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bucketslutz · 1 month

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Don't Be Late (Professor Logan Howlett/Fem Student Mutant Reader)

A/N: This one's a doozy, don't know how I feel about most of Logan's dialogue in this one but oh well! Enjoy!

Chapter Summary: Awkwardness ensues when you arrive at Logan's class on Friday, finding no one there but him.

Warnings: 18+, mindors DNI!!!!, drinking, reader getting drunk, puking, swearing, light depiction of anxiety disorder, sexual harassment (nothing bad happens to reader, light harassment only)

Word Count: 4,712

Chapter 3

This is the fourth night this week you’ve masturbated to the thought of your professor. Unfortunately, your fingers don’t offer the same release that you’ve been seeking from Logan. Instead of relieving the pressure that spreads through your body, your orgasms leave you dissatisfied and in need of more relief. But you can’t. He’s your professor, and downright terrifying to speak to. He makes every hair on your body stand on end, like your body is in a constant state of flight or fuck. Plus, you’re pretty sure he hates you. He stares at you, makes rude remarks, and barely even pays you any mind. But, goddamnit, sometimes you swear his lips curl into somewhat of a smile when he sees you. And you haven’t seen him smile at much of anything. But you cannot misconstrue tolerance with infatuation. He just might hate you less than everyone else, which could be enough for you to get through the semester without anymore anxiety than you already have.

You turn over in bed with a huff and glare at the clock. 2:14 am. If only you spent as much time studying as you did masturbating, maybe you’d get your masters a year earlier. You almost fear going to sleep. Afraid that another dream will leave you hot and bothered in Logan’s class tomorrow, and you don’t like that he has that effect on you. You repeat a mantra as you doze off, I do not want to fuck Logan Howlett.

…

It’s been a good morning. You woke up, no explicit wet dream, with enough time to manifest a Colombian dark roast and one of the best breakfasts you’ve had in a while; which you enjoyed while watching the sunrise from your roof. For a brief moment, you considered flying to class. The weather was perfect, making you long for a place you could traverse the sky in peace without a worry of who might see you. You often find yourself dreaming of such a life. How freeing would it be to fly around the world, helping people in need, exploring areas unknown? As much as you daydream of this life, you still know deep down that your dream can never become a reality. No, every day you hear of someone else being killed just because they’re a mutant. Or others disappearing off the streets and thrown into secret government labs where they conduct god knows what kinds of tests on them. That’s not a reality you ever want to face. You don’t want to think about how the government might exploit your powers. The thought of them abusing the atomic structures you manifest to create weapons of mass destruction makes you sick. No matter how desperately you wish you could display your strengths for good, you can’t. And that breaks your heart.

Despite the unfortunate stifling of your powers, your morning still ends up going just as well as it started. You’ve timed your commute perfectly; slipping into your favorite parking spot with just enough time to walk to class, Colombian dark roast in hand. You open the door to Logan’s class, quickly stopping dead in your tracks once you see that not a single one of your classmates are here yet. You check the time on your phone, there’s only 3 minutes until class starts.

“I was beginning to think it was something I said,” Logan’s voice calls from the front of the room, his broad frame leaning against the white board., “Did everyone tell ‘ya to skip?”

You chuckle softly, “No, Logan, I think it was actually something you said.” He furrows his brow, you clarify, “Wednesday when you left class you sorta said ‘see ‘ya Monday.’ So I think people just got confused.”

“Huh, and I guess you’re here…” he trails off, wanting you to explain.

“The convenience store. You said you’d see me on Friday, so, I just assumed you misspoke the other day,” you conclude, your fingers fiddling with the lid on your thermos. He just stares at you for a beat, making your anxiety swell in your throat. Is he mad at me? I think he’s mad at me, you think to yourself, “Not that you messed up or anything! It’s definitely everyone else’s fault for not following up with you, or whatever.”

“Right,” he says, giving you an incredulous look. You definitely weirded him out. The way he’s looking at you makes your breath hitch, and not in a good way.

“Anyway,” you continued, setting your coffee on a nearby desk, attempting to drive the topic of conversation elsewhere, “I might as well give you this.”

You approach Logan slowly as you rifle through your shoulder bag in search of your essay. Your fingers anxiously fumble between each folder and binder in your bag, incapable of grasping anything. You halt your approach, digging deeper in your bag to find the folder containing your essay. Jesus Christ where the hell is it. You’ve been searching for hours, has it been hours? Or 15 seconds? You cannot tell because time has halted right here. Blue folder, blue folder, blue folder, you repeat to yourself, hoping your thoughts do something to pop the folder in your face. Finally, after years of searching, you’ve found it. You pull it out of your bag with a breath of relief, stepping forward as you intend to hand it to Logan. A gasp escapes your lips when you slam straight into Logan’s tall frame, stumbling backwards, nearly falling until hands grasp your waist and keep you upright.

“You alright?” Logan asks, his hands remaining fixed on your waist. You look up at him through your long eyelashes, your hands planted flat on his chest for support. You cannot help the fluttering in your heart at your proximity to him, feeling your arousal swirling inside you at the feel of his strong hands holding you tightly. Logan stares at you from above, breathing heavily through his nose; his sharp, repetitive inhales almost sounding like a dog sniffing the air. You struggle to form a coherent thought, the only thing flooding your senses is the smell of Tobacco and pine emanating from Logan. Only a few seconds have passed, but as far as you know time doesn’t exist anymore. Logan loosens his grip on your sides, smoothing your jacket down with his hands before letting you go. You clear your throat, trying to shake the impure thoughts that are swarming your mind.

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” you exhale, handing him the folder, “Um, my essay. Here you go.”

“Right, thanks,” he smirks as he takes it from you, “Don’t suppose you want to be the only one hearing my lecture today.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” you affirm eagerly, watching Logan’s smile dissipate into a pursed line. He was joking, oh my god. Kill me. “Oh! You were kidding! No, I’d much rather be home right now. Definitely do not want to be here…with you.” Your words grew quiet towards the end, unsure if your recovery was even remotely smooth at all. If you could even call that a recovery.

“Oh, so you don’t want to be here with me?” he questions, his arms crossing over his stiff chest.

“No! No, no, of course I do, you’re lovely, I mean, not—I don’t hate you is what I’m saying. You’re lovely, as far as professors go,” you stutter, a clammy layer of sweat forming on the palms of your hands. He’s silent, his eyes burning a hole into your soul. Surely, he’s mad at you, “I would so love to sit and listen to you lecture, if you want, totally up to you. I’ll be here taking notes and listening if—“

Logan calls your name with a chuckle, interjecting your ramblings and bringing them to a halt.

“I’m just messing with ‘ya, bub,” he assures with a self-satisfied smile, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder. You can tell he gets a lot of enjoyment out of making you uncomfortable, giving himself personal satisfaction every time you squirm under his gaze.

“Oh,” you mutter dejectedly, your face blushing red from embarrassment, “right, well, you sure got me.” You attempt a laugh to hide your anxiety. Fiddling with the strap of your bag, you try to focus on anything else than the tears of embarrassment that prick the corners of your eyes. You hate this feeling, someone making a fool of you just because of your gentle, people-pleasing demeanor. It makes you feel weak, even though you physically aren’t, but no one knows that. They just see a meek, quiet girl that they can walk all over and take advantage of.

“Shit, are you okay?” Logan asks, a surprising level of concern in his voice. His knees dip slightly, craning his neck to your level to try and meet you face to face. You keep your eyes to the ground, not wanting to embarrass yourself further by crying in front of your professor just because he teased you a little bit. You’re surprised to feel fingers grasp your chin, gasping as Logan lifts it to so you’ll meet his eyes. Tears haven’t fallen down your cheeks yet, but you’re sure you look embarrassing; flushed cheeks, watery eyes, parted lips inhaling air shallowly. Logan looks concerned, which surprises you. It seems out of character for him, considering he only speaks to cuss someone out.

“You look like you need a drink,” Logan says, not a hint of humor in his face, fully meaning this seriously and earnestly. Like it could solve all of your problems.

“I can’t drink I have class,” you whimper, slightly confused.

“Not now, later, here—you got a paper? Pen?” he asks as he drops his hold on your chin, holding his hand out while he waits for you to hand him what he’s asking for.

You nod, shuffling through your bag for a notebook and pen, retrieving it and handing it to him with a sniffle. He starts scribbling something on an empty page.

“9 o’clock,” he hands you the paper, an address is written on it, “go there, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Oh, no, I can’t ask you to do that,” you declined politely.

“You’re not asking me to do anything, I’m asking you,” he corrects, a firm tone in his voice making you nervous to say no. It’s almost as if he isn’t asking, merely telling you what you’re supposed to do, but disguising it as an ask to seem less brute.

“Okay, 9 o’clock,” you conclude, nodding your head in agreement.

…

What the hell are you doing here? This is inappropriate. This breaks multiple codes of conduct. But free booze? Who are you to decline an offer like that. The outside of the establishment is like any other mountain-town, backwoods, rural dive bar. It honestly wasn’t too far from where you live either, maybe you ought to give this place a visit more often. You step out of your car and approach the front door, lit with a neon red “open” sign flickering in and out of consciousness. The door jingles and creaks when you open it, causing a few of the patrons to turn their heads towards you before promptly returning back to their drinks and games of pool. The air smells of stale cigarettes and salt, rock music droning through a busted jukebox in the corner. Straight ahead, you see the bar, lit dimly by more neon signs and faulty overhead bulbs. A familiar figure is already there, Logan’s flannel-covered back is to you, hunched over what you can assume to be a drink he’s been nursing. You approach the bar-seat next to him, pulling it out with a sharp scratch to the ground, causing Logan to turn his head in your direction. Before you can even mutter a greeting, the bartender has already intercepted your attention.

“What can I get you?” he asks, scratching at his scraggly beard, a rag draped over his thin, tattooed shoulder.

“Um, Woodford and coke?” you ask as you get comfortable on your stool. The bartender laughs at your request.

“This ain’t that kind of place, missy,” he quips, you try and look at Logan for support but he’s focused on his beer, “I got Maker’s, Jim Beam, and Jack, what’ll it be?”

“Maker’s, I guess,” you concede, watching as the bartender walks down the bar to make your drink.

��Bourbon girl, eh?” Logan remarks, adjusting in his seat to face you.

“Um, yeah, I don’t like much clear liquor,” you say, trying your best to avoid eye contact, “or, it doesn’t like me at least. Some of my worst nights started with a bottle of vodka.”

Logan laughs, catching you off guard, you laugh lightly with him. The bartender sets your drink in front of you, you thank him with a smile.

“Open or closed?” the bartender asks, but before you can even think of a response, Logan answers for you.

“Put her on mine, Jim,” Logan says.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to—“

Logan gives the bartender a stern look, and he walks away, no contest.

“Thank you,” you grin, taking a sip from your glass.

“Don’t mention it,” he waves off, the same warning in his voice as last time. There’s a beat of awkward silence. You’re not sure what to say, or why he even asked you here.

“I um—“ you pause, trying to find the right words, “I appreciate you going out of your way to try and make me feel better about earlier.”

“I didn’t go out of my way,” he corrects, turning back towards the bar, his body now parallel with yours, “this is usually where you can find me this time of day.”

“Oh, well, thanks for inviting me, I guess,” you correct your previous statement. You purse your lips, wanting to explain your behavior earlier. But you’re not sure if that’s appropriate, you feel bad that he had to take pity on you just because you got choked up from him making fun of you. “Look, I at least want to apologize for the way I acted earlier and—“

“Save it,” he interjects with a raise of his hand.

“I’m…sorry I—“ you stutter, trying yet again to apologize for your presence, causing Logan to cut you off with a wave of his hand again.

“You don’t need to keep doing that. Have your drink. Relax. I’m not pissed at you,” Logan reassures, his voice stern. You’re convinced that his voice doesn’t fluctuate from that kind of tone too often. But despite the sternness of his voice, you feel your shoulders relax. You’re holding his gaze but you don’t feel like you’re about to combust. You feel…fine. You feel just fine.

“Huh,” you mutter, a curious tinge to your voice. Relax. Have your drink. You ponder the glass for a moment, considering it. Fuck it. You raise it to your lips and chug, swallowing every burn the Maker’s leaves down your throat without a care. Logan’s brows raise at your sudden gratuitous impulse.

“Okay then,” he remarks with a grin.

A buzz floats around your head, your chest heaves from your uninterrupted drinking.

“Rick!” you call, attempting to get the attention of the bartender.

“Jim,” Logan corrects you quietly, smiling in amusement as he takes another sip of his beer.

“Jim! Can I have another?”

…

You’re four bourbon and coke’s into your evening, and you cannot recall the last time you had this much fun. You beat Logan twice at pool and watched him take fruity, girly shooters for each loss, per your request. Currently, you’re in the middle of another game, a tied score bringing out your competitive edge. Logan’s frame is bent over the pool table, lining up the perfect shot. You chew on the straw in your drink as you unabashedly ogle his ass. Damn, he looks good in those jeans. He makes his shot, the cue ball ricocheting off of the edge and barely skimming the 8 ball he was trying to get in.

“Damn it,” he grunts, turning away from the table, his chest rising and falling in frustration. You giggle in excitement, ready to take your turn.

“Jim! I’d get started on that lemon drop if I were you!” you call, your voice slurring slightly as you’re ready to claim your victory over your professor.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, bub,” Logan warns, clearly a bit more annoyed at the fact he’s losing than he’s letting on.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me, baby,” you counter, a teasing, almost sultry edge to your voice. Logan holds his eyes on you, watching as you bend over the pool table to make your shot. You close one eye, carefully trying to line up the cue ball in the direction you want to go. The ball is towards the center of the table, but you’re so sure that you can manage on your own, balancing on your tip-toes.

“Need a hand?” Logan asks, trying his best to hide his amusement at the precarious position you’ve put yourself in.

“Shh!” you snap, “I’m concentrating! 8 ball, corner pocket.” You make your shot, but your feet slip out from under you with the momentum you built. You almost crumble to the floor, but Logan’s hands catch you around your ribcage first. He lifts you onto your feet, but in your buzzed state you’re having a hard time maintaining balance.

“Easy there,” Logan drawls, keeping his hands so temptingly close to the side of your breasts. You’re jelly in his hands, letting him take hold of you in whatever way he wants. You could spin around and make out with him right here, which you honestly consider for a moment. But before you can, Logan leans his face close to your ear, his beard tickling your cheek.

“Looks like you scratched,” he whispers, his gravelly voice reverberating around your skull. Any other day, this would make you wet immediately, but the competitive monster inside of you is awoken. You shake your head in disbelief, turning your focus back to the pool table. There’s no sight of the white cue ball anywhere. You suddenly find your balance, scrambling out of Logan’s grasp to search for what pocket the ball got shot into. ‘Lo and behold, it made it into the corner pocket you were aiming for.

“Goddamnit,” you curse, stomping your foot in frustration, gripping the table with white knuckles.

“I told you not to get ahead of yourself,” Logan taunts, one hand planted on the pool table, the other on his hip. You scowl at him, trying to find a clever comeback, but your liquor soaked brain is coming up dry. The sound of your name turns your attention towards the bar.

“I got ‘yer lemon drop right here,” Jim calls, setting the sugar rimmed shooter on the edge of the bar closest to you.

“Get her a shot of Tito’s to wash that down with, will ‘ya, Jim?” Logan chimes, maintaining eye contact with you. Your jaw drops in shock at the deliberateness of his actions. The nerve.

“Are you trying to get me to be more sloppy just so you can beat me again?” you question, your eyes narrowing as you cross towards him. You stand just a few inches in front of him, squaring up to him with a challenging look in your eyes.

“I think you’re doing a good enough job at being sloppy by yourself,” he teases, eyeing you up and down. You roll your eyes as you brush past him and towards the bar to retrieve your punishment. Lemon drop in one hand, Tito’s in the other.

“Bottoms up,” you chime, maintaining eye contact with Logan as you lick the sugar off the rim of your glass, taking the shooter down with one swift gulp. You wince slightly, before humming in satisfaction, the sweetness masking the vodka just enough. You exhale in preparation for your next drink, closing your eyes and willing yourself to not think too hard about what you’re going to inevitably do to yourself. A single lemon drop is not enough to make you blackout and puke all over your house, but another shot of vodka on top of that might just put you on that track. Swallowing your hesitance, you bring the glass to your lips and choke it down in one gulp. Frowning at the way it burns your throat, sending tingles down your spine.

“Oh, wow,” you grunt, your face twisted into a pained expression. “Okay, fuck you, m’gonna win this next one.”

Logan snorts at your drunken confidence, already anticipating what might happen next.

You did not, in fact, win the next one.

Logan cockily slams a shot glass of clear liquid in front of you, causing your jaw to drop in surprise.

“Thisn’t fair,” you pout, leaning against the pool table for support.

“I choked down 2 lemon drops because of you, the least you can do is take this shot of tequila, princess,” Logan counters, offering you a slice of lime and a flimsy packet of salt.

“Bitch, this’s tequila?!” you exclaim, too drunk to even comprehend the fact that he just called you princess.

“Bottoms up,” he says teasingly, pushing the glass towards you, clearly quoting you from when you were more confident earlier. “Unless you’re feeling like chickening out on me.”

“No! I jus’ don’ wan’ get too drunk before our nex’ game,” you slur, almost tripping over yourself. Logan sighs, considering your drunken state for a moment.

“Tell you what,” he starts, “I’ll do half this shot with you if you quit your whinin’, got it?” You nod eagerly, accepting his proposal. With your confirmation, Logan takes the lime in his mouth and bites it in half, giving you part of it. You secretly wish he gave you the half that was in his mouth. He rips the salt packet open, and you watch earnestly as his tongue swipe along the back of his hand before he pores some of the salt on it. You follow suit, wetting the back of your hand with your tongue and allowing Logan to pour a bit of the salt on it. Logan goes first, licking the salt up, swallowing half the shot down, and finishing it off with a bite of the lime. You try and stifle a gag when you look at the glass of clear liquid. You sigh, closing your eyes tight as you lick the salt off the back of your hand, choke down the tequila in one gulp, hoping the squirt of lime juice in your mouth will save you. It does not. Your throat burns and you involuntarily shiver at the contact of the liquor on your tastebuds.

“I’m gonna get these back to Jim,” he gestures to the stack of glasses that’s accumulated over the course of your games, “rack ‘em up for me, princess.” Logan nods to the pool balls, indicating for you to get another game started. You oblige, leaning over the table to retrieve the balls and placing them into the plastic triangle. A gasp escapes your lips when you feel a pair of hands grasp your waist. Assuming it’s Logan, you smile, craning your neck to get a view of him. You startle when you see a complete stranger pressing up against your rear. A yelp leaves your lips as you scramble up onto the table in an attempt to get away.

“Don’t be like that, baby, I was just saying hi,” the strangers gruff voice beckons to you from where your feet are hanging off the table. You scrunch your face in disgust. He has a long, unkempt beard with yellow teeth peeking out behind it. His hairline is thin and greyed, his figure broad and heavyset. He towers over you, making your stomach churn.

“No thanks,” you say, sternly, sobering up slightly in an act of self preservation. The stranger doesn’t let up, though. Still attempting to pull you towards him by grasping at your ankles. You don’t register anything else around you. Not Logan’s shouts from the other end of the bar, you don’t see him rushing towards the stranger either. Your preservation is the only thing on your mind.

“I said no, asshole!” you shout, reeling your legs back before kicking into his chest with as much force as you can muster, your abnormal strength sending him flying all the way into the back wall 10 feet away. He crashes against the wood paneling, leaving a dent in his wake, groaning and writhing in pain on the ground. Your adrenaline dissipates, allowing the realization of what you just did to really sink in. Someone of your size should not have been able to send someone like him flying in the way you did, and the way that Logan looks at you, indicates just that.

“…You okay?” Logan asks carefully, reaching towards you, helping you down off of the pool table. You tumble off the surface, allowing Logan to fully support your weight. “You, uh, seemed to have it pretty under control there.”

“I don’ skip leg day,” you slur, feeling your mouth suddenly fill with saliva, your natural instincts of self preservation just dissipated, and you now are feeling the full brunt of every sip of alcohol you had tonight. The blood drains from your face and a wave of nausea washes over you, “Logan, I think’m gonna—“

You can’t even finish your sentence before you hurl the upset of your stomach all over the floor in front of you, Logan just barely missing the line of fire.

“Shit,” Logan hisses, trying to support you as best as he can without getting your puke all over him, “Okay, let’s get you out of here before you kick someone else through a wall.”

You’d find that funny if you weren’t painfully nauseous right now. Logan slings your arm around his neck, you’re limp around him, like a rag doll. The next few hours are a blur. You’re delirious, incapable of forming a coherent thought. You might recall Logan asking for an address, or directions. But you don’t remember what you said, or if you even said anything in response through your drunken stupor. Which leads you here, hunched over the toilet in Logan’s bathroom, as he tries to shove croutons in your face in an attempt to soak up the liquor that’s strangling your stomach. You’re half awake, ready to fall over and sleep this off. So you do just that, fall over, that is. You’re snuggled into the shag rug on his bathroom floor, reveling in its softness. Oh, this is perfect. You think to yourself, dozing off already.

