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whumpflash · 2 years ago

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Acacia Aneura: On and Up

cw: noncon drugging, beating aftermath, slavery/captivity, branding, briefly mentioned noncon

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Most scavs were loners at heart, and Judd was no exception. He had friends back at the camp, sure. They'd swap tips, share tools, maybe even split a haul if someone came up empty handed. But not a single one would stick their neck out for him. Judd didn't expect them to. He sure as hell wouldn't do it for them, not if he could get away scott-free.

So why the fuck had Skye come back for him?

The thought burned away at his skull, dancing the fucking two-step with the bitter dismay of his failure to escape.

Judd and Skye were each fitted with heavy restraints, courtesy of the slaver's market; an apology to the buyer for the hassle the pair had caused. The man saw fit to drug them both for the ride as well, pinching Judd's nose and forcing his jaw apart when he tried to fight it. Not Compliance, but something thick and bitter that leadened his limbs and made him drowsy. The two captives were tossed into a storage compartment in the back of the buyer's transport, and locked inside.

Judd tried to reposition himself in a way that didn't put too much pressure on his bound arms, grimacing as the compartment began to rumble with the start of the vehicle's motor. This was it, then. He was about to disappear from the wastes, maybe forever.

As shitty and brutal as the desert could be, it was still his home, and the fear of leaving it all behind overpowered the heavy pull of the drug, keeping him from slipping under.

Beside him, he could feel Skye struggling into a better position. There was hardly any room to move between the two of them, and by the time he stopped his squirming, he was leaning heavy on Judd. Any other circumstance, he would've shoved the other man away. Cussed him out. But the drug and his throbbing head and the feeling that he owed the older man something, kept him silent.

For some reason, he was caught by surprise when Skye spoke.

"Listen close, bully," he mumbled, his words coming out half-slurred. "Man who has us is very rich, and he came down to the market himself. Hand-picked you." He paused, taking a shaky breath. "Means he has a purpose already in mind for you. Likely either as a pit fighter or a pet."

"Pet?" Judd repeated.

"Bedslave," Skye replied, confirming what Judd already knew, and intensifying the sinking feeling in his stomach.

He clenched his jaw, willing the feeling away. It didn't have to happen. He could still escape.

But even as he thought it, he knew how pointless that hope was.

"What about you?" he asked.

The older man shrugged against him. "I'm an afterthought. Pits or labor. Doesn't matter." His voice sharpened. "You need to get him to make you a fighter. Don't know if that's what he's already got planned, but if it's not, you need to change his mind."

Judd scowled, despite knowing Skye couldn't see it. "What difference does it make? Still a slave either way."

"Fighters need to put on a show," Skye said, suppressing a wince as he shifted again. "They escape the drugs, the Compliance, at least when they're getting ready for a match. They get to train. It's your best chance at escape."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"The better your chances, the less I have to worry about you."

Judd grunted, pressing his cheek against the metal inner wall of the transport. "You should've just fucking ran," he said in a near-whisper.

"That's where you're wrong," Skye replied. "I couldn't be responsible for a fellow scav losing his freedom."

"Now you're responsible for two."

Skye had no response for that. Judd pushed further into the wall, until the pressure on his face built to something almost painful, biting past the dragging effects of the drug. He was going about this wrong, he knew. He was shackled, in the hands of a man who thought he could own him, on the way to a city that might as well be alien. He needed all the allies he could get.

"What about the kid?" Judd said, changing the subject. "Is he—?"

"She is miles away at our camp. Safe." The way he said it sounded almost sad. Resigned.

"What's going to happen to her if you're…" Judd bit the inside of his cheek. "With me?"

A sigh from Skye. "She… I told her not to come after me. Said if I was gone more than a week, to just move on."

"Just move on?"

"Hell knows if she'll listen or not." Affectionate. "Evyr'll be okay. She's a tough kid. She knows I wouldn't just leave her. That if I don't come back it's… it's because I can't."

Judd swallowed. "You said becoming a fighter's the best chance at escape. You think there is a chance then?"

"There's always a chance. Tough one, but scavs are tough. We can make it, but we gotta stick together best we can."

"Thought you said you don't wanna have to worry about me?"

"Doesn't mean I'm gonna leave you high and dry. Faster alone, further together, ever hear that saying?"

The transport suddenly stopped, metal shuddering and creaking. Judd flinched as an odd feeling spread over him, a drop in his stomach. Were they..?

"Don't panic," Skye mumbled. "It's the lifting mechanism. Moves transports up to the floating cities. Kind of like a… shit, y'don't know what an elevator is, do you?" He sighed. "It's taking us up. That's what's important."

"What about getting back down?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Judd grunted in response. How the fuck did Skye know so much, anyway? How could he be so sure about any of this?

The odd drop in his stomach stopped before long, and soon after, the transport slowed. A pair of burly men, neither of them the buyer, threw open the door to the storage compartment and hefted its occupants out. Judd's legs gave out the moment he tried to put any weight on them, the drug's lingering effects rearing their ugly head.

They were in a small concrete bay, empty aside from the transport, and cold. They had air cooling units at Judd's camp, but they didn't offer much against the heat of the wastes, and were nothing compared to the chill of the room.

In the light, Skye was looking worse for the wear; blood drying on his lips, in his hair, one eye swelling shut. With the hits Judd had taken, he doubted he looked much better, and the pain and the cool air and the drug all combined to leave him shivering. No doubt the picture of a pathetic mess.

The buyer was climbing down from the passenger compartment of the transport, and it gave Judd some meager comfort to see that he was sporting a black eye.

"Where do you want them, Mr. Burke?" One of the burly men hefted him to his knees by the collar, and he winced as it dug into his already-bruised throat, adjusting his position so he could still fucking breathe.

