#and then several knife wounds to the gut and heart :(

[loverboyromanroy]

sublime

[bwat5-blog]

The Cost Of Humanity: The Price Caitlyn pays

**Spoilers For All Of Arcane**

The discourse around Caitlyn's fall from grace and eventual redemption continues to be all over the place. I honestly struggle to think of examples from recent media that can compare when talking about the complexity and humanity of her arc, yet people continue to paint her with their broad-stroke, virtue signaling generalizations. Things like this, are why I started doing this in the first place.

Because as much as I have come to love doing these deep dives, and these character analyses, and how I learn along the way and learn new insights from all of you, peoples determination in disrespecting such a masterfully crafted story that is so full of heart, and depth, offends me to my core. As I have said repeatedly throughout my posts like a grouchy nerdy broken record, GOOD STORIES MATTER.

This is not about ships, it is not about favorite characters, and it is not about your right to like, or dislike her character. If you feel questioned by this post, I am not questioning your opinion of a character, I am questioning your ability empathize and see the humanity in a twenty-four year old girl, who has had every pillar upon which she bases her perception of the world VIOLENTLY changed.

To that end, what I am discussing this evening is the cost of Caitlyn's mistakes regarding her assuming the role of Commander and what follows. This is not about how she redeems herself, although I have spoken on that and do feel they did a masterful job in achieving it. This is not a deep dive into her fall from grace, the causes, or rather or not I believe it was justified. This is solely to address the following tidbit of lunacy and all of its variations that are still floating around.

"So Caitlyn's arc is that she becomes a war criminal and gasses kids and goes full KKK and she gets to ride off into the sunset with Vi with the only consequence being an eye patch?"

Physical:

As the easiest of consequences to measure, let's take a look at the effects Caitlyn suffers to her body as a result of her mistakes. For this I will focus on the battle at the end of the show, although she is certainly wounded in various ways in the commune.

Maddie's Betrayal- We will speak more on this when I move to mental, but Maddie literally hits her in the head twice with a rifle stock. Concussions anyone? Skull Fractures?

Stabbed - Stabbed in the stomach with Ambessa's blade up to the hilt. Now I am not a doctor and freely admit that I know nothing about the severity in the wound in terms of placement. And in a world with shimmer healing and such things obviously we can't strictly hold to real world rules. But a simple google search suggested the following as possible long term complications of such a wound: " intestinal obstruction due to scar tissue adhesions, intra-abdominal abscesses, bowel perforation, delayed bleeding from damaged blood vessels, abdominal hernias, chronic pain"

Kicked- Kicked square in the midsection with a knife in her gut. Seems healthy

Head slammed into concrete- Ambessa using her skull-crusher legs sweeps Caitlyn off of her feet slamming her head into the ground (Please Note: Caitlyn is shown clearly struggling at this point tremendously to rise)

Kicked Again- Once again kicked in the midsection with a knife in her gut

Ankle- Ambessa pins Caitlyn's ankle to the ground by force and kicks her leg out from under her before backhanding her

Headbutt- After dazing her with the backhand, Ambessa full on headbutts her with her mask on

Kicked yet again- This time completely off of her feet

Loses her left eye- Her sacrifice to stop Ambessa.

Returning to the stab wound- She did all of this with the knife in her. Tearing and exacerbating that wound.

This was one fight. Don't mistake me, Caitlyn has become an absolute warrior as the show has gone on and is an amazing fighter. But she twenty four, and only a short time ago was still very much in her sheltered life. Ambessa Medarda is a LITERAL WARLORD.

Mental/Emotional:

**I'm sure there are things I'm going to leave off of this. But this is just what I am thinking of in the moment. This is NOT a bashing on her list. This is what I feel the kind and courageous woman we know she always been is going to have to work through in the aftermath.**

Violet- Thankfully she and Vi have found their way back to one another. And while I love their reuniting, I don't think its unfair to suggest there is still quite a bit of healing ahead of them. Vi was not without blame in what happened between them (not justifying what Cait did to her at all, just that neither of them are perfect and were going through a terrible time). But ultimately Caitlyn has to make peace with the fact that she left the woman she loves crying alone in that chamber, and that that heartbreak sent Vi into a spiral that very easily could have killed her. When you add to that the loss of Vander, Isha and Jinx in Vi's life these are all things a woman like Cait is going to struggle not to blame herself completely for.

Zaun- The early show does an excellent job establishing that Caitlyn does not share the classist and oppressive attitudes of others in her social circle. But at her most lost, she bears responsibility for the full military occupation of Zaun, imprisoning its citizens, and likely the death of more than a few at the hands of the Noxians who Caitlyn allowed to be there . And that is to say nothing of the actions of the strike team, or that it is Vi's home.

Maddie- The woman she invited into her bed to distract herself from the loss of Vi, came as close as someone could have to executing her right then and there. Someone she never realized was a spy, prepared to shoot her the back of the neck. I think the trauma here is obvious.

Death Toll- The deathtoll and destruction of the war are going to weigh on her. They just are. It is clearly not actually all her fault, But as I have stated, and as anyone who pays attention will have seen, Caitlyn IS A GOOD PERSON. Yes, I'm sorry, I know some of you want to pretend otherwise because you have the emotional depth of a teaspoon. But she is. And there is simply no way she does not feel the weight of the loss brought on in part by a woman she allowed to seize control.

Mental trauma from injuries- On top of the base physical component of her wounds, Caitlyn was quite nearly beaten to death. Speaking as someone who has been in a bad fight (nowhere near this obviously) it's not something you just forget. Not to mention the impact to her shooting which has been such a major part of her since she was younger.

I could go farther with all of this but you get the idea. Caitlyn is so.... so young. I and so many others have gone on at length detailing her arc, her grief, her trauma and all of the other components that make up this part of her story. I encourage you to read them if you are interested. This list of her suffering and of the suffering she will feel guilt for is not about what she does or does not deserve. As stated, that's not why I wrote this. I wrote this because as I stated in a much shorter look at this topic, you literally have to try to miss the consequences of Caitlyn's actions. You have to blind yourself in the name of being able to place whatever hashtag makes you feel righteous in condemning her character. If you want to say the reparations to Zaun were not fully addressed in the course of the show, okay I can give you that. But I would remind of you two things:

Caitlyn surrenders her family seat on the council to Sevika. For the first time as we understand it, the undercity now has a voice.

This show is not the end of the story. From the beginning Arcane has been our door into this universe, not out of it.

Listen folks, I'm not actually crazy. I understand it's a tv show. But as I have and will always continue to say, good stories matter. There is a reason fables and epics stretch back throughout our history as a species. Yes, of course for entertainment, yes of course to impart lessons or wisdom. But that belief that we can conquer our own darkness, that we can stand in the breach against those who would bring death to the innocent, and that can find redemption, these beliefs and many more have guided the best and worst parts of us for all time.

As always, thank you so much to any of you who take the time to read the rantings of a lunatic. I cannot express to you all the joy I have felt engaging in this community and celebrating this epic tale. I can't wait to see what they have for us next. Until next time, keep standing up for the stories that stay with us.

[thedepthsoffandomminds]

The cold truth

Artful Dodger one shot. Jack Dawkins x fem reader

Before Fagin's return, before Belle, before it all there was y/n. The first woman to break Jack's heart. He kept her portrait in a silver locket, the chain hanging on his bed. One day, long after her operation Belle sits in the hospital going over medical text when Hetty comes into her. Seeing the locket in Belle's hand she tells her the story.

"She was a lovely girl, a nurse here. Odd though because she was married. So many of us live a solitary life but not y/n. She was such a wonderful spirit. I'm convinced she could make the dead dance with her joy. None of us could have known. Jack was the first to notice the changes, they were so small at first. Y/n had always had the most beautiful red hair, it was so thick she could hardly contain it and would have it tied several plates pinned about her head. I remember Jack coming to me one morning, the spirals were gone. It was all chopped off up to her shoulders. Y/n wouldn't tell us what happened.

Then it was the bruises. Poking out of her dress on her neck, her arms you know. She just kept saying she was clumsy, but we spent hours with her and none of us ever saw her even trip. Jack tries to ask her once but she brushed him off.

I don't know if it was her original joy or the subsequent lack of it, but the doctor seemed fixated on her. He needed to know what was happening.

One time he bumped into her, knocking her ribs and the touch sent y/n to the floor. Shocked by the reaction Jack took her aside and checked her over. Y/n had a bruise that covered her whole left side. Angry and red, purple, blue. Still she wouldn't tell us a thing. Jack took it upon himself to look after her. Noting that she would often work a whole day without a bite of food he began making extra lunch and sitting with her.

He would talk about her when she wasn't around. Retelling her jokes and talking of her beauty.

Of course we know now that it was her husband. He cut her hair off with an axe. Said she was too vain about her appearance and a nurse didn't need long hair. The beatings were worse. He would attack her for any little mistakes. Her ribs? That was because she had burnt dinner one night. He was an awful man. We only found out because Jack found her wandering the streets on his way home for the cat and bagpipes. He had kicked her out of their house. I don't remember what for, but Jack found her and he took care of her. By then the only time I saw her happy was when they were sat together. She told him everything and he promised to help her. Said she could have a bed in our nurses quarters. She even appeared happy for a while, the two of em did.

A week or so later she went home to collect her things, convinced her husband would be at work. He wasn't.

She managed to get back here. I'll never know how she made it. One broken leg, a fractured elbow and a knife in her gut. She did though, she came stumbling in. I think I screamed when I saw her. Jack rushed her into the theatre, but this was about a year before you came along. There was nothing he could do with the knife wound. That damn blade was wide enough to take down an elephant. Ripped her up so badly inside. She couldn't breathe and the blood was pouring into her lungs.

Jack tried and tried until she asked him to stop. Exhausted and covered in her blood, Jack was ready to collapse himself. She held tight to his hand and looked into his eyes.

"No, no y/n, you gotta fight this. You can't die." Jack begged her.

"Jack, I have to go. I'm sorry. You can't save me." Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. Jack held on to her. I had hoped his will alone might make God knit her back together. My faith took a knock that day and I'm not afraid to admit it. The look on that boys face when they insisted on taking her away. Tim had to hold him to keep Jack from following her body to the grave.

We all changed after that day. The first time one of our own bad died so brutally. Jack wasn't the same. He threw himself into his work, his competition with Sneed.

You know there are times when he still visits her grave. Maybe that's why he was so desperate to save you, Lady Belle. Jack's poor heart couldn't take another love being ripped away from him. It's a lovely portrait of her. " She finishes by glancing over Belle's shoulder at the lockett.

"he's in prison, so you think, do you think you could take me to her grave?" Belle asks.

It's a small wooden cross with her name carved into it.

"we couldn't afford a real headstone. " Hetty explains. Belle bent to touch the wood, running her fingers over the carved wood.

"What happened to the husband?"

"Got himself hanged for his troubles three weeks after. It took three hours for him to die. Come on now miss we should get you back before you're missed." Hetty reminded her.

"of course. I shall bring y/n flowers tomorrow."

"very good Milady "

[bow-of-aros]

One Minute More

Summary:

What if Agent Curt Mega set the timer on the bomb for four minutes instead of three?

