s Rowena’s. She’s the one behind all of this.”

Nodding again, you swallowed the lump in your throat and willed your tears away before lifting your head to look up at him. “We have to find him before something bad happens.” Dean nodded in agreement and you continued, “Where’s someplace Rowena would go?”

Much to your dismay, he only shrugged, running a hand through his hair before turning away from you and beginning to pace. You watched Dean walk in silence, nervousness growing in the pit of your stomach. Finally, you couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m going to go see if Sam left any clues to where he’d gone,” you said, standing. “Surely he wouldn’t have gone without giving us at least a small lead on how to find him? He knows that he’ll be defenseless without someone there who’s on his side…”

Dean straightened and turned to look at you. “What did you just say?”

“That I’m going to look for—”

“No, after that,” he interrupted, waving his hand.

“That Sam’s defenseless without someone there who’s on his side. Why?”

You watched in confused silence as Dean pulled out his phone and dialed, holding it up to his ear. Seconds later, the faint sound of a cheesy pop song echoed throughout the empty halls of the bunker.

“Why are you calling Cas?” you asked, recognizing the ringtone you’d set for him, and Dean held up a hand for you to wait. Finally, the song finished and Dean lowered his phone, ending the call.

“He didn’t pick up,” he said. Frowning, he left the library and headed down the hall, and you quickly followed after him.

“Well, yeah, because we’re in the bunker. Cas can just come talk to you in person. Dean, what’s going on?”

He didn’t answer and you followed him in silence, your stomach tied in knots. Though you trusted him wholeheartedly when it came to his brother, you didn’t like not knowing what Dean’s plan was.

Finally, the two of you arrived outside one of the bedrooms farthest from the library. The hallway was trimmed with cobwebs and dust, and you held a hand over your nose, covering it with the sleeve of Sam’s flannel. Unlike the other bedrooms, the door to this one was closed, and you watched as Dean pushed the door open. His face fell as soon as he laid eyes on what was inside, and you quickly stepped in behind him.

Cas was lying face-up on the bed, his eyes closed and his body still. It didn’t take either of you very long to realize what had happened when you saw that Cas wasn’t breathing.

“You don’t think—”

Dean nodded. “Cas is with Sam. Er, in Sam.” He winced at his wording and you swallowed thickly.

“Dean… Cas would take over and protect him, right? He’d be able to do that because the curse was only put on Sam, right?”

After a moment, Dean shook his head. “We’ve never tested that, Y/N. I don’t know why we didn’t think to before, but we have no way of knowing if Cas could help like that,” he replied.

Suddenly lightheaded, you sat on the edge of the desk and closed your eyes. Dean reached out to steady you, and a moment later, you opened your eyes to look at him.

“We could track him. If we find an angel location spell, we could track Cas and find Sam that way.

The frown lines around Dean’s lips deepened as he thought over your suggestion. He nodded in agreement and you let your shoulders slump forward a little when he pulled his hand away.

“You gonna be okay, kid?” he asked, holding onto your elbow as you got to your feet.

You nodded and gave him a tight smile. “I’ll be better when Sam’s back where he belongs, safe and sound. I know it’s stupid to be worried about him when he knows what he’s doing, but—”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing, Y/N,” Dean interrupted. He dropped his hand back down to his side and sighed. “He’s… blinded. He loves you, and that’s all he can think about. Not that loving you’s a bad thing, but he’s putting himself in more danger than he should be. We would’ve figured out what to do eventually, and he probably knows that, too.”

_______________

By the time Amanda had finished torturing him, Sam was mentally and physically exhausted. Bouncing back between consciousness and his spellbound state made him sick to his stomach, and he’d thrown up enough that his entire body felt weak. That, plus the pounding in his head and the blood loss, meant that he was barely able to keep his head upright as Amanda walked back out the door.

Sam was beginning to feel nauseous again when he felt himself being pushed back into a corner of his mind as Cas stepped forward to take over. He let himself fall silent as his friend carefully healed internal injuries and restored his strength. The dizziness, nausea, and headache all disappeared in turn, and after a few moments, Sam felt worlds better, though he was still exhausted.

Thanks, Cas, he thought.

A tugging sensation pulled him forward into his mind again, and Sam closed his eyes as soon as he’d regained control of his body. Sleep came easily, and once he’d reached a steady dream-state, he found himself facing Cas. The angel stood tall and proud, and Sam didn’t think he’d ever been more grateful for him.

“Thank you,” Sam said as soon as Cas’ image had grown clear.

Cas smiled thinly. “We need to be careful. I would’ve healed your external injuries, but that wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. You’re still at a risk for blood loss if she keeps on like this.”

“I don’t care if she notices,” Sam replied. “I just want to get out of here. I can’t believe I walked right into her trap!”

“Sam…”

Shaking his head, Sam continued, “I should’ve known that it wouldn’t be as simple as handing myself over. There’s no way that Rowena would allow us to get away this easily.”

“She knows that the best way to get to you is by hurting Y/N,” Cas said, stepping closer. “We don’t know for sure if Rowena is hurting Y/N, but she and Dean have already noticed your absence, Sam. Y/N’s been praying to me and she doesn’t seem to be in pain. She’s good at hiding things, but I don’t sense any kind of distress except over your disappearance. They’ve already discovered my empty vessel.”

Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping. “They’ll be looking for us, then.”

Cas nodded and tilted his head slightly. “I can’t communicate with them, but Dean is praying to me now. They’ve found a way to track me in order to find you. As soon as they’ve pinpointed my location, they’ll come.”

“What about Rowena? We don’t know how many other witches are here or if she’s cast any kind of warding,” Sam replied. “What if there’s angel warding on the building?”

“The Switch is on our side this time, Sam. Eventually, she’ll run out of magic and won’t be able to do anything if I take over. The other witches will no doubt abandon her once they realize that she can’t hurt them if they leave,” Cas said, and Sam nodded in response. “We don’t know how long we have until that happens, though. We need to be careful.”

