#also nobody warned me about the worm violence. also i love my fucked up brain dog and miss them with my whole heart

[depresseddepot]

I downloaded baldur's gate 3 (because of course I did) and I am feeling very normal about it thank you very much

[chromes-corner]

Hello there! I am a human who is in desperate need of an angst regarding Lilac Cookie and is hoping you could perhaps provide me with one since I absolutely adore your writings. Would that be okay?

I do not have any scenario in mind as my mind had been on a constant "No head, thoughts empty" mood for the past few days. But I was hoping you could do something with reader dying and lots of remorse and guilt for Lilac afterwards (Please, this is my fav stuff lol)

Thank you and bye :D

(Also this is my first request on Tumblr so sorry if anything I said is weird and/or out of place lol)

i have been thinking about this prompt nonstop for days. like I've been fucking CURSED by it. You gave me BRAIN WORMS DUDE. oughhhh i love writing angst so much AND WITH LILAC HELLOOOOO OPPORTUNITY. HELL YEAH BABEYYYY

5k (!!!!) words of brainrot enjoy :))))

---

Drown

Lilac/Reader

Notes: angst

Content Warnings: gratuitous blood, violence, injury, death, brief gore (an appendage gets chopped off ok)

A/N: this might not be as polished as it could be but god i was getting really sick of rereading it and tweaking it in teeny tiny bits. i just had to get it out lmao

A/N cont.: also I experimented a bit with story structure in this one so I hope it’s not too hard to follow?? Idk <3

Emotions are weakness.

That’s the first thing you learn on the job. Anger burns like an inferno and turns into blind rage, which will kill you in the end. Sadness boils in the pit of your stomach and turns into desperation, which will kill you in the end. Happiness dulls your edge and will be used against you, which might as well kill you in the end. Nobody teaches you how to suppress emotions. Nobody shows you how to pull a thick mask over your face until you’re indecipherable from the marble statues in the royal courtyard. It’s learned from experience; from trial and error (and pure luck if you don’t end up dead) that forces you to numb yourself from feeling anything at all. Then, and only then, are you safe from the world and all the terrors it has to throw at you.

Lilac knows this rule all too well. He’s honed himself to a deadly blade on the whetstone of this rule. He’s dedicated his life to it, and it, in return, has become his livelihood, providing him with more coins than he knows what to do with. As long as people roam the markets, there will be quarries to eliminate and bounties to collect. As long as Lilac continues to reinforce his walls, to block out anything and everything, he will survive.

He’s so well versed in the golden rule, in fact, that he doesn’t so much as flinch when the sharp edge of the metal tub slices open the pad of his finger. It’s more of a minor annoyance than a painful affliction – nothing more than a dull scrape against a brick wall. Lilac kneels in the sand over the metal tub, watching a single dark drop lazily dribble down his finger and palm and drip into the clear water, fresh from the well. The blood blossoms out in a wispy cloud, the single drop of pollutant rendering the entire basin spoiled. It only takes a tiny bit of one solution to corrupt another.

The single drop is not the end of it. Lilac submerges both his hands in the tainted waters. He splays his fingers wide, feeling the cool of the liquid seep into every crevice on his stained hands. The long-dried crimson that cakes his palms and crusts his fingernails starts to disperse, pluming out like the flames of a torch, dyeing the water in the wild hue of the desert sunset.

—

It’s like the sky was on fire.

Lilac crept over the lip of a massive dune, kicking up puffs of sand as he walked with light footsteps. He had shed his cowl after he left the marketplace, wrapping it – and the item it held – beneath his arm as the sun had disappeared behind the pale crests in the distance. When he stood on the very top of the massive bank, the wildfire glow revealed itself to him.

The sun hung low in the sky, like a blazing amber pupil trained on the world below. Bronzed clouds stayed still as a held breath against the smoldering backdrop of the evening sky, their edges lit up by the piercing sun like liquid gold. The sea of sand beyond was shrouded in its smoldering haze, dunes like embers and desert birds springing from their hiding spots like stray sparks.

Below the forge of the setting sun was a single, untouched coal, a cool relief within the scald. The tent was pitched beside an outcrop of sandy boulders, protecting it from the midday sun that choked the desert with a grip of scathing steel. It was a white canvas sheet stretched over the sand, held upright by a pole in the center. The color deflected the worst of the heat, and the canvas provided a shady pool to hide under when the scorch of the sands was too much to bear.

As Lilac began to slide down the dune, a head peeked out from under the tarp. Attached to that head was a pair of arms, clutching a tiny dagger to the owner’s chest. He adjusted the bundle of his cowl under his arm as he approached. The wielder of the dagger relaxed their grip on the weapon when they saw the shock of his hair and the weightlessness of his step. There was only ever one person who carried himself like that in the endless ocean of sand.