“C’mon, you can’t sleep on the floor,” Logan grunts, scooping you up off of the bath mat. An incoherent whine escapes your throat at your loss of comfort. You snuggle into his chest, seeking the same comfort you were just robbed of. Your body lowers onto something soft and plush. You sigh in approval, spreading your arms across the expanse of this luxuriously soft bed. Ready to get comfortable, you groan in indignance at the stuffiness of your jeans. You ungracefully unbutton and prod them down your legs, freeing your body from the stiff discomfort of the pants. You hear a throat clear, and feel the comforter get pulled out from under you and then promptly over you, cocooning you in a soft, pillowy heaven. The soft fabric feels so nice and cool against your bare legs, clad in nothing, save for your panties. You silently thank your sober self for wearing a tank top and no bra today, allowing for optimal sleepwear.

“There’s water for you here,” Logan tells you, gently, gesturing to what you think is the nightstand, but you can’t bear to look at it.

“Don’t puke on my bed,”Logan warns. The light gets turned off and you sigh at the peaceful nature of the space. You inhale, reveling in the scent of Logan that lingers on the bed.

“Hm, bed smells like you,” you hum in satisfaction, finally feeling your sleep begin to overtake you. There’s a beat of silence that hangs in the air.

“Night, princess.”

...

A/N: hehehehehehe😈😈😈😈 I hope y'all had as much fun reading the bar scene as I had writing it. I loved writing reader letting loose a bit and not being so anxious, hopefully she stays that way but you'll have to wait and see. I'm getting oral surgery tomorrow so I'm not sure when the next update will be. click here to view on ao3.

Tags: @wolviesgirl @sanemis-piss

#logan howlett fanfiction #hugh jackman #logan howlett #logan howlett smut #wolverine fanfiction #wolverine smut #x men #wolverine #logan gets reader drunk but in a trying to get her to have fun way not a pervy way #deadpool and wolverine

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luvrodite · 3 months

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JASON X F!READER [12k]

synopsis. the end of the world comes and goes. you’re just trying to survive another day, but you don’t quite expect to become so attached to the green eyed boy who saves you. “i’m here,” he tells you, and a horrible part of you wonders, for how much longer?

warnings. zombie apocalypse in a no capes au, attempted sexual assault, body horror, gore, angst, character death, violence. (if you feel i'm missing any tags, please let me know) sfw but minors and ageless blogs please don't interact with my profile

note. for my sunnie @fic-over-cannon, who always lets me talk her ear off about my jason wips, and without whom i would never have listened to everywhere, everything by noah kahan properly and thought of this fic. you are such a sweetheart and deserve all the good things in the world. unfortunately all i can offer at this time is this fic. i love you, and i'm sorry

additional disclaimer that i am NOT american so i’m talking out of my ass and my expertise is like a six month stint in the midwest please ignore any inaccuracies i’m just a baby

read on ao3 | the playlist

The end of the world comes and goes.

There is, as with all things, blood and the destruction promised. The end sweeps through the country, burnt buildings and shattered glass that crunches further under your feet. It leaves few survivors, cares not for wealth nor poverty, health nor sickness. All succumb to its touch, and the world you know slips away from your fingertips so violently you can no longer remember what it was like, in the beginning.

The world ends, but then it doesn’t, really, it doesn’t burn when it should have. You are still here, somehow, aren’t you? (It’s only a matter of time before you aren’t. Only a matter of time before you, too, join the horde.)

You find each other in the wreckage, on the outskirts of the city you’d grown up in. The body in front of you twitches as it falls – only moments ago, inches from your throat – and green eyes assess you coldly, your own tracking his movements with your heart in your throat. Blood stains your hands, and they curl around your weapon when he lowers the barrel of his gun.

What are you even living for? All you know is gone and lost, stolen from you by a drooling maw and ever starving fingers. Blood tracks your every step, a haunting you will never be rid of. Until your last breath, you will remember it.

You stay by his side, let him offer you a hand out of the rubble and sink your teeth into the tough skin of dried meat he pulls from his pack. It’s a kindness you refuse to leave unpaid. The days turn into weeks, and he doesn’t demand you leave. You aren’t sure when this thing became a partnership. Perhaps when he’d taught you how to wield your weapon better, clumsy movements turning precise, fear hardening a once soft heart.

I’m going to find my brothers. They’re out there somewhere. Over a small fire in an abandoned department store, he tells you this, green eyes flicking over his shoulder to meet yours.

How do you know they’re...

I just do.

Oh.

You coming? Or you got people to –

No. No, I’ll help you.

A nod, then, seals it.

The end of the world brings with it a disconcerting level of silence you find it difficult to grow accustomed to. Your skin crawls at the stillness of it all, the unmoving air of abandoned homes you use as shelter. A city once unrelenting, the echoes of what once was ring in your ears as you traverse through the city. No longer does the smoke catch in your lungs, and the nights are clearer than they ever were, stars shining on a city with no one to look up to them.

You travel out of the city, eventually. The bridges had been the first to go, in the beginning – an act of damnation perceived as absolution. Better to contain it within the island, you think bitterly, to damn the desperate millions who could not seek refuge. Still, you find a way through, travelling on foot through the tunnel they forgot to destroy – filled with stationary cars that prove just as difficult to navigate around as a destroyed bridge. You come out the other side by the skin of your teeth, and the both of you continue.

Do you know where we’re going?

A sharp look, as if questioning your loyalty. Last I heard, they were in Georgia. You getting cold feet?

No.

Then come on. We’re going to lose daylight.

It’s easier, the further you travel into the country. The quiet out here makes sense to you – it had been here long before the beginning of the end, before the beginning of all things. Gotham had never known peace, you think. It was not meant for that, ever moving, ever alive. Out here, there are less of them, too. Very quickly you learn that the end of the world did not kill with it all other vices.

Despite your rationing, despite ransacking what places you can for food, it dwindles down. Maryland, now, you think – you’d passed a sign a few hours back – he’s begun to slow down. His face is pale, but he stubbornly clamps his jaw when you try to get him to eat the last bits of your food. It’s in the middle of this argument, nearing tears and trying to keep quiet, when you’re found.

The trio makes their presence known by the deliberate snap of a branch, and you stiffen, hand flying to your hatchet as you whirl around. Jason moves closer to you, until your shoulders brush.

“You folks look like you could use a good meal.” The one at the front eyes you unabashedly as he says it, eyes trailing down your figure. A prickle of unease runs down your spine, and you shuffle closer to your partner.

“Couldn’t we all?”

He lets out a little laugh, and raises his hands. “You’re trembling, darlin’. Relax, it’s just an offer.” He looks over at your companion. “Your man over there looks like he’s about to fall over.”

It feels like a gut punch, despite his grumbled “I’m fine.” because you know he isn’t. In the end, you ignore the warning in your gut, and you find yourself making camp with them for Jason’s sake. The three men share looks amongst themselves when you shuffle closer to him, but you try your hardest not to pay them any mind, pressing bits of dried meat into trembling hands and watching him until he swallows every last bit. You don’t take a bite of your own soup until they do, relaxing only in the slightest when he seems to have gained back some of his strength.

“Where are y’all headed?” the second of them asks, and his expression rankles you less, so you answer.

“Further south,” you say carefully, looking between the three of them. “And you?”

The first grins at you in a way you think is meant to be charming. “Shit, sweetheart, I’ll go wherever you do.”

You stiffen and he lets out a laugh. “’M only joking, jeez. Going west – they’ve got communities over there.”

You can barely let out a non committal hum. Beside you, Jason’s head presses into your leg, and your gaze slides over to him. In sleep, he looks younger, more like what you think he might’ve looked like before all this. Black curls rest close to his forehead, hair cut close to the scalp courtesy of the scissors you’d found in a gas station a few days ago –

All of it?

All of it. Don’t need it getting caught on something and getting us killed.

Can’t you tie it back?

What, you attached to this look? Knotted hair does it for you?

No. It’s just –

...It’s just hair, kid. C’mon, I’m getting tired.

Fine.

– The group settles into silence after that, and though your lids weigh down, you take watch. The night is quiet for the most part. You’re kept company by the whispering trees and the occasional sound of an owl. Every so often, a branch will pop in the fire, the sound making your limbs stiffen reflexively. Your eyes scan the treeline each time, vigilant. You balance your hatchet across your knees, and wait.

Eventually, black bleeds into the cool blue of dawn and Jason stirs beside you.

“Morning. You didn’t sleep?” You dart a glance over to the three sleeping bodies a few feet away and he presses his lips together in understanding. “Should’ve woke me.”

You shrug, looking away to where daylight breaks through the thick of the trees. “You needed the rest.” And before he can argue back – you can already hear the retort, and you don’t? – you stand up, passing him your axe. There’s a small knife in your shoe, and you don’t intend to go too far, you figure it’ll be fine. “Gonna powder my nose.”

He snorts at the phrasing, and you offer him a tired smile. Relieved that he seems to be in better health today, you step away from the campsite. The breath of air you take is cool in your lungs, and you stretch your arms above your head as you step over rocks and fallen branches.

Relief muddies your senses, you think. You forget to be mindful, forget that this is not just another day, not just a camping trip of sorts. As you pull your jeans up, there’s a rustle nearby and you freeze, hands on the waistband of your pants tightening in unease when someone breaks through the foliage and it isn’t Jason.

“Oh,” he says, stopping short in front of you. There’s something like surprise in his voice but it feels short of convincing you that he hadn’t meant to find you, the artificial coating of his words doing little to hide the interest in his eyes. “Guess we both had the same idea, huh?”

You wrinkle your nose, taking a step to the side. “Yeah. It’s all yours.”

His hand clamps down on your arm as you go to walk past him and you stiffen. “Whoa, what’s the rush, little lady?”

You grit your teeth, glaring at him. “Can you let go?”

He balks at the look on your face, before his own hardens, lips tugging into a sneer. “You should be a lot nicer, you know. If it weren’t for me, you and your little friend would be dead by now. How about a thank you?”

You consider spitting in his face as you grind out, “Thank you.” Still, he does not let go. “Can I go now?”

He mulls it over, before shaking his head. “Nah. You don’t sound so thankful, let’s try that again.” At the look on your face, which suggests you’d rather die, he grins. It’s a mean thing, eyes glinting as he tugs you closer. Your heart picks up at the proximity, and by your side, your fingers curl into fists. “Or, you could just pay me back proper. How about you put that mouth to use?”

You stay still, frozen as he draws nearer. The stench of his breath makes your stomach turn and suddenly you’re in motion, raising a foot to stamp down on his with all the force you can muster. It takes him by surprise and he yells. You take the advantage to wrench your arm out of his grip, pushing him as he stumbles and booking it through the greenery.

He recovers quickly, if the crashing behind you is anything to go by, bellowing threats. Your arms sting as you push through the foliage instead of carefully stepping through as you had earlier, branches scratching and snapping as you barrel in the direction of the camp. The brush of fingers against your neck makes you scream, loud and high, and you force your legs to carry you faster.

The distance to the campsite isn’t far but every step seems to stretch and time slows with the threat of leaving you disjointed, forever stuck in this moment with hands reaching for you.

You burst into the clearing and bolt to where Jason is. He’s already on his feet and he meets you halfway, standing resolutely in place when you try to push him further away – we need to LEAVE, what are you doing? He steers you behind him when your pursuer breaks through, and you grip the back of his jacket. Still, he refuses to move, an arm stretching behind him to curl towards you protectively.

Your mind seems to black out then, because when you blink, Jason’s hands are hovering over you and there’s an awful amount of blood on them.

“You hurt? Did he touch you?”

Your gaze slides over his shoulder and your stomach begins to turn when you see what’s become of the man. Blood soaks into the earth in copious amounts, another carcass to join the millions. You tremble and he turns your face back to him. His palm is sticky, and the realisation of why brings tears to your eyes. You shudder, stepping closer to him.

“You’re fine,” Jason mutters, breathing hard. He repeats it when you begin to cry in earnest, clutching fistfuls of his shirt. “You’re fine. I got you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

You learn a few things that day. The first, that he’s not hesitant about taking lives if it means yours are safe. And second, that a horrible, terrible part of you doesn’t feel remorse that he did it.

In the wake of the murder, the fallen man’s companions had fled, unwilling to meet the same fate, and Jason had let them go. You keep to yourselves after that, travelling further south and avoiding the few survivors you do come across. Guilt festers in your stomach when you sneak glimpses of weary faces run haggard, but fear weighs out when you feel the phantom brush of hands on your arm and neck.

Neither of you speak about it beyond the set of the sun that day but it brings about a shift, however miniscule it may be. He’s less willing to let you stray far from his eyesight, now. Sometimes, even with your back turned, you can feel the weight of vigilant eyes on you. But it isn’t only Jason who’s affected by the changes. You linger closer to his side, now, never beyond arm’s reach, never more than a few paces away, unwilling to risk being parted once more.

The spill of blood only brings with it more carnage. It feels rather like a curse when, in the days that follow, only havoc trails after you. Blood in the spaces beneath your nails, blood that pools and darkens in linoleum and hardwood and concrete, blood in your mouth. It clings to you, a stain you’ll never be rid of, no matter how you scrub your skin. The frigid water sticks you like a thousand pins, pinking in the dying light of the day, and still you scrub.

The end of the world doesn’t harden you like you think it’s supposed to. You think maybe if you were idealistic, it would be a kindness, to retain your softness. But it has no place here, meant for a life long gone. For all the precautions you take, the weapons you wield and hide on your person, you still feel like vulnerable prey, the soft belly of your heart exposed. You flinch, you freeze, you–

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

He says it quietly, standing at the mouth of the river, behind you. Red lingers in the corner of your vision – his flannel, darkened. You ignore him.

You’ve stripped down to your underclothes and waded in until the water reached the top of your thighs. Your name falls off his lips, and your own press together tightly. Your jaw aches with the weight of all you try to hold back, and it’s only when fingers curl around your elbow gently do you let it out.

The boy pulls you out of the river with all the care of coaxing a wild animal, uncaring of the water that bleeds through his pants. The skies overhead grow darker, the air steadily cooling around the both of you, and yet you remain in place, staring at the place where his hand meets your skin.

There is no trace of what happened, nothing to suggest anything had occurred. Old scars fleck the back of his hands, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his shirt, but his hands are clean. You stare at the lines of him, the bitten nails, the tendons that flex. Hands that had, only hours earlier, killed for you.

“You’re going to get sick if you stay like this,” he says finally, and you let out a breath.

“I can’t wear those,” you whisper and he tips his head.

“There are clothes inside. They’ll probably fit.”

“Okay.”

He tilts his head, and you fall into step with him. His hand drops until it circles your wrist, and you let him pull you forward. There is only silence as you walk through the wood, save for the snap of leaves and sticks beneath your feet, clumsily pushed into your boots. You can feel the water clinging to your underwear, and you can feel the autumn air cutting you deep.

(You can hear the sound, still, of splitting flesh.)

You return to your camp for the night, stumbling up the rotting porch and entering the cabin. Unseeing eyes trail over the living room, browns and flaking paint quickly disappearing out of sight behind a wall as you’re pulled into the next room.

“Here.”

The Henley thrust into your hands is felted over. You look up and you’ve entered what looks like the main bedroom – perhaps the only one, you think.

Time stands still in here, the air stale and near everything left untouched. The bed remains made, dust lining the window, pale light filtering in through discoloured glass. Perhaps once, you might’ve felt the discomfort of standing in a place that was not yours. Once, your skin might have crawled at the clothing in your hands, the absence of their owner a clear signal of their fate. Now, it’s all you can do to tug the rest of your clothing off and pull it on. A pair of pants are passed to you next, a size too big and settling low on your hips.

Your wet tank top remains slung over the rail of the bed frame, and you watch the water drip out, pooling on the floor. There’s the rustle of clothes behind you, and you wait until he moves back into your line of vision to look up.

In the darkening room, the boy in front of you looks older than he is. The shadows beneath his eyes smudge deeper, the hollow of his cheeks carved. You wonder what you must look like to him, half crazed and yet entirely subdued. Your breaths mingle in the air between your mouths, and you feel, not for the first time, the years you’ve lost and those forced upon you in the last months.

“Good?”

It takes you a moment to register what he’s talking about. His eyes flick down to the clothes on your body, and you nod jerkily. He seems dissatisfied at your answer, turning to rifle through the closet. When he turns back around, it’s with a jacket in his hands that he pulls around your shoulders.

It’s thick, lined with fleece that settles comfortably against your sides. It’s a wonder it hasn’t been ruined and immediately you try to shrug it off. It would fit him better – but he refuses to let you, fingers tightening on the lapels and keeping it tight around you until you settle.

“Going to freeze otherwise,” he mutters.

“What about you?” you ask dully and he shrugs.

“I run warm.” But already, even in the dim light, you can see the pink in his face. The thick sweater he’s stolen out of the closet does little to combat the chill of the water, and you push past him to rummage blindly through it until your fingers come into contact with something soft. The coat you pull out is fraying at the sleeves, loose threads tickling the skin of your wrist, but you push it against his chest anyway. You don’t move until he pulls it on, letting out a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding.

“Better get some rest,” he tells you, tilting his chin in the direction of the bed and you nod, only to pause when he goes to turn. Your hand flies out so suddenly you have no time to feel ashamed, only fear at the thought of being left alone.

“Where are you going?”

He blinks. “I’ll take the couch. I’ll hear it if – if something tries to get in.”

“Stay here.” The words are out before you can rein them in, and you aren’t sure you want to, anyway. The bedroom is small, wide enough to fit a dresser, closet and a bed, but it looms outwards threateningly at the suggestion of only housing one occupant. As if on cue, a branch slams against the windowpane and you jerk, fingers tightening on his sleeve. He looks back and forth between the window and the door, and sighs.

When you go to bed an hour later, it’s after he pushes the couch against the front door and moves your things to the bedroom. The bags lay at the foot of his makeshift bed, spare bedding laid down on the floor beside the bed in a mess of blankets. It hardly looks comfortable, but he’s silent as he takes his place amongst them, lying flat on his back. You peer over the edge of the bed to confirm he’s still there. In the dark, it’s difficult to make out his features, but the sight of his body reassures you, the sounds of his breathing guiding you beneath the covers until you’re staring up into the blankness of the ceiling.

“You still awake?” It’s him who breaks the silence a while later, voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Mm. You?”

“Yeah.” A beat, and then he says, “You know it’s not – it isn’t your fault, right?”

Your mind flashes back to the mauve blossoms you’d spotted on his stomach when he’d undressed – the only evidence of your morning.

“I almost got you killed,” you tell him, feeling dread burn in your gut. You see it once more, the horror etched in his features, the thud of a body against his, a drooling maw and rotted limbs outstretched. Your hatchet sinking into a softened skull. “You don’t need to coddle me.”

He lets out a breath. “I’m not.”

“You are. We got lucky.”

“You’re the reason I’m not -” he breaks off, letting out a shaky sigh. It’s the only thing that betrays his fear and your heart squeezes painfully in your chest. “I owe you.”

“You don’t.” Your voice comes out harsh, and you fist the sheets under your fingers, suddenly burning despite the chill in the room. “Don’t say that to me. If you’d died, it would’ve been on my hands. I nearly killed you. Don’t tell me that.”

Your voice rings in the air between you, harsh, before he exhales once more.

“If that’s what you want.” Weary, he settles back into the quiet.

Your eyes burn the longer the silence stretches on, and your throat is uncomfortably thick as you force out the words, “I can’t do it again.”

“I know,” he whispers.

“I’m selfish,” your voice wobbles, but you grit your teeth. Salt tracks a trail down the sides of your face, bleeding into the fabric under your head. “I just can’t. I can’t do it alone. Not again.”

“I’m here,” he tells you, and a horrible part of you wonders, for how much longer?

Outside, the world is still and you’ve never hated silence so much, never longed more for the shriek of a car alarm and drunken arguing. Gotham lies in ruin now, motionless and hundreds of miles behind you. It only seems to grow quieter the further you travel into the country, nought but grassland and the whispers of wind to be heard.

Your hand finds his in the space between you, and it’s only then that sleep finds you.

Autumn storms sweep through the county over the next few days when you leave the cabin, driving you to take up shelter in the loft of an empty barn. Water streams in through a gap in the boards with each burst of wind, whistling echoing in the caverned space. The two of you huddle in the corner, tucked close amongst bales of dried straw and a ratty, threadbare blanket you’d found hanging over one of the stalls. Grey clouds form overhead, thick and visible from the skylights above, and you watch through a window as the grass whips back and forth violently, the entire world awash.

Jason pores over the map you’d snagged, eyes squinting in the dim light to make out the lines. It’s torn in a few places, and an entire section of Eastern Gotham and the surrounding states has bled into an unintelligible mess of ink. He looks up when you shuffle away from the window back to his side.

“If we take this route, it should get us to Georgia quicker,” he tells you, pointing a finger along the line. “We’re gonna need to find a car, though. It’ll make it easier.”

“It’ll be noisy,” you murmur, pressing your cheek into your shoulder and he lets out a breath.

“Yeah. It’s that or we keep walking. We don’t have any other options.”

Water drips in through the ceiling, and you sigh. There’s a thread of steel woven tightly into his voice, desperation that reminds you just why you’re making this journey.

“What were – what are they like?” you ask quietly, pulling your legs close and resting your chin against them. His clothes rustle as he shifts against the wall.