Sam started to feel the dream fading. Before he could say anything, Cas pressed two fingers to his forehead. Y/N’s voice filled his mind as he was pulled back into reality, and Sam opened his eyes as her words floated away.

We’ll be on our way soon, Cas. Tell Sam I love him, even though he’s an idiot. I promise that I’ll find you guys before it’s too late. I’m not going to let some measly witch keep me from my soulmate.

_______________

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[laurent--stpierre]

THIS WILL END IN TEARS [2 / 4]

All right, so this is the start of a series of self paras that all tie into each other. They’re not being posted in chronological order, so make sure to take note of the dates they happened. The information in this self para will spread through the Organization quickly. Enjoy being able to react to it, and be a little bit smug to Johnathan. 

Date: August 6th, 2019. Warnings: Typical mob fare. It’s really long tho, so apologies.

“I’m going to level with you, I was looking to make this a bit more dramatic…”

The piece of shit hunched over in front of him didn’t respond.

“It’s not that I don’t care enough about you to put the effort in. It just turns out we picked the one sprawling estate without a fucking basement. Can you believe it?”

As the Frenchman took an exaggerated drag on his cigarette, he glanced around the room for a minute. It really was a world away from the basement he’d been forced to endure; decked out from floor to ceiling in palatial gold that could’ve only been by request of Aurélie. This prick must have thought himself so lucky to have ended up here. It didn’t matter to Laurent, though. Whilst this place mightn’t have had the same looming reputation the Russian torture chamber did, the former Commandant was more than content to make up for its shortcomings with his own hands.

When the man he addressed still didn’t respond, he could feel himself losing patience.

It was no fun if they didn’t play along.

“Come on, now. Did nobody ever tell you it’s rude to ignore your host?” Laurent asked, finally resorting to kicking at the leg of his captive’s chair as he blew smoke in his direction. “If you’re pretending to be unconscious so you don’t have to talk to me, I’m going to be offended.”

“You French cunts really do love the sound of your own voices, don’t you?”

As the man sighed, he appeared to deflate along with it.

“That’s more like it,” Laurent greeted, loudly enough that it visibly startled the Brit. As the Frenchman clapped his hands together in mock jubilation, the man finally looked up at his tormentor through his swollen eyes with a glare so evil, if looks could kill, Laurent would’ve been dead on the floor in a heartbeat. “I personally love the sound of my own voice, but don’t you go stereotyping us all, now. That’s racist.”

“What the fuck do you want, Laurent?”

It seemed an odd question to ask, under the circumstances. Did he even want to know?

“I just want a nice, friendly, productive conversation. How does that sound?”

Plucking this man off the streets had taken more planning than he cared to admit, but the boss had been adamant that this time, the biggest thorn in their side would pay the price for his sins. What happened with Théo had hit them all hard; they were, after all, an organization so used to absolute power that to be limited in this new city was a difficult situation for them to stomach. Whilst they hadn’t been able to intervene when it came to influencing the Met Police, however, they still had just enough eyes inside to know that a certain somebody had paid Théo a visit.

Laurent was sure that he hadn’t seen fire like that in her eyes since Versailles.

It was no secret that Westminster’s Commandant and Aurélie were close. Laurent reasoned that it was the only reason he’d gotten as far as he had in the first place. But for this to be the reason she finally snapped? For Johnathan’s unannounced visit whilst her friend was unattended to be the thing that pushed her over the edge? Unless there was something she wasn’t sharing—and as his short time as head of London, he’d already learned it was better not to ask—he was baffled by the escalation.

That didn’t mean they weren’t all happy to be finally making some moves, however.

Aurélie had been vague but absolute in her orders: Johnathan Parsons was to be reminded that despite what his ego might’ve told him, his actions did have consequences.

Johnathan Parsons was to suffer for all the times he had not suffered before.

The easiest way to get to the brute of a man would’ve been his child, and anybody who’d said the thought hadn’t immediately crossed their mind was a liar. No, they weren’t the Russians, and they tried to keep family off limits as best they could, but this was Parsons. Extreme measures were necessary. Of course, given that she was just about to bring a third into the world, and despite the fact she didn’t doubt they would stoop as low when it came to her, Aurélie had vehemently prohibited any violence against his daughter.

It’d taken slightly more grovelling on his part to spare Jessica Reyes what would’ve no doubt been a painful end. Aurélie hadn’t seemed pleased about that—she’d followed it up with a comment that made him wonder just how closely she was keeping an eye on him—but he had been insistent enough that eventually she’d got bored of arguing. Laurent didn’t regret it; partly because she reminded him of Claudia, but mostly because Johnathan reminded him of himself. The situation was not her fault, and she didn’t deserve to suffer for it.

Eventually, they had settled on the closest person that remained.

“And what exactly do you want to talk about?”

Laurent snorted. Where should they begin?

“I want to talk about everything, Jai. I want to talk about your boss. I want to talk about why one of my people was attacked by the Russians. I want to talk about Théodore Chaussard being behind bars. I want to talk about your business in Tower Hamlets. I want to talk about you slipping me Lara Rutherford’s number to make this go a little easier for you.”

It was his turn to scoff this time.

“No.”

For someone who was such a raging piece of shit, it was almost hard to believe that Johnathan could have any real friends at all. When it had become apparent back in Porto Velho that Jai Dalal was not only his right hand man, but also his most trusted confidant, however, the target on his back grew exponentially with every antagonistic move his best friend made. Jessica and Sarah might not have been ideal candidates, but a man who had committed just as many himself—or been passive to those his boss had in the meantime—was just as deserving of the pain as Parsons was.

“To which part? Don’t say Lara…”

“What the fuck was St. Clair thinking when she sent you here, huh? Her way of saying London is just a joke to the French, by any chance? How does someone like you make it to head of the city?”

If Laurent hadn’t already spent months asking himself those same questions to the point of absolute insensitivity, he might’ve taken the comment to heart. Instead:

“Fucked my way to the top.”