You greeted Lilac in silence, wordlessly taking his face in your hands and pressing your forehead to his. Lilac was equally as mute, closing his eyes and allowing himself to breathe and let go of the stiffness of his shoulders. Your hands were gentle on his face, bringing him closer, past the limit of proximity that he had originally allowed himself. He ghosted his free hand over your cheek, the tips of his fingers just barely grazing against the softness that he felt he shouldn’t be allowed to behold, much less caress. The unspoken sentiment went both ways: I’m glad you’re okay.

Lilac only opened his eyes when he felt a tug at the bundle under his arm. He forgot it was even there while he was drowning under the soft exhales you had left fanning over his face while you cradled him. He unwrapped his cowl and presented you with the item that was hiding within.

A conch shell.

You stared at the gift with wide eyes, like it would vanish if you looked away. Its smooth, polished surface was cool on your palms, but you almost dropped it as though it had scorched you upon contact. It was pearly white like sands from where it came – wholly different from the pale gold of the desert. You ran your fingers over the various bumps and ridges, memorizing every inch of the pristine shell. Lilac couldn’t look away from its surface reflected in your glassy eyes.

Carefully, slowly, you held the shell up to the side of your head. The hollowed side had fit snugly on your ear. You closed your eyes and held your breath.

You listened for a long time.

—

Lilac blinks, and the image is gone.

He swishes his hands around in the tub and begins to scrub. The dried blood comes off in flakes, and the clarity of the water is entirely lost beneath the pink tint. He scrubs everywhere. Between his fingers. Over his knuckles. Under his fingernails. He passes the stiff bristles of the brush over his hands dozens of times, revisiting the same areas over and over again until the skin is raw and tingling. Still, he does not show express a fraction of discomfort at the feeling.

Finally, he stops his scrubbing. The stains on his hands have been washed away. The skin underneath shows through. Despite this, he still feels unclean.

No matter. Lilac moves on to the next item that needs cleaning. A small, soiled pouch jingles as he picks it up. He dumps its contents into the tub, and he watches the shiny gold coins sink to the bottom.

—

The man behind the desk peered into the bloody sack Lilac provided and grimaced. “Sheesh, I take it he didn’t wanna come willingly?” He pushed the sack away with a pencil until it was at arm’s length. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. You got the job done, and that’s all I asked of you.”

The man haphazardly threw a pouch onto the table in front of him. It landed next to the bloody sack with a full, hearty clink. Lilac took the pouch and dumped it on the table. Dozens of coins fell to the surface with a hefty clatter.

“You think I shorted you?” the man asked with a snort, tapping on the red wooden desk before him as Lilac began to drop them back in the pouch. “They’re all there, friend, trust me. Come on, now, you're gonna stain the imported wood.”

Lilac did not hear him. He could not hear anything. The only thing in his ears was the thrum of blood throbbing through his head. Like the crackle of static. Like the ocean’s tide.

He counted the pieces individually, turning them over in his hand, then letting them fall into the sack. The red that coated his hands dirtied the luster and left the coins wet and slick. Lilac didn’t worry about staining his payment. The money was already dirty, even before he arrived.

The man at the desk watched, gritting his teeth each time Lilac picked up a coin. “I’ve got a few more jobs for you when you’re done with that.”

Lilac did not acknowledge him. The clinking of coins was his only answer, sharp and rhythmic.

The man pushed forward a few sheets of aged parchment from his side of the desk. One depicted a woman in a bandana, her toothy grin nearly as sharp as her daggers. Another was simply a dark, blurry silhouette in the vague shape of a person. The only tip to their identity was the glint of the diamond on their cane and the white bulb of light reflected in their monocle. On the last poster was a hulking beast of a man, his sun-kissed skin wrinkled with sea salt and his yellowed teeth crooked into a sneer. One eye glared into the sunlight, while the other was covered by a black patch.

Lilac’s gaze hovered over the last poster. The man’s heavy, squared frame took up most of the image, but behind him was a glimpse of vast, never-ending water beneath a clear horizon. Blue meeting blue.

Lilac’s employer leaned over the desk. “Ah, looking for a tropical vacation, huh? Ol’ ‘broadside’ here was last spotted in the Tropical Soda Islands, plundering my merchant ships with his ragtag scurvy crew. Good choice, though. I hear the Isles are beautiful this time of year.”

Lilac took the poster and the coin satchel and left without another word.

—

Lilac scoops the coins out of the water and tilts his hand until the light hits them just right. They shine like the day they were minted. They are heavy in his palm, heavy enough to make his arm teeter like it rests on the fulcrum of a scale. Even a single coin in the center of his upturned hand leaves him trembling. They’ve never been so weighty before. They’ve never been so worthless. He lays them on a square of burlap, so they can dry beneath the sun.

The next item to be washed is the lump of stiff, black fabric that was once the thick veil attached to his belt. He pushes it under the water and it loosens, then he goes to work on it with the brush. The material is dark, and it flows beneath the water in slow-motion, as though being pushed by a soft nighttime wind.