Yeah I watched Spies Are Forever again and was seized with a desperate need to make everything better. Also, this was supposed to be like 1k words at most. I just need them to be okay SO BAD. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!! Hope that y'all enjoy <33

Owen fell.

God, what had Curt been thinking?! He hadn’t, is what Owen would tell him. He’d gotten all arrogant and cocky and dropped a banana peel next to a safety guard that he’d dismantled like a fucking idiot.

Curt nearly threw himself down after Owen as he lunged to catch him. His arm was outstretched as far as it would go and he could feel the brush of Owen’s fingertips against his own as he fell out of reach. Blood rushed in his ears, but he could still make out the shape of his name on Owen’s lips before he connected with the floor.

For a moment, everything froze. Curt had the blueprints and the timer on the bomb was set for four minutes, three of which had surely passed by now. He should leave, Cynthia would expect him to put himself and the information over the life of who she thought of as merely an ally.

But then his eye caught on the banana peel that was still up here when Owen wasn’t, then on the still open safety barricades that Curt had forced Owen to leave, and everything snapped back into focus.

This was his fault, and he was not leaving without his partner.

The sound of the sirens blared through the air, punctuated by panicked screams and gunshots that were far too frantic to come anywhere close to hitting their mark. Curt refused to waste another second as he slid down railings and skipped steps, taking risks with even less abandon than usual.

He ducked as some pissed off Russian scientist took note of him and fired a few direct shots that embedded themselves into the wall right behind him. Curt dropped down low, quickly lined up his aim, and took him out with one clean shot to the head.

The stairs shook around him, his subconscious clock alerting him that he had maybe fifty seconds before the silo came down on top of him.

Stupid. Curt was being so stupid.

But then his eyes flickered down and caught on Owen’s prone form, kept from an even more fatal fall due to being caught on a half-closed safety guard. He’s never been more grateful for anything in his life than he was for Owen’s insistence to spare the rest of the silo from harm in this moment.

Suddenly, the breath was knocked out of him, and it was hard to tell whether it was from the burly guy throwing him into the wall, or the fact that Curt could’ve sworn that he just saw Owen draw in a breath.

A fist drives itself into his gut and he decides that it’s probably a mix of both.

“Get the fuck out of my way.” Curt doesn’t even bother with any of the fancy gadgets he has on him, opting for a swift uppercut that has the man stumbling back followed by pouring all of his fear and desperation into a kick to his chest that sends him flying over the railing.

He doesn’t even wait to see him fall past Owen before he’s on the move again, shoving, shooting, and stabbing his way through the hysteria.

That isn’t to say that nobody lands any hits on him. Curt’s pretty sure that he has at least two fractured ribs, is bleeding from a various assortment of knife wounds, and would guess that the burning across his arm is from a bullet. He can’t tell if it’s a graze or fully lodged into bone, and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting to Owen.

Thirty seconds, a voice whispers, and Curt’s heart sinks.

There’s still two more sets of stairs to go down and several people intent on killing him coming up them.

An idea pops into his head, and Curt doesn’t let himself think twice before he jumps.

As he falls, his first thought is that Cynthia is going to kill him for this if he doesn’t die either from the impact or the sheer dumbassery of his actions catching up to him and he just misses the mark entirely. But he’s taken worse risks with less on the line before, and he can’t bring himself to regret it.

He was taught how to fall, which sounds silly, but in his line of work being thrown large distances for any reason was one of the many hazards he had to adapt to. It’s all instinct now, he relaxes as much as he’s physically able to before landing on the balls of his feet.

As the sharp pain of impact begins to shoot up his legs, he falls onto his side, bringing his arms up to guard his head as he rolls away from the edge.

Twenty-five seconds.

Curt scrambles to his feet and, yep, his ankles are twisted at best, but he’s going to wring every last drop of adrenaline coursing through him to get them out of here. He grabs Owen’s nearly fully-loaded gun and takes out the people on the stairs sill looking down at him in shock in quick succession.

Being the best shot in the American Secret Service has its benefits.

Twenty seconds.

Owen’s heavier than he thought he’d be. Dense muscle disguised by a lithe frame and the phrase dead weight hits Curt like truck. Sure, he’s carried Owen before, but he’s always had enthusiastic help from his partner.

That image is quickly pushed from his mind as the fear of never seeing it again seeps into him, and Curt focuses on steading Owen on his shoulder as he stumbles.

Fifteen seconds.

Each step sends pain roiling through him. The extra weight isn’t doing all his injuries any favours, especially the damage he’d wrought on his legs, but Owen’s called him the most stubborn bastard to grace the Earth and Curt intends on earning that moniker.

With one hand busy keeping Owen secured, the other one works to pull him up the railing as fast as he can physically muster.

Ten seconds.

Suddenly, Curt is hit with a sense of startling clarity. The room goes silent, everyone except him and Owen either gone or dead, the blaring alarm fading away and leaving only the staccato sound of his breaths as his company. The pain fades away and a sudden burst of energy surges through him.

Five seconds.

His legs pump in time with the ticking clock as he races up the steps. Curt swings himself around the final corner, just barely recovering his footing before crashing into a wall

Four seconds.

Just a few more steps and then Curt’s out the door with enough awareness to ensure that he doesn’t hit Owen’s head off of the doorframe.

Three seconds.

His legs threaten to buckle as the sky opens up around them, but he forces himself to keep going because, right now, every step counts.

Two seconds.

In a complete disregard of protocol, Curt doesn’t bother to speak in code when he flips on the small radio that Barb insisted he take with him.

One second.

“I need an emergency extract immediately. Owen’s—”

BOOM!

As they fly through the air, Curt’s last few moments of consciousness are spent tucking Owen into his chest and angling his back to the ground.

The cold Russian dirt rushed up to meet him and an unintelligible, high-pitched voice framed the impact that wracked his body.

At least I got Owen out.

And then it went dark.

Curt woke up and, for a brief moment, basked in the comfort of an actual bed.

And then Oh holy fucking shit why does everything hurt?!

His eyes shot open and immediately squeeze back shut after being assaulted with fluorescent lights. The second attempt is much more cautious, the bright room slowly filtering in through the gaps in his eyelashes before it felt safe enough to take it all in.

Immediately, Curt recognized one of the various American Secret Service medical facilities that they’ve managed to nestle in nooks and crannies around the world. It was only slightly better than a regular hospital comfort-wise, but at least the doctors and nurses wouldn’t question the various injuries that agents showed up with.

The steady beat of his heart monitor rings through the room with a faint echo.

Owen.

Curt nearly flung himself out of bed, tearing various tubes and wires out of his body and ignoring the muted agony that sears through him (Thank God for the painkillers he was definitely on because he would not be standing in any other circumstance).

Some sort of alert screeches down the hall, but it doesn’t matter because, at that moment, Curt’s eyes land on a bed on the far end of the room surrounded with even more machines than his was. He distantly heard the sounds of people running into the room, but he’d already staggered over and was looking down at a pale face framed by dark hair.

Owen looked like shit. He was covered in casts and stitches, essentially being held together by pins at this point. His breaths were shallow, the heart monitor beeping much slower than Curt’s had been. He looked uncomfortable, even in sleep, and his face was twisted up the way it normally did when he was having a nightmare.

It was the most beautiful thing Curt’s ever seen.

His legs gave up on supporting his weight and he slumped half over Owen’s bed, being careful to not jostle anything as various medical personnel burst into the room. They shouted at him, telling him to get back in bed, but he could already feel sleep calling to him, all energy seeping out of him with the knowledge that Owen was safe.

Curt managed to smooth a gentle thumb over the crease in his partner’s brow, sighing quietly when it seemed to soothe him into a deeper sleep.

He was out before the first doctor even crossed the room.

The second time he woke up wasn’t nearly as eventful.

It was a slow process, and almost pleasant, like gently sinking back into his body after floating weightless through the space between here and somewhere else.

And maybe he was a little high off the morphine they were pumping into him.

Curt turned his head to the side, exhausted body protesting every inch, until he was able to look at the bed beside him. Apparently the doctors hadn’t wanted a repeat of last time because now he and Owen were placed right next to each other, barely a foot apart.

His smile widened as he caught his partner’s eye. Owen was awake and looking significantly better than the last time Curt had seen him, a little bit of colour back in his cheeks did wonders.

Owen cast an amused look at Curt’s heart rate which had been steadily increasing the longer they gazed at each other before smiling back at him.

“Hey, Owe.” Curt’s voice was rough from disuse and he noticed a water bottle left beside him. He carefully opened it and took a sip, relaxing a bit from the relief on his dry throat. “It’s, uh, it’s good to see you.”

His partner’s grin softened and, with a quick look around, he flipped his hand palm up.

“It’s good to see you too, love.”

Curt took the hint, sliding his hand into Owen’s and giving it a gentle squeeze. When Owen squeezed back, however lightly, it sent and overwhelming surge of emotion through him and he felt his eyes burning.

“It’s okay,” Owen didn’t bother asking what was wrong, they knew each other too well at this point to bother with pointless questions, “You got us out. I’m safe. You saved my life and I’m going to be okay.”

Even with the reassurance, Curt could help but choke out a few tears.

“You almost weren’t though. You slipped on my stupid banana peel that I left even after you told me to get rid of it. And I didn’t let you close the security barricades back up like you wanted to. And—” He cut Owen off when he tried to speak, “I almost set the timer for three minutes instead of four.”

A look of confusion creeped onto Owen’s face. “What?”

Curt let out something between a sob and a laugh. “Yeah. I was standing there, looking at the bomb, and I wanted to show off a bit, you know? I wanted that extra thrill that came with pulling off something that I knew was fucking stupid.” He was clutching Owen’s hand too tight, but he didn’t say anything. “And then there was this voice in my head that sounded like you. It said ‘Don’t do that, old boy. It’ll only get us into more trouble than it’s worth.’ I almost didn’t listen to it, but I had this nagging feeling that wouldn’t go away and, well, I’ve always trusted you. Even when you’re just a voice in my head.”

He gave Owen a watery smile and brought up his free hand to wipe away the tears rolling down his face. “You would’ve died, and it would’ve been my fault.”

“Oh please.” Owen scoffed at that, shooting him a mock-offended glare. “I’m better than that and you know it. It would take more that a several story fall followed by an explosion to take me out.”

He looked contemplative for a moment. “Although, I hope you’ve learned your lesson and plan on actually listening to me from now on. That banana move was moronic and if it had been what did me in, I would’ve put my body back together just to hunt you down and kill you myself.”

They both laughed at the idea.

“Yeah,” Curt said, “Your supervillain origin story: Slipped on a banana and then got exploded. They’d make a comic out of you for sure.”

Silence fell over them, the knowledge that they were both here and alive finally having the chance to properly sink in.

Owen’s expression shifted into something a little more serious. “Curt—” He cut himself off, trying to find the words, “Thank you for coming back for me.”

What a ridiculous thing to say. “Of course I—”

“Ah ah,” Owen tutted, giving his hand a gentle tug “I wasn’t finished.”

Curt leaned back as much as he was able to when already lying down and raised his eyebrows. Well? Go on then.

