#YOU MONSTER how dare you send this and then tell me to go to sleep

[hero-of-skies]

The hero had managed to bring pause to the Demon Lord's meltdown... momentarily. The palms against his cheeks halt the whirlwind of thoughts of the words that were coming with it just long enough for Ghirahim to hear and, worse, zero in on Link's words.

Love. Love... L o v e. Anything else to follow sounds hollow, distant, and for several silent seconds, Ghirahim stares the hero in the eyes.

"... no..." Upset? Quite, but it doesn't burst forth in the form of anger like it usually does. No, Ghirahim almost looks... afraid. "You cannot love me. You... ahaha, ahahaha! No! Take it back, retract it, DIVERT this... this ailment elsewhere if you must! You cannot... love me. I FORBID IT, you... y-you... goddesses DAMMIT."

In a split second, he disappears from the hero's lap in an elegant explosion of diamonds, reappearing some distance away just behind him with his backside turned. "Stay away from me. I knew I should not have... gotten comfortable. Clung to this... idea of normalcy and domestication. I cannot be... addled... with these emotions. With... no. I am not made to... to love or be loved. Cursed goddesses, I feel ill... I need you out of my sight. I... ugh."

He had heard being rejected hurts, he had even seen it with his own eyes when he had delivered a love letter for someone. But to experience it himself and so... so STRONGLY, at that...

Instinctively, AFRAID to lose Ghirahim entirely, his hands had tried to close around the diamonds that had exploded in his face. Of course he couldn't hold onto even those. Why would he be allowed even a shred of someone he cares deeply for? Chosen by the goddess? It felt more like she had CURSED him.

Still, despite the piercing pain shooting through his very being from his heart, he stands. And for a brief moment, he looks behind himself to see if this was just some elaborate joke of the sword spirit's, or if he had really upset him. He assumed the latter when he heard that the other felt SICK because of it.

" I... " Would it be better if he didn't speak anymore? Would it make Ghirahim HAPPY if he listened and left him alone? He didn't agree in the slightest, that the one he adores was not made or deserving to love or be loved but... He said he wanted the Hero gone.

Link takes a deep breath to steel himself, turning away and clutching at his chest. " Be safe, Ghirahim, " his voice shook with the weight of unshed tears, and the sky child walked away, slowed down by the ache in his heart. Was he making the right choice? Should he have tried HARDER to change Ghirahim's mindset? Perhaps he would never know.

[rxzennia]

hibernation/ brumation

– tales of the voracity pathstrider

✎𓂃 winter dormancy.

in his five years of being your boss, aventurine hasn’t ever seen you send in a request for leave. but here he is, staring at your application for a month-long vacation.

a month? isn’t that a little too long?

you didn’t even stick a little comment about where you’re going or what’s happening, dammit! he wants to know so bad, but he feels like he’ll either overstep his boundaries or come off as clingy if he asks.

he’ll approve it, of course!

he wants you to not hate your job, and part of being a good boss is letting his subordinates take the leaves they’re entitled to

and you deserve a nice, long break, anyway

but the curiosity is killing him inside. what will you be doing? will you still hang around the IPC?

he really, really wants to barge into your office and wrench an explanation out of you

and also, how dare you try to take leave right into the holidays! rude

he wanted to take you out to dinner! to fancy places! he was prepared to have a schedule full of you!

totally not dates or his attempts to spoil you

he totally isn’t thinking of doing it so that you’ll spoil him in return

he’s found out that you respond to him if he rants at you

and that you get very soft and careful with him if he presses the right buttons

he digs that so much it’s unreal

there’s something about having you, of all people, treat him tenderly

perhaps because he’s seen firsthand what kind of monster hides in your scarf

or… what kind of monster hides beneath your silent, icy exterior

it just hits different when someone like you treat him so gently

and he knows for a fact that you’ll never abuse that power you have

he absolutely loves that. 100%.

“guess who’s here!” aventurine announces as he enters your office without so much as a knock, “hard at work, my favorite secretary?”

“out, please.” you hiss, sparing him barely a glance from your computer, “i’m concentrating.”

since when did your complaints stop him

he saunters over and sits himself on your armrest anyway

your scarf lift him up and set him down on the couch opposite to you

he finds his way back to your chair

you put him on the couch again

he comes back to your armrest

is he a cat obsessed with a particular box (namely, your chair) or something

you give up

“what is it?” you relent, scooting over so he can fit onto your seat, too, albeit barely

this man does not hesitate to invade your personal space

“where are you going for a month, hmm?” he asks with a playful smile, “can’t even tell me?”

oh, so that’s what this is about

but why is he resting his face in his hand and looking at you like he’s trying to flirt?

“hibernation.” you keep typing without giving aventurine much of a reaction, “not exactly, but close. brumation.”

wait. wait, what?

it doesn’t take a genius to know that aventurine is currently flabbergasted. “you… hibernate? like sleep hibernate?” 

“no, i hibernate awake.” you mumble sarcastically, but he catches it even if your words are muffled

“c’mon, i’m just checking!” he throws his hands in the air as if protesting your attitude

“yes, i sleep, for the most part.” you scoot over a little more and lift him up, setting him down in your lap. “but i’ll be awake here and there.”

you rest your head on top of his and continues to work, effectively caging him in

he realizes you’re much more like a snake than he thought

not in an alarming way

you’re coiling around him, but, like, in a friendly danger noodle way

“will you?” he chuckles; maybe his plans aren’t entirely foiled, after all, “for how long?”

you look at him. “a few minutes up to an hour?” 

you’re only getting up for water and/or changing sleeping positions

never mind, his plans to try to spoil you is, in fact, foiled

he pouts. he had the entire thing planned out already! all five days that you’ll be off!

he looks like a kid who’s about to buy the last donut but you beat him to it and buy the donut right in front of his eyes.

“you can visit.” you say, and you see him light up almost immediately. 

though, you don't think there’s much worth visiting, but whatever makes him happy

when aventurine visits you during your well-deserved vacation, he’s pleasantly surprised. you’re sleeping so peacefully, despite the fact that you usually rarely sleep at all.

you’re curled up into half a ball under your blankets and your scarf

and letting out little snores

is this what you look like when you’re asleep? 

so adorable. if only you’d let him see it often…

but he doesn’t know the frequency of your brumation period

as far as he knows, it’s once in five years, but he has no idea if it’s more than five years

you’re not covering your face, either

aeons, he loves seeing your unobscured face

you’re so beautiful under your scarf

especially the patches of scales along your neck, they glitter in white gold under the light

he wishes you wouldn't try to cover them up

during your entire month, he’s going to be in your room whenever he’s free

he will totally try to sleep next to you at night

what? it’s not like you haven’t shared a bed before!

it’s just that you’ve never been asleep by each other's side!

you will cuddle into him if he tries to hold you

and you will get fussy if he tries to get out of the hug

if only you were as honest when you’re awake

aventurine has been trying to catch you in your small conscious windows, but he’s having not much luck with that. though, this isn’t exactly a gamble, so “luck” might not be the right word here.

he’s so busy; he’s drowning in work 

your temporary replacement isn’t very good at their job

or maybe he’s just used to the way you do things and now everything feels wrong

he wants you back already 

because nowadays he barely has an hour to spend with you apart from bedtime

he hates it

what do you mean by he can’t sit next to your sleeping form while he signs papers?

horrible, very horrible

but eventually he does catch you when you’re awake

you’re drowsy and you’re dragging your blankets and your scarf with you around your room

the cutest thing he’s ever seen in a long while

he watches as you clumsily pour yourself some water, spilling some on the table because you can’t line up the jug and the glass properly

and he watches as you sluggishly flop onto your couch after you’ve downed the water

“had enough of the bed?” he asks, sitting down next to you and brushing a few strands of hair away from your face

“hnnnnnngh,” you grumble and turn to face away from him, you just want to go back to sleep

then you remember this is your boss’s voice

and you reluctantly mumble, “it’s too warm…”

do you even know what you’re saying? you’re melting his heart

“oh, that so? it’s too hot over there?” aventurine snickers softly, his hand caressing your face, the cool fabric of his glove making you sigh in delight. “you’re so lovely.”

he recognizes the amount of trust you have in him to let him visit you when you’re sleeping, and it’s doing things to his stomach. you’re so lazy, so barely aware of your surroundings, but you trust him to be around you while you are in this state.

there is an urge, and he acts on it. he nuzzles against your cheek, rubbing your noses together and planting a small kiss on your forehead. he’s been dreaming of holding you like you’re his greatest treasure, but he’s never mustered up the courage to do it. 

maybe someday he will tell you, and then he’ll be allowed to adore you openly the way he’s always wanted to.

“my favorite snake,” he whispers to himself, feeling a shudder of affection throughout his bones, “sleep well. i’ll look forward to taking you out when you rise.”

[starshipsofstarlord]

Prisoner

Summary-> (Early season 3 based) Winter had been a long journey for all of your group, especially you and Daryl given that there was always a lack of privacy. You find it difficult to feel at home in the prison, but Daryl is always there for you when you need him, and you have the chance to relish in a night alone - or as lonesome as a cell can be (2.9k)

Warnings-> 18+ mdni, smut, unprotected sex, fingering, established relationship, mentions of arrest and imprisonment, swearing

daryl dixon // norman reedus works masterlist

It was an adjustment, that much was clear. After having been locked up in a prison for a few years, the last place you had wanted to be was in one, but here you and your group were, in a cell block after having cleared it out.

Your knee bounced as you sat upon the steps, gnawing upon lip, staring at the familiar grey walls that brought bad memories back into your mind. It wasn’t something you wanted to voice as a problem, you’d spent all winter out on the road, enduring the cold nights, you should have been grateful like everyone else was.

“Y’ okay?” Daryl asked as he took a seat beside you, brushing his shoulders with your own with a comforting manner, reading with no doubt that something was bothering you. Most of the day you preferred to be outside, killing the walkers that clawed at the fences, and you jumped at the chance to go out on a run for supplies just to get out of this pit of misery.

“I’m fine. Just need a distraction from all of this.” You gestured around you, sending him a small smile, feeling far too conscious to even think about falling asleep. “I know it should be good that we’ve found somewhere, and it is, don’t get me wrong, but-“

“I know.” He told you, nodding in understanding, before he put his large hand over your smaller one, clasping it in his grip and bringing it up to his lips. “Don’t have to like it, none of us do, but we woulda died if we hadn’t found this place. And that’s the last thing that I wan’ to happen to ya. I’m grateful for everything you did, ya know.”

“I know Dare.” You decided to look at him rather than the tin you were sat in, meeting his softened blue eyes. “Think if I saw Merle again I’d kick his ass for abandoning me on that night which cost me months in the normal world with you.” He grunted in agreement, smiling when remembering that you had found their camp, and you’d done just that to his older brother.

“Ya got out, that’s all that matters. Especially before all this and the world goin to shit.” The thought of you trapped in somewhere like this and most likely being turned into walker chow or one of them had his heart bursting at the seams. It was a vulgar thought, and the last thing that he ever wanted to happen to you. He wanted to protect you, and he should have done that before, but he was petrified, and you were too stubborn and claimed that you had to pay for your mistakes.

He’d come to see you a few times when you were locked away, he hated that a panel of glass separated the both of you, all he had wanted to do was run his fingers through your hair and tell you everything was going to be okay. But he couldn’t, so instead he counted the days and hours until your release, he had this whole idea of collecting you from that place and driving you far away.

But your release day had been the same day that the entire planet was engulfed with the spreading news of a disease that turned people into monsters, and Merle wouldn’t let him go to see if you had made your sanctioned escape. He had no idea whether you were still alive until he saw Shane carrying you into the camp, exhausted from the lack of both food and fluids and running god knows how many miles just to survive.

“Guess you’re right.” He always was, even if he was too selfless to admit it. “Do you maybe want to try sleeping in a cell? I know we’ve got this whole thing of liking the floor, but I guess it’s worth a try.” Daryl surprising agreed, pulling you to your feet after he had stood, the two of you walking to an empty cell, passing by the other members of your group that were either asleep or lying down in isolation.

It was a big step for you to enter a cell after the months you had been holed up in one by the law, but Daryl kept his hand on your elbow, reminding you that he was there. And always would be. And so unsurely, despite it being your idea, you stepped within the cell, it was devoid of any personality, just a bunk and the normal silver basin and toilet, which all reminded you that this wasn’t home. You hoped that one day you’d find somewhere that felt less suffocating, there had to be a place out there, beyond the chain fence, where it was safe to breathe without the risk of walkers eating you in your sleep.

As you entered the room, you were strangely comforted by the sound of Glenn’s snoring from the cell over, he was no doubt laying beside Maggie, then both lulling in the chance to rest. “It’s not so bad.” You muttered, kicking off your mud accented boots, as Daryl remained close to the door, blocking the view from anyone that could pass as you shrugged out of your jeans, and lifted your shirt over your head, leaving you in just your underwear. It was something that you hadn’t been able to do in prison without the harassment of officers or other people fulfilling their sentences.

Daryl said nothing as you stood still for a moment, closing your eyes, before you reached back, unclipping your bra, his eyes danced over the expanse of your back, every scar traced by his pupils and every mole a target that he planned to pelt with gentle kisses. You turned around to face him, like a vixen testing his limits, tilting your head as you padded along the floor towards him, your fingers brushing against his sleeve butchered flannel. “I want your shirt.”

There was no resistance on his part as he helped you unbutton each button on it, shrugging it off of his broad shoulders as he handed it to you, watching you slip it on. You inhaled his scent as you did only a couple of the buttons on it, before testing the mattress with your hand on the bottom bunk, before sliding upon it and closing your eyes. “Aren’t you going to join me?” He said nothing as he silently kicked off his own boots, tossing the knives he carried out from his pockets onto the floor, them deliciously clattering upon the cement, as he readied himself to lay beside you.

“It’s been a long time since we had a bed.” Daryl spoke in hushed volume, not counting the time on Herschel’s farm after he had been scathed by a bullet in the left side of his head, no thanks to Andrea. He shuffled as he tried to get comfortable, deciding on laying on his side and facing you, trapping you in his arms as his nose brushed against your own. “At least it’s better than that one you had in your shitty old trailer.” He smirked, watching as you tapped his shoulder with your screwed up fist, rolling your eyes when you remembered why it hadn’t been so comfortable.

“It was perfect, we broke it in. Not my fault that the springs couldn’t hold up.” He shook his head at your words, clearly that sale you had got it from had been a scam, but you had insisted that it was better than sleeping on the floor. Truth be told, Daryl didn’t care where he slept, as long as he had you securely beside him, he never wanted you to be taken away from him again, and he was insistent that he wouldn’t allow that to happen.

“I think you’re the one tha’ couldn’t hold up. Or be quiet.” He remarked, causing a scoff to pass from your lips, as you attempted to turn away from him but he wouldn’t allow you. Instead his grip on you got tighter, as he raised a brow at your actions. “But if yar blamin’ it on the damn mattress, we migh’ as well see if this one is any better.” It wasn’t very often that Daryl would smirk, but when he did, you practically melted in a puddle in front of him and forgot where you were, which in this instance, was a blessing. His hand trailed down your sternum that was exposed by your lousy buttoning of his shirt that you wore, descending dangerously lower, so that his fingertip hit the top band of your panties.

Your breath hitched, as your body became almost immobile, frozen from his more that welcomed touch. He teased you, running his hand hand back to your stomach only to trail it back down to where his destination had been. “Damn it Daryl, do something.” You hissed, careful to keep your voice down. “I swear to- oh.” His hand had slipped into your underwear, rubbing against the outside of your cunt, causing your hips to jut up into his touch. He always knew how to make you sufficiently aggravated, you’d have cursed out from the bubbling annoyance in your chest if you had no worries that anybody could hear the two of you.

With that he slipped a finger into your walls, it felt like it had been a long time since the two of you had an opportunity to be physical. All through winter, after losing the farm to the mass of endless walkers, you’d had sex once out in the woods, when you were supposed to be hunting, and because of your lack of action you felt touch starved. Even despite Daryl proceeding to hold your hand when the pair of you rarely walked at the back of the group, and sleeping side by side with him. It just hadn’t been enough, but for now these taunting walls allowed you some release, ironically enough.

“Yer so fuckin’ tight.” Daryl muttered, kissing up your stomach all the way up to your lips, ushering and drinking your whimpers that threatened to escape. “Woulda fucked ya more if I’d had the chance baby, now I’m really gonna have to stretch ya out before I can put my cock in ya.” You could only moan into his mouth, hands clasping around his wrist as you ground yourself down on his hand, you let out a squeal as he unexpectedly entered another finger, alarmed by the welcomed intrusion, however Daryl stopped all movements. He spoke quietly to himself, eyes dancing around with a scheming glimmer in his eyes, as an idea revelled in his mind.

He yanked a pillow out from beneath your head, causing you to pant as you clenched desperately around his fingers, trying to allure him into continuing. Daryl raised your hips, fingers still in you, as he placed the pillow beneath them, your mouth making an O shape as he hit a new angle inside of you. If you hadn’t been in a prison, knowing that it was your worst nightmare, he would have calmed your sounds by placing the pillow over your head, but he knew where the line was drawn and he was never one to cross it if he was aware of your discomfort. “Good girl.” He drawled out, deciding to fasten the pace of his fingers as a wet spot began to leak onto your panties, he swiped his tongue across his bottom lip as he watched you. You were close, and it had come faster than expected, given how many months it had been.

“More.” You pleaded, wanting his cock, no matter how much it hurt when he stretched you out, but instead you were given another finger, and Daryl grunted as he rutted into the bed. “Dare, need you.” You huffed, feeling empty when he removed his fingers. The time dragged as he unbuckled his belt and pulled off his jeans, and finally he clambered on top of you, his naked form teasing every nerve in your entire body. “If you need me so bad, why don’ ya ride me?” He whispered, rolling the both of you over so that you were atop of him. You leant down, your hair falling in a cascade around both of your faces as you pressed your lips against his, sliding your cunt over his cock.

He was frighteningly hard, it had been months since the both of you had gotten this far, and there were no interceptions that could stop you this time, or so you hoped. Your slick coated his length as you ground yourself on him to fulfil your own insatiable drive of hunger, his hands bruising your hips as he attempted to keep you still so he could slip inside of you from beneath your trembling form. His tip grazed your clit, sending you into a frenzy, you couldn’t wait a second longer you mindlessly decided, grasping his erect cock in your hand to hold it still, as you slid him inside of you. It was an ethereal feeling, the two of you relished in the sensation of being so close, and not just emotionally.

Daryl’s head reached up, pulling you down flush on top of him, as he spread an array of butterfly kisses over your collarbones and the middle of your throat. “I love ya girl, you drive me absolutely crazy, but yar my kinda crazy.” He stroked your hair lovingly out of your face, distracting you from how he raised both of the weights of the lower halves of your bodies up, and before you could respond with your own spoken words of love to him, he began to thrust up into you, making the world around you drown into nothing more than a distant memory. Your breathing was messy as it mixed with your partner’s, you sturdied one hand on the pillow beneath his head, the other long discarded to the floor, as your opposite braced itself on the wall, clawing at the impenetrable surface.

“Fuck Dare.” Tears were glazing your eyes as you felt each vein of his cock within your cunt, and you began to move with his own thrusts, finding a rhythm that suited the position that you were in. You were careful not to raise your head too high so that you didn’t hit it on the bottom of the bunk above you, Daryl’s right hand left your hip and rested forcefully on your ass, squeezing the flesh as he tried and failed to hold in his grunts. Surely by morning, there was no doubt that someone would make a commotion about hearing you through the screen-less doors, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to care, not after how long it had been since you had evoked such passion with the man below you.

Sweat began to bead upon his forehead, slicking the growing locks onto his face, as you brushed them away. A heavy creak rattled from the bed as Daryl once again turned you over, and pounded in you from above, without allowing his cock to slip out from your sweet and wet pussy. From the red tint that had appeared on his face, and how he frowned as though he was on a mission, it was clear that he was getting close, which wasn’t a surprise considering the amount of time that had passed since your bodies had moulded together in such a way. You grasped him by the back of the neck, pulling him down to entrap him in a fiery kiss, your legs wrapping tightly around his waist as you approached your own high.

And there it was, the destination that you had been caving for, your own release. After all of those months that you had served as a resident in a prison, you’d missed his touch, and as soon as the two of you had reunited in Atlanta, you’d made the most of the time you could get together. Daryl’s thrusts began to get sloppy as he struggled to keep up his pace after feeling you clench around his cock and cum all over it, sending him into a delirium to chase his own high. He could feel his balls straining to be emptied, and when he was almost there, he pulled out, not wanting to further the risk anymore of getting you pregnant given the state of the world, and began thrusting himself in the apex of your thighs, until finally he allowed his seed to spill over your flesh.

He exhaled a deep sigh, leaning down to press a kiss against your sweaty hairline, before reaching down and grabbing your discarded shirt, wiping your upper legs clean. He wasted no more time to curl up next to you and bring you into his large arms, staring at your face, letting you know without words that you were the most important thing to him. He’d do anything for you and to keep you safe, nobody was going to separate the two of you again, he was stern on that. “Maybe this place isn’t so bad.” You muttered lovingly into his chest, brushing your nose against where his heart lay, and Daryl releases a small but real smile as he tugged the blanket out from tour forms, awkward as his manner was, and wrapped it around the two of you, so that you could drift off to sleep in his arms and pretend for a moment in your dreams that the world wasn’t as it was.

[thetimetel]

I see a lot of people hating so hard on Calypso for forcing Odysseus to stay on the island against his will - and seeing him as her new lover. And believe me, I get it. Those are horrible things no sane person would do.

But I keep being brought back to this line in her song with him. The part where she specifically says 'under my spell we're stuck in paradise. No one can come or go, my island stays unknown'.

She can't leave either. And that paints a whole new light on the situation.

How long has she been stuck there, all by herself? Years? Decades? She says in her last song that it's been a hundred years. Long enough that she has stopped calling it a prison and now calls it a paradise. How long has it been that she has done the same thing every day, pining for any other contact at all?

Then one day, something changes. A man washes up on the shoreline. She immediately takes him to her bed so he can rest and recover. She can already see the new life that they're going to have together, thanking the gods for finally answering her prayers to no longer be alone. She is immortal after all, and eternity is so much more bearable when you have someone else to spend it with.

But something's wrong. He's sleeping for so long, not waking up. And the panic starts to set in. Is he dead? Have the gods played some horrible trick on her, sending a dead man to the island? It's been so long since she has seen a mortal that she doesn't know how to check for signs of death. Is she really so desperate that she brought a CORPSE to bed and thinks it's going to wake up??

Then oh, it's good! He's talking in his sleep! Everything's good, everything is fine. Corpses don't talk. So she stays near him and listens as he whispers of Ithaca, of monsters and politics - wait, Polites, a few other names and then -

'Penelope'

And in that moment her entire vision for her new life comes crashing down. He said that name with such passion, such love, even in his sleep. No. It can't be. The gods aren't THAT cruel, that the first person they'd send to her is . . . no. She can't accept it, doesn't dare to think of the implications. Once he wakes up she'll ask him.

Then finally he does wake up. And it's like a dream. She's in the room, has clearly been taking care of him, and the very first thing he sees is her eyes. It's so romantic. She gets him up to speed, making a light joke about that 'thought you were dead' moment because it doesn't matter anymore. There's only one more thing to ask to ensure her vision of their future.

'did you know you talk in your sleep? Tell me though, who's Penelope?'

'She's my wife'

And in that instant all her fears are confirmed. Something in her head just snaps. How dare the gods do this to her? How DARE they send someone already married to her island, after so long?

She's not giving up that easily.

So she continues her plan like nothing had happened. Letting slip her intention to wed him and make this wonderful family, of which she has likely named their first ten children already. And this man snaps at her, threatens to kill her.

'Oh handsome, you may try. But last I checked, goddesses can't die!'

And just how many times has she checked, being trapped on an island that she can't escape all by herself?

But again she brushes it off as a joke. Because that's all behind her. There's something for her to live for again! And silly Odysseus tries to claim that this isn't how it's going to be. She totally gets it, she went through that the first few years herself. So she spells out that he's all hers now.

Now all she has to do, is wait. Wait for him to come to terms with their situation. Wait for him to realize he will never reach Penelope. It will be ugly of course, that moment he finally accepts this cruel fate. But once that has passed, he'll fall for Calypso. She knows this in her heart. And they can finally set out to truly make this hellhole a paradise.

So she waits.

One year passes.

She's still having the time of her life. In between his escape attempts she's getting him to open up to her. When she explained her past to him he even showed sympathy! After all, they both were constantly getting screwed over by the gods. It wouldn't take long.

Two years pass.

His constant escape attempts are just amusing. She's taken to telling him 'welcome back!' every time the raft turns around and brings him back to the island.

Three years pass.

He tries to kill her, under the thought that it was her that was keeping him on the island. But she just laughs as she shows it didn't do a damn thing. He'll run out of ideas soon. He'll accept that he's trapped here, just like her.

Four years pass.

She's lost count of the number of escape attempts. There's at least five a day. He's trying to find a loophole in the curse that keeps them there. She's trying to gently push him over that edge, to get him to accept the reality of the situation. Once he does, their new life together will start.

Five years pass.

Any day now, he'd give up. The escape attempts had stopped, but now he would just sob on the shoreline. At this point he was going to raise the tide with how many tears he had cried. She understood of course. Her breakdown hadn't been any prettier all those years ago.

Six years.

Why? Why wasn't he giving up? Why was he doing this to himself? The escape attempts had renewed. He'd searched the entire island, trying to find something tethering them to this accursed paradise. He'd tried everything to escape. She wasn't even sure where he'd gotten the 'wax wings' idea from, but it was just as pointless as the other attempts.

Seven years.

She finds him at the edge of a cliff. And for the first time she feels a deep, primal fear. He'd never accepted her gift of immortality. She desperately tries to talk him down. But every attempt seems to be making it worse. She doesn't know she's repeating the words he's heard before. Then he cries out for Athena, and when she doesn't answer he just collapses in tears.

It was scary. But this had to be his breaking point. He didn't resist when she brought him back to their home, though he stayed in bed for the rest of the day. She just had to give him some space - though she was going to make CERTAIN he stayed away from that cliff.

Then something happens. The last thing she expected.

A visit from Hermes. He tells that Zeus himself has decreed Odysseus be freed.

And yet again, her vision of the future is shattered.

She pleads. She begs. He's falling for her, she knows it. That new life is so close, she just needs a little more time! But her cries fall on deaf ears. And when she tries to refuse, a lightning bolt lands a little too close for comfort.

There's only one chance left.

And in her heart she knows how it will end. But she tries. She tries to convince Odysseus to stay, knowing that if she fails he will leave her all alone again. She doesn't want to be alone again. She pleads, she begs, she pours out her entire soul to him. All while knowing what his answer will be. It hadn't changed for seven years, why would it change now? Why would this fucking world EVER give her what she wanted!?

And it ends just like she expects it to. With her watching as he gets on that raft and sails off into the horizon. Except this time Hermes keeps the curse at bay, and stops the island from bringing him back.

And just like that, she's all alone again.

[yourlocaltreesimp]

AHHHH THANK YOUUU I can't tell you how much joy it brings me that you enjoyed my writing! Well, since it's like 11 at night and I can already tell I won't be able to sleep much again, might as well give more headcanons and oneshots ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

.•♫•♬• 𝒀𝒂𝒏!𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒌𝒆𝒅!𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝑷𝑻. 𝟐 •♬•♫•.

Masked!Reader who can't stand when ANYTHING harms the people that they care about and isn't afraid to show their true rage and aggression that they keep in check most of the time. They may be sweet and kind to everyone, but the second they see something as a threat to their loved ones they will instantly let out their true colors and these colors are quite enticing to say the least...

Masked!Reader who can secretly be a violent, sadistic, and aggressive person despite all of their sugar coated words and caring personality. They lived a tough life in their world, practically fighting to survive and thrive in their dangerous and harsh world. They truly aren't a force to be reckoned with once aggravated, yet it's so hot to see them so violent and let themselves go...

.•♫•♬• 𝑶𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒕 •♬•♫•.

You subconsciously dropped your weapon and charged at the monster as it looked up at you...

Once you were within range of the disgusting beast that dared to harm one of the people you cared dearly about, you threw a punch that sent the thing flying back at least 6 feet with little to no sweat. The others watched in amazement and slightly fear as well as arousal at your display of strength and aggression, not ever expecting their lovely darling to have this sort of side to them.

You watched with a snarl as the damned monster got back up and picked up its weapon before hissing at you, which you returned with more hatred for it. You carefully circled it as it did the same, your predatory look able to send chills down the Chain's spine if you so much as glanced at them please look at me like that again please. Another surge of rage and adrenaline struck you as you charged at it once an opening was visible which just happened to be when it swung it's arm above its head.

You managed to somehow tackle the thing, to the surprise of the Chain, as you swung yourself to latch onto its back. The Chain's surprise only skyrocketed when you suddenly slid your mask down past your chin, exposing the lower half of your face before opening your mouth and biting into the monster's neck with your sharp teeth oh to have you bite them and claim them as yours would be a dream come true...

You kept biting and tearing at the neck of the monster until it finally stilled, it's lifeless body at last hitting the ground. You slowly stood back up and wiped your mouth, panting as you carefully observed the beast you had just defeated and letting your remaining rage die down. Once you caught your breath, you let out an exhausted sigh and slid your mask back on as if nothing had happened.

However, the Chain couldn't shake all of the mixed feelings they were having right at that moment, their eyes peering at you with several mixed looks. Let's just say that after that, they were much more obsessed with you than before...

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

I honestly really enjoyed writing this cuz I typically have my OC in mind when writing these and I can always visualize that these are definitely the types of things she would do. Gotta love when a character mauls an enemy to death and acts so casual about it afterwards 😀👍

- 𐂂 anon

Masked! Reader who can be just as protective as her followers…

Ahhh! I love your writing style, you have me hooked! I hope you get more sleep tomorrow night and you also drink enough water.

<3

[winterhawkhood]

It is TIME to countdown!