—

The rising full moon encircles your head like a halo as you remain still beneath the cover of the black desert sky. Your hair, dark and shapeless against the stark white backdrop, rustles in the breeze.

You listened into the shell until your lungs screamed for air. The first breath you let slip from your lungs came out as a stutter. The first breath you let into your chest was drawn in as a sob. A tear rolled out from beneath your still-closed eye. It trailed slowly over your cheekbone, flushed red, but was wiped away by a gentle thumb.

Your eyes flew open and you pushed the shell into Lilac’s hands. He let you guide it up to his ear, and he closed his eyes as its cool surface rested against the side of his head. He stilled his breath and waited, just as you had.

The static that filled his ear swayed into focus like the tide. The gentle swish rang out throughout the shell and filled his head. It was a sound he had only ever heard stories of. Water lapping against the shore, like the pulsing of a heartbeat. Like the rhythm of a song on the wind. Like the sound of your voice breaking through his trance.

—

The dark stain does not come out. It’s lightened significantly, but as Lilac fans it out to dry, there’s an ugly cloud of brown spanning nearly the entire surface. He traces his fingers around the edges of the stain. It’d be easier to throw the whole thing out and get a new one.

He grabs his twin Chakrams from his side and inspects them. They, too, are stained, their razor edges more red than their normal steely silver. They’re cool to the touch, despite the heat.

—

The marketplace buzzed with life, filled with the calls of criers advertising their wares and the chatter among locals and tourists as they clinked about the shop stands. It was a constant, steady noise; not a whisper and not an uproar. It was static, like a rusty cooling unit sputtering to life in the sweltering afternoon. Like the calm but colossal weight of water creeping up a beach as the tide swelled in.

Lilac stumbled into the narrow street from an even narrower alleyway. He knocked his shoulder against the cool sandstone wall as he pushed himself upright. A damp sack dangled from his hip, still dripping blood into the dusty cobblestone beneath his feet. When Lilac pushed himself from the wall and started forward with all the grace of a newborn doe, his hand left a dark, smeared handprint.

His ears rang and the world tilted beneath his feet, while his legs went into autopilot and carried him toward his destination. The cacophony of the marketplace never ceased, even as eyes, so many of them, followed him down his path. Tourists shied away from the streets. Locals looked away as he came, then at him as he went. Shopkeepers leaned out from the red canopies of their stalls. Some glanced his way and turned back to their business, while others, wide and frightened, bore into the back of his head.

The buzzing of conversation beside him became hushed. Lilac was underwater, the rumble of alarmed voices all around him pulled him deeper and deeper below the surface until the edge of his vision turned black as night. His bleary mind fell down into the depths. The only sound in his head was that of the blood pulsing through his ears, drowning him beneath the torrent.

—

The Chakrams cleaned easily, even in the soiled water. They are quickly returned to deadly perfection. Lilac studies the blades, looking for any spots that he missed. A dirty weapon is poor showmanship. When he finds one, a small blot of dirt crusting the steel, he flicks a fingernail over it. It rings out with a soft metallic peal. White noise in the back of his head.

—

“Do you hear it?” you asked, cradling the back of his hand in yours.

Lilac nodded to the beat of the current that washed over the invisible shore.

“So much water, as far as the eye can see.” You threaded your fingers through his free hand. “They say you can’t see any land on the other side. It’s just water. Blue water meeting a blue horizon.”

You closed your eyes and saw yourself standing on a beach. The sand there was wet, not dry like the desert. The tide massaged your ankles as it washed over the ground beneath your feet. The air was cold and fresh in your lungs, and your nose was flooded with the bite of salt on the breeze that melded around your body like the lightest of fabrics.

Lilac pictured a beach, too. All he could see was you running down the beach, kicking up a spray of salty water in the red sunset with each joyful footstep.

“I will take you there.” Lilac clung to the image of your joy, your laughter fully drowning out the white noise. “We’ll see the ocean together.”

—

Plink.

A droplet of water splashes against the blade of his Chakram. Lilac turns the weapon over in his hand. The reflection of the sun flashes brilliantly against the shining steel. He instinctively squeezes his eyes shut as the brightness momentarily blinds him.

Plink.

Another drip, despite the clarity of the day. The liquid slides down the blade and drops unceremoniously into the tub. 

—

Plink.

You looked so small in the dark, narrow space, with your shoulders shrunk inward and your arms squeezed tightly against your chest. Your hands were clenched over the steel below your chin, and the metal just barely kissed your throat. Your fingers were so stiff, so tense that the entire length of your arms, all the way to your neck and shoulders, trembled. Lines of red drew themselves down the blade as you tightened your grip on the steel and tried to pull it away from your throat with all the strength you could muster.

Your eyes were trained on him, wild and frenzied, pupils constricted as your teeth chattered.