“Annoying,” he tells you, but there’s affection in it, voice teetering on the cusp of grief-stricken. “Before, I couldn’t get a moment of peace without one of them interrupting it, showin’ up at my place and demanding to stay ‘cause they didn’t wanna go home.”

“You didn’t live with them?”

He shakes his head, and something in his eyes shutters, a story you’re not privy to hidden in their tourmaline depths. “Moved out. The two younger ones lived with my old man. My, uh, older brother, lived in Bludhaven, but you wouldn’t even know it, always hanging around mine or my old man’s.”

“I think that’s sweet,” you murmur, and he snorts.

“You would. You’d like him, probably.”

You tilt your head to hide your smile. “We’ll see, I guess.”

He sounds more plaintive than you think he means to when he says, “Yeah.”

Rain slams against the roof, the storm no closer to clearing, and he clears his throat.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“What was it like, y’know, before?” He sounds hesitant, as if the question might hurt somehow. And you suppose it does, in a way, when you think of all that came before, of all that can never be. It will never be as it once was. You hum.

“I don’t know,” you tell him. “I was in college, and then I wasn’t. I thought it was gonna be like that forever, you know, finals and midterms and the break in it all when we went out, even though we had to be up the next morning.”

“You go out a lot?” he asks, curious and you shrug.

“I liked dancing,” you hum, and once more you can feel the heat of a packed room, the floaty feeling of a few drinks and the press of fingertips into your palms, sweet smiles and longing. You let out a laugh, bitter and mournful. “I always said I was too tired and then somehow ended up walking home at 2.”

“Sounds like you had a good time, at least,” he says, and you catch a hint of envy in his voice.

“Did you not -?”

He lifts a shoulder, hunching forward. “Things got in the way of normal for a long time. By the time it started to settle, I got in a few years before..” He gestures vaguely around you. You nod,

“We’ll find your brothers soon,” you murmur, shoulder pressed against his. Your hand finds his atop the straw, and he doesn’t move away.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, tiredly. His temple knocks against yours gently and the two of you sit like that, with his head on your shoulder until the storm passes through.

You think that maybe fortune must be smiling down on you when you find a truck a few miles out from the farm and it lives long enough to carry you to the interstate, where Jason is able to siphon gas from the lineup of abandoned motor vehicles. There’s a moment when you think it might go south, your heart gripping painfully in your chest when a herd passes through just as he gets back into the truck and you have to press down into the footwell of your seat to keep from being spotted. Your fingernails leave dents in the back of Jason’s hand, stretched across the console in danger of being seen to hold onto him. He squeezes yours back intently, green eyes meeting yours from where he’s managed to fold himself beneath the wheel. A finger comes up to his mouth, and you incline your head in the barest of movements.

They pass through, eventually and you find yourself glad for the grime that muddies the windows, making it hard for already decaying eyes to catch sight of a pale arm reaching out to comfort you. You hate that he’s kind, a little. He waits until you’ve caught your breath, letting you hold his hand and press your forehead to the seat until the tremors die down before the two of you shift carefully back into your seats and pull away – mercifully, in the opposite direction of the herd.

You drive for a day and a half, switching every so often and pushing the truck into the cover of the trees when you decide to rest. Dawn comes once more, and the terrible dream continues to prove it is anything but a fiction. There is cruelty in the enduring stillness of the world around you, and you think your heart breaks for the thousandth time when, as you pass a faded billboard sign, you begin to recognise the buildings around you.

Your hand flies to the console, pushing you up from the passenger seat to take a better look out of the windows. Beside you, Jason makes a noise of concern.

“You okay?”

You blink, looking over your shoulder at him before you’re pulled back to the passing playground and a familiar set of swing tires.

“I know where we are,” you tell him, hating the way his eyes soften sympathetically before the words are even out of your mouth to explain. “I used to spend my summers here – look, there.”

He follows the line of your finger to a row of houses, and you have to press your lips together at the wave of nostalgia that washes over you.

You think about a different time, a neighbourhood washed in gold and the roughness of bark beneath your palms. The ghost of a seven year old girl in overalls stares at you as you drive past the corner store, and you remember skinned knees, bare feet on asphalt and the stickiness of ice cream dripping down your wrist. You think of the two boys that had lived three houses down, always arguing, always dragging you to the arcade with them and insisting you play the games with them. You think of barbecues and the smell of charred meat, running around under the spray of a hose and squealing when the older kids jumped into the community pool.

Madison is now broken fences and stains you don’t dare to look at too closely, abandoned tricycles and boarded windows. It’s eerie as you drive through the bones of the suburbs you’d spent your youth in. Not for the first time, grief takes your heart in its hands and squeezes.

You turn your face away from your companion when the tears start, trying to discreetly raise your hand to swipe them away. It’s unfair, that the months have done little to soften the edge of your hurt, that even in the fear you find moments to mourn. Time passes, and your scars remain as fresh as the day the city fell, wounds open for anyone to see.

Jason, though, you never catch his grief, hidden except when the light tilts just so, when he turns and you catch a glimpse of it, like a star winking before it’s gone. You envy it, that he’s able to carry himself – that he’s able to carry you, too.

Sometimes, you wonder if it wouldn’t be better if he’d left you, that first day.

Almost intuitively, his voice draws you from your thoughts, the murmur of your name on his lips as he brushes against your elbow. You blink, and water splashes against your cheeks.

“Pass me the map,” he says, tactful enough not to mention the drying tears on your face when you turn to him. He lifts his chin towards the bag at your feet. “Should be in the front pocket.”

“It’s not there,” you mumble, after rifling around and coming up with nothing. Rooting around the spare t-shirts you’d bundled after a stop at a small boutique – 3 walkers, easy enough to take out except for the one, split second when you’d fumbled with your axe – and the ripening pears you’d salvaged from the farm had brought up nothing, and Jason clicks his tongue when you tell him as much.

“It is,” he insists, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to flick in your direction. “I put it there this morning before we left.”

You frown at him, impatient as you begin to unpack the bag again. “I’m telling you, it isn’t here. Is it in the other one?”

He takes the empty rucksack from you, placing it in his lap and rummaging through it with one hand. You don’t wait for him to realise he’s wrong, twisting in your seat to reach for the other bag in the backseat. Your body blocks the gap above the centre console, and you squeal when Jason swerves a little, your hand flying to grip the headrest of his seat. His hand leaves the bag to snag onto the back of your shirt, the material twisting in his fingers. The metal bars are cool beneath your fingers, and strands of his hair tickle your palms.

“Watch it!” you tell him reproachfully, unzipping the bag as best as you can with one hand. The material proves hard but it eventually gives way, and you grin when the glossy paper of the map comes into view. “Found it, I told you it wasn’t in there.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he grumbles, looking away when you settle back into your seat.

That evening, when you make camp, you park the truck and head further into the forest. 15 minutes of walking leads you to a lake, and you grin when you come to a stop near the water, turning excitedly to Jason.

He doesn’t return the enthusiasm, eyes tracking for movement on all sides, but you see the satisfaction in his face when he sets his pack down on the edges of the lake.

“You go wash up first,” he offers, nodding his head. You’re too pleased to argue. His face warms a little, and he turns away. “I’ll keep watch.”

The stones are smooth and rounded, here, and you bite back a swear at the chill when you step in after shucking most of your clothes. It occurs to you, when you wade in about knee deep, that maybe you ought to be a little more concerned about undressing in front of him, but when you glance over your shoulder, Jason’s face is directed firmly away from you. He remains alert, poised to act at any moment, and you let out a little breath, assured in the set of his shoulders.

The water is, mercifully, not too cold. You get used to it after a few seconds, scrubbing your skin as quickly as you can.

“Don’t take too long,” he reminds you, calling over his shoulder but keeping his voice fairly low. “Don’t need you getting sick.”

“I won’t,” you mutter, but you end up lingering a little longer than you ought to, soaking your worn muscles. When you get out the sun has begun its descent in the sky and you quickly pat yourself dry with a spare rag. You take advantage of the afternoon sun to warm yourself on a larger rock as you take up your post, now your turn to keep watch as your companion washes himself off.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” you tense immediately, turning your head in a panic only to find him clutching the sodden material of his shirt. He lifts his eyes to you, and shakes his head. You realise, delayed, that he hasn’t got a shirt on, standing only in his boxers, and you look away, feeling your face warm.

“Can you pass me -”

“Yeah, sorry, got it,” you mumble quickly, leaning for his bag. An undershirt and flannel are retrieved quickly and passed to him with your eyes decisively fixed on the treeline, passing the items behind you until you feel the brush of his fingertips as he takes them from you.

You try not to think about the water pooling in the divots in his skin, or the drops falling from his hair, ink black and curling.

“You sure this water’s safe?” he grumbles, after a while, climbing up onto the rock beside you. The sun is steadily setting, and you need to make camp, but you sit, watching the shadows stretch over the lakeside, orange glowing through the leaves. “I’m not gonna contract a flesh eating disease, or something, right?”

You huff, foot pressing out to kick gently at his ankle. “We swam here all the time, back then. Relax.”

He lets out a little laugh, and you look away when it turns something in your stomach over. It’s a pleasant sound, though one you’ve rarely heard – there isn’t much cause for joy, these days, after all. You turn the sound over in your mind, wondering if this is what it might’ve been like, to be friends in another world. You sneak a look at him through your lashes, and the feeling travels up to sit beneath your ribs, stretching soft like toffee, sticking to all it touches, too sweet a feeling for a world like this one. He leans back on his palms, face relaxed. You could almost pretend, here, that nothing exists beyond the treeline.

“I’m trusting you,” he says lightly, knocking your shoulders.

“I wouldn’t lie to you like that,” you say, and it comes out like a confession. His eyes meet yours, and all that you don’t say, all that you don’t even dare to think, too out of reach and impossible to grasp between your fingertips, lies between you. Jason nods.

“Yeah, I know.”

The cicadas have begun to sing, and he keeps his gaze on you a moment longer before he pushes himself up, holding out a hand.

“C’mon. Gotta make camp, unless you want to freeze tonight.”

You take his hand, pulling yourself to your feet. He squeezes it once, before your hands fall away.

The fire he builds that night is small, stones piled high to surround the flame and keep it from drawing any unwanted attention. You watch him squat, arranging the rocks from your place on a log, leaning closer to the pit and holding your hands out.

“Can I ask a question?”

He hums.

“How do you..” you furrow your brows. “Most people don’t know how to do all this stuff. Were you like, some doomsday nut, or?”

His eyebrows fly into his hairline, a surprised laugh falling from his lips as he turns to you.

“A doomsday nut?” he repeats, amused, and you nudge him with a foot, attempting to unbalance him. Frustratingly, he only grips your ankle to still it. “Come on, tell me.”

He presses his lips to stifle a smile, shaking his head. “My old man was the doomsday nut, not me.”

You incline your head forward. “Really?”

Jason snorts. He pokes at the fire a little, before sighing. “No. I mean, kind of. He was really disciplined about all that self defence shit and being self sufficient. We used to go camping, and he’d make a game of it, a survival exercise, or something. Mostly we were just goofing around, but I guess it was interesting, and I picked up a few things.”

He looks over at you, hesitating, before he elaborates. “He and I, uh, we fell out when I got older. We mended it after a bit, but it wasn’t the same, you know. It’s all gone to shit now, but if I have one thing to remember him by, this is a damn good one, I guess.”

His thumb strokes an arc across your ankle, before he lets it go, turning back to the fire.

“Did..” you trail off, unsure, and he shakes his head.

“Kicked the bucket a few years before all of this.” He stands up, only to deposit himself by your side. “Left a fucking mess behind him, but I’m glad. That it was then, before..”

“I’m sorry,” you murmur.

“It’s not your fault.”

You hum. “I know. I’m still sorry.”

You press closer, resting your cheek against his shoulder. His arm comes around you, after a beat of surprised silence in which you worry you’ve overstepped, and he leans against you. The flames flicker and burn, the cicadas sing and Jason does not move.

When you wake the next morning he’s lying on his side and both your hands rest in the space between you, fingers curled and knuckles pressed against each other.

It feels like the flicker of something new. Something is forged in the earth where your hands lie, weaving your palms together, an invisible thread that ties you. His eyes flutter open a few moments after yours, and in the early light of the morning, you know you aren’t the only one who recognises it.

But there is a bigger sky over your heads, one that presses the urgency of your journey, one that has no time to address the curling in your gut or the gentleness of his fingers as they brush dirt from your jaw.

Time, time, time. You return to the truck wishing for more of it, for more spaces in between.

The road is bumpier when you return to it, and you follow the map in silence, navigating carefully around the rare lone walker.

Georgia comes faster, then, and you feel the stirrings of fear as the distance to where you’re headed, noted on faded boards, grows smaller and smaller. Jason grows tenser, too, answers short and distracted. The possibility hangs heavy in the air – of what might await you. His fingers curl into fists, and he presses his knuckles to his mouth as you drive past the first sign –

Welcome to Georgia! The Peach State.

You don’t dare to speak when he tells you to pull over, climbing into the passenger seat wordlessly. He drives slowly, and your nails dig into the fabric of your jeans when the car slows down and he mutters to you,

“We’ll walk it from here. We know where the car is, if–” he stops short, and reaches over the console to grab his pack from the backseat. You nod, biting your cheek and he looks over at you in confirmation, pausing only when he catches your obvious apprehension.

He takes a breath, and extends a hand.

“You trust me?” he asks, and you nod.

“I do.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” he presses, intent, and you nod.

“I’ve got your back, too,” you whisper, and he leans forward to knock your forehead against his.

“Let’s go.”

There is a part of you that knows you will not return to the truck – that leaving will forever alter the course of your journey. Safety is not something you can guarantee, but intuitively, you know this: the moment you close the car door, you seal your fate. This knowledge is something you know, yet are blind to, unwilling to face it, unwilling to shirk your post at his back, unwilling to abandon him now. You are at a crossroads. He will not stay a moment longer from his brothers, and you –

You will not leave his side.

In the end, of course, you follow.

You are tethered, caught in his orbit and unwilling to let go – he is loath to let you, but you know he would. You’ve seen the hesitance in his eyes, the silent debate of whether he should have brought you into this, if you’d be better off without him. If you asked him to let you go, you think he would.

You follow him, eyes alert and shoulders tense. The path to the bunker is a difficult one, overturned branches and muddied with fallen leaves. Once, twice, a few times, you cut down the walkers that stray into your path. The sound of a splitting skull makes your stomach turn every time, and you bite your tongue hard enough to draw blood, in an effort to keep from screaming when you strike.

Each time, Jason pauses to inspect their rotted faces, and you wait in apprehensive silence. Stranger. Stranger. Stranger. With each that proves to keep the chance of his brothers being alive, his face grows harder, fingers twisting around his machete.

Dread creeps up on you as the sun begins its descent in the sky, and you draw upon the outer perimeter of the place he’d detailed to you in the car.

He told me – gave me the directions to a bunker. It’s pretty deep in the woods, but he said it was secure. They’ve got some sort of system in place, so it doesn’t go down easy.

You begin to see what sort of system exactly it is, wooden spikes boring up from the ground to act as a fence. Already, a few remain impaled, their gurgling making you flinch as you pass by. A pair of heavy metal doors act as the only entrance, and you watch Jason come to a stop in front of them, hands trembling by his side.

He takes a breath.

You grip your axe.

He bangs on the door.

There is a split second, right before the door opens and a gun presses to his head, where Jason looks over at you. The face that peers through is not, judging from the mistrust on the man’s face, his brother. A large scar runs down the side of his face, red hair dry and thinning. He’s much older than the both of you – and stockier. In a fight, you don’t know that the both of you could overpower him.

“I’m looking for Grayson,” Jason spits, unrepentant and unmoving in the face of the metal digging into his forehead. Your throat closes over and you find it difficult to breathe when a cloudy eye trails over his shoulder to fix on you. “She’s with me. And he’s expecting me.”

You anticipate the words before he delivers them. You see it in the way his face eases ever so slightly, as if he’s established you aren’t a threat, though his grip on the gun doesn’t waver. You see it in the pikes propped up beyond the fence, small boards attached with writing you can’t make out – you know it in the drop of your gut, though, the loss of balance as the world seems to swim before you. You know what those are, and you know the words before he says them.

“Grayson ain’t here, kid.”

Jason stiffens, and you taste blood. The walkers nearby gurgle louder, likely catching the scent of your bitten tongue, your grief palpable in the air.

“What the fuck do you mean,” Jason says lowly, and you want to reach for him, but you’re too aware of how anything could change in a split second. “He told me he was here – how the fuck do you think I found this place, huh?”

“Jason,” you whisper and the red haired man cuts you a sharp look.

“Grayson,” he bites out, clearly agitated. “Drake. Wayne. ‘S who you’re here for, ain’t it?”

Each name he drops makes the hair on the back of your neck raise, and you look at Jason – the eerie stillness on his face, not a muscle moving. He’s barely breathing.

“Only me left, man,” he breathes out, weary. Overhead, the trees blot out the sun, so thick it feels as though night has already fallen.

“Are they dead, is that what you’re saying?”

He looks at you then, at the devastation on your face, the grief of another life lost etched into your heart, and he sighs, opening his mouth to answer but before he can, he’s cut off.

“I don’t believe you,” Jason says defiantly, chancing a look over his shoulder at you and back to the man. “You’re lying – there’s something you’re not telling us, look at him.”

And you trust him with your life, he’s kept you safe thus far, so you do look. There’s a nervous twitch of his eye as he begins to protest, and you note the sweat beginning to bead at his hairline, despite the cool evening air.

“Is that true?” you ask, voice trembling. He pales and there’s a moment when you think he might just come clean but it comes too late. Jason, fed up, shoves him, dislodging the gun from his grip and spinning it around to face the other man. You gasp, but it’s already over in a matter of seconds, the tables turned before you can blink.

“Only you, you said,” he breathes out heavily, expression hardening. He lifts the gun to point over his shoulder. “You try anything and unlike you, I won’t hesitate. I’m here for Grayson and you’re going to fucking take me to him.”

Red grits his teeth. “Fine.” He mumbles something under his breath that you strain your ears to catch as you draw closer. “Don’t...warned you, though.”

The bunker is dark as he leads you down a large stretch, your flashlights pointing straight into the black to avoid tripping. You’re aware of your obvious disadvantage – though you might outnumber him, he knows this place far more intimately – and it makes you wary as you step through. When the hallway finally opens out, it’s into a wider, caverned space, and you descend a set of stairs into a small atrium of sorts. There is no sign of any other occupants – nothing scattered across the large tables joined together to meet in the middle, chairs left firmly pushed in.

Your gut curls as he leads you through the bunker, and you draw closer to Jason. His hand reaches out to brush against yours briefly, before withdrawing. Once more, you reach a set of stairs and begin the ascent. Another exit, you note.

Twilight outside slips through when he opens the door and with it, the scent of something immeasurably wrong. You go to clutch the hem of Jason’s shirt, panic spiking in your veins, but he’s just out of reach, already stepping through. Against your will, you are tugged forward, as if a marionette on strings. The smell reaches you before you’re even out the door, and you retch when your eyes fall on what he’s brought you to.

Red is breathing hard, glancing between the both of you, unaware of just how precariously his life hangs in the balance now.

Looking at what he’s brought you before, you can’t find any pity for him.

Jason makes a strangled noise, and your own face is warm, the slide of tears dripping into the earth beneath you. Once more, you find a spiked fence, once more you find bodies speared. All strangers to you. To Jason –

There are echoes of a handsome face in the rotted visage of a nearby undead. Milky eyes stare hungrily when he draws closer, clamoured breaths fogging in the air in front of him, anguished. Red remains forgotten, attention stolen by the groans of what had once been most loved. Jason’s knees give out before him, and he falls forward into the muck, prostrate in grief.

Flanking his sides, two younger bodies – both who receive the same reception. He doesn’t have to say a word. Grayson. Drake. Wayne. The youngest, no older than 16, bears the worst injuries compared to his counterparts. Grief rolls in through you, and overhead there is a distant rumble of thunder.

You turn, the contents of your empty stomach splattering into the mud at your feet.

The acidity makes your eyes water and when you stand, wiping your mouth, you look to Jason. A new feeling grows within you, the longer you stare at him, a burning in your gut that simmers at the look on his face – too late, too late. One, two, three, all gone, before he could reach them. Worse still, his failure stands before him, a taunt of all that he had done, all that had not been enough.

Red is blurry when you turn your gaze to him, but it doesn’t soften the loathing that floods your being. He stands a few feet away, fidgeting, unsure what to make of this.

“You kept them,” you breathe out and he furrows his brows.

“Huh?”

You tilt your head in the direction of the pikes. There’s a throbbing in your head, and you’re distinctly aware of your hands growing numb. “They were your companions – and you couldn’t even put them to rest. You just left them like this, and for what? To protect yourself?”

Confusion bleeds into irritation. He isn’t forgiving of your tone, contempt in your every syllable.

“Don’t you fucking look at me like that,” he growls. “You don’t get to judge me – I’m doing what I gotta do to make it out here. Everything’s gone to hell and you wanna judge me? No fucking way, lady.”

“Fuck that,” you shoot back, shaking your head. A suppressed sob threatens to rise when you step forward to the pike, and he grows alarmed.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Putting them to rest,” you snap, and he lurches forward. He doesn’t get very far, Jason rising from the ground in silence and slamming him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle. He stumbles back, swearing.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” he warns, voice hoarse. Red-rimmed eyes seek yours out and you nod reassuringly.