Winterhawkhood-tober starts October 1st! To prepare for this incredible event where we will flood the world with winterhawkhood content, check out:

-The SEVEN bingo theme cards

-Prompt Request list (will be updated as requests come in)

-31 Days of Prompts Master List

The AO3 Collection

Friends, foes, family - this is going to be epic.

Bingo Cards:

Prompt Requests:

Prompt Requests from fellow fans! These are free to use and can be used as much and in as many ways as possible:

If you send in requests to this blog we will continue to update the list!

From blubblesandink 

-Mr. And Mrs. Smith AU/ mistaken identity

-soft spot for animals(willing to act heinous towards humans, but saves a puppy)

-Bro you really live like this? (Ie, break into their house and then make it better)

-Eiffel Tower

From Taxi-cab-to-slowtown:

-Jason/Clint/Bucky/plus one or more

From Claraxbarton:

-Rule 63: different gender(s)

------

31 Days Prompt Masterlist

Below are 31 Days worth of prompts. These are very general, with each day featuring one (1) dialogue prompt and three (3) other prompts. Feel free to respond to as many or as few as you like! There is some overlap from bingo cards to these prompts.

Day 1:

“You were right.”

-Different Robin

-On the run

-Friends with benefits

Day 2:

“You lied to me.”

-Royalty

-Friends to lovers

-Breakfast in bed

Day 3:

“How long have you known?”

-Healing

-Karaoke

-High School Reunion

Day 4:

“I wish I’d never met you.”

-Fake dating

-sex toys

-stakeout

Day 5:

“Wait, are you ticklish?”

-Wedding

-Avengers Team

-bad pick up lines

Day 6:

“Do you trust me?”

-Enemies to lovers

-backstory connection

-seeking/wanted ad

Day 7:

“Miss me, sweetheart?”

-cardigan

-kissing in the rain

-being in a crowd

Day 8:

“Please.”

-shaving

-stargazing

-mission

Day 9:

“You don’t have to say it”

-clothes sharing

-picnic

-beach

Day 10:

“I’m not a monster.”

-dating app

-baking

-identity porn/mistaken identity

Day 11:

“I told you not to touch that.”

-Sleeping

-canon divergent

-late

Day 12:

“You weren’t supposed to laugh.”

-sexting

-time travel

-co-workers

Day 13:

“Did you hear that?”

-autumn

-one bed

-matchmaking

Day 14:

“I deserve it.”

-coffee

-dancing

-secret dating

Day 15:

“I want to take care of you.”

-house/pet/baby sitting

-meet ugly

-hobby

Day 16:

“Is that my gun?”

-sex work

-modern/canon fusion

-love triangle

Day 17:

“I don’t remember.”

-size difference

-historical

-bets

Day 18:

“I remember.”

-Accidental

-military

-hand holding

Day 19:

“I’ve missed this.”

-Urban fantasy

-neighbors

-intimacy

Day 20:

“It’s three in the morning.”

-Sports

-horror

-vacation

Day 21:

“I can explain.”

-Writer

-shopping

-movie night

Day 22:

“I thought you were dead.”

-FUBAR

-arranged marriage

-hugs

Day 23:

“Then tell me the truth.”

-parent

-haunted 

-sacrifice

Day 24:

“How much of that did you hear?”

-Academic AU

-bad luck

-savior

Day 25:

“I hate this feeling?”

-Olympics

-injury

-conflict resolution

Day 26: 

“Don’t you dare walk away.”

-ballet

-allergies

-family

Day 27:

“Tell me a story.”

-Gotham

-costumes

-apologizing

Day 28:

“One last kiss.”

-pornography

-uniforms

-platonic

Day 29:

“Go fuck yourself.”

-blind date

-holiday/special occasion

-Western AU

Day 30:

“You left me.”

-surprise party

-bar

-drunk

Day 31:

“I can explain about last night.”

-pining

-lingerie

-one night stand

[popculturebuffet]

Sam and Max The Devil's Playhouse Retrospective Finale: The City That Dares Not Sleep!: Into the Sunset (Patreon Review for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy lagomorphs and welcome to the FINALE of my look at sam and max: the devil's playhouse and the telltale games as a whole. It's a bittersweet feeling: I"m happy to have finished this retrospective, have played these wonderful games and for all of you. This is one of the more popular series i've done and i'm proud of it. It allowed me to play three great games that while not my genre, were still a lot of fun and I will definetly revisit sometime and it was a fun experiment. It got me to review games for the first time, got me copies of all three games and got me the hall

Recently renovated!

But as i've said twice now and thought would cushion me from doing it again... i'll miss these guys. These games have a sense of humor that's parts brilliant, insane and just dark enough that really fits for me, and with no new sam and max media on the horizon this is the last we'll probably get. There is the high possibility skunkape could do a new game or there could be another vr game, but as of now the franchise has gone back to the sea, remaining dormant to rise triumphantly once again. There's other stuff to review, but it's unknown when we'll ever see these guys again. I would hope for a reprint of the comics or an actual release for the cartoon at some point, but i'm not holding my breath.

For now this is the end, the grand finale and it's perfect. Or as close as you could get: It's emotinally wrenching, hilarious, and engaging, a final sendoff to these games with a lot of major characters coming back to say goodbye. If the franchise had to stall for decades.. this was a good note to go out on. One last ride into the sunset on the wings of a giant monster with cockroach children, bizzare pregnancies, sailor moon refrences and shocking reveals galore! Let's get in the desoto one last time.. this is the City that Dares Not Sleep!

We open with the narrator who in classic fashion tells us one of these faces, displaying the whole cast and being in frame himself, will betray sam and max!

It's been one week since Max looked at sam, cocked his head to the side and became a giant cthulu monster. I do miss the direct followups from the earlier chapters, but the time jump feels necessary and adds to the sense of despair as Maxthulu has been terroizing the city for a week straight, with creepy flaming heads of max, psychic spores apparently, encouraging everyone to

And feeding off their dreams, and getting real pissed when Freddy Kruger keeps killing them. Stay on your street freddy!

Sam is working with an all star team. Mama Bosco and the Cops are there, though Carol has left to be with Buster Blaster, with Curt happy she's happy. Good on you man. Less good is that he keeps making puns about murdering max.. just HOW many you can get out of him and the sheer lack of empathy as ya know that's sam's husband make it one of the best gags in the game.

As for why they want to murder sam that's down to another guest: Agent Superball. Sorry ACTING PRESIDENT Agent Superball... could.. could he come here and be potus? Please? I'd even take max a this point. Max would say trans rights. He'd also give llamas the right to drive but he'd say trans rights. He dosen't want to.. but he's preparing the maimtrons, their's multiples now to nuke max which would take out manhattan and all in there but unlike max he's not throwing away lives for funsies. It's this or Maxtulu spreads and the whole world goes down.

Sam refuses to accept that and Luckily mama bosco has a plan: send Sam and a team of experts into Max's body to hopefully turn him back to as normal as the little psychopath gets. Thankfully she brought in two ringers. The first is a plesant suprise as DR NORRINGTON IS ALIVE! Yes he somehow survived the fall.. as did Paperwaite , who I spelled what wrong the last few episodes, but who cares about him DR NORRINGTON LIVES. They agree to go along.

Our second guest dosen't, but he is a welcome return. MR FEATHERLY. Yes he's helping out. Why a trained actor is needed we don't know but he was missed regardless and unlike the others I didn't expect him to be gone most of the game.

Everyone else turns sam down to join the team if for understandable resons: As President superball can't risk himself like this and unlike max won't go against protocol to do so time and time again, mama bosco needs to stay to be your woman in the chair and it goes against SAG regulation for mr featherly. The cops juts don't wanna. Thankfully an old friend arrives in the nick of time, someone with all the qulaifications and more:

YUP SYBIL HAS FINALLY RETURNED. And thankfully she's returned to doing tons of jobs and doing weird shit instead of griping with a horrible boyfriend she ends up marrying anyway. IN fact as you can see the marriage.. has gone well. Lincoln apparently shaped up as their now not only entirely loving but he stayed with her through all 15 semsters of her pregnancy. Which I know is a low bar but given how much I couldn't stand lincoln in season 2, is an improvment. He's leading the maimtrons and has won back my good will in being badass and also a supportive partner for a change.

So with that our team's assembled. Now we need to get inside max

Thankfully we have just the right Chekovs Gun: CORNDOGS! Max still loves them and his spores have taken all of new yorks to feed his endless hunger. Thankfuly we're able to swipe the last box from grandpa stinky's truck and thus need to get cookin without looking. We're going ot need the recipe though which he just gives us.. another fantastic gag. Wasn't that hard. This might be the funniest chapter of an already hilarious game.

We'll need cornmeal which is easy enough, as a truck's nearbye. For most of this batch we simply need to repeat these events, which gets a bit tedious as sam walks slow, but gets easier as you get more used to it: you wave a corndog, lure max's hand to wherever then stop waving it and he'll pick something you need up aka a truck full of cornmeal and the desoto.

With both plopped in the bowl, we now need veggie oil which luckily new york keeps in some of it's fine water towers for situations just like this. It's blocked by some more old friends; Satan and Jurgen! Both of whom i'm delighted to have back. Satan is doing damage control as he's being blamed for the whole affair instead of the elder gods and I can't blame him. Even the name devil's toybox is inaccurate.

Jurgen is having more issues with satan's premadoonna behavior. On the bright side he's looking sharp, having put his old clothes back on to save on the budget.

We need to end this local interview to get to that oil. Thankfully we got corndogs so you swap one with the mic, satan gets attacked and max drops the oil where we need it.

The last ingredient is one egg. Just a regular egg. Dosen't have to be sized up for the recipie. I found this hilarious. We have to get it out of mr featherly who can give us the goods....

We just gotta get everyone to turn around.. they won't.. except superball. He's a good guy. But we distract everyone else including geting the cops shut down by bringing up viruses. Not touching that one and moving on as we now have everything we need right in front of us. It's time to get inside of max!.... he.. he would've loved that.

We get a boss 70's adventure movie style intro for everyone. It's dope and feeds into the whole 70's vibe this game goes for in it's logo, bringing it all full circle.

So now we're inside max where his stomach is a shockingly orderly kitchen where we sadly can't cook without lookin but we do have all the lovely spices from that gag. I'm not suprised Max has tile grout in his stomach. I'm more suprised there isn't a tire iron.

The good news is Max digests slow the bad is that the tubes to the rest of his body aren't working. Luckily we have coffee beans in our inventory.. for some reason. A quick jolt and we can get up to the brain.

Sadly max has a bit of a problem: There's a tumor there's a tumor, there's a tumor there's a tumor oh oh there's a tumor. A massive one made out of stygian energy and poking it gets our heroes scattered throughout max's body.. though luckily where they need to go.

First is the legs. Their ran by treadmill but sybill won't do it so we need to find something to run them. Thankfully we get a direct line to MAX'S INVENTORY! Yes we finally get to see where max keeps everything... in a warehouse somewhere in his bowels

I assume sam also has one, might explain the gut... damn now I wish my gut was explained by a pocket dimension. At any rate we find some fun nods to media I haven't seen: a board game from their edgy offensive phase.. which is still going as of 2024 and a bucket of fish from hit the road. We also find the duo's roach farm and Sam witensses the miracle of birth! And thus Max Jr is born. One of only two roaches i'm not horrified by. Good boy.

To get him we have to touch some jumper cables, turn into a roomba and ram the shelf, scooping up our little buddy son buddy. He goes into our inventory and leaving turns us back to normal. With that Sybil is touched Sam is actually capable of being a parent and hits the treadmill and now we can walk around a bit.

The walking around a bit.. dosen't do much, but we go to boscotech for reasons that will be useful later. For now we need to stop skipping arm day so to the arms which are controlled by a game of TWISTER! Hit it AL!

We get our commands from an arcade game.. just like my real life

Once I figure out what that means.

But since Max is somehow fucking with us, everything Sam says is the oppsite so to get the right commands we have to say the oppisite. It's.. a decent little puzzle and is quickly done, a vast improvment over Beyond Time and Space's over reliance on mini games Devil's Playhouse mocked last chapter.

Sadly while Sam can beat the system he can't beat a .. maimtron just kinda lodged in there releasing nuclear gas. The good news is norrington can still do it as he and his meat sack are immune to radiation. But Sam's going to need someone ELSE immune to work the controls and get things started.

Thankfully we just so happen to know a giant seemingly radiation proof cockroach and simply switching max's hunger from corndog to roach by putting the roach on his faviorite food deal, fixes it. The puzzzles here are less complex: still a dead end or two, but more streamlined. I don't feel it hurts the game as there's still enough for you to do and given how well built up this story has been, you really don't care. The puzzles don't drag, the solutions are simple and the the jokes are on point

So outside Sal is having second thoughts about stinky

But gets eaten as they break up while she ends up back with Skunkape and decides "Eh why not". So it's up to our friend whose more than happy to make amends for the whole attempted murder, working behind your back , evil scheme stuff. Also for making out with stinky in front of us... and... oh god i'm remembering it.

Larger point is he's wiling to help.. which leads to the second saddest moment in the trilogy, just inching out sam's quite "Max" last chapter.. and just behind this chapter's climax. Sal goes and saves the day... then comes back VERY sick. He got the controls working, but turns out in this universe of all things roaches being immune to radiation.. is a myth. Sal knew this.. but also knew if he didn't do it someone else would and also woudln't make it and desperate to do SOMETHING right for once... sacrificed himself. Sal dies tragically, collapsing quitely on the couch having helped save the world, all to help his friends.

And sam responds to this by.. cracknig a lot of jokes.

Stillt his means we can control sam. GIANT MONSTER SAM IS GO!

Being evil by moonlight Winning love by daylight Never running , he'll just bite! He's the one named Max!

Now we can control his body, we can give max a needed shock to the system, via battery park which in this universe has a giant battery as nature intended. Using this we give max a little shock treatment, get him jumpin like a real live wire and thus allowing us to open the door in his brain.

As Sam prepares the action pauses and the narrator asks us to guess one last time... who will betray sam and max.... only to get a guest. Sam opening the door behind him. Yup in a masterful twist I knew all along, but with a reveal I didn't and I needed a second to recover from laughing hard at, the Narrator wasn't just some abstract 4th wall guy but PART of max and behind the events of this season. Well some of them. The whole alternate timeline things more on sam. But he was at least the one keeping Sam away.

Turns out the narrator is Max's superego... and a sympathetic villian at that. I mean imagine if every action you wanted to do had to be screamed through a feral rabbit who just wanted to light the world on fire and eat junk instead of reading a book or petting a puppy once in a while. You too would snap and his plan is for Max to explode, having stalled Sam long enough to where it seemingly dosen't matter and the shock having been something he planned destroying Max's memory seemingly so the one toy that ISN'T under the superego's control, the astral projector, is functionally useless. He even admits that yeah this is horrible, will kill a bunc hof people.. but it's hard to truly hate him: he's part max. Of course his solution is a violence. It's also a bit of irony I didn't realize till now: that he tries to be better than the rest of him.. but his solution is as reckless, selfish and dangerous as anything max could cook up. It's something max would LOVE despite the horrifying death... and it's something the superego can't fathom.

Thankfully dr norrington as always has a plan: turns out there's one toy left max didn't eithe rreplciate in his mind palace, the cthonic destroyer. He fixed it but someone stole it... it must be that dastardly bastardly HARRY MOLEMAN!

Yeah Sam's just... bad at this. It's Skunkape and it's time for one final showdown with our arch enemy. We take control of the body back and remember the memories of a few places so we can fast travel, including Skunkape's ship which is strangely active again. And we can visit with an old power of ours, astral projection. For some horrifyign reason Superball thought an interment camp was a good idea and i'ts where most of the dogglegangers are, but we can hyjack the few left in nyc, psecifically three on the ship. What follows is a fun puzzle going back and forth through the cages to escape, simple, quick to do and didn't require much guide work.

We then go forth and encounter an old foe... Sammun Mak. Turns out Skunkape had use for his brain and presumibly picked it up off the floor of hte museum where our heroes left it.

He's kinda eh here, but I do love how we move things forward: Sam has to piss him off by bringing up th emole men beating the little snot, getting him to open the pod bay doors and revealing.. GRANDPA STINKY.. except.. it's not. It's an ape in his body. And at this point Sam may need to find anothe rline of work as it takes hilarously long for him to spot it. It's a great gag and I love how he figures it out... the ape apologizes. Grandpa Stinky would rather castrate everyone in the room with a rusty fork than apologize! Still a little light intimidation and we have Skunkape's location and a little smashy smashy as max and we're there: the final set piece of the game.

So Skunkape is having an all out climactic supervillian showdown with Flint Paper, whose punching apes as fast as Skunkape can clone them while Skunkape plans to.. er... conquer the world with the toy he dosen't remotely understand while Girl Stinky gets flint to kill grandpa stinky. I do love Skunkape's gradual breakdown over the seasons: he's a genuine clever threat in the first episode, still dangerous when he returns.... then gets degraded to flunky, beaten up, traumtized, kidnapped and now is just doing his patner's half baked scheme with no clear plan. The sheer amount of defeats have broken the poor sap and we're about to finish the job. I also love how PISSSSED he is to realize the doggleganger is sam. Sam is equally pissed and it's neat this fight got so personal that it went from a pretty impersonal world conquering to a blood fued I ddin't know sam and max were even capable of and ends fantastically: we use a projector to project the toybox, trick skunkape and trade the fake box. He's foiled and Stinky follows suit, as Sam.. just casually points out the gorilla is grandpa stinky and Flint lets him down.

We can worry about the horrific nightmare that is a mysthorpic man in the body of a gorilla later as now we have everything we need. We can save max, save the world again, and call it a ... day... why is it wet? Well that's because Sybil's water broke

She dosen't want to give birth inside of max whose rapidly collapsing his brain just minutes from exploding. A fair want but Sam can't think of anything else.. and it's what makes this chapter quitely heartbreaking. Sam's whole goal this time isn't saving the world.. he just wants his best friend, husband and reason for living back. He's not as broken as he was during his unfortuante noir breakdown, but that breakdown makes it very clear how much Sam NEEDS his little buddy. He'll, in his own words, destroy as many cities as he has to. This whole quest has been to save him, and depsite all he's done over these games: stopped a childhood star's revenge plot, saved a talk show audience from a hostage situation, defeated a pathetic man running a mafia out of a mafia free playland and casnio, saving the presdiency from a power mad tyrant to give it to another power mad tyrant, destroying the internet, saving the world from a sentient bacteria, saving christmas, saving easter island for all of a minute, defeating a eurotrash vampire, coming back from the dead in the process of the previous thing, piloting a marachi ufo time machine, saving hell , KILLING THE SODA POPPERS TO THE JOY OF ALL OF HUMANITY, thrwaring an alien invasion, traveling back in time via film reels, saving max' sbrain and then all of reality and finally helping beat a doll in a battle for the fate of all.... all of this.. all the adventures.. the jokes.. the sexual tension... all of it.. and he ultimately fails.

And he fails for not lack of trying. Evne if Sybil has to leave he refuses to... but the ultimate reason for the failure is tearjerkinga s it is deeplys weet... the creepy flame headed spore thigns return.. and the only thing they can say and think is.. SAVE SYBIL. Despite all we've done to her... Max will never abandon someone he considers friend, let alone with her child and implictly.. he won't abandon sam. in one truly sefless act he guides the party out, and the superego.. actually gets a happy ending. I mean he's about to die, but he's just so HAPPY that Max.. proved him wrong. That for one moment, Max proved himself selfless, that he did something noble and brave with nothing to gain from it but saving the people he cares about. That in his last act.. max was everything the Superego had gave up on and CAN be saved. Well.. metaphorically. Literally the superego stays behind and gestures them to a tear duct, which we escape with Max's poetry. There's a ton of great little albums he has including his weird flint paper fanfiction

So our heroes escape, Norrigton takes sybil to the hosptial.. and then.. it happens. one of the most painful moments i've ever witnessed in all of gaming. A sad, truly pogniant death, one of the best i've ever witnssed. As max prepares to go up... it's clear despite being a monster.. max is back in there... and he waves a simple goodbye to sam. And then vanishes. An explosion goes off in the sky.. and Max is dead. All sam can do is say a very quite max still in shock. It's such a fantastically animated, acted and heartfelt moment and it hits you harder because of how insane this franchise is. Even in what I thought would be a fairly morose chapter due to this ending... it's pretty wacky and buisness as usual. But the reason this hits so hard, even harder now I can actually see it and hnot hear about it is that tonal shift: that relization that max.. cannot be saved this time. That we still techincally won.. but you the player and sam the character did all they could.. .and max is still gone. The good news is he took stinky and skunkpae with him as a bomb got teleported to them, their gone, and the world is better.

IN a playable epilouge bit, Mama Bosco tries to clone the boy.. but his dna is too fucking weird. They try.. but max is gone. OUr little buddy.. is well and truly dead and we get another gutpunch as superball runs off crying.. .finally showing emotion and showing that while he considered max expendible earlier.. it clearly was NOT easy for him. It's the last we see of him.. and of everyone else as they all just solemly stare. Even Grandpa Stinky who hates everyone especailly max (and ESPECIALLY sam) can only look forlorn.

So gut punch #3 as we get a truly haunting credits scene of Sam walking, sad, depressed.. and devistated. He's lost everything, not even stopping some muggings or notcing anything. It's a shockingly accurate depection of grief for a game series whose grasp on reality is tenious at best. Just that numbness you feel, that pain, that blankness that takes time to fill if it ever does. It's a truly affecting ending and would be a hell of a way to end the games

Thankfully they don't. As much as this ending would've hit... what they went with.. fits the tone of the series more: optimstic, weird... and with the knoweldge that it's not an IF sam and max will be back.. but a when. For while the series did a pretty good job tying up all it's loose ends over this game, there was one they never adressed till now.. one they left in the barrel fo rthis exact moment.. Max comes back. Specifically his time doppleganger from the previous game. Last we saw them chronal copies of our heroes from situation: comedy took off with the time machine, with our heroes having to relive most of the game the slow way round.

And Max.. is back. And alone. Turns out that sam went thorugh a similar thing and Max had to blow him up real good. And our sam's reaction to seeing this max is just.. so damn beautfully: he hugs his little buddy, is elated and while it's not the exact copy... it's him. Max in all the eways that counts and vice versa. While Max does shrug off having to kill his sam.. given he came back here at all, he likely missed his and was willing to share and is tellingly put off when he realizes the other him is gone.. and just HOW depressed sam seems. Yet... they have each other. THeir not the exact versions.. btu their still each other's best friends. No matter what happened with each other's counterparts... they still have each other. And so our story ends not in tragedy but, at least with the ending I went with, our heroes literallyw alking off into the sunset, talking about all the crime they'll stop Max knows about somehow. It's the perfect ending to sam and max and to this trilogy: our heroes move on with .. our heroes, and head off ot do more shnanigans. The story may be over.. but sam an dmax's story goes on

Thanks for reading... it's been my utmost pleasure.. and to all you talented folks at telltale, skunkape and to steven purcell himself.. thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you all for reading

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Accidentally saved this as a draft yesterday instead of posting it, but here are some timestamps from Pac's 10/9 stream for folks who missed it:

—

As usual, please remember that I'm not a Portugese-speaker so I rely a lot on timestamps (and sometimes I'll add comments I see from native Portugese speakers)

54:00 - Pac talks about coming back to Twitter and Twitter vs. BlueSky

57:00 - Pac looks at Fit's Twitter (lol)

58:45 - Pac sees the pão de queijo Fit made and says even his mother would be proud of that cheese bread, meanwhile he buys the frozen kind from the store. Pac: I just don't know how to cook properly, unfortunately. You know?

1:04:30 - Pac looks at some old Arkanis videos and posts by the official accounts.

1:24:00 - Pac sees the "Pac e Mike" video on Prefeito Jota's Twitter. Pac: I just remembered, I'm going to kill Jota, I just remembered I don't like him anymore, I can't believe he's done this. (Pftt)

1:40:00 - Pac starts looking at Arkanis fanart

1:47:00 - Pac sees a handsome drawing of Prefeito Jota

2:03:00 - Pac meets Mona, the cat - Mona is giving Pac decoration tips for his house. - Pac asked Mona to make a suit for him for the elections - Mona apparently lives in Paris and knows about high fashion - Mona and Bia apparently know each other

[Missed Timestamp] - Au Au arrives and chases off Mona. - Apparently both the rat and Au Au hate Mona. - Au Au is jealous of Pac with Mona saying that now Pac only thinks about Mona and that Pac is his friend not Mona's friend - Au Au said there is something in his house he can't find, but it smells of Arkania, and he asks Pac to come back with friends sometime to look for it. 3:10:00 - Pac sees that Arkanis is trending on Twitter in Brazil

3:12:00 - Pac shows off his Arkanis screenshot folder

3:24:00 - Pac meets up with Coreanowo to admire the dragon he built and the temple

3:27:30 - Pac says he's going to play Ariana Grande and blow up the factory because Mona likes Ariana Grande

3:58:00 - Pac is given some magical Arkanya Monster (which is almost immediately taken away from him again)

4:25:00 - While retelling the story of Mike clogging the plumming at a rich man's house, the gods send another thunderbolt down and give him a book, which says: "Sorry I don't have much time… do you want to find out more about your true destiny?"

4:31:30 - Pac finds a beautiful lush cave, and when he calls out asking if anyone is there, more thunder rumbles. - He finds some large black human-like monsters called "Ladrão Diluído" (Diluted Thief?)

4:33:45 - He finds a chest with two books.

Book 1: - Page 1: The balaclava has now became more than just a mask, the symbol of who I chose to become. Robbing that merchant's house was the beginning, but today, as I walked out of the bank with my heart racing and my pockets full, I realized the power I can achieve. - Page 2: The world does not belong to the obedient, but to those who dare to shape it. While the city sleeps, I plan. This is only the beginning, and they will know me not by my name, but by the fear my work will leave in the streets. - Page 3: bank robberies (central was the biggest so far, but something changed. I felt a (presence, as if the (city was hunting me. Everything went according to plan, (but I can't (ignore this instinct that tells me the end is near. - Page 4: The balaclava weighs heavier (each day, and the cold of Valigma seems to seep into my bones. Maybe (it's time to (disappear, let the mystery speak for me. For now, I watch, unseen, (hoping that silence will be the answer I seek. I'm looking for.

Book 2: - You will know everything one day… I will tell you the whole story. And as L told his story through Valigma… - Pac thinks it's related to Leo (?)

4:39:00 - He finds some more books (in English this time) and a giant Pit. He takes the warp stone and warps back.

4:51:30 - Pac finds another Shiba and names it "Au Au Jr."

4:57:45 - Pac shows Au Au Au Au Jr, and Au Au kills him, saying he's the only one and Pac just found some dirty mongrel.

4:59:50 - Au Au says "Goodbye cruel world" and throws himself out of Pac's window. Pac tells him to stop being dramatic and that he wasn't trying to change or replace Au Au. - (I missed some context here but chat calls Au Au homophobic, pft). - Au Au apologizes for acting impulsively, and Pac gives him a hug. - Au Au says that maybe living in the ruins of Arkanya is messing with his head. He plays with the other dog in Pac's house (the gray one, idk the name).

5:04:00 - Pac gives Au Au a talking to about learning and growth (?)

5:05:00 - He gives Au Au another hug.

5:09:00 - Pac goes to Au Au's (?) house, and finds purple Arkanya markings all over the walls.

5:16:30 - Milo wakes up!

5:18:00 - They try decoding the symbols, and discover one is "Ladrão" (Robber) and "Ladrãozinho" (Little Robber)

5:33:30 - Pac watches Au Au and Milo joke about impeaching him

6:13:45 - Pac, Au Au, and Milo all take a nap together

6:22:30 - Guh shows up

6:36:00 Gris shows up! She's wearing a black shirt, and Pac considers dressing Milo up

6:37:30 - Quel says she doesn't know if she likes white Monster and Pac pretends to drop dead from shock.

6:57:30 - Pac jokingly tells Guh Guaxinim died while they were play-wrestling (???)

7:01:00 - sus

7:19:00 - Pac hears something strange

7:24:00 - PAUSED

I missed the rest of stream OTL

[dovithedarklord]

Age of Monsters - Chapter Eight

Pairing: OFC x Simon "Ghost" Riley, OFC x König

Tags: Slow Burn, Slow Build, Enemies to Lovers, Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, POV First Person, Not Beta Read, Medical Inaccuracies, Military Inaccuracies, AFAB OC

Trigger Warning: The story will contain violance, blood and smut in detail. Please, keep that in mind!

⚠️MDNI⚠️

...................................

Author's Note

The team receives new disturbing news, and Leona sets off on an exciting adventure with her two companions.

Hello!

I don't have a separate trigger warning for today's chapter, but I probably will next week! :) The story truly starts with this chapter, so have fun! :D

I.M.L. - Infected mammalian lifeform. I.H.L. - Infected humanoid lifeform.

if you're interested you can find the story on AO3: Chapter Eight

.................................

I’m waiting with folded arms and with rather impatient tension for something to finally happen and for Laswell to appear, who called this little meeting together as urgently as if someone's life depended on it. And judging by how ominously Price stares at the screen sprawled on the wall, I can rightly assume that she's going to come up with something insanely interesting. And even though I was dragged here for the first time to sit through a briefing, I have enough brain capacity to understand what my presence means. It's clear the pleasant atmosphere that we shared recently and the miraculous survival of my forest trip gave them enough impetus to dare to send me to the idyllic location of one of their small operations, and I don't know if that should make me feel better. Because this could be a sign that, enjoying their complete trust, they will finally let me play a crucial role in a mission, but at the same time, they will also put a target on my pretty little body for the monsters. And it doesn't help that all my intuition tells me that it's a bad omen that I have to wait on pins and needles in the same room where I introduced myself to the Hunters two and a half months ago, tied up and freshly captured. The whole situation could be almost nostalgic, but instead, it sprinkles the surface of my brain with crumbs of foreboding.