"Have them processed and put in a holding cell," Burke responded, adjusting his shirt collar. "I still need to decide on a sufficient punishment." He disappeared through a shiny white door as soon as he finished spouting the instructions, and his goons hauled Judd and Skye roughly to their feet, pulling them to a second, significantly less shiny door.

It opened on a staircase that was somehow even colder than the bay room. Getting down it while chained and dizzy was no easy feat, but both men managed to reach the bottom without falling.

There was a hall, then another door, and another, and then they seemed to have reached their destination; yet another fucking concrete room.

Rubber tubes dangled from the ceiling, and below them, rows of metal drawers lined the walls. In one corner sat a squat furnace. If not for the absence of any parts, it'd look like the kind of repair bays Judd had seen in the grounded cities. A pretty well-equipped one at that.

The man holding Judd dragged him toward one of the hanging tubes, pulling the chain around his neck taut and attaching it to a hook above his head. Burke's goon grabbed the nearest tube and took a step back, angling it at Judd, who let out a strangled gasp as a jet of cold water came spurting out.

Somewhere behind him, he could hear the sound of tearing fabric, followed by protesting curses. Skye was getting the same treatment.

The stream of water soaked into his hair, drenched his skin, worsened his shivering. He watched as the red dust of the wastes washed off him, trickled into the drain.

So much water. A city luxury stealing what little he had left of his home. How stupid was he, to mourn for dust?

The man unhooked his collar and dragged him closer to the furnace. If nothing else, Judd was grateful for the slight heat coming from it, lessening the chill that gripped him. He felt the goon reach behind him, fastening his wrists to the wall.

"Don't move, or this will be a lot worse."

The other goon was hauling Skye over, attaching his restraints to another point in the wall to keep him in place as he reached towards the furnace, pulling out a long metal rod.

A choked, almost fearful sound escaped Skye, and only then did Judd realize what was about to happen. He thrashed, as if he were capable of breaking metal with something as weak as fear. The restraints dug painfully into his wrists.

"Shit— shit, no, don't—!"

"Hold him."

A hand closed around the back of his collar, yanking his head back, better exposing his chest.

Judd cursed as the red-hot iron came closer to him, too panicked to make out the outline of whatever it was they were about to brand him with. He tried again to jerk away, but the man holding him gripped the collar tighter, cutting off his air.

The metal seared into his skin, right below his collarbone, and his scream came out strangled, warped by the pressure on his throat.

Vision white, dizzy from the drug and the pain and the lack of air, Judd's legs buckled. The goon holding his collar caught him, wrapping an arm around his waist and propping him up.

The smell of his own burning flesh was like cooking meat, and it sickened him that it made him feel almost hungry, of all things.

Judd blinked away tears, breathing through clenched teeth as he waited for the pain to ebb, even just a little.

Across from him, Skye's head was hung as the man with the iron approached him, the burning brand in his grip.

The older man didn't try to struggle or curse. He didn't even look up.

But he still let out a blood-curdling scream as the iron pressed into his skin.

When it came away, leaving Skye panting, though still upright, it left behind a bright red circle with a pair of B's in it, mirroring each other, as if to form the outline of a butterfly.

They did Skye's on the right side, not over his heart like Judd's, and when he squinted through blurry vision he could see why.

Over Skye's heart, below his collarbone, was a different mark. An encircled pair of X's, one overlapping the other.

Another brand.

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@kira-the-whump-enthusiast @kixngiggles

#dun dun dunnn #acacia aneura #whump writing #judd harlow #post apocalyptic #apocalypse whump #slavery tw #branding #tw noncon drugging #manhandling #collar whump #tw choking #noncon strip #older whumpee #multiple whumpees #carewhumpee

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deviant-doughnut · 4 months ago

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Augusnippets Day Eighteen

Chosen Prompt: Apocalypse

CW: Dubcon; trans guy MC having unprotected vaginal sex; non-consensual bareback orgasm; dubcon orgasm denial; starvation; spoiled food.

There’s little need for privacy these days, so the stranger leads him into the tall grass and gestures without words to the ground. Klaus’s stomach aches badly with hunger.

If his mental calendar remains correct, he’s been on this road for four days — walking in desperate search of a village he’s starting to think isn’t real. A place, he was told by the last group he encountered, where food and drink remain readily available, and upon which the dead things have yet to descend. The news gripped him like a fever dream — a community so small that the creatures have missed it, too focussed on cities and towns to have ventured out this far. But Klaus has waded through three frigid nights to be met with yet more barren landscape. His phone is long dead, the internet defunct. He’s slowly losing track of the date, and his body is weak and groaning with hunger.

He flicks his eyes to the stranger’s bag, mind caught on the offering hidden inside. One loaf of bread for an ounce of his time, for whatever brief entertainment his body can offer. He hasn’t been fucked since the dead things descended, since the world began its sudden unravelling. The stranger’s pale eyes are fixed to him, unblinking, his mouth a thin line of impatience. His stomach emits an audible groan, a type of plea, of crying out. He hasn’t had something as good as bread in seventy days — or maybe seventy one.

Klaus drops his rucksack into the rustling grass, and lowers himself onto his back.

“Take your clothes off,” the stranger tells him. “All of them.”

“It’s cold,” Klaus protests. He’s met with a stare that sends tremors through him — not fear, but something not far from it.

“You’re hungry,” says the stranger, “and I haven’t had a good fuck in a long time. I’m not giving you this bread for nothing.”

“Sure,” says Klaus, already unbuttoning his shirt. “Okay, okay.”

Part of him expects the stranger to follow suit, but all he does is watch. His eyes roam over Klaus’s rakish frame, painfully thin from the scarcity of sustenance. When Klaus kicks his threadbare jeans from his ankles, the stranger kneels between them and squeezes his knees like a warning. He digs his nails in, a featherlight threat, and Klaus’s heart thunders as he swallows a sigh. Annoyance sparks through him at the man’s callous nature, but the hunger feels like a miserable sickness, and he spreads his legs for him anyway.