“I—” Jai started, but instead ejected yet another hefty sigh.

“Let me guess, you did the same thing? Johnny boy looks like the type…”

“So you don’t do basements. What, you and your dumb fucking comments like Chinese water torture are the new way of trying to break people?”

“I can send Varden back in, if you’d prefer?”

There was real beauty in seeing fear flash behind eyes that were trying so hard to hide it.

Jai said nothing.

“How about we bring someone else into the mix, instead? Maybe if there’s another person here for you to converse with, I won’t annoy you so much.”

It didn’t take long to tap out a message to his friends in the adjoining room.

“See, you’re the headliner, Jai, but we managed to pick ourselves up a little bonus prize whilst we were out scouting tonight.”

A few silent moments passed in which Laurent contemplated lightning another cigarette, before his action was interrupted by the sound of the dining room door swinging open. Two of his men flanked the hooded figure of a woman; it seemed an excessive entourage, given that she appeared far too injured to even think about fighting back. There was no struggle as they dragged her over, and dumped her square at Laurent’s feet.

It only took a quick once over to realise that the arm she was cradling had been so badly broken, it was visible through the skin. The silent weeping became more obvious as Sylvain and Jean walked away again, as did the realisation that they hadn’t restrained her because they didn’t need to.

“Don’t worry, it isn’t anybody you know,” Laurent assured, like he gave a solitary fuck, leaning forward to take a careful handful of the hood. “This is Ivanna.”

Laurent didn’t know why, but he hadn’t expected her to look worse than Jai did.

He was wrong.

It was a shame it’d come to this, really, because he’d seen her just before Varden and Daniel had been let loose. The woman had beautiful brown eyes, and features so feminine and delicate that it seemed impossible she was a fucking Russian. If she’d been walking down the street, with those same killer legs that were now twisted beneath her in an uncomfortable heap, she would’ve turned his head in a heartbeat. But now? Laurent didn’t doubt that it would take extensive amounts of surgery to give her back any semblance of…well, anything human in definition.

There was so much blood.

Aviv Kasyanenko sure could pick them.

The corner of his mouth turned upward slightly as he glanced down at her hands. The left ring finger was missing as a special fuck you from Daniel, no doubt.

“It’s okay,” Laurent said in a hushed whisper, as though comforting a child, reaching forward slightly to brush against her hair. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

It didn’t surprise him that nothing more than a strangled sob followed.

“You’re here because I want to talk to you, okay? Nothing else. The more you can help me out here, the less likely it is I send you back to them. I really don’t want to do that, Ivanna, but I’m going to need your help.” Sighing out through his nose, Laurent looked down at the dumb fucking bitch. It was a sight so pathetic he was finding it remarkably difficult not to visually cringe. Might’ve made that feigned sympathy a little less convincing, though… “How about we get you up off that floor and into a chair, huh? You can sit in my seat.”

Luckily enough, Jai had either slipped back into unconsciousness, or had just learned how to behave, because the idiot didn’t speak a word as the Frenchman slowly hoisted the pretzel into the chair. It seemed impossible, but she almost looked more uncomfortable now she was seated. Maybe he’d find a second to feel bad about it later. Until then, and now that he was without his own chair, he slowly crouched so that he was face to face with her.

“Is that better?”

Even though he knew it wasn’t, it seemed as though she’d nodded because she was scared not to.

“Thank you…”

“Did you hear that, Jai?” Laurent gasped, turning his head quickly to glance at the Indian. “That’s what it sounds like to have manners. You could learn a lot from the Russian, here.”

Silence.

Prick.

“Unfortunately, he’s not too chatty, Ivanna, but he’s going to help us with this conversation we’re going to have, is that all right?”

The brunette nodded stiffly, and his warm smile seemed to have comforted her somewhat, because for the first time since she’d entered the room, she finally looked up at him. Laurent immediately wished she hadn’t. They were as badly damaged as the rest of her. As his own gaze travelled down to the hands she cradled in her lap, he slowly took a hold of the one which wasn’t missing a finger or attached to a compound fracture. It felt like ice. As he brushed his thumb across her knuckles, he couldn’t help but wonder whether or not he still had that bottle of hand sanitizer tucked away in his jacket pocket…

“The first thing I need to ask you is when did you get here? When did you come to London?”

The interrogation proved to be an arduous process. Most of her answers were quiet, stuttered, or forced through the sound of what could’ve easily been her choking on her own blood. Jai seemed to have no understanding as to why he was present, and that amused Laurent even more than the bitch before him who genuinely believed that he was going to help her if she was honest. The Frenchman alternated between holding her hand and gently stroking her hair as she answered the basic questions about the Russians, where they were set up, whether she’d come with Aviv, and who else had followed her out to the city.

Ivanna bared all because she was scared.

Because she was not a mobster, and because she just wanted the pain to stop.

Laurent didn’t feel bad for her when she started to cry. All he could think about was how much Claudia must’ve been hurting when the Russians had done the same thing to her.

It wasn’t until he finally got to the most important question of all that Jai would learn why the Frenchman hadn’t conducted this discussion in another room.

“Why did the Russians come to London, Ivanna? Did Aviv tell you?”

When her eyebrows pulled into a confused frown, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the Russians could’ve headed to any city they liked. Why pick London?”

There were other things he’d wanted to ask; perhaps, he could’ve even phrased that more subtly. Unfortunately, it seemed as though her strength was fading by the minute, and as her head lolled back uncomfortably—like a child trying to fight sleep—he quickly moved his hand up to help her. The tears had started to well again. It was almost as though she knew that her answer would condemn her family, even though he was sure she didn’t realise quite how much.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, bringing her head to rest against his shoulder. Blood on his Hugo motherfucking Boss. Unreal. “This is the last thing I need to know, and then you can go, all right?”

“It was what they agreed.”

“What who agreed?”

Laurent spared a glance at Jai.