“I’m okay.” You turn to Red, eyeing him disdainfully. “You can either help me get them down or go back inside, but I’m not leaving them like this.”

He chooses the latter, after some moments of silence, retreating through the doors mumbling under his breath and leaving the two of you alone with his brothers. A light mist has begun to roll in, and it clings to your hair and lashes as you move towards Jason.

He folds into you when you reach him and you stagger to support his weight, a hand resting on the back of his head as he takes a shuddering breath. His face hides in your neck, hands gripping your jacket tightly. You let out a soft sob, clutching him.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, lips pressed against his head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Fuck,” he gasps, struggling to draw a breath. “Should’ve...’f I’d just fucking stayed...”

“It isn’t your fault,” you plead, but it rings hollowly between you, a feeble consolation that even now does little to free you of your own guilt.

He weeps and the mist turns to a gentle pour, rainwater streaming over your heads and muddying the ground at your feet further. You hold him like that, trembling frames clinging to each other in your shared grief. A second passes, and then another, until you’re unsure how long you’ve remained there. Long enough to grow roots, certainly. It’s difficult to move when you smooth a hand over his rain slicked head, to urge him forward.

“Come on,” you murmur thickly. “We have to do right by them.”

His face seizes again painfully, and you fear he might collapse once more. His grief holds him whole as he moves forward, and you flank him as he steps forward.

The youngest goes first, an apology on his lips as he presses the barrel of the rifle against Damian’s forehead. The silencer keeps the shot from ringing out, and his snarling face falls slack in mere seconds, slumping forward. You hold the rifle as he’s lifted; cradled in Jason’s arms, how young he truly was weighs on you, and you turn your face into your shoulder to muffle a cry. Jason places him gently on the ground, and turns back to you. Tim is next, and laid next to Damian. Jason lingers by his side, a hand cradling his head, and you feel, not for the first time, like a stranger bearing witness to something sacred, like you’ve stumbled across something not meant for your eyes.

All that’s left of their family are the two eldest, now, and Jason stands before the being that had once been his older brother. Dick Grayson leans forward, drooling and he doesn’t flinch, despite the rotted fingernails stretching out only inches from his face. One step forward, and he too would join them. You wonder if he isn’t half considering it, staring up at him.

“I’m sorry. Dick, I’m sorry, you hear me?” His voice trembles as he hefts the rifle. “You stupid bastard. I told you I was coming. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

There’s a current of betrayal in his words, hurt and grieving. In the dark, it’s hard to make out the expression on his face, but you can hear the hitch in his breath, the strangled sob he tries to bite back at the groan his brother lets out.

“B’s gonna – he’s gonna kick your ass, you know.” He’s gasping the words out, trembling violently and you’re helpless to do anything about it, rooted to the spot. Would that you could carry his burden for him – but it’s his to bear. “You better – fucking give it back. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

The last of his line, an orphan again – you hear Jason shed bitter tears as he shifts his older brother, laying his body beside the others.

He rises, sniffing loudly. The rain has stilled, but the temperature is unforgiving on your dampened skin, you fear the two of you might fall sick if you stay out here any longer. Still, it feels wrong to leave them here.

“Go inside,” Jason instructs, his voice rough. “Gonna get sick, standing around like this.”

“I’m not leaving you,” you refuse. “I’ve got your back. Come on.”

You find a shovel amongst a pile of tools, just outside the door. Within the circle, unwilling to venture beyond the safety of the fence, you dig. The muck makes it difficult, and your arms strain as you sift through the earth. The two of you take turns, and by the time your plot is dug, you’re covered in filth.

Only one grave is dug – “Keep them together,” Jason mumbles tightly and you nod. In your arms, his youngest brother is light. You kneel, lowering him into the ground with a whispered apology of your own. It will never reach the ears it was meant for, but you repeat yourself, and then once more, when the third body is laid down. You make a vow of your own, too, to these three, whose brother might have reached them in time had you been a little faster – had he not been slowed down by you.

I’m sorry, you apologise, thrice over. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of him in your stead.

You climb up, standing beside Jason as the wind begins to howl, a wordless service to the fallen. Bitter, guilty and grieving, the two of you pack the earth over their bodies. Buried, you hope they’re at rest – and hope they’ll forgive you.

It’s only in the late hours of the night that the two of you return through the doors. Red startles awake where he’d been sitting in the atrium when you shuffle in, tracking in mud and grime with you. Bloodshot eyes scrutinise you before he tilts his head. “Shower’s through there. Should be a clean towel in there.”

You tip your head tiredly, and Jason nudges you in the direction of the bathroom. You’re dead on your feet, and more than once you stumble, muscles aching and mind foggy. The cold has begun to set in, and your fingers feel numb from the hours outside.

Jason locks the bathroom door after he steps in with you, scrubbing wearily at his face. He lifts his chin, a silent request for you to go first. You don’t have any time to protest before he drops to sit against the closed toilet lid, eyes closing firmly.

Stiffly, you peel off your mud-stained clothes, stepping into the small stream of water. The warmth takes you by surprise, and Jason lifts his head at the noise you make, finding your gaze in the thin cloud of steam that’s begun to amass in the air.

You okay?

You offer him a nod, and he lowers his head once more.

Neither of you speak, when you leave the bathroom later, about the sniffles you’d been unable to mask under the thin spray of water or the red that rims Jason’s eyes. The only other inhabitant of the bunker has long since retreated to one of the bunks and you curl up in a different room, listening to the tremulous breaths across the room. In the dark, Jason lies in the bunk closest to the door, a chair wedged against the door – just in case.

It’s difficult to sleep, despite the events of the last day. Exhaustion weighs your limbs down, and though you’d scrubbed down every inch of dirt, the grave clings to you still. Beneath closed eyelids you can still see the twist of their faces, of Jason’s when denial had made way for grief, stubborn disbelief swept away by a tidal wave when he’d met milky eyes.

Tears once more. You press your fingertips to your face, shucking the duvet higher up to muffle your breathing.

He hears it anyway. There’s a warmth at your back that you don’t startle at, only shuffling closer to the wall and making room as he slips under the covers with you. Perhaps it’s for your comfort, but you don’t doubt that he seeks it, if only partly, for himself, too. His forehead presses to the back of your head, and arm sliding beneath your neck. You clasp the hand that finds a home over your stomach, turning your head to press your mouth against the skin of his forearm.

Words conjure in your mind and fall short, a static-y mess of jumbled letters. There is nothing to offer him in place of the loss he’s suffered today. Your hands remain empty. Would that you could turn back time. All that could have been taunts you in the darkness beneath your lids.

When you turn to press your face into his neck, settling your weight firmly in his arms, it feels like both a plea and a measly tribute. What is a stranger in the place of three brothers?

When dawn breaks, you are deep beneath the earth. Sunlight does not reach through the walls of the bunker, and so you are disoriented when you wake. It is as dark as when you’d closed your eyes, but you’ve shifted in your sleep, and your bed is missing a body.

Panic seizes you first, and you sit up straight, ripping the covers off. You’re halfway out of bed when you trip over the rucksacks, and the fall startles you enough into realising you aren’t in danger. Much, anyway, you reason when you slink out of the room and find Red in the hallway. He raises a brow at you, and you press your lips tightly together, unwilling to interact with him any more than you have to.

“Your man’s down the end of the hall,” he tells you gruffly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. You hum indifferently, waiting for him to leave before you start in the direction of the room.

You’re led to another bedroom, larger, with more cots pushed into it. Jason stands in the centre of it, holding a shirt in his hands that you don’t recognise from the contents of his bag. He turns over his shoulder at the sound of your footsteps, relaxing when he realises it isn’t Red.

“Hi,” you whisper, lingering at the threshold. The air is still in the room, and you’re hesitant to disturb it. A twitch of his mouth is your answer, a tilt of his head that coaxes you closer.

There’s a scribble of initials on the tag, D.G scrawled over the care instructions. Your fingers curl into a fist at your side, and you turn away, ashamed. It’s hard not to bear this guilt. It lingers with you, clogging your throat at the sight of the few possessions that clutter the room. You don’t have to draw closer to know whose room this had been.

“We’re leaving. I’m not staying here,” Jason says finally, and you turn to look at him. He clutches the shirt in his hand, fingers curling in the blue fabric.

What else is there to say? You go where he does.

“Okay,” you tell him, and only when his shoulders loosen do you realise they’d been tense in the first place, as though he had expected resistance, fearing your denial. “Should I go get our things?”

He shakes his head. “Too late to go anywhere now. We slept through the day.”

How are you up, you wonder, staring at him. How can you continue, how can you move on? But you see it, in the lines of his face, the fragility of his facade. There’s a haunting in his eyes, emerald turned viridian, and his hands tremble in front of him. Barely kept together, there’s a silent plea.

Don’t press. Not now. Now is not the time to break. There will be time to mourn your loss later.

So you don’t ask. You don’t press. You lead him out of that room, away from the ghosts, away from the pencil shavings left undisturbed and a sketchbook that never got to be filled. Another day passes, the first in a world without his brothers. He sleeps in your bed again, and your fingers intertwine in the dark. He presses his cheek against your pillow, and you remain awake until his breathing evens out.

Dawn breaks and you leave with a handful of things shoved into your packs. You don’t tell Red, nor do you care to wake him when you leave.

“Where will we go?” you ask Jason, when you break out of the woods. His face seizes painfully at the reminder that there is nothing to reach now, nobody waiting on the other end to make it worth the pain.

“Anywhere, I guess,” he croaks. He glances over his shoulder doubtfully. “You still with me?”

“I made a promise, didn’t I?” It’s far from what you want to say. But you think he understands, and there’s a hint of gratitude in the crease of his eyes – the time is not now, but not never.

That selfish hope tides you over, tightens your grip on his hand as you step out into the wasteland.

For a long time, the two of you drift. Unmoored, adrift with nowhere to go, you struggle. Days bleed into night, dusk into dawn, rinse and repeat. If you could ever find such a thing, you come closest to finding respite in the thick of the woods. Winter draws closer, closer, and you make your camp where you can find it, hollowed husks of dead trees, cordoning off the area with noise makers before you fall into fitful sleep on a bed of dead, dry leaves.

It’s difficult, grappling with the loss. There are no more moments in between – every breath spent covering as much ground as you can before nightfall and taking turns keeping watch. The cold cuts you deep out here, a knife that whittles you down to the bone. Selfish, you long for the cabin, longing for the stillness, for once. Ever in motion, you don’t linger in one place for too long. The woods are thick and you don’t intend to see winter through here.

Jason curls himself even tighter around you now. His body canvasses yours, nose pressed firm into your neck when you sleep. In the early mornings you wake in a vice grip and it becomes impossible to disentangle yourself from him without resorting to waking him, too. Always with a start, thrust violently into consciousness, he opens his eyes, alert. He seeks you out, first, before scanning your surroundings. Only when he’s satisfied there isn’t an active threat does he loosen his grip on you, following to keep guard as you relieve yourself.

He remains closer to your side than ever now, but he couldn’t feel further away.

There is a lifelessness in his eyes that only sparks when you chance upon walkers. Bloodshed sparks his adrenaline, and he takes a long time to come down, breathing heavily and eyes alight with a fire you haven’t seen since then.

Blood, always blood. You track it through the country, soles red. It cakes in your hair and darkens your clothes. This time around, there is no cabin, no wardrobe to replace your clothes. The fleece in your jacket is matted now, Jason’s shredded his further.

You still with me? Jason asks you one night, when the two of you have curled close to a small fire. Chest at your back, all you can see of him is the white of his fingers, scarred digits curled against your own.

Still here. (Still yours, you think.)

And that is the end of it. You don’t bother with reassurances, not when his palm presses over your heart – he feels it for himself, a vow intact. The cords threading you together are silken, unbowing. As he shadows you, so do you follow in his stead, treading the path after him unthinkingly.

It makes sense, that the end comes soon, once more.

It’s been a long year, and you’re weary. Down to the bone, you feel it, the heaviness of being. Of continuing, fighting against the grain to survive another day. You’re living on borrowed time and now, more than ever, it becomes apparent to you that it’s begun to run out. Perhaps the clock had started on that first day of it all, when the bridges had fallen. Or had it been when you’d found each other in the destroyed remains of your home city? You think it had been when you’d closed in on Georgia.

Death catches up to you. It had always been in the periphery of your lives, drawing closer with every staggered step, every brush of rotting breath, every encounter that got too close. Now, it drifts in, unbidden.

Bodies litter the forest ground, muddied, rotting. The clearing looks out on a cloudy sky, thick grey hanging low, the promise of a storm.

You and Jason fall last, staggering into the centre of the clearing. The wounds are deep this time, too deep. Copper, and the scent of petrichor. A thick mist that rolls in, a sheath for your bodies, a funeral shroud for a ceremony you won’t see. Side by side, you stare at the sky.

“I’m...” Heavy, gasping breaths. You use the last of your strength to turn your head. Fading green eyes find yours. “I’m...sorry.”

Your own burn with tears, and you brush your fingers against his. “Not your fault.”

Bloody lips press against your own, bitter against your tongue. Hand in yours, Jason goes first. His movements slacken, and then, it is only you. Time, more time. If you’d only had more of it. In the next life, perhaps. Jason goes first and, as you had promised, you follow.

The end of the world comes and goes and then you, too, join the horde.

fin.

i started this during finals season when all i could think about was the horror and tragedy of loving someone doomed to die.

'Do you still believe myths can save you? Foolish creature. Let me be clear: every version of this story ends with you being slaughtered' << this exactly.

anyway this was inspired by everywhere, everything by noah kahan but also, sort of: bones and all, the walking dead, ethel cain and the midwestern gothic ? maybe i'm misusing that term but i mean specifically location wise. the eeriness of how quiet the world would be after its end, how disconcerting it would be when all you knew was Gotham, too, never resting, always in motion. the end comes and you're driven out from a city you longed to leave, but now all you want is to go home.

at so many points throughout writing this, i wanted to keep jason (and reader) alive, even though i knew he was going to die well before i even started writing this. i struggled a lot with sticking to that decision, but i feel like in a lot of my writing i give them happier endings and i wanted to try something newer for a change. i don't think i'm as well versed in this sort of genre, i mostly write light-hearted romance. but i also think there is something beautiful in tragic romances that i don't explore enough. so here is my attempt at this.

anyway. this only makes sense 2 me, probably. i still hope you enjoyed reading it though

#jay my heart #jasonsmirrorball #jason todd reader insert #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #jason todd fanfiction #x reader #x fem!reader

190 notes · View notes

chaostroberry1 · 3 months

Note

I need a part 2 of Beelzebub x Arché! Reader. What if the gods held a court meeting to see the potential danger of the reader and Odin's goals. When Odin wants to evade the assumptions of the people in the congregation (or even to the point of telling the reader to kill everyone there), the reader instead says that he does not want to destroy the people of gods or humans because he plans to marry Beelzebub.

Or showing how he REALLY loves Beelzebub by fuckin him shamelessly infront of them all.

Tyy pookie!! ^⁠_⁠^

Bro I love this😭 primordial god reader is mad interesting.

Beelzebub × Dom!male!primordial god!reader

....

All eyes were on you, as you as you feasted on food, ignoring everyone's prying eyes. Man, food has really became tastier huh? It's been so long since you've eaten like this. Beelzebub just sat there uncomfortably, glancing at you a few times before returning his eyes down.

Everyone was suspicious of Odin, if anything bad was included in his plans that could potentially lead to the destruction of the gods, everyone knew they had to stop him.

Odin was obviously aware that there were too many of the strongest gods there, capable of ganging up on his ass. But, he knew that none of them combined, could leave a single scratch on you. But look at you over there, moronic and stupidly eating food without a care about giving respect. Hey, to your defense, you were alive before zues, and possible as old as the other primordials.

it should be THEM to pay their respects to you. But it was a little difficult to believe that you were older, looking at how young you acted. like a matured/(not really) matured young adult who probably eats pizza slices for dinner.

"Hey, old man. Are you sure you ain't up to anything suspicious? Things don't seem very 'normal' to me." Shiva spoke, two of his arms on his head while having his other two arms crossed. Odin closed his eyes, starting to get irritated, wanting to avoid anyone's assumptions and suspicions of his plans.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"then what about the guy sitting in this room right now? Doesn't seem to me like he's anyone you'd just walk by." Loki teasingly joked, knowing he'd get on the old man's nerves. "I agree, seeing a primordial god...isn't something you'd just see out of the blue" Thor spoke, everyone gathering their assumptions and ideas for the so called "all-realm-altering god".

Finally, Odin's last nerve popped, before he slowly spoke. "(M/n), if you want to prove to them that you are really so powerful, why don't you just kill everyone here?"

Everyone's eyes popped open, immediately turning their heads to you, who stopped chewing, your eyes slowly darting up to meet their gazes.

"No."

"what do you mean 'no'? You don't plan on killing all the gods and ruling over all realms?"

"Its not that I can't. I'm simply uninterested." With one more chew, you continued "I plan to marry Beelzebub." And with that statement, everyone was speechless. Zues chuckling while Loki grinned, "my my, I didn't know that even an all powerful deity would be interested in such.. matters~"

"ooh! Ooh! I have a question! How strong are primordial gods? Can we fight? Please please please??" A hyper, dog like god spoke. His name was...Anubis? Right, that's his name. He's quite energetic, you only chuckled and shook your head. "No, not right now. Once I settle in, I'll give you a good fight, okay buddy?" He whimpered sadly at your response, sitting down with a huge frown.

Then, you suddenly got serious as you looked back to the others.

"now, speaking of our marriage. If any of you try to interfere with my plans, it will end in bloodshed. Every single one of you will have their heads displayed on a shelf. Do not test me."

That statement was enough to make everyone feel dread. They knew that no matter how strong or respected they were, they can not lay anything on you. You were far more than just powerful. An unmeasured type of power that many seeked to have, but could never get.

Your hands trailed onto Beelzebub's face, giving him a heated kiss, and a beast like grin. His pretty face was a huge turn on.

you felt lust grow when you eyed Beelzebub, before standing up and bending him over. Everyone's mouth dropped when you started brutally fucking him at an intense speed, as he just took it, whining and crying for you. His legs spread wide open, his hole already very agape, which was proof of your cock inside of him a little while ago before the meeting.

"still so wide and pretty for me..."

Everyone present just decided to leave, knowing that they couldn't utter a word in your presence. Beelzebubs moans the only thing that could be heard in the room while you put him in multiple positions.

Odin sighed, deciding that he'd just have to talk to you some other time. For now, everyone should just leave you to the poor god, who was bended over and now covered in kisses and hickies. Your wife, male wife, as you'd like to call it.

When I tell you all of Valhalla shook from the force and speed of your pounding, I mean it.

You couldn't wait for the marriage, you'd fuck him in front of everyone after you'd seal your kiss, and that was a mental note you made sure to remember. You wer gonna show everyone who your territory was. And how they couldn't do a thing about it. Man, he'd look so pretty in a wedding dress.

You couldn't wait.

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readyforevolution · 2 months

Text

To: Vice-President Kamala Harris

I appreciate the unity of Africans in America regarding all matters pertaining to African Liberation.

In addition, I applaud your rise as the first African woman in America, to the top spot on the Democratic Ticket for the Office of President of the United States. However, many of us need to know your positions on important issues before we can support your candidacy. Why? Because intelligent Africans in America do not vote for a candidate because of the color of their skin or the shape of their skin. Intelligent Africans in America vote for a candidate because their positions are in alignment with the values/interests of Africans in America and the betterment of Africans in America and Africans Abroad. As Zora Neale Hurston stated, “all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.”

Before you can earn our vote, Vice-President Harris for the Office of President, we need to know your positions regarding several issues so that we can validate that your positions are in alignment with the values/interests of Africans in America and Africans Abroad.

In regard to the Liberation Struggle of Africans in America, what do you plan to do in your Administration to bring into existence the freedom, justice, and equality of African people in these yet to be United States?

In regard to the U.S. Supreme Court, what is your plan for restoring justice in the decision making process of this far right leaning court in light of the corrupt justices sitting on the court and their recent unjust decisions? Will you seek to expand the court? Or, reduce the time served on the court by the justices?

The wealth gap between White People in America and Africans in America was $121,000 in 1963; favoring White People. The wealth gap between White People in America and Africans in America is $161,000 in 2023; favoring White People. From an economic perspective, Africans in America are doing worse today than we were doing in the 1960’s. What is your economic plan to reduce the wealth gap between Whites and Africans in America?

In regard to the continent of Africa, do you support the continued exploitation of countries in Africa for their resources which has been promoted by the West? If not, what do you plan to do to remediate the suffering of Africans and end their oppression by the West?

In regard to the disastrous policy of Genocide promoted by Joe Biden in Gaza which left a destructive legacy as bloody as they come, what will be your policy regarding the immoral, illegal, and unjust state of israel and the implementation of justice for the State of Palestine?

We look forward to your responses to these issues as you seek to earn our votes.

Arinzechukwu Ture

#blacktumblr #black history #black liberation #african history #kamala harris

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moonlightazriel · 3 months

Text

Chapter 20: Home /// Azriel X F!Reader

Summary: Azriel and Y/N finally reunite.

Word Count: 3,9K

Warnings: None for this part.