“You could have left. In fact, I’m fairly certain that Cynthia would have demanded that you do so in order to preserve your life and the blueprints that you had acquired.” Tears were now glimmering in Owen’s eyes, and he took a breath to compose himself before continuing. “But you didn’t. You put yourself in grave danger and through grievous bodily harm to get me out of there. Though Lord knows how you managed to pull it off with the time you had left.”

Curt remembers the sight of Owen sprawled out unnaturally below him. He would’ve done anything to save him.

A thumb rubbing over the back of his hand draws him back into the present and he look back at Owen. Owen with his crooked smile and his soft brown eyes and his hands that hold Curt like he’s something that’s meant to be cherished.

“I suppose that what I am getting at is that I love you, Curt Mega. I truly, truly love you.”

And… Wow. It was like fireworks erupted within Curt at those words. They hadn’t said them yet, maybe afraid that it would make what they had too real. Something that they couldn’t come back from.

But now, looking over at the man that Curt had spent the past few years fighting alongside, getting to know and treasure and love, he knew that he wouldn’t want to come back from it even if he could.

“I love you too, Owen Carvour. I’d throw myself down that silo for you even if I had set that timer for three minutes.

They stayed there for a while longer, simply basking in the glow of still having the other at their side, until a doctor came bustling in and Curt had to quickly withdraw his hand and tuck it safely away at his side.

She chattered at them and, while most of it was medical jargon that flew right over Curt’s head, Owen’s eyes were shining with something like hope, and he knew that they would get through this.

Then, Owen caught his eye, and the small quirk of his lips told Curt that he knew it too.

They could do anything as long as long as they did it together.

After all, spies are forever.

[reds-skull]

BLOOD||HUNGER

[PREV PART] [AO3]

Haha... it's been far too long. What can I say, technology hates me.

This chapter turned out really long, and I was not planning it like that at all. I like what it became though :)

This chapter is called "The Downfall of Kinsmen".

Page 39 of the “Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde”, parable 13:

How could a man such as you, keep in his heart a Beast? Blind eyes turn heavenwards, crescented and kind, How could a flower, small and fine, Love the fiery sun, the killer and divine, How could the tide, heedless and rough, Love the gentle moon, a teacher for those misguides, How could the star, far and bright, Love our darkest nights, brighten our eyes, How could I  Not admire you?

Simon Riley was a hero.

Ghost has more confirmed KIAs than any merc walking on this accursed earth.

Simon Riley was a hero.

Ghost came here to work with the Hunter, whose soldiers are ending innocent lives by the hundreds, every second taking down another soul.

Simon Riley was a hero.

Ghost is thrusting a knife into his palm, bearing his neck out. Scarred and mangled, veins discolored by the poison eating away at his blood. Gloved hands resting on Soap’s thighs, a soft touch so out of place on this barren dirt.

Simon Riley is Ghost.

Ghost is asking him to slit his throat. Telling Soap it is the only way to end this, to kill the Hunter, to win. Closing his eyes, leaving fate in the hands of a broken, once soldier.

He’s right, Soap knows. Killing Ghost would end everything. He could free this city from the Hunter’s clutches with a swing of a knife.

Soap lifts the blade, the setting sun’s light reflecting over Ghost’s mask, an emotionless skull painted to resemble death. It shines through its eye sockets, casting light over Ghost’s pale lashes. His cheeks lift somewhat, and it dawns on Soap that he’s smiling.

The knife shakes in his hands.

Open your eyes, Soap wants to scream. Fight me, claw at mine. Why do you accept death so easily, when it’s in my hands?

Tell me, why did you become this?

Simon Riley wants Soap to kill him. 

John swings the knife down, teeth bared, feelings swirling in his gut. The blade strikes down.

Buried in the dirt besides Simon’s head.

John watches his brown eyes flutter open, confused. Watches them turn to see the knife, and back to his, questioning.

He heaves a breath, the eye contact burning, yet he doesn’t dare to sever it.

“You were a hero.” John almost growls, hands still trembling on the weapon, “why… why did ye become Ghost?”

Simon tilts his head minutely, his hands caress John’s legs, lost in memories.

“They left me to die.” the man under him murmurs, “was captured, no one came to rescue us.” John feels Simon’s chest stutter, “I escaped. I tried to stay away, tried to live.”

Dark eyes look up at him, “couldn’t. Like you.”

“So ye became a monster?” John spits harshly.

Simon’s eyes soften, “I was always a monster. They only called me a hero because I died-”

“No.” John lets go of the knife, bracketing Simon’s head instead, “ye were a legend, ye saved thousands, ye were-”

Ye were everything I wanted to be.

Simon’s hands are warm, as they pass over his clothes, as if he’s trying to soothe a phantom wound, “you are a hero, Johnny. Why are you not killing me?” he asks, confusion and an edge of fear bleeding into his words.

It angers John. He knows, if he were to try and be a hero, his next step would be to kill the Ghost. Throw his head in front of the Hunter, banish him from this land, save the civilians. His mission is clear-cut, and Ghost is just an obstacle. Another hostile, another target, another objective. That was what he always strived for, from the moment he set foot in bootcamp to the day he was discharged.

All of his previous COs’ words rush forth, voices mingling to a single sentence-

Stop trying to be the hero, MacTavish.

John roughly slides Ghost’s mask off, revealing a face twisted by confusion. Dirty blond hair, curled and pressed flat by the ever-present mask. Scars, creating valleys and hills over pale skin. Bisected lips that fall open in surprise. Brown eyes, so deep, they can’t help but reflect the darkening skies.

Simon Riley is just a man.

He takes the knife out of the ground, only to stab it through the now hollow eyes of the skull. John leans closer, whispering in Simon’s ears.

“Ghost is dead. What will ye become now?”

Simon’s eyes widen, the last of the day’s light radiant in them. “I… I have nothing left to be.” he fearfully answers.

“No.” John raises up, “there’s more to us than heroes and monsters, Simon.” the man startles at the name, “what do ye want to do now? Ye want to kill me, kill yerself, keep on the path that destroyed us both…”

John offers a hand.

“Or ye want to find out what else we could become?”

Simon breathes in deep, like a newborn’s first taste of air, like a dying man’s last prayer. Gloved hands, that know to both give and receive unfathomable violence, take his.

“I do.” the words flow through scarred lips, and John can almost taste the want in them. For salvation. For redemption. “But how?”

John yanks the blade out of the mask, and gives it to Simon. The man that wears it will not be the Ghost that sunk first to the ground, nor the man that has risen from the grave.

“With what we always had.” John turns back to the truck, “with pain and will. With bloodshed.”

He glances at Simon, mask still in hand, “we lead ourselves now.”

When he joins him in the vehicle, Simon wears the mask. But he could never hide how his eyes look at John, how the emotions flow through them. How he trusted him with his death.

How he’ll trust Soap with his life.

He takes them back to the city center. All paths lead down here, it seems. Soap feels the weight of Ghost’s stare on him for the whole drive, and not for the first time he wishes he could take a look inside his skull.

Soap is surprised to find himself without regrets. He’s not without anger at Ghost, hell, not without hate, but alongside those feelings something else stirs awake.

He thinks it might be kinship.

His surprise only grows when Ghost chimes up, “you still want to kill the Hunter, right?”

Soap glances at him, “‘course.”

“We still need to get intel-” Ghost unexpectedly jumps at the steering wheel, pulling it left.

“What the-!” Soap veers the truck back to the road, “are ye tryin’ teh kill us?!”

Ghost’s head pokes out of the side window, looking back, “there’s someone on the road, Johnny.”

“What?” Soap kills the engine, jumping out of the vehicle. Ghost instantly follows him, rifle ready for a gunfight.

They approach the still body on the road cautiously, “are ye friendly?!” Soap shouts.

The form doesn’t move a muscle. “They’re dead.” Ghost mutters. Soap observed the pooling blood around the body, sensing the tension leaving Ghost’s motions.

Stepping closer, Soap recognizes the insignia of the Hunter’s soldiers, a red skull. The body is littered with gunshot wounds, from their legs to their head. Whoever was fighting them, they were frantic. Desperate.

There is only one other group fighting the Hunter in this city. The 141. And if they were in a state bad enough to shoot like an untrained rookie…

Ghost crouched down to pat the dead man’s pockets. He collects a couple extra mags, and the comms. As he switches between channels, Soap scans the surrounding streets. Signs of a struggle litter the walls, cracks drawing a picture of a hopeless fight for survival. More bodies are hidden under shadows, and Soap walks to check their identity.

Civilians, mingled right among the Hunter’s soldiers. This doesn’t feel like Price and Gaz’s work…

Soap’s lingering thoughts snap back to the radio in Ghost’s hand, when the constant white noise is replaced with alarmed commands. “-armed civvies, group of 20! They’re around the main plaza. Took down about 5 of ours-” Ghost meets his eyes, expression serious. “-told you to take ‘em out!” “yessir”. The comms click off.

“They’re fighting back…” Soap thinks out loud, voice trailing off. 

Ghost raises to his feet, shoving the radio down one of his pockets, “they won’t last long. The Hunter’s soldiers are highly trained.”

Burning rage spreads through Soap. He can’t let them die, can’t let the Hunter squash down the few that found the courage to strike back. He glares at Ghost with a challenging stare, “I’m going to help them.”

Ghost studies him silently. “We are going to help them.” he starts walking back to the truck, leaving a bewildered Soap to catch up, “I know where the plaza is, was in the debrief the Hunter gave me. There’s a sniper rifle on the rooftop opposite of it, we can back up the civvies from there.”

Soap slams the door behind him, rushing to start the engine, “if there’s a sniper rifle there, wouldn’t the Hunter have a soldier on it?”

Ghost halts his movements for a moment, “they did. It was me.”

“What- who did ye shoot?”

Ghost seems to curl into himself a little, “...I don’t know. They were just… a target.”

A warning light flashes, signaling the fuel tank is almost empty. Soap sighs, worries and curses overlapping each other on his tongue, ”can ye direct me to the plaza?”

Ghost looks up, “...affirm. Turn right at this intersection…”

Flashes of gunshots light the plaza, a huge building with a court in its middle, acting as a battleground for the civilians and the Hunter’s soldiers. Their fuel lasted them just enough to reach it.

Ghost leads him to the back, where a ladder lines the side of the wall. When Soap doesn’t follow him, Ghost stops, “what’s on your mind, Soap?”

Soap grasps the rifle in his hands tightly, “There’s only one sniper rifle up there, right? Ah’ll be of more use down ‘ere.”

Ghost lets go of the ladder completely, “you’re not planning on joining the civilians, are you?”

“You know Ah won’t be able to do shit up there with ye.”

“You’ll get yourself killed, that will certainly help-”

“Why would ye even care?!” Soap snarls, taking two steps closer to Ghost and staring him down.

He watches his gloved hands clench, “I can’t-”

“What is it?! Ye think Ah’m feckin’ useless-”

“I CAN’T WATCH YOU DIE!” Ghost shouts.

Soap’s brow shoot up, his anger dissipating into nothing. He’s left speechless, as Ghost continues, “you’re fucking reckless, and uncontrollable, and- I thought we’ll-!”

“Ghost.”

“I’ll die without you, you know that? The poison-”

“Ye didn’t care about that when ye gave me the knife.” Soap grabs the front of his mask to pull Ghost down, shoving him against the wall, he ignores his grunt as he forces those dark eyes on him. “Why do ye care?” he asks calmly.