The man was a professional. There was no way on God’s green Earth the French would’ve been able to get the answers out of him, no matter how long he was left alone with Laurent. What seemed unlikely, however, was that he would be able to stop himself from reacting to somebody weaker spilling everything right in front of him. Ivanna might not have been the most reliable source in the world, but if he could get the back up of a reaction from Jai, then her words would surely hold more weight than that of a woman trying to save her own life.

Not that she seemed intelligent enough to lie.

“I don’t kn—” It sounded as though she was really struggling, now. If she didn’t hurry the fuck up, he might miss out on the confirmation all together. “I don’t know everything. Aviv doesn’t tell me.”

“Who agreed on what, Ivanna?”

“The Rutherfords, when they asked for help in Porto…”

In a split second, it felt like all of the air had been sucked from the room.

Of all the cancerous things he was expecting might leave her mouth, that was not one of them.

Porto? They were in fucking Porto?

“What do you mean? What help did the Rutherfords ask for in Porto Velho?”

“They needed help. Help. The hotel. If we helped with the hotel, they said we could come here…”

If he hadn’t been so stunned by the words that had just left her dumb fucking mouth, he might’ve made a solid attempt at ripping her head from her shoulders. The Russians had been in Porto Velho this whole fucking time, and it had gone unnoticed? Unpunished? Was the hotel she was referring to Versailles? It seemed pretty fucking unlikely they’d enlist Russian help to work on PR for the Chelsea fucking Royal… Laurent could feel every ounce of anger he’d felt about that whole cluster fuck—even if his pain had come at the hands of someone else—flood back in an instant. Aurélie had been stabbed. Alessia was dead.

“You stupid fucking cunt.”

The outburst was a solid reminder that Jai was still in the room, because for a minute there, lost in an absolute flood of wrath, Laurent had forgotten he’d existed.

Whilst he was fully expecting this to go his way—to get solid confirmation that it had, indeed, been the Rutherfords who had invited the Russians to London—he had not expected their desperate collusion to go back so far. For it to have been the Russians who had orchestrated the attack on their hotel, and not the British family they had been blaming for years. Fuck, they should’ve known… They might’ve had the money and the influence, but to attack the heads of two powerful crime families so boldly? It was out there. Too fucking out there.

The fucking Russians.

“Do you mean Versailles?”

It was impossible to keep himself from shaking. Laurent had long ago given up the gentle hand against her head for fear of crushing her skull before she could finish.

“She means Empire. The Russians helped us with funding for Empire.”

That particular bluff might’ve landed better if Aurélie didn’t have Amir, the actual fucking investor, wrapped around her little finger.

“The Russians help at Versailles, and the Rutherfords let some of us move to Haringey. It was the deal. I just wanted a fresh start. We just wanted to be anywhere but Launceston…”

“You people will literally say anything to drag us down,” Jai scoffed.

Even though he was gearing up to shout again, Laurent’s hand had already found its way to the cool metal of his gun. It did nothing physically to soothe the fact he felt like he was on fire, but the deafening sound of the point-blank shot—the sight of Jai slumping back as soon as the bullet smashed through his skull—was satisfying in ways he could only hope to relive with Johnathan. Laurent stared at the carcass as though he expected it to speak up again. Get fucking cocky now, you prick. Ivanna was now in fits of sobs so loud he could hardly hear himself think. Still, his hand held firmly onto his weapon, and he wondered whether he should turn around and shove the thing into her noisy fucking mouth.

“Wasn’t he helpful, Ivanna?”

“You said you weren’t going to hurt me…”

The sound of the door opening, Sylvain and Dan bursting through the door to see what was happening a second later, did little to distract him from the woman in front of him.

“I never break a promise.”

Her pathetic relief was the cherry on the top of the dead Jai sundae.

“But that man over there?” Laurent said quietly, lifting a hand to gesture toward the men with a smile. “This is Daniel. Did Aviv ever mention somebody named Daniel to you? Maybe Noa?”

The way that she seemed to freeze in an instant suggested yes. It hadn’t taken a bullet to drain the life from her; just a boyfriend who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and the couple of brain cells it took to add two and two together.

“Aviv took some things that belonged to Noa. Wedding and engagement rings. He almost took their baby’s life, too, did you know that?”

Laurent had thought her face couldn’t possibly look even worse than it had done post-beating, but as it contorted into the ugliest fucking crying face he’d seen since Sofia Kurylenko, he realised that he’d been wrong. This was definitely worse. Dan could have dibs on the physical suffering, but Laurent was glad to be the one to make her suffer without having to life a fucking finger.

He would enjoy thinking about it for weeks to come.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Ivanna,” he said, standing up straight and slipping his gun back into the holster. “But Dan? I think Dan is probably going to hurt you a lot.”

[humbae]

Whumptober 20: Concussion

“Shit shit shit,” Deisha chanted as she pulled the man’s face away from a pile of moss. He was freakishly pale, and his eyes were half-open, showing only white. He wouldn’t be walking under his own power anytime soon, and they were in the middle of the forest. In a word, they were fucked.

“Thoroughly fucked,” Deisha muttered as she tucked the man’s hair behind his ear. “What are you doing? This is the enemy,” she chided herself.

But he wasn’t. Intellectually, Deisha had always known her grudge was petty. Things slipped by all the time. In a city as large as theirs, it was unrealistic to think that all cries could be heard. Not that reason had ever mattered to her emotions. She had been hurt and no one had saved her. But was her bitterness justified? Looking at the man lying in front of her, she couldn’t summon up any anger towards him. If Deisha had been as battered as he was, she would’ve just stayed in the comfiest corner of the basement in a ball of misery. She wouldn’t have pulled herself up a flight of stairs to help a stranger against a foe she had no chance of defeating. The little girl in her was still weeping, like she always was, but the rational adult decided to let go of the past.

“Alright buddy, we’re a team. I mean, we already took down Tom, that was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Now we just gotta get your concussed ass up, and run to civilisation, before someone catches us. Are you even listening?”