The stranger pulls himself out of sweats, and fucks him with all of his clothes on. It takes Klaus a while to get wet. The stretch is sudden and the intrusion burns. Klaus gasps and hears himself whining.

“Not so fast,” he says, squirming in the dirt, fingertips coming to the stranger’s broad chest, pressing to tentatively halt him.

“Shh,” says the stranger. “This is perfect.”

Klaus turns his head to the side and shuts his eyes, listens to the breeze and the man’s ragged grunts. He ruts into him roughly and fast, Klaus but a rag doll beneath him. He keeps his legs splayed, feels his heart in his throat when the stranger takes his teeth to it. He fucks him until Klaus’s body responds, rutting into him until his wetness is audible. Beneath the stranger’s loveless thrusts, a pleasure ghosts softly in tendrils. The stranger rolls his hips and Klaus keens with the pulsing of his g-spot. His body shakes, his breath trembles. He reaches down to touch himself and the stranger takes his wrist in a vice grip. He pins it high above Klaus’s head, the bones aching sharp in the dirt.

“Did I say you could touch yourself?” He asks, voice ragged and low.

“N-no,” Klaus whimpers, body rocked roughly beneath him. “But it’s been so long.”

“I’ll get you off when I’m ready,” he tells him, pushing so deeply into him that Klaus’s mouth falls open wide, yet all that emerges is a squeak. “You’re mine to play with, remember?”

“Yes, sir,” Klaus whispers, and the stranger cuts his own moan short with a sudden bruising kiss. His tongue plunges into Klaus’s mouth. The pain deep inside him scrapes at the edges of his pleasure. The stranger slows and quickens more times than Klaus can count, drawing out his own pleasure and denying Klaus the bulk of his own. His clit throbs keenly between them, his slick inviting the stranger to be rougher.

“Oh god,” he breathes, thrusting passionately. “Oh fuck. Good boy. You’re taking it so well.”

“Thank you,” Klaus murmurs, his eyes wet, his insides aching, his stomach warm with the pleasure, the heat of it spreading to his thighs. His eyes roll back as the stranger’s breaths grow suddenly shorter, as if panicked.

“I’ve missed this,” he gasps.

“M-me too,” says Klaus, though a large part of him wants it to be over already.

“I’m gonna come inside you,” the stranger announces, voice strained with the grip of his pleasure. His hips stutter badly out of their rhythm. The pain and the pleasure persist. Klaus’s thoughts never turned to protection, too fixed on the promise of food.

“Wait,” he whispers, barely audible under the sounds of their sex, of the stranger’s desperate gasping.

The stranger comes inside of him, muffles his yell by sinking his teeth into him. He bites into the space between Klaus’s shoulder and neck, his desperate cry muted immediately.

Klaus, on the other hand, wails.

The stranger’s release spills quickly inside him, a rush of sudden hot wetness. Klaus’s heart pounds like a fist, each heartbeat jolting wildly through him. The pain in his neck gets worse when the stranger withdraws, an open wound exposed to the night — the harsh air of what should, he thinks, have been October. He lies in the grass beneath the stranger, waits as he catches his breath.

“That was incredible,” says the stranger, rolls his hips, still half hard deep inside him and fucking him lazily. “Did I hurt you?”

Klaus considers this, a flickering light in the back of his mind that warns him to be careful how he answers.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, not sure which response the stranger would prefer. He feels his eyes fixed on the wound on his neck, the proof that the dead things might not yet have reached him, but that something else sank its teeth in.

The stranger pulls out of then, makes him gasp at the drag of his cock against his sensitive walls. The stranger chuckles, tucks himself away. He reaches into his bag, tosses the loaf of bread onto the ground beside Klaus.

“Found it in a freezer,” he shrugs. “Kept going by a generator. Pretty cool, I guess. After all this time.”

“Yeah,” Klaus says, not wanting to engage with this man much further. He still feels him deep inside him, swollen and throbbing from the fervour with which he had fucked him. Klaus forces a smile, one that portrays his desire to cease their brief and hollow relationship. The stranger adjusts himself in his pants, then spits crudely onto the ground.

“Thanks,” he says, and turns away from him.

“You too,” Klaus mumbles. He watches the stranger retreat, waits until he’s far enough away not to see him when he tears into the plastic wrapping, undignified in his hunger, made only worse by the exertion he was put through. Klaus’s mouth waters, his stomach groan loudly. He’s naked still, and almost laughing by the time he frees the first slice, near hysterical at the thought of eating it.

And then he halts.

The bread is soggy. Freshly defrosted, Klaus reminds himself, and nowhere for the moisture to air out of. He holds it at eye level and examines it closely. There’s too much mould on this slice to eat, globs of hairy green clinging to its edges, spreading like bruises in its middle. He sets this slice aside for a moment, atop his discarded clothes as he pulls out the next one, heart thudding in dread.

He finds the next slice the same, wet and turning slowly green. He sighs. His shoulders slump, and he’s struck with such a sudden lurch of homesickness — not only for a place he misses, but for a reality that has been lost to man — that his eyes well with stinging tears.

Klaus lets some of them fall, lets himself sob quietly in the tall grass as the breeze ripples around his naked frame. He mourns the past. He’d give anything to go back to that time, to freeze himself somewhere deep in the middle of his most inconvenient day of normality. He’d give anything now, for any of it. Klaus cries until his sobs come dry. He wipes the wetness from his face, pushes one slice of bread back into the bag and takes the other in a trembling hand.

His stomach rumbles so hard that it hurts. He gets to work picking the mould off.

Thanks to @augusnippets for this event!