Plink.

The tear that rolled down your face dripped onto the scimitar skimming your jaw.

Lilac tightened his grip on his Chakrams, the sharp edges trained at the person before him. It was just a young man, barely out of his teens, who had a hand tangled firmly in your hair. He, too, had a wild look in his eyes. The hold he had on his sword’s hilt left his knuckles nearly as pale as his face, and there was no doubt his palms were as slick as his forehead. The man lurched back into the shadows, cornered and so very afraid as he tilted his blade back to meet your throat.

“You don’t want to do this.” Lilac was the first to speak, his tone measured and calm as he matched the man’s step back with a calculated step forward. “I can take you in breathing, or I can drag you in stiff.”

“Don’t come any closer!” the young man exclaimed. His voice shook and cracked.

Lilac stilled himself, even as his heart crashed against his chest and boomed in his ears like a seaside thunderstorm. The man was holding you to his chest like you were a shield, and cowering like a trapped animal.

All Lilac needed was a window for him to fling one of his weapons. The man would make a mistake sooner or later. He was so very young, face still plump from childhood, as scared and as pale as you were. He wasn’t a murderer, only a petty thief who stole from the wrong person. A moment of hesitation — or flat-out surrender — was inevitable. Lilac kept his eyes trained on the man, waiting for that perfect moment.

“Lilac,” you whimpered beneath tears. “Lilac, help me…”

“Shut up!” The man jerked your head back and curled his fingers deeper into your hair.

The angle at which he pulled you was perfect. With the man’s attention drawn away and the side of his neck exposed, Lilac flicked a Chakram forward, faster than lightning. The man didn’t even know what hit him as his hands jerked to the side to clutch his neck. His sword clattered against the wall where he threw it in his panic, and both it and the man fell to the ground.

—

Plink.

Lilac inhales sharply and holds his head as it throbs, squeezing his eyes tight with a pained grimace. Blood thunders through his ears like drums, beating his temples over and over until he doubles over and clutches the edge of the tub. He reaches for the next item to clean, clenching his teeth and struggling to breathe.

There is nothing left.

With his equipment washed, the water has run red. Lilac cannot see the bottom of the tub. The reflection of the sun is muted, drowning beneath the clouded liquid. The pale yellow of the sun and the deep gold of the sand pale before the stark red that stains the opaque water. Red like the desert sky. Red like imported wood. Red like the flush of your cheeks. Red like a shopkeep’s canopy. Red like an ocean sunset. Red like blood dripping down a blade. Red like death.

Lilac, clinging to the edge of the metal tub, watching his reflection like it’s a stranger staring back at him, drowns in the red.

—

It was a shame someone so young had to meet their end in such a bloody way.

Lilac leaned over the body and positioned his blade over the man’s hand. He balanced the sole of his foot on the flat edge inside the Chakram’s loop and pushed down. In one swift movement, he separated the dead man’s forefinger from his body with a soft crack. The finger was still warm when he plucked it from the ground, and Lilac was prompt to drop it into a sack at his hip. With the proof of his completed job secured, he was ready to collect his payment for the quarry and get you as far away from there as he could.

When he turned around, Lilac expected to see you leaning against the wall, scared and shaking and ready to take his hand. Ready for him to make everything alright like he promised he always would. What he saw instead was so much worse than he could ever imagine.

You were on your back, mouth agape as your body seized. Lilac's blades clattered to the ground as he dropped to your side. Beneath his legs, the growing puddle gushed out and pooled around his knees.

The open wound on your neck was a long, perfectly straight line, a clean slice made in a split second when the man threw his sword to the side to grasp at his own wound. You weakly palmed at the cut, gasping in ragged, shallow breaths as your hands slipped right off the crimson that spilled out like water from a spigot.

He tried to stop it with his hands, first. The blood pulsed out from beneath his palms despite the pressure he put on it. It slicked his hands and leaked through the gaps between his fingers, coating him in its scorching reach. The bite of metal overpowered his personal fragrance, burning his nostrils and clogging his throat as he pressed his palms against your skin.

It kept coming, even as he clasped his hands tight, so tight, over your neck. Lilac ripped the soft lavender veil from his belt and wadded it up, frantically pushing it against your throat. The fabric plugged the wound for a few moments before it, too, became sopping wet.

You looked at Lilac with eyes nearly popping out of your head. Sweat covered your face in a film, shining on your skin as it paled under the blood loss. Your inhales became thick, and your exhales came out in gurgles.

“L… Li…” It takes all your strength to flex your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

Lilac shushes you. “Don’t speak. Just breathe.”

You attempted to nod, but all you could manage was a tremble. You clenched your mouth shut and gritted your teeth so hard they felt like they could crack. Breathing through your nose, you stared up at the sky and clenched your hands into weak fists.