Simon breathes heavily, so much that Soap can feel it through the mask, and he sees how the emotions try to peek through the bleached skull. “I… I don’t… “ Simon sighs, “I can’t let you die.”

“Why?”

Simon hand wraps around Soap’s wrist, not pushing away, just holding. “You… trust me. I can’t break it, not again-”

Soap lets go of the mask, “I won’t die, Simon.” He looks down at the hand holding his, and it retreats, “and ye didn’t fully earn my trust just yet.”

Simon nods slowly, and Soap steps back, “ye better stay alive so ye can.”

Simon stares at him, eyes somewhat soft, muscles relaxing, “I will, Johnny.” the name sends a pang of hurt through his heart. Despite everything, Soap still hasn’t stopped Ghost from calling him that. He thinks he’s just afraid of regretting it, missing the way it sounds.

Wanting that little connection, to keep them tied through this endless sea.

Soap shakes his head. He finds himself in a similar boat to Ghost.

He doesn’t think he can watch him die either.

Chaos is the only rule on these grounds. Furniture is stacked precariously to build cover, bullets shoot in every direction. Soap can’t tell whose blood covers the once white floor.

He climbed up to the second floor, trying to find a vantage point over the battle. The civilians have retreated farther back into the shops, soldiers overwhelming them by numbers and skill. Soap takes aim, a deep inhale.

The shots echo through the empty walkway, deafeningly loud in his ears, but he pays it no mind. Soap keeps tabs on the soldiers trying to push forward on the civilians, watching them scramble to cover once they realize someone is attacking them from above. He tries to kill as many as he can before they’re out of his sights.

Every few seconds, a soldier he’s aiming at drops abruptly, the shell of a bullet splicing through the night air. Ghost is a frighteningly excellent sniper. Soap can see why he struck fear in the hearts of so many.

The civilians have noticed something’s amiss, their willpower strengthening. Soap’s heart swells-

They’re fighting back tenfold, now that they believe they could win.

The Hunter’s soldiers retreat, enough that Soap has to descend back to the ground floor. As he rushes down, he spots the fearful eyes of children peek through the dark shops.

The civilians are protecting them.

He vaults over the edge when he’s low enough for it, and finds himself in front of a man, who seemingly left the fight, searching for him. Soap’s eyes widen with recognition.

“...Mihail?” Soap mutters.

“Soap!” The man smiles, “I have thought it was you!” 

They both start running back to the front, “I thought ye left!”

Mihail shakes his head, “I left. I came back.”

“...Why?” he frowns.

The man halts for a moment, staring at Soap with a determined gaze, “I couldn’t. Leave others, children, friends.” his untrained arms shake around his stolen gun, “you fight, so why couldn’t I too?”

Soap heart beats a war chant in his chest. Mihail pushes them both to run again, all the while his mind forms a storm.

He chose to fight… because of Soap? 

“Here!” Mihail shouts over his shoulder, “we need help. This is Alma.” he points to a woman tending to one of the shot men, hidden behind a stack of sofas, “she knows English good. Tell her what we do, she will tell us.”

“Aye!”

The woman, Alma, lifts her head when he comes closer. Her arms are covered in blood up to her elbows. Her brows crease as she assesses Soap, “are you the one that helped Maria and Victor?”

“I am.”

Her expression relaxes, “thank you.” She nods to the fighters, “we’ve been fighting for hours, they cornered us here. I think they’re trying to kill us all at once.” her teeth bare, “they will, if we don’t do something differently.”

Soap quickly scans their numbers. About 40 people, most equipped with rifles like his own. The Hunter’s soldiers are still cowering under cover. Ghost’s shots are making sure to down any that attempt to push forward, but he can already see them going around, using Ghost’s blind spots to try and flank their group.

He turns back to Alma, “We need to split up, take both the left and the right. Leave the worst fighters here, so they think ye haven’t moved, take ten of the best left, five more right.”

Alma nods, “where will you be?”

Soap motions right, “Ah’ll go ahead, clear the path fer the five on the right.”

Alma wipes the blood on her dirtied clothes, shouting to the fighters. The shooting calms a tad as they listen to her orders. Soap watches them get ready to split up, and only a few moments pass before fifteen men and women step back. Alma continues to talk, pointing at both hallways. Ten leave, and Soap leads the remaining five to their side.

It has been over a year since Soap ordered anyone on field, and a certain nervosity spreads through him, before he shuts it down.

This is no different from any other mission he’s been on, he has to tell himself. The footfalls behind him are of soldiers, not civilians. Their guns are their own, not stolen from corpses.

He is Sergeant MacTavish, not John.

Soap motions them to stop, and he walks ahead to clear the corner. He swiftly ducks behind a low wall, scanning the dark hallways ahead. Ghost seems to recognize the forming plan, since he started providing cover fire for the split groups.

Even with no comms, they work flawlessly.

Soap hears the nearing steps of hostiles, and so he points his group to find cover, and aim forward. He himself sneaks ahead, moving from pillar to pillar. 

Once the first soldier rounds the corner, Soap pounces. He burrows his knife into his side, dragging the man in front of him.

A copy of Ghost’s tactics, he uses the dead man as a shield, and shoots down several soldiers. Soap finds a moment to back up, opening the hallway for his fighters to shoot the rest. Their aim is expectedly shite, but they managed to hit the hostiles by sheer number.

He smiles back, baffled. Soap wishes he could encourage them. But the fight isn’t over, and soon enough the Hunter’s soldiers find a weak point in their defence.

Soap is blindsided by a mass tackling him. They both fall to the ground, Soap scrambling for his knife, blocking the frenzied hits of the soldier. Large arms manage to wrap around his throat, lifting him to a chokehold. 

Soap snarls, eyes rotating wildly in his sockets, breath squeezed out of his lungs. He slams at the hands, clawing at them, leaving rivulets of blood behind.

It is not enough. His vision begins to darken, spidery tendrils encompassing his sight. He can distantly hear the civilians shout for him. They wouldn’t be able to save him now. 

As his vision fades completely, John waits for his life to flash by. This death would be far than the worst he could have had.

Yet, instead of memories, dark eyes flood his mind. A man, once dead, with a plea.

I can’t watch you die.

Soap grips harder at the arm, shoving his face to it.

And bites down as strongly as he can.

Crimson bursts on his tongue, a scream goes off behind him, the arm loosening. Oxygen fills Soap’s lungs once more, and he arches forward, flipping his attacker and slamming him to the floor tiles.

For a split second, he sees the fear in the soldier’s eyes, the dark red covering him. Soap finds his blade.

It sinks down the soldier’s throat not a second later.

Soap rises on shaky legs, adjusting his rifle. The civilians behind him look horrified at his appearance. He can’t find a place within himself to care. He only spares them a nod, and he’s off.

If he can’t be these people’s hero, he’ll have to suffice with being their enemies worst monster.

[fandomnerd9602]

Hunting Ghosts

Sam Carpenter x Wick!Reader

For @tokufighter

Sometimes the past comes back to haunt you when you least expect it. For you and the Carpenter sisters it was a mixed bag. On one hand, they had to deal with the serial killer known as Ghostface. For you it was the festering wounds that the Continental Hotel had brought on. You find yourself loading up on guns and any assortment of gadgets you needed to combat the dollar store slasher villain. You holster the P30L pistol and pack your grandfather’s tactical rifle into a duffle bag. The attachment that Winston mentioned was a secondary shotgun barrel retrofitted for dragon’s breath incendiary rounds.

You snuck out, having Sam and Tara in the safe confines of the Continental Hotel. You even took Sam’s cellphone that way whoever this Ghostface was, they would be hunting you and not them. You made your way down Times Square, walking around just waiting for a call from the killer. On the cue the phone rings. The caller ID reads Charon. You pick it up, “tell me the girls are safe” “Oh we’re safe.” Sam answers back. “Where are you?” “I’m ending this. Today. I won’t let you or Tara get injured again” “This one’s different. I can’t lose you too. You come back right now. You hear me?!” Sam begs you.

“I will…when Ghostface is six feet under” you hang up. Another call rings, you pick it up without even looking at the caller ID. “Sam, baby, I’m sorry I-” “Oh I’m sure you are” the slimy voice of Ghostface answers back. You stop dead in your tracks. “you look snazzy in that suit. I’m sure if you weren’t with Sam, Quinn would’ve gobbled you up in an instant.” “I might’ve let her. She was smoking hot till you gutted her like a fish” you retort, “of course Sam wouldn’t have minded sharing” “Tempting that would’ve been. Honestly that outfit is missing something…”

“Yeah what?” you say, your instincts kicking in at that moment. “It’s not stained red!” the voice shouts from behind you. You duck and weave, narrowly missing the blade of Ghostface. You counteract the next swing of the blade and stab your own blade through the assailant’s arm. A shriek that sounded feminine in form rings out from the mask. You knew who it was in the moment. “Hello Quinn” you smirk. You hear a growl under the mask. You give your assailant the finger and run off into the crowd. You can feel her give chase. Your mind runs wild - if Quinn is under the mask, who is her partner in this? There’s more than one, as always.

You run into an abandoned building, Ghostface is hot on your tail. You run up the staircase of the complex, you can practically hear the boots of the killer right behind you. You reach the top of the staircase and roll into a shooting stance. You fire off several shots which ricochet off the robes of the killer. “It’s amazing what you can buy on eBay” Quinn retorts “Someone sold out the tactical tech.“ you huff. She drives her knife towards you. Quickly rolling again, you pull out your own bowie knife and swipe at her, landing a few jabs at her left knee and elbow.

She screams before driving a knife into your right calf. You grit your teeth to muffle any scream. “Funny” she retorts, “I always was hoping you’d stab me. Over and over again” She gets real close, removing her mask. She licks your face, a sign of mockery, or maybe that was just her sex positive attitude leaking through. She slips her mask back on and readies the knife over your heart. “We’re in the endgame now” Quinn whispers, readying to run you through with the knife. “You know what I love about a franchise’s endgame?” you smirk as your hand reaches into your duffle. “What?”

“It always ends in fireworks” BLAM! You fire off the dragon’s breath attachment. Quinn’s robes catch fire and ignite. She screams, trying her best to dampen the flames. BLAM! BLAM! Two shots ring out, bouncing off her robes. The masked Quinn slams into the railing and tumbles down the staircase. And with that, she disappears. “Chasing ghosts, kid?” A gruff voice rings over you. “More like being hunted by them” you respond as a hand reaches down to help you to your feet. “Apparently one’s helping me now” You get pulled up to your feet by John Wick, who offers you a weary smile and a hug. “It’s good seeing you again” he says, rubbing your shoulders reassuringly.

“Good seeing you’re still kicking, Dad” you respond, “I thought you died in a duel in Paris with Caine” “It’s the city of love, not death” Wick responds. “let’s go” Your dad guides you out to a jet black Mustang. Sam jumps out with her own shotgun a second later. “I thought i lost you for a second” Sam runs up and hugs you. “Wicks are hard to kill” you retort. “And even easier at resurrecting” John finishes as he shakes your girlfriend’s hand. “Come on” Sam smirks “lets kill a ghost”

[whump-me]

Martyr, Chapter 26: Gratitude and Dread

Chapter 26 of Martyr, a novel-length sci-fi whump story about a captured Martian rebel with a secret and the renowned interrogator who has waited a decade for the chance to break him. This series is best read in order. Masterpost here.