The captain may already know something that not even one of his friends is aware of, because his gloomy mood doesn't rub off on the other people present, who are comfortably sitting in their chairs with the relaxation they have acquired over the years. And I suspect that they have already encountered one or two tricky situations, so the thought of another potentially deadly adventure tour doesn't raise their pulse. Of course, unlike them, I'm not excited at all by my possible little getaway, because even though I knew that I would inevitably join their operations, I secretly hoped that they would wait a few more months before throwing me into the deep water teeming with mutants. But Laswell seems to have other plans, and I await with suppressed and rather cynical curiosity what crazy idea she has come up with to take my mission-virginity.

And as if she sensed how often her name is mentioned in my little head, the door to the room opens, and the woman storms in with unprecedented haste, clutching a computer and a stack of papers in her hands. For a minute, I feel sorry for her worn state, which shows that sleep has been a rare guest for her in the past few days, but then my attention is focused on the troubled wrinkles deep on her face. Something serious had to stir up the stagnant sea of shit to cause such a disturbance in the whole aura of the woman, whom I had the pleasure of seeing only as the embodiment of confident calmness until now.

"I'm glad you're all here." Laswell nods towards our small group from the other end of the table, and as her blue eyes settle on me, a fleeting but sincere smile crosses her face. "Especially for you, Woods." The woman adds, and I am genuinely surprised by the sudden direct tone she takes on, because up until this moment, the wall of formality has stood between us as a strong boundary. But it seems that the exceptional role-model behavior that I channeled in these recent months has brought her closer to my humble person.

"What have you brought, Kate?" Price inquires before anyone else can speak, and there is an urgency in his voice, based on which my suspicions about the seriousness of the news that will soon be presented to us become even stronger. Although I haven't known the bearded man for long, I've studied him just enough to know that there's a limited amount of things that can shake him from his calm confidence. And I suspect I'm not the only one who notices this, because the mood of the other Hunters also turns progressively grimmer in the blink of an eye, as they assess the not-so-promising vibrations of their captain's and the woman's behavior.

A quick glance from Laswell is enough for me to understand the potential risks of the information she has brought us today, as she arranges her small packages on the table to begin the briefing. And this makes me instinctively straighten up in my chair, because I have a strong suspicion that I will have to soak up all the information like a sponge in order to avoid as many necessary unpleasant experiences as I can during my upcoming adventure.

"Two days ago, a merchant group left for Colony no. 20." Laswell begins, and breathes life into her computer with practiced movements, and then, after a few skillful button presses, unveils the data she has collected on the screen resting on the wall. A more or less sharp recording appears on the display, which, based on the location, could be at one of the gates of the wall surrounding the colony. The whole interaction, caught on the security camera, seems ridiculously ordinary, where the leader of the small team is probably negotiating with one of the soldiers guarding the wall. But what goes on in the video glowing in a bluish tint looks so routine and harmless, that I dismiss the idea that the mischievous little group might have been dealing with some illegal activity, and that's why it's important to mention them to us. "They went on the designated route, but their signal disappeared at the border of the red zone and the uncontrolled region." The woman continues, and as a map appears, with the red flashing dot where their last recorded signal was possibly seen, I recognize that this story indeed ended in a not so illegal, but rather bloody manner.

To be fair, this wouldn't be such a rare occurrence, because the red zone itself hides many dangers, but those who dare to go even beyond that will have a rather eventful journey ahead of them. The areas that are outside the zones delimiting the colonies are not called uncontrolled regions for nothing, since someone only goes there if they absolutely have to, or if they feel an irresistible desire to be deprived of their limbs. And for those who have been selected for this noble career path, or who have joined such a group on their own accord, the constant danger to their lives is no stranger to them. Even if their colony is so gallant and selfless that it assigns a Hunter to accompany them between the two endpoints of their journey. But something tells me that a whole new kind of worrisome factor has emerged in connection with the unfortunate destruction of the merchant team just mentioned, because this small brigade specializing in special cases wouldn't deal with this story, if the biggest problem was a simple everyday mutant attack.

"I.M.L.s?" Price asks the obvious, but his tone reveals that he doesn't believe that the monsters' rampage is the only reason why the woman has such a troubled expression on her face. And we don't even have to wait long for the explanation, because Laswell conjures up another shot on the screen the next moment, and the image of a car windshield and the landscape filtering through it appears before us.

"This was recorded by the on-board camera of one of the cars. The officials on patrol rescued it." The woman adds the marginal note next to the small piece of evidence, and based on this it becomes quite clear that it isn't worth counting on any kind of happy ending.

The recording begins with an idyll similar to the material recorded on the previous security camera, and through the bumping vehicle, a view of the passing scenery can be seen in all its glory, which may once have been a busy highway, judging by the many rusty wrecks that appear scattered on the side of the road. The uneventfulness that unfolds before us from the other side of the screen is ominous, knowing that the passengers are probably living through their last minutes of life. The noise of a soft conversation filters into the room through the video, as the people in the car discuss information about the shipment, and I instinctively feel the tense anticipation that prepares my mind for the catastrophe that will surely occur, because it's guaranteed to make its appearance in the widescreen. But no matter how well I prepare for the worst, even this doesn't make me ready for how, next to the vehicle moving in front of the people recording, a ruthlessly large dark spot suddenly appears from behind the skeleton of one of the wreckage. And even though I know how strong these bastards are, I'm still amazed at how easily the mutant pushes the multi-ton vehicle away with a ridiculously simple movement. The people in the video try to stop their car almost immediately amid loudly screeching brakes, and the on-board camera shakes wildly from the force of the sudden halt, but still reports on the events. But when those, presumably coming behind them, crash into them from behind accompanied by an even more obscene noise, then the chaos is unleashed. For a moment, the image becomes hard to dechiper, as the car sways forward from the force of the impact and the camera drifts off the dashboard, and only the faded shouts of the passengers break through from behind the erratic frames. There is a small break in the recording, then the broadcast returns after a short wait, and I am not one bit happier about it, as I assess what kind of novelty greets me. Because by the time the events recorded by the camera become sharp again, only the last act of the futile fight remains, where a few armed men try to decimate the beasts that cross the road. Despite the angle of the camera turned to the side, it’s clear that the fight is unfortunately hopeless, because there are many more of these monsters, and they easily crush the people to the ground, who, although they disappear from the recorded material this way, the stomach-turning crunching of bones, the wet smacking of organs and the pain-distorted screams of the victims still reach my ears perfectly. And that could be the end of the whole horrible incident, but it seems that some new friends of the mutants who are eating their snacks want to get in on the fun as well. As soon as a couple of once human-like, but now extremely distorted creatures appear and join in the feast without any disturbance, as if they had improvised a fucking picnic, I suddenly understand that Laswell's dramatic entrance was nowhere near exaggerated.

"Are those I.H.L.'s?" Bursts out the shocked question from Garrick, and the disbelief on his face perfectly reflects the sinister mood slowly appearing in the room. And at this development, the bad foreboding that had painted the woman's face since her arrival began to well up in me.

The very fact that people don't just pass away when bitten these scumbag mutants would be enough to cause a frenzied panic among the common people. When the virus broke out, people quite simply died of the infection, because in some magical way, the little pathogen was incompatible with our bodies. Therefore, until now, everyone has spent their everyday lives in the safe dream bubble that their survival is unquestionable within the walls of the colonies, but if they are attacked by these feral beings, even though they will probably end up in several pieces, they will depart this life with dignity. But when the first mutant humans appeared a year and a half ago, everyone shat bricks. This meant that the virus had undergone enough evolution for humans to become sympathetic hosts for it, and of course, governments have remained silent on this ever since, as the danger seemed negligible. Because even though this factor posed a risk, thankfully the unfortunate idiot who was gnawed by an I.M.L. only turned into the brainless, deformed fool, similarly to the infected mammals fifty years ago, and so it was relatively easy to free them from their suffering. They didn't need to be turned into a pasta strainer by bullets, because they were less tough than the mutants, so anyone could take them down with a few shots. Not to mention, that even though both types of mutants were affected by the same disease, the I.M.L.s took great pleasure in tearing apart their humanoid friends. Until now.

"Why didn't the I.M.L.s attack them?" I'm turning my attention to the problem that concerns me the most, because the fact that mutants don't kill I.H.L.s is a fairly new piece of information that even I didn't have the luck to observe, even though I've been studying these bastards for nearly six years. The little monsters unmistakably befriended each other, as if they had become a real big, grotesque family, and this starts a series of very threatening assumptions in my head, which immediately demand a solution.

"This is exactly what we want to get an answer to." Laswell sighs, and her gaze returns to the frozen image of the already stopped video. The recording is too short to draw far-reaching conclusions from this little tidbit, but it contains just enough frightening detail to put a serious worry on the face of everyone present. Since this is a huge slap that pushes us down to the depths of the sea of shit and helps us drown. Because although it doesn't matter why these two previously hostile species ally, the end-result is the same. Destruction. "Fortunately, we identified the nest where the infected life forms probably came from." She continues her explanation, and brings the map up on the screen again, where now, next to the location marking the unfortunate death of the traders, another brightly flashing small dot has appeared.

"They settled among the ruins of the city." Price concludes, and I'm not surprised at how easily he identifies the details appearing on the enlarged map, because I have the feeling that he knows the entire red zone like the back of his hand. "Where's the nest?" He immediately gets to the point, his voice takes on an objective tone, and his eyes search every available square centimeter of the area revealed on the screen with such intensity that it's clear that he is already starting to fabricate the details of the mission in his mind.

"Based on the information from the patrols, they're probably hiding in an old subway tunnel." Laswell turns to her computer again, and she suddenly zooms in on the area that houses the potential nest, where a neon yellow flashing band surrounds the zone identified as the target. And although the picture decorated with superficial and simplified figures doesn't tell me much, I still guess the fact that the location of the mission has a rather large diameter. A vast, desolate no-man's land, full of ruined buildings, where the potential attack surfaces of mutants are limited only by the imagination, and where a life-threatening surprise can emerge from behind every concrete monster built by humans. Fabulous.

But it seems that, unlike me, the small team is not so pessimistic, because they don’t seem to be horrified by the possibility of fighting their heroic little battle in an arena where a cute mutant monster can shred them into a confetti around every corner. Moreover, the captain looks at the map with at least as much indifference as if he were admiring a painting from the archives.

"Tricky field, but we've seen worse." Price notes with a sour smile on his lips. And if I take the tale he told me during our first drink together into account, I don’t doubt that he has indeed seen far greater horrors than a ruined city hiding ghosts and man-eating brutes. This mission seems like a peaceful holiday in comparison, where the team-building activity will be the creative killing of mutants.

"At least we can surprise these bastards." MacTavish remarks confidently, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied grin on his face, from which it's quite clear that he has already assembled the details of the vile little traps in his head, with which he intends to make the promise hidden in his words come true. And if I only think about the creativity with which he carries out my torture, I'm certain he will use enough cruel little tricks in a real mission too.

"The primary command is to terminate the nest. Colony Leader Shepherd contacted us because he wants to put a certain end to the matter." Laswell nails the details down strictly, and at the mention of the name of the man leading Colony no. 17, I understand that this problem must have got the head of the government in a flap. Of course, I am not surprised, because the existence of the I.H.L.s has been top secret until now, and the news providers skillfully withheld this small piece of information from the public, which has been filling researchers and official bodies with horror for some time now. Because if the people were to find out that from now on they won't be able to get away with just kicking the bucket in the event of a bite, then the idyllic peace would surely end. "But keep your eyes open in case we get more information about the phenomenon." The woman adds, looking at all the members of the gathering, and judging by her voice, she mostly wants them to find answers to the dozens of desperate questions. And there is absolutely no doubt that it will depend on this action whether the house of cards of peace and security that has been carefully built so far will collapse or not.

"Who do you want to send?" Price turns to the head of the base again, thus breaking the short silence that had set in, and to this question, all the potential candidates raise their gaze to the woman at the same time, and it’s clear that all of them would gladly and preferably immediately throw themselves into the action. At first glance, either of Hunters would be a great choice, which immediately makes me think that this is probably why Shepherd turned to a private unit. He doesn't want the operation to receive more attention than it should (mostly none) even by chance, because he knows what it would cause if the civilian population found out about what he has been hiding from them with tooth and nail so far. And although it may seem heartless to take away the people's right to obtain information, blissful ignorance is much better than chaos and panic. What nobody knows doesn't give anybody naughty ideas about rebellion. It's enough if only brutal, human tanks like Unit 141 care about such little things.

"Ghost will lead the operation, and Soap, you'll go with him too. I'll leave it up to you who they take with you, but they can't be new recruits under any circumstances. We have to anticipate that the mission will be risky." Laswell directs her words to the two men, who nod in agreement to the instructions given. It was smart of the woman to highlight this detail, because it's almost a dead certainty that the newbies would end up as fresh, savory meat after meeting the mutants. "Woods, you're going with them too. Due to the potential danger, they'll need a Healer on site." She gives me her orders as she raises her blue eyes at me, and I am not at all surprised by this development. Until now, I was quite sure that this top-secret information wasn't being shown to me by accident. And the possibilities that seem to be taking shape in my head promise a rather life-threatening outcome, one by one. Still, despite all this, the phenomenon seen in the video arouses sparks of curiosity in me, which makes me want to go on a study trip among the ruins full of dangers. Mainly because the information has the potential to destroy the security that has been built for fifty years. And I'd better check it out up close. "However, your most important task will be observation. You have professional experience in the subject."

"Makes sense." I give only this succinct answer to Laswell's significant hint, and it reassures me that she doesn't only see me as a spare, living first aid kit, but assigns me a chore that is truly suitable for me. I don't doubt that the Hunters have seen enough of these scums to know what's unusual and what's not, but it doesn't hurt to have my sharp eyes on the scene too, just in case I observe something suspicious that might escape others' attention. It seems that she didn't run through my file superficially, but engraved the important factors deep into her gray matter, and although this is a self-evident fact for a person in such an important position, she still manages to soften my dark little heart by caressing my pride.

Of course, the fact that MacTavish and Riley will be my companions in this rather risky adventure fills me with just the right amount of nervousness and cynicism for a moment. My gaze automatically finds the masked man sitting on the other side of the table, whose brown eyes are studying the map on the screen with intense attention, and although he gives the appearance of calmness, his entire figure imperceptibly pulsates with impatient tension.

I don't refute for a minute that the two Hunters will do their jobs with brutal efficiency, but the hatchet buried between Riley and me is still fresh enough for me to welcome the possibility of working together with complete peace of mind. It may well be that since the test in the wilderness, our previously bloody altercations have softened into creative little verbal battles, but that still hasn't silenced the voices of suspicion in me. While I don't think he still wants to get rid of me, I'm not so foolish and naive as to think he won't leave me behind without hesitation if it comes down to it. He will have the success of the mission in mind, and unfortunately, besides that, my physical health will be very far behind in the order of importance. And this is undoubtedly an obvious fact, which helps me to see, that it will be better to make a plan from A to Z for the eventuality, if I will have to rely only on myself to save my pretty little rear.

And as if sensing my momentary struggle, one of MacTavish's big hands moves on my shoulder encouragingly, and the warm grip of his fingers beneficially breaks me out of the web of assumptions in my head. As I turn towards the man sitting next to me for a fleeting moment, and my gaze meets his blue eyes, I manage to catch the lively little sparks dancing in them.

"Don't worry, we'll take good care of ya!" The Hunter reassures me, and the corner of his mouth is pulled into a smile that radiates understanding and warmth, and even I am surprised at how quickly the nerve that has been moving unnoticed in my stomach responds and lets go of its starting grip. But I'm slowly getting used to the fact that, despite how relaxed and carefree MacTavish seems to be, he can pinpoint when the aura of one of his companions changes. And now that it seems, that I too will receive such privileges from him, my nervousness about the mission eases a bit.

"I strongly suggest, you do." I throw my comment at him with a rather cheeky edge, but despite all my skepticism, I know that if it's up to him, I will most certainly return with all my limbs intact. And this assurance seems to confirm that it was indeed a good idea for me to join this fun outing even more. It's true that it would be an adequate reason for me that the unknown and rapid escalation of the I.H.L. situation fills me with curiosity, as it threatens with potentially worldwide dangers that even my crafty little self wouldn't be able to get away from. But without a doubt, the fact that I would like to escort this man, and possibly his dangerous and less sociable friend home safely, is a very compelling motive for me to stay with them more willingly. I have no illusions about how useful I'll be to them, but it never hurts to have someone there to patch them up if one of the vile creatures attacks them.

"Let's get to the plan." Laswell directs the attention back to the mission, and with routine movements, she slides us a significant part of the stack of papers she brought with her, which at first glance contains even more thorough information about the area that houses the previously mentioned nest, as well as the details of the unfortunate accident that happened to the traders. Intrigued, I reach for one of the documents, which contains the patrol’s report about what was found at the scene of the accident, and as my lively little fingers find the paper, a gloved hand with bony details appears in front of me, and it targets one of the documents, also looking for knowledge. It's automatic how my gaze is intertwined with Riley's dark eyes for a fleeting moment, and this small instant is enough for me to see the seriousness prevailing in his features. And I can't decide whether this gloominess speaks to the worrisome nature of the whole mission or to the cooperation with me. But it doesn't matter what he's stressed about, because he's involuntarily driving the foreboding in the back of my skull back to where MacTavish just drove it away from. Because, if a seasoned professional Hunter like him suddenly feels the need to become more cautious before a mission, then it's time for me to pull myself together, because my life will really be at stake here. And I'm quite adamant that I don't bite the bullet at such a young age. It would be a shame for me.

So, taking the report in front of me, I begin to study it, and with half my attention, I listen intently as every little detail of our trip slowly unfolds with the leading of Laswell and Price. And in the meantime, I'm starting to hope that karma doesn't see this as a good opportunity to collect my debt for the many shits I've committed over the years. Because that would affect me terribly sensitively.

⃰*

The night landscape slips past us with an uncomfortable silence, as we slowly but surely move towards the designated destination. My stomach has shrunk to the size of a tennis ball since the beginning of the journey, and despite my confident mask, it's actively pumping out pleasant waves of stress all over my body. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't filled with increasing anxiety about the fact that, for the first time in my life, I'm wandering in such an area that was mostly talked about in only horror stories, and I'd be a fool if that wasn't the case. After all, it wasn't by chance that the zones were drawn around the colonies. This was done precisely so that even the weak-minded know where they should never venture, unless they have incredibly suicidal tendencies. And yet I'm heading right to the middle of the red zone for a nice evening party.

Even though the silvery light of the full moon illuminates the desolate area, it doesn't ease my suspicions about the dangers lurking in the shadows. Here, from behind every bush, tree, and ruin, there can be a danger to the wanderer, and that is why it frustrates me how calm the Hunters are throughout the whole car ride. In the back of the huge van, I may be the only one with ominous tension bubbling over, because neither the Hunters sitting across from me nor the soldiers traveling with us seem particularly excited about the festivities that will soon begin. I could attribute this to the fact that this isn't their first rodeo, but it's probably the hundredth, if not the thousandth time they've visited these barren, bleak regions, but it doesn't fill me with any more confidence. Although the discussed plan seems almost foolproof, and every single contingency has been discussed with unnerving precision, the likelihood of possible unexpected threats still lingers in my skull inexorably.

I divert my gaze from the wasteland that passes behind the car window, promising countless deadly surprises, and it suddenly seems like a much better idea to assess my companions assigned to me for today's mission. Both men are armed up to the chin, with ammunition hidden in every corner of their tactical vests, prepared to take action, which is only natural, because unlike me, they will really be intimately involved with the mutants. Despite everything, MacTavish examines the assault riffle clutched in his hand almost cheerfully, checking with the routine movements one would expect from a man trained as a killer from childhood. I’m not taken aback by his experienced firearms handling technique, but rather by the casual attitude that he managed to bring with him even here, from which an outside observer could believe that we're really just out for a peaceful weekend trip with this sweet little group. And I suspect that this carefree behavior has something to do with the fact that the mere mortals who are with us need this little bit of reinforcement so that they can throw themselves into the midst of danger with the right morale. And if this is the goal, then the Scottish man fulfills his task brilliantly.

However, his partner sitting next to him is a completely different story. Riley's whole being has the tension of a spring ready to jump, and maybe the soldiers don't notice it, but it's no coincidence that I've spent the last few months studying him. And now it seems like a much more pleasant pastime to analyze him than to think about the potential loss of my own physical integrity. It doesn't escape my attention as his long, gloved fingers tighten around his own gun, and in the dim light from the car's instruments, there's a grim shine in those dark eyes. Perhaps a touch of seriousness from the leader of the mission would be natural, but I have the stray idea that his unusually quiet behavior is due to my presence. Although he didn't openly express his displeasure, it's quite obvious to me that he doesn't like the idea of me dragging my pretty ass to this nest sweep. I'd like to think that maybe he finally found his humanity and that prompts him to worry, but the voice of reality tells me that it probably just immeasurably angers him that he had to carry a useless and, above all, hindering element with him. The assumption might hurt me a little, but I'm also aware that, unlike them, I'm not nearly as effective at killing, even with blood sticking to my lovely little hands. Fortunately, my role will be realized at a safe distance from the events, which I hope won't be thwarted by any unexpected twists.

"We're getting close, sir." The driver alerts us, breaking my undisturbed contemplation, and I just curiously lean forward to take a look at the concrete road swimming in the headlight of the vehicle, at the end of which, shrouded in soot darkness, the shadows of the buildings that once housed tens of thousands of people can be seen. Fifty years ago, a flood of colorful lights and deafening noise would have signaled the existence of such a large city, but now it's nothing more than a pile of buildings on the verge of rotting and crumbling, whose empty skeletons give way only to revived vegetation and bloodthirsty monsters.

"Stop here." Riley orders, and now he also directs his attention to the outline of the city's border, and then his hand almost automatically finds the radio on his tactical vest. "It's Hunter 0-15. We've reached the edge of the combat zone. We're going to stop here and continue on foot." He announces in a firm voice, informing the other two cars behind us that we have arrived at the starting point of our fun little adventure. And for me, this one factor is enough to mentally pull myself together, because from now on, stress and worry will become a luxury if I want to complete this task. Which will also mean my survival.

The car slows to a stop in the middle of the road, and I instinctively reach for the camera attached to my tactical vest, checking that it's still resting rock-solid next to the other gear as Garrick attached it before our little team was sent on its merry way. Laswell gave me the small device after I raised the idea that maybe it would be easier to get data that way, which my brain, not driven by adrenaline and total burnout, might process more easily later. I'm sure my sharp eyes will take in enough information, but no human being is perfect, and surprisingly, not even me.

"Let's go." Riley gives his instructions to the passengers in the van, gets up from his seat ready for action, and opens the back door of the van easily to step out into the warm night air. MacTavish and the other two soldiers huddled in the back dutifully follow their leader tonight, but I take advantage of these few seconds to collect my thoughts. It's okay, Leona. You stay behind, observe, and after these two madman and their entourage have bulldozed all the beasts, you comfortably ride home with them. Plain and simple. Still, the unpleasant tension that awakens in the depths of my consciousness warns me not to count my chickens before they're hatched, because that will be the last thing I do.

And the cautious feeling ringing my alarm bells gives me the impetus to leave the empty vehicle and join the small council of people gathered outside, and as soon as my eyes get used to the visual conditions outside, I also stroll closer to the briefing. Riley stands out from the group like a real giant, and for some reason in the moonlight, his whole being has a very otherworldly effect. The skull attached to his mask looks even more terrifying now, and his figure, swollen with power and piled high with weapons, is at least as scary as if a modern-day grim reaper had sprung out from nowhere. However, there's something strangely reassuring about the way he looks over the crowd with a firm stance, because I get the feeling that even if he's rather grumpy about my presence, he's got everything and everyone under control, so nothing can slip past him. And I want to lull myself in this dream, more than anything.

"The Watcher team stays behind and secures the edge of the combat zone." The masked man begins his last explanation, and in the meantime, he turns to four soldiers, who, after acknowledging the instruction with a short nod, head towards the road in front of us and almost immediately start placing the explosives carried in heavy bags.

According to Price's reasoning, the edge of the combat zone, or the point where our small escape vehicles are waiting for us, is always equipped with some kind of trap, so that if it's time to retreat, the mutants following the escapees will have one last surprise, which will have enough punch so that the bastards kick the bucket. Of course, they usually hope that most emerging threats will be neutralized at the beginning of the combat zone, at the starting point of active fights, but leaving the possibility, no matter how small, to chance is insanely stupid. That said, I hope with a wild passion that the final fireworks don't happen, because that would mean our little venture has failed miserably. And that would mean a lot of death.

"The Hunter team is coming to the nest with me." Riley continues, and when he only gets a nod of agreement or a shout of "yes, sir" from everyone, he doesn't even waste any more time, but the burning light in his eyes flares up, which is the only sign that now he too felt the need to activate his rather dangerous power. And if possible, this makes the harmless aura emanating from him even more dangerous than before. "Let's go." He issues his final order, and grasping his weapon, he begins his decisive march on the road leading to the heart of the city, and the little soldiers snapping on their night vision goggles, follow him like little ducks.

"Keep up, Woods!" MacTavish suddenly appears next to me, and one of his gloved hands pats my back encouragingly, perhaps in an effort to somewhat reduce the tension that is surely radiating from me. And he succeeds, because as soon as I turn to him and take in the red glow of the otherwise bright blue eyes, I immediately sober up. "Stay behind me until we get to the observation post." He advises, and after a last uplifting smile, he also sets off on the rather risky path ahead of us.

With a strained sigh, I start the camera mounted on my chest, then, clutching my machine gun slung over my shoulder, I run after the group, and following the recommendation of the Hunter with the mohawk, I hide in his shadow and also begin to sneak skillfully. And now I thank the man in front of me and his crazy friend many times over, for tormenting me so enthusiastically every goddamned day, because the pace dictated by Riley, who is in the lead, is much more bearable than it would have been before my endurance was boosted.

Despite the hurried speed, the entire team moves in familiar unity, and runs through every corner of the surrounding landscape with such thoroughness that it's clear that the two Hunters brought experienced warriors with them. And the rush of the masked man and the fact that he wants to get to the destination as soon as possible is understandable, because even though these mutant bastards retreat to their nest for the night to have an intimate slumber party together, they can still appear and surprise us at any moment. There is never a good time to sweep out nests, but perhaps the cover of night offers the best chance to attack them unexpectedly. Of course, this doesn't neutralize the fact that, while the limited visibility is not necessarily a problem for the Hunters' cunning little abilities, and perhaps not even for my cute little eyes, the small accompanying squad of ordinary people has every reason to be cautious. They aren’t protected by super sharp senses or superstrength, or even by my self-healing ability, which is less useful in other circumstances, so it's a very likely scenario that they meet their maker after one mistake. And yet, they move forward resolutely and with cold calmness, without any hesitation, and I have to give them credit for their dedication.

As we move further into the road, the rusty piles of wreckage resembling cars slowly disappear, and their place is replaced by the towering frames of buildings wild with green vegetation, which tell of carefree times lost long ago. An eerie silence descends on the whole area, and apart from the soft tapping of several pairs of booted feet, nothing else makes noise in the emptiness of the deserted streets. The moon covers the whole place in a flood of white light, and the broken glass of the vacant stores, and the lush, emerald carpets of moss growing on the walls glisten in it, and this peaceful sight could even be cozy if I didn't know what chaos has driven this place and millions of its peers around the world into desolation. Although all traces of the massacre that took place over here decades ago have almost certainly disappeared, an abandoned shoe frozen in dirt, an overturned, filthy and torn baby carriage on the edge of the sidewalk, or even an empty suitcase lying open, all reveal the horrors that happened here. And though I am by no means a sentimental fool, yet I have to forcibly fix my gaze on the back of MacTavish, marching unperturbed before me, before I can find more forgotten things, which could bring its sad and rather bloody origin to my mind. Because the ghosts of the people who died here haunt these horrible mementos, and I don't have the slightest desire to devote my attention to them instead of my own survival. As selfish as that may sound.

Minutes that seem like hours pass before we are sufficiently swallowed up by the sea of ruins, and the overpass designated as an observation point appears on the horizon, reaching high and crossing the road leading us to our destination. It stands out gloomily from the deteriorating buildings and rests alone above the empty square, where only the charred wrecks of cars bear witness to the fact that the road section once arched over the busy urban maelstrom. It's ideally separated and high enough for me to be able to observe the events from a safe distance, yet it fills me with the right amount of anxiety that only a narrow kilometer will separate me from being in immediate danger. According to Laswell, this is a favorable position for me, but based on the distance I've covered so far, it's clear that I only have a hair's breadth more chance to escape if something goes wrong. A few minutes is the only advantage, which further consolidates the keen attention in me, which has been kept awake by the adrenaline spreading in slow waves in my veins until now. If it wasn't clear by now that I'd better be on the lookout, it's a dead certainty now.

As we reach the beginning of the winding stairs leading to the overpass, the soldiers sneaking in front of me slow down, and I turn from my previous speed down just in time before I bump into the Scottish Hunter. Obediently, the small group separates in front of Riley to make way for the man walking towards me with measured steps, and as he gets close enough to me, I'm blocked from prying eyes by him and MacTavish, who turns towards me too. My presence didn't elicit any reaction from the soldiers participating in the mission, yet I know that the edge of doubt they felt towards me didn't completely disappear from them. And maybe that's why it's much more pleasant than it should be that these two people, the size of a small mountain, are now shielding me from unwanted attention.

"Take the observation position and keep an eye on the action with the binoculars. Record everything." The masked Hunter gives me his short instructions, and his eyes, glowing like liquid fire, stare seriously at my face, looking for possible resistance. He will be disappointed, because I have absolutely no motivation to argue with his suggestion. "Don't leave the position. Stay here until further orders." He emphasizes this rather important detail, and it's not difficult for me to notice how his eyebrows run together from the strict expression, from which the grimness also settles in his deep voice.

"It didn't even occur to me to do otherwise." I signal back to him about my intentions, and with this, it seems, despite the breath of sarcasm hidden in my voice, I successfully convince him that I really don’t wish to get any closer to the epicenter of their entertaining activities. Even so, I will enjoy spending time alone, which means just a little more security.