Stop, stop, it has to stop, Lilac silently begged, willing the cascade of red to cease from prayer alone. He’d seen blood like this, caused by his hand, but it’s never sickened him to this level. It’d never made his heart feel like it was going to jump right out of his body. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he held his breath so the scent and the wetness and the fact that there was so much being spilled from something so small so quickly didn’t cause his stomach to vacate itself.

The veil was so heavy under his hands, so full that it no longer absorbed any more blood. Excess dripped down from the dark edges and tassels as it overflowed, leaving the crimson that was still flowing freely from your throat to find another place to pool. 

He focused all his attention on stopping the bleeding that he hardly noticed when your shakes started to die down. The rapid rise and fall of your chest became stunted, and each exhale left a few beats of stillness in your chest before lurching back up with another gasp. Your palms were face-down on the dirty stone ground, fingers arched, no longer curled into the butt of your hands.

Lilac nudged your cheek. “Stay awake.”

You took a few rapid breaths and whimpered in confirmation of his words.

The flow was finally coming to a halt beneath the veil — as if that was any consolation. The pool beneath your neck seeped into the cracks of the cobblestone ground, painting the smooth rocks a shade darker than their typical gray. Lilac’s hands had become sticky as the wetness baked and dried under the blazing desert heat. If he could get you to a point where you could securely cover the wound while he got help, you would have a chance. He just needs—

“A little longer,” he says, watching your chest stutter in acknowledgment.

Lilac copied your breathing, counting the seconds between each breath.

One, two… one, two…

“Do you remember what I told you?”

One… one, two… one, two…

“I’ll take you to see the ocean.”

One, two…

“We’ll sail out to a distant island.”

One, two…

“We can watch the blue in every direction, as far as the eye can see.”

One, two, three… one, two…

“Just keep thinking of the ocean.”

One, two, three…

“Think of the ocean.”

Four, five, six…

“Can you hear it?”

Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…

Lilac stopped counting. He stilled, hands still pressed to your throat, watching the sweat on your face dry and the color bleed from your face. He listened for the sound of your breathing. For a whimper. For any indication of consciousness.

He listened for a long time.

—

Drip.

The tub trembles under his grip. The soiled water sloshes around as Lilac shakes, every muscle stretched taut and lit on fire. His fingers clamp down over the sharp edge. The metal breaks his skin. He does not feel it.

Drip. Drip.

His heart pounds in his throat as he closes his eyes. The scene from the alleyway plays itself out, again and again, seared into the back of his eyelids. With every blink, all he can see is you, staring into the sky, collapsed and lying still on the dirty ground. Your eyes, so wide and scared and pleading for help, his help, losing their light and becoming blank as your entire body seized and you choked and gurgled on hot, slick red. 

Emotions are weakness.

Drip drip drip.

Lilac is a machine. He obeys his orders and executes his programs. He was an autonomous being that did as it was told without a single thought or opinion about the whole ordeal. Kill. Get paid. Kill. Get paid. A looping function that never returned zero, that never reached the termination protocol. Kill. Get paid. Kill. Get paid. Numb to the world and to the victims of his hands. A simple cycle that he went and ruined, all because he caved into the weakness of emotion. Because he let himself grow weak and left his walls to weather against the soft rain that held him in its sweet embrace. Anger will kill you in the end.

Drip drip drip.

He grew weak. He was weak. He should’ve known you would follow him, always concerned for his safety, always refusing to believe that he could handle himself. He should’ve known you’d be found. You did not grow up on the golden rule. You were never taught to stalk the streets, always checking behind your back and honing your senses to detect even the slightest disturbance. He should’ve known his happiness would be used against him. It was only a matter of time before his weak spot was discovered. If he wasn’t weak, so damn weak, you wouldn’t be rotting in some dank alleyway, or buried out in the sands, or whatever his employer did to your body when he sent his men to clean up the scene. You could’ve been happy and safe and none the wiser to the crushing numbness of his heart, had he not let himself indulge in the first shred of happiness he’d felt in years. Sadness will kill you in the end.

Drip. Drip drip drip drip.

The tears flow freely now, the taste of salt mixing with the smell of metal. The barriers he worked so hard to build eroded away in your touch. The numbness, once replaced by a warm morning’s bliss, evolves into a dark ache that eats him from the inside out. Like a storm raging off the coast, like the wind beating on a sail, the emotion breaks through the fortifications. The stronghold of his honed mind collapses. Lilac cries and gasps and shakes for the first time since he was a child.

He was weak.

He was happy.

Nearly all his life, he’d been underwater, pulled along by the current, granted just enough light to see where he was headed. Nothing else mattered except moving forward. Then, he was pulled out of the water without warning, thrust into the world that was just beyond the surface. A part of him that he had locked in a box and buried in the desert was unearthed. It was chaotic. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. 

It was you.

It came like a shock of lightning. Like a tidal wave crashing against the shore. When he was with you, the air was that much sweeter. The earth was that much softer. His heart was that much lighter.