Notes: This chapter was a little bit hard to write cuz it's always difficult to say goodbye to a fic, I can't believe this is the last one. Thank you for all of your support in this, love you all.

Main Masterlist

Worlds Apart Masterlist

The sweet aroma of coffee filled her senses, luring her forward until she pushed the wooden door open. A simple kitchen welcomed her, with white cupboards and a marble countertop, near the stove, a female with blonde hair stood there, humming lowly some old lullaby, she poured the boiling water over the coffee powder and two mugs waited to be used by the side.

“Sit down, it’s almost done.” She said and Y/N did as told, the old chair scraping against the floor, as she pulled it near the crackling fire, the heart of the old cabin, warming the entire space, making her feel cosy as she waited.

She reached for the fire, heating her numb hands, the snow fell outside, the snowflakes softly getting rustled in the air. She sighed with relief, rubbing her palms together, she needed it, that light, that heat.

“You always loved the fire, drawn to it like a little moth, seeking its warmth.” Asterin said, placing the mug in front of her, she took it, nodding her head in appreciation, hearing as the older witch pulled her chair near her as she sipped on the perfect coffee, feeling her chest boil with heat.

“The fire reminds me of you, you’ve always been the torch in the middle of the darkness.” Asterin chuckled and she basked in that sound, letting it fill the void in her heart, turning to the side, her sister looked like she always did, with a soft glow around her. Suddenly her face turned into a frown and she lifted her hand, wiping the tears that fell down her cheeks.

“Why do you cry?” She inquired and Y/N lowered her head, not daring to look into those eyes.

“Because I never got to say goodbye.” She mumbled and Asterin lifted her chin with a long finger.

“But I never left, did I? I was with you, right here.” She pointed to her own heart. “I'm alive in your memories, in your love for me, in the people we helped, in everything we left behind.”

“But this won't ever be enough, nothing is enough to ease the pain your absence brings me every waking moment.” Her voice was low, filled with hurt as she poured her heart out to her sister, she was never able to do that before. “Nothing is worth living for if you're not here.”

“You found the only exception, the one that made all that pain, all the sacrifice you ever made worth it, the one worth enduring everything for his love.” She pointed out and Y/N sobbed harder.

“And what for? To never see him again, no matter how much I keep fighting, I always lose in the end.”

“You didn't have to come back…” Y/N snorted.

“I had to, because that's what is expected of me, I have a role to fulfil. I have to be like you.” She sounded so tired.

“It pains me to hear this, that they did the same thing to you. I left the love of my life, the life I wanted behind because I was too blind to see past other people's expectations, a warrior, a weapon, destruction, death, war. It makes me sad that you made the same mistake, no one wants you to be me, you don't have to, you're your own person and if anything, you shouldn't be like me, you shouldn't give up on the love you deserve so much, the happiness you would have by his side.”

“It's too late for me now.” She quietly lowered her head again.

“It is not, you still have time, don't let your inner demons control you, what happened was meant to happen, you couldn't have stopped any of us, we made that choice and it isn't your fault.”

“I FAILED YOU, I SHOULD'VE PROTECTED YOU THE SAME WAY YOU PROTECTED ME.” she shouted, her voice echoing on the walls of the cabin.

“You never failed me, not when you chose me as your family, not when you brought my daughter here, giving her the dignity and love I couldn't, not when you followed me to war, choosing a better world, not when you ended up almost dead fighting for what was right, I couldn't be more proud of you than I am.”

Her words hurt, old wounds open up ,bleeding profusely, causing so much pain that she didn't know if she could take it, why did it have to be like this? She sipped on the forgotten coffee, trying to focus on something else to calm herself down.

“I had to die to finally live the love I always craved, I had to be buried in the ground to finally be free to be with my family. Please, don't convince yourself that you have to do this as well. You found something truly unique, don't let that go to waste, don't miss your chance. Not again.” Asterin begged.

“And what if I already lost it?” Asterin grabbed her hand, pulling It to her chest, and she could feel the beating heart against her palm, she didn't know how this was possible.

“The gods work in mysterious ways and love always finds a way, it's not over yet.” She raised an eyebrow curiously.

“What do you mean?” She inquired.

“Trust your heart, allow it to guide you back to what is yours, back to him.” Asterin advised and she nodded her head. “We don't have much time left, please never forget that I love you.”

“Fuck, I miss you so much.” She leaned against Asterin's shoulder.

“One day we'll be together again,but that day is not now Please, tell Manon that we're proud of her, just as much as we're proud of you.” Asterin said, getting up, Y/N followed her, the older witch wrapped her arms around her and she sniffled the sweet scent of Asterin, the comfort she desperately sought, finally making itself known.

“I love you.” She whispered.

“Me too, with all my heart.” Asterin replied, departing the hug and walking outside, where a male with a baby in his arms waited for her and eleven fierce warriors waved at Y/N. Her heart squeezed at the sight, waving back and yelling at them that she missed her friends.

She gasped when she woke, wiping the waterfall of tears that fell down her cheeks, she rested her hand on her chest, feeling her beating heart. She was alive, and she was going to live like she wanted, if her chance was really coming back to her, she would grab it with her claws and teeth and never let him go again.

Later that morning, she met a worried Fenrys, who definitely noticed how her face seemed lighter, like the darkness that clouded her life was finally dissipating, he had blinked three times to which she blinked one time, enough to appease him. He had come to her, hugging her and asking if she was ready to go to Orynth, for the ball in two days.

She had nodded, getting her backpack and helping him up Meraxes’ back, riding her dear wyvern with the rest of Queen Manon's caravan towards Terrasen, where the pull on her chest urged her to.

⋆˙⟡☾𖤓☽ ⟡˙⋆

“How long are you guys locking us in?” Nesta bumped her metal plate against the iron bars, their weapons being taken away from them when the tall warrior had “gently” escorted them to the cell they were currently locked in.

“I’m sorry for keeping you guys locked, we're waiting for our queen to decide how to deal with this situation.” The kind female spoke as she emerged from the shadows, her hair braided away from her face, her brown eyes scanned their figures up and down, each one of them kept in different cells, so they wouldn’t try to do anything.

“Is she coming?” Elain asked and the female, Elide, turned to her, smiling gracefully.

“She’ll join us this afternoon, I’m here to offer you all a bath and a fresh pair of clothes if you want it.” She offered and Elain was the first to raise her hand.

“Please, I feel disgusting.” Elide nodded and went to her cell, freeing her and taking Elain with her. By the door, the tall male watched them with a sneer, escorting the small female back to where they came from.

It took two days since they arrived, in a place called Perranth, for them to be captured, it was too late when they realised that winged people weren’t that common there and everyone was staring at them as they walked in the city, leading to their later imprisonment, by the hands of the Lord of Perranth himself, Lord Lorcan.

They were being kept in a dungeon, understanding why they were there but pissed anyway for allowing themselves to be taken by these people. One hour and a half later they were all clean and in fresh clothes, stuffing their mouths with delicious food and wine, being accompanied by Elide and her mate.

“This tastes delicious, my lady. Thank you.” Lucien bowed his head towards the lady of the house and Elide smiled at him.

“When is your queen arriving?” Azriel tried again, to which Lorcan replied.

“My queen will arrive whenever she deems fit, be grateful that we’re allowing you to join us.” Elide felt her cheeks getting hot at his tone and rested a warm hand around his arm.

“You hear that, Buzzard? He called me his queen.” A blonde female said as she entered the room, hands on her hips as she eyed the Lord and made kissing noises to him, to which he just rolled his eyes.

Behind her, another tall fae slowly walked, white hair and a tattoo on the side of his face, he was beautiful, in a way that they would think of him as a god, but prettier than him, was how he looked at her, like she was the only female that walked on this earth, his eyes shining with pride and undeniably love, he kept a respectful distance but they knew he would give his life to protect her if he had to. Nesta sniffled the air, mates, just like Elide and Lorcan.

“He’s finally warming up to you, Fireheart.” The male gave Lorcan’s shoulder a tight squeeze prompting him to groan. Elide was already up, greeting the female with a hug.

“Please join us, are you hungry, Aelin?” She pulled a chair for Aelin. “We have chocolate cake.” The female looked at Elide, her blue eyes sparkling with anxiety and she nodded her head.

“You know how to win me over.” She pinched Elide’s cheek and the smaller female signalled for the maid to bring the dessert, their plates getting taken away. She turned to them, her eyes locking with Nesta’s, but she didn’t lower her head. “You must be our guests for the day, I’m Aelin Ashryver Withethorn Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen.” It was purely out of fear of losing their necks that they bowed to her. “That's Rowan, King of Terrasen.”

“What brings you all here? We have never seen anyone like you.” Rowan pointed towards the two illyrians, their wings scraping against the floor in those normal chairs. Aelin kept looking at them.

“We’re looking for someone.” Lucien took the lead, trying to appear friendly. Aelin smiled.

“She promised we wouldn’t have to worry about any of you because you had no interest in our world, yet, here you are, in my Kingdom.” She pointed her fork at them, before dipping it in the chocolate frosting.

“We have no ill intentions, we just want my mate back.” Azriel said and they all looked at him surprised.

“She didn’t mention a mate.” Rowan pointed out and Azriel felt his heart shatter a bit, was she embarrassed of being his mate? Why wouldn’t she say anything about him if she talked about them?

“It’s what a good ruler would do, protect their people from any harm, we understand.” Cassian said, giving them a smile to which Elide returned.

“Well, after everything she went through, I guess she wanted to keep this pain to herself.” Aelin concluded. “We apologise for keeping you all as prisoners but you must understand that we’ve been through many things and we can’t let our guards down.”

“You all came here, without knowing how it would be, to see Y/N?” Elide asked and Azriel nodded.

“I would go to Hell for her. Elain saw her, and I couldn’t bear being away from her, knowing she needs me.” His shadows moved faster at the mention of her.

“I’m sure she will appreciate seeing you all there.” Aelin spoke, taking the last bite of cake towards her mouth. She got up and Gestured towards them and towards the door. “I’m hosting a ball in Orynth in two days, you are my special guests, Y/N is a dear friend of mine and I want her to be happy, let’s go.”

“We would like to have our things back.” Nesta said as she got up. Lorcan ordered a male to grab their things and soon they were ready to leave, following the Queen and her King in horseback towards Orynth, where Azriel would finally see her again.

⋆˙⟡☾𖤓☽ ⟡˙⋆

Y/N smoothed the fabric of her deep green dress, with a flowy skirt, a crossed neckline, a golden corset hugging her frame and long sleeves, she looked beautiful, feeling the winds on her skin. Behind her back, Godslayer looked like an adornment complimenting her figure, but she still had to escort her queen, and she would be prepared.

“Ready to go?” Fenrys asked from the door, his suit was a different shade of green, all matching the Terrasen official colour palette. She nodded, checking herself once more, before accepting his extended hand.

They walked with the other witches, Manon and Aelin had asked him to stay with her so she wouldn’t be left alone, they were still worried about her after the failed attempt. She hated being babysitted but she understood their reasoning, deciding not to argue against them, knowing it was a lost battle.

The ballroom was filled to the brim with people, she spotted Aelin at the throne, Lysandra by her side as the two giggled about something, and crossing the ocean of people, King Dorian Havilliard made his way towards Manon, bowing to her before placing a kiss to he back of her hand, whisking her away to the dancefloor.

“We knew this would happen, let’s just grab something to drink, you don’t have to be her guard all night.” Fenrys whispered in her ear, guiding her with a hand on her back, towards the food filled table.

Y/N sipped on the fizzy drink he offered her, a weird sensation of being watched as she did so, her eyes scanned the crowd, spotting in the middle of the dance floor, a couple dancing, huge wings poking from in between the people as he spun her in the air, her hair cascading down her back in a straight line, fierce blue eyes meeting hers in a millisecond. She could only be imagining things, there was no way those were Cassian and Nesta, not here at least.

Through the night, she kept glancing at the couple that looked like them so much, she also spotted a male with his long red hair in a ponytail, hand in hand with a female with flowers on her hair, and here and there she decided that she indeed was going insane, her friends wouldn’t ever cross the border for her, they weren’t there and she would never see them again.

“Hey, let’s go somewhere more private? This is starting to bore me.” Fenrys spoke against the shell of her ear, and she nodded.

He escorted them through the empty halls of the castle, stopping in front of a door, pushing it open and urging her inside, telling her to wait for him while he fetched something for them to drink. Fenrys closed the door rather quickly, leaving her alone in the darkness. A cold breeze danced on her skin, she swore it was shadows dancing against her, creating goosebumps whenever they touched her.

And as a light appeared, illuminating the room, she saw Azriel sitting on a chair, her knees almost faltering as she drank him in, hair falling to his forehead in loose curls, a suit matching her dress, his wings standing proudly behind him. She couldn’t control herself, afraid this was some sort of sick joke her brain was pulling in her, she jumped in his lap.

Feeling him underneath her fingertips, looking at him so closely, feeling his warmth and his scent, it all told her that it was real and he was there for her, the chance Asterin promised in a dream, right in front of her now. She glued her lips to his, kissing him with all the longing she felt in those months apart, her chest almost bursting open with all the emotions coming from the bond, humming with life after being reunited with her mate.

“You came.” She breathed as they departed, resting her forehead against his, her eyes closed, just feeling him there.

“I promised to respect your decision, but I couldn't live without you. You have to come back to our home.” He cupped her cheek. “I’ll build you a cabin with the garden and the books you dreamed about, I’ll learn how to take care of sheeps so Meraxes will always have fresh food, I’ll make all of your dreams happen, I’m yours for you to use whoever you please.”

She leaned in again, kissing him repeatedly, her heart beating so loudly that she knew it reverberated throughout the whole room. She traced his features, exactly like she remembered him to be.

“I love you, words are never going to be enough to express how much I waited for you, for the love of my life. I want to marry you, call you my husband, have our children running around and driving us insane. I want to grow old with you, spend every single moment of my life by your side until the gods decide that it is enough.” Azriel and her were crying now, while they smiled at each other.

“I’ll give you the greatest wedding ever, I’ll climb Ramiel and yell to the world to hear that you’re mine, and I’m yours, until The Mother decides that it is enough.” Someone knocked on the door and he rolled his eyes. “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal Elain, Lucien, Nesta and Cassian at the other side, squeezing themselves in and pulling her to greet her. She passed from hug to hug, talk to talk, hearing how they all went against Rhysand’s orders and jumped to Erilea to get them back, without realising, she was crying harder at that sight.

“I can’t believe you all came for me.” She sobbed.

“You’re family, we don’t leave family behind.” Cassian said, pulling them all for a hug. “Are you ready to go home?”

“More than ever.” She assured them.

“But don’t think that you’re leaving without saying goodbye.” Manon said from the door, behind her all of her friends waited for her. “Asterin would be really proud of you.” Manon pulled her for a hug.

“She is, and she’s proud of you too, all of them are, they wanted you to know that.” She whispered into her queen’s ear and Manon felt her heart squeeze at her words, she could just hope that her Thirteen were proud of her, after all, all that Manon did was for them.

“Promise you will visit.” Lysandra said, embracing her.

“I will, we can always find a way to forge a second key.” She winked, embracing all of her friends. Aedion, Dorian, Lorcan, Elide, Rowan and then Aelin.

“If you change your mind, we’re all here waiting for you, but remember, you deserve to be happy, never forget that.” She cried on Aelin's shoulder and they all smiled at her.

“Don’t ever forget me.” Fenrys said, approaching her after she let Aelin go.

“How could I ever forget you? You saved me.” She looked at him, blinking four times, to which he replied, blinking four times too. “I love you Fenrys, thank you for being my friend.” The male hugged her again.

“I’ll miss you, but please, be happy. I love you.” She nodded, promising that she would.

That night, after she said goodbye to all of them, they walked the group outside the walls of Orynth, giving her one last chance of looking at the Thirteen, her eyes remaining on Asterin’s figure a little while longer. She would make Asterin proud by living her life as she pleased, being happy and giving a chance to live the love she wanted so much.

She waved them goodbye, Nesta opened the gate, the slit in the sky. Meraxes roared loudly, being the first one to cross, followed by Elain and Lucien, then Cassian and Nesta, and finally, after looking for the land she called home for a century, she grabbed Azriel’s hand a little bit tighter as the crossed towards Prythian again, falling in between the world until they landed on top of Ramiel.

“You should rest, we have Valkyrie training tomorrow morning.” Nesta warned, being carried by Cassian towards what she could only presume was Velaris.

“And we have gardening lessons at noon.” Elain winked, disappearing with Lucien as he winnowed away, leaving her and Azriel alone.

“I’m glad to have you back.” He said, the winds roaring around them.

“I’m glad to be back.” She replied, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him again.

“I agree with the girls, we should head home and rest.” Azriel spoke, urging her towards Meraxes, watching as she climbed the wyvern’s leg, using his wings to get on top, strapping himself behind her, resting his head on top of her shoulder. “We have a wedding to plan.”

“A wedding?” She gasped, using the reins to make Meraxes fly.

“Yes, a big wedding, big enough to accommodate you friends, I’m sure Aelin would be pissed if she missed it, she was eager to help Nesta with the plan to get us back together, I’m sure those two will find a way to make a new key just so they can talk about books.” He laughed.

“Bringing them here?” The winds whipped her hair around.

“We may have made a deal of friendship, visiting each other’s world whenever we want, just because you chose me, doesn’t mean you have to stay away from them.”

“You didn’t have to.” She whispered, her words being carried with the wind.

“I know it would make you sad not to see them, and I want to make sure that you don’t have sad days anymore, just happiness.” He kissed her neck and she blushed.

“No more sad days then. I love you Azriel.”

“And I love you much more than you can even imagine.” She smiled at him, love filling the cracks in her heart, finally making her a whole person again, to never be broken and damaged again, she would never be like she was before, she would never feel small or afraid in her life. After all, her name was Y/N Blackbeak and she would not be afraid.

⋆˙⟡☾𖤓☽ ⟡˙⋆

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#shadowsinger #azriel #night court #azriel x reader #azriel x y/n #moonlightazriel #velaris #azriel shadowsinger #acotar #sarahjmaas #worlds apart fic #azriel x oc #azriel acotar

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cirilla-fiona-riannon · 2 months

Text

Galileo Galilei Main Story

Translations may not always capture the exact nuances or tone of the original text. Expect grammatical errors and inaccuracies.

Spoilers ahead. Not proofread.

His eyelids slowly opened, revealing his amethyst eyes.

His gaze wandered for a while, then he tilted his head and looked at me.

Galileo: "You..."

Mitsuki: "You've regained consciousness! Thank goodness, I'm so glad."

Tears flowed endlessly, wetting Galileo's fingers resting on my cheek.

He moved his fingers awkwardly to try to wipe my tears.

Galileo: "You've been by my side all this time?"

I nodded repeatedly, and he lowered his eyes.

Galileo: "I had a dream."

Mitsuki: "A dream?"

Galileo: "A very happy dream. I was with my family and friends."

Galileo: "But for some reason, I felt like I was forgetting something."

Galileo: "Then your voice woke me up."

(My voice?)

He looked at me again and gently narrowed his eyes.

Then,

Galileo: "Thank you, Mitsuki."

His smile was endlessly kind, without a hint of any shadow or doubt.

After regaining his composure, he sat up and looked outside the window, squinting against the light.

Galileo: "The progenitor within me has vanished, hasn't it?"

Mitsuki: "Yes, thanks to you risking your life."

Drake's knife had even obliterated the progenitor's soul.

Galileo himself was severely weakened and had been in a coma until now.

(It's going to be okay now, right?)

Mitsuki: "It'll take some time for your body to recover, but I'm sure you'll be back to your old self soon."

Galileo: "No, my body probably won't last long."

(What?)

His words made my mind go blank.

Galileo: "I know myself better than anyone. This body is no longer the same as it used to be."

Galileo: "The body that was seized by the progenitor and corrupted by miasma likely won't return to its original state. It will probably decay soon."

(That can't be.)

Galileo: "It might be a punishment for the foolish dhampir who desired the destruction of this world."

He looked at his own hand and spoke with extreme calmness.

He seemed to have accepted his fate.

Mitsuki: "You don't know that yet."

Galileo: "........"

Mitsuki: "It's too early to give up! I don't want to give up on your life."

All I could do was speak hopeful words without any basis, and my voice trembled.

He sighed softly.

Galileo: "You were like that back then too."

Mitsuki: "Back then?"

Galileo: "When my body was taken over by the progenitor."

------------Flashback-----------

Mitsuki: "No matter how powerless I am, even if I have to face the world alone, I will protect him!"

---------Flashback Ends--------

Galileo: "You didn't give up and kept calling out to me."

(He remembered.)

Galileo: "The me that should have disappeared back then was moved by your voice, and now I'm alive."

I could sense that he was trying to face me sincerely.

Galileo: "You always shake me with your straightforward words and eyes seeking the truth."

Galileo: "I was frustrated with you for that. Moreover, I blamed you for my own past powerlessness."

Galileo: "I was probably afraid that you would see through the truth I was avoiding."

The truth he had been averting his eyes from was surely the powerlessness that tormented him, and perhaps his former self that purely wished for peace.

(He had to discard those unnecessary feelings to rush towards destruction.)

Galileo: "But you were not powerless."

His voice held a faint strength.

Galileo: "Unlike me, who despaired in my powerlessness and clung to strength to end everything, you continued to reach out to people, and you even saved me."