Contains: aftermath of severe injury, medical setting, restraints, ominous caretaking, wishing for death

---

Wraith

Wraith came back to consciousness in a series of jagged flashes. At first, it was pure white light. It was too bright, stabbing into his eyeballs even with his eyes closed, until his mind retreated into darkness again. But each time, the flash of light lasted longer, until finally he couldn’t retreat anymore.

Sounds, disconnected and meaningless, joined the light. Metal dropping on metal. A rush of footsteps. A muttered curse.

Smell came next. The sharp, sterile tang of bleach. The thick miasma of blood. The cooked-meat smell of a cauterized wound. His stomach churned. That sensation reminded him that he had a body, a realization he quickly regretted as fresh pains sprang to life all over. The worst was the one in his head, behind his eyes, throbbing with every heartbeat.

Why was his heart still beating?

He hadn’t thought it would take this long to die.

If the white light was here to usher him into the hereafter, it was sure taking its sweet time about it. And it was nothing like the gentle, welcoming light he had heard about. It was a weapon, driving into his eyeballs like a needle or a knife, so bright that squeezing his eyes shut didn’t fully block it out. He had thought the light was supposed to take the pain away.

And anyway, when people talked about going into the light, didn’t that mean it was whisking them away to heaven? He didn’t know much about what was waiting for him after death, but he could be certain heaven wasn’t it.

That thought, more than the pain, was what convinced him he was still alive.

That realization cleared away another layer of haze from his mind. He was still alive—otherwise it wouldn’t hurt this much. He lying on a soft surface—a bed? Not the cold floor of the interrogation room, that was for sure. His head swam in a way he remembered from too many post-mission visits to Gabriel’s medic. He had pain medication in his system, and a lot of it, if the seasick sensation in his head was any indication.

He winced at the thought. If the pain was this bad with medication, he’d hate to see what it would be like without it.

But he loved every bit of it. Every sharp stab when he tried to move, every dull ache, even the throbbing behind his eyes. He loved it because it meant he was alive.

There would be no noble end for him, no martyr’s death. No, he would go on selfishly drawing breath. Selfishly loving Gabriel more than Gabriel’s cause. Selfishness had never felt so good.

He drew in a greedy breath, even though the act of opening his lungs made a sharp pain shoot through his chest, so strong it brought tears to his eyes. Then he did it again. The air tasted of bleach and blood. It was the most glorious thing he had ever smelled.

A dark figure hovered over him, blocking out the light. He squinted his eyes open, but couldn’t make out more than a shadowed silhouette. Gabriel? he almost asked, and held the name back just in time. It couldn’t be Gabriel, anyway. Not in this place. If Gabriel was here, he had failed.

At least, if he was still a prisoner. Was he still a prisoner? And if he was, what did it mean that he was still alive?

It meant they weren’t done with him, that was what.

It meant Isadora wasn’t done with him.

A rush of cold spread out from his gut, chilling the fizzy joy of being alive. The throbbing in his head increased.

“Looks like you’re waking up,” came a woman’s soft voice as the shadowy figure spoke. Not Gabriel’s voice. But not Isadora’s, either. He squinted at her until more details resolved. She was young, with a kind face, and wore a crisp nurse’s uniform.

Could anyone who worked for Special Security look so kind?

He tried to answer. All that came out of his throat was a weak moan.

“You don’t need to talk.” A cool hand rested gently on his shoulder. He moaned again, in intermingled pain and relief, as the touch chased some of the heat from his skin even as her fingers brushed a tender bruise.

“That you’re awake at all is encouraging,” she continued. “For a few days there, I thought you might not make it. Rest. You have a long way to go before you’re fully recovered.”

Days? he tried to ask. And, Where am I? If he was still in the hands of Special Security, surely they wouldn’t have worked so hard to save him. Surely Isadora would have killed him by now.

But he had Gabriel’s name and location. They had been searching for Gabriel for a decade. Wouldn’t they do anything to keep him alive long enough to get that information from him?

“Where am I?” The question was more urgent this time. But his words came out garbled, unintelligible.

The nurse patted his shoulder. “Rest,” she urged.

He made a noise of protest. He had to know if he was safe. And if he wasn’t, he had to get out of here. Now. Before Isadora could get to him again.

He tried to sit up. Hands pressed him down on both sides, at his wrists, his ankles, his midsection. No—not hands. He was strapped down. He thrashed, then let out an animal yelp of pain as the motion jostled injuries he hadn’t known he had.

“Don’t move,” said the nurse. “Your body isn’t ready for that yet. You don’t want to set back your recovery.”

Was that the only reason for the restraints? But if so, why not just tell him where he was?

“Wouldn’t it be better to keep him sedated for now?” a cold voice asked from across the room. The sound sent a blast of cold running down Wraith’s spine. The chill traveled down his nerve endings, all the way to his fingers and toes.

He didn’t need to ask where he was anymore. He had his answer.

That voice belonged to Isadora.

“He’s still too badly injured,” the voice continued. “I don’t want to risk him damaging himself.”

“He’s been unconscious for several days already,” the nurse protested. “It’s important for him to have some moments of wakefulness as soon as possible. The longer he stays under, the more difficult his recovery will be, especially mentally.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. The shape of her body blurred as Wraith’s brain stopped paying attention to her. The only important thing in this room was Isadora.

But one detail stood out on the nurse’s chest. The emblem of Special Security—the planet Earth with a golden star to either side.

Heavy footsteps crossed the floor. Isadora, her hair pulled back in a severe braid, looked down at him with ice in her eyes. He didn’t struggle against the restraints anymore. With her eyes freezing him in place, he didn’t remember how. But a full-body quiver ran through him. His body remembered her. It remembered what she had done to him.

And his mind knew she had kept him alive so she could do it again.

He closed his eyes, but unconsciousness didn’t rescue him this time. He knew she was waiting for him on the other side of the blackness behind his eyelids. He could hear her tightly controlled breaths and the frigid crispness of her voice as she argued with the nurse.

He was alive. But now that thought brought him nothing but dread.

He had no desire to die for a cause, but suddenly, he wished he had died that martyr’s death after all.

---

Tagged: @straight-to-the-pain @soheavyaburden @gala1981 @whumpacabra @sacredwrath @suspicious-whumping-egg @sonder35 @decahedron-crabclaw @seasaltandcopper @tremendousenemyhideout @bloodinkandashes @whumplr-reader @whatiswhumpblog @delicateprincepaper @sunshiline-writes

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[qe-podfic]

@pb-and-jammothy has created this wonderful illustration for the cover art of Chapter 7 - Angels of Observation.

Excerpt under cut:

Dimly, Aziraphale was aware that his hand was wet. And in pain.

He looked down.

He had grabbed his steak knife, blade first. He was bleeding. Quite a lot.

Everything was an abrupt flurry of movement. Crowley rushed for him, cradling the underside of his hand, easing the clenched fingers away from the blade. Pressure was being applied to the gash, Aziraphale couldn’t be sure who was doing what. Gabriel appeared from behind a wall, he was calling someone on his iPhone, his voice muted and muffled as the adrenaline spiked in Aziraphale’s temple. So Crowley was the one applying the pressure. Huh.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley whispered, chin brushing the side of Aziraphale’s face in order to direct the words under Gabriel’s radar, “I know what you meant. It’s an avalanche,” his voice was distraught, wavering at the seams. It sounded like he was threads away from bursting, spilling out onto Aziraphale’s feet. Sheer determination seemed to be the last pull of gravity, keeping the splitting segments of him from shattering to dust. The whole of him was poured into his fussing, his movements, contrite and repentant, as though the wound in Aziraphale’s palm was the only place his frenetic energy could burrow itself.

“I shouldn’t have—” the sentence died a miserable death in Crowley’s throat as Gabriel’s shadow loomed over him. Aziraphale wasn’t really all there. He was in… shock? That’s the word they used in all the crime dramas, right? Shock. You got a special orange blanket, and shivered as the police asked you questions about that gunshot you’d heard.

Gabriel was handing items to Crowley, murmured words flittering between them. Nothing reached Aziraphale’s ears. The sting of an alcohol wipe, oh so gingerly dabbed across the slice in his hand, was the first thing to phase Aziraphale’s mental lock-down. Jaggard, acute pain. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” Crowley said, again.

“You should kiss it better,” they both startled as Gabriel spoke, pocketing his phone and ruffling Aziraphale’s hair. Aziraphale only smiled weakly towards his brother.

“And risk an infection?!” squawked Crowley, “I’ve only just cleaned all the broccoli bits out!”

Despite the indignation of his tone, the touch on Aziraphale’s hand never roughened. Crowley’s ministrations remained, soft and soothing as ever; the alcohol’s bite, quelled with the lick of wet gauze and cotton pads. It did nothing to dilute the wound in his gut, the writhing mass of blood and viscera that squirmed to avoid the hot-iron poke of Crowley’s words. A joking kiss to the hand, an idea shot down with brutal efficiency. But Aziraphale was good for nothing if not pushing too far.

“You’re going to deny me a little kiss?” he pouted, making his eyes as big and round as he could manage. He was leaning forward playfully, batting his eyelashes and nursing the slice on his hand. Even when made in light-hearted jest, Crowley froze at the proposition, mouth agape, his brain reverting to its old Windows XP shutdown jingle. Whelp, in for a penny, in for a pound. Aziraphale tried ramping up the absurdity to snap him out of his funk.

“I’m injured, Crowley!” he pressed his hand outward, “Look at my grave battle scar, my wound! My boo boo…”

With his palm to the sky, fingers outstretched as far as he could manage until the tugged edges were too painful to bear, it left his digits half-curled, the gnarly slash across his heart line, exposed and red-weeping. Irritated skin was a blooming flower, peeling outwards from the delicate tissue beneath, and pouring scarlet nectar from a severed network of holy capillaries. Crowley was the fuzzy bumblebee he was trying to coax into his centre, drywall dust like the sticky pollen in Crowley’s fur. The adrenaline tremble of Aziraphale’s hand as it was offered. The quiver of rose petals in the breeze.

“Dearest, please?”

Crowley swallowed, honeycomb eyes absorbed into darkest night, flicking from the injured palm to meet Aziraphale’s steady gaze. He leaned forward, slowly, incrementally. Cradling the disfigured blossom in a grip too gentle to be real, he hovered, mouth over the hand-heel. His breath ghosted the anticipation of a kiss across Aziraphale’s palm. Air caressing the hills and valleys of his sundered skin. Overwhelming and, yet, too little a touch to satiate the newly awoken ache in Aziraphale’s stomach. It felt like peristalsis in his bones, a new sense coming alive under the not-touches littered over him, an exhalation of electricity on a Faraday cage. He was starving for cyanide. This was the apple. A little death, hidden in the seeds.