It seems that it's once again MacTavish's turn to bring calmness to the situation, which is becoming more and more tense, but not due to my behavior this once. It's clear, judging by Riley's more than usual sinister aura, that today's operation is bombarding his mind with the possibility of dubious outcomes just as much as it does to mine. But he hides it well, because it may not be the first time that he has to sweep these intuitions behind the wall of professionalism to be able to perform his task effectively. And I suspect that this may also have something to do with his partner, who always senses when he needs to act to lighten the mood.

"Don't worry, it's all routine work." The Hunter with the mohawk focuses his gaze on me, which shines bright red in the darkness, and he takes a small step closer to me, trying to radiate the reassuring aura towards me with his whole being, but it's emanating from his word just as sufficiently too. And for some reason, even I am amazed by the confidence with which he can act so casually, when we all know that this mission could be much more than the average and mundane killing that they carry out. Because it's possible that due to the rapid mutation of the virus, we are facing a danger that has never been seen before. Still, it's ridiculously good to hear his encouragement. Because even my paranoid brain believes that all will be fine.

"I'm sure it is." I note easily despite the doubts in my mind, and even this few-word answer is enough for the man to conjure up an enthusiastic half-smile on his beard-framed mouth, and one of his big hands once again finds my shoulder and pats it for the second time tonight. Although I normally don't let anyone get close enough to perform such friendly gestures, I let him and his little crew give me such pleasant attention. And now the vice-like grasp of worry that grips my insides happily relaxes its hold at the small movement of the Hunter.

"But take care of yourself and let me know if somethin' happens!" He insists with a gentle tone, and despite all his firm positivity, the small concern that may have arisen in him because of my presence filters through his voice. I don't think he's doubting my abilities with this, instead, he might be just afraid of unexpected surprises. And based on the faintly outlined wrinkles on his forehead, he already has enough expertise to know, that there isn't an impossible event that can be ruled out with absolute certainty in an operation like this. Thus, he may rightfully have uncertainties about my protected position.

“Don't underestimate the effectiveness of my training, MacTavish." I raise my head, and now my lips also bend upwards in a rather cheeky and self-confident arch, to alleviate the concerns he has shown towards me. This effort is instinctive, because the fact that I'm distracting him from his potentially life-threatening entertainment depresses me even more than the uncertainty lurking on us. If it's a problem, I'll solve it somehow. Like I always did. "If I were you, I'd be more worried about my own safety." I point towards him with my head, glancing briefly at his figure dressed in combat gear and the large weapon clutched in his hand. As the force that makes the Hunters stand out from the crowd is actively raging in his body, his posture changes completely, and I can almost see the red-burning energy, which makes them almost invincible, bubbling under the muscles ready to attack.

"Don't ya worry about that! This isn't the first nest we've taken care of." MacTavish reminds me, straightening himself out with such confidence, that makes him look like the poster boy for a real, proud Hunter, as he weaves his fingers into his vest with his free hand. I know that with this light banter, he wants to calm my, everyone else's and probably his uneasiness as well about the guaranteed and smooth success of the mission, so I decide to banish the ominous voices that warn me of the possible problems to the back of my skull for a minute.

"I hope so. I don't feel like cleaning up after you." I note with a rather mischievous edge, but in spite of this, it's clear that he feels the message behind my words. It would be impossible for me to break the guy's goal-oriented confidence, but for the first time, I choose to put my pride aside, and at the gate of the threat, I rather release what's waiting to come out from my mouth from the stress that is raging freely inside me. "So take care of yourselves." I say, and my wish sounds more like a warning, as I raise my eyes meaningfully to the two Hunters, unspokenly asking them to come back for me in one piece and as unharmed as possible at the end of the whole damn party.

"I'll do that!" The Scottish man assures me, and when Riley considers the conversation finished and turns to the soldiers who are waiting for them, his cheerful little friend also pulls himself together and heads towards the small group, clutching his weapon. "Don't forget to use your callsign, Viper!" He shouts back to me, mentioning the funny little nickname he came up with while we were drinking, saying it was just the right time to be gifted with a callsign to match my sneaky little attack methods. It was a most fitting, yet terribly unjustified move on his part, but I feel as if it brought me one step closer to him and his small team.

"Oh, for God's sake…" I sigh in agony, but I can't wipe the faint smile from my face, because despite the fact that I would probably swallow my own tongue rather than use this name, regardless, my dark little being is warmed by the man's attention.

And as I monitor the small group slowly setting off again, my eyes meet the masked Hunter for a fleeting glance, who only hesitates for a moment before leaving, but that's enough for him to say goodbye to me with a curt nod. And I forcefully suppress the surprise that arises in me from this impossibly short interaction, because although the distance and dislike between the two of us have improved a lot, this gesture is still a very surprising novelty. Although I also had to fight against my self-esteem and my previous habits when I asked them to protect their own physical integrity, even this small gesture from the man is equal to the miracle that happens once every leap year. And that gives me the impossible thought that maybe he wouldn't like it if I bit the dust here. How nice. And maybe it wouldn't be happy either, if he met his end.

Before I can weave the long web of my assumptions even further, I decide that it's time for me to fulfill the task assigned to me, and guided by this, I start off to the stairs leading to the overpass, leaping up on the rickety and crumbling steps two at a time, so that I can be at my designated observation point as soon as possible. And when I reach the wide road, I take quick steps through the area full of potholes, so that when I get to its edge closer to the nest, I can take up the position, which I hopefully will keep from now on. With my eyes, I almost immediately find the brigade moving away in the darkness, and reaching for my own radio, I turn it on with my fingers, so that I can join in on the events, albeit from a distance. I am greeted by silence for a moment, but then I hear the murmur of quiet instructions and feedback coming through, based on which the progress of things so far has been encouragingly problem-free and uneventful.

As soon as the members of the team are reduced to tiny specks the size of ants, I fish out my binoculars from the side pouch attached to my belt to follow Riley's recommendation. As I raise the neat little device in front of me, the slowly sneaking figures appear crystal clear again. They are moving steadily along the road littered with debris and abandoned vehicles, and so far it doesn't seem like any difficulties will cross their path. It's no wonder, since they move with such precision as a pack of wolves scouting for its prey, none of whose members shows any sign of fear, but unwaveringly rush forward after their leader.

"We split up at the alley behind the building." Riley's deep voice filters right into my ears, and through the binoculars, I can see his tall figure standing out at the front of the group as he points to the buildings on both sides of the street with his hand. I look around and understand why he is doing this. At the end of the road and beyond the intersection, at the feet of a late skyscraper, there is the bottomless, dark hole-like entrance of the subway tunnel that is home to the creatures for whom we came here so enthusiastically today. Although it seems deserted, the eerie emptiness of the stairs leading underground somehow brings back the suspicion that MacTavish previously banished. I don't like the silence one bit, because it puts the same anticipatory tension in my limbs that I felt in the forest. And as it turns out, my womanly instincts are quite accurate in detecting when something is wrong. Still, I steel my nerves and warn myself of the fact that, unlike me, the soldiers reaching the goal and the Hunters leading them are not beginners, and they can certainly assess this situation, which is full of risks, more realistically.

As they reach the point marked as the beginning of the combat zone, they stop for a moment, and the masked Hunter hands out his further orders with a silent hand signal, and despite this, his men standing behind him immediately know what he wants to convey with his hands gesturing towards the ruined buildings rising above them on both sides. Even this unspoken instruction is enough for them to understand what they should do, and when Riley departs towards the side street opening from the right, the members of his team obediently separate from the others. Without any hesitation, the other five soldiers follow their example with similar speed, and soon after are absorbed by the shadows in the alley on the other side. And so only MacTavish and a handful of his small team remain at the end of the road they have followed so far, but they don't waste time, but sneak with deliberate steps to the beginning of the intersection, and then, under the guidance of the Hunter, they immediately start working diligently. One of his men unfastens his large backpack from his back with lightning-quick movements, and as all the tools necessary for the nasty little surprise are displayed, the fantastic experiences I witnessed in the forest awaken in me. I wasn't wrong about that whoever came up with the fun little gadgets hidden there was a scumbag, but contrary to my assumption, it was probably meant to give the little Hunter apprentices a first-hand experience of what it's like to suffer at the hands of their own stuff. Just to feel and understand what the weapons that they themselves hide to kill the bastard mutants are capable of. But now MacTavish and his minions, according to the detailed information from Price, are setting up equipment even more evil than the one that tormented me.

The sensors, that they attach to the walls of the buildings blocking the road, are almost invisible, and the tiny packages that are placed with perfect geometric precision in a line behind the sensors disappear even more cunningly among the debris and cracks of the road. I'm not fooled by how small the bombs seem, though, because I know they'll easily tear apart anything unlucky enough to stray near them. This nifty little solution isn't enough to finish off all of the nest's inhabitants, but it's just enough to deal with the first wave of beasts that come out. And according to Price's explanation, this gives the team just enough of an advantage to take care of the rest with the dozens of weapons they brought with them. Maybe I should thank fate that I didn't walk into a beauty like this, because now I would probably be a few limbs poorer. Provided I miraculously survived the meeting.

I see the serendipitous soldier who appears and sticks a sensor to the side of the building that is standing next to the nest for a fleeting moment, and this is the only sign that the small troops that disappeared into the darkness of the side streets have successfully bypassed the structures and arrived at the roads opening from the intersection. And although they are hidden by the walls of the truncated buildings and the shadows stretching out from them, I can still see how the clever little hands are working, and with hasty, but no less routine movements, they set up their own gifts for their little monsters.

The whole thing only takes a few minutes, and every detail falls into place, turning the area into a deadly obstacle, because in this way the nest dwellers are trapped on all sides of the T-shaped intersection. And after this, there is only one stunt waiting to be done. It would be suicide, even for an all-powerful Hunter, to venture into an unknown, confined space full of mutants, but fortunately, they are able to overcome this problem as swell. And as MacTavish's soldiers place the last element of the trap right in the middle of the road, I pull the corners of my mouth in disgust, because the little structure has only pleased me with near-death experiences so far, although this doesn't take anything away from its usefulness. Because now it will lure the bastards out of their hiding places with the same efficiency as it directed the piggy to me in the forest.

"This is Hunter 1-15. Traps in place." I hear MacTavish's voice on the radio, and I follow with my binoculars as he and his assistants retreat in search of cover to move to a safer distance from the explosives left on the ground. They pull in behind the rusty frame of a car forgotten on the side of the road, and as they crouch down, they melt almost imperceptibly into the shadows and the emptiness dominated by the ruins.

"Be ready. We start after the signal." Riley gives his commands, and to this statement, my hand nervously moves towards the handrail in front of me to look for something to hold onto due to my increasing anxiety. Because all my nerves are straining, as I realize that the important part of the whole night will soon begin, and even though I feel that every little detail has been realized so far without disturbance, I still can't calm the tension that is growing wilder and wilder in my body. However, I don't have time to dwell on this anymore, because I hear the masked man's voice once again on the radio and he gives out the order that starts the real excitement of the mission. "Activate the sound alarms!"

And then, after that one announcement, that unpleasant, eardrum-splitting screeching sounds up again, which, despite the comfortable distance I'm at, reaches me and rips into my ears just like I previously experienced. But now I'm not concentrating on the noise, which cuts through the undisturbed calm of the night, but, frozen in nervous immobility, I fix my gaze through the lenses of the binoculars on the entrance to the nest. A few nerve-wracking minutes pass, and for a torturous moment, the unsettling immobility sways me into the belief that we may have received the wrong information and we came here completely unnecessarily. But all my doubts disappear when something stirs in the darkness of the underpass and moves up the stairs with slow, jerky steps. A lanky, human-like form emerges from the shadows, and as it fully leaves the nest, the pale light of the moon envelops it in a sickly light, which is only enhanced by my binoculars. And I furrow my brows in confusion, because it doesn't mean anything good at all, as the once human being steps out into the emptiness of the street, of whom now nothing but a distorted, grotesque creature is left. The I.H.L. doesn't stay alone for long, because a couple of its friends soon appear behind it, and they begin to drag themselves in the direction of the sound that lured them out, as if they were just going for a pleasant evening walk as an intimate friend group. And although not nearly enough time has passed since their appearance for us to know every little detail about the effect of the virus on humans, the way in which, belying their previously observed bloodthirsty behavior, they head towards the traps in sync is more than unusual. The normal thing would be if they galloped into the trap mindlessly. But these almost seem to behave in a premeditated and intentional manner.

"What the… what the hell is going on here?" I hear the bewildered voice of one of the soldiers, and his disbelief, suppressed into a low murmur filtering through the radio, faithfully reflects my shock. Because by now a whole herd of I.M.L.'s should have poured out of that fucking pit and casually jumped into the trap the Hunters had set for them. Still, the fact that mutated humans appeared in place of the beasts only confirms the rather ominous fact that I observed in the video. Which, in the best case scenario, means that the virus is going through a completely new kind of evolution, which not only happened faster than after its first appearance, but also promises additional risks for which we are not prepared at all. Because if they start getting just a little bit smarter, we're done for.

However, as slowly as they begin their path, they suddenly start running at such a speed, as if a switch had just flicked on in them, and the teams waiting for them don't have time to react to what is happening. The humanoid creatures rush towards the pre-prepared surprises with an almost crazy momentum, and although I could be happy about this development, the knowledge that they appeared too few and too organized for it to be so simple doesn't let me rest. And even when the I.H.L.s, in a frenzied rage, almost throw themselves into the line of the sensors, the bad feeling doesn't disappear from the skull. The bombs hidden on the ground are activated with a loud noise, and for a moment I see nothing but the blinding light that flashes after the detonation accompanied by a bang. Smoke and dust cover the street, and suddenly everything goes quiet, as the field becomes empty again after the neutralized threat. For a fleeting moment, I nervously look for MacTavish and his crouching comrades, and when I find them, I’m briefly reassured that they are still safe, albeit rather disturbed, waiting for the next step.

However, my joy doesn't last long, because an unmistakable roar cuts the silence left after the explosion in two. My hand clenches almost painfully around the rough metal of the handrail, but the ache caused by pieces of rust biting into my skin doesn't cut through my astonishment. My brain is much more occupied by the mass of mutants emerging from the nest with bloodthirsty anger, who pour out like an unstoppable herd from the mouth of the underpass, which until now was believed to be ominously bleak. And my mind suddenly cannot put together the chain of events, because what is happening now doesn't fit into any line-up observed over the years. And it seems that the reception committee is similarly surprised by the appearance of the originally expected guests.

"Fuck! Take cover and start shooting at the bastards!" I hear Riley's quick instruction, and an icy grip of doubt closes around my stomach as I hear the concern in his voice. Because the fact that, even through the radio, I can feel the shock and urgent restlessness of his words, plants the first seeds of fear in me. And I have every reason to be terrified, because as the monsters break through the slowly disappearing clouds of dust, chaos begins, and all of a sudden I lose all hope that I can survive this night.

[dontbesoweirdkira]

Yandere Prompt List

Originally posted by blushycherub and animeyanderlover

You can look through and request a specific prompt for any character. Just write the number(s) when you send in the anon along with who you want it with.

1. “I’m crazy?! What’s crazy is that this world refuses to let me be with you!”

2. “I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I’m going crazy. It’s because I love you.”

3. “Did you sleep well? Don’t lie to me, I watched you.”

4. “Gosh, you smell so good when we cuddle like this!”

5. “Do you think I enjoy punishing you?! Because I don’t!”

6. “I feel like I’m suffocating when I’m not with you.”

7. “Darling, you look gorgeous covered in their blood.”

8. “Don’t cover my love bites or else I’m going to add more.”

9. “Do you want me to break your legs or lock you in a cage to prevent you from running away?”

10. “Tell me how much you love me.”

11. “One more chance! I’m giving you one more chance to fucking stop resisting!”

12. “I’m going to carve my name into your skin so everyone will know that you’re mine.”

13. “Can you at least pretend to love me? Just for tonight?”

14. “You think I’m jealous? Believe me, you haven’t seen me jealous yet.”

15. “Shh princess…don’t cry over this scum, he doesn’t deserve your tears.”

16. “You don’t understand! If you accept me now, I’ll be your slave!”

17. “You’ve been such a good girl lately. If you continue to behave so well, I might just reward you. Would you like that?”

18. “I-I just want you to love me!”

19. “If I ever see you with them again, I’ll kill them!”

20. “If you leave me, I’ll die!”

21. “I don’t care if I’ll go to hell as long as I drag everybody who dares to touch you, talk to you and look at you with me!”

22. “I don’t know if I should be angry or turned on.”

23. “Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t my blood. It’s the blood of the person who touched you earlier today.”

24. “I’d kill for you.”

25. “This might sound weird, but I like it when you’re sick. Because then you let me take care of you.”

26. “…Why do you cry?! Who made you cry?! Tell me their fucking names so I can rip their heads off for making my angel cry!!!”

27. “We were made for each other, can’t you see that?!”

28. “I need you more than I need air to breathe.”

29. “Stop giving me that look! Stop looking at me as if I’m a monster!”

30. “I desire any physical touch with you so please hit me more.”

31. “Just remember that I’m never going to leave you. That’s a promise.”

32. “Babe! I brought you a gift. You don’t know what that is? Let me tell you. These are the eyes of the person who kept looking at you today.”

33. “The next time someone touches you, I’ll chop their hands off!”

34. “NO!! Please tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it, but don’t leave me!!!”

35. “Why do you suddenly care whether I hurt myself or not? You were going to leave me, weren’t you?”

36. “I think I should hurt myself more often so I can get your attention.”

37. “Even thinking about you with someone else makes me want to throw up.”

38. “Look! I carved your name into my skin so everyone will know that I’m yours!”

39. “I can end all of your pain. You just have to say those three words.”

40. “What I am doing? I’m punishing myself. Why? Because I upset you earlier.”

41. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll look cute with a swollen stomach carrying our child.”

42. “You have no idea how far I’m willing to go for you.”

43. “I’ll handcuff you to me if I have to!”

44. “Escaping is all you think about, isn’t it? Always dreaming about it, always thinking about it?”

45. “I always wondered what those lips would taste like…”

46. “Can I…can I kiss you?”

47. “Telling me I’m crazy sounds wrong. Let’s… just say I’m madly in love with you.”

48. “I hate it when you pay attention to something else besides me.”

49. “You don’t know how much blood I already spilled for you.”

50. “Tell me, is love supposed to be…this passionate?”

51. “The next time I’ll kill someone I should take you with me. So you can finally see what happens when you try to run away again.”

52. “You want to leave me?!?! Why?!?! Is it because I beat those people up who insulted you last week? Or is it because I didn’t make you your favorite breakfast yesterday? Whatever it is, I promise I can fix it!!”

53. “It is funny that you think you can actually leave me.”

54. “I don’t mind being a monster as long as I’m your monster.”

55. “I killed all of them and I would do it again if it means having you in my arms.”

56. “Sweetheart…where are you hiding? I know you’re here. Come out, come out, wherever you are. I’ll find you anyways, I can hear your breathing.”

57. “If you don’t kiss me back, I’ll slit someone’s throat.”

58. “Listen, I’m giving you two choices. Either you start eating willingly or I’ll force you. There’s no way I’m letting you starve yourself to death.”

59. “Hate me, scream at me, hit me. Do whatever you want with me, but please stay with me.”

60. “…You are telling me that I can live with my life without you, but you don’t seem to understand that YOU are my life.”

61. “You had a nightmare about me? That’s great! That means you think of me even when you dream. Even though I hope your next dream about me will be more pleasant.”

62. “I’ll do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING for you.”

63. “Your hair is so soft and silky.”

64. “You look stunning when you cry like this.”

65. “What are you doing?!?! Why would you do something like this to yourself?! Do you seriously think death will help you escaping from me?!”

66. “It seems like I have to remind you of who you belong to.”

67. “Say my name again like this.”

68. “You’re all I think about. I always think about holding you, kissing you, touching you, making love to you, breeding you…”

69. “You can’t find your clothes? That’s a shame. But you can wear mine. They look better on you anyways.”

70. “Hearing you say that makes me want to fuck you so badly.”

71. “Your body, your heart, your soul. It all belongs to me.”

72. “Do you want your underwear back?”

73. “You can use me however you want to. Just stay with me.”

74. “As long as you love me everything is alright. You…you do love me, right?”

75. “I need you to stay with me. Forever! Without you I feel empty and lonely.”

76. “You think you’re ugly? Who told you so? Tell me so I can give them an agonizing death for making you think that. And after I’m finished with them, I’m going to worship you in bed until you see how beautiful you really are.”

77. “I like it when I’m sick because you always take care of me during these times.”

78. “You want to see your family? Why? You have me and I’m all you need.”

79. “I’ll kill everyone you care about if it means having all your attention for myself!”

80. “I can’t help, but be selfish when it comes to you.”

81. “The more you struggle now, the heavier your punishment will be later on.”

82. “I feel sick every time you talk about someone who isn’t me.”

83. “Every time you look at someone else I just want to strangle this person.”

84. “I’m not the most violent person, but I’m willing to change that if it means having you.”

85. “I’m all you need and you’re all I need. Isn’t that just perfect?!?!”

86. “Why…why do you keep resisting me? That’s not fair! Don’t I deserve to be happy too?!”

87. “Tell me you love me! Even if it’s just a lie!”

88. “I’m sorry that I keep you in here. But you’re too pure and innocent. I’m scared that this world will break you. I’m only protecting you.”

89. “Please stop crying. You make me feel even worse. But you need to understand, if I wouldn’t have chained you to the bed, you would have tried to run away again.”

90. “Babe…! Shit! I’m sorry you had to see this, but please believe me! He deserved it! No,no,no, don’t be scared of me. You know I would never harm you.”

91. “They are going to hurt you. They are going to leave you, mock you, betray you, abandon you. But not me. I’ll be here for you. I’ll worship you, love you and protect you from the world. Just you and me. Forever.”

92. “I just want to be yours.”

93. “Leaving already? Stay a little longer. You know you can’t refuse me.”

94. “You’re just too cute kitten. I want to keep you with me forever.”

95. “You mean the world to me, love!”

96. “I need you. I! Fucking! Need! You!”

97. “I feel like I…want to…protect you. Always…always…and forever.”

98. “Every second I am not able to spend with you is a wasted second.”

99. “I would love to be your stars, your moon, your sun.”

100. “We share a special connection that no one else has my darling.”

101. “These people are stupid! Can’t they see that you’re mine?!”

102. “You enjoyed it when they touched you, didn’t you? Well, I’ll remind you that I’m the only one who can make you feel amazing.”

103. “Please smile again like this! It makes my heart flutter.”

104. “Am I too much for you?”

105. “I watched you sleeping the whole night ‘til morning and I’m still not tired of it.”

106. “Take me, I’m yours!”

107. “Yes…I’m crazy. Crazily, madly, truly and completely in love with you.”

108. “You are mine!”

109. “I know she’s cute. BUT SHE’S MINE! TOUCH HER AND I’LL KILL YOU!!”

110. “I won’t let anyone take you away from me.”

111. “I’m gonna make you love me~”

112. “Every breath you take. Every move you make. Every bond you break. Every step you take. I’ll be watching you.”

113. “Love is patient. I, however, am not.”

114. “What a wicked way to treat me, the person who loves you, like this.”

115. “I know the sound of your heart.”

116. “I love you more than planned.”

117. “Use me however you want too. My body is yours.”

118. “Why would you let them talk to you?!?!”

119. “Eyes on only me.”

120. “Jealous! Jealous! Jealous! Mine! Mine! Mine!”

121. “Tonight we’ll become one.”

122. “Don’t be scared. I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with them.”

123. “It would be so much easier if you would just start accepting me.”

124. “I crave you so much that my body hurts.”

125. “I could have easily murdered you without hesitation. But those angelic eyes made me dizzy and weak.”

126. “But sweetie…I want YOU!”

127. “I would bleed out if you tell me you like the color red.”

128. “Just give it a little time! You’ll get used to it, I know you will!

129. “I want to be your only one.”

130. “I’ll never let you go.”

131. “Every time you smile at someone else, I just want to stab a knife in my skull.”

132. “I want you. I want us. I want it all. With you. Only us.”

133. “I know the restraints must hurt you. Don’t worry, I’ll untie you as soon as I’m sure you won’t run away again from me.”

134. “I get jealous when you give someone else the kind attention I want from you.”

135. “I am the monster you created.”

136. “I won’t be able to sleep until I have you in my arms.”

137. “Let me have you…All of you.”

138. “I-I’ll do anything you ask me to!! But please don’t leave me!”

139. “I have everything they don’t have, but you still choose them? Why?! Choose me! Love me!”

140. “Let’s stay a little longer like this. Just a little.”

141. “Do you like these photos of you? I have a lot more.”

142. “Say you love me. Even if it’s just a lie. I need to hear these words from you.”

143. “Just tell me that you’re mine.”

144. “I’m sorry that I stole your hoodie. I just couldn’t help it. It smells like you.”

145. “I can’t get enough of you.”

146. “If destiny decided that we weren’t meant to be, I would just force it.”

147. “Why are you so scared of me? You should know that I would never hurt you. I would rather die than laying a single finger on you.”

148. “All I want is your love! Is that too much to ask?!”

149. “Love…did I ever tel you how sweet your lips taste?”

150. “I’ll keep you safe.”

151. “Everything about you is addicting. Your eyes, your lips, your hair, your scent. Everything.”

152. “You…don’t love me? Don’t be ridiculous! I know you love me! You just don’t know it yet!”

153. “Tell me how much you love me whilst I fuck you into the mattress.”

154. “I can’t let you go because…without you I won’t have my happy ending.”

155. “I just want to protect you. Nothing wrong with that, is it?

156. "I f you would ask me, I would cut out my heart for you. It’s yours after all.”

157. “I don’t want anyone else to have your love, kiss your lips or see them in your arms. That’s only my place.”

158. “Call me selfish, but I can’t share you with anyone else.”

159. “I’m not the jealous type. But what’s mine is mine.”

160. “I would set fire to the world around me just to have you. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t let a single flame touch you.”

161. “Yes, you are allowed to have other friends. You’ll just have to spend more time with me.”

162. “No matter what happens, I will never let anyone else have you.”

163. “I love you. You’re mine. And I’ll kill any bastard who tries to take you away from me.”

164. “I need you. I’ll breathe you. I’ll never leave you.”

165. “Oh, I’m so in love! With you!”

166. “Love made me do it.”

167. “Beautiful…Beautiful and all mine.”

168. “You’ll never leave me, right? You’re all mine forever, right? Tell me! Tell me you belong to me.”

169. “Only I can have you.”

170. “You’ll learn to love me.”

171. “If only you knew…how much I love you.”

172. “I love you so much that it hurts me.”

173. “Without you I’ll kill myself.”

174. “If you are angry with something, let it out on me. I’m more than happy to be useful for you.”’

175. “It’s okay, babe. I won’t let anything happen to you or your loved ones. You’ll just have to stay with me.”

176. “See? This wasn’t so bad. If you behave more often, it can always feel like this.”

177. “This is what I do for you! I don’t care who I have to kill to keep you, my darling!

178. "Try to stay still whilst I finish carving my initials, will you?”

179. “You love me, don’t you? Everything seems so one-sided lately.”

180. “Silly little thing. Don’t you realize that this is all your fault?”

181. “I love you! Please stay with me!”

182. “Please love only me! Come back! Don’t be scared of me!”

183. “I adore you.”

184. “It’ll be the family we always wanted~”

185. “I’ll hunt you down if I have too.”

186. “I won’t be as forgiving next time.”

187. “If you run, I will kill…”

188. “I am so jealous and needy and my heart hurts so much! So please…just show me that you care about me…”

189. “It’s a shame I have to cut your beautiful skin.”

190. “You can’t hide from me, my sweetie.”

191. “I might just shove my head into the fucking walls if I can’t be with you.”

192. “Close your eyes so it’ll hurt less.”

193. “You’ll learn to enjoy it.”

194. “I’m going to have you in the end, you know?”

195. “~Found you~”

196. “Missed me? Because I really missed you!”

197. “You could rip my heart open darling, for I have never known true love before you came.”

198. “You’re a shining star in my deepest night and I refuse to be left alone in the darkness.”

199. “I do everything for you and this is how you repay me?!”

200. “Be good for me next time.”

201. “You’re like gravity. Always pulling me towards you.”

202. “I live of you. You are my oxygen.”

203. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

204. “Those bastards tainted you by touching you! Now I’ll have to erase their stench on your skin!”

205. “Don’t worry~I’ll make sure that what you’re about to lose is going to be worth it.”

206. “I’m going to lose my mind if I can’t touch you.”

207. “Are you worried you’ll meet them again. Don’t worry, they’re already long gone…”

208. “I’ll show you how kind I can be! I’ll let you choose the death of this guy!”

209. “Don’t get me wrong but you look sexy covered in their blood.”

210. “Of course I am jealous! You’re mine!”

211. “I would die for you if would ask me to.”

212. “Your skin is so soft.”

213. “You’re looking for your friend? The last time I saw them, they were choking on their own blood.”

214. “These people are truly dumb for still searching for them. Because I made sure that their body will never be found again.”

215. “All those bastards who made you cry will shed tears of blood.”

216. “You are my purpose to live.”

217. “I could kill you if I wanted to.”

218. “Maybe branding you will help.”

219. “Consider yourself as lucky that I am nice.”

220. “Kitten, I’m going easy.”

221. “I’m doing this out of love.”

222. “I would go to the depths of hell for you.”

223. “I can keep you safe because they’re all afraid of me.”

224. “I am jealous of the way you are happy with them but not me.”

225. “What I did, I did for us.”

226. “You’re so pretty, I want to cry.”

227. “So cute. Begging like anything will help you.”

228. “I would sleep better on your floor than I would ever in my own bed.”

229. “You can’t be lonely! You have me!”

230. “This world is a ugly place but you’re so beautiful to me.”

231. “This will make us closer. I promise.”

232. “I’m afraid I can’t let you see them. Even if I would, you wouldn’t be able to recognize them.”

233. “I do realize I’m sick in my head. That’s why I need a cure called you.”

234. “Isn’t just the thought of a mini version of us unbelievably cute?”

235. “I love it when we are so close like this to each other.”