Happiness was beautiful and so much bigger than he could ever imagine. It was a blooming in his chest, like the petals of a flower opening up to the sunshine. It was the cool moon shedding its light over the ceaseless plains of sand. It was the ocean meeting the sky, blue meeting blue, everywhere you looked, stretching infinitely beyond the horizon and winding around your heart until it was part of that infinity, all-encompassing, all-embracing.

Lilac never believed he could feel love. He thought it had died — that he had killed it, over and over again — just like his targets. He thought that everything he worked toward was meant to kill it and ensure that it stayed dead. It was still there, however; a seed burrowed inside a heart trained to be still. It waited for you to come and nurture it, to let it grow and spread until he was love, open and ceaseless and infinite.

And then he really did kill it. It really did die, choking on its own blood as it pleaded for his help, begging for him to save its life.

That blood is on his hands. He will carry the feeling of sickly wetness on his skin, in his heart, for the rest of his life. Every time he feels even an iota of happiness, he will be reminded that his love is dead, buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, and it’s his fault. The numbness buzzes in his ears. Like crackling static. Like the ocean’s tide. Like your laughter, sweet on the wind and full of joy. Like your breathing, shallow and ragged, and the moment it stops endlessly replaying in his head.

Happiness might as well kill you in the end.

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 9

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader   Warnings: One big boy word. Late stage violence (like, literally the last line). Word count: 3,122.   Chapter Summary: Guess it’s time to meet your maker. A/N: Dun, dun, dun!!!!!

Ao3 if you prefer

Once again, it was Friday. She woke up a little later than usual because she was working from home on the advise of the Winchesters. She noticed that she was running low on body wash while she showered and added this to her list. She purposefully picked two odd socks to wear—one pastel pink and one baby blue—because under her jeans nobody would notice. Not that she planned on seeing too many people. The day was full of the usual formalities that she expected out of every single day, which she supposed is why she felt so peaceful. Never would she have suspected that this serenity she had found was the calm before the storm. Never would Y/N have thought that this was the tranquility some people experience on the day before they die.

“Like hell, is it,” you respond to the inside of your car as your foot presses a little harder on the gas pedal. Your speedometer zips past the ‘within 10%’ of the speed limit you’d normally drive at until you’re going 90 in a 70. You are, like she says, calm. You’re a great big blanket of calm even speeding along the interstate. Because you know exactly where you’re going. A little suburb that backs onto Lake Easter in Des Moines.

You’d almost hit the road the day before except by the time you’d street viewed the home you were traveling to, memorized three different routes, and talked yourself in and out of going several times; it was too late. What should have been a good day yesterday—a successful rookie mission and an unexpected kiss—had become all about her. Emma Effiel. You’d looked up her social media and scrolled back as far as a Supernatural convention she’d been to some years ago. You’d read an article in her local paper about a pie baking competition she’d won last summer. The paper hadn’t understood her quote as a reference to some books because they had printed it as is: “Dean loves pie.” They hadn’t even questioned who Dean was. Or the reporter must have asked at the time but she’d pretended to know a Dean.

There is a Dean, obviously. The actual Dean. He’s working. He’d called you before you left to tell you they think they have a lead on the shifter. Another death on the other side of town that fits the pattern. They think they can catch this thing now before the insurance claim is even submitted, and put a stop to this. They also think you’re at home, safe and sound, not driving a hundred and something miles to run a quick errand and save your own life.

If everything goes right by the end of the day there will be one less monster in the world and one less voice in your head.

Although it’s not a voice anymore. It’s Emma. She’s in your head.

You slow down when you take exit 9 onto shorter roads with fewer lanes, slowing down is a necessity to not kill yourself on the way to saving yourself. Eventually, you’re chugging along two-lane roads amongst other people going about their lives. A few red lights, some traffic, and then you’re turning onto her road and parking on the street outside her house.

You didn’t know she was home, technically, but there’s a truck in front of her garage. The bumper sticker says ‘driver picks the music, shotgun shuts their cakehole’ and you figure it’s a pretty safe bet that she’s inside.

Driving is easy but there’s a lump in your throat when it comes to actually walking to her front door. You’ve been walking since you were 11 months old. This is the hardest it’s ever been to move one foot in front of the other.

Her door is whitewashed wood with a window in the middle. You notice doors because you stand in front of so many, this one just makes you wonder if she’ll recognize you through the glass. If you look how she imagined, or if her brain will be able to even leap to something as crazy as you existing.

She has a doorbell so you press the small rubber button with a lone shaky finger. You hear a classic ding dong reverberate inside her home, although dulled by the walls.

She doesn’t take long to answer the door and once she does you’re paralyzed.

“Hello?”

Even with that one word, it’s her. You’ve heard a thousand or more words in that same vaguely midwestern accent. The interesting thing is actually hearing it outside of your head. Usually, she’s amplified, echoing, taking up the whole of your brain. In front of you, she’s so, to use her own phrase, achingly normal.