#augusnippets #augusnippets day 18 #whump #cw dubcon #Apocalypse whump #trans whumpee

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generic-whumperz · 10 months ago

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This show is so underrated 😭

z nation - 1x3 philly feast

#z nation #znationedit #cassandra z nation #horrorgifs #Whumpy gifs #taser #electrocution #tw electrocution #apocalypse whump

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questions-about-blorbos · 4 months ago

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This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote with their own Blorbos in minds

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what-would-your-blorbo-do · 8 days ago

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Trigger warning: mention of suicide, character death

This poll was submitted to us. If you’d like to send us your own scenario (plus different ways a character might react to said scenario) so we could make a poll for you, feel free to send them to our inbox.

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urlocalwhumper · 1 year ago

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whumpee and carewhumper in a cruel, harsh world. (maybe post-apocalypse, maybe wartime, maybe it just sucks)

carewhumper doesn't hurt whumpee because they enjoy it. in fact, it pains them to do so. but they learned the hard way that might makes right in this world, and whumpee is certainly lacking in might.

whumpee is small, weak, and frail, with a kind, gentle heart. all things that drew carewhumper to them back before the world hardened them into what they are now. now, they can only see those attributes as weaknesses, things to potentially be exploited by others.

carewhumper firmly believes that whumpee would've died years ago if it weren't for them. maybe they're right.

whumpee doesn't hate carewhumper for any of this. they remember the person they used to be, the curious child who used to think whumpee was something special. they know carewhumper still loves them deep down. that they only want them safe, as twisted as their methods are.

the same hands that punched a tooth out of their mouth also carried them back home ever-so gently, pressed gauze to the gum until it stopped bleeding, and fed them painkillers and ice cream to help with the lingering soreness.

"i'm sorry." carewhumper had said, brushing whumpee's hair away from their eyes. "i went too far. i didn't mean to knock your tooth out." they sighed. "but you need to learn, alright? it's dangerous out there, you can't make yourself so vulnerable."

"i'm sorry." whumpee rasped. "i won't do it again."

carewhumper huffed drily. "you better not."

they nudged whumpee until they were leaning their head against carewhumper's shoulder, carewhumper's arm resting around their shoulders.

"but it's okay. i forgive you."

#whump #whump prompts #abusive relationship whump #whumpee x whumper #you can read their relationship however you like tbh #apocalypse whump #doesn't have to be but yk might as well #carewhumper #mine

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generic-whumperz · 1 year ago

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Two unlikely strangers collide and learn to put aside their differences to work together for a chance to survive the dual threats of red room internet stardom and the apocalypse.

(This story takes place within the Apocamerica AU)

Writing: A03 | Backstory | Progressing Storyline

Playlists (story and characters, Spotify & YouTube Music links)

General Content Warnings (18+)

Character Info

(Tentative) Timeline

(Amateur) Art:

Bad Procreate Portrait! +Backstory

Basement Dayz

SPD Basement Haunting

OC Week Day 5: Powers

Other:

"Life Before" Backstory ask

OC in 3 (Aid vibe pics, visual references)

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marvelstoriesepic · 14 days ago

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Whumpcember (day 12)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader (Zombie apocalypse au)

Prompt: I have nowhere else to go

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: Enemies to lovers; zombies; mentions of murder; blood; death

Author’s note: This got a little too long for a fic that was initially meant to be a Drabble but I couldn’t bring myself to let it end earlier. And this was quite fun, since I’ve never written something like this before.

[Divider by @sweetmelodygraphics ]

Masterlist | Whumpcember Masterlist

Your side is stinging terribly, pulsing with every unsteady step.

Your legs fail at mimicking a normal stride, falling back into a limp.

Your hands tremble, defying every command to just stay still.

Your lungs sear with every breath, dragging air like fire down a raw throat.

Your head swims in chaotic loops, spinning with images and echoes you can’t escape.

Your shoulder and back throb from an impact you took earlier, sharp pain shooting up your spine with every jolt of your uneven stride.

The enormity of what just happened refuses to fit neatly into thought.

The sun is not even all up in the sky and your day already took a turn so cruel, you are teetering on the edge of collapse.

You stopped keeping track of time since this whole apocalyptic shit began but it's safe to say that you just lost everything you had in the span of maybe three hours.

You are exhausted. You are tired. You are in fear. You are in shock.

Acknowledging all of that is dangerous right now.

The world feels off-kilter.

Nausea rises again. Though there is nothing left in your stomach. You already emptied it on the forest floor before you stumbled into the trees, desperate to escape.

The acrid taste still lingers at the back of your throat.

The trees around you sway in your periphery, tall shadows painted in moonlight. It’s not the wind that makes them sway. It’s your vision. Branches claw at the sky like the dread claws at your resolve.

Your body is screaming at you to stop and collapse into the dirt, but you know if you let it, you won’t ever stand back up again.

You have to keep going.

You have to press on.

Your world has crumbled into rot and hunger, and all you have left is the instinct to run.

Run and survive.

Whatever that means now.

You have no sense of the distance you’ve put between you and the nightmarish scene you had to leave behind, no measure of the miles your aching legs already crossed.

You don’t know if they are right behind you. If they’re even coming for you.

It was barely dawn when they came.

It wasn’t a warning shot or a distant sound that reached the camp first. No, it was the impact.

The sound of boots trampling through the undergrowth, bodies charging through the trees, wild shapes silhouetted against the rising sun. Barked commands that carried no meaning, only menace.

You had barely time to register what was happening when they were already in the heart of the camp.

They scattered supplies, spilled meager rations into the dirt, kicked apart the fire pit still faintly glowing from the night before when your small group all sat in a circle around it.

With the first scream, violence erupted.

Blades flashed and mocking laughter rang out from all sides as you heard your companions cry out in terror and pain.

They scrambled from their makeshift shelters, some clutching weapons, others still groggy, confused, unarmed. There was no time to gather thoughts, no time to plan. The raiders were already upon you, tearing through tents and slaughtering everyone in their way.

You watched as Caleb lunged for them, but they cut him down before he even reached anybody.