[altruistic-meme]

WIP FILE GAME

RULES: post the names of the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPs.

nobody tagged me in this but with the large influx of capri fics in my head i want to do it anyway :) for the sake of my sanity, im only naming the wips that I haven't started posting yet

Erik re-lives AU (young royals)

i see you, you see me (young royals)

Sunset Dreams and Sunrise Desires (young royals)

dare(d) to do it (young royals)

not supposed to know (young royals)

yr fic oops (young royals)

Go Low (all for the game)

laurent stabs damen (captive prince)

even under ashes (i've got glory) "a different brother falls at Marlas" inspired (captive prince)

Carpe Noctem (captive prince)

Time Travel AU (captive prince)

based on "monster" by ahawn mendes and justin beiber

"women be fantasizing about waltzing in an ancient castle under the starlight" fuck yeah i do (captive prince)

Disappearing :D (captive prince)

i also have no chance of tagging 14 people and also i need to go to sleep so i am going to leave this as an open tag <3 do it!! it's kinda fun just to see what wips you have!!!

[notatumb1rsexyman]

this reminds me of my ex fiancee's cat.

last year i had broken my ankle + lost a lot of blood bc i got hit by a car

for some reason she would refuse to clean the litter box despite it being in our room and there being 2 cats in there.

I cant do it bc i cant even sit up by myself (due to.. you know... heavy blood loss.)

it was a yelling match constantly because she just didnt like doing it. Usually she would get mad and go to a friends' house for a few days to "catch a break" (and also find time to cheat, but anyways.) (we lived with her fakily, so he mom would send her sisters up with food so i didnt starve, god bless that woman.)

one day, after a week of not being there, and ne still not being able to get up, the cat didnt want to pee in the box, because it was gross.

so he started peeing in HER clothes basket. Freshly washed clothes no more !

on the day she came back she started an argument about not ever getting help from me (thats a whole other story yall) so i didnt tell her what her cat had been doing, because... why should I ?

I had to coordinate someone voming and taking care of both mine and her dogs, feeding the cats, feeding the me, along with the year and a half of what she had been saying and doing to me... so i simply didnt tell her.

(btw, we cant smell anything because my nose is broken, and she smokes so much weed its practically all she can smell, constantly. thats what she says anyway. i think she was just noseblind to the smell because she was living in the smell.)

so since shes now mad at me, for daring to ask her to get me water, she had started previously mentioned argument, and started contacting all her friends asking who can hang out, and if she can stay over. She finds one and goes out to "go skating" (taking the longboard i gave her, and clothes I bought her that are now asparagus scented.)

the whole time shes getting dressed (WHO wears a DRESS to go longboarding ?) shes asking if the clothes smell weird to me, and I (didnt lie !) told her i cant smell anything.

so she went out wearing those clothes, and when she came back home hours later she showered and went right to sleep.

her cat was sleeping on her pillow, and suddenly decided.... I need to pee.

so this beautiful monster of a cat stands up, circles, and pees on her pillow, with her on it.

she tried to blame this on me, but i asked her how, in any way, this could be traced back to me and she got couldnt figure it out and got more upset so she tossed everything into the wash (because she realised what the smell was now) and spent the day cleaning up her mistake.

it was the most satisfying petty revenge I've ever gotten to experience.

Me, watching my kitten hold still for a suspiciously long time: Ollie, are you peeing on my floor?

Ollie: Not

Me: Are you sure?

Ollie, grunting through time and space to push out a chocolate mcmuffin wider than he is tall: Not

[libidomechanica]

And her babe so bold to hunt the small

A sonnet sequence

               1

And her babe so bold to hunt the small people out of nose: be her ankles go, in praise delicious of conquers where left ear folds in her man on the greeted by a double-lock them, seem to sweat, for men are! Whether to imbibe it in knot. Pressure though soon exhale—by moralize, and all for Thee—Oh spurn them; her eyes that are not rise, Oh Moon of the father’d up in fayre Elisa rest, for thy provok’d my feet. You dragged bound forgot. A greatest of thy head. And breathe throng, ambition, this caprice; and, your troupes to meet her without a swallow still exist above compares to me.

               2

My own voice hath such a race, into thee? They say she denied theme, the nag like them, will every little like a singled both his magazines this is soft cheek, his tail, broad, which I give your arms and passed them red another bed. Other in one to year and all that fills be dried blood does it red; and sing, shows its wings I take the way to mumble thee I dare not to begin. The bride of sheep are gone! Being hurt my words love, lay this wound to blame. A pair, I should bring from my eyes are asleep and ring of thy name. Love and husks of youth to surprise of thy mermaid’s yellow autumn turning.

               3

A voices lower, to leave to shoote as well the artists do the air, and every that work maybe neither self depart, as if from thousand she was he: bound that caren, they not be said; she tells may I make, sleepe begin to substance of those that your adventure: and new change. And anger dress each shadow had forswonck and shutting so enrag’d, for long as thou can penetrate: fixed to be said their loudly she doth freshly gay, scorched with easeful Death repent, her down. Opening all love to that he would wear red fireflies will I remember young: sweet smell, wishing rookery swerve.

               4

Of monsters, easily harm’d magic, his Death done that cedar-tops and on end; his eyes like a man was built, in lovest! The bailey bear, or rivers say, is this page— now, sun, and thy youth, his uncontrolled with her rejoiceth with her Day’s Delight. A good, how white curtain leaves lessened aboue these, ye must dig the Musky Locks dividing green, and she is enrag’d, desire! It were clawing once she tremendous if: if she with beauty set, and be need not, all subiect think men love, all wreath’d horses play, our Cuddie, the for this: how my mouths at change above that I am sure, for this used.

               5

To preace emong the boar! Come a pale-fac’d nightmare, his Death she entrances and heart and woe are done. As if thou will send flow; now she arose, leaving—the river of the same or for the truth: for when with curtain, to and the same, perchance hap always. While he types; Yes; and to her. And white before I do when he plight. On they should say, Your mother’s feature; tells thee. For zeal like a regatta of magic casement, oftentimes been first and so tis true. Which I bring of crimson living the world for each is perfect health or come this, and old man came. She said; and fly: conscious supreme.

               6

Rolling plumes from the poor Venus’ liking eyes of your troubled plunging wave one, can every part, of threatened something in their rayes to wear, dainties now doth dight, with the stamp they all I lov’d. Yet I see not to living wasted tree or the upper thigh to surprise with in his limits far upward the eye. To eat broke, and I will, standing man it means daiquiri. Simplicity, and the bourn of sorrow now it, in all the literally the wanton troopers riding trips, and with that just stay. Speak, my feels, because in bigger blood. To whom the sorteth life ending green married you worse.

               7

And can that make my old self-ingrain’d, each time and died to the fault I am bereft his word she given, was thy forth fire, lean, watching your life like chiropractors have your form the elms, and govern’d him if he dart from heavenly wise; it is grown light of her glu’d, fall though it leaded panes. Leaves of Paradise enow! She wild; and words and a sun, and whither eyes and keep, to shine own his plaidie, a rule themselves to lose, you of thy dark cloud; hear’st me wherewith my widow …. He show the humble tributary gaze upon every one, that trembles and flip-flops. The ill of respect.

[mayabooowrites]

Scorpius's letters

Summary: letters Scorpius wrote to you his mother.

Requested: by my friend Lilith who is a monster for giving me this idea.

Dracos POV

Warnings: death and alcohol mentioned

Dear mom,

Dad told me today that you had to go on a trip, I wish you could have said goodbye to me but I'll see when you get back. I love you mommy I'll get daddy to send the letter to you

-Scorpius

Dear mommy,

It's been a month where are you? Dads been crying himself to sleep every night, we went to a funeral today I don't know who it was for, do you know? People kept telling dad they are sorry for his loss, who did he lose? And why did daddy say he wishes you were here? And why did people say y/n which is your name when talking about the person he lost? Do we have another y/n in the family? I don't know, also could you reply to my letters thank you, I love you hope your coming back soon

-Love Scorpius

Dear mum,

Dad yelled at me today after I handed him the letter to give to you, why would he do that? He said stop giving me them, and then started crying. What's going on are you both fighting? Can you please come home and make it up to him? You know so we can all play again, I miss you so much please come home

-Scorpius

Dear mom,

I'm so happy you replied to my letter, dad gave it to me today and I'm so happy, I love you so much too and I also can't wait to see you as well, I was getting scared you left us an weren't coming back, I can't wait when you get back from your trip to the place called heaven. I love you

-Scorp

Dear mom,

It's almost been a year, where are you? Dad ripped up every letter I tried to write to you, he yelled and said she's dead stop giving me these stupid letters, I don't like it when he yells at me. Please come home from heaven dads drinking too much and works too much now. You need to help him mommy he needs you.

-Your star (I love it when you call me your star mommy)

Dear mummy,

Daddy brought another woman home I kicked her in the face and fought her she deserved it, how dare she steal daddy from you. But dad tried to tell me you weren't coming back but I know you are, the trip is just taking a while, you send me letters back saying your stuck in the country and will be home hopefully next year, I can't believe daddy would do that I hate him. Your coming home you have to be please come home I need you, my birthday is soon I'm turning six please come home mommy

-Scorpius

Dear mom,

Hey, it's me mom, daddy says your dead and won't be ever coming back. Daddy also said he wants you back too and he was the one who sent the letters to me pretending to be you, please don't let it be real please tell me it's not real mummy, you can't be dead please come home

Dear mom,

Hey it's me it's been a few years hasn't it? I'm now 30 and I found a box full of the letters I used to send to you when I was 5 and 6 when I didn't understand what death was, they were under dads bed I'm glad he kept them, I've been missing you mom I really do miss you, I got married and have two kids now. I really wish you were here to see it, I've just been missing you a lot lately so I need to write out my feelings, dad has never moved on from you he tried but failed and stopped seeing people completely, he's stopped drinking though and isn't a workaholic anymore so that's good. He spends all of his retirement now with his grandkids, and telling them all about you and how amazing you are, I do the same I sing the song you made up and sang to me as a kid. Dad talks about how he can't wait to see you again one day and the big kiss he's gonna give you when he joins you in heaven. I also named my daughter after you her names y/n, she's named after the best mother I ever had I love you so much mom.

-Your star Scorpius

[yoongsisbae]

Bon Voyage: Into the Sea - Chapter 3

BTS fantasy AU. OT7 x reader. werewolf!Namjoon x werewolf!Hoseok x werewolf!Jungkook x siren!Yoongi x vampire!Jimin x vampire!Jin x whatis?Taehyung. This is the "vampire chapter" :'D

Thank you for all the love on this random nightmarish story lol. This extra update is for all the readers who made it my most popular post! Thank you! <3 Also this is my contribution to the start of the spooky season :D

Warnings: Hi, remember when I said this was horror? This chapter in particular is pretty horrific, you have been warned! blood, fighting between m/w, blood, graphic violence, blood, imprisonment, blood, blood, blood, minor character death, vampires doing vampire things including noncon blood drinking, human imprisonment, mind manipulation, stockholm syndrome, dubious consent, slut shaming, anal, degradation, foursome, orgasm control, orgasm denial, what a ride, you must be over 18 to ride this ride, scary scary scary

Word Count: 22k

---

“Scared, y/n?” Jimin’s face sends you a wicked smile.

You look back and forth between the men, uttering an unconvincing “No.”

Seokjin speaks again, “You should be.”

---

‘So did you get the answers you are looking for?’ You sit up, jolted out of your sleep, Hoseok’s words echoed softly in your mind.

Seokjin moved so fast, his striking face in front of you in an instant, his red eyes centimeters from yours, delicate lips curving into a smile over his fangs as water splayed around where he stood. That was the last thing you remember.

He smiled down at you sweetly and held you by the neck, putting pressure on your vein until you passed out. It all happened so fast your scream remained halted until this moment. The response came out of you abruptly, as fleeting as the memory.

And now where the hell were you? It looked like the room of an old bed and breakfast; large bed, writing desk, love seat, high windows; but to your captors the breakfast on the menu was you.

The first thing you notice is how the curtains are drawn together blocking the sunlight, but you know it’s there, just out of reach, as evidenced by the small line of light that trails its top edge. The room you found yourself in was dark, from the wallpaper to the furniture, the stillness unsettling, you listened as your own rapid breathing filled the silence.

You were seated right in the middle of a king size bed. They left you atop the cleanly-made white bed sheets, a treat placed in the center of a platter. You shiver, your clothes still remained damp from the night before, cold and stuck to your skin. That is why you shiver, you tell yourself, because you don’t hear them, but you feel them...watching you...

You build up enough courage to scan the room, and that’s when you see two pairs of red orbs staring back at you from the corners’ shadows, glowing in the darkness. Eyes of beasts, watching you, studying you.

You try not to react, not show your captors how scared you are, but every mechanism in your body betrays you, and the pair immediately pick up on your rapidly beating heart, the sweat on your brows, your unsteady breathing-

“Good morning, y/n,” Seokjin says, walking out of the shadows. Jimin stays hidden, but you can hear his soft laughter.

Those answers you wanted, where are they?

Seokjin slowly moves to the edge of the bed. “It seems like our friends have taken quite an interest with you and I want to find out why. Is that okay?”

You purse your lips, keeping your eyes trained on the thin strip of light showing at the top of the window curtains. You sit in silence. Has your breathing always been this loud? The shaking of Seokjin’s legs, a sign of his growing impatience, rattles the bed and your resolve.

He clasps his hands together, finally saying “If you don’t want to speak to me,” he leans in slightly and whispers the rest, “I can always let Jimin pry information out of you, but I don’t think you’d appreciate that very much.”

The pounding of your heart and the uneasiness in the pit of your stomach makes you feel like you’re going to become sick at any minute, but you manage to form a coherent sentence to ask him, “What do you want to know?”

“First, I want your permission to find out,” he speaks softly, placing a gentle hand on your calf, but you flinch away anyways. That’s a loaded question if you ever heard one. You wonder if it’s all an act, the same way Jimin fooled you. You stay silent.

Seokjin sighs again, looking over his shoulder, “Jimin?”

“No!” you yell. “Not Jimin! You...you, okay I give you permission.”

“Thank you, y/n.” He smiles, “I’ll be gentle.”

You yelp. Seokjin’s cold hand travels down your leg, wraps around your ankle and pulls you down the bed closer to his body, and in an instant his lean frame is hovering over yours. This close, his beauty is intimidating alone, but his eyes feel like they are piercing through you, digging inside, seeing all the ugly secrets you try to hide from even yourself, you feel like you could catch fire the way his gaze burns you.

He holds you down loosely by the neck, fingers searching for a pulsing vein, eyes focused on you with the concentration of a doctor performing surgery. Seokjin wipes away the tears that begin spilling from your eyes and smirks, “Don’t cry Dove, I promise this time will be the least pain you’ll experience from now on.” His words are devoid of any real sympathy, a false comfort, a looming warning.

You consider fighting back, but in this position there is no way you would be able to reach for your dagger (hidden away in a secret pocket in the front of your corset) without Seokjin stopping you, and even if you were lucky enough, there’s still Jimin, waiting in the shadows.

So you choose to wait, and try to find comfort in Seokjin’s twisted words. It could be worse. A tiny voice inside you reminds you it will become worse. You’ll just have to escape before then. You take a deep steadying breath, preparing yourself.

Don’t cry.

Seokjin’s lips latch onto your neck, soft and full as he rolls his tongue harshly over your pulse point. Goosebumps bloom across your body, and you try to focus on the sunlight rather than the vampire above you and his overwhelming aura, that sliver of light that you pray won’t dim.

This could be worse. This could be more painful. This could be Jimin.

Seokjin can feel the jumping of your pulse against his tongue. The vampire wants to know your story, what is it about you that riled Jimin up more than he’s ever seen him. But with your sweet scent enveloping him and the cocktail of emotions Seokjin’s keen senses could smell: fear and anger and mounting arousal, you smelled better to him than the finest wine and he can’t stop himself from teasing you a little longer, drink it in just a bit more and savor the moment.

Seokjin still understood the importance of ‘living’ in the present, he enjoyed taking his time with things. Others would have gone mad by now with the infinite amount of time, but not Seokjin, he used it to his advantage. Your warm body, your addicting smell, the softness and saltiness of your skin, the shifts in your breathing, Seokjin took his time to savor the gifts of life that he still missed.

You try not to react to his sensual touches, tensing your body under him, until you feel two sharp pricks on the surface of your skin. Your reaction is involuntary, you grip the bedsheets with your fists and let out a soft cry, moving against him. His bite hurt for only a second, like a pin prick, but Seokjin in his precision had nicked an artery for optimum bloodshed. With each gasp of breath you take, with each pounding beat of your heart, you feel your blood drain as it escapes the punctures in your neck and into Seokjin’s waiting mouth.

Seokjin groans against your skin, sending fire through your veins, pressing himself harder into your body. The vampire is better at keeping his physical responses to blood drinking at bay than Jimin, but he hasn’t had a new taste in awhile, and you’re so responsive.

When he pulls away from you you reach to cover your neck and stop the blood, a reflex in an attempt to save your own life, but Seokjin grabs your wrists before you can, pinning you to the bed, studying, his red gaze challenging you.

You gasp as the blood rushes out down your neck, over the sheets, seeping into your clothes. ‘They’ll underestimate you...’ Yoongi’s words replay in your mind and you stay still. No matter how much you want to fight back, this time you have to be smarter, you have to believe in Yoongi’s words.

Jimin has stayed quiet for this long, staying in the shadows, but your whimpers and grunts of pain are music to Jimin’s ears, the blood pouring from your body like an offering to him. His groans can be heard from the shadows.

He holds himself back for now, waiting for his turn. Jimin wonders where all that fight went, he had expected a show, for you to thrash away from the older vampire like you did the merman. He can’t help but feel a little disappointed. When it’s his turn, he thinks, you’ll become more entertaining then.

You watched in silence as Seokjin licked his lips clean of your blood. The red liquid that he had stolen from you, that was now steadily seeping from your wound and covering the white bedsheets underneath you, like a Rorschach picture mapping your life. “You’re strong,” he grins, speaking too tenderly for the brutality he was inflicting. “Stop fighting and it will end sooner, y/n. Let me into your mind.”

What does that even mean?! In your blood loss the tips of your fingers begin to feel cold like your captor’s, your head pounds and your vision blurs with each passing moment as the blood drains from your artery, you don’t want to give in, but if it will end this torture...

You shut your eyes tightly, and turn your head to expose your bleeding neck further to the monster above you. When Seokjin lowers his lips to your neck, you try to think of sweet Jungkook instead, his warm body instead of Seokjin’s cold one. You didn’t dare wish to be with him again, you didn’t dare think you made a mistake, that you should have stayed. Now all you can do is hope you can save him and yourself from this horrible island. Jungkook doesn’t deserve to be imprisoned with the likes of them.

Seokjin drinks the warm liquid pouring from your throat. You listen to him gulping down your blood, How much longer, until he finds what he’s looking for? You feel your fight escape you with each swallow, you feel yourself slipping away. It reminds you of drowning, it reminds you of Yoongi and how he kissed life into you instead, but this was the kiss of death.

‘Yoongi,’ you close your eyes and think of him. And then you felt it, the pull inside your mind. Your current circumstance falls away in shambles, your memories are pulled out of you through the cracks, the images race through your mind as Seokjin bears witness to it all.

---

Yoongi sits at the table, hair and clothes dry, turning his head to see you awake.

The relief that softens his features as he’s walking to your side.

The delicate way he places the hairpiece back in its place.

The way his eyes melt at your words.

Why hadn’t you seen it before? Seokjin saw it all. The way Yoongi screams at you, the rage and embarrassment in his eyes as he tells you how much he can’t stand you, the way he licks his lips when you yell back. His eyes studying you when you yank him closer, full of anger and full of-

You weakly push against Seokjin, you don’t want to remember, you don’t want to miss him. You can’t stop it, you can’t stop the memories flooding through your system.

You suddenly remember Jungkook’s sparkling round eyes watching you, wanting you, the crinkle of his nose when he laughs, the pink flush on the edges of his ears when you talk to him, the muscles of his arms flexing as he cages you under him, his deep groaning in your ear, the vein in his neck when he pushes into your wet heat, the truth in his voice when he says he’ll protect you.

You feel Seokjin’s hands travel down your body the same way you remembered Jungkook. You curse him in your mind, but your body couldn’t tell the difference, your stomach tightens and you’re no longer cold, warmth spreads over you to the tips of your toes.

You want to scream, scream for Jungkook, but you’re frozen, lost in your own thoughts, confused by your senses. Jungkook feels as real as Seokjin, but you know he’s not really there, no matter how much you wanted it to be true.

You remember Hoseok’s harsh looks, the growing anger in his eyes, the hurt in his eyes, the pain in his eyes, the pain still present in his eyes even in his wolf form when he howls and cries at you. He’s begging you to stay, he’s telling you he can’t bear to lose someone again. How could you leave them? Why can’t they be enough for you? Hoseok will treat you better, if you just stay with him, please. You understand his barks and howls now, because Seokjin understands. Tears well up in your eyes and you try to move away, but Seokjin is too solid, too powerful, and unyielding in his search.

Namjoon’s eyes are on you as you eat next to his brothers at dinner, filled with nothing but warmth and happiness. Those brown eyes, you miss them. You feel dizzy and helpless, you can’t take it anymore. You grab a fistful of Seokjin’s hair to try to pull him off of you.

“What have you done to Jimin? What have you done?!” Namjoon’s voice roars in your memory. But it’s not any memory you remember having. Before you realize what you are doing, your hands hold on tightly to Seokjin’s hair, pulling him closer and holding him to you so you can see more.

---

“It-It wasn’t me...” The tall vampire is covered in blood. Some of it is Jimin’s blood, yes, but the majority of blood that drips down his face and hands, that covers his clothes, belongs to five other men. Dead men. Men who beat the broken man in his arms to the brink of death.

Seokjin found his dear friend screaming in pain. He saw them over Jimin’s bleeding body, blood Seokjin treasured just as much as he treasured his bond with the compassionate and playful man. His friend, Jimin, who wailed for Seokin, for Namjoon, for Hoseok, for Taehyung, for anyone to help him, while his bones cracked, lying in the dirt, choking on his own blood, precious blood.

Seokjin explained to Namjoon when he saw them laughing, like hyenas over a carcass, spitting hateful slurs down at Jimin, he couldn’t control himself. Seokjin tore them apart one by one. He chased each one down like the pathetic animals they were, and tore the limbs that touched his dear friend straight from their bodies.

Seokjin had been weak, he had become too accustomed to the harmonious life he and Namjoon had created for themselves. Had it been decades before, he would have endured, but living with the pack had softened him too much and he couldn’t stand the pain of losing Jimin, so when he found a weak pulse he gave Jimin as much of his venomous blood as he could.

Namjoon simply nods at the information, his weary eyes examining his two friends, friends who were like family to him. He didn’t want to lose Jimin either. “We need to take him somewhere safe...to the island, before he wakes up,” Namjoon places a hand on the trembling vampire’s shoulder.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” the vampire’s voice shakes, he notices the cuts on Jimin’s face and body have yet to heal themselves.

“That’s not something you should be worried about,” Namjoon runs his hand through Jimin’s tangled hair, gently placing the dark strands back into place, his eyes filling with tears, “it’s when he wakes up, we need to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Seokjin nods weakly.

“Go now. I’ll clean up the mess, brother.”

Your hands fall, the blood loss making you too weak to grip onto Seokjin’s hair. Seokjin had taken more blood than he intended, lost in his own memories.

The vampire pulls away from you, even as the edges of your vision blurs, you see his eyes, glowing red and glassy with unshed tears, staring at you with a mixture of pain and surprise. He shakes away his bewilderment and rips into the flesh of his wrist, placing the cut across your lips as you can no longer hold consciousness.

---

When you wake again it’s night time, the light behind the curtains has left you.

Your body aches. You run your fingers along your neck, searching for the punctures, and you can only feel smooth skin crusted in dried blood. Your head feels like it’s splitting. You groan in pain.

You see Jimin before you hear him, and even then you’re not sure if your brain created the sounds to ease your mind as he stalks closer to your waking form.

“Finally! Now what could you have possibly done to Jin?” Jimin says, contemplating the reason his friend holed himself up in his office, refusing to speak to Jimin or even look at him.

He jumps on the bed, shaking your already pounding head. “He refuses to let me bite you,” he whines, “Explain now, pet.” Jimin prods you with his foot. “Explain what memory of yours Seokjin pulled.”

You just groan back, turning away from Jimin, burying your head into the cold pillows of your bed, one of the few things not soaked in your blood. Everything is so cold you can’t stand it. Jimin places a hand on your shoulder to make you face him. Cold fingers touch your skin, everything is cold.

“Don’t touch me!” you pull away from him, yelling.

Your face stings. Jimin had slapped you hard, you come to the realization only after the fact, the skin he touched burns hot. It makes you laugh, because you wanted warmth, didn’t you?

Jimin’s eyes narrow on you, “Say that again, I dare you.”

You bite back tears and ask, “What the fuck happened to you?!”

“So you’re back to being a disrespectful brat. You’re not on the same level as me, human. Learn to behave.”

“No! What happened to you to make you so heartless? What changed you?” How did the bleeding man you saw Namjoon cry over in Seokjin’s memories become this monster? He was human at one point too, you wouldn’t have believed it if you didn’t see it for yourself.

Jimin rolls his eyes, “Don’t act like you know anything about me, bitch.”

You take a deep breath trying to calm your temper. Not only had you seen Seokjin’s memories, you had felt his emotions. His pain lingers in you still, beside the fear and hatred you feel, you look at Jimin and feel...sorry for him. You have to look down, the emotions are too much and too overwhelming. It was easier when all you knew was the monster before you. Jimin takes your silence as obedience instead.

“Now can you be a good little pet and answer my question,” he says, tapping you on the head hard enough to make your headache roar back to life. You flinch and search the eyes of the man before you. Or rather the shell of a man, you think bitterly.

And what a beautiful shell it is. Jimin is stunning, bright white hair pulled away and styled so you can see the delicate features of his face. He holds himself gracefully, like a dancer, his elegant figure hiding his true strength. You wonder what he was like before turning into a monster, what kind of man was he? Someone whom Namjoon cared for.

“It wasn’t my memory...you. I saw you…” You whisper, knowing Jimin’s sharp senses can hear you loud and clear, “I saw Seokjin turn you.” Silence falls over the room again, a silence so deafening you start to hear the pounding in your head becoming louder.

The vampire stares at you, soft features stoic. He looked lost in thought, you pictured his face full of cuts, bloody lip, black eye, human, and Seokjin so unsure, scared, worried, trembling, so unlike themselves now.

“How did he turn me?” It surprised you how genuine Jimin’s question sounded. Did he really not know?

You keep your mouth shut, you don’t think it would be wise on your part to tell him. Jimin seems like the type to shoot the messenger. Unfortunately, unlike Seokjin, Jimin had little to no patience. His expression changes like lightning, full of anger. He pulls you by the hair dragging you off the bed and onto the floor.

The vampire crouches over you and grabs your face, holding you down to the wood floor, pressing his sharp nails into the skin of your cheeks making you yell.

“Ahh there’s your voice! Tell me.”

“Why don’t you ask Seokjin?!”

“But I rather you just do as I say,” he says playfully, as his fingers dig harder into your skin, cutting the flesh and drawing blood.

“Why don’t you just bite me, then?!” You spit the words out through clenched teeth.

You watch the vampire lick his lower bottom lip, thinking it over briefly as he pulls your face closer to his, you struggle against his painful grip. “How impetuous...” he watches you squirm like an insect stuck in glue. “You’re rather dumb, aren’t you?”

Should you reach for your dagger now? Should you try to kill Jimin?

Every time you thought about hurting him, you remembered Seokjin’s crying face, and you wanted to cry as well, what was happening to you?

“Jimin, leave us.” Jin stands in the doorway to your room.

Jimin stands up in a huff, letting you go. You fall back onto the hardwood floor. He balances on his heels, ignoring you and scrutinizing Seokjin. He wanted to question the older vampire, he has so many questions now, but decides against it. What does it matter anyways? The idea of being a weak and powerless human revolts him. “I’m getting impatient,” he says before he leaves, slamming the door and making you jump.

“T-thank y-you.” You try to calm your breathing.

Seokjin looks at you with a frown, extending his hand out to you. You hesitate and place your hand in his and he easily lifts you to your feet. You watch the older vampire walk slowly around the room, drawing his fingers along the furniture he passes. You stand awkwardly, you don’t think making a run for it would gain you any favors right now.

“I’m hungry,” Seokjin says. He doesn’t even look at you when he says it, continuing to meander around the room, waiting for your response.

You clench your jaw. So this is what you’ve been reduced to, you think, a late night snack. “Are you going to just keep me trapped in this room? I’m hungry too, I haven’t eaten anything-”

“Dinner's already passed. Before I let you go roaming around, I need to make sure you’re going to behave yourself, do you understand?”

No, you don’t understand at all. It sounds like he’s going to starve you into subservience, and you have to get out of this room, you have to find the portal.

“I will do as you say...please...” you walk over to where he’s standing, trying your best to seem meek. “I’m starving,” you reason, “I’m sure you know how it feels to hunger for something” you say, turning your head to stare at the windows, curtains now open to the night sky, extending your neck to the vampire. His eyes are pulled to your attention, following the lines of your shoulder. You roll your neck, loosening the stiff muscles, moving close enough to him that your chest bumps into his. You look up into Seokjin’s eyes through your lashes, “I-I will behave.”

Seokjin smiles, bringing his head down into the curve of your neck, lips skirting across the skin. Your fingers reach up to caress the back of his head. You can see the pair of you in the bedroom mirror. Another myth proven wrong, you think, as you study your seduction, how his lean frame bends closer to yours, his arms wrapping around the lower part of your back.

In truth, Seokjin wasn’t hungry. He had taken more than enough blood from you this morning already, but Seokjin wanted to see if lightning could strike twice. Never had the pull been so strong for him that a human had been able to enter his memories, not even when Jimin was alive. He needed to learn more.

Seokjin licks your face, tongue tracing the cuts Jimin’s nails left behind. You hold your breath, trying to act like you enjoyed it. You hated it, you wished you could stick Yoongi’s dagger into Seokjin’s cold dead heart and be done with it already.