The man was showing signs of waking up. Which was good, Deisha remembered that passing out for more than a couple of minutes was a bad sign. Or was it a couple of seconds? She couldn’t recall the details, but if the man was coherent, she figured they’d be okay.

“Come on, get up,” she said and nudged the man. She should really ask for his name. Funny how little details like that didn’t matter when someone was trying to hurt you.

“...okay?” the man mumbled.

“Are you asking me if you’re okay? Well no, not even close, but we gotta move. Come on, focus.”

The man blinked his eyes open. They were not an unattractive shade of green, even if she typically found pale eyes a bit unnerving. He groaned and rolled over, planting his hands on the ground to lift himself. Once sitting up, he looked at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Me? Yeah, I’m unharmed. Just scared and anxious, nothing unexpected in this situation. Can you get up?”

He nodded and climbed to his feet. Deisha offered him a shoulder, and together they started limping forwards. They followed the shore, where the sun was setting behind the clouds on the horizon. It would’ve been beautiful, had they had the time to stop and admire the orange glory.

“Listen, I feel like I need to apologise to you,” Deisha said. She wasn’t sure if she’d get the words out, but her conscience demanded she at least try to say something. Maybe that would help her shake some of the guilt.

“You don’t have to, at least not on my account. I get it,” he said.

“How could you possibly understand? I made the call and put us both in this mess. And even before… I’m not a good person.”

“You didn’t raise your fist against me. You didn’t torture someone just to get me to dance. I carry more guilt than you.”

“That’s insane! You can’t help what you are. You didn’t feed people to these monsters to play with. Innocent or not.” Deisha fell silent.

“What’s really bothering you?” the man asked after a moment. He sounded out of breath, and they weren’t moving fast.

“What do you mean?” Deisha asked. For someone with his abilities, she must be utterly transparent.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry, but I can kinda tell your guilt goes deeper than my part. And we did escape, so no harm done anyway.”

Deisha wouldn’t call their encounter with Tom harmless, but she supposed her spirits were rising higher the further they made it from the doctor. When she thought about the house, however, she remembered the freezer.

“Did you open the freezer?” she asked. The man nodded. “He used to be my mom’s boyfriend. He did bad things to me. I met Tom through a friend of a friend some years ago, and we came to an agreement. They teach the man a lesson, make sure he never hurts another child again, and I owe them one. I was stupid enough to believe that giving you to them would wipe my slate clean. I was such an idiot, and incredibly naive. I didn’t know they kept him as a prisoner, and I certainly didn’t know they would kill him. On the one hand, it’s totally justified, but… it isn’t.”

“You didn’t kill him,” the man said. He looked at Deisha square in the eyes, not backing down. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“How can you be so forgiving? Without me, you’d be lying on your sofa, with only one stab wound to nurse.”

“Without you, I might be dead already. You’ve shown me nothing but compassion.”

“Except that one pretty major act of betrayal.”

The man shrugged. They had reached a place where the shore cliffs fell straight into the ocean. They’d either have to swim, or go the long way around them. They headed inland. With the sun dipping below the horizon, they were losing light, especially as they walked among trees now. Their canopies were still thick this early in the autumn, effectively blocking what little light remained.

“Look,” Deisha said. The man followed her finger and sighed. Of course dark clouds were rising ahead of them. Not only would they obscure the stars and make navigation impossible, they might drop some water on them too. But at least no one was chasing them.

[starspatter]

Heroes and Thieves, Ch. 6

Title: Heroes and Thieves Fandom/Universe: BTAS, pre/post-RotJ flashback

Summary: A story about second chances, healing, and having hope.

Rating: PG-13, for references to character death, child psychological torture and trauma.

Genre: Romance/Family/Friendship/Hurt/Comfort

Word Count: 3,791 Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Also on ff.net and AO3. In which Dick is surprisingly racist towards clones.

Two birds on a wire One says "come on" and the other says "I'm tired" The sky is overcast and I'm sorry One more or one less Nobody's worried

-Regina Spektor, "Two Birds"

Then.

Once their guest had left, Tim turned to Dick with a wounded air.

“How about giving me some warning next time before someone shows up, huh?  A little heads-up would’ve been nice.”

Dick’s smile didn’t falter.

“What, did she catch you doing something embarrassing?”

Tim skewered him a look of disgust.

“Do you have to make everything sound dirty?”

“Sorry, sorry.  …I’m surprised you’re still doing ‘that’ after all these years though.”

Tim shrugged with a heavy sigh.  “Was just testing to see if I still could, I guess.  I messed up on the landing anyway.”

“You probably just need to work on your form some more.  It has been a while since I last saw you brush up on any techniques, they’re bound to get a bit rusty.  If you want, I can still coach you…”

Tim’s lips tightened.

“Forget it.  It’s not worth it.”

“Are you sure?  That girl seemed pretty impressed by it. She’s the one you were talking about earlier, right?”  Dick nodded in sage observation.  “She’s cute; nice face, decent rack- ow!”  He rubbed his arm as it was abruptly met with an annoyed punch.  “Hey, it was a compliment.”

“…Didn’t sound like one.”

“Would you prefer I said she has a mighty fine ass?”  He waggled his brows and grinned provocatively, despite wincing from the pain.  Kid could still hit pretty hard when he wanted to. “Not as fine as mine though.”

“Shut up before I shove a dumbbell up there.”

Dick clutched his behind in mock dread at the threat.

“Seriously though, she’s obviously into you.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “The way I see it, from where I’m standing, she’s more into you.”

“Oh ho, do I detect a note of jealousy?”

“No,” Tim denied hotly, though his cheeks told a different story.  “It’s just that you’re being super-gross about it.  You know you’re acting like Bruce by coming onto every giddy schoolgirl and her mom who walks in through the door.”

Dick’s smirk jerked slightly.