“Are you selling something? Because I’m sorry but I’m not interested.”

The door in her hand moves an inch and that triggers you, the thought of this door closing.

“Hi, my name is Y/N Y/L/N, I believe you’re writing a story about me.” You hadn’t planned what to say, you’d been more concerned with getting here, although you suppose that’s not a bad place to start.

She narrows her eyes at you but the corners of her lips curl slightly, caught in surprise and thinking it’s a prank. “Did-Did someone put you up to this? Is this a joke?”

“No-one put me up to this. My name is Y/N and you’re writing a story about me, or about killing me I guess. I’m an insurance adjuster with a crappy car and I drink tea instead of coffee. Yesterday I visited a bank with Dean Winchester. Oh and there’s this.” You lean down and pull the hem of your jeans above your ankles, enough to show her your mismatched socks. One pale pink and one baby blue.

She looks between the two strips of fabric peeking out of your shoes. Her bottom lip trembles and her chest shudders to a stop. And then, when she brings her line of sight back up to your face, she faints.

It happens quickly. One minute she's standing there and the next she's collapsed on the floor like a rag doll. The only thing you can think of is what if someone sees this, so logically you do the only thing you can, you step inside and around her. She's only out for a few seconds, she's opening her eyes by the time you click the door closed.

You go through it again. She's woken up half groggy, half scared, and still questioning who you were. With the addition of now asking why you were inside her home.

The thing is, she knows it's you. That's why she'd fainted. Each time she asks is only confirming the obvious fact. It takes a few minutes but eventually, she admits it out loud. She knows you are who you claim to be, and she knows because an image of you was inside her head. You’d laughed at that, almost certain that she didn’t mean it in quite the same way as you've had to deal with. But that was a whole new can of worms that you hadn’t covered yet.

“How did you find me?” She’s got her legs tucked into her chest and her hands wrapped around a heavy glass filled with some amber colored alcohol. Possibly bourbon but you weren’t going to question her, even if it's still eleven in the morning. She’d made you a tea and although you hadn’t told her, she’d made it exactly how you liked it.

“That, well, wasn’t me actually. I have a friend, Stan, he’s done some work for me before. I asked him to try and find you. I didn’t know if he would manage it, I only had your blog to go on.”

Another gulp of her drink. “My blog? You-you’ve read my blog?”

“Yes. I’ve read it.” You state the fact as simply as possible in short, sharp sentences. She is struggling to some things still by now you’re used to a little crazy.

“But you said you hear-hear me writing it? Did you hear me writing earlier?”

“When you casually mentioned that I die tomorrow? Yes. I don’t hear, God, not all of it. I don’t know why…” you let out this laugh, all strangled and broken. It’s a laugh but you are not happy. The bitterness you’ve buried deep down comes crawling out of your throat. “I don’t know why I hear you at all! I don’t hear all of it though. And there are things I didn’t do, like-like I didn’t sleep with Dean.”

There’s something that looks like relief on her face, which she explains when you pointedly stare at her, “oh I wouldn’t have felt good about forcing you to…you know.”

“You’re planning on killing me.” You deadpan.

She looks like she has no idea what to say to that and you have a thousand things to say, that's kind of why you did the drive, so you continue. “Don’t get me wrong, I kissed him and I think I like him but how do I know when I can hear you? You’re in my head whenever he’s around telling me what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking and… how do I know what’s real and what's your imagination?”

Emma is staring at the melting ice cube in her almost empty glass like she hasn’t heard a word you said, lost in her disbelief. You let her stare. You're trying to be patient, you can appreciate that you’d had a lot longer to get used to this than she had.

“I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re sitting there in front of me, drinking my tea. Talking about my story like it’s…”

“Real?”

She nods, afraid of what might come out of her mouth if she opens it again.

You take a sip of your tea. “Now you know how I felt when I read Supernatural and then Sam and Dean showed up.”

“Wait, you’ve read Supernatural?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shakes her head and you realize that she’d never mentioned it. Your imminent death sure, but she’d never mentioned the books you read and how disarming it had been to meet the characters from them. Only that it was disarming to find out monsters existed at all.

“Fuck, that means Sam and Dean are?”

You manage to smile at that and the idea of her finding your existence to be more impressive than theirs. Even with her bumper sticker. “Yeah, they’re real too. They’re hunting the shifter literally as we speak.”

She creases her brow, “they’re not? They didn’t want to come here?” She must be thinking back to Chuck, to the story of the writer in the book, and how Sam and Dean couldn’t help but investigate.