You tried to get little Benjamin to safety but he got ripped away from you in a matter of seconds and you only felt the slash of a knife against your side.

You heard the guttural sobs of Jonna and her wide eyes as she couldn’t tear them off the lifeless body of her husband. You tried to reach her, grabbing her and getting her away but before you could, she got hit and fell. Just like her husband had moments earlier.

The thud of bodies hitting the ground, the clash of metal, the desperate screams of the people you knew and trusted, cutting off as quickly as they began, the splattered blood everywhere across the ground, slick on leaves, staining clothes of people who’d been alive only seconds earlier. Blood that is all over you, painted in your hair, in your face, on your hands-

You heave the bile against a nearby tree.

Your throat burns. The images burn. The memories burn.

The world is already torn apart as it is but they ripped at everything you had fought for.

You were pinned on the ground at one point. Brutally shoved down and the impact took your breath away. However, you were able to move out of the way of the knife that was meant for your face and instead buried into the ground. The surprise of your attacker weakened his hold on you and you were able to flee, but not without taking a few more hits.

Your friends were dead. Everything was destroyed.

So you ran.

You ran, stumbled, fell, scrambled up, and ran again.

You wondered if the raiders stayed to strip your makeshift camp bare or if they followed you. The last one alive. The one that slipped through their grasp.

Or maybe they’ve decided you’re not worth the effort, and your life hangs by nothing but chance.

After all, you feel death knocking on your door. And it will kick it in, hinges breaking and wood splintering if you don’t open it yourself.

But you won’t.

You push on. You will push your body to its breaking point.

Even if your mind shatters way before your body does.

Because you know you will crumble if you allow your thoughts to win over your body.

You just lost everything you had.

Your group was only on the move.

The camp was supposed to be a fleeting thing. A place to catch your breath from traveling. This morning you were all supposed to pack what little you had and keep moving and get closer to the sanctuary you had spoken of. A place you were going to build. A place where no raid, no nightmare, no lifeless beast could touch you.

So, if you had risen earlier, broken down the camp faster, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps your friends - the few people who so graciously took you in almost two years ago - would still be alive.

You don’t even know who the marauders were. They came out of nowhere.

A realization makes your blood run cold.

Something you remembered only now.

The sounds.

You heard it between the screams of your friends at one point. Low, throaty, and too familiar. The kind of sound that makes your pulse rise and pricks the back of your neck.

It was the sound you learned to fear. The sound your world had been drowning in for years now.

The sound of the dead - those shambling remnants of humanity, curses to wander the earth as mindless husks.

You remember the way they started moving so differently than when they came into your camp - some of them sluggish, others unnervingly erratic.

And you begin to wonder. Perhaps they had been bitten before raiding your camp.

And perhaps that’s the reason they came. They knew their time was up. They probably felt the infection eating at them, death clawing closer. Maybe attacking your group was their last violent eruption of humanity, the last thing they did with a conscious mind before they fell to the disease that had already claimed their souls.

They didn’t have anything left to lose. No loved ones to mourn. No future to fight for. Just an empty void ahead. A transformation into something even crueler than the monsters they already were. Perhaps they wanted this last conscious act to mean something. To carve their names into the memory of the world before they became nothing more than rotting corpses, stumbling through the dirt without a single thought in mind.

It makes you sick.

If they wanted to be remembered, they succeeded. You will remember. You will remember the massacre, the destruction, the screams, the wicked laughter that curdled your blood.

You will remember them because the screams of the people you came to love and trust have planted themselves into your chest and they won’t ever leave.

Maybe that’s what they wanted. To leave a mark, no matter how meaningless, no matter how vile. Or maybe they simply wanted to take something beautiful and shred it before they joined the walking rot.

Either way, they are gone now and you are left.

Alone.

You are left alone.

On the way to the one place you never thought your feet would lead you to again.

The one you meant to leave behind. To forget. To never return to. To move on.

Though you have to admit to yourself it never worked as well as you had hoped.

It has been two years since you left.

Two years of telling you to lock those doors with memories you tried to forget for so long.

And now, the thought of going back lets dread curl around your chest. It’s the dread of walking into a place you don’t know if you’re welcome anymore. The dread of facing what you left behind - facing who you left behind.

But there is also a flicker of something else. Something that feels too fragile, too dangerous to name. You tell yourself it’s nothing - just a memory, nostalgia - but you can’t quite smother it.

Because those people were your family once. Before you left, before you found the group you traveled with these last two years, they were your everything. Your friends, your loved ones, your sanctuary.

They were the ones that held you together when the world fell apart, the ones who gave you a purpose in this now purposeless society.

You left them behind to find something that you lost again just earlier.

The new group you had come to call your own, the people you fought beside, laughed with, dreamed with. All gone. Taken from you in a single, brutal morning. By people you couldn’t even take revenge on anymore. By people who aren’t even people anymore.

And you know your new companions never replaced your first family but they were home nonetheless.

But now, you have nowhere else to go but the place you called home first.

Though, would you really be welcome after all this time?

Would they let you in? Would they open their gates and arms for you?

Would he let you in?

Because truly, that is the only question that matters. You know the hearts of the others, know that they would be happy to see you again.

Sam, with his wide toothy grin. He’d throw his arms around you and clap you on the back and tell you something that would make you laugh despite everything.

Steve, with that glint in his eyes. Because he never truly believed you wouldn’t return.

Wanda, with the tears in her gaze. She’d pull you into her embrace, whispering how she’d prayed for this and never given up hope.

Natasha, with her amused smirk. She’d stand a step behind with her arms crossed and tease you that it only took two years for you to miss them enough to lose all the dignity you could hold onto and came back.

And all the others who would greet you with happy smiles and tears and hugs. Because that’s who they are. Who they’ve always been. They are pure love for those they call their own.

And you have been one of them.