“Wow, okay dude, we’re really going there.”  It was his turn to be hurt by insensitivity.  “You didn’t need to go that far.  I’ll have you know this and that are completely different.”

“How so?”

“I approach these things from a sole marketing perspective.  Purely professional.  It’s called ‘show business’, bro.”

“Uh-huh.  This coming from the guy who just lied about his scars to make himself look good.  I suppose ‘that’s’ also part of your advertising strategy?”

“Hey, it’s not like it was a total lie.  That really did happen, you know – minus the ‘falling debris’ part.  …Besides, what else would you have me say?”

Tim shook his head, keeping his voice low.  “…I don’t know.”

Dick seized on the telling silence.  “You are attracted to her, aren’t you?”

“I am not.”

“It’s okay, I can see why. It’s all right to admit these things, you know.  You don’t have to hide it.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

The firm, yet flustered defiance only further confirmed Dick’s suspicion.

“Heh heh, little Timmy’s got a crush~”

He tousled Tim’s hair teasingly, to which the boy scowled.

“I do not.”  He pushed the invading hand away in indignation.  “Will you cut that out already?  I’m not a kid anymore.”

Dick lowered his limb in disappointment.

“Okay, okay.  Sorry.”  Despite insistence otherwise, it delighted Dick that Tim was finally exhibiting some of the youthful desire – if not exuberance – he’d missed out on through his teenage years.  “Trust me though, I have no interest in someone her age.  She’s all yours.”

“Look, will you just drop it?” Tim snapped bluntly.  “It’s none of your freakin’ business.”

Dick exhaled, clicking his tongue.  If only Tim could be more honest with his feelings, true to himself – though he was painfully aware of how excruciatingly difficult that must be, what with everything the boy had been through.  To be fair, he had his own troubles genuinely opening his heart to others, after all the times it had been broken and betrayed before.  …He could only imagine how terrifying it must be for Tim, to allow someone else – a complete and total stranger – to get close by entering into his currently (semi-)stable and secure – if supremely secluded life, experience that kind of risky emotion again. Breach the many walls and defensive barriers he had set up around himself, upset the plainly precarious balance that was still a struggle to barely maintain.  So as much as he wanted to continue coaxing and clowning – kidding around, he agreed to leave it alone for now, raising both palms in admitted defeat.

“Okay, I get it.  I won’t bother you about it anymore.”

The subject successfully dismissed, Tim attuned towards the boxes in the back.

“So did you want me to help with moving this stuff or what?”

“Yeah, I needed to clear out some old things to make space for new equipment.  Trying to tidy up the place more, getting rid of useless junk and whatnot.  …Although most of it’s probably going up to the storeroom in the attic anyway.  Sorry to bother you for this; I’d do all the lifting myself, but with my back…”

“Don’t mention it, it’s the least I can do to repay you.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Tim knelt by one of the cartons as Dick set to work sifting and sorting, organizing according to some arbitrary system that ostensibly only made sense to him.

“Christ, how much crap do you have here?  Seriously, what even is half this junk?  I knew you had all kinds of odd ends lying around, but I didn’t realize it amounted to this much.  Do you ever throw anything away?”

Dick shrugged.

“What can I say, I’m a hoarder by nature.  Keeping keepsakes is my hobby.   …Well, more like a habit, I guess.  Why do you think we had a trophy room in the basement?  It wasn’t originally Bruce’s idea, I can tell you that.”

Tim remained quiet as he poked through a large collection of CDs, containing a few recognizable but mostly random titles by various indie bands and artists he’d never heard of.

“Man, you’ve got weird taste in music.”

“Hey, don’t knock the classics.  Those are precious goods, be careful with those.”

In spite of his scoffing, Tim picked up one of the discs that appealed to him, and was almost about to subconsciously slip the item under his oversized hoodie – an old, old habit of his own – before remembering he didn’t have to resort to sneaking or stealing when he could just ask.

“Can I borrow this?”

Dick didn’t even twist to look, implicitly trusting in his little brother’s judgment.  “Yeah sure, go ahead.”

Tim breathed out in relief as he pocketed the prize with permission.  That was a close call.  Borderline kleptomaniac compulsions hadn’t surfaced like that in a long time, but then, it was only another minor checkbox on the extensive, exhaustive list of psychotic symptoms he was suffering from today.

There was another entry that caught his eye, different from the others.  It had no hard case or album cover; just a plain, simple jacket labeled with marker:

For Babs.

Tim wondered if it was a mix tape – surely Dick wouldn’t have tried to record something himself? He couldn’t tell whether it was a gift Dick planned to give but never worked up the courage to – or something Barbara sent back after (one of numerous) breakup(s).

…Maybe Joker was right. Being in love with someone seemed like way more hassle than it was worth.  Hell, just watching those two go back and forth between affection and anger even back then was tiring.  Aggravating.

At any rate, he left burning curiosity alone, not wanting to intrude too much on Dick’s privacy (years ago he would’ve taunted his brother with the juicy bit of exposing bait himself, but that was then, when he was less mature and still found amusement in such things), and moved on to another container.  As soon as he saw the contents inside, he balked a bit, heartbeat spiking.  Aching.  It was a family photo album, full of fond memories from the Flying Graysons’ circus days. His hands trembled as he flipped tentatively through the pages, unable to tear away even though it made him uncomfortable for a number of reasons.  Paranoid of polaroids.  Anything involving camerawork tended to make him queasy, though he could typically tolerate homages to others at least.  These were different from the blown-up, polished posters on the wall though; the images portrayed within were more intimate, unscripted.  Candid, captured moments of a close-knit clan, happy as a clam – treasured remnants of childhood innocence and bliss combined with parental pampering.

“This must have been such a cool place to grow up.”

“…It was.”

Glancing back at the receptacle, buried at the bottom was another set of snapshots: a framed photograph of Dick and Barbara together (him smiling smugly straight at her in puppy-like adoration while she beamed brightly at the viewer instead), and a worn print of the former in graduation garb next to Bruce, who had his paw wrapped proudly on the other’s shoulder.  Scrawled on the top left-hand corner in Bruce’s surprisingly haphazard handwriting was a short congratulatory message:

Good luck at college, Dick.

