#but ao3 is bereft of both

[acapelladitty]

bereft of grace

Summary: Defeated by Messmer, you find that his plans for you, a mongrel tarnished, are far different than what you might expect.

(tw: non-con, humiliation, forced stripping, restraints, mild tit torment, rough sex, size difference, stretching, vaginal fingering, creampie, overstimulation, pain)

Fic Masterlist

Link to AO3

You feel the infernal chill of his helm pressing against the side of your face as he lowers his head to your own. His words, soft-spoken and laced with cruelty, brush across your ears as your naked back remains pinned to his chest - restrained by both the strength of his arm pulling tightly across your stomach and the unshakeable wrap of the snakes which lace across your wrists to keep your hands useless and pinned against your sides.

"Mongrel tarnished." He growls the words like a slur, silken hatred pairing with the predatory knowledge that you were truly helpless in his arms. "Thy kind are good for naught."

A serpentine tongue slips free of his lips to stroke a languid line across your neck, tasting the sweat of your battle and the fear that had long since laced your skin since he had deprived you of your torn clothing; the shredded materials laying in a discarded pile below your suspended frame. His tongue is warm, wet and the sensation of it brushing along the sensitive skin of your throat is as arousing as it is repulsive.

"Stripped of gold."

Thin fingers force their way between your legs, widening your thighs as they push at and grope the skin there so roughly that you know small, circular bruises will be left in their wake. His hand slides further, your breath hitching with despair as he presses against your most private flesh; lengthy digits stroking along your slit to test the skin there as they tease your slightly-wet hole before slipping up to graze across the ultra-sensitive nub of your clit.

"Stripped of grace."

Gasping as he pushes two of his fingers within you with little preamble, the sudden stretch of the intrusion burns like hellfire and you cry out as he starts to pump them inside your walls. Your body responds despite itself, his long digits stroking areas which were quick to ignite a warmth in your cunt that made your brain feel fuzzy despite the hollowing discomfort.

"Stripped even of thy paltry linens."

The heat is oppressive, the flames which he was able to conjure in an instant making his body feel like a furnace where it touches your own - even through his armour - and it pairs with the shameful warmth which rolls from your own body as you find yourself pressing down into his hand like a bitch in heat.

As soon as he had robbed you of your weapon, you assumed death was to swiftly follow and a genuine fear of being impaled like so many of the corpses which littered the road to the Shadow Keep immediately made you compliant to his commands. You had dropped to the floor and awaited a swift death which was not to come as his hand had stayed, something almost like amusement playing in his drawn face as he noted the instant submission and ordered you to approach him.

He had ripped your clothing from you, tearing it with a demigods strength as you shivered and ignored the hot shame which paired with the fear in your heart. His snakes followed their masters will without verbal instruction, the infernal heat of them as they slid across your skin making you gasp as forked tongues tasted their way across your shuddering frame to lock your hands in place.

After that, it didn't take long for Messmer to make his move. His gaze, split between hues of gold and the abyssal void, had taken its time in your appraisal - peering into your anguish and fear-laced expression before roving across your ample breasts and lower half. A rail-thin hand had struck like one of his many serpents, harshly gripping at your upper arm to spin you in place and allowing him to scoop you close as inhumane strength lifted you from the floor as though you weighed nothing.

Nothing in the face of a demigod.

Thoughts snapping back into the moment as a third finger breaches your hole, a pained howl slips free of your lips as you writhe in place - attempting to pull away from the pleasurable pain with a futile struggle. Sex and bodily pleasure wasn't unknown to you, but the sheer power which rolled from the demigod who seemed determined to amuse himself with your flesh made it difficult to focus on anything outside of the humid air and the sensations he was forcing upon you.

"Thy kind are fit for use as a fleshly pleasure. No more. Strip all thoughts of lordship from thy desires before my hand is pushed to strip thy skin from such soft flesh."

Fresh snakes slither across your chest, the thin bodies wrapping around the globes of your breasts and tightenening to the point of true discomfort - the rope-like restraints making a wicked pressure quickly build up in your abused chest. Sinking their fangs into the sensitive skin just below your chest, the snakes showed no sign of letting up their firm hold and you almost sob with relief as Messmer's thick fingers pull free of your cunt.

It's a short-lived peace though, as his slickened fingers are quick to establish how tight the hold his snakes have achieved and a guttural cry breaks free of your throat as his large hands move to pinch at your chest roughly. Nipples perked due to the pressure and arousal which is rolling through your stimulated frame, he's careful to snatch the sensitive nubs between his fingers, one at time, until fresh tears spring into your eyes and your back arches violently into his chest while your lips form a constant stream of pleas and whines.

"For one so cursed and devoid of all, thy voice is surprisingly sweet." And although you cannot see his face, you can hear the predatory arousal which accompanies the words.

He was enjoying himself, attempting to force you to do the same.