Of course, your sight would first be met with concern at your condition, but the joyful reunion would eventually happen. Banner would fuss over you but keep the worry out of his calm hands and voice like the professional he is. Tony would bark orders, his mind already working ten steps ahead. Peter would hover nearby, ready to help, ready to do whatever was needed to put you back together.

You imagine how they would patch you up, make sure you didn’t collapse right there at their feet. They’d press water into your hands, bandage the gashes, stitch the torn skin. They would give you time to breathe, to settle.

A smile almost manages to spread over your lips but the exhaustion in your bones tugs the corners of your mouth back down.

And there is this one person you’re not sure about. What will he do when he sees you? What will he say? Will he say anything at all?

There is a reason you left, after all.

The community you all lived in was a big one with men and women and children and elders all sharing a beautiful and vast space.

You had all agreed on not having a single leader to rule but rather having the few most trusted people who started this whole thing to do councils every so often.

Once, you were one of them.

You would meet up, usually when the night had already started, discussing and making decisions - everything involving supply runs, how to keep the walls protected, how to celebrate a birth or mourn a loss, and so on.

Bucky was a part of that as well.

And that’s where the trouble lay.

You two never really seemed to see each other eye to eye. You would fight and banter - him calling you stubborn and reckless, you calling him pragmatic and intolerant. The disagreements were constant, heated, and sometimes public enough to turn heads and the other council members to end up disappointed and helpless.

It went on like that for years. Though the day it all fell apart will forever live in the cracks of your mind. Guilt never dulls no matter how much distance you put between them and yourself.

It was a supply run. Something that’s been routine by now. A scavenging mission into hostile territory, dangerous but necessary. Food was running low, medicine almost gone.

You were walking through the woods - a sector closer to dead zone, but Bucky and you were both fueled by anger at the other’s stubbornness to pay attention to the little group of people you took with you. They were good at ignoring your bickering.

“We do it my way. Slow, methodical. We’re not losing anyone because of some reckless stunt.” His tone was flat. Final.

“I’ve never put anyone in danger, Bucky,” you defended with fire in your voice.

Bucky’s voice was hard. “You charge in without thinking, every single time-”

“Yes, and I always do that alone, Barnes. Don’t you think I know the risks? I wouldn’t ask anyone to-”

“Damn it, Y/n,” he cut off, voice sharp. “It’s bad enough that you do it-”

“If we only ever go slow, people will starve. We can’t afford to waste time, Barnes. You want to lose them sitting on your hands instead of taking a risk? That’s on you, not on me.”

Bucky talked lower then, harshly.“That’s not taking a risk, Y/n! That’s fucking suicide.”

The actual mistake was in the silence that followed. No compromise, no meeting of minds. Just the brittle quiet that stretched between you both and the tension that lingered even over the other group members walking with you.

Bucky’s jaw was tight, his steps heavy. Yours were no lighter.

It happened fast. As it always did. One moment, the woods were still, only the crunch of the leaves underfoot and a few insects in bushes and trees surrounding you.

The next, groans split the air, coming from every direction - shadows lurking between trees, their figures misshapen, their eyes empty.

There were too many of them. That was clear from the first breath, but you didn’t have time to process it, to count.

You shouted for the group to move, to break toward the clearing just ahead and they started rushing away until Bucky’s voice rose behind you. His commanding tone seethed in your veins.

“No! Fall back - circle to the ridge!”

But the clearing was closer. The clearing was safer.

So you said as much.

But that’s all the hesitation it took for the dead to gather closer. Close enough.

You lost precious time, precious ground. The damage had already been done.

Two people didn’t make it. Two lives, lost in the spaces between your choices.

The argument that followed was like nothing before. No banter. Not bickering. It was an unfiltered and ugly thing, charged by your guilt and his. Words were thrown, accusations hurled. It was awful.

And when the shouting stopped, there was nothing but silence. Thick. Unbearable.

Neither of you could let go of your anger, your grief, your pride long enough to see that you’d both failed them.

That day something shattered in your connection. Whatever that had been. The tension that always accompanied your relationship. It felt corrosive. Wrong.

And that’s when you made the decision. The decision to leave, that now led you to come back again.

Will he resent you? That thought is a blade that has turned itself dull from too much use, yet it still cuts at you in ways you can’t dodge.

You imagine him standing there, arms crossed, his face as unreadable as it would be stoic, staring at you with the fire that always burned behind his eyes.

Will he even let you step inside? Or will his anger boil over and turn you away, pushing you back into the wilderness you barely even escaped from?

Will he relish in your brokenness, in the way life has stripped you down to your very bones? Will he find satisfaction in seeing you this fragile, this vulnerable, clinging to scraps of pride as your body barely holds itself together? The image of his piercing gaze, not softened by time or mercy, sends a shiver down your spine.

But it also just might be your body starting to give out, you realize when more shivers whack your form.

You push on.

And you wonder. Could there maybe also be relief in those eyes, hidden behind the mask he always wears so well. Relief that you’re still alive, that whatever dark roads you’ve walked since haven’t claimed you completely.

Or would that relief be poisoned by something bitter - the satisfaction not of your survival, but of seeing you humbled, seeing you brought low enough to crawl back to him, back to the home you lied to yourself you were fine living without.

You picture his face shifting. A flicker of something softer crossing his features before he buries it deep. Will it pain him to see the bruises painted across your skin, the blood that’s long since dried on your hands and clothes, the tremble in your limbs while you stand before him like a ghost returned from the grave?

Will he turn you away, disgusted not by your injuries but by the weakness they represent?

You wonder if he’d speak at all. Silence, from him, could be worse than anger. After all, anger means caring. You don’t get angry if you don’t care.

So, perhaps you will be left to fill the empty space with your many regrets and guilty feelings.

Maybe he won’t even look at you. Don’t throw you a single glance, his gaze fixed somewhere distant.

But your conscience can’t help but imagine things.