Tim recalled how Dick told him the story of Bruce missing his graduation from Gotham State University, shortly before the two split up as Batman and Robin.  (…The old man never even bothered to come to his own high school ceremony – not that Tim was expecting him to – although Dick and Barbara both did attend at least, albeit sitting at opposite ends of the auditorium.)

“It was building for a long time.  I realize that now.  …It was never really right.  I mean, this isn’t exactly a normal childhood.”

He hadn’t really comprehended the notion then, but Tim understood now what those words meant – unfortunately all too well.

Tim sensed a shadow behind him, and for a brief instant, he half-envisioned it being Bruce from the way it loomed – but of course when he revolved around it was only Dick instead.

“Yo, you all right? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”  Tim looked down at the scrapbook in his lap, a wistful mist in his eyes.  “I was just… thinking I don’t really have any pictures of my folks.  At least none where we’re all together.”  Or that isn’t a mugshot, he thought sullenly to himself.  “I never saw my dad keep any mementos of Mom after she died.  To be honest, I’m not sure I even still remember what she looks like.”

Dick plopped down on the ground next to him, resting a hand on the boy’s sagged shoulder.

“Listen, I hope you know: No matter what, you can always think of the two of us as family at least. I know I haven’t exactly been that much of a great guardian myself, that I could never replace what you lost either… But you are still a brother to me. Hell, I consider you the closest thing to a real relative I’ve had since then.”

Tim simply nodded, swallowing a lump in his gorge.  Dick patted his back with a thump.

“Us guys, we gotta stick together, right?  Through thick and thin.”

“Yeah.”  Tim ducked his neck towards his collar, surreptitiously drying ducts on his sweatshirt.  “…Thanks, you know, for letting me stay here so long.  Roy and Conner too.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” A pause.  “…How’s Conner doing by the way?”

Tim snorted, the caution in the other’s tone not escaping his notice.  “What do you care?  You never liked him anyway.”

“That’s not true. It’s just… The whole idea of cloning someone kinda wigs me out, okay?  I dunno, imagining there being a duplicate copy of you running around is freaky enough, but one of Superman?  It still doesn’t sit well with me to leave him loose like that, after all the underhanded crap Cadmus has pulled.  Something about it just doesn’t seem right.  Who’s to say he doesn’t have some secret kill switch that’ll make him go rogue like Supergirl’s doppelganger?  Gotham may be full of crazies and creeps, but at least we never really had to deal with stuff of metahuman caliber aside from Ivy and Clayface, or Kirk when he took the serum.”  Dick intentionally didn’t include Killer Croc on the atypical rogues roster; guy was too dumb a criminal to count.  “We’re on the high end of the ‘weird’ scale, sure, but not even Batman’s equipped to take down a serious superpowered menace alone.”

Tim glared at him in disbelief.

“Is that you talking, or the old man?”

“…Maybe a bit of both,” Dick willingly conceded.  “Look, I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Yeah well, don’t be. I’ve got Mr. Kent on speed-dial, and Kon gave me his full consent to use the Kryptonite at my discretion as part of our ‘roommate agreement’.  If anything happens, he told me himself he wants me to hit him with it as hard as I can.” …Even if it meant killing him – although Tim knew he could never go through with that. Not again. “Besides, it’s not him you’re actually worried about, is it?”

“Tim…”

“No, you know what this is?” Tim clenched his fist, drawing away from contact again.  “You look at him with the same way you do me – like some ticking time bomb about to explode. I’m getting real sick and tired of it.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Sure it isn’t.  Look, for your information, Conner’s doing fine. Hell, he pretty much behaves just like you; he’s probably getting wasted and chasing after chicks at some mixer right now.  …That’s what you call a ‘normal college life’, isn’t it?”

Dick cleared his throat, aversely acknowledging hypocrisy.

“…What about you?  How is school going?  Do you like it there?”

Tim shrugged.

“It’s okay.”

“You know you didn’t have to just stick locally around here.  If you wanted to go someplace else I would’ve sponsored you.  I mean, I chose to stay close to Gotham because of that… ‘part-time job’ stuff, but you’re smart, you could’ve gone anywhere better.”

“I told you, I’m fine with this.”

“What about taking that girl’s suggestion at least?  Life doesn’t just have to be about books and studying for tests all the time either, you know.  Look at it this way: You’ve got the time and opportunity now to be a part of after-class club activities that I never had.  Why not take advantage of it, get out there and socialize.  Enjoy the excitement of your youth and all that.”

Tim stared, trying unsuccessfully to read the other’s expression.  He couldn’t deduce whether the dude was just being humorously sarcastic, or genuinely envious and attempting to live vicariously through him.  Either way, he wasn’t falling for it.

“I said forget it.”                                                          

Dick kept pressing despite disengagement, earnest in his endeavor to tempt Tim to pursue what used to fill the boy with fervent passion, desperately hoping to rekindle some kind of joyful spark.

“Come on, I’m sure it’ll be fun.  I bet I could even still teach you to do a quadruple somersault if you’re interested.”

“Why?  I suck at it.”

“You just need more practice.  …Besides, it’d be kind of a shame to let a legacy die out without passing it on to at least one person.”

Tim wavered at the sincere, if somewhat scheming statement.

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me, it’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

“Maybe for you.”  He bitterly bit his tongue under his breath.  “I’d like to see you try to concentrate on keeping your balance with the Joker as a peanut gallery.”

“What was that?”

“…Nothing.”

Dick held his gaze for a second.

“Tim, I didn’t want to bring this up, but… Conner called me the other day.  He told me, about the lab incident.  He says you haven’t been sleeping or eating much either.”

Tim grit his jaw, feeling like a dagger had just been thrust in his gut.  He couldn’t believe his best (perhaps only) bud in the world would betray him like that.