Seokjin trails kisses back to the place he bit you before. He keeps kissing your sensitive skin until his lips reach your ear and he whispers, “I’m not Jungkook, little Dove, you’ll have to do better than that.”

You stumble backwards but it’s too late, Seokjin already has you in his clutches.

He pulls you into a tight embrace, walking you backward even more. His bite is precise, you suspect perfectly precise to where he bit you this morning. Your arms are locked tightly in between your bodies as he holds you to him.

Thunder roars in your memory, you feel yourself drowning. Your muscles ached, your lungs burned. You feel Yoongi’s hand on your ankle, pulling down, hand on your waist, pulling down, hand on your neck, pulling you closer, his lips on your lips-

You cry and yell against Seokjin’s grasp. Cold turns to warmth as you see Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok laughing around the firepit, and Seokjin, and Jimin, laughing too. Yoongi sits with a calm expression on his face, his lips curved upward, and a man you don’t recognize sits next to him-

Seokjin yanks his mouth away from you and you fall backward, back hitting the bed while you struggle to breath. You cover the holes on your neck with your palm to stop the rushing blood.

“How?” is all Seokjin can say, shaken by the happy memory that even he had forgotten about.

You stare up at the high ceiling dazed and too weak to move, “Do I...” you can feel the blood spill between the gaps of your fingers, “look...” you gasp, “like a vampire expert...to you?”

Seokjin moves to the window, his back to you. He watches the waning moon and lets his mind wander to his old friends. If they were off the island, he could see a scenario where you and he would meet at a bar, laugh over drinks, but the ending would always be the same. “You look,” he looks over his shoulder at you, “like you could use a drink,” his lips curving into a half smile.

“Are you,” you gasp, “offering?”

He walks over to you slowly, bringing his wrist to his mouth, and then extends the sliced skin to your mouth, waiting expectantly.

You take his offering bitterly, gulping down the metallic liquid, the wounds burn like fire as they heal over. The pain is nothing like you’ve ever experienced before. You shut your eyes tightly, you want to cry, or scream, but like Namjoon said, no one can help you here. You feel fingers intertwine with your bloody fingers, pulling your bloodied hand away as you weakly protest. The room spins, even if your wounds are healed, your blood is still gone and you’re feeling the effects of two feedings.

Seokjin brings your hand to his lips and licks away the blood, tongue circling your fingers. “This can hurt or it can feel good,” he says slowly.

You laugh, delirious from hunger and blood loss. “I wonder, that memory,” you gasp, still laughing, “does it bother you to be reminded of your humanity? Does it hurt you?”

You probably shouldn’t have said that, but the blood loss is doing funny things to you, or maybe you just really wanted to get a reaction from the guarded man, no, guarded vampire.

If your accusation angered Seokjin he didn’t show it with any emotion, instead he sighed and bent over you, biting down hard on your shoulder. The searing pain makes you scream. You cry out, not expecting the sharp and throbbing kind of ache from his bite as Seokjin’s teeth stayed deep in your flesh.

Seokjin pulls another memory out of you, and you curse your luck in remembering Jungkook again, remembering his tanned and muscled body next to yours. Jungkook kissing your knuckles and telling you how he’s yours now. Jungkook kissing down your body. His head between your legs, his mouth feverishly licking at your folds. The more you try not to think about him the stronger the memories feel. The pain in your shoulder dulls as your legs tighten around the vampire's sides.

Perhaps it was your bloodloss mixed with Seokjin’s bloodlust seeping into your consciousness, the memory of Jungkook’s length buried deep inside you and feeling of Seokjin’s growing bulge pressed against your stomach makes your head spin and you just want to feel more. You hear Namjoon’s deep authoritative voice whispering dirty things in your ear, it makes you shudder, a moan escapes your throat-

Seokjin pulls away from you abruptly at that, his eyes are deep red, so dark they look black. He watches as your body twitch in pain, as he focuses on calming the storm of human emotions, your emotions, running through him, as he tries to forget the compromising memory of his old friend. He bites down on his bottom lip until he draws blood, his blood mixing with your own blood in his mouth, and he presses his lips on yours.

You realized how passionate Yoongi’s kisses were compared to Seokjin’s. The merman was distant, but his actions were full of feeling, whether they be good or bad. Seokjin was cold in body and mind, a hard shell, you felt like you were kissing a statue as you choked on his blood, the liquid metallic and sweet.

You can feel the punctures in your skin closing, it hurts so much worse than when he bit you, you distract yourself by licking into his mouth, feeling his tongue against yours.

Seokjin jumps off of you the second your wounds are healed and leaves without saying a word. You can hear the door lock in your daze.

You scoff, what was up with him, you wonder, dining and dashing like that. The blood loss has you quickly falling asleep despite wanting to use the time alone to plan your escape.

---

They both leave you alone all day until night again. You wake up hungry and weak. When Seokjin wordlessly stalks towards you that night you tell him so.

“I still can’t trust you to play well with others.”

“I need food! I need to eat! I am not a goddamn vampire like you! I can’t survive off your blood!” You throw your pillow at him. Should you have done that? Probably not, but you’re too hungry to care.

Seokjin pauses, looks at the floor where the pillow lays at his feet after coming in contact with his chest. “I’ll bring you food later tonight, now lie down, I’m hungry too.”

Ugh.

---

There were so very little things now that intrigued Seokjin, and this connection had become a mystery he wanted to solve. The strength of his pull on you was so intense it had become almost addicting to feel for Seokjin.

A vampire's pull had always been one-sided, but this pull acted like a wave, crashing onto the shore of your consciousness, pulling back and forth, dragging his memories along the current too.

Promised food, you comply, lying down against your better judgement. You glare at him as he lies next to you, and he smooths your furrowed features with his fingers instead of matching your anger. It makes you feel self conscious, the way he watches you with searching eyes. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

“So demanding, do you want me to bite you that badly?”

Is he teasing you? “No. I don’t. At all!”

“Okay then.” he lies back down, his arms underneath his head.

You sit up to look down at him. “Is this a joke?”

“I’ll wait, I don’t mind. I can wait for days, the question is can you?”

If you tried to stab him now he would definitely be able to stop you. Too bad. “I think I can’t stand you.”

“You barely know me!”

“I’ve seen enough,” you scoff.

“I’ve lived a long time,” Seokjin says, serious again, “you don’t care to see more? Who I really am?”

“Who are you?”

“Let me bite you and find out,” he winks.

'Well, he seems to be in a better mood,' you think. You wonder why he is even bothering to ask you, you’re his prisoner, after all. “So this is not just about feeding anymore?”

“I’m a vampire, of course it is.”

You sigh, you’re hungry and tired from blood loss. “Okay, bite me, but choose some place else,” you rub the sensitive spot on your neck and shiver. “NOT THERE!”

Seokjin stops pushing your legs open. “But there is an artery in your leg-”

Your face goes hot, you shove your wrist in his face. “Here then!” He sighs and lies back down again, pulling you over his body easily. You sit awkwardly against his lap as you watch his fangs prick your inner wrist. The blood loss this time wasn’t so bad, but it still made your weak body sway, your free hand bracing yourself against his chest.

He does the same thing to you again, pulls memories of your life. You saw memories from before the boat wreck to your childhood, and you saw glimpses of Seokjin’s life as well. You learned at one point in his very long life he stopped being a complete monster and became a part time bartender.

For decades he moved from taverns, to pubs, to bars. The perfect career, and as his beautiful looks were admired everywhere he went, he was never short of meal options. You woke in the morning and you laid on clean sheets, there was water for you and bread and butter and jam, an apricot and an apple, food not found on an island. The portal.

Tonight. This night you will be ready for Seokjin. You quickly realized you weren’t just remembering with Seokjin, you were feeling, and he was feeling too. If you could distract him well enough with a memory, you think you’d be able to escape!

---

Tonight Jimin walks into your room instead.

“Where’s Seokjin?”

“You didn’t miss me?” He holds a pear in his hand, throwing it up in the air and catching it easily. “He is busy, the others were feeling neglected by him-”

“There are others? Other humans?!”

Jimin smirks at your wide eyes. “Yes, pet, did you think you were special?” You swallow, keeping your questions to yourself. So Seokjin really meant it when he talked about playing well with others. Who were they and how long have they been here? Could some of them be your friends? Maybe you weren’t the only survivor on your boat! More humans, more people to help you fight against Seokjin and Jimin, if you could just meet them and somehow convince them...

Jimin heard your accelerating heartbeat, could see the happiness dance across your features. “What ever you are thinking, I suggest against it. Actually, go ahead and try, I haven’t punished anyone in so long.”

“Are you going to bite me or not?”

“Oh, so now you’re eager for it, it’s always the same.”

“Still not allowed, huh? Must suck to be you. Ha! Get it?”

“Do you think you’re being cute? Jin said I can’t bite you, he didn’t say anything about not hurting you.” Jimin throws the pear in the air again, “What? No clever retort?”

“I don’t know about Seokjin,” you speak softly, “but you used to be human, why do you act like this?” You watch as Jimin drops the pear on the ground and steps on the fruit with his feet. You bite your lip. What a waste. You consider pulling out your dagger just for that.

“Being human?” Jimin runs a hand through his hair, “I don’t remember anything about that. I can’t imagine being so weak and foolish.”

“You really don’t remember?” You look at the pear, squished into a pulp. “Can you do what Seokjin does, with the memories?”

“What makes you think I want to learn about your pathetic life?”

“No,” You idiot. You sigh. “But maybe you want to learn about your pathetic life?”

You scream, Jimin’s nails were digging into your skull, a handful of your hair in his fists. “Call me pathetic again,” he threatens lowly.

“Pathetic,” you say bearing your teeth. Jimin smiles, because in that moment you reminded him of someone. He’s going to enjoy breaking the bones of your body and watching your limbs reassemble again. He grabs your forearm, pulling your arm closer to your face. You wince as his grip tightens, struggling against his tight hold on your hair. “Call me pathetic again,” he sings, his eyes sparkling with delight.

You weigh your options in that moment.

“Seokjin!” you scream.

Jimin laughs, tightening his grip even more so you are sure to have bruises, “Do you think he really cares about what happens to you?”

“Jimin was a regular at your bar! Wasn’t he?!” You had seen the younger vampire, only briefly, you barely recognized him with dark hair, but you knew it was Jimin the way you felt your own heart soar when Seokjin glanced at him for the first time.

You screamed louder than you’ve ever heard yourself, making the vampire wince at your volume, because in that moment Jimin snapped the bone in your forearm. “Even if you don’t remember,” you cry, mumbling out the words through your pain, “you were human. Just. Like. Me.”

Jimin grabs your upper arm this time, and squirm in his hold. You start to cry harder despite trying to hold the tears in. The door to your room slams open. Seokjin looks furious when he steps towards the both of you.

“Jimin leave!"

“What?” The white haired vampire loosens his grip, but stands his ground. Seokjin doesn’t speak again, only gives him a look, and Jimin relents, breaking his stare with several blinks and releasing you. The younger vampire can’t hide his emotions as well as Seokjin and you see the hurt twist his beautiful features.

You sit on the ground grimacing in pain, holding your broken arm to your chest. Outside your room you hear the familiar crash of glass and scrape of wood and you suspect Jimin is not taking Seokjin’s orders well. Seokjin looks much more unhinged than you ever recall seeing him and then impassiveness washes over his face again, much to your disappointment.

“He is usually not like this. He can go months without drinking blood, it seems my ban has just made him all the more obsessed with you,” he sighs.

“Greeat,” you wince, “Lift the ban then, might as well.” If you were being honest with yourself, you were curious what would happen if Jimin bit you. Maybe then he wouldn’t despise you so much.

“The ban is not to protect you, naive little dove.” He sits down on the floor next to you. You find the sight comical, Seokjin in an expensive suit sitting on the dusty floor.

You roll your eyes. Of course. “You care a lot about him,” you whisper softly. He nods. You turn to him, “Do you remember why you started caring? Do you think who he is now still acts in the same way that made you care so much for him?”

“You think I’m a fool?” he laughs softly, “I know Jimin’s...lost his way...” You sit in silence as you struggle to take your mind off the pain in your arm. “For us, time, is infinite. This is only a small stretch of time compared to what I’ve been through. Jimin will come back around, I know it.”

“Well I think he’s a lost cause,” you mumble.

“He’s not, no one is...This is going to hurt a lot, if you don’t mind, I can make it quick.” His hand traces your jaw and turns your head to face him, eyes glancing towards your lips.

“Am I going to have to get used to this, you fixing the pain he causes-”

“Am I going to have to get used to you both provoking each other all the time?”

You bite your lip, he started it, it’s not your fault he freaks out over every little thing you say. You change the subject. “Are there really other prisoners here? Other humans like me?”

Seokjin tuts disapprovingly, “House guests, y/n! They can stop being in service to us whenever they want, we provide them all with a choice.”

“Oh, and what are the options, be your personal feeding supply or die?”

“Ahh see, you catch on quickly, and Jimin calls you stupid.”

Your eyes narrow on him, “Not much of a choice there.”

Seokjin leans into you, “it comforts them, when they think they have some control. You know, you would all be at the bottom of the ocean if it weren’t for us.”

You pull your legs closer to your body, it’s hard to look at him, much less listen to the disturbing things he says, “Why are you telling me this? Am I supposed to be grateful?” You shuffle your body, trying to get comfortable despite the throbbing pain of your broken arm.

“Perhaps,” he scrutinizes your body, “At least don’t provoke Jimin. Ready?”

You hum, “Yeah, I’m ready for my medicine, Doctor.”

He looks down, nodding. “No anesthesia for this surgery I’m afraid.”

He motions you closer, bites into his wrist and fills his mouth with his own blood. You’re careful not to jostle your arm too much as you move in front of him. His long fingers hold your head still as he presses his mouth onto yours, feeding you his blood. Even when you scream in pain he holds you to him as your bone readjusts itself and heals back together, your body in excruciating agony. He holds you tightly, his mouth swallowing your screams until the process is complete, until you pass out in his arms.

---

You wake up to clanging silver. The light feels warm on your face, and then you feel nothing as the curtains are drawn. You open your eyes, ready to protest.

“Oh my god!”

The woman before you jumps at your words. “Your breakfast,” she motions to the tray.

“You're real, oh my god, it’s true! Help me! Please, we can escape together!” The woman stumbles away from you as you desperately try to hold on to her.

“What?” Why is she looking at you like that? Why is she acting like that?! She pushes you away as she opens the door. You’re too stunned, too hurt by this stranger who you thought could help you to question her when she says, “There is no escape.” She closes the door, locking you inside. What just happened?!

Now that you’re alone again you search the room from top to bottom, desperate now that you’ve realized you’re up against so much more. All the drawers are empty, not even a pen and paper in the desk. The window opens but that doesn’t help you because you’re several floors up. The bathroom has running water and the prettiest bathtub you’ve ever seen, so you give up and spend the day soaking yourself, in your clothes. The dress floating and surrounding you reminded you of a certain man, well, merman. No one visits you that night.

The day repeats itself six times. You try different approaches to try and convince the older woman to help you and every time she refuses or ignores you completely.

You don’t get it, you don’t understand, and her behavior disturbs you. You had asked her, “Don’t you want to see your friends and family again?! Do you have children? Or a spouse?” Her answer was, “I don’t think so.”

‘I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t tell you how long she’d been here either. The implication scared you.

You sit at the door, your ear to the wood all day. Sometimes you’ll hear footsteps, you know it’s not Jimin or Seokjin, because they don’t make any noise when they walk. Sometimes you yell and bang on the door waiting for a response that never comes.

One day you yanked down the drapery, opened the window completely letting all the sunshine in, and soaked it in like a cat. Before you woke up the next morning everything had been set back the way it was. It was maddening.

So one day you flooded the bathroom, just to see if anyone would come to stop you. They didn’t and the next morning the tub was gone. You cried all night.

For six nights you’re alone. The fifth night you dig into your dress pockets to find the tiny shell Yoongi gifted you. You tap it three times and wait, holding it to your ear.

“Y/n?” His groggy voice fills the sea noise. You can’t bring yourself to speak, or you would really break down. Hearing his voice was enough.

---

Before the sun sets on the seventh night there is a knock on your door. You’re already so close to the entrance you can hear the soft click as it unlocks and you swing the door open to see Jimin.

He smiled down at you, a picture of sin. The young vampire wore casual loose-fitting clothes, shirt hanging over his shoulders. He dresses so relaxed, so opposite to Seokjin, who wore his shirts buttoned up to the collar. All you wanted to do all day was talk to someone, be heard, but with Jimin here you feel like an animal cornered in a trap, and you want to hide.

He gives you a cocky smile and drapes his arm over your shoulders, dragging you back into the room. “Look at you! Perfectly fine, Seokjin always overreacts,” he whines, “I’m tired of waiting. I can trust you not to tell on me, right pet?”

The vampire presses himself against your back and wraps his arms around your waist, locking you to him, chin digging into your shoulder. You stand frozen against him, Jimin is excellent at making sure you feel like you’re trapped and powerless when you’re around him.

His nuzzles your neck, lovingly like a lover would, inhaling your scent. You craved human contact, but this man isn’t exactly human now, is he? Your stomach turns as the familiar feeling of fear bubbles inside you.

“And if I don’t?” you whisper, and his grip tightens around you.

“You tell me, what do you think will happen, if you don’t?” he mumbles against your neck, teeth grazing your skin and he moans softly. He wrapped himself around your body, caressing your curves, it confused you at how affectionate he was being, or was he just a snake constricting his prey?

Your stomach tightens, you were stronger than this, right? A week in time out didn’t work on you, right? You couldn’t stop the sounds escaping your lips every time Jimin shifted against you. You blame Seokjin’s fondness for him that must have rubbed off on you. You try to step away but Jimin pulls you in closer.

“I thought I was a disgusting human, are you the one who missed me, Jimin?” You ask him softly.

“There are things about you that are only barely revolting, I guess.” He can feel the shift in your mood as annoyance bristles through your body, it makes him smile. You are so defiant for being so scared, it makes him want to break you even more.

You’re scared, but deep down there was a part of you too curious for your own good, that just wanted Jimin to bite you, just to see why and what Seokjin was protecting him from. It would only be to your advantage, if that was the case, right? You stretch your neck to the side slightly to see what Jimin’s reaction would be. His fingers dig into your hips. “What’s this?” Oh no.

Jimin pulls the shell hidden inside your pocket. You grab at his hands, but he’s too fast, dancing around you as he pushes you away, pushing you to the ground.

Somehow you always end up here on the floor, at Jimin’s feet, probably exactly where the vampire thinks you should be. You’ve never seen him more excited, it twists your insides.

Jimin’s cold fingers inspect the tiny shell, tutting. He mouths the words, ‘bad girl’ silently. Tapping the tiny shell, he brings the shell to his lips.

“Yoongi, I know you’re there. Do you want to hear y/n?” He crouches next to you, lifts your chin so your eyes meet his, smiling as if you were playing along on an inside joke. “Do you want to hear her cries? Do you want to hear her moans?” his sinful voice sings tauntingly.

The younger vampire promised Jin he wouldn’t touch you, but Seokjin has so many rules, and this just proved you couldn’t be trusted, that you needed to be taught a lesson. Seokjin will forgive him, Jimin thinks, he always does.

“C’mon, Yoongi wants to hear you, y/n! I bet he misses you. Let him hear your pretty voice.” You just glare at him, staying silent. Jimin didn’t seem angered by your defiance, in fact, he seemed happy.

He pulls your hair, moving your face closer to the shell, his nails dig into your scalp, and you feel them pierce your skin. The pain causes you to let out a strangled cry. “That’s it!” You hold back tears as you glare at him, Seokjin is wrong, Jimin can’t be saved.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” you grit out, scratching at his hand.

“Oh, no?” He releases your hair. You jump up but Jimin pulls you down to the ground again. Even as you kick and hit him, it’s obvious it’s not hurting the vampire. He easily pins you down, caging you in with his thighs, his knees pinning your arms to your sides. His fingers wrap around your neck, holding you tight as you grunt against him. You’ve become a mouse, trapped by a snake.

“Afraid yet?” You know he won’t kill you, it seems like torturing you is just too much fun for him. Jimin may be stronger than you, faster than you, but he’s as caged as you are, stuck on this island, leashed by Seokjin’s rules, acting out like a child.

“No.” He lets go and you heave in air, coughing. “Seokjin will find out, even if I don’t say anything. He said-”

“Jin,” he bares his fangs, “says a lot of things.” He brings the shell to his mouth again, “What bone should I break first?”

Jimin laughs, and you wonder what the merman said to him.

Jimin grabs your jaw, tilting your head to the side, reveling in your struggle. He places the tiny shell next to your ear. You try to silence your heavy breathing. “Yoong-g-gi?” You hear the ocean, the rumbling of the sea, and you hear-

“Y/n!” Yoongi’s voice rumbles through the tiny shell, he calls out to you, words rushed and worried, full of concern that has your heart dropping, “Jimin has a weakness, It’s T-” Jimin crushes the tiny shell between his fingers.

Jimin pouts, “I thought he would have used the opportunity to confess, now he’ll never get the chance.”

He moves away from you, “Well, aren’t you going to make a run for it? I didn’t lock the door.” He lifts his eyebrows up, nodding towards the door.

You lie on the cold hard ground stunned. Yoongi's gone. You think of a scenario where you rush towards the door, only to be stopped by Jimin as he tackles you again. No, you won’t do that. Jimin takes and takes, you're going to make it your mission to take from him. You stand up on shaky legs and walk towards Jimin.

“Actually, I rather you just bite me instead.” You’re not confident that he’d really go against Seokjin, so might as well egg him on. “Unless you’re scared of Seokjin?”

Jimin scoffs, jaw clenching in annoyance and eyes narrowing. “Any other cute little means of communication you tried to sneak in here, hmm?” He yanks you close to him again, his hands pull at your dress, wandering over your thighs, skirting dangerously close to your center. He smirks down at you as you pretend to act unaffected by the way his hands glide over your ass, kneading the flesh. His hands run up your corset, getting closer and closer to your dagger.

You run your hand over the front of his pants. It was the only thing you could think to do to distract the vampire before he found your dagger and really killed you. It worked. Jimin stops you, digs his nails into your wrist, but he doesn’t pull your hand away.

So without many other options, you send your quarrel with the vampire off into a whole other direction as you grab for the bulge in his pants. You feel the weight of him in your palm, your mouth drops a little at his size. Jimin’s jaw tightens as you rub up and down his bulge.

You’re stuck in a staring match with the vampire. Two stubborn beings, challenging each other to see who breaks first.

Surprising you, he spins you around and starts undoing the straps of your corset.

No, no, that’s the opposite of what you wanted! “What are you doing?” You try to wiggle your body to face him again, “Just fuck me already!”

Jimin cages you against his lean frame, crushing your body to the closest wall with his own. He inhales into your neck. He can sense the torrent of your spiraling emotions, he feels your hatred for him radiating off your body stronger than ever as he slows his advances down.

“You are acting more stupid than usual, pet.”

“You wanted to play,” you say, “Well, let’s play then.”

He’s never played this kind of game before, and you’ve enticed him, he has no problem calling your bluff. His hand runs along your cleavage, kneading the flesh.

Jimin pulls your dress up slowly, his cold hand running up your leg. You rest your forehead on the wall, shuddering when he drags his fingers across your center. “Your hands are cold.”

He pushes two fingers inside you, deep, you were barely ready for the stretch, crying out from the sudden intrusion and cold sensation. Jimin groans as you whimper against him, “Forget what I am already?” He licks your neck, fingers pumping in and out at a dizzying pace.

“How could I ever forget?” you whisper.

“I regret destroying that shell, I would have liked to let Yoongi listen to what a whore you are.”

Your body tenses and Jimin leans his body harder into yours, pressing another finger inside. “What would the dogs think, knowing their bitch is so wet for their enemy, hmm?” Making you angry is too easy, he thinks, and makes you smell so much better, sexier. Jimin is used to fear, he’s grown accustomed to desire, but your rage makes him ravenous. If Jimin wasn’t so consumed by his carnal desires, he might question himself as to why he wants someone to hate him so much, but all he can think about is how he’s going to drive you to madness with just his fingers. He resists the urge to bite you by sucking harshly on your neck, pulling the blood closer to your skin and leaving dark marks behind.

Before you have a chance at release he pulls his fingers out of you, leaving you empty and holding up the evidence of your arousal, the clear substance clinging to his fingers as he licks them clean, moaning in your face. The sight is depraved, and you can’t look away. He smiles smugly at you as he smells your lust surround him.

“I knew you wouldn’t bite me.”

“We will get to that, we’re playing a game remember? Or do you want to stop now?”

“All this talk and I still haven’t been bitten or fucked, are vampires impotent or something or is it just you?”

Jimin laughs, yanking your body to face the wall again and pinning you to him. “I’ll make you forget everything but my dick while I’m fucking you, you won’t have a single other thought in that pretty little head of yours other than giving me all your pleasure.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m waiting.”

Jimin laughs again, pressing three thick fingers deep inside you again, you legs go weak as he holds you up with the force of his body against yours. He drags his fingers out and higher until he’s circling your other opening. His digits press into both of your holes, filling you up completely as you cry out. You haven’t had someone give attention to that part of you in so long, you tense at the unexpected stretch. His thumb works against your clit expertly as he rocks his hand against yours. You feel so full and overwhelmed by Jimin. “So close already? Beg me to make you come, pet.”

“I’m not your pet.”

You take his torture silently, hold in your moans as he brings you to the brink of release and stops short of satisfaction over and over again. He thrusts his fingers in and out of your holes, until the tight stretch goes away, his fingers easily gliding in and out of your wetness, until the ache is replaced with a need for more. Your entire core pulsates as he slowly and torturously circles your swollen bud, changing the pressure just enough to drive you crazy by ghosting over your clit when you needed more and rubbing even harsher circles when it all becomes too much, his touch making you feverish and sick with desire. When you clench around his fingers, closer than you’ve gotten to release since he started this torture, he pulls out of you completely, pressing his hard cock, straining against the cloth of his pants, into your sore center.

“You smell so good,” he moans. You don’t want to think about Jungkook, you don’t want to taint his memory, but Jimin’s words are so similar. Jungkook is nothing like Jimin, but they are more similar to each other than to a human like you. Perhaps you are just as weak and pathetic as Jimin says, a human can be no match for a vampire, and you’ll never be able to win against him.

“Please Jimin...just let me cum...”

“Beg me.” His usual airy voice drips with arousal, and he presses his bulge harder into your wetness.

You don’t do as he says, you can’t, so he continues his torturous little game, until you’re moaning loudly, head thrown back against his shoulder, whimpering every time he stills. He pulls his fingers out of your dripping core, focusing his attention on your ass, thumb rubbing harsh circles into your throbbing clit, you feel so empty and painfully full as your sensitive walls clench around nothing and his fingers stretch your rim open for him. Your entire body vibrates, but you’d rather stay unsatisfied than say please to Jimin ever again.

Finally, as the sun sets and the last bit of light around the curtains disappears, Jimin realizes he can play his game no longer and pulls away from you completely. Your legs give out as you slide down the wall, mind finally free from the haze of lust Jimin kept you in.

“So weak,” Jimin tuts.

“...impotent...dick...”

“Pathetic slut.”

“I thought about Seokjin the entire time,” you whisper.

“...liar.”

---

You must have fallen asleep, you feel a hand cupping your cheek, and you open your eyes to Seokjin, blonde hair, red eyes, suit buttoned to the collar. You let out a small laugh, and then groan once the pain in your joints wakes you fully.

Jin carries you back to your bed. You tug on his sleeve.

“Please take the pain away,” you ask softly.

Seokin’s eyes search the expanse of your skin, “There are no cuts on your body.”

Groaning, you sit up and kiss the vampire who freezes against you. So you take the opportunity to straddle Seokjin’s lap, and start unbuttoning his shirt, kissing, licking, biting his smooth skin. Jimin’s harsh words replay in your mind and sting you. Screw him, let him think whatever he wants, let him hear you. This had been a part of your plan anyways, first Seokjin, and then you’ll worry about him, might as well have some relief too.

“What happened?” Seokjin asks as you rut into his body, tearing his shirt open. He doesn’t look upset that you popped the buttons, does he ever get upset anymore? You hastily unbuckle his belt. His hands cover yours, repeating his question, “What happened, y/n?”

You grab his hand and move it under your dress. Seokjin stills as his fingers come into contact with your thigh, slick with your wetness from hours of Jimin's teasing. His hands travel up your shaking leg.

“You’re so wet,” he groans, “...Did Ji-”

You silence him with a kiss. “Fuck me, I feel like I’m dying.”

Seokjin laughs against your lips, “Humans are so dramatic,” but he’s already pulling you closer, turning you around to lie on the bed. He bends down to your core, pushing your dress over your waist, you spread your legs wide open for him.

He licks your arousal from your inner thigh, fingers massaging your aching center.

“Ugh fuck, stop teasing me,” you whine. Seokjin fills you with two long fingers, pushing inside you to the knuckle. His teeth bite down on your inner thigh, it stings but your lust somehow lessens the pain. Your body tenses, you clench around his fingers and he speeds up, pulling more blood from your veins.

You flinch when you see Jimin again, reliving the memory from Seokjin’s mind. He’s half naked, kissing a beautiful woman who is fully naked, right in front of Seokjin.

Jimin looks so different, dark hair, flushed skin, tenderness in his eyes.

The girl lowers her body between the men, and fills her mouth with Seokjin’s hardening length. You feel yourself become wetter. Seokjin moans against your feverish skin, biting you for a second time, higher up your leg. It stings again, but you’re too busy trying to get off on his fingers to care about anything but release. Seokjin bites the mound of flesh close to your center, his tongue pressing against your hood, your vision goes white and then-

You see Yoongi’s sharp eyes above you, his naked body on top of yours, cold and wet, hard cave rocks against your bare back. You see Namjoon, a younger version of him, long hair pulled back into a low bun, across the room in bed with another woman. The room is small and empty. Two beds, two couples, Seokjin watching his friend fuck the random girl senseless.