Because what if he’d feel something he wouldn’t dare admit, not even to himself. That the faintest pull of relief isn’t for the pain you’re in, not for the way life has broken you, but that it is for the simple fact that you’re here, alive, breathing. Maybe that relief would be buried under layers of what he’d felt for you all those years. But it would be there.

Honestly, you don’t think you will ever get an answer to any of those questions. Because you feel your mind start to drift too much. As if the images in your head start to turn into dreams and your body is luring you into sleep to live them out.

You’re giving up.

And you are still not close enough to your old and now only sanctuary despite walking and dragging your frail form for hours and miles on end.

Your head is spinning, images and voices now blurred and upside down and all wrong.

Not even noticing you stopped dragging yourself forward, you start to lean the whole weight of your body against a nearby tree.

The bark is rough against your skin, scraping through fabric, digging into bruises, and tearing them raw. It should hurt. You know it should hurt, but it barely even registers anymore. It’s just another sensation - one more thing slipping away.

Your eyelids droop. They feel so heavy. The forest is shapeless around you, just a mess of color and shadow.

Your breaths come shallow and uneven, lungs forgetting to do their job. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you know this is it. This is where you’ll stop, where you’ll finally collapse and leave it all behind.

And the thought somehow isn’t as terrifying anymore. There’s a strange, unfamiliar peace blooming in your chest. You think about how your body would lie here, half-curled in the dirt, skin pale and bloodied, eyes forever closed.

Bucky might find you.

One day he might stumble upon your corpse on the ground. Maybe he’ll kneel beside your lifeless form, the frown on his face deepening, lips pressing into a grim line. Maybe he’ll tell you that he was right. That you were reckless and should have listened. Maybe his voice will tremble just a little.

The bickering you shared will follow you even into death.

The thought makes you want to laugh, but your body is too far gone for that. It’s barely your body anymore. It’s a shell of nothing. The world tilts, spins, then tilts again. You feel yourself begin to let go.

You won’t wake up. Not this time. And somehow, that’s okay. The peace blossoms brighter in your chest, warm and soft, as if the weight of the world is finally lifting.

You lost everything you had. And not even just today. You lost it two years ago when you decided it was the best to leave your home.

Your eyes slip shut and you don’t try to press them back open again. Your body is slumping to the ground, bark scraping against you, the ground rushing closer. The cold earth is pressed against your face. Your breath falters and slows.

Your body feels dead by now but your mind still blinks with awareness. And funnily enough, it can’t seem to let go of Bucky. His sharp face. His strong voice, the cadence of it so deeply carved into your memory that it echoes so clearly as if he were sitting right beside you.

“Y/n!”

“Shit, Y/n!”

It calls your name. The sound so urgent and frantic, it pulls you back for a fleeting second, though you are sure none of your muscles even twitch.

You are actually impressed with yourself. His voice sounds so real, so vivid. How is your mind able to conjure something so precise on the verge of unraveling completely? It’s him, down to the inflection, the roughness, the bite.

But you know it isn’t really him. That wouldn’t make any sense. Your mind is exaggerating. You’ve blown the image of him out of proportion, dressed him in a panic he wouldn’t wear for you, not for this.

If he found you like this - broken, slumped, slipping away - perhaps his voice wouldn’t even crack.

The day you said your goodbyes, Bucky wasn’t even there with the others. He wasn’t there when you hugged Sam, his arms lingering around you. Not when Steve couldn’t evoke a smile that wasn’t tight or sad. Not when Wanda touched your cheek with shaking fingers, her tearful eyes searching you for a reason to make you stay and telling you you’d always be welcome to come back home. Not when Natasha ordered you, not to get yourself killed out there, what was a little too late now.

You didn’t really expect him to come. Actually, it was better this way, you had thought. Cleaner. No last harsh words, no heated standoff, no last-minute chance for him to dig deep again.

Some stubborn, foolish part of you had hoped of course.

But that was when you saw him as you made your way to the gates.

He stood at the edge of the grounds you were about to leave behind, hidden in the shadows of bushes and trees. His arms were crossed over his chest, his figure rigid, his face set in stone.

You willed not to let your heart clench, but it did. You told yourself he was just there for a final gloat, some grim satisfaction in watching you go. In seeing you lose.

But his eyes held yours. So unwavering and intense. It burned through you. His features were dark, but also, he did stand covered in shadows. However, there was no smirk, no triumph, no venomous parting shot.

But he didn’t move. He didn’t step forward, didn’t say a single thing. He didn’t do anything but hold your gaze as if daring you to be the one to break it.

And you did.

You had a new life to attend to.

And you didn’t look back when leaving.

Still, you felt the burn of his eyes on you, so much more intense than ever before.

You guessed he dropped that stoic, seemingly unhappy mask the moment you were out of sight. Maybe he even threw a silent celebration, relieved to finally be free of you, of the friction you brought into his life.

But the small annoying voice in the back of your mind whispered something else. Something that actually made you consider turning back around before you got ahold of yourself again.

It told you that maybe his expression had stayed dark long after you were gone. That maybe his gaze lingered on the empty path where you’d disappeared. That maybe his arms stayed crossed, not to shield himself from the cold but to stop himself from reaching out.

And your brain now doesn’t seem to have any doubts either because you might actually feel hands shaking you, gripping your face. There weren’t many times when you came in contact with Bucky’s hands, and only fleeting and unintentional, so you don’t know if your conscience got the feeling of his hands on you right but you relish it anyway.

You hope he’d worry. You hope so much. Why, you don’t even know. It’s not like it matters anymore. But you need him to worry.

You need him to feel something sharp, something visceral. You need the cracks in his stoic armor to show and your name on his lips to sound like a prayer instead of a reprimand.

“Stay with me, Y/n! Come on!” It’s a snarl and a plea at the same time.

His voice is pulling you back - or maybe it’s pulling you under. You can’t really tell the difference. It is the kind of sound that is too rough to be tender, too desperate to be cruel.