Galileo: "Even when you fell into sadness, you didn't give up and found a star called hope. That's the real you."

His gentle smile made my heart flutter.

(That's how he saw me.)

All the various events that had happened between us flashed through my mind.

There were many painful and sad moments, but it felt like all of them were connected to this moment.

(To understand you and come to this understanding.)

As my emotions welled up, I took his cold hand and placed a paper crane I had found in a drawer on it.

Galileo: "This is..."

Galileo: "You found it."

Mitsuki: "Yes. I became who I am now thanks to you."

(Because you saved my life and taught me the courage to help others.)

Mitsuki: "Galileo, please let me say this again."

Mitsuki: "I love you."

Galileo: "........."

Mitsuki: "I know I've hurt your heart many times, and I'm not asking you to feel the same way, but please allow me to stay by your side."

The wind whispered through the trees outside the window, enhancing our silence.

He eventually spoke up.

Galileo: "I don't know how long my body will last, so I might just waste your time."

Galileo: "Even so, do you still choose to stay by my side?"

His eyes, reflecting his heart, wavered slightly as he asked.

Mitsuki: "Yes. I want to be with you forever."

(Even if the day comes when your body withers away, I will support you so you can at least find happiness.)

I answered with all my heart, and he reached out and touched my cheek.

Galileo: "You always stir my heart."

Galileo: "Even when I lashed out at you, you still faced me head-on."

Galileo: "I couldn't ignore your existence anymore."

His voice, squeezed out, seemed to reveal his innermost feelings.

Galileo: "I didn't understand why I couldn't control myself, but now I've found the answer."

His eyes, always seeking the truth, reflected me.

Galileo: "Mitsuki, I can only call this feeling I have for you love."

(Love.)

Something warm surged from deep within my chest, making me unable to speak.

Still gazing into each other's eyes, Galileo's hand moved from my cheek to the back of my head.

He gently pulled me closer, and I leaned toward the bed.

As the distance between us disappeared, our lips gently met, and the midday moon witnessed our tender kiss.

Then, some time passed.

Mitsuki: "Wow, it's beautiful!"

After Galileo started feeling better, we went stargazing, just as we had done before.

Sidereus: "Woof! Woof!"

Mitsuki: "Hehe, Sidereus is in a good mood too."

Galileo: "Yeah. We can see the North Star very clearly tonight."

Following his gaze, I found a bright star near the Big Dipper and felt a sudden wave of nostalgia.

Mitsuki: "They say that travelers and sailors in the past used the North Star as their guide."

Mitsuki: "I wonder if Drake is looking at it somewhere in the world right now."

Since then, Drake has used the door to the hideout to embark on a journey.

A journey through time and space, beyond countries and eras.

(I don't know if he will ever come back, but...)

Maybe this is Drake's way of ending their journey.

Even though I understand that, I still sometimes feel lonely without him around.

Galileo: "I'm sure Drake is looking up at the stars right now."

Galileo: "Knowing him, he'd find a way to enjoy life no matter where he is."

Mitsuki: "That's true."

His voice was so certain that I could almost picture Drake looking up at the stars from his ship.

(Even if we're apart, we are all connected by this vast starry sky.)

As I smiled at that thought一

Galileo: "By the way..."

Galileo: "You're thinking about another man while stargazing with me."

Mitsuki: "What!? No, that's not it. I was thinking about the two of you!"

(Wait, does that mean...?)

Mitsuki: "Are you jealous?"

Galileo: "..........."

(Have I said too much again? But...)

Even under his sharp gaze, I couldn't stop the joy that was welling up inside me.

Galileo: "..........."

As I gazed at him with anticipation, his face drew closer.

Mitsuki: "Nn…"

Then he gently placed a kiss on my lips.

Galileo: "Your eyes should only reflect me."

Mitsuki: "----!"

In his amethyst-like eyes, I was the only one reflected.

Mitsuki: "You're the only one I had eyes for from the very beginning."

(Since the moment I met you in that garden, and ever since you saved my life.)

At my confession, he blinked slightly in surprise and smiled.

That night一

Mitsuki: "Nn... ah."

Upon returning to his room, he gently pushed me onto the bed and claimed my lips.

Galileo sat up momentarily and discarded his cloak.

Galileo: "If it gets too much, tell me."

Mitsuki: "I'm fine. But you—"

Galileo: "I'm not so weak that I can't hold you."

Galileo: "And if my life could end at any time, I want to feel you as much as possible while I can."

Mitsuki: "----!"

His eyes, filled with a burning desire, deeply moved me.

(Being loved feels so wonderful yet so heartbreaking.)

(I don't know how much time he has left.)

But for now, I just wanted to fulfill his wish, so I wrapped my arms around him.

Mitsuki: "Feel me. I'll give you all of me."

Galileo: "Let me love you."

He whispered in my ear, then leaned over me.

Galileo: "Haah, Mitsuki."

Our bare skin touched the sheets.

Every time his hand glided over my skin, the delicate movements increased the heat between us, making me gasp.

Galileo: "Such a sweet voice. It seems you're very sensitive."

(It feels like he's observing me.)

(Even though it's embarrassing, I don't want to hide.)

We laid everything bare, and eventually, we looked into each other's eyes.

Galileo: "I love you, Mitsuki."

Mitsuki: "I love you too."

Immediately after whispering our love, the heightened passion connected us.

His sweaty look and silver-white hair swaying made him look incredibly hot.

As our bodies melted into each other, he let out a pained sigh.

Galileo: "Haa..."

He leaned close to my neck, trying to keep something in.

(Could it be...?)

Mitsuki: "Is it the bloodlust?"

When I asked, he suddenly lifted his head.

Galileo: "I'm sorry. I once bit you against your will."

Galileo: "I'm sure it's a memory you'd rather erase."

(He was enduring it for my sake.)

Feeling touched by his thoughtfulness, I reached out to touch his cheek.

Mitsuki: "Tell me your true feelings."

After a moment of hesitation, he kissed my hand and whispered.

Galileo: "Mitsuki, I want you so badly."

Galileo: "Can I bite you?"

(.......)

Realizing that love could heighten the bloodlust just made me even happier.

Mitsuki: "Don't hold back; bite me."

Mitsuki: "Let me take in all of you, your love, and your fangs."

As I tilted my neck invitingly, a predatory light flashed in his eyes.

Mitsuki: "Nn... ahh..."

After a bit of pain, it turned into pure pleasure and bliss.

Galileo: "Ah, Mitsuki, I love you."

(I hope this heat and love will never fade away.)

Feeling his fangs, our hearts beating together, and the way we felt connected, I wanted this moment to go on forever.

After our deep exchange of emotions, we made a decision.

(We've said our goodbyes to everyone at the mansion.)

(Is this the end of our time here?)

Today, we were leaving this place.

We packed our belongings, and the last place we visited was一

Mitsuki: "Are you sure about this?"

Galileo: "Yeah. I should've done this sooner."

He looked out at the sunlit garden as if burning the image into his memory.

Then, quietly, he closed his eyes for a moment.

Galileo: "My brethren, for now, just rest in peace."

He released a lantern with a lit candle into the garden.

In an instant, the fire spread to the Blanc flowers, engulfing the pure white and crimson blooms in flames.

(Everything is burning away.)

As the petals ignited and ascended with the sparks of fire, my heart ached at the sight, and his embrace tightened around me.

Galileo: ".........."

The color of the flames flickered in his purple eyes.

(I wonder what he's thinking now.)

Is he regretting not being able to avenge the dhampir's grievances?

(But the dhampirs resting here will surely not blame him.)

I gently squeezed his hand as if to convey that.

(And he chose to do this to sever the sorrow rooted in this garden.)

To start walking again from here.

Galileo: "Let's go, Mitsuki."

Mitsuki: "Yes."

Turning our backs to the raging flames, I spoke to him beside me.

Mitsuki: "Galileo."

Galileo: "What is it?"

Mitsuki: "I’ll continue to search for a world where everyone, regardless of their race, can join hands and a future where you can truly smile."

(Even if the time left is short.)

(I want to continue seeking hope by your side.)

That is what I can do now, after meeting you and witnessing everything.

Galileo: "Mitsuki."

Galileo turned to face me, his eyes softening gently.

Galileo: "Thank you."

Galileo: "I love you. Your love is my truth, and you're my final star, named Hope."

Our intertwined destinies began through a door that transcends time.

Through miraculous encounters and many sorrows, what I have arrived at is the truth of my feelings for you.

Previous Part ╎ Masterlist ╎ Dramatic End

#ikevamp translations #ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp jp #ikevamp drake #ikevamp galileo #cybird #otome

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fire-lizard-ro · 1 year

Text

SO UHHHHH- Beware the darker themes ahead. I know people were probably expecting more smut from me, but I find it hard to write smut for the Aeons??? Who even knows how that would actually work-

Anyways sorry for the lack of smut. OTL

I will feed y’all some good Geppie smut later!

GN reader

CW: mentions of death, permanent maiming, breaking bones, sadistic and obsessive tendencies, loss of self

Lemme know if I missed anything. T-T

I didn’t really get into it as much as I could have, so I don’t think it’s too bad. But still read that CW, please-

When it comes to the Aeons, I refuse to believe that they understand human conventions, morals, or ways of love. I think that with them, it's very easy for them to be a yandere??? Sorta?

Once they are interested in you, they won't immediately take you. They'll likely observe you, being interested in figuring out what it is that had them interested in you in the first place.

But slowly they become more convinced that you are someone they want to keep by their side.

Once they've decided that you should stay by their side, they'd likely kidnap you???

And I feel like as an Aeon who doesn't empathize with human emotions just has to keep you because you make them feel something truly novel- Is this that "love" that they always heard those humans talk about? That thing that they strive for yet the Aeons couldn't possibly hope to understand? So no matter how far you try to run, they'll find you.

Yaoshi

With this particular Aeon, I can see their love being one that is harmful for humans no matter how sweetly they put it.

They don't understand why you don't want the protection of their path and the blessing of everlasting life they can give you. :((

At some point, they'll likely give you the curse of mara, turning you into something you aren't. It's all because they love you and can't bear to see your mortal form crumble to nothing over the years and your life come to an end. They just couldn't accept that. So one day they tell you sweetly to close your eyes because they have a gift for you. One that you can keep... forever.

They understands that it will hurt. Yes. They understand that you'll lose your humanity and really your sense of being- But that's okay! They can take care of you. They'll never let you feel pain or suffering after this moment. You'll just have to take this moment of pain to have an eternity with them. Okay? :))

Honestly I can't really see why any of the Aeons would keep a human or other mortal around when what they pursue is something that mortal minds cannot truly fathom. Like with Nanook....

Nanook

(Disclaimer: what I said with Yaoshi? Y e a h - THIS ONE IS DEFINITELY HARMFUL TO HUMANS AND IT’S NOT EVEN PUT IN A SWEET WAY LIKE WITH YAOSHI.)

They are literally seeking the destruction of all things. Those who follow the Path of Destruction even sacrifice their own health and bodies in order to gain power in battle. The Path of the Destruction is one that seeks the end of all things. But maybe there's a slim chance that despite seeking to destroy all creation, they would find you oddly charming. A cute little thing that they cannot seem to take their eyes away from. Somehow, to them, you are just as beautiful as the fiery destruction they seek to bring to the universe.

Obsessively watching you and doing whatever they please to you. Keeping you close at all times, trapped in their embrace as though their hands were a living cage. Again- No matter where you run, no matter where you hide… they’ll find you. Their love is also Very Harmful to Humans TM. Holds you far too tight without really realizing it. But if you try to pry their large fingers off or you squirm too much… they only squeeze harder. To the point that you feel your skin bruising, flesh becoming sore and your very bones creaking. If you actually manage to get away from them somehow, I’m not sure what will happen to you. Not to mention the fact that it will be very VERY hard to run once you’ve escaped. Aeons can probably traverse the universe at speeds unfathomable. And their piercing gazes leave no stone unturned. How could you hope to hide from such all-seeing eyes? How can you hide from an Aeon? Once they’ve caught you again… you probably aren’t getting away. They may break you a bit. Juuust a but. Enough to discourage a second escape attempt- And maybe even enough to make that second attempt impossible. You don’t really need to walk if they’re always holding you, right? Maybe if they… break your legs? Careful you don’t anger them any more than that- Paralysis from the waist down is also a dangerous, but possible option. You may be broken after that, but they’re the Aeon of Destruction. You’ll be beautiful to them even broken. :))

At some point, if this was you second attempt and you’re somehow able to get away without them breaking your legs- Or hell maybe they did but you are just stubborn enough to devise a way to run away again (though likely not on those twisted legs of yours). Point is- If this is not your first attempt at escape, it’s likely that word of what happened the first time has spread. I doubt there’d be a planet in the galaxy willing to harbor you when Nanook could easily raze their cities to the ground and destroy the very planet they live on.

Nanook is the Most Dangerous of the Aeons to catch the attention of. Because I think with them, the most realistic thing would be that you are always one wrong step away from becoming a beautifully broken thing. The grand and beautiful destruction this Aeon sought. For what greater love is there than making you an example of their reason for being, right? Right? :)))

Or maybe it’s because they cannot be bothered with you if you become too much of a hassle even if they fancy you. I’m not really sure how Aeons really work, soooo…. I’d honestly be careful around this one… Even though I’m sure most would be considering their intimidating stature and nature.

Lan

I wonder if Lan would find it fun to let you think you’d escaped them only to hunt you down. I mean. They are the Aeon of the Hunt. Yes that means more than just that, but. I can see it. Some sort of sadistic glee they have in the fear in your eyes, the pounding in your heart, and the panicked breaths you take when realizing they’ve found you again. But they’d never hurt you! No, no, no- They certainly wouldn’t… Right?

I don’t think there’d be any getting away from the Aeon of Nihility. 💀

I mean- Considering what happened in the Simulated Universe when meeting IX, I think you know why. I don’t know too much about them and no longer have many spoons for this so ye.

Maybe will write more about the Aeons later.

Sorry for any wack writing and typos it’s ass o’clock and it’s time for my eepy ass to go mimimimimimi- Might fix it eventually if I catch it.

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magpod-confessions · 4 months

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(look at me go, not asking anonymously for once lol)

“the web is underrated” “the buried is underrated” “the dark is the most underrated”

yes. you are right, i agree. but they are all underrated. none of the fears get the attention they deserve.

-the dark and the end are almost completely forgotten about due to their perceived simplicity.

-the buried, the flesh, the hunt, etc are so unexplored, no one bothers to look any deeper into them.

-the desolation is not just fire, but no one ever tries to represent it some other way.

-don’t get me started on the whole spiral-distortion thing (perhaps i will make this a future confession bc oh boy do i have a lot to say).

with all of them people seem to be scared of diverging from the explicit canon representations.

no one seems to care about the fears anymore. THE fears. you know, the one thing that makes tma so special? i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve seen someone say “after listening to tma i can never look at things the same. i always categorise them by the entities”

that’s all they are treated as, categories. perhaps this is an odd way to describe horrific manifestations of our deepest fears, but i think they are beautiful concepts. i could spend hours thinking about each one and the ways they bleed into one another, i probably have.

yeah, at this point smirke’s 14 are old news, but there are always new angles to explore. we saw that in season 5 of tma, and we are seeing it now in tmagp (though the fears are of course different). why did we stop talking about that? (i wasn’t actually on tumblr when tma was happening so idk. maybe no one ever cared)

talk about the fears, put your ideas for unconventional statements or avatar or whatever out there, there’s an audience (me at least). say stuff about how different fears crossover, or some new aspect of one. “but surely people would have already said this at some point” respectfully, i don’t give a shit. if i come across mutliple posts analysing a similar aspect of the vast, i’m going to be fucking overjoyed. because much of the fears is up to intepretation, they have slightly different meanings to different people, so every single person’s interpretation adds value and adds something unique. i see a little of this, but not enough.

we should keep discussing the fears. i don’t know why we ever stopped.

(sorry this is so long and rambling, i hope you can see the points i’m trying to make.)

🗣️ i’d love to hear your thoughts on this

Literally this. Agree with all of it

Some things:

The Desolation can be natural disasters, including floods, storms and earthquakes. Water is just as destructive as fire

The Dark can be not knowing something. It overlaps with the eye yes, but it still counts

The Corruption is shown to be a response to loneliness, not the opposite of it. Its being so lonely you seek out community, no matter how dangerous it may be. Every single corruption statement has references to loneliness

The Spiral says its a liar, but its never done that, only changing your perception of reality to make what it says true. It is delusion not manipulation

The Slaughter is never portrayed outside of war, which is strange because sheer unhinged violence has so much variety

#magpod #tma #the magnus archives #magpod confession #🗣

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itsabouttimex2 · 9 months

Text

Descendant of the Lady Bone Demon: Part Two

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three)

Maybe they should’ve seen this coming. Maybe there were a few warning signs they didn’t pick up on. Looking back on it now, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? All those little things should’ve added up a long time ago.

The way the room grew silent and tense when you walked in, no matter how how exuberant it had been prior. How you manage to sneak up on everyone without even trying, as though you had no presence. The wide berth that strangers give you, even though they can’t explain why. That last one had been particularly strange for your friends. They hadn’t understood why people would treat you so coldly, not back then.

They understand now.

MK has already had so much placed on his shoulders, and all of it was without his asking. The fate of his friends. The fate of the city. The fate of the world. Time after time, countless lives are placed into his hands, and he does his very best to bring them safely through the danger posed by ancient threats and lurking demons.

Once, living out the dream of being a hero had been fun. Back then, all he had to do was master a new power or bust down another bad guy, and then everyone laughed and went on with their peaceful lives. Back when every adventure ended before the day was over and he was back home just in time for Pigsy to start scolding him for being reckless.

But as he grows stronger, so too does his vast array of enemies. As he trains his body and masters his skills, all those who seek to oppose him are doing the same.

Which means higher stakes. More danger. More destruction. More lives on the line day by day. It means that every last friend and companion of his will end up finding themselves in danger just on account of being associated with him. His enemies are rarely noble, most of them willing to target his friends in an attempt to devastate his heart and mind, hoping to leave him mourning and unsettled. He thwarts these attempts one after another, always saving the day in the end.

His greatest fear is that a day will come where he falls short of such an accomplishment.

A fear that the Lady Bone Demon brings to the forefront of his mind. She brings this hidden terror to light, and exacerbates it.

“Foolish child. Do you really think that one person can save everyone from pain and suffering? Or are you truly arrogant enough to believe that your strength alone can forge a better tomorrow?”

She makes him want to be stronger. Smarter. Better. Good enough to protect anyone who’d ever be put in danger. Especially you.

“Y/N! Let’s hang out today! Come on, I’ve got my room set up for a Monkey Cop marathon!” He takes you by the hand, dragging you along after him with a big smile that he struggles to maintain. When he’s sad or upset, he turns to you. In turn, he makes it clear that you can always rely on him to protect you.

If he were a bit more mature, a little more confident and self-assured, he’d make for a wonderful older brother figure. He’s spontaneous, energetic, supportive… and entirely terrified that he might lose you.

That fear drives him to train harder, to work harder… to be someone you are truly and honestly proud of. To be someone you can rely on and turn to in any time of need. He tackles his training with a renewed vigor, all in preparation for the moment that you might need his protecting.

And now that said moment has come, he’s more scared than ever before. The person he fears most bears down on him as he stands in front of the person he fears losing most, and all he can do is hold strong.

“You will not stand between me and my destiny!” The Lady Bone Demon’s voice is furious, her eyes crackling with arcane energy.

The very same eyes that you have. MK doesn’t know exactly what started his suspicions, but your eyes are what confirmed his little hunch. The two of you are related in some way, he’s sure of it.

And with how insistent she is with getting her hands on you, it’s only a further nail into the coffin. There’s no denying that you and the Lady Bone Demon have some sort of connection. But what? Are you her descendant? Did she plant a seed of her essence into your forefathers long ago to ensure that some part of her would go on, and only now is returning to reclaim it? Are you simply powerful enough for her to see use in you? Does she think she could sway you to her side?

There’s a dozen explanations that could be true. However, he has no way to prove which one of them it is, because the Lady Bone Demon is staying tight lipped on why exactly she wants you, perhaps as to not give MK a chance to counter her plans.

It doesn’t matter, MK reminds himself. What she wants with you doesn’t matter. What matters is that she wants you, full stop. And if he can stop her and her well-intentioned plans, then he can save you and everybody else too. All he has to do is push a little harder.

And then?

Maybe he can just… forget about it all. Forget about the Lady. Forget about your nebulous ties to her. And everything can go back to the way it was, when he didn’t jump every time you spoke to him, when he could look into your eyes without feeling like someone had dumped ice down his shirt, when he could fall asleep next to you without waking up in a cold sweat.

He’ll forget all about it, burying it deep inside his brain.

And then things will go back to normal, with you safely under his protection.

Right?

He knows right from the start. I sincerely believe that if someone was the Lady Bone Demon’s descendant, Wukong would be aware the very moment he met them.

A dread chill races down his spine the moment he see you, freezing him for just a second as he contemplates one of his worst fears coming true. The Lady Bone Demon is back.

Except… no, not really. That’s not her at all, is it? You’re just… some kid. With the exact same crushing spiritual pressure that she personally exerted. And the same eyes that she had.