“Anything,” murmured Crowley, the distance between them, a yawning void that halted the potential for an accidental brush of skin on skin. And then. And then, Crowley’s lips were on his hand. The sensation shot down Aziraphale’s nervous system, lingering at his elbow, then jolting around his rotator cuff, before it finally settled. Down, down, down. Deep in that hungry pit of him. In his empty core. There, it boiled into nothing but smoke. Crowley’s kiss lingered, only a fleeting few seconds, and then it was gone. It did not take the hunger with it. No, the hunger stayed, swirling in the padded fortress of Aziraphale’s abdomen.

“I’d give you anything,” every word Crowley uttered was a new kiss against his wrist, achingly soft and jittering through the slipstream of Aziraphale’s bone marrow. It was the coincidental flicker of Crowley’s mouth as he spoke, as well as the intentional decision to not move away from the grazing. Every sparkle of contact burned anew down Aziraphale’s spine, zipping to his toes and back. It hurt to hold this thing that wasn’t meant for him. This love, now angled in his direction, out of convenience. But Aziraphale had never been its true target.

This had been a very, very bad idea.

He didn’t know what his face was doing, but it couldn’t be any more pleadingly sincere than the lips at his wrist. In that, at least, he was safe. There was no social etiquette for this kind of thing. No decorum to be had, when a man knelt before you and offered up a pious devotion that wasn’t yours to keep. What was the protocol when your sanguine ichor dripped onto his chin, having escaped from your veins, abandoned to blemish his skin’s silk pearl? How was Aziraphale meant to respond, other than to brush away the spot with the thumb of his uninjured hand, and tilt Crowley’s jaw, upwards, eye to eye, to cease the oral torment on his palm. Crowley’s mouth had never wandered, never trespassed into the angry skin, flushed around the knife-split. Yet, Aziraphale suffered all the same.

“Uh,” Gabriel interjected awkwardly. Crowley reefed himself back from Aziraphale’s hold, careful not to disturb the wounded palm; meticulous, even in his moment of panic. The lurch of him shook Aziraphale out of his head, observing the scene as a voyeur, if only for a moment. Vaporously, he beheld the rendering of them, the mural that had been composed of their positions, shattered in the vacuum of Crowley’s shape as he recoiled.

[yui-onnero]

Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope you’re doing well. My name is Lana, a former engineering student from Gaza🍉💔. My life was turned upside down when the war started, destroying my dreams and my home. I barely made it out from under the rubble, losing many loved ones, and my father was severely injured. He has always been my biggest supporter, and now he’s fighting for his life. I’m desperately trying to secure the treatment he needs.

I never imagined I’d have to ask for help, but time is running out, and my father’s condition is critical. I cannot afford the medical care he desperately requires. Please, I urge you to act quickly. Your donation could be the difference between life and death. Even a small amount, like $20, would make a huge difference. Please don’t underestimate the impact of your contribution, as every bit of help makes a real difference in these critical times.

Life is unpredictable—what you give today may come back to you tomorrow. Please, don’t wait. Help us now.🙏❤️

OMG!! I'm so sorry! As someone who's also suffering through their father needing severe medical care, I cannot express how desperately I wish to donate! I'd give you thousands of dollars if I had the money! Unfortunately, I physically can't because I'm still getting paid minimum wage with, again, my own father to support. I pray with all of my soul that you or someone is able to get him the treatment he needs! Please, be safe and I wish you the best in all that you embark on! Do you have a GoFundMe I can tag?

Found it! It's on CHUFFED:

Please, someone, donate! I cannot stress how much almost losing the figure, maybe only figure, in your life who's supported you through it all feels like, and I cannot sympathize with Lana more!!

Please, PLEASE, donate to help her and get her father the treatment he needs! I grew up/am poor, and I know how hard medical care can be to get, especially for my beloved father. And I know I couldn't deal with the loss of my father if he did pass, so I want NO ONE else to have to go through that. Countless nights at the hospital/elsewhere where your wondering if your father is still alive or not, knowing nothing about his condition at the moment except what they told you when you were there, if you were at all.

And it hurts.

It hurts the heart, the soul, twisting a knife into your gut and pulling out hard before stabbing back into the contorted wound over and over as your anxiety hits you like it'll kill you with one more hit, one more attack. And on top of this, she's lost many family members to these attacks...

So please donate, and I'm begging whoever comes across this to donate. Because my experience was horrible, but Lana's...Her's is worse, so much worse, and she needs our help! So please. PLEASE. Donate if you can, or spread this around Tumblr as much as you can. Reblog! Like! Share! Something that can help her, that can help Lana and her father!

Lana, know that you could NEVER be a burden, bother, nor inconvenience to me, alright? If/when I get the money, I'll donate. But until and after and during that time, my page can/will ALWAYS be a safe space for you , alright? Please keep that in mind. My tag is @yui-onnero , where I go by Yui. Real name is ||||| Heatley. This Blog can always be a safe spot for you. I will offer you all of the support I can give, and know that you will be loved and supported as long as you are on my blog. If you ever need to rant, go in my inbox. I'll respond. You wanna talk? My messages are open! If you need support, my digital, wilting arms will try their best to raise you high enough so you may soar.

I wish you the best, truly the best, only the best. I'm here for you.

-Yui / @yui-onnero

[silversiren1101]

In universe everyone thinks the final blow that shattered Minovae's soul completely was her heart breaking from Regill sacrificing herself for her; classic collapse from grief. It's worse than that - she doesn't have it in her to correct that belief though.

The teleport had just completed. She and Yaker lying on Drezen's floor, him bleeding out from his own wounds and she so weak and sick and injured, filled with Abyssal corruption. They'd left Regill behind as he'd ordered, though she hadn't had much of a choice having being carried away kicking and screaming with what little strength she'd had. In desperation, she'd reached for the time travel ability the aeon had afforded to her before.

"Go back. Go back. Please, gods let me go back! Let me save him this time! Let me make this never happen!"

Only to hear in that cold facsimile of her own voice from the dying aeon declare: "You are not worthy."

The powers she'd purged herself of, freshly 'restored' to her by Ssila'meshnik and Paradoxified, were so different from what she'd wielded before--and still unstable as the Maelstrom itself. Her soul, having already been weakened severely by the Abyss and the stress of the removal and return of that mythic power, couldn't take it.

Metaphorically her fingers had just skimmed the surface of where that power had been when the spiteful jolt surged through her. She felt herself crack. Like watching a crack start and then steadily creep across a pane of glass, nothing one can do to stop its advance and undo it. She could only lay there on her front and elbows frozen in horrified realization of what she'd just done, those few seconds of the pieces holding together before the cracks splintered. Then feeling the cracks spiderweb outward into countless branching paths, further and further, a last thought of "what have I done" before everything inside exploded into countless separate pieces.

She could only describe it so much like being gutted and the knife being pulled out: the brief disbelief and numbness before time compress and you realize that you've just died, only a few seconds from now.

Just, "oh no."

And there's nothing that you can do about it.

[magpie-moon]

I am a dawn

My heart yearns for a bloom of fire, morning sun

to end this devastating numb

I have become a creature 

Bereft of comfort, habit consumed by harmony

It haunts, fair in golden-pale sunlight

I plead with a star blurred hope

That the crosses i bear will lessen with age

And the teeth gnawing on these hollow bones

The marrow sucked dry from

Luminous winter nights, over and under, trapping weaves in baskets keen

For warmth beneath this great dark eye, will finally glimpse

The sky and see

Purity, breathe through holes poked in the afterlife 

So bright, the fantomes fly home

A windless and cold tribunal

A funeral, staring at a body that might once have been mine

Dressed in the clothes they chose for me, my hair shines

Lips burn red, bright in candlelight

Igniting the waste

I am squandered on sympathy

Empathetic tyranny 

Understand my place, inhale with my lunges

And feel my heavy heart beat with every blood filled pump

I am deceased

Undercovers, find me 

I am lost, soul searching only left me

In a search of higher places 

In debt, my heart wants for wider spaces

To hold me down

The crying never stops, it only slows 

Keep me with you always, i might drown in brevity 

Aching for serenity 

Lover, love me dearly 

For if you ever stop i fear i might stop being

A person in this plane, existing for existence sake

I pray

For something

Someone to keep me safe 

But the fall of rain matches the patter of her breath

Footsteps heaving, hear her on the steps

Nightmares at the door, i slept so well these last few nights

But nothing, save nothingness, ever lasts. I’m breaking

Swelling at the seems, clashing, i’ve never been seen

Only perceived with preconceived notions 

Hold me back, i may run, dressed in nothing but a rash decision 

Caressed by darkness, give me strength to sever and create

Hold me still, for thrashing under weight only brings injury

My eternity, cut short, please exhale life unto me 

And give me another start, a chance at flight

Hold on to fragile butterfly wings 

They break so simply, try to see me. Truly see me 

Please 

Revive me in my hardship, running only makes them faster, grasping further with sticky 

hands

Devour my fear, my hunger, my sickness

Eat my innocence and retch it up, its hurts doesn’t it?

This frail naivete kept hidden, degrading under constant pressure

Understating its devine measure

Humiliation lasts a lifetime, praise but a second 

And I can only lie in bed and count my ceiling fan’s rotation as if they were sheep and i 

a shepard

An exodus of sleep rending me from tranquility. Its lovely, however, no answer to my 

many questions

And the hunger never ends, my sin an overwhelming din above a cliff’s searing edge

I was born and shall die with my eyes unmasked, not to be blinded by the pretty lies 

they said, its so telling

How he won’t have anything to do with me

A devil child of her own heart, raised and bred by her blood

And later trapped in his maw, surrounded by wolves so cruel and so drawn

I grew and became 

A sword too dull to use, i cannae cut anything but myself 

And even then it only bruises 

My words pierce like spears, thrown so hard i tumble in after them

Threatened and deceived by their violence, i am rejected by my own mind, i’ve been 

gutted

And i cannot harden this heart of mine

It breaks with every word

Starshine, no remedy, heals no wounds, only fills me with clarity

Cures of this kind only work for a time

Desperation looms, a flick of a knife

I will forgive her, bloody knuckles save me, give me momentum

Love me with strife, oh mother, my heart

Laden with tremulous oaths broken like original wedding china

Hold me gently, i bleed constantly

My fingers plucked clean of flesh and bone

Every morning, i awake 

To a light so blue it blinds

My skin frigid, nauseated, my stomach empty, crawling

I bend beneath iridescent luminance, forehead against cold porcelain

Stones driven deep with uneven breath, i tremble 

Take me home

Oh mother dear

Leave me be, save me from my malady and let me plod this path in peace

Sling your past from my back

My strength is failing. I cannot sustain your vice on top of mine, mother please, i beg 

of thee

Sing me to sleep, so i may know rest before death takes me

And what a shame that you ever spoke my name, made me a known entity

Exposed me to a poppy field of pain

Numbing all my hurt, even as you claw your way back into my brain

Your breath reeks of wine and decay, rot outshines its sweetness

Let me in, show me a sign

Of motherly devotion and i will grant amnesty for your crimes, yet you only play games

You set in motion

My decline, proclivities notwithstanding, i attempt to rise

Above your demise

I am a dawn, so clear, so eager to render anew 

Weep as woe-begotten tomes tell tall tales 

Of remembrance and honeyed betrayals, the bells ring out and time rectifies

Yet i am forever tied to this life of mine, and though we both may carry shame

You and i shall never be the same

[redux-iterum]

not related to warriors or the redux at ALL but i would absolutely LOVE to hear your thoughts on the last of us if you were willing to share!! honestly i don't think i could've ever asked for a better video game adaptation, i shudder to think what the original movie back in, like, 2015 would've looked like

I am very glad you've given me this opportunity. Thoughts under the cut.