“Damnit, Kon.”

“Don’t blame him, he’s just worried about you too.  I told you: You don’t need to keep hiding things from us.  We’re here to help if you need anything.  Babs too.  If something’s troubling you, you can talk to us.”

“It’s fine, I’m handling it.”

Dick wouldn’t desist, determined to get the truth out of him.

“Tim, I heard you yelling earlier.  …He’s back again, isn’t he?”

The boy sighed in surrender, eyes slanting stage right.  “…To your left, making faces.”

His partner fixed him with stern concern.

“Are you off your meds again?”

“They don’t work.  Not as well as they used to.”

“That doesn’t mean you should just stop taking them.”

“For what?  So I can only experience the side effects?”

“So talk to Leslie.  Ask her to adjust the dosage.”

Tim made a hollow noise.  “I’m already on the highest strength that’s considered ‘safe’ for human consumption.”

Dick pulled out his phone anyway and began dialing her number.

“I’m contacting her.  There must be at least something else we can try.”

“Not Dr. Thompkins,” Tim whined, as if a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“Look, either you call to make an appointment, or I will.”

Tim seethed, grinding his teeth.  “All right, fine.  Jeeze. God, you and Barbara still both treat me like a fucking child.”

“Yeah well, maybe if you stop acting like one.”

“Whatever.  Just hand me the phone.  I’ll talk to her.”

Dick extended the cell towards Tim, who took it with all the enthusiasm of accepting a dirty sock.

“It’s ringing.”

He listened closely in on the conversation to confirm a meeting time was set up, before Tim returned the receiver.

“Here.  She wants to talk to you.”

Dick lifted the mobile to his ear.

“Hey, doc.”

“Hello, Richard.  It’s good to hear from you boys.  How’s the back treating you?”

“Fine.”  He didn’t want to dwell too much on his own health status, so he moved on to the matter at hand.  “Is there anything we can do to help Tim?”

“In such a rare and unusual case as this, it’s hard to say.  It’d be beneficial to start by identifying the root of his relapse.  Once we pinpoint that, it’ll be easier to formulate a treatment plan.   It’s possible it could just be due to the stress of moving to a new environment.  It’s good that you’ve been able to help support him through high school, but now that he’s becoming independent it may be triggering a stronger separation anxiety response in him.  Even if consciously he rejects it, the Joker ingrained himself as a parental figure in Tim’s mind.  Essentially, he equates that kind of attention with the nurturing love and protection he never properly received growing up.  It’s common for child victims of abuse to form a disorganized attachment to the caregiver, especially when the caregiver behaves in an inconsistent manner.  The conflict of the caregiver being both a source of comfort and distress can cause the child to display contradictory patterns when faced with a stressful situation; instinct tells him to simultaneously avoid and approach the one who is mistreating him.   In the absence of a familiar atmosphere he’s accustomed to, he’s likely seeking alternate methods of coping as a survival mechanism.  Has he been under any kind of particular pressure lately?”

Dick relayed the events leading up to the fainting spell, with little input from Tim beyond affirmative nods.

“I see.  It’s certainly a sign of progress that he’s trying to face his fears, but a heads-on approach might not be the best tactic.”

“I tried to tell him that.  He won’t listen.”

“I’ll have a chat with him about it when I see him, hopefully we can find a way for him to succeed in his studies without compromising his sense of safety.  One more question, this is important: Has he tried to harm himself?”

“I… don’t think so.  I’ll check, and let you know.”

“Please do.”

As Dick temporarily terminated the exchange, he rotated to see Tim had stood up and was headed towards the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Out for a smoke – walk – whatever.  Just text me when you need me.”

“Hold it.”  The harsh bark arrested the boy before he was halfway to the exit.  “Wrists.”

Tim swiveled with a sour countenance.

“Seriously?  Do we really have to do this?”

“Show me.”

He hissed, but obediently rolled up his sleeves, revealing bare but apparently unmarked skin.

“Satisfied?”

Dick advanced and examined him all over anyway, before nodding.

“All right.  Now empty your pockets.”

Tim tsked, feeling as violated as when the staff at the detention center frisked him on admittance for any concealed contraband.  He dug through his possessions, retrieving objects one by one: phone, wallet, CD player, lighter, cigarettes, and finally – under Dick’s demanding eye – the hidden pocketblade.

“Give me the knife.”

He hesitated.

“Don’t make me wrestle it from you.”

Relinquishing, he slapped the weapon into Dick’s grip without a word.

“Thank you.  You can go, but try to keep near.”

“Sure thing, Mom.”

Dick deliberately chose to ignore the sardonic retort, used to receiving attitude by now.  (For a fleeting moment, he mused if he ever gave Bruce this much frustration, although no doubt Alfred would certainly attest to it.)

After Tim left, Dick hit redial to reassuringly inform Leslie on the observed lack of self-inflicted damage to the patient’s physical condition at least – and preemptive confiscation of means just to be safe – before bidding goodbye with a final beep.  He sighed as he rubbed his neck, hoping his “tough love” hadn’t come off as too deterring. He really wasn’t good with this whole “parenting” thing, considering the primary role model he had for nearly half of his life after early adolescence.

As he picked up the memoir from the floor, he caressed his fingers feather-light over the cover, brushing off collected dust and disenchantment before delicately placing it on a shelf for easy viewing access.  The rest he unceremoniously dumped in the “to toss” pile, purposefully cramming as much trash as he could on top.  …After a few minutes though he fished them out again, rescuing from the base of the rubbish heap with ambivalent reluctance, restoring to the original package and sealing tightly with tape.  They could remain upstairs for now at least – like his ruined Nightwing costume – evidence of old wounds and shattered bonds shuttered behind closed panel; tucked away in the dark recesses of his conscience, lurking and lingering deep in the shadows off-screen.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Two birds of a feather Say that they're always gonna stay together But one's never going to let go of that wire He says that he will But he's just a liar