“I didn’t tell them about you. I mean, I kind of thought I was going crazy at first. Even when you were right about everything I only thought you were right because you were a figment of my imagination, or like, a tumor. I only realized you were,” you wave a hand in her direction, tired of saying the word ‘real’ again, “when I found the story. It’s good, by the way. The story I mean. I read a lot of books, I guess you already knew that, and this is up there. That’s not biased because it’s about me. I thought it would have been weird but actually it was nice to see my life through your eyes. You made me more important.”

Emma nods somehow understanding even if she has no clue, “I can’t believe you read it. Although if we’re playing the game of what I can’t believe the most, it’s definitely still sitting here talking to you.”

Your mind goes back to that part of the story you hadn’t heard but you’d read on your phone. The paragraph had stuck in your head when you read it and in the days since it repeats at particularly quiet moments.

Y/N had never considered herself the main character, not even in her own life. Main characters, those in the books she read, were always so interesting. A tragic past or a troubled present and the perfect amount of development for an interesting future. These characters kept her reading in bed till three in the morning because she needed to know how they would handle their next danger or heartbreak. Or how would that particularly brilliant one figure out who the murderer was with nothing to go on. Main characters could be anything or anyone and next to them Y/N felt so helplessly ordinary. She woke up five days a week and went to her job, she paid her bills on time and went for groceries on Sunday mornings. She always thought she was a supporting character, black and white in a world of color.

She was, of course, absolutely irrefutably wrong.

You hadn’t believed it, a part of you still didn’t believe it now, but that was before you saw the way Emma looked at you. Granted she was the person who wrote it, and yet it was still there in her eyes. Awe. Past the shock and disbelief, this woman was in awe of sitting in a room with her main character. And you remember how you felt reading the story, how much you’d wanted to know what happens. Not only because you wanted to know how you were going to die but because in her story you really were the leading lady. Sam and Dean, the characters you’d poured yourself over in the books, were playing second string to your story arc. You remember how beautiful her words had been and by association, how beautiful you’d been.

That's when you decide to ask the question. The one that you've lost sleep thinking about, the one that you came all this way to ask. Except as it comes tumbling out of your mouth you're not quite cautionary. You're eager to find out.

“How is it going to end?” 

Your house is quiet when you arrive home. It’s barely dark outside but you’ve driven for more hours than you’re used to. Exhausted does not come close describing how you feel. It’s more than a physical exhaustion—although your back is definitely mad at you—after you’d spent hours talking to Emma you’re mentally ready to check out.

Not check out of life, although, in the end, you’d left that decision up to her.

She let you read where she was up to, which was about ready to finish the penultimate chapter. Then she’d mentioned she’d have to revise it now. Even though it was perfect. Even though you found yourself smiling at the screen because it was that perfect.

In all the work to find her, you never stopped to consider that maybe you shouldn’t find her. You weren’t ready to die but you’re finding it hard to decide if you’d get a better-written death than the one written by Emma Effiel.

Yes, that’s an absolutely crazy thing to think and Emma had told you it was crazy when you’d dare to say it to her. And it is crazy. In the end, you'd argued with yourself while storming around her coffee table, making cases for both endings and neither endings.

There was a reason you'd left this decision up to her. You couldn't make it.

If she killed you then at least you’d live forever in literature, and if she didn’t, at least you might get some peace and quiet. Although, if she does kill you, you told her to find a book publisher already so it would at least be worth it.

You should eat but after weeks of a thousand reasons to not sleep your bed is finally calling you. Which is why your phone rings.

“Dean?”

“You want the good news or the bad news?” He sounds more tired than you, not that it's a competition. He's just winning anyway.

You kick your shoes off, “there’s good news?”

A pause that could be a shoddy connection. “Alright, you got me. The bad news ain’t so bad though. The lead was a bust, the guy had been wormfood for weeks but it's not the end of the world. We'll find it."

There's a knock at your door, "thanks for letting me know. Listen, I've gotta go, someones here and then I am going to sleep for a really long time. Talk tomorrow?”

"Someone's there?" You wonder if he's always so nosy. You don’t remember that in the books.

Pushing yourself against the door, you check the peephole, "it's only Laura, she’s probably dropping off some new case for me or something. I am still supposed to be working remember."

Dean must hear how calm you are at your friend showing up because he sighs all relieved down the other end of the phone and Laura knocks again. "Sorry, I really have to go. I'll call you tomorrow Dean."

There's some muttering with someone else and then a faint, "sure," as you hang up. Not that it matters. You could see Dean tomorrow, you hoped to see him tomorrow. In case it does end up as your last day on earth.

Laura grins when you open up, "Hi Y/N. Had something to stop by and bring you."

"And there I was thinking that you missed me.” You feign hurt in your voice. “It’s fine I've got some paperwork anyway, think you could take it in on Monday for me?"

She follows you inside and the last thing you hear is the lock close and, "sure thing. Perfect actually."

You turn back to Laura with a small stack of forms from the bank in your hands. That’s when she rams the butt of her gun, a gun you hadn't seen, against the side of your head.

Continue to the Final Chapter. 

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