So I just gotta say, up front, the story in the game is magnificent. It totally earned its place of being held up as one of the best stories in gaming history. Several scenes still make me wanna weep (I even hear someone say "baby girl" and my heart has a knife-wound immediately). When I heard they were making a show, I was very afraid - I don't think it's controversial to say that games being made into shows or movies just don't work out at all, ever. The Last of Us, the game, is especially one that, if you ruin it, you have fucked yourself over harder than the dudes behind the final season of GoT. I thought that you will never win over people no matter how good the show is, because the game is just so much better.

BOY AND FUCKING HOWDY WAS I WRONG

This fucking show! Is so good! Its version of the story, dare I say, is better than the game! I don't know how they fucking did that. It seems an impossibility. But their additions and translations and pacing are incredible! I'm watching a playthrough of the game right now for the story to compare, and I'm boggled to realize I prefer how the show did darn near everything! These goddamn writers made me care about Bill! How the fuck is that possible!?

They did make changes, but I love all of them. Especially when it comes to characterization. This Joel, I absolutely adore. Which, I wanna go into that real quick, because the comparisons between the two versions interest me greatly:

Joel in the video game was, to me, characterized as he plays in the game - that is, an unstoppable monster that the NPCs should be and are terrified of, because he can and will kill everyone to make things more convenient for himself. He gets stabbed in the gut and as soon as he gets one dose of antibiotics he hobbles out into the snow and the enemies run away from him; the protagonist equivalent of a boss fight just arrived, and they are not going to fucking engage. He is grumpy and stoic and terrifying, and it takes a long time to get through to his actual humanity, what little he has left.

That characterization works very well for a game, but the show is not a game. It needs a human being to be the protagonist. No one is going to support game!Joel in a TV show. So they softened him and dented his iron wall a good amount, and I love that. He's a person - he's old enough to have bad knees, his hearing is failing, he damn near weeps telling his brother about his desperation to keep Ellie safe - and what a compelling person he is. I loved him already, but the instant he started giggling over a stupid pun Ellie made, he beat out game!Joel by a wide margin for me. I just adore this version. He's a human being, not a playable character. It's perfect.

On another note, it is INCREDIBLE that I know everything that's going to happen in this show - I have watched multiple people do multiple playthroughs of the first game, I know this shit backwards and forwards - and their little adaptive flairs still make me wanna cry. Sam and Henry in particular killed me (I'll talk about that some other time because this is long enough), and even all these new characters that they made for the show have me so invested that, whether or not I can guess where they're going, I'm desperately hoping for a peaceful end for them. I will say that the scene that I cry at every time (the end of Ellie's confrontation with David) was probably the only thing I didn't find to be better than the game, but it still hurt and I am happy for that.

I have a lot more thoughts, but this shit is a textwall now, so I'll leave it at this: 123/10, will cry again.

[maniacalscribe]

Leo’s Price childhood home stood like a severely wounded animal on the outskirts of a dying town, wooden bones splintering under the weight of neglect and abuse. It was less a sanctuary of familial love than a breeding ground for twisted affection and cruelty. Within those weathered walls, the air was heavy not with the fragrance of home cooked meals but with the acrid scent of fear—an odor Leo learned to inhale deeply, as shadowed figures danced around him, mocking the innocence he never had. His father was a monument to brutality, towering over Leo with hatred glaring from deep-set eyes. The sickening sound of his fists striking flesh echoed through the thin walls of the house like a morbid drumbeat of doom. Leo would often find himself huddled against the cool, unforgiving wood of the floor, hoping for the solace of a night where he could escape the reverberating chaos. But solace was a distant star, and Leo watched as his father’s anger became more ritualistic—a twisted clockwork of torment. “𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐮𝐩, 𝐛𝐨𝐲!” his father would roar, yanking him from a fitful sleep by his hair. Leo would scramble to his feet, always wary, always alert. The first blow was usually a gut punch, knocking the breath from him, leaving a trail of stars in his vision. The mailbox were rarely used for letters; they were a graveyard of bruises and blood-stained tissue.

Leo’s father had an unholy arsenal of agony at his disposal. It was on one particularly harrowing night that the old porcelain bowl of warm, soapy water became a method of punishment. Leo found himself thrust into its depths, the world above shimmering just beyond his grasp. The man’s hands, calloused and merciless, held him down under the water. Every pocket of air became a fleeting prayer. He struggled, bubbles erupting from his mouth like the desperate cries for mercy he dared not voice—a primal fear racing through him that perhaps this time he wouldn’t surface. With every terrifying moment, a new flame ignited within Leo—a rage stoked by the knowledge that even the one person who should protect him had become his executioner. And still, it was nothing compared to the silvers of much smaller tortures. The lighter, that infernal silver device, almost seemed like a cruel joke. He would watch with childlike fascination as the flame flickered and dance before meeting his tender skin. The first time it happened, he thought it was a mistake. The burn was seared into his memory, the way the skin blistered and festered leaving traces that morphed into ugly scars.

Every angry flick of the wrist kept Leo locked in a battle between survival and suffocation—his childhood a grotesque canvas on which his father painted his rage. It removed whatever innocence remained, setting the stage for the blood-streaked climax that would change everything. The night Leo murdered his mother was a turning point, marked by both desperation and gut-wrenching betrayal. In a fit of unimaginable fury, he tiptoed to her bedroom, the shadows whispering promises of twisted redemption. She lay sleeping, utterly unaware of the hell that would soon break forth. With trembling hands, he grabbed the kitchen knife, its blade cold and glimmering under the pale moonlight filtering through the bedroom curtains. The very act of betrayal was both sickening and exhilarating. Leo didn’t just stab her; he plunged the knife into the fabric of a life that had been draped over his existence like a dark shroud. He used every ounce of rage honed against his father to deliver the blow to the heart of the woman he always longed to protect.

As her life blood seeped into the sheets, he felt neither relief nor sorrow but an eerie emptiness. He chopped her into masses of flesh and sinew—a horrific puzzle with pieces that no longer fit in a world of love lost. The act itself felt like a merciful release, and with each fragmented piece that he bundled and carried down to the packed fireplace in the living room, he desperately tried to shed the weight of all that was broken. He struck the match and let it dance on the wood, igniting a rebellion against his past. The flames licked higher and higher, consuming her remains and the remnants of what he had deemed family life. The fire roared to life with a ferocity that felt almost euphoric, the scent of burning flesh mingling with a finality that obliterated memories he had both cherished and abhorred. The house burned into a charred silhouette against the night sky—a tombstone for his shattered childhood. He walked away, the adrenaline pumping through his veins like poison, a smirk curling his lips as he took one last look at the inferno. He was free, but freedom bore the weight of the flames, tattoos of destruction etched deep within him.

─── ─── ───

It wasn’t long before Leo met Emma, a beam of soft light breaking through the long darkness of his life. Her laughter resonated in his bones, reminding him of sound that wasn’t synonymous with fear. She was everything he had lost and desperately craved—a brief breath of fresh air in a life choked by grief and regret. They flirted amidst the chaos, finding stolen moments that sewed the ragged seams of his heart back together, if only for a while. But in the shadows, betrayal loomed. She discovered the truth he had buried—her honeyed truth cracked beyond repair. In a shattering moment of panic, anger, and fear, he did the unthinkable. Her trusting eyes, once mirroring his fractured soul, turned to horror as he unsheathed the knife that had once been an instrument of survival and now a harbinger of chaos. The blade met her throat, slicing through flesh and innocence with a finality that echoed years of pain. As the warmth drained from her body, he felt something within him erode—something he might have called love crack apart and fall forever into the abyss. Emma was gone, and so too any flicker of hope for redemption.

Now, Leo found himself on a path suffused with vengeance—a relentless thirst to find the father who had drawn blood from his veins and violated his soul.

[acteur-dramatique]

I lie here,

splayed out on the dusty attic floor,

a body once whole,

now a carcass of what I used to be,

bleeding into the cracks,

the wood beneath me soaking up

all that was once trust, love, hope --

now just flesh, hollowed, torn.

Samuel took the first bite,

sinking teeth into the skin of my trust,

a slow rip, peeling back

everything I'd built to keep safe,

and he chewed it down,

savored it like something rare,

leaving me bare,

nerves raw, veins exposed.

Them came Liam,

with his hands stained red,

his fingers tracing the lines of my heart,

only to flay it open,

pulling back each layer,

peeling me like old wallpaper,

watching as I shuddered,

every sinew severed,

my heart a tattered thing

hanging in the air between us.

And Troy --

he took my soul,

sank his hands deep,

fingers curling around the threads of me,

and yanked, disemboweling every dream,

leaving me gutted, emptied out,

just a shell of who I was,

my spirit twisted in his grasp

like something broken beyond repair.

They hover over me now,

hungry,

eyes wide with a dark pleasure,

feasting on the pieces they left behind,

gnawing on the bones of my trust,

my heart, my soul,

like scavengers picking clean

the body I once called my own.

I am bleeding out,

my warmth pooling beneath me,

a crimson stain spreading across the dust,

and I know this is the end --

there is no rising from this place,

no stitching together

the wounds they carved into me.

My soul rises,

floating above the desecrated corpse,

watching them feast on what I once held ear,

as if I am nothing,

just meat for their hunger,

a banquet of what was once me,

devoured and forgotten.

I am a stranger here,

to myself, to them,

to the broken body they leave behind,

and as I drift higher,

fading into the quiet above,

I see them all,

gnashing teeth, tearing at pieces of me

that I gave so willingly,

thinking love would protect me.

But love was the knife,

trust the feast,

and here in this empty attic,

I am left as nothing but a shadow,

a ghost watching the gorge

on the ruins of who I used to be

[lollipencil]

The Crow: Cerberus #3

No idea when the next part will be, at least this part's done.

Enjoy and be gentle ---

There was no moon in the sky. Only darkness broken by streetlights, silence muffling screams. And under this blanket, Marc Spector walked.

Followed from a distance by another.

She kept to the shadows, but never took her eyes off her target. It had taken several very long and risky nights, but finally, she had a list of names. Each picture burned into her memory fueling the rage in her heart. And she knew, deep in her gut, that this man was one of them. No layer of makeup could disguise him.

The knife was light in her hand from within the pocket of her hoodie. As were her footsteps as she followed him into an alley. When his suddenly stopped.

Layla was within arm's reach of him. All she had to do was close the distance. Instead, she watched Marc Spector turn to face her. He was calm, body loose and open. At the end of the alley, a crow lands on the ground. "Any reason you're following me?" Marc didn't waste his time. "You know why," Layla hissed, hand white-knuckled around the knife now.

Marc blinked in confusion, before another crow landed on his shoulder. Layla startled, but he didn't, just turned his head slightly towards it. "Ah, so you're Layla," Marc's eyes seemed to grow lighter as he said this.

Something about the way he said it, in how he sounded almost like he'd seen her before, in how he put two and two together, set her blood ablaze.