Yeah, this isn’t a coincidence. There’s just no way. He goes off to do some digging, but not before subtly tasking MK with keeping an eye out for you while he searches for anything that could prove your ties to one of his greatest enemies.

And this is Sun Wukong we’re talking about, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. It doesn’t take him very long, whether through cleverness and trickery or sheer brute force.

Maybe the monkey demon twists a few heavenly arms to get the information he wants. Maybe he utilizes the 72 Transformations to eavesdrop on a keeper of records. Maybe he’s just got a sacred book of lineage hidden away in some pile of junk somewhere.

However he does it, he gets the job done well, with just the conclusion he’s looking for- you are indeed, of the Lady Bone Demon’s blood.

But Sun Wukong has come far from his days before Five Phases mountain. He’s not some vicious demon who bullies those around him, nor does he jump to outright murder as a solution for every last problem.

He’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, just so you can maybe prove yourself to him.

It starts with him crashing at your house without an excuse, he himself writing it off with a very unconvincing “bout of motion sickness” that would supposedly leave him incapable of comfortably riding his cloud back to Flower Fruit Mountain.

His true intention is to see what you’ll do while he’s “asleep”, laid across your couch with his head rested on a cushy pillow, tantalizingly propped-up for one who might wish to try and crush his skull or slice his throat.

Instead, you usher him to a cozy guest room, asking him to call you if he needs anything. He makes use of this several times, asking for food and water to see if you’ll poison it.

But you don’t. There’s no hand-made poison sourced from the Underworld slipped into his peach tea. No sacred knife hidden inside your sleeve. No Heaven-forged needles baked into the slice of pie you bring when he mentions being hungry.

You aren’t a scheming demon, he realizes. You’re just a good kid.

You remind kind to him, even as he intentionally tries to fray your nerves. You don’t snap or argue or whine, instead tending to his false needs with a smile on your face.

He drifts comfortably to sleep in the guest room, stomach satiated and his brain whirling. Before he passes out, he realizes with a pang of sympathy that he’s clearly the first person to have ever slept here. Stocked and furnished comfortably for anyone who might stop by and spend time with you… it’s instead been rotting without occupancy, left unused for what may well have been years.

You aren’t a bad person. You really, really aren’t. You’re just a good kid who clearly needs someone to quell the stomach-turning loneliness that finds you down each path you take.

At first, he decides to be that person out of pity. He stops by sometimes, ducking in to snag a bite from your fridge, engaging in a short but friendly conversation, watching sympathetically as the mere exchange of several sentences boosts your mood to healthy levels.

You start to anticipate his visits, making sure you have food and drink he’ll enjoy on hand. Lots of peach-filled pastries, to nobody’s surprise. Pies, tarts, cookies… it turns out that Sun Wukong has a pretty unabashed sweet tooth. He’s actually somewhat touched that you out in the effort just to make sure that he’ll have something nice to eat when he stops by.

Just as pity went to warmth, slowly that warmth comes to a peak, igniting.

Eventually, he starts taking you back to Flower Fruit Mountain to spend time with you there, trying to acclimate you to an eventual residency there with him to repay every kindness you’ve done for him.

There’s not a single pivotal moment where he realizes that he wants to keep you beside him, just a slow, day by day fall into platonic obsession. He gets attached, hard.

From your point of view, your kindness and determination to forge bonds with those around you has finally earned you a friend.

From his point of view, you’re a lonely, wayward child who needs someone nearby to protect and shelter you.

This is far from the truth, but his delusions grow by the day, in part an innocuous desire to repay your kindness, in part an unhealthy attachment to someone who has no hope of escaping from his grasp.

Really, though… if he did spirit you away, would you complain or argue? Fight or run?

Even if you did, there’s no way you’d get away from him. Just sit back, and let him take care of you, just the way you took care of him.

That’s what family does, after all.

You’re another one of his weird kids. That’s where it starts and ends for Pigsy. You fit snugly between Mei and MK, forming a neat little trio that he wants to both throttle and hug. Just as often as you three make him feel like he’s heading to an aneurysm-induced early grave, you make him feel fulfilled and content. His noodle shop, his two best friends, his three high-energy goofy kids.

Pigsy is happy with the life he has. He’s happy with the life he’s provided for MK. He’s happy to see Mei overcome her insecurities with her family and gain their approval. He’s happy that Sandy has found peace and improved himself. He’s even happy when Tang comes to visit, though he’ll gripe about the man “freeloading” whenever he stops by.

It’s a strange, stressful life that he’s built for himself, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

A world he wishes was just a little kinder.

It has served him kindly enough, though. Success, family, friends, some degree of fame. Most things a person can want, Pigsy has in decent abundance.

His problem is the way it treats you.

You’re a good kid. You really are. You’ve been visiting since you were a child, and he’s watched you grow up. If it weren’t for Tang, you’d be his most frequent customer. (Because you actually pay for your food, he calls you his favorite customer, to Tang’s dismay) And because you’ve spent so much time here with him and his family, he has a pretty good feeling he understands you.

Is isn’t just the renowned food you’re coming back for. It’s the company, too.

You always come in alone and drag out your visits to last as long as possible. You make conversation whenever and wherever you get the chance, stretching out these moments of companionship for as long as you can.

You’re lonely. Not for a lack of trying, of course. You try to strike up conversations, try to reach out to others wherever you can. People seem consistently unsettled and unnerved in your presence, immediately looking for an out when you come around. No matter how kind you are or how often you try to make connection, you get left in the dust.

If you aren’t at Pigsy’s Noodles, then you’re alone. So you keep coming back, again and again. Not just for the incredible food, but for them.

For him.

It’s sad, but it warms his heart a little at the same time. You rely on him. Maybe he could go as far as to say that you need him. Who would he be, if he didn’t welcome you with open arms?

Pigsy wants you to be happy. He wants to keep you safe. And eventually, those feelings grind slowly towards wanting to keep you close.

And close he keeps you, there and then, and then, here and now.

Pigsy does not let go of you. Even as the manic wide-eyed man he only knows as “the Mayor” demands your unconscious body from him, talking about “bloodlines” and “destiny” and “the power she requires”, the chef refuses to be parted from you.

Since he can’t run, he has no chance but to stand and fight, wielding a nine-toothed rake with one hand and keeping you slung safely over his shoulder with the other. He’s never been good at fighting, so it isn’t truly an even match. He’s instead trying to block and dodge the Lady Bone Demon’s sycophantic servant, barely warding him off after each blow.

His efforts to hold out eventually do pay out, with MK stepping shortly in to knock the “Mayor” away from you both, punting him across the landscape and then into the ground from there.

Leaving Pigsy to weigh the options left before him. However, it’s not much as much of a struggle as one might assume. You’re a kid, he thinks to himself, holding you close as he examines your bruises and scrapes. You don’t need to know. What would it accomplish? Do you need to know why people fear you? Why they think of you as unapproachable? Why they run away from the kindness and warmth you offer?

Would it help you, to know the reason? No, Pigsy decides. It could only lead to trouble and heartbreak. What if you ran away from both yourself and your friends, and never came back for fear of hurting them? What if you lost the ability to trust yourself? What if you hurt yourself?

He can’t run the risk of losing you. From now on, he’s going to take a much more personal role in your life, very potentially bringing you to live in the restaurant with him and MK.

“You don’t have to worry about those two freaks, kid. Just let me look out for ya, from now on.”

#Platonic Yandere #Yandere Lego Monkie Kid #Yandere LMK #Crystal Heir #Yandere MK #Yandere Sun Wukong #Yandere Pigsy

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mandalhoerian · 2 years

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leon kennedy + love languages analysis

It’s in Leon’s job description to help and serve, he’s always out there chasing bioweapons and their makers to save others or doing the bidding of his higher-ups — it’s all in the name of the right thing and out of his strong sense of justice. It doesn’t matter if he’s in an overbearing mission breathing down his neck in utmost priority, he will stop and try his best to help out a random citizen as you can see in RE6. He does also state in RE2 remake that helping people in need was why he chose his occupation, be it in his emo era too, Leon just can’t look away from innocent bystanders. Accepting to look for Claire’s brother when he just met her that night, and also the inability to leave Ada alone in the maze of the sewer he has no idea how to solve the puzzle to, and agreeing to whatever Helena wanted to show him when he was so suspicious of her because she was distraught and clearly in need of something are just some examples of this.

He helps however he can, whenever he can; he also expresses great concern for the wellbeing of others before his own as it’s his main drive in life. Leon’s a man of duty and selfless in nature, the only time he’s done anything for himself was when he wanted to chase the trail of bioweapons in Eastern Slav Republic instead of pulling back like he was ordered to, and even that was work.

Therefore we can say acts of service is his primary love language, so much so you would want him to take a break from it.

Leon really doesn’t look after himself.

His go-to self-destruction method is to indulge in alcohol to deal with his problems and drink away his feelings instead of seeking help. Maybe he doesn’t believe in getting help in his field of work (nobody has gone through what he has, and seen what he’s seen, and maybe he doesn’t want to bother people with any of it), but he does shut himself off and ignores his problems — doesn’t ask for help, at all.

In Damnation, he pushes Hunnigan away when she tries to explain the situation to him and nonchalantly dissolves the conversation when she’s afraid he’s going to take off. In Vendetta, he’d rather fight Chris and put on a sarcastic demeanor than to express vulnerability when he clearly needs someone to be his confidant. He doesn’t want to share his burden, but will relentlessly pressure you to share yours.

With his significant other, he would want to take on the weight of whatever’s on you regardless — from mundane things around the house like cleaning, fixing things, preparing breakfast so you can sleep a little bit more and being a great giver in bed to grander gestures like taking a bullet for you and becoming mean to you in order to keep you away from harm’s way (like he did with Claire at the end of Infinite Darkness, he lost his friendship with her but it kept her safe). Leon will go above and beyond to make life better and easier for you, but he is obsessed with your safety first and foremost.

However, you will have problems with getting him to open up like I mentioned previously, he deals with his problems on his own and he won’t want to trouble you with whatever he’s going through at the moment — with the plus of his job being mostly confidential, it’s a struggle to help him when the most of his suffering comes from the loss and trauma that comes with it.

It makes him emotional that you help in other areas though, when you clean up his place at times he is away for a long time, when you make a homemade meal cooked just for him, or when you offer to give him shoulder massages seeing as he’s extremely tired. He isn’t used to being taken care of, and part of him feels guilty, but he’s so appreciative and happy someone cares for him this much.

Leon moves around quite often and is rarely at his place of residence, so he doesn’t spend a lot of time at home. Therefore, even when his place screams how fat his salary is from the outside, his house is not a home, it doesn’t have a lot in it and is basically empty like a ghost is living in it. And again, with being an agent comes the practicality of not having a lot on you so you can be more flexible, but it’s almost as if it reflects how little he thinks of his life and has nothing to leave behind if he dies on duty.

He even has two default outfits, first is anything he can throw on himself (preferably jeans) with a leather jacket and the second is the agent outfit, which is just a suit (button-up shirts grew on him over the years.) He isn’t someone who treats himself aside from alcohol and he doesn’t care much for luxuries — the only materialistic things that could excite him were a bike and a bazooka, and both were found by him randomly and were tools to help him in action.

What he chooses to own, though, are high in quality. His RE4 outfit has Schott’s Classic B-3 Sheepskin Leather Bomber Jacket is $1495 USD. He also drove to Racoon City in a Jeep that he had to abandon. Being rich makes you this carefree, huh?

He has a lot more than he can spend, therefore I believe he would happily spend it on his significant other. Leon would be the type of guy who buys something out of nowhere because it reminded him of you, or that he saw you looking at it, maybe it was a chocolate bar, or maybe some random scented candle you thought looked sick. He loves seeing you surprised and delighted, and thinking of your space having the traces of him makes him happy — makes him feel the bond is more concrete and tangible. He’s a giver, so it’s only natural he gives presents too.

Now, receiving gifts from you is another level of joy for him. Leon wouldn’t have thought he cared much about things like that but the thought. The idea of you thinking this much of him and putting your heart into it, there’s something intimate in it that has him feeling so important. Owning things you gave him has a special place in his heart, and he will take great care of them. Maybe he still has the wrapper of some ribbon from a package in his drawer, who’s to say? It’s the carnal desire to hold onto the proof of your existence, perhaps.

Leon has absolutely no time at all for himself, and in his days off, they keep pulling him back for some unexpected emergency. His schedule is unpredictable. In RE4, he does say “Story of my life,” when Hunnigan reminds him that he’s on duty right now after he flirts with her. Then later, he reminds her that it was them who pulled him out of furlough for this when she tells him to fall back on his Eastern Slav Republic mission. Leon rarely gets any break from bioweapon fighting and over the years, the exhaustion has taken a toll on him, the only constant is chaos in his life, he scarcely can spare any mundane moments to his acquaintances as he barely has any time for himself.

Quality time though, as he lacks so much of it, is something he yearns for deep down. I mean, hello, the way he wanted that dinner with Claire in Infinite Darkness? He really really wanted her company, and to catch up with her. He asked Shenmei as well. It's a crime that nobody accepted his requests, someone go get dinner with him right now.

It’s because he can’t spend time with people that he wants it so badly in the first place. That’s where he is also self-destructive and it’s a double-edged sword. He seeks company of flirtations because he’s lonely, yet he won’t pursue anything serious. He’s scared of committing to someone since it won’t work due to complications and the distance, it’ll get messy.

He even deprives himself of friendships and is unwilling to let anyone get too close. Leon is an isolationist, yet he needs people in his life to process his trauma and grief and bully him about his drinking habits but keeps denying himself the company.

And then there’s the fear of losing that person. He doesn’t spend any time getting close to people, he treasures the companions he has, but everybody is at an arm’s length. He already reacts so negatively to the deaths of allies he barely got to know briefly — Ada messed him up real good, too. How do you think he feels imagining what he could have had with her? He wants stability and settling, but Ada is anything but that. He chases every interaction to be longer, seeks her company just for their meeting to be stretched even by minutes. Leon gets attached so easily, and he deprives himself of time with them out of being scared by it. One part of him must be comfortable in his love for her because it’ll never become a reality, because she’ll never take him up to it, he’d rather take the suffering than the happiness.

But quality time also is so important to him because it’s in these times of ordinary domesticity that he can find normalness outside the crazy undead shit he has to deal with. It helps him recharge and he craves having this to come back to.

He would feel so guilty about not being able to be with his significant other, he could even forget important days and miss important moments of your life and he wouldn’t even know most of the time because he’s just so occupied and in survival mode for a while after he comes back. You would have to be understanding of his situation and forgiving, too, it’s not up to him whatever he gets called in for, and because you wouldn’t know what it was, it’s a great deal of practicing patience, and that’s why it’s hard being in a relationship with Leon. Hell, it’s the base reason why couples break up; the guy is inattentive and negligent and the girl breaks it off in the end. In this scenario, zombies are involved.

You can only get the peaceful moments inbetween with him. And it has to be enough, and believe that he hates going away as much as you do and more.

Leon hates being praised. He dislikes being heralded as some legend for getting out of Racoon City alive and his experiences ultimately leading him to rescuing the president’s daughter only to be elevated in praise more.

He was just at the wrong place at the right time. He got lucky, ended up trailing behind Ada who was competent at what she did and reached the root of the problem just because he happened to run into her — it wasn’t him, it was just stars aligning. Pure coincidence.

Leon sometimes thinks he didn’t deserve making it out, but he did anyway, and now this life of his belongs to a purpose, the purpose.

He’s just doing his job. One shouldn’t be applauded for doing their job.

Compliments make him uncomfortable and it’s the easiest way to make him clamp up on a conversation, he’ll vehemently deny whatever it is and change the subject. It looks like Leon’s being humble (he is), but there’s a deeper reason with an underlying imposter syndrome going on in the back of his mind. He just doesn’t feel worthy some days.

Affirmations on the other hand also don’t come easy, he’s in one of the most coldly professional fields and it’s strictly business, and he is emotionally constipated and deeply traumatized, therefore there’s a lot he doesn’t say and he doesn’t know how to say, and he is bad at telling you what he wants. He’s good at sass and banter, but ask him to tell you about his nightmares and he’ll just hug you and go back to sleep.

Leon isn’t used to expressing affection through words either, and prefers to show it instead. You’ll know he loves you even if he doesn’t say it outright. But with his significant other, though, he’ll do his best to learn to be more affectionate with words to you to show his appreciation — just prepare for shy and awkward Leon. The soft side of him comes out this way, he’ll hesitantly ask you to stay and he’ll look so young doing it that it’ll melt your heart.

Leon is one touch-starved poor bastard.

Here’s the reason why: he’s a pretty lonely guy but he’d rather indulge in the warmth of a person than letting them in. Solitude is a personal preference of his, and it leads him to seeking out temporary companionship to feed this part of his. Meaningless one-night stands are a go-to of his, as they mean no deeper connection but all the skin to skin contact and the soothing heat beside him. If he’s lucky, his partner would pet his head during the deed, or caress his face, now those are the treat.

If he could just let go and the perfect opportunity arose, he would just lie in the arms of his significant other for hours being hugged by them, enveloped in the coziness, head empty and fuzzy. Those would be the perfect naps he needed, because wow does this guy not sleep well.

It would be a first for him to get affectionate touches coming with a friendship as well, it’s been a lifetime since he let himself be that way with someone, it’s not easy to get him to be chummy and lighthearted with you in that aspect. He’s a well-mannered guy too, so he’s the type to keep a respectable distance even when he’s being playful. Half-hugs, back pats and handshakes are the best you’re going to get as his friend, and they don’t happen often.

The clinginess blooms well into the relationship after Leon gets comfortable with exploring that childish, neglected part of his. He would adore hugs, hand-holding, reaching out to grab you casually while sitting next to you in the confines of your private space, you would feel his love through him seeking you out for comfort voluntarily and lowering his serious exterior to be relaxed around you. His utmost weakness is you playing with his hair and tracing his face with your fingers, because he goes out like a light almost immediately.

Leon also won't be rough with you physically while bonking so don't expect playfighting and do not hit him while joking around, he gets thrown around and hurt so much as it is (the amount of being strangled by tyrants and plagas? no, he's not into choking), and he tends to be extremely tender and sweet. Though you might discover a pretty interesting side of him if you decide to be assertive and take care of him in bed, you might just get addicted to how shy he could get.

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#leon kennedy #leon s. kennedy #leon kennedy headcanons #leon s. kennedy headcanons #leon kennedy x reader #leon s. kennedy x reader #leon x ada #resident evil headcanons #leon kennedy x you #im adding the reader tag even though this is very leon-centric because i can #who's gonna stop me #leon needs a hug #and all the affection he can get #this is just a very long post about his loneliness and isolation #Honestly Leon's that pretty intimidating guy who turns out to be so sweet and respectful and i want him #god i love this guy i just want to wrap him in a blanket and give him a break #shai talks #character: leon kennedy

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thatonebirdwrites · 4 months

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Sneak peak on a Lena Luthor, Sam Arias, and Kara Danvers fic that has grabbed me by the throat and won't let go till I finish it

(Once I finish it, I'll throw it up on AO3.) Finished so will post weekly/bi-weekly until it's all up. Here's the link.

THE EVENT

Lena realizes something is very, very wrong when she feels the heft of a gun in her hand. The fog in her mind lifts slowly as she wrestles back her consciousness. She blinks and realizes she’s in a concrete room with a desk to one side.

But far more disturbing is her brother, Lex, who has pushed himself half-up with one arm, the other hugging his abdomen. The gun she holds points at him. Blood dribbles from his mouth. He laughs, and his words swim through the fog in her brain.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? The very people you fight to protect. Do you know their truth?” He reaches up to grab a remote and turns on the televisions that make up a wall of the bunker.

Lena breathes in sharply. Bunker?

No, no, she can’t be alone with Lex. Bad things always happen.

Panic rises like bile in her throat. Her brother is speaking again, but his words can’t penetrate the growing haze in her head. She blinks at the televisions, but it blurs into a mosaic of color and faint soundscapes.

Her thoughts spark and sizzle like a broken circuit. She hyperventilates, lightheaded, as tears sting her eyes. The gun’s weight pulls her arms down. The fact her brother is bleeding out in front of her, while laughing, alarms her.

He believes this is checkmate. It’s not. Please, let me handle this.

The thought laces through her alarm and comforts her. The confidence in her other self dismantles her rising panic. Just like the last time in Kasnia during the self-destruct sequence. Time had warped for her, the fog saturated all awareness, until she woke in the cool air, the sky studded with stars. In her hands was an air duct grate, her clothes rumpled, one heel broken, and streaks of dirt on her legs and arms.

Oh.

Her other self must have fronted like in Kaznia. What is the last things she remembers? She briefly closes her eyes.

She had been escorted by armed guards to where her brother and Lillian waited in the Presidential room at the White House. Listened in horror at her brother’s rant of his victory over aliens. Saw evidence of Supergirl’s death. The terror that grabbed her by the throat had the fog boiling through her mind. No matter how hard she tried, she could not escape the Luthors.

Then nothing. Time evaporated until she wrestled her way out of the suffocating fog.

And here she wakes in a bunker, a gun in her hand, and her brother bleeding out in front of her.

“Do you see the lies they’ve woven? How they’ve abused your trusting nature? Your broken mind?” he continues with another irritating laugh.

He seeks to manipulate us again. Trust us. Lean into our anger.