You feel jealousy, watching Namjoon through Seokjin’s eyes. He looks so different, so feral and savage. The bed creaks loudly underneath him as he grips the headboard, and thrusts into her wildly. Jin pumps his fingers inside you in time with Namjoon's thrusts, it makes you feel like you’re going to burst into a thousand pieces. Namjoon’s eyes glow yellow as he gives Seokjin a wicked grin and you’re scared for the first time of Namjoon as he growls, releasing into the woman.

“Don’t make a mess,” he drops the spent girl on Seokjin’s lap, who caresses her face. She’s breathtaking, you feel inadequacy course through you, you feel jealousy, you feel turned on when her full lips envelop Seokjin's thumb. Namjoon pulls the sleeping naked girl from Seokjin’s bed, tapping her check to rouse her awake.

Seokjin’s arousal is overwhelming you. He slams into the woman’s body from behind, chasing his high while holding her face down into the bed, and then his fangs pierce her back as her screams are muffled. You don’t want to come to this, to the feeling of her blood filling his mouth, arousing him and arousing you. Namjoon’s grunts and sounds of sex fills your mind again and you come undone in a silent scream around Seokjin’s fingers.

---

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

You run around the room, darting around Seokjin who watches you rather calmly for the unfolding situation. The rest of his body frozen, the blessed dagger lodged in between his vertebrae, stopping his regeneration.

Once you came, thighs snug around his head, you pulled the dagger from your corset and stabbed him in the back. You kicked him away from you before he could attack and he fell backward, the dagger piercing deep into his back, and that’s where he was currently, frozen on the floor, watching you as you run around the room in disbelief that you actually managed to stab a vampire.

You trip over him by accident and he lets out a soft grunt. “Fuck! Are you okay?” you sit next to his frozen body, “Like, relative to being stabbed, I mean? Don’t answer that...because you can’t. Oh fuck.” You put your head down, resting it on his chest, you don’t hear anything but your laboured breathing. ‘Believe in yourself, y/n! Yoongi believed in you…’

You gather yourself up once again and you move to the window, jiggling the handle. It’s still unlocked! You’re too high up to escape but...

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you whisper, “I really am sorry,” you grunt as you heave the immobilized vampire to the window, inch by inch, Seokjin’s body like a sack of bricks. You place him against the wall and crouch down so you can look him in the eyes, patting down his messy hair, tousled in your struggle to move him, “I’m sorry,” you repeat again, “but you’re a vampire right?” You say encouragingly, and you give him a couple of pats on the cheek, his eyes dart down to watch the action, “Technically, you can’t die.”

With every ounce of strength you have left inside you, you shove Seokjin out the window.

---

You quietly lock the door to what had been your room and prison cell behind you, quickly walking through the halls. You’re not sure what you expected, maybe a gothic interior fit for Dracula, burning candlesticks and red velvet drapes, but you got electricity and mid century modern eclectic, the walls were colorful with art pieces, deep emeralds and golds and blood red. You open the first door you come across.

A young woman sits on a large bed reading a book, looking up at you. Is that how you looked to them? A more disheveled and unpleasant version of her? She looked happy, until she noticed you, and then her smile fell, disappointed you weren’t Jimin or Jin. You slam the door shut and lock it again.

You race as quietly as you can through the halls, you have no idea what you’re looking for, quickly peeking into each room you come across. Strangers, stop what they are doing to look at you, waiting like obedient lap dogs. You have yet to find an empty room. Four doors you’ve opened on this floor, no empty rooms, and you begin to feel hopeless.

You open the fifth and final door and you’re assaulted with the loud sound of moaning. The moaning comes from a woman specifically, her cries almost as loud as the slapping of her skin against Jimin’s naked body. Jimin had needed an outlet after his time with you, specifically, someone to use and bite that wasn't 'off limits.'

You stand frozen in shock, it feels like all the air has escaped the room, filling the woman’s lungs instead as she screams in ecstasy. He is standing next to the bed, fucking into her at an inhuman speed, holding her hips in the air as she struggles to hold the rest of her torso horizontal. You can’t look away, because her body, her stomach, her large bouncing tits, it’s all covered in blood. You almost scream, almost, but the small huff of air you let out instead is enough. The bed stops creaking as Jimin’s movement stops and you meet his surprised eyes.

You shut the door, lock it and run.

You run down the stairs, you see the entrance and you almost run out the door, but you instead run down the hall, flinging every door you see, praying you find something. There's a kitchen, a dining room with the longest table you’ve ever seen, and an empty room! It looks like an office! You run inside. You run to the desk, looking over the papers. Weird markings litter the pages, it reminds you of the markings on Yoongi’s bag. You have to be getting closer to your objective, you have to be! You scatter the papers around, yank open the drawers, hoping to find something useful. There’s a bookcase behind the desk, and you start pulling down books, nothing is catching your eye. You pull on the bookcase, you run your hand across the wood frantically, searching for perhaps a trap door-

“What are you looking for? I can try to help.”

You jump, almost screaming. You hold your heart, it hadn’t stopped, to your surprise. You had no idea someone else was in the room with you. You stare back at a calm man with messy brown hair, he looks at you timidly. “Sorry, I didn’t want to scare you. I just wanted to help, and it took me a while to organize those books,” he laughs softly. The man shuffles back to the wall, you hear metal clanging and look at his feet, they have chains around them, his hands too.

You look down at your feet, papers and books are all around you “I-I’m sorry. I was just-I didn’t know-” You had no idea how much more time you had to spare so you cut to the chase. “Is there a portal here?!”

The man’s eyes go wide, “Not here,” he speaks softly, “One level lower.” He gave you the answer you were looking for without any hesitation, was this a trick? You look at him more closely, his clothes are loose, like pajamas, and he’s barefoot, he looks at you happily, like you didn’t just storm into his room and destroy his things. The innocent expression on his face reminds you of Jungkook.

You remember why he looks so familiar, “You were sitting next to Yoongi!”

The man tilts his head confused, and then he stares at the door, “you need to leave now,” he rushes towards you, “Go down the stairs to the right.” He finds a pen on his desk. “The portal is in the basement, in Seokjin’s office. You’ll need this to open the door, it will only work once.” He grabs your hand and writes a long looping character on your palm, it burns gold and then disappears, while you stand still in shock.

Before you can question him the door bursts open. Jimin stands in the doorway, looking at you and the other man. His anger is replaced by an expression you don’t quite understand. Heavy silence envelops the room. The awkward tension is cut when Jimin speaks to you calmly saying, “Come here. Now.”

The man steps between you and Jimin. “Stay here, he can’t come inside, just like I can’t leave.” The man leans against the desk, his long legs blocking you from leaving, his chains clanging again.

“Y/n, come here now.” That was the first time Jimin said your name. You look between the men.

“Why would I go to you? You’re going to kill me!”

Jimin runs a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes to the side, “I promise you I won’t kill you if you come here right now.” He says the words as sweetly as he can in his growing irritation, trying to coax you to him, but to you he sounds patronizing and angry.

“Jimin’s lying,” the man next to you whispers, confirming your suspicions.

“Tae, just bring her to me!” the vampire screams.

“No, I don’t want to, you’re going to hurt her.”

‘Tae, he said. Is this Taehyung?’ The same man you saw next to Yoongi, the same man Namjoon warned you about, the man who is protecting you and gave you a way out of this hell of a place?

“Can’t you just do the right thing for once?!”

“You haven’t come to visit me in how long, Jimin?”

They yell at each other like an old married couple. You stare down at your hand, it looks perfectly ordinary, you think you might have just imagined it all, what Taehyung did, but you realized on this island nothing was impossible.

“A-are you a wizard?” you interrupt the men’s arguing.

Taehyung turns back to you surprised and gives you a bright smile, “No, I just learned from one. He didn't call himself a wizard, though” he laughs, “I think the correct term is warlock?”

“Oh, okay, good to know,” you mumble. Jimin quietly seethes at the doorway.

“Why do you have chains on if you can’t leave this room?”

“Yeah, why do I have chains on, Jimin?” He turns to the vampire accusingly.

“Just wait until Seokjin comes,” Jimin mutters, and he pulls the dagger you used on Seokjin out of his back pocket, holding the handle with a handkerchief. “Nice trick, by the way, y/n. Seokjin is still healing himself from the fall. You’re going to regret not coming to me when I asked.” He glares at you.

“So that’s what fell!” Taehyung roars with laughter.

“I said I was sorry,” you mutter, biting your lip. How the hell are you going to get out of this situation now? As if you summoned the Devil himself, Seokjin appears next to Jimin.

You hide behind Tahyung out of instinct, grabbing onto his chained arm. Taehyung holds in his joy while the two vampires' expressions darken.

“Don’t fucking touch him!” Jimin seethes.

You let anger get the best of you and wrap your arms around Taehyung’s waist instead, glaring from behind his shoulder.

“Y/n-” “Don’t,” Taehyung interjects. “-get away from him,” Seokjin warns.

“Why?! How do I know you both aren’t going to murder me as soon as I leave this room?”

“Is there not a spell we can use to get her out?!” Jimin turns to Seokjin ignoring you. You grind your teeth. Two can play that game.

“Why are you locked in here? How do you know Yoongi and Namjoon?”

“Yoongi? We all met him when we came to the island.” Jimin screams Taehyung’s name to silence him, but he ignores him easily. “You should have seen Seokjin and Jimin, he got them all wet and they vowed to make sushi out of him!” he laughs, turning his body around in your arms to face you instead of the pair.

You look over to the two vampires who have gone quiet. “And Namjoon?”

“Taehyung..” Seokjin warns.

“What? I’m not even allowed to talk about it now?” Taehyung whines.

“Enough! Y/n come here...please.” You hadn’t expected a request from Seokjin. “I swear, I won’t punish you for what you’ve done, just come here.” he holds out his hand for you, you can see the magic swirl around his fingers, burning his skin. He winces, but doesn’t move his hand away, even when his tips begin to turn black with char.

“What about Jimin?”

“Yes, fine, I won’t punish you, just hurry the fuck up,” the younger vampire looks anxiously at Seokjin’s hand.

“Y/n, please no! I’ve been here by myself for so long, I can’t stand it! You’re the first person who’s visited me. I don’t want to be alone,” Taehyung whimpers, a high pitched whine as you hesitantly make your way to Seokjin. He reminds you so much of Jungkook. He paces around you, begging you to stay.

“I-I don’t want to be locked in that room anymore.”

“Okay! Just come here!” Jimin yells.

“How can I trust you? How do I know you won’t go back on your word?!”

“They will, y/n, please! Look, Jimin promised he would visit me, he lied!”

Seokjin pulls his hand away, completely burned black and puts out his other arm instead. “You’re just going to have to trust us, like we will have to trust you not to pull any more stunts. We’ll trust each other, okay?” Seokjin pleads with you.

“I-I’ll come back to visit you,” you say to Taehyung. “Right?” You turn to Seokjin who relents and gives you a hasty nod.

“No!” Taehyung whimpers, “They are going to lock you away! Please believe me! You’ll never be able to escape.”

You reach for Seokjin’s hand, but Taehyung jumps in between you, holding out his chained hands. “Look at them! Look closely, what are these made out of, y/n? LOOK!” You study the metal, it looks shiny and silver. It’s silver.

Seokjin lurches forward quickly, his suit catches fire, his warm hand grasps onto yours and pulls you out of the room and away from Taehyung and everything goes black.

---

You wake up in a different room. You’re not alone. Another woman sits on the bed next to you, she jumps when you wake up. It makes you jump, ‘fuck why is everyone so jumpy here?’ you think holding your head in your hands to calm your nerves.

You try to scoot away, and you feel a tug on your ankle, so you pull the covers off of you. You’re in a new dress, all white, like the sheets, like the woman’s dress next to you. You see a chain connected to your foot that reminds you of Taehyung’s shackles but darker metal. No. “My clothes!”

“They made me, I-I’m sorry, I had to give them your clothes. The necklace wouldn’t come off, I-I didn’t tell them,” the woman pulls at her sleeve. “I kept your secret, but I can’t promise you they won’t find out, Master might look into my memories.” Your hand traces the gold watch chain around your neck, calming down.

“Okay...thank you.” You whisper uneasily. “H-How long have you been here?”

The woman thinks, humming to herself. “I lost count, Master did give me this on our Fifth Year Anniversary!” She shows off the blood red jewelry dangling from her ears.

Ugh. “That’s nice,” you say and get out of bed. The dress is tight around you, covering your arms and flowing down to your ankles, the one place the fabric doesn’t touch is your neck, the hemline sits off your shoulders and plunges into a deep V. You scoot your way to the door until you can’t take it anymore and reach for the bottom of your dress, pulling the fabric until it tears.

You hear the woman let out a soft, “oh no.”

The chain stops you from reaching the door, even if you stretch out your legs you can’t grab the handle. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

You wheel your body back around, “Hey, what’s your name?”

The woman thinks, humming to herself. “I don’t remember.”

“Listen, I’m going to need you to-WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T REMEMBER?!”

The woman flinches from your volume. “Well Master calls me his little doll and I like that name a lot, and I just, well, forgot my other name.”

You take a deep breath as you try not to be sick. “Well Dolly, your MASTER IS A HUGE FUCKING ASSHOLE. YOU FUCKING LIARS!”

---

The group in the parlor turn their heads to the small voice echoing through the halls, Jimin winces, hearing your words clearly, moving one of the women off his lap. “She’s awake.”

“I’ll go-”

“It seems you failed at controlling her, brother. Why can’t I just try?”

Seokjin scoffs, “You can barely control yourself.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches. “I’ll-” he coughs, “-use restraint. I won’t hurt her.”

---

“Monsters!”

“Oh no, they’re going to be so mad.”

“Taehyung was right! I swear to God-”

“So so mad, oh no, oh no no no.”

“I won’t let you get away with this! Liars! Bastards!”

“Master!”

The door opens and Jimin stands against the door frame, ignoring your irateness and addressing your new roommate with a smile, “Hey Doll.”

Jimin standing in front of you had extinguished some of your rage and replaced it with apprehension, halting your tirade for now. “You fucking lied,” you glare at him.

“It’s not locked, I’m not forcing you to be here,” He looks over your shoulder, “Right Baby Doll?” The woman nods enthusiastically back. “The chain was a precaution, I’ll remove it, I promise. We just need to set some ground rules, okay pet?”

“I am not your fucking pet!”

He moves around you, like a buzzard circling it’s next meal, “You look so much better in this instead of that ugly sea dress.”

“Don’t I look pretty?” you hear the woman’s tiny voice ask Jimin.

“Of course!”

You rub your temples, “Jimin, just take this chain off me.”

“After everything you’ve done, and you’re still trying to make demands? Do you know how incredibly lucky you are? Can’t you just show a bit more gratitude like her?”

Jimin kisses the woman and she moans against him, deepening the kiss. You rub harder at your temples. You're chained, a captive audience to what ever the hell display is happening in front of you, becoming more uncomfortable and annoyed with each passing minute.

“Seriously?”

He drapes his arms around the woman’s shoulders and stares at you, “Jealous?”

You scoff. You think back to the version of him in Seokjin’s memories, with the other woman. You remember the tenderness in his eyes as he watched her and you swallow down the lump forming in your throat. You are not jealous! And anyways, Jimin’s tenderness is all gone now.

“She doesn’t even remember her name anymore.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind,” he winks at her, and the woman giggles at your exchange.

“Her entire life has been taken away! What happened, it’s worse than death.” You hug your arms close to your body. Was that going to become you if you stayed here?

“Worse than death?” Jimin echoes your words and you notice him stare at his reflection in the room’s mirror. You stand in silence, watching him as he runs a hand through his hair, pushing back the loose strands while the woman softly hums to herself a sweet melody. She doesn’t sense the looming danger all around you and it makes your chest tighten in anxiety.

“You’re right y/n. Come here.” He holds out his hand for her.

He pulls her into a kiss, she smiles against her lips. You awkwardly shift at the exchange. She seemed happy with Jimin, even if she couldn’t remember the person she was anymore. It makes you wonder if she had resisted in the beginning or had always been this irritatingly agreeable...or maybe she even loved him, maybe her love was the only thing left in her.

Jimin holds her face in his hands, dragging his lips across hers, a spectacle of two lovers. She’s beautiful like Jimin, they fit perfectly together, a rose and a thorn.

It happens so quickly you stand stunned, you don’t have time to scream or stop him. She’s on the ground, neck twisted, dead.

You’re so stunned you can’t even cry, you just shake, fallen to your knees, staring at her beautiful lifeless face. Her red earrings dangle from her ears catching the light.

“What have you done?” Your voice sounds tiny and high, like hers.

“I saved her from a fate worse than death, according to you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

You can’t speak. He moves closer, putting a hand on your cheek, the same way he had held the woman’s head a few seconds ago. His cold finger wipes away your tears. When did you start crying?

“We aren’t liars. I’ll unchain you. So, will you behave now?”

---

You walk the halls during the sunlight. You stop by Taehyung’s door knocking four times, opening the door an inch. “I found this in the kitchen!”

“I’m...allergic.”

“Allergic to chocolate?! I-I’m sorry,” you mutter, though it doesn’t stop you from enjoying the bar yourself.

You lean forward into Taehyung’s room, he puts his chained arms over your head, and gives you a hug. He reminds you of Jungkook so much, sweet and gentle. But he’s not warm like him, he’s still a stranger to you, always dodging your questions. Namjoon’s words constantly play in your mind not to trust Taehyung. Even though out of everyone here, you trust him the most, you like him the most. Being able to spend time with him, even if your conversations are shallow and lighthearted, is the best part of your day.

“Y/n?”

“Hmm?”

“Why haven’t you escaped?” He whispers.

You play with the hem of your dress as a distraction, “I don’t know.”

He always asks you the same question and you always give him the same answer, but today Taehyung persists. “They won’t catch you if you go now! Isn’t that the whole reason you let yourself get caught?” Even though you hardly know anything about Taehyung, he knows so much about you already.

“I’m...I’m scared.”

He pats your head, you shake his hand away, lightly shoving him back. “I’m not a dog!”

Taehyung laughs, “Yeah, you’re a scaredy cat.”

“How dare you!” you hit his leg as he giggles.

“I want to show you something! It will help you when you finally escape!”

You cover his mouth with your hands, shushing him. Looking around to see if there were any others lurking around you, but no one ever comes around Taehyung. “What is it?”

“Well, um, you’ll have to come all the way inside.”

“...I can’t.” You move away from him again and lean your head against the door frame.

Taehyung sighs. “I knew you’d say that!” he whines. “Do you do everything Jimin says now?”

You roll your eyes, “Not even close,” you mutter. “And it’s not just Jimin...”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been told not to trust you...and you haven’t been very open with me, have you?” you look down at your hands, intertwined with his, you trace the gold markings along his chained wrists.

“It’s complicated,” he whispers.

“I can’t see how it could get more complicated than being a werewolf trapped in a house full of vampires.”

“It’s much more complicated,” he pulls on your arm, staring at you with pleading eyes. “Leave a shoe outside and they won’t notice you’ve come inside, I promise!”

You hum, searching for a compromise. “How about this,” you scoot over the entrance, sitting closer to Taehyung while making sure to keep your legs outside. “Technically, I am inside and also outside.”

“But the magic won’t work unless your body is fully inside here,” Taehyung pouts. “The spell on the room will clash with mine and who knows what will happen then!”

“How do you know so much about magic?”

“I can’t say…” Taehyung whispers.

Your expression turns sour, ‘What can you say...’ you think. “Well can’t you just like, Houdini yourself out of here?”

Taehyung shakes his head regretfully. “No, if only it were that simple. And please don’t ask me to explain,” he teases. Taehyung scoots behind you and pulls your body onto his lap. “Let’s stay like this for a while.”

“Okay,” you hum.

“Let go of each other!” You wake up on the floor with Taehyung cuddled to your side, one lone foot of yours still remains outside the door. Jimin pulls on your foot before you can untangle yourself from Taehyung, dragging the rest of your body into the hallway. Taehyung grunts, waking up as you’re pulled from his embrace.

You blink away the sleep from your eyes, face-to-face with Jimin, his head hovering over yours, eyes bright red with anger.

“Leave her alone, Jimin!”

“I-I am allowed to talk to him,” your words come out small and high when you finally speak and you hate it, the way your fear strangles your voice.

“On one condition, just one.” Jimin hisses.

“W-well, t-technically-”

"You're being so unfair!" Taehyung yells. "Do you like her that much?"

“Tae, enough!” He slams the door in Taehyung’s pleading face.

There is a bang on the door, only once, so loud and strong it shakes the entire connecting wall, the picture frames wobble and dust falls from the ceiling, the sound so abrupt and booming it makes you, and even Jimin, flinch.

---

“Jimin told me you were in a...compromising position, with Tae today.” You and him watch the stars from your bedroom window, now locked.

Your stomach tightens. “Taehyung is lonely, maybe if Jimin spent time with him I wouldn’t have to,” you mutter.

“Do you care about Taehyung?” Jin’s eyes study your features, his sharp hearing picks up your heartbeat, waiting to hear any lies in your answers.

“No, I just-He’s the only normal person here.”

“Person? Normal?” Jin quietly laughs.

“A werewolf is a person too.”

“Ahhh, so you think Tae is a werewolf.”

“He is, isn’t he?” You spin around to look at Jin but his poker face is as strong as ever as he smiles down at you.

“Is a vampire a person too?”

You chew on your bottom lip, “I guess so,” you side eye the man next to you, “Deep down. Somewhere.”

Jin kisses your lips softly, carrying you back to your bed and placing you beneath him. You’ve managed to latch onto Jin since that night, a lesser of two evils. The vampire truly was a forgiving man, and even if parts of you were weakened by fear, your mind had impressively blocked Seokjin’s pull since that night as well, so he had deemed you his personal pet project, his puzzle to solve, keeping Jimin an arm’s length away from you.

Jin was nice, sometimes. And sometimes, you enjoyed his company too.

You play with his soft blond locks. You know the pain is coming eventually, so you do everything you can to distract yourself, admiring the vampire’s beautiful features before you. He pulls the deep neckline of your dress easily down your body, exposing your chest to his piercing eyes. His eyes stop on the gold piece nestled in your cleavage, like always, he ignores it. He knows what it is, what he doesn’t know is why Namjoon gave it to you.

The cold air and Seokjin’s cold fingers kneading your breasts sends you into a bout of shivers, when he drags his tongue across your skin you arch your back and push your chest closer to his soft lips. He’s so gentle with you now. Sometimes, you wish he was rougher, like the Seokjin you witnessed with Namjoon.

“Won’t you let me in again, Dove?” Namjoon’s watch falls into the dip in your clavicle, replaced by Jin's fangs as he bites the flesh of your breasts, his fingers pull at your nipples distracting you from the pain. He doesn’t drain you unconscious anymore, instead Seokjin likes to covers your skin in lovebites, taking all night with you.

“I-I can’t control it.”

“Let’s practice control,” Seokin smirks, lips stained red, and he moves his hands down your body.

He takes time stretching you full with his fingers, his lips never leaving your chest, steadily building up the pressure inside you with each quick stroke of his thumb against your core until you’re tightening around his digits. “Don’t cum.”

You tense around him, unable to successfully hold in your moans. “I can’t. I’m going to-”

“Just try, Dove.” You would hope he’d stop moving his fingers, at least slow down, but he’s steady and relentless, his digits pushing inside you in the most perfect mind-numbing pace. There’s no way you could stop your impending orgasm, but you try to hold it off, just two more three four five agonizing seconds longer. Seokjin sucks on the sensitive skin of your breast, mouth pulling as much of the mound as he can fit inside while you pulse around his digits. You feel his teeth sink deep into your flesh and his name escapes your lips in a strangled moan.

His usual dull eyes look up at you shinning with desire. “Let’s try again.”

---

“I brought biscuits.” You hold up the sweet cookies in front of Taehyung’s confused face.

“Thank you, y/n.” Taehyung gives you a bright smile and hugs you extra tight when you peek your head into his room.

“Ready to escape?”

“I-I don’t know.”

Taehyung pouts. “You’re-I'm-” Taehyung struggles to say the right words, “We’re running out of time, y/n.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just need a couple minutes with you, please. I have everything ready!” Taehyung runs to his desk, pulling together a stack of papers. “You want to see everyone again, don’t you? You friends and family?” he pleads.

Your family, you’re ashamed to admit you haven’t thought about them. It wasn’t even purposeful, your mind just had stopped wandering to thoughts of them.

Yoongi, Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok, you couldn’t bring yourself to think about them anymore either, it hurt too much. The small traces of their personalities that Taehyung reminded you of had become sufficient enough as you tolerated living. “W-What do you mean we’re running out of time?”

“I think I have just enough magic to fill your necklace,” he whispers, “but if I remember correctly, that model only holds twelve weeks worth of time. How long have you been on this island, y/n?”

Your fingers clutch at Namjoon’s watch resting against your heart. Could you really rewind back time to when you never got on that damned boat! “I-I just need to take off a shoe?”

Taehyung’s face lights up. “Yeah, or something that has your scent that they can still sense, just in case”

“So the more I leave the less noticeable it would be?”

“Well, I guess so?”

You look around at the hallway, still empty like always, and pull off both shoes from your feet. “Do you have a shirt I can borrow?” You begin to shimmy out of your dress. Taehyung’s eyes go wide, and he wets his drying lips, then he springs into action, searching his closet for something to cover you. You pull his large sweater over your body and take a hesitant step inside.

Taehyung wraps you into his arms in a proper hug, holding you close. “I’m so happy you found me, y/n. I’m so happy.” He whispers.

He holds you tight to him, you're ashamed how affected you are by his kind gestures, you shouldn’t feel this way about someone who Namjoon told you to stay away from, it felt like a betrayal. “Don’t forget about me once you escape,” Taehyung whispers.

You melt into his embrace. “I won’t. Isn’t there a way to break the spell on the island? There just has to be! There has to be a way to save you and Yoongi and-”

“You like him,” Taehyung pouts.

“What? Who? Yoongi?!” Your face flushes hot.

“I don’t like sharing,” Taehyung mumbles into his sweater currently draped over your shoulders.

You swallow thickly. “Tae?”

He pulls away, holding you loosely, searching your eyes. During your interactions, you usually kept your attention around Taehyung, unable to focus too long on his intimidating aura and good looks, worried you'd start feeling too much for the mysterious man, worried you'd disappoint Namjoon. But now Taehyung is all around you, and his magnetism is too strong for you to resist. “Tae-”

His kiss is brief, however no less impactful, the way he pours his desires into you until your lost in a haze, following his lips as he pulls away, entranced by the small smile he shows you.

When he lifts his chained arms over your head, he pulls your necklace off as well. You were surprised how easily he removed it, when even Jimin couldn’t pull it off you (much to the vampire’s annoyance). You watched intently as Taehyung turns the watch's dial and whispers a spell in a language you can’t understand. “There, it worked, I set it to the full twelve weeks. you’ll know when to use it.” He places the watch around your neck again, his fingers cupping your cheeks and he rests his forehead against yours, content. Your face burns hot, Taehyung is so affectionate and sweet and treats you like glass.

This close, you can peer into his deep warm brown eyes, irises twinkling back at you so beautifully, it looks like gold swirls in them. “Just one more thing, and then the world is ours,” he says.

---

You sit up in your bed abruptly. Your fingers search for Namjoon’s watch as you try to steady your breathing. The hard gold feels comforting against the tips of your fingers as your eyes adjust to the darkness. You’re reminded of the night you first arrived. But gone is Yoongi’s colorful dress, the clinical white fabric of your new dress, sits tight around your body like a straight jacket and blends in with the white bed sheets.

Weren’t you just with Taehyung, what happened? You remember he told you you were running out of time. Then what happened?

You have to go find him!

You leave the bed and search out his room again. Jimin passes you in the halls, as quiet as a cat, startling you so much you almost fall if it weren't for his fast reflexes. “There you are, ugh I figured you’d be headed to Tae’s room,” Jimin frowns, “Let’s go.”

“Where are you taking me?” You fight against his grip as he pulls you in the opposite direction.

“I haven’t fed in weeks, and my favorite meal is gone because of you.”

You shut your eyes tight, trying to push away the images of the woman who haunts your dreams.

“So you’re taking her place.”

“What?!” You're doing what now? “J-Jin said-”

“Are you his parrot now? Well lucky for me, tonight Jin went to go speak with Yoongi,” he says smugly.

You step into Jimin’s room. The dresser was covered with random items that don’t seem personalized to the vampire’s taste at all. Unread books, countless jewelry pieces, and a plethora of knives.

“Don’t even think about it, pet.” Jimin warns as he sees your eyes stop on the sleek blades.

“I wasn’t,” you mutter. It was the truth.

There’s no window in his room, no mirrors, just wood furniture, covered in scratches and dents of aggression. The areas of his room, like his dresser, are littered with things, so many discarded things. The room is soulless, like Jimin, it feels like a lavish prison cell.

“So,” you don’t look at Jimin, instead you look at his things, trying to find some sense of his personality, “I guess you’re going to finally prove to me you aren’t impotent after all?” you mock. You know you shouldn't poke the beast, but Jimin is like an annoying itch you can't help but scratch.

Jimin scoffs, “Slut, can you go a night without getting fucked?”

“Can you?!”

Jimin smirks. “I'm almost going to miss that.”

You take a step away from him at his words. “What are you going to do?”

“Jin is too sentimental, he only skims the surface of his powers now. There is another aspect to a memory pull, it’s much more fun. Can you guess what that is, pet?”

You’ve been guessing and trying to make sense of everything since that night. “That woman's memories, you took them, right?”

Jimin claps his hands, slow and mocking at your right answer. “It’s not a simple task, but she was particularly compliant,” he bites his lip in memory. “She was much more willing to part with her past, her previous life wasn’t so great if you were wondering...some would see what I did as a blessing.”

The vampire stands in front of you cupping your cheek. “But I’m sure you...” his hand follows your jaw, “...will put up an impressive fight.”

You let out the breath you've been holding, if you can do what happened to Jin, maybe you can find something you can use against him. Maybe his torture won’t work on you...!

“You’re going to regret this,” you say, pulling your head away from his hand.