Before she could blink, the knife was in-between his ribs. His next breath was a wheeze, but it sounded off. Too relaxed still.

His face retained the mask of calm, even as he looked down at the knife handle still sticking out of him. A third crow landed on a bin and cawed. Nothing came out of the wound, no trace of the blood that should be appearing. Even when Marc tore the blade free, no red.

Just inky, thick black.

Layla's stomach turned at the sight of it. Not that Marc seemed worried about it. No, he just wiped that viscous ooze from the knife with his jacket, and offered it handle first, "Here." Slowly, Layla reached out and took it. "What are you?" her voice didn't waver, but was definitly quieter than before. "A dead man," Marc stated plainly. "...Why are you here?" "Why?" Marc whispered before his eyes grew dark, "Because of what they did."

Layla could hear the unspoken names, the same ones she'd commited to memory. "Because," Marc continued, rage visibly building, "they don't get to walk away scott-free. I'm dead, but so are they. And their undertaker has arrived."

The sudden roar of a car engine had Layla whip around. But the owner just raced by, uncaring of the world around them. Mere seconds had past, and yet when Layla turned back, Marc was gone. Crows and all.

[wind-in-the-sky]

Here's the full fic, but do please read it on AO3 if you can - I live for comments and reviews.

Alexander Anderson was, without a doubt the best agent Iscariot possessed in its ranks – he had been the only person to survive the process of becoming a regenerator to better fight the unholy monsters. The point was, he could say confidently, and without hubris that he was the best vampire hunter available for this mission – clearing out an abandoned hospital that had become an unwilling host to a nest of particularly foul vampires who were experimenting on the unfortunate local population – which is why he got particularly concerned when it became apparent that these godless abominations had prepared for his arrival.

When he’d arrived at the decrepit building, the hallways had been shockingly empty of the ghouls he would usually expect from a group of vampires living in one place, which set him on edge – normally fledglings that had grouped together like this would have become sloppy and careless after the first little while with their newfound power, creating a mass of ghouls that would give them away to anyone who knew what to look for. Shit, they must have known he was coming, but it would do the bloodsuckers no good. Summoning a pair of his bayonets to hand he continued stalking through the corridors, hunting down the damned bloodsuckers.

“The lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth,” Anderson muttered under his breath, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”

Finally, he reached the last door in the corridor – rather ominously it was the hematology lab – and with one sweeping kick, knocked the door clean off its frame. With no time wasted Anderson deployed a barrier of bible pages around the room to seal of the vampires’ routes of escape, then strode through the doorway into the beckoning darkness.

A shriek, and then the first of the vampires threw themselves at him, relying on their supernatural strength to try and land a wildly uncoordinated attack with their mouth of sharklike teeth. Pathetic, he sneered, all of this is so boring compared to fighting him, and he swung his right arm across his body in a clean arc, neatly decapitating the beast and letting out a spray of blood that splattered across his face, before stabbing straight through its ribs and into its heart.

Barely a second's reprieve and then Anderson was swinging more bayonets into his hands as he walked further into the room, this time launching half-a-dozen through the midsection of the next vampire, making it bulge, then explode like a corpse left in the sun too long as its flesh burnt in response to the holy silver of the bayonets, spraying yet more gore on Anderson and the ground.

Something was wrong, this fight shouldn't be so easy, even if they were young. Perhaps they were distracting him from something else.

Then, just as he'd predicted it, there was a sharp whistle of noise as several darts of some sort embedded themselves in his back.

Anderson pivoted around to launch a flurry of bayonets at this fresh enemy, but his arm faltered, and the consecrated blades flew wide and impaled themselves on a wall rather than the vampire which took advantage of the split second it took for Anderson to get two more in his hands to land a vicious swipe with the knife they held in their hand that sliced clean through several layers of skin and fat to skate across his ribs and gouge a deep line through the softer flesh of his stomach. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he tried to lift his right arm to gut the abomination, but it did no more than twitch.

It was with a dawning sense of horror that Anderson realised his wound hadn’t regenerated. As a second wave of dizziness hit him, and with it a leaden sensation that swept through his muscles, his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor.

Shit, whatever was in the darts had managed to counteract his regenerative abilities and make him far weaker than he would be otherwise.

Still, he grit his teeth once more and managed to flick one of his bayonets up into his mouth, so that he held the handle squarely between his teeth like one of those bad caricatures of pirates that showed up in the books the boys at the orphanage were so fond of reading. His legs trembling with the effort, Anderson forced himself to his feet, and with a quick jerk of his head, slid the bayonet neatly between the ribs of the third vampire and into its heart. The vampire, even in its death throes, used the last of its strength to stab the scalpel right into the meat of his shoulder before collapsing, finally dead.

Good, according to the intel, there should only be one more vampire left, which would be the sire – vampires tended to let the fledglings do all the work, unless they were landed in dire straits.

Unfortunately, Anderson's body chose that moment to cease normal functioning - so his vision swayed, then tilted as he fell to his knees once more, and slumped none too gracefully to the side, and driving the scalpel further into his shoulder.

A hoarse shout of pain left him as he struggled to try anything to get up again and move, goddammit, even as the seals he had laid on the room faded and fell away - the bayonet that had just missed the previous vampire had pierced one of the Bible pages making up the seal, letting it fall uselessly to the floor and thus break the seal around the lab.

Now, all Anderson was able to do was lie there, weakened by the insidious poison that wound its way through his veins, and watch as his blood pooled slowly around him and wait for the last vampire to finish him off.

As his limbs started to grow cold and lose feeling, and his breath came in shorter and shorter pants, Anderson had to accept that maybe he would die here - here, in some abandoned building, surrounded by vampire corpses, as he had always suspected he might.

How lonely, it was a shame he wouldn't be able to say a final farewell to any of his children, including Maxwell, that ambitious brat.

Huh, when had he stopped thinking of him as Enrico, the scared little boy who had been introduced to the orphanage.

More importantly, what would Alucard say if he could see him now - laid low by some useless bayonet fodder that would usually take but a few minutes to clean up.

As darkness started to creep in at the edges of his vision, Anderson heard the sound of footsteps crunching through the broken glass on the floor. Looking up with what little of his strength remained, he saw the vampire sire walking towards him with a large dagger clutched in his hand. His eyes started to fall closed as the vampire swung back it's arm to deliver the final blow, his consciousness fading even as he heard the whistle of the blade start to cut through the air.

Suddenly, that noise was cut off by the sharp retort of a pistol, and as Anderson finally lost all semblance of vision, a flash of red fabric filled his vision. Floating in unconsciousness, he suddenly felt himself held by a pair of strong arms and cocooned by some sort of cool material, before even that faint sensation faded away.

-------------‐-----------------------------

Alucard was bored out of his mind - his Master had dispatched him to deal with a small nest of vampires in an abandoned hospital deep in the English countryside, with a warning that section thirteen had likely also sent his beloved nemesis, the judas priest, ahead of him. Walking in through the doors of the building, he entered a strangely empty hallway - no bayonets lay abandoned on the ground, no telltale signs remained from what Alucard had come to expect of a battlefield that man had passed through.

Perhaps Iscariot's paladin had already swept through and cleared the building? But no, there was the telltale itching feeling that crawled underneath his skin whenever Alucard came close to those holy wards.

So he was still here then, good.

A maniacal grin spread across his face as Alucard strode through the hallways, readying Casull in one hand and Jackal in the other - it was going to be fun after all.

As he grew closer to where his beloved nemesis was, the vague itching sensation grew stronger - into a burn that started to seep its way to his very bones. Suddenly, though, his single-minded focus was distracted - Blood - but not just the blood of those long dead, but the blood of one he was intimately familiar with. Blood that did not normally permeate through a building to such an extent, as the priest's injuries healed over before too much of that bright-burning lifeblood fell away. Alucard could almost taste the heady aroma on his tongue. Too much for the man it belonged to not to be in mortal danger. His legs sped up as he broke into a run from his previous leisurely stroll.

No one but him was allowed to do that, he would not let some pathetic insects hurt that which belonged to him - that which was his to rip and tear, to shred the flesh of and then walk away laughing as he promises to come back stronger and fight again - the one man who comes close to finally ending him.

As Alucard finally got up to the third floor where the alluring smell of blood was coming from, the burn of the holy wards fell away as the power of the one keeping them up faded away. Fuck, he's really just going to leave me before we have the chance to fight again. A scant handful of minutes later he burst through the empty doorway of the haematology lab and caught sight of a grotesque Tableau in front of him - Anderson lay crumpled on the floor in a worryingly large puddle of crimson, eyes clouded over and unaware, and a vampire stood over him, their blade swinging down towards him.

Jackal was up and firing before Alucard could fully process the situation, bursting the head of that pathetic leech like a grape as he strode forwards to the downed form of his favourite enemy.

Crouching down over Anderson, he bent his head toward his chest and sighed in relief - there was still a heartbeat, thready and far, far too fast but nonetheless still there. Alucard had to move him somewhere safe, and now, if he wanted even a chance of being able to fight that glorious man ever again. The Vatican was a no go - besides the likelihood of getting shot on sight, he wouldn't be able to get there in time to prevent his death - so back to the Hellsing manor it was.

"Releasing control art restriction to level three, level two, situation C - release level one - until such time as injured allies are out of reasonable danger," he whispered, bending down to gather up Anderson, "Master Integra, I'm bringing back a guest, could you please tell Walter to prepare the medical room."

"Really, Alucard? I would have thought you'd be glad to get rid of your nemesis, but I do know you better than that I suppose. Very well, do hurry." Came the terse reply.

"As you say, my master."

A fresh trickle of blood from Anderson dripped its way onto the floor, splashing crimson-bright against the floor. As Alucard's form melted into the shadows, he sent out a single prayer to the God who had abandoned him, and who he abandoned him in turn - Please, Lord who loves His servants, let not this one die in vain, or before his time.

With that, he vanished, bringing Anderson with him.

Here, have a sneak peak at a half finished Hellsing one-shot I'm writing for AO3.

You shall not fear the terror of the night.

Au - No millennium, Anderson's regeneration is compromised

Tw - someone is dying. It's Anderson. He's the one dying.

As his limbs started to grow cold and lose feeling, and his breath came in shorter and shorter pants, Anderson had to accept that maybe he would die here - here, in some abandoned building, surrounded by vampire corpses, as he had always suspected he might. 

How lonely, it was a shame he wouldn't be able to say a final farewell to any of his children, including Maxwell, that ambitious brat.

Huh, when had he stopped thinking of him as Enrico, the scared little boy who had been introduced to the orphanage.

More importantly, what would Alucard say if he could see him now - laid low by some useless bayonet fodder that would usually take but a few minutes to clean up.

As darkness started to creep in at the edges of his vision, Anderson heard the sound of footsteps crunching through the broken glass on the floor. Looking up with what little of his strength remained, he saw the vampire sire walking towards him with a large dagger clutched in his hand. He closed his eyes as the vampire swung back it's arm to deliver the final blow, his consciousness fading even as he heard the whistle of the blade start to cut through the air.

Suddenly, that noise was cut off by the sharp retort of a pistol, and as Anderson finally lost all semblance of awareness he caught a glimpse of the bottom edge of a red coat.