His voice gnaws at something in your awareness, steering something deep in your bones.

Hell, your dying brain is doing a hella good job.

The world shifts again. Or maybe it’s you who shifts. The sharp bark of the tree is gone suddenly, as though the earth has abandoned you. Or perhaps your body just lost any kind of sensation, because there is nothing solid beneath you anymore. The ground is gone.

Free fall grips your stomach for a second, and panic sparks weakly in the recesses of your mind. But before the fear can take root, you feel something else. Something warm.

Not the feverish heat that’s been chewing at your skin for hours. Not the sticky warmth of blood still drying against your ribs.

No, this is something different. Hard, but not unkind. Solid, but not unforgiving. It presses against your body, and for the first time in what feels like days, it doesn’t hurt.

You don’t know what is happening. You only know you want more of it. Tilting your head as best as it would go, you lean into it as much as your useless limbs allow, seeking that warmth like it’s the only thing keeping you from succumbing to nothingness.

And then the pieces click together.

You’re being carried.

There is an arm under your legs, another braced firmly around your back. The grip is strong but it is trembling faintly against you.

You are cradled against something warm, something alive. And there is a pounding against your ear that is way too rapid to seem healthy.

None of this makes sense, not really, but the sensation of movement - the sway and jolt of steps, hurried but careful - tells you that you’re not imagining this.

Someone has you. Someone’s carrying you.

Your battered mind, of course, latches onto Bucky again.

Your brain shapes the thought of him so effortlessly. Some part of you knew it could only ever be him. You picture his face, sharp and shadowed, his jaw clenched, his eyes dark and heavy with something you don’t dare name.

“Damn it, stay with me! Stay awake!”

Is this him saying that? Or is this your mind still indulging in the vivid fantasies from before? Perhaps this wasn’t your mind all along. Perhaps all of this wasn’t a fantasy of your brain. This was him.

You feel the tight hold with which he is gripping you, how it feels less like he is carrying you and more like he’s keeping you from slipping away entirely.

It doesn’t seem like the Bucky you knew. The one who looked at you with barely concealed irritation, who argued with you until you were both red-faced and seething.

But then again, maybe it does. Maybe this is the same man, stripped bare of all his armor, his stoic resolve fractured like you had imagined. Maybe this is what he looks like when he doesn’t have time to mask the cracks.

The thought makes your chest ache. Or maybe that’s just your ribs - stabbed, bruised, barely functional. You can’t tell anymore.

You want to open your eyes, to confirm what you already know, but your eyelids are heavy, unwilling.

You want to reach for him, to feel with your hands that his worry really is your reality and not all in your head, but your arms hang limply at your sides. Useless.

But your face is pressed against his shoulder. The speeding throbbing of what you assume to be his heart is still in your ear and it makes this so much more real.

“Don’t you dare die on me now, Y/n! Not after this.” His ragged words send swaying currents through the still waters of your fading consciousness. “Not like that! Not after I’ve been looking for you for two damn years!”

Wait.

What?

The words ring like a bell, too loud, too pronounced. You feel yourself struggling with comprehending the meaning of this but the shock still rushes up your spine.

Bucky was looking for you. He didn’t celebrate your departure. He came after you.

You left two years ago. Bucky started searching for you two years ago.

“I should’ve stopped you. Fuck, I should have stopped you. I never should’ve let you leave.” His voice is a single crack. So much remorse seeping into his tone, it even latches onto your chest.

“God I’m so sorry I let you leave. I’m so sorry for everything, Y/n! There’s so much I gotta tell you. So much I gotta make right. So you don’t get to do this, alright? You don’t get to die on me!”

His voice doesn’t sound like him at all. The Bucky you remember used measured words, calculated, controlled. Doubt again creeps in that this really is real and not just your mind all up in shambles. Because there is so much pain in his voice. Pain you never saw inflicted in anything he did. Or said. Not to you at least.

Your body jolts in his grip, caused by his hands. He might have tried to shake some life back into you but his hands don’t stop shaking. They are trembling so heavily, as if he’s terrified you’re going to slip through his grasp at any second. As if you’re going to die in his arms. Maybe you will.

“You’re staying with me, you hear me?” he continues, low voice filled with gravel, so wild and anguished. “There’s so much I need to tell you. So much I need to say. But I can’t-” his voice gives out and you basically hear him trying to hold himself together. His breaths are uneven and broken. “I can’t do it like this. No, not like that. So you gotta pull through. You can’t leave me before I get the chance to tell you. Can’t die on me now that I’ve finally fucking found you. You can’t, Y/n! Please! Stay with me. Just stay.”

You try to open your eyes. Try to let your fingers twitch. Try to open your mouth. But there’s nothing.

You can’t tell him that you’re trying. You can’t tell him that you want to hear what he has to say. Can’t tell him that you’re clinging to his every word. Can’t tell him that you’re fading away.

Only a broken exhale slips through.

His arms tighten, pulling you impossibly closer.

He’s pushing himself. His muscles strain and coil, his body still trembles against you. His voice is breathless and full of despair..

“Stay awake! Look at me. Just- please open your eyes. Just for a second. I need to see them. Need to know you’re still in there, okay?” His words are torn, pulled apart, and put together in a desperate attempt. Tears fill his voice. “You always had to prove me wrong, so do it again. Fight. Fight, Y/n! Please!”

Bucky makes it sound like it could actually be easy. But unfortunately, it’s not. His voice is more distant now. Perhaps it’s giving out. Perhaps it’s the hope that leaves him, taking his voice.

Yet, you’re trying to hold onto it. You’re trying so much.

If he says more, you don’t catch it. You don’t catch anything anymore. You think you might be okay with that. Because even if this isn’t real - even if this is all just a fever dream conjured by a dying mind - you think it’s a good way to go.

Sheltered in warmth. In motion. In the arms of the one person you never thought would come for you.

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