Lena takes a steadying breath. That’s right. Her anger and horror at his brutal experiments and murder of aliens. The prison couldn’t hold him, cutting off his assets also failed — all facts she has factored into her calculations.

But this exact scenario is supposed to be the last resort. Her stomach curdles, bile on her tongue. Kieran, wait, what of the other plans?

We had to end the cycle, Lena. Otherwise, he’ll never stop coming.

Stop being cryptic. What the hell happened? She needs to reassess. There must be a better solution. She can still repair this somehow. Seek the Truth. Focus.

Fine. I confronted him and injected Harun-el as we agreed. He demanded we join his genocidal crusade. We are not his tool anymore. The solidity of the decision warms her from head to toe, even as her heart shatters at the sight in front of her.

Lena clears her throat and summons what strength she has left. “You’ve abused me, Lex. You have no ground to stand on.” She tries to avoid looking at the wall of televisions, for what is surely a cleverly crafted way to destroy her yet again. Like he always does. Her lip quivers, and she blinks back the urge to cry.

“Me? Your trusting brother?” Lex laughs then coughs blood into his hand. “I’ve given you the world, Ace. Only ever been truthful. Honed your skills. Do you still not see the truth? I’ve laid it out for you this time, you stubborn fool!”

Colors leech into grey in her periphery. Her limbs feel puppeted by her other self still. A rare moment of synergy but it leaves her nauseous and her head aching in a growing migraine.

“They’ve all been lying to you,” Lex continues as he laughs and spits up more blood. “Preying on your weaknesses.”

That’s you, Lena thinks. You’ve preyed on us.

But her curiosity overwhelms her, and she can’t ignore the televisions any longer. The scenes capture her gaze, and her ears roar with the orchestra Lex has woven into the security footage he’s stolen. Half the screens are footage from when Mercy attacked L-corp.

<<.....>>

Lena turns to Kara desperately. “No, Kara, you’re safer with me.” She can feel the grey fog pulling her toward the dark maw of her psyche. She reaches out to grasp Kara’s arm, the fabric of her cashmere sweater soft and comforting. As the emergency light goes off again, she slips deeper into her mind’s tumultuous seas.

Kieran rises forward, and her body transforms. Her shoulders straighten, her limbs more agile, her stance that of a fighter. Commands issue from her voice, but Lena can no longer discern meaning.

She wraps herself in the cold of shadows.

Time hiccups and coughs. Shots echo like thunder, safety doors drop like quakes, and the clatter of heels click against metal.

Is Kara okay? She needs to know. She swims through grey fog, until she pushes into consciousness again.

An uncomfortable weight hangs on her arm. Kara stands behind her, but Mercy holds the bigger gun of the Lexosuit. Fear curdles her stomach. Of course Mercy would hack through security to reach her experimental prototypes. Lena had built a lighter suit to be used for good. Not like this.

Lena, don’t. Let me handle this. Kieran’s smug confidence scratches into her thoughts.

Kara is still here!

Lena, we don’t have time to argue. Kieran surges to the front, and Lena watches as her body moves to block Mercy’s shot. “You did not see the upgrade. The arms hold more goods now.” A hint of excitement sweeps through her voice, the onset of a fight a thrill for Kieran, while Lena nears a panic.

Please, get Kara out of here. Lena struggles to keep them moving backward. Kara is behind her still, the door to the lab just a few feet away.

I said let me handle this. Anger filters through Kieran and burns against Lena’s presence.

Lena throws open the door. “Go, Kara.” Kara stumbles backward into the hallway, and she slams the door shut. The fog sears through her mind, Kieran’s anger pushing her back.

A blast tears through the air, but Kieran blocks the shot with their shield.

Except, Lena can’t let go fully. Kieran blocks and shoots, but Lena fumbles with the footwork. Kieran’s the fencer, not her. Mercy spars not only with the gloves but with caustic words. Kieran fights Lena for control, their dodging clumsy, their shots missing.

The fight warps and fizzles in her mind; the fog screeches through Lena’s consciousness.

She fumbles. Slams against metal.

“You aren’t deserving of the Luthor name,” Mercy says, her poison like barbs that sink into Lena’s insecurities.

Heat beams destroy the door, and Supergirl blasts into the room. Mercy is slammed against the wall, Supergirl’s arm against her throat. “No, you got that backwards,” Supergirl hisses, “the Luthor name isn’t deserving of Lena.”

Warmth floods through Lena at the strength and resolve in Supergirl’s words. A massive turnaround from the worldkiller crisis.

Stay focused. Don’t let your guard down until Mercy’s off the property. Kieran releases her hold, and Lena stumbles, back in full control. Already her mind shifts into overdrive to plan the exact route to verify the security of her building and her people.

<<....>>

This is a repeat of the Mercy incident. Where Lena couldn’t let go, and both of them co-fronted. It sparks a migraine, the grey in her periphery darkening, and her nausea worsening. She hates moments like this.

Let me handle this. We have him in a checkmate. The confidence in Kieran’s analysis softens the panic that has started to freeze her limbs. We know the Truth.

If there is one thing that unites Lena’s fractured psyche, it is an overwhelming need to protect those she loves. And her own brother has nearly killed her and her friends a dozen times over.

She’s exhausted, terrified, and wants this endless game of his to stop.

Lena raises her gun and shoots the televisions one at a time. The shards explode outward and rain down on her brother.

For once, Lex shuts the fuck up. His eyes widen.

The fog burns away the rest of her awareness.

She stumbles across wet grass, her clothes wet and clinging to her body, as the heavens pour down upon her. She’s outside the bunker in a stand of aspens. The sky sparks with lightning, the greyness suffocating.

You’re safe now. We all are. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

Lena shouldn’t dig deeper. She knows it’s not healthy. Kieran has always protected her, held the worst of the horror. It’s how they’ve survived this far.

But this was her brother. And those screens showed Kara as not human. It makes no sense with what Kara claims. How does she reconcile it all?

Kieran, what did you do?!

What was necessary. Kieran’s confidence holds a trickle of grief and pain. We must seek help now, Lena. Focus.

She feels strange, unreal, like a pantomime of herself. The urge to lie in the mud, to let the rain wash her away, nearly overwhelms her. She pushes off a trunk and stumbles forward. Her hair falls in front of her eyes, sticking to her forehead and cheeks.

The images from the televisions ripple through her thoughts. Is that the Truth?

Yes. Now focus, Lena. We must call her.

Has Kara been deceiving her this whole time? She doesn’t want to believe it.

She’s given Kara her heart, far more than she ever meant to do, and yet, those videos sync with the disjointed mess of her memories. Bits and pieces that Kieran has held for her, scattered shards unlocked like the showers above.

Wait, did you know? Shock starts to shiver through her body.

That’s not important now. Call her.

Lena stumbles and falls. Her hands push into the mud and the world crackles with thunder. It’s too loud. Too bright.

It's all so wrong; she gags and spits out bile.

She wishes Kieran would take over again, to call for her, but her protective self has faded from awareness. Fatigue throttles all of her.

Her brother is likely dead in the bunker. By her own hand. Tears mix with the rain and her fingers dig into the mud. Her senses crackle with pain. She feels herself shrinking. The hairs on her arm raise, goosebumps from the cold, her body vibrating into oblivion.

She wants to go home.

Call her now. The thought is weaker, laced with grief.

“I know. I know,” Lena says it out loud to ground herself. To stop the shrinking, to avoid the inevitable pull of a switch. She shudders and leans against the trunk of a tree.

Focus on the goal. Break it into smaller steps.

She hugs her legs to her chest with one arm. Her other hand fumbles through pockets of her suit. Too many. Suit so wet. She feels slimy, gross, slipping toward the warmth of shadows.

Her fingers grasp he phone in her inner suit jacket. There’s two numbers on speed dial: Sam and Kara.

Her fingers hesitate over the two. She bites her lip, closes her eyes, and hits the button for Sam.

(To be continued on AO3, will edit in the link or drop in comments once up.) Note, this playlist was on repeat as I wrote this piece: Shattered Playlist

Edited.

#supercorp #reigncorp #Lena Luthor #Sam Arias #Kara Danvers #Supergirl #Rift Fic #Healing from trauma #disability #Mostly canon up to this moment #Nearly finished writing this but there's a shit ton more to the tale as this is only the start of our journey #What are folks feeling about this?#I really wanted some hurt/comfort happening between Sam and Lena #Hurt/comfort will happen between Lena and Kara too #That is the only clues I will give you #I wanted to explore how we survive trauma and then heal from it #How sometimes to end an abuse cycle requires hard decisions and how we survive the aftermath of that is complicated

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angelstate · 6 months

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“Understood and Seen”

Miserable!Ghost x Miserable!Reader

Loneliness was something he was used to, the weight of years of social isolation had managed to tame him enough that seeking a lover seemed to be an action he rather not do, he appreciated too much the quietness at night, the ability to walk away from somewhere and not be missed, not having to worry about leaving someone behind if he were to die in the battlefield.

it brought a sense of peace in a way, a sadistic and destructive one in the long run, destined to forever be desolated, to perish with no one holding his hand as he takes his last breath. It was a miserable ending, as Johnny made him see.

Then you came along, pretty smile and the touch of a pristine and unblemished angel, unaware of the torture that could be being a human, like you were created for the sole purpose of bringing peace to the disturbed people roaming the earth like himself.

it would’ve been stupid to let you go, to not let his claws sink into your skin, no matter how much he wanted to leave you untouched and well like when he first met you. What’s another sin under his name? if he is destined to burn in hell for having touch you, then he would endure infinite torture just for the opportunity to hold your hand.

It was cruel truly, the way you could never seem to stop gifting feathers from your wings till you couldn’t fly away from the greedy hands of miserable people, trying to snatch your bones and limbs to suffice themselves.

he felt bad at times, your struggle was visible even when you tried to hide it behind kind smiles, gentle touches and soft hearted worry. giving and being stolen from while thanking those who took, comforting them if they felt awful about grabbing more than they needed.

Sometimes kindness took opportunities away from you more than it gave them, you were a clear example that sometimes being a good person gets you nowhere, he should know, his family was killed when he chose to be good.

quietness didn’t suit you, that’s what simon believed after knowing you for almost two years. The beaming energy is always present even when you are just sitting on a chair with a book in your hands. A sort of joy was always there, a faint hum always leaving your lips, like you couldn’t stand the quietness in any way.

therefore, the sight in front of him is weird to say the least, you were sitting in your usual chair, no book in hand, eyes opened as you stared out the window, there was no one outside, the heavy rain had stopped the ability of trainees and other soldiers to go outside and do their normal schedules.

so what were you looking at? he couldn’t exactly tell, maybe the rain? but then again, you weren’t one to get hung up on sad aspects of life, the way rains interrupts the flow of your life, takes away opportunities of doing things out in nature because risking your health is something you rather not do, knowing you were too needed to compromise something so important for your own enjoyment, you can “fill your enrichment time doing other things after all” or that’s what you always told him.

you closed the doors that opened for you every time you could, not taking opportunities if it meant you couldn’t give one to another person, being selfless is a step away from being self destructive, Simon believed you had already walked past the distance though.

far too gone for your own good, but what can he do, when he is the type to walk away every time life asks for more than he’s willing to give, and you are only able to walk impossibly closer to give more than life asks you to hand over.

He's too different to understand you, it’s futile to try and adopt your perspective. He doesn’t spend time doing rotten work, not even for himself, although he allows himself to sympathize with you.

“enjoying the rain?” he asks suddenly, breaking you out of your chain of thoughts.with a harsh soop, sometimes you wished he wasn’t so good at gathering your attention.

you hummed in confirmation at his words, eyes briefly looking towards him, gaze with a dimmed glee in it. something was missing, he could sense it in his every bone, every fiber of his being buzzed as a signal there was a thing out of place, interrupting the usual peace and joy that circulated all around you.

“reminds me of home” you muttered softly, and if it wasn’t for the otherwise quiet and empty room he wouldn’t have been able to hear you. your words ring loudly on his ears and he doesn’t know what to do, for what feels like an eternity of desolation.

home is a word that he doesn’t hear often, people tend to avoid the word like it’s a curse when he’s around, pretending that the existence of a place to go after work is nonexistent. He is grateful sometimes for the quietness in regards to the topic of belonging somewhere but it’s also disheartening.

your answer doesn’t taste bitter in his mouth, it is rather sour and sweet. a complex mix of feelings he is used to experience but still finds overwhelming all the same as the first time he felt them. even without meaning to, you’re able to carve a way into his heart.

it’s like you’re threatening to prove to him that there’s more to life than what he has experienced so far, it terrifies him in a way he would never indulge or admit out loud.

“homesick?” he asked, tilting his head slightly, it wasn’t something unusual for soldiers to experience, even he, with nowhere to go back to, sometimes also felt homesick, the idea of a home most of all but it still counted in his book.

“something like that…rain just made it a bit more painful” you responded to his question, tone so somber that he could feel some of the sadness seep into his skin. today you didn’t feel like being chirpy and he couldn’t really blame you.

you took a deep breath, eyes looking towards him and away from the window, like your mind had finally processed you were talking to someone and not solely focused on pleasing them. Simon watched as you twisted in your seat to face him, a smile on your lips he knew was just part of your routine rather than a sign of your actual feelings.

Everyone gets through life in a different way, he could only imagine how exhausting it must be to try and make everything positive when you’re clearly struggling to float in an ocean of emotions that most people chose to just sink to the bottom and drown.

“sorry..i shouldn’t be gloomy, rain is amazing for the plants” you said apologetically, a red tint in your cheeks he knew was because of embarrassment.

you felt stupid being upset about something so simple, the rain and a home was something a lot of people didn’t have in their lives and yet you believed you had the right to be sad about something that should be appreciated.

even without meaning to, you were selfish. selfish…God, what would your mother think about the way you were behaving if she was here right now?

your mind taunts you with whispers, as if the smallest of memories carried the weight of years of pain “don’t be a disappointment, make her proud…for the love of God make her at least not regret having you.”

It feels ridiculous and you question yourself a second too long, maybe you should go to therapy like captain price had suggested all those months ago, no shame in asking for help, you cannot always survive on your own, one way or another you will find yourself also needing things from people to be happy.

“I hate the bloody rain…disturbs combat sessions” Simon said, trying to somehow make you feel less conscious about hating some aspects of life. Everyone is entitled to feel a certain way about things and it's time you understand that.

He wished he could bring himself to say more, a thought in the back of his head that told him you deserved to be one of the people he let into his life after seeing you consistently be present and helpful in every way you can. Maybe he was taking advantage of the situation.

But how could he not do so, you dedicated every ounce of energy running through your veins to comfort the disturbed, like it would fix the people who were born broken, shattered from the womb, welcomed into the world with death and violence.

“that’s a valid reason…yeah” you answered more to yourself than to him, his words replaying in your mind like a broken record, what wouldn’t you give to allow yourself to hate something so openly, to say you hated something and not hear your mother on the back of your head telling you to be grateful, that you were too selfish for hating things people liked and needed.

Simon shrugged, he didn’t need a valid reason to hate the rain, he guessed you were just talking through him, the need to have a valid point to dislike something seemed to be very important to you, almost anguishly so.

“It doesn't need to be valid love…you can have an opinion about the bloody rain without having a reason” he commented, breaking the silence that seemed to stretch for a longer period of time as the conversation went on with great difficulty, the both of you communicating because you thought the other needed it.

two helpless souls who cope in different ways, you were like the embodiment of trying to save people from drowning while not knowing how to swim yourself, and he was the water, taking down every living thing that he let into his space, killing without meaning to, almost unaware of the danger that lie within himself, a graveyard with not memory of the people he buried in it.

you understand his point of view, why he speaks what he does, but it doesn’t help you to accept that having a lack of reasoning isn’t in itself a death sentence to your worth. that you’re allowed to live happily hating something as insignificant as the rain and not be a bad person for it.

this goes beyond the simple rain though, you know it, he knows it but neither of you is ready to recognize it, cowardly so, but you’re not even worthy to criticize even your own behavior so you keep your mouth shut as time continues to pass.

some things are meant to change, the universe cannot continue its flow if they don’t. you should know that, it isn’t healthy to stay behind while pushing everyone to move forwards, wanting the past for yourself, to drown in memories of people who will not return, trying to change situations that already happened, there is no saving them, there is no saving yourself from experience it.

Moving on is a type of love, a love you have been neglecting yourself from.

Simon believes in a lot of things, God isn’t one of them, but he finds himself speaking to God more often than he cared to admit, suggesting him to give you some type of mercy, to give your mind the ability of forgiving and forgetting.

He knows it’s forlorn, that if God exists he isn't the person who God would choose to answer their prayers to, but the effort, as futile as it is, doesn't get lost on him. for once in his life he finds himself trying to seek help, not for his well being directly, but if you're fine, he will be too.

This time he doesn’t mind doing rotten work, not if it is for you.

You knew sooner or later life would catch up to you, that moving fastly wasn’t the right measure, especially when you struggled so greatly moving on from the past. It is conflicting and torturous to be pulled back and forwards constantly, your limbs cannot stand the tugging.

You're not made of rubber, the resistance will not last forever, one day you'll fall and not be able to get up. Caring for yourself is a decision you have to make, there’s no other choice but to tend after your wounds. Bleeding out is not an option.

“this is nice…” you mumbled, tracing your fingers on the hardcover of a book you had bought recently. It wasn’t often you allowed yourself to spend money on things you enjoyed, always buying things for others, the ones you believed deserved nice things more than you did.

It was a small action, one that set a mindset that you too, had the right to be a priority on your list of important things. your mother would be furious if she were by your side right now. Thankfully, sometimes death is kind, not to the people who pass, but to the people who get to live after the loss of someone who harmed them more than they took care of them.

“good to see you taking care of yourself” a voice said from behind you, spanning you out of your thoughts and bringing you back down to earth. It would have been nice to stay in your bubble for a bit longer but you're given the time you're given for now and hope to gain more in the future.

you hum, turning around and the figure of simon coming into view, your grip in the book tightens for a second before loosening in a relaxed manner, no need to bear the claws that you keep hidden to someone who is not set to harm you. not that you would hurt people that do.

you're a dog that doesn’t bark or bite, too domesticated to let instinct take over. wanting to please people more than the want to survive, dying in a pool of your own blood, proud of not bearing your teeth to someone who deserved even the slightest growl.

“is just a book” you replied as humbly as you can bring yourself to be at the moment, part of you believed you owed the biggest cordiality and humbleness to Simon, he was the one who had brought you to the point of being able to buy a book and feel half the guilt you would have experienced otherwise.

and this, in a world full of misfortune, pain and misery can only be described as an overdramatic motion to something as simple as shame to claim written pieces of paper as your own, but is difficult to not see it as the end of the world when you have never been able to even think that your suicide note is of your ownership.

Simon doesn't know the context of your so-called humbleness but he can shoot a guess in the dark and find the target quickly as everyone who cared to give you the slightest bit of attention did.

that was humiliating of course, and he knew better than to bring it up and throw you into a pool of more shame than you could survive in, drowning by the minute, unaware there was no bottom to sink to, just an eternity of feeling unwelcome into your own body and life.

“I have books too” he tries to approach the subject in a way you would,with carefulness and gentleness palpable but he is the furthest thing away from a cautious person when it came to feelings, not indulging in them the same way other people did, barely able to feel any at all most of the time.

So he ends up sounding as stupid as you often feel when speaking to people in the same tone, he cringes at his lack of ability to show he cares in a loving and indirect way, the gentleness of showing you care with more than overused words and phrases.

“What type of books do you read?” you ask, trying to find a crevice to slip through in his life as you always did, but every corner seemed to be sealed shut.

oh how much he wished you would just notice the door he opened just for you to walk in and never leave again.

This is stupid, that much is clear on his mind and yet at the same time the intimate tone of the conversation leaves him starving for more of you, a connection more profound than the care and worry you feel towards him who you think is forced to stand by your side.

“Philosophy” he responds, muttering gruffly his answer like the word feels heavy on his tongue, letting himself be known and seen by someone he feels may just be as rogue as him.

“Lovely…philosophy feeds the soul and kills it in the same motion” you comment, head tilted and eyes focused on the twitch his eyebrows do every few seconds, like it is the only way his emotions can manifest without being shut down by him.

“or my uncle used to say that, it can be false…i don't really read philosophy” yet again you find yourself explaining your words, fumbling over everything that could be said to give a reason to what leaves your mouth.

Do you give meaning to your words, or does the person who hears them?

Is tragic really, it is as if you can't help but run in circles around the idea that Simon would misunderstand you and walk away.

but you guess that the fear is to some degree acceptable, when all your life you've focused on understanding others, at the mere sight of someone trying to understand you you panic, worrying that what you are isn't pretty, worrying they won't understand the ugliness they might find.

All that is left is to let go, Can you let go?

The willingness to live and not just survive is something you have to find within yourself, and walking that path alone is not something you have to do.

Simons stands by your side, an understanding that whatever it is that weighs you down and attached you to your past is worth loving if it means to bring peace to a restless soul.

He wasn't wrong when he first met you, you are an angel who brings peace to the disturbed people roaming the earth, he just wishes the disturbance wasn't a disease.

he wished he had kept you pristine and unaware, no angelical being deserves to experience being a human, you did not deserve the torture that it is to be mortal, to lose and to be hurt.

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