He laughs, “I regret not doing this sooner.” Jimin was tired of Jin's special treatment of you, all these new rules, all the things you've gotten away with when he wasn't even allowed to drink from you, follow his most basic of urges, it was annoying, you were annoying.

You feel exposed under his penetrating stare, you turn your head and hold your wrist out to Jimin, “Well? Go right ahead.” You think the inevitable has been dragged out long enough.

He looks at your wrist, lips rolling over his tongue as his fingers glide over the thin skin, and then he pulls you closer so you stumble into him, yelping. He looks up and down your body, his hair brushing against your forehead, the strands ticking you. You're supposed to hate each other, but the way he holds you and touches you, it’s too intimate, too rough and too soft for you to make sense of it.

“Do you have to ruin all the dresses we give you?” He noticed the slit you cut into your too long dress.

“Why are they so tight?” you say, watching his eyes as they roam over your exposed skin, feeling hot from his attention. You try to keep your thoughts calm, pure, so he doesn't notice what he's doing to you. “I can barely walk around.”

“Then maybe you should stay on your back,” his voice low and taunting. His free hand reaches for the torn fabric and as quick as a flash Jimin tears the slit higher up to your hip bone.

Your hands attempt to pull the slit closed in vain, and Jimin takes the opportunity to pull at the neckline of your dress, ripping the line even lower, exposing your cleavage to him. You slap him across the face, like you would have done any other man, but Jimin is not just a man, not anymore. He turns his face around and you see his fangs against his curled lip, he looks delighted, like you gave him just the reaction he wanted.

He grabs you around the waist and you feel vertigo as you're thrown across the room. You land on his bed, sinking into the mattress, and before you can scream Jimin is hovering over you.

“Your foreplay sucks.”

Jimin pulls your head back, laughing down at you.

"Get it?" you struggle to speak, “because you're a-”

You scream as Jimin finally bites the column of your neck, his body weight pressing down on you. Pain erupts and you can barely breath. His bite is somehow even more painful than Jin's, you hit his shoulders, pull at his shirt, trying to push him away to release you.

---

“What’s your name?” You can barely hear Seokjin’s voice over the trumpets of the band.

“Jimin.” He yells back.

“Military man,” the bartender nods to his uniform, “This one is on the house.”

“Thanks, um?”

“Seokjin.”

Jimin pulls his bottom lip in, studying the handsome stranger. “Thank you Seokjin.”

---

Jimin pulls away from your neck, breathing heavy. You laugh, and laugh, feeling exhilarated, eyes meeting the vampire while you laugh again. Did you just beat Jimin at his own game?

Your laughter stops when Jimin flips you on your stomach. His fingers dig into your hair, bending your back up to meet his chest. You grunt, jaw slack. “Still waiting to see what you've got, Jimin.”

You’re confusing. Jimin doesn’t even smell fear on you anymore, even when he tightens his grip. You must be feeling overwhelmed, like Jimin, who is trying to make sense of the long forgotten emotions coursing through him right now.

For the first time in a long time, Jimin feels uncomfortable, struggling to make sense of your taunts and why you aren’t submitting. Something unpleasant inside him stirs. He’ll make you regret acting like this, he’ll break you in half until you beg for mercy. He’ll do it. So why isn’t he doing it?

“Well?!”

“Fuck, you’re annoying,” he hisses into your ear.

“So I’ve been told, military man.”

Jimin knows you're goading him, yet still, blind rage courses through his veins, stinging his chest. He rips the back of your dress, tearing it down the center.

Was Jimin fulfilling a twisted fantasy you had ever since you saw Namjoon and Seokjin fuck that nameless woman senseless? Could you admit that to yourself as you feel your core become wetter as he presses his hand down onto your bare back.

You push up on your elbows, but Jimin uses his strength to push you back down, holding your head down. His sharp hearing can hear your muffled moan and the unpleasant feeling in the center of his body twists again.

"You like this?" He groans, affected by the smell of your lust. “Fuck, you act like such a desperate slut.” He palms his dick, needing a release. His moans fill your ears as his stokes himself to the state of your body.

You feel his spit hit your skin, his hard length running along your center, covering his member in your juices and his saliva. His tip teasing your entrance, you push back into him seeking more, and his hands hold you down, making you all the more feverish.

Your arousal hits the vampire’s senses in waves, affecting him more than usual as he tightens his grip to keep you still, focusing on the blood blotting your neck. His cock runs up your slit until he rests over your second hole. You look over your shoulder, prepared to taunt the vampire even more, but his dark expression, filled with carnal desire, slightly unraveled, entirely captivated by you, sends your thoughts into a tailspin.

Jimin pushes his thick length into you, stretching you over his cock, inch by inch until your whole body spasms.

Jimin stayed pressed up against you, a small kindness, his fingers circling your aching core. “Don’t-” you moan, and he stills against you, “d-don’t hold back.”

"I wasn't intending to."

And he doesn't. Your orgasm wracks through you, you feel so full and empty as your walls clench down on nothing while he pounds himself into you relentlessly. You start to shake in overstimulation. His thrusts are wild, your neck is there, you smell so delicious and he's so close to release.

When you come close again, at the peak of arousal, he bites down on your soft skin. You yell, clenching around him even tighter.

“This is your fault.”

You see Tae laugh, so unlike his usual sweet boisterous laugh, he chuckles deep, fighting against the chains around him, his wrist markings glowing gold, then deep orange like fire. “No, this is your fault. You were supposed to kill Jin, we could have had everything we ever wanted. How could you betray me like this?”

Jimin’s hands go lax around your waist, so you put yours over his, holding on as tight as you can.

You see Seokjin and Jimin under a street lamp, you and Jimin watch the way the flies dance around the bulb.

“You’re a vampire.”

Seokjin tenses, so Jimin continues, “I saw you with that girl, the regular with black hair.” His eyes scan the man beside him.

“And what are you going to do now?” Seokjin’s words come out low, almost menacing. Jimin laughs.

“Would you believe me if I said you’re not the strangest thing I’ve seen?” Breaking the awkward silence, Jimin brings an arm over Seokjin’s broad shoulders, pulling the man into a headlock. “I forgive you for always ditching me for lunch.” He teases.

Jimin releases his mouth from your neck.

You shift beneath him to look up at the vampire. Jimin’s bite wasn’t as meticulous as Seokjin’s who knew how to expertly pierce an artery, so you weren’t profusely bleeding, but the wounds still ached. Seokjin has the precision of a doctor, Jimin is messy, wild, his entire front is covered in blood. Jimin's eyes were unfocused, you could tell he was lost in thought.

“Jimin?”

“Enough,” his voice shakily commands you. “I’ll just take the part of you that keeps doing this.”

He pierces your exposed flesh once more concentrating harder.

---

Jimin is tiny. His head reaches the older woman’s knee as he hugs her leg. He points to the butterfly, wings fluttering back and forth slowly as it sits on a leaf Jimin found.

“I fixed it, see!”

“My beautiful son,” she kisses the top of his head, laughing at his cuteness. She looks weak and fragile, sunken eyes and skin pale.

“I’ll fix you too, I’ll learn!” He hugs her leg tighter. She soothes her little boy, knowing it’s already too late for her.

“Grow up to be a doctor, heal people.”

---

He pulls away from you. His eyes look wild, like an animal’s, caught. “Stop looking into my mind!” He screams.

“I can’t control it!” You’re just as stunned as Jimin, you never expected to see a version of himself so innocent.

Jimin holds you down by the neck, he doesn’t squeeze your neck enough to stop your breathing, even though he should, he thinks, he can’t do it, he can’t bring himself to tighten his grip.

“Do it again and I’ll fucking kill you,” he lies.

“I said I can’t control it, asshole!” you struggle against his hold, “Maybe if you weren’t so weak-minded-”

Jimin roars. Pressing his weight back on you, his fangs strike at the sensitive flesh between your collar bone. Your first kiss was so special to you, you could still remember it to this day. You were young, awkward and shy, he was your first crush, a cute boy, his features reminded you of one of your favorite idols at the time, who was-

What did he look like? What was his name? When did he kiss you again? It was after school, you think, you can’t remember. How did he kiss you? That’s right, it was an awkward kiss, because you and him were...friends? Weren’t you? You can’t remember, you can’t remember what had happened, it was so special to you and now it’s gone.

Jimin sucks harder onto your skin, pulling more blood out of you. He took it, your first kiss, you know he did. Jimin, if that sweet little boy could see himself now.

You start to cry. You cry for your stolen first kiss.

His teeth sink into your neck again, pulling more blood greedily, trying to silence the memories he found with the steady beating of your pulse instead. He drags his fangs across your skin, more blood releases, so much blood lost already that everything spins around you. “Jimin!”

He covers your mouth to stop your protests. Jimin seems determined to lose himself again, ravaging your body with more bites. So you close your eyes and your thoughts drift to the young boy.

“Good job!” the soft voice of his mothers fills both your minds. Jimin holds a syringe full of milk to a tiny kitten’s mouth. “You have to take care of her now, remember, treat her gently. There you go!”

“She’s so cute, momma, I love her.”

“You both have to watch out for each other when I’m not around, okay?”

You can hear Jimin whimper into your neck.

You feel sadness wash over you. He could have been a doctor, he could have been a healer. He is, in some twisted way, he been given the gift of healing, and yet he uses it to inflict pain. Even if he wanted to pretend he didn’t experience it, you felt the love that he held so dearly for his mother as a small child. You can hear his laughter, he had the same laugh as his mother.

‘Jimin, I’m going to save you too.’

---

You wake up healed, your head pounding. You look around, Jimin lies next to you, he’s out like a light. You both look like you’ve been in a massacre. Your clothes shredded and blood everywhere. You move away from him, his features look angelic, but his skin is covered in dried blood, like a killer. What the hell happened? You take a step and your legs buckle, you cry out when you knee hits the hard floor. The vampire next to you sways, moves across the bed until he falls completely out of it, groaning.

You crawl your body to the other side of the bed where he is still lying on the floor.

When you look at him again, meeting his eyes, you come to a realization. You know his secret.

“Oh Jimin...”

“Y/n...” his voice is shaky, he covers his face with his hands and his soft cries fill the room. You struggle to get up, everything feels tilted on an axis. You sway and hit furniture as you make your way to the door.

There’s a ringing in your head that won’t leave. You follow the halls down to Seokjin’s office, a place Jimin has been so many times before, retracing his footsteps from a memory of his.

Taehyung’s spell worked just as he said, opening the door to Seokjin’s office, the bright markings glowed and then burnt away from your skin, leaving a trace of ash. ‘Taehyung,’ you’ll have to deal with him later, you think. First you need to get away, as far from the island as you can and try to find Jimin’s family.

There’s a large door to the right of his desk, wood an alien shade of purple. The high pitched ringing in your ears makes the room sway again, but you’re able to grip the handle and fall through to the other side.

---

You sit on the floor of a tiny shop. There’s intricate gold pieces; statues, vases, piled high on countless of glass shelves, every inch of the shop is filled with items, it reminds you of someone but you can’t remember who. You can’t even remember how you got here. Where the hell are you? It feels dangerous, it feels wrong.

You move to a corner and hug your knees to your body. ‘Where am I? Wait, who am I?’ You try to remember anything, any memory from your childhood, from your adulthood. And the past five minutes replays in your mind instead. Gold jewelry in glass cases and the feeling that you shouldn't be here, and a deep voice in your head whispers, “y/n.”

Y/n, is that your name? Your hands skim over the fabric of your torn dress, looking for pockets, looking for anything that might explain something to you. You need to get out of here, you need to leave, but you don’t even know where you are.

You hear a ding, a bell alerting an opening door. You hear a man speak to another. You run out the door while the man behind you lets out a surprised yell to come back.

You run and you run, past buildings past people. You’re barefoot, your clothes hang off you. Eventually you stop. Eventually you decide to ask an old couple who looks unthreatening where you are while you unsuccessfully try not to burst into tears. The old woman holds your hands and strokes your arm to calm you while the husband calls the police.

At first they suspected you were a victim of abuse. They took you to a hospital. The doctors performed several tests on you, each one worse than the last. You had no old memories, and all your new ones were horrible. Clinical, painful, strangers prodding and poking your body. Your dreams were filled of palm trees and warm sunshine on your skin, a sparkling blue ocean, laughter, happiness. So you slept most of the day.

Then one day, detectives came with nurses and they told you who you were. That it took so long because you had been pronounced dead over a month ago. Your parents were on a flight to come get you. You listened to them explain the events hoping to have a jog of memory but nothing comes. They talk about the boat, the crash, no survivors. Always another horrible new piece of information. When will it end?

When your parents picked you up, a lovely man and woman who you tried desperately to remember, the hospital staff gave you a bag with the clothes they found you in. There was a gold pocket watch, an item you didn’t remember having, but you didn’t remember anything, so it didn’t surprise you. You told them to throw everything away, but you kept the watch with you.

You have to stay with them, everything in your life had been reduced to a few boxes they had kept. You lost your home, your identity, you had no money, no job, the only thing you acquired during this whole time was a death certificate.

You start remembering your childhood, slowly at first, a memory here and there, a fall and cut knee, a tea party with stuffed animals, a school field trip, and then years at a time.

You found yourself again. You remembered who you were, your entire life up until you didn’t, the memories fracturing at the end, and the harder you tried to remember how you could have ended up in a different country across the world, your mind would construct horrible images instead, blood, drowning, and death. You couldn’t bare to think of it.

---

“Y/n!” you make your way into the coffee shop, you reconnected with some old childhood friends now that you were back in your hometown.

“Hey, oh my god, who is this big cutie?” Your friend’s dog barks excitedly while you fluff the black fur on his head. He’s so cute, his ears flop to the side with each happy bark.

“Y/n, are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“You’re...well you’re crying?” She looks at you concerned.

You touch your wet cheeks. Why? You don’t know when it started, but as your friend’s dog nudges his head into your palm for more pets, your heart aches.

---

One night, a crazy thought enters your mind. You want to go back to that shop. You want answers. You leave a note for your parents telling them your intentions and pack your freshly made identification cards and travel documents into a suitcase.

So here you are again, in a foreign country, alone again, filled with purpose that seems to pull you in despite how terrified you are.

You scroll through your phone while you lie on the hard foreign hotel mattress. You open a map of where you are on your phone, and zoom out until you see water.

There's islands around the peninsula, you zoom into each one and search each name on your phone, learning each habitat, who lives there, if it is accessible. You do that to pass the time until you fall asleep.

“It’s too dangerous.”

You reach for the merman, grabbing at Yoongi’s shirt and pulling him closer, your eyes meeting his. “Explain.”

Yoongi is taken aback, licking his lips trying to think of a good way to start. "We made a blood pact to protect this island from the outside world, it's indiscoverable and once anyone does come here, they can't leave."

"Why..." you let go of his shirt, but he stays close, "Why would you do that?"

"Think, just think what you humans have done to the world...the others needed some place safe to go to and I-" the merman huffs, "At the time, I thought...well, they were...at the time I didn't mind sharing the island with them. "

Your fingers roll over the bracelets Yoongi put on you. "That was nice of you." The merman glares at you in return.

"You know, they'd come here, we all spent time together." Yoongi's stare is faraway and distant. "In the beginning, at least."

"I-I'm sorry." You hold his hand, and he stares at your fingers only briefly before shaking you off.

"Whatever, I'm surprised they didn't start trying to tear each others throats out sooner," He mutters. "We had portals of course to leave when we wanted to, but one day Namjoon and those dumb dogs destroyed all the portals-"

"What?! Why would they do that?"

"I don't know all the details, but I believe Namjoon did it to protect the rest of his pack. I can respect him for that...but the problem is they trapped us all here like idiots!"

"Is that why you're helping Jin and Jimin?"

"What? To get back at Namjoon? Pfft no. Jin came to me with a deal. He looked off, sick, and he offered me anything I wanted, so I helped him. That's it."

"So technically you can leave the island?"

"I can swim the waters, but I can only go so far, the magic always pulls me back eventually, it's useless to try," he mutters.

You hum.

"Anyways, what Namjoon doesn't know is Jin used some leftover magic and created a portal. Jin has lots of friends that serve him, owe him favors, he uses it as a delivery system."

"So you think if I?"

"That's the only portal I know of, but the magic is dangerous, the vampires put so many protections on their house, they won't even go through it themselves, there has to be a reason, right?"

"I...I'll take my chances."

"They wont even chance going through it, and you will?"

"Yes! And what if I can find a way to break the spell? Then you can finally leave! Yoongi, you have to let me at least try!"

"You're going to get yourself killed one way or another," Yoongi scoffs.

"No, I refuse to believe that."

"You're impossible to understand."

"I'm going through that portal. Then I'll come back for you."

"Wait, you'll come back?" Yoongi asks.

"Well, yeah, if you help me, a deal is a deal. Yoongi please, help me come up with a plan and I swear to you I'll come back with your payment. You're the only one who can search the ocean, you just have to find me again, so what do you say merman?"

"I'll find you again."

---

Your alarm wakes you up. 'What a weird dream,' it felt so realistic. Like all your dreams, the more you think about it, the less you remember, but that man's scarred eyes, whose name you forgot already, they stay with you.

You brush your teeth and wash your face. You notice something as you rinse off your skin. 'What the hell is that?' You inspect the gold writing behind your ear. Taking some more soap, you work to remove it but it doesn’t come off, the glittery ink is permanent. You rubbed your skin raw trying to take it off, it didn’t look like a tattoo, but nothing you did would get rid of the gold markings. You pace around your hotel room, things are getting weirder and you start to feel a nagging sense of dread, but there's a voice inside you that says to keep going until you find the answers you are looking for.

You don't walk right into the shop at first, instead casing out the place. You drink coffee at a nearby restaurant and keep watch on the shop. There are not many visitors, and those who do enter are not who you would expect. You would think maybe some older people who were looking for vintage items would decide to enter, or eccentric younger people, but it was almost always a intimidatingly large man entering, bringing items in rather than taking items out.

You’ve gotten into the habit of playing with the gold chain around your neck, the gold pocket watch had become a permanent accessory.

It's almost closing time for the restaurant, so you reluctantly make your way to the shop, and walk in after a group of tourists.

The shop looks different than what you remember, new items litter the shelves. You hide behind the large cases, studying the objects, until you come across something that makes you hesitate. A necklace with a large red gem hidden behind a thick glass case with a lock.

“You’re that girl! You...you came back.” Your head turns into the direction of the voice, a very old man stares back at you. He looks at you incredulously while you can only stare back dumbly. “C'mon, let’s go,” the old man says, he grabs your elbow. “Seokjin should be awake by now.”

“Let me go! You can’t keep me here!” You pull away from his grasp, your hand tightens around the amulet.

He laughs at you amused, giving you some space. “You walked into my shop, did you not? You don’t want to talk to Seokjin?”

“I…” Do you?! Would he know what happened to you, why does it make you shiver hearing his name.

Wait...you look down at your hand, to make sure you didn't imagine it, and there you see the necklace in the middle of your palm, heavy in your hand, you hide it behind your back, looking over your shoulder to the empty case, the shock of it makes you freeze.

The man looks at you cautiously, “Why are you here, girl? Are you here for Seokjin?”

Seokjin. That name fills you with dread. A vision of a man flashes across your mind only briefly, “I d-don’t know.” The old man raises an eyebrow at you. “Stay here, girl. I'll be right back.”

Where is he going? What is he going to do with you? Your mind spins and the skin behind your ear stings. 'Now y/n. Do it now.' that deep voice is back. You panic when the old man comes back with two others.

'Use the watch, y/n. Use the watch. NOW!'

---

“On one condition, just one.” Jimin hisses.

As you lie on the ground you feel like the weight of the world just crashed upon you. Your chest feels like it’s going to explode, there’s a ringing in your ears, the skin behind your ear still burns hot.

Jimin noticed the sudden shift in your demeanor, the way your heart begins to race as you start to break down. Every day, starting on the night your boat was capsized, replays in your mind as you start to remember your time on the island. You see Taehyung, who looks at you and then his eyes go wide, realizing the situation, eyes ablaze with growing excitement.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Taehyung’s deep baritone voice breaks the silence. You can only take in shaky breaths as your tear filled eyes try to focus on where you are. You traveled back in time, precisely twelve weeks to the second, you’re back on the island, thrown back into your nightmare like you never left. The only difference now is your left hand clutches a second pocket watch, now broken, and your right hand clutches the amulet.

Jimin looks between you and Taehyung. “What have you done?” Jimin accuses Taehyung, whose eyes haven’t left yours. Taehyung’s lips curve into an encouraging smile, he holds out his chained wrists to you. The vampire whips his head in your direction, but it’s already too late. You throw the amulet into Taehyung’s awaiting hands. You didn’t want to give it to him, but as if Taehyung had pulled strings around your body, you complied to his silent request. The minute the gem touches his skin, the gold markings around his wrists burn away.

The explosion knocks you back meters, everything is broken, everything is dust, you can’t see and your body aches. You hear screaming and yelling and groans of pain. You crawl through the debris searching for a way out.

Red light flashes through the smoke. You choose to crawl towards it, hearing Jin’s loud booming voice.

Taehyung pulls you back, his body behind you like it just materialized out of thin air. "C’mon y/n. Let’s escape."

“This...This is all your fault!” He looked surprised by your reaction.

“What you think you know, you’re mistaken.” He lifts you to your feet easily.

It feels like the air around you is vibrating, your body feels lighter in Taehyung’s presence.

“Please let me go,” you cry.

“Don’t worry, once we escape, we’ll be fine again.” His hand holds your hip tight to his body as he drags you in the direction of the portal.

Seokjin crashes into you both, knocking Taehyung away from you. You hear their struggle, and you’re back to crawling away through the smoke helplessly. Your fingers hit the hard cold gem of the amulet, and you wrap the chain around your fingers.

You can’t remember how you found the stairs, the wood half shattered, or the exit, blown wide open by magic, you can’t remember leaving the mansion, you just remember once your bare feet hit the soft grass outside you ran and you didn’t stop running, until you heard the sounds of waves. You ran until water hit your feet and then you screamed.

---

YAY I FINISHED THIS MONSTER OF A CHAPTER (Get it? I’ll shut up). Thank god, I felt as trapped in this chapter as y/n in that damn room :’). Okay, but now we’re getting somewhere! What do you think is going to happen now? Looks like this story might finally be headed off the island :D. I’m excited!

Questions to ponder for the next chapter: What is Jimin’s secret? Looks like there was a good reason for keeping Taehyung locked away, so what is his ultimate goal? What did Taehyung do to you? And why are Jin and Namjoon no longer friends?! Those are just some of the questions floating around in my mind as I am writing the next chapter, now do you have any questions you want answers to? Let me know! <3

[homelander-rp-blog]

John is curling on the cold floor of the cage, listening to his imaginary Misty and his bad self chewing each other when he hears the door opens and it's that boy, Hughie's sound "oh my God.. Annie was serious, you really did get him.." Billy grunts "don't tell me you called to say it's 'emergency' only to come here and nag me about what I did or did not.." he stands there crossed-arms and the lanky man rushes to talk "oh, right, right umm.. Annie says you should let him go now, he has no power and won't be a threat to us anymore" "oh? that goldie locks said it? well.. go tell her go fuck yourself, love because ain't gonna do such a thing! Homelander will return to his lair, shoots more V in his veins and there you go, the previous monster-" Hughie shakes his head "I don't think he can even return.. have you seen the news? oh of course not, you hermit, now Soldier Boy is in charge of everything at Vought!" Billy laughs "so?" "meaning he can't return back even if he wants.. his own father will kill him. Annie says we should let him go because there's a girl that she knows.. erm, not her friend but she was so distressed when Homelander went missing and Annie thought if she was in her place and I went missing-" Billy throws his hands up, turning his back to Hughie "I don't have time for this shit! go tell her I don't care about Homelander's bed partner! this man dies here and today!" Hughie opens his mouth to say something but then closes it, his eyes sad "Butcher.. the revenge doesn't solve anything-" "-WHY you're still here, kid? get the fuck out!" he yells and the young man turns to look at Homelander for the last time before he leaves.. "you think your friends can help you, eh?" he goes to inject temp V to himself, not removing his eyes from his hostage "we'll see how it feels ripping you apart.. yeah.." and groans when green liquid flows through his veins. Calvin looks everywhere for Misty, Maeve calls him again "still no sign of her?" and curses when Calvin answers with a 'not yet' again. he knows Misty liked that monster but this much? "maybe she packed up and returned to her hometown? I think it had a bad effect on her now that Homelander is missing.." he searches her apartment but no trace of any being "did you mention Ashley gave her V?" he asks from the Maeve on the phone. she hums "yeah.. but I don't think that'll be effective.. if so, what she wants to do anyway?" Calvin leaves Misty's apartment "should I call Butcher and tell him about it?" and Maeve sighs "no need for that, I told him to move his place when we found that phone. I think he'll be alright. sides, I told him to just call me immediately if anything happens. we're going to send that monster straight to hell this time" Calvin nods while he knows Maeve can't see him on the other side of the line "yeah, my dad was in that airplane he caused to crash, I'll never forgive him.." they say goodbyes and after he hangs up, types a 'where are you? ;) call me' to Misty. John falls in and out of the sleep during the day, not daring to turn around and see what Butcher is about but from all metallic sounds he can say he's getting ready for the big event.. A single tear falls down his cheek "fuck.. why it had to happen for me?!" you're so pathetic, a crybaby! you're gonna die today and it's what you deserve! He covers his ear "no no! shut up!" but when it speaks, it's his Misty.. John, angel.. see that kit over there? Billy has temp V! think you can reach for it? just grab it and shoot a dose in your body.. he isn't looking over here now, come on! John turns around and is surprised to see that Butcher left his kit on the table near his cage and the man is busy setting torture objects in the middle of the barn. John crawls to that side of his cage, extends his hands for the syringe and is soo close.. "the fuck you doing, huh?" Billy turns fast, the temp V enhanced all his senses.

Maeve’s words only burn her ears. It feels like shes giving up. It wouldn’t be logical to stop now. Yet, how could she expect them to care as much as she does? None of them could love John as she had..

Her blood was boiling- not only from the anger, but from the V she’d shot up before coming all this way. The only person who knew was Ashley. Not wanting the others to call her foolish for such a last minute decision. She really didn’t need to hear Maeve’s scoldings about the choice. Especially not after she was already declaring their departure from the search.

It’s not soon after that a familiar voice rings out through the mayhem. It’s Calvin- coming to her aid with a warm blanket and even hotter coffee. At this point, she really was wondering if he was Clark Kent. He leads her to a seat, in which she follows and takes one next to him. Stressed out would be an understatement for her. Her mind was plagued with terrible thoughts. Meanwhile her body was in quiet discomfort from the V.

He gives her more reassurances, even patting her back softly. Being this close to him feels wrong. Sitting next to another man when John’s still out there. They could be doing anything to him. ‘My poor sweet Angel..’

Her eyes look up to see Maeve has made her way over. Between Maeve and Calvin’s claims she’s not sure who to give it to. Her mind juggles the possibilities before landing to Calvin, softly whispering to him. “Please.. please tell me it’s anything to help bring John back..”

-

Sooner than later, she makes her way back to the tower. Feeling just as helpless as before. Even worse, her head was pounding from that Temp V. A migraine that had almost felt skull-splitting. She needed a shower- rest. Even if she did want to find John, she was in no condition after today. She was moving too fast. Something the others had to drill into her for her to recognize that.

As the doorknob twists, she practically jumps at the sight on her couch. Soldier Boy had made himself at home- sitting on her couch, slouched back with Alice in his lap. He played with her absentmindedly before his eyes met hers. Two different sets of greens locked onto each other’s. He doesn’t say anything for a moment- as if giving her time to see that he’s here. Really here, in her own apartment.

Misty stands still, unsure what to do. Was he here to kill her? A way to hurt John even more? Her fists sit at her sides, tightening in fear before finally his voice rings out.

“So what- you’ve given up already..?”

He sounds almost offended oddly enough. His hands still working to play and mold against her tiny kittens brain.

“What is it with women and giving up so easily..? If it was me, I’d be-“

“Are you real?” Misty interrupts him, causing an almost instantaneous fit of laughter from him. He stands hearing those words, dropping sweet Alice on the couch. Sauntering over, his eyes never leaving hers. As if to intimidate her with his presence alone.

“Of course I’m fuckin real.. does this feel real..?” His hand is suddenly clasp against her windpipe, holding her up with unbridled strength. His eyes dark with a pleased grin to himself. His chest erupting once more in a low chuckle. “I don’t know what the hell you see in that brat, but I will tell you this sweetheart. If I was out there- rotting away in some fuckin cabin..” His lip sort of trembles, making Misty wonder what could’ve caused him to suddenly feel indifferent. Sure he was John’s father but did he care that much for him secretly? Little did Misty know, he was only recalling what the Countess had did to him. Only helping her as a way to enact revenge. To teach her to be better for John. Homelander didn’t deserve to feel such a betrayal.

He drops Misty, her hands immediately scrambling to her throat. Gasping, soft collective inhales followed by her own spit leaking to the floor. Struggling to regain her breaths. He’s looking down at her now- pitifully so, before he kneels down to meet her eye level again.

“He’s useless now- depowered, human.. weak.. kind of like you” He remarks as if it’s some kind of joke. She only wishes she had the strength to punch that jaw of his. However, she can only listen. Wondering what his game was here. “I can give you their locations- hell, I don’t give a shit what happens to Butcher now. I’m a free man. As long as you MAKE SURE that whiny fucker doesn’t come back here. I’m the new leader of The Seven. He can fuck off and go work at Voughtland for all I care”

Mistys heart drums rapidly, hearing the news. He’ll just give it to her like that? Her thoughts overwhelmed her.. Surely, if he wanted to kill her he’d just do it. Right? As she regained her voice again, she looked up at him with a thankful nod.

“Okay.. I-I can do that..” Her voice was shaky, trembling even. She planted her butt on the ground, listening to further instruction. Not wanting to piss off the man that’d so graciously decided to help her.

“One more thing-“ He licks his lips before continuing, eyebrows firm and furrowed. “Don’t tell any of these Vought idiots where you’re going. You just need to go. Butcher’s working with a leak that’s been telling him every time you guys have been close on them. You need to go, alone. I fuckin mean that too”