"You are the cursed one."

Finding your voice, you yelp out the words like an accusation - arousal, shame, and mild horror sparking a momentary boldness which you immediately regret as his body stiffens and a sharp chill replaces the cruel warmth of his earlier tones.

"True, little tarnished. My curse is borne in the void of the abyssal serpent. Naught more than a monster, I will force thee to embrace thy oblivion and know such suffering."

Something blunted presses against your hole and your panicked struggle renews as you feel just how big he is, the girth making genuine fear lance your spine as you realise that his earlier rough treatment with his fingers was a necessity more than anything else. Aside from the stretch which his fingers provided, you were horrified to feel just how wet you were as his cock grazed along your slit; collecting your arousal to ensure an easier entry as he forced himself inside such a tight-fit space.

The noise that slips free of your throat is inhumane, guttural and raw, as the head of his cock breaches past your hole. It feels like it's going to split you apart and the sheer burning ache of the merciless stretch instantly overpowers any other feeling in your body - your toes curling as a wracked sob shakes your trembling frame.

"Please! Please, st-stop." The words are a babble, stuttered and broken, as you try to force yourself to relax around him, to adjust to his infernal size. "My lord, please."

The unexpected use of his title earns a rumble of approval and his lips are hot against your neck once more as his sharpened teeth graze across the sensitive flesh while he considers the plea with a low hum.

"Thy slickened folds tell of a differing desire, little tarnished." Messmer growls, keeping his cock still as he allows himself to acclimatise to his gripping tightness of your spasming cunt. "But I am not a rutting beast, devoid of all mercies. Ask it of me and I shall see to thy own pleasures."

Fresh shame flushed through your frame, adding another layer of heat to the already sweat-slicked skin as you listen to his offer. He would force you to ask this of him. To make you accomplice to your own unmaking. A cruel mercy, but a mercy which you would take him on as the alternative seemed impossible to bear.

"I beg you, my- my lord. Please, use me."

His chuckle is victorious and wicked in its joy as Messmer pulls you lower on to his cock, forcing another two inches of him within your aching hole. However, true to his word, his free arm, the one not pinning you to his chest, slips down between your legs and you gasp as his finger circles itself at the top of your cunt, seeking out your most sensitive flesh.

He knows he has found it when you jerk in his arms, an electric bolt of pleasure arcing across your skin as his calloused finger grazes your swollen clit. It sparks him to pick up a slow pace, his cock breaching your hole until it presses flush against your cervix before pulling free until only the head remains. A slow pace, but a brutal one as every thrust makes it feel like he is pulling your walls free with him - the friction immediately sending your body into overdrive.

His finger never lets up the pressure on your clit; alternating between grazing along it directly and gently thumbing circles around it as the dual manipulations forced your legs wider, your body seeking more pleasure to offset the ache of the stretch. Pain and pleasure, both sensations at war within your tortured flesh until his thumb presses just a little too roughly against your nub and you came undone.

Clenching around his cock, your release brings with it a low scream as waves of pleasure roll across your body. Messmer seems to appreciate the forced pleasure, if the growing pace of his cock is anything to go by, but the continued stimulation of his thrusts only serves to make your orgasm draw out until your body twitches from the aftershocks.

"So easily pleasured. Were it not for thy warriors garb and weaponry, I would have assumed thee a courtesan. A temptress, well-versed in the pleasures of men."

Messmer grunts the insult as he continues to fuck you without mercy but his humiliating words barely register within your overstimulated mind as your whimpers fill the large room. His voice is full of excitement and you can hear the slight gasps which exist between the words and how they speak of his own coming release.

His cock having ruined your most sensitive walls, the dull ache of the stretch now only serves to enhance the pleasure and you cannot help but clench around him, pulling him to his finish as his cock twitches within you.

The arm around your stomach tightens, as do the snakes which remain bound across your suffering frame and you feel the heat of his release as it scorches you from the inside out, much hotter than any man you had been with before. Seeking his own pleasure, Messmer pulls you tight, forcing his cock up hard against your battered cervix as his mouth buries itself into your neck - teeth and tongue making a mess of your skin as he marks the territory like a beast.

It all proves too much and you come again, your cunt fluttering and squeezing his cock as low, animalistic noises break free of your lips. Your strength leaves you in an instant after the initial high and the loose limbs of your frame are only supported by his arm and snakes as he keeps you suspended like a puppet until he's finished with you.

His cock pulls out, the movement slow and certain, and the moment his cockhead slips free you feel the heat of his release trickle down your thighs as a gaping emptiness seems to fill the space between your legs. Despite the heat, you feel cold and you whimper anew as his snakes unlatch themselves from your chest and retreat back to their master.

Messmer's breathing is heavy and his chest feels as hot as ever against your naked back, even his armour having lost its metallic chill, as he continues to hold you in place. Aching, twitching, and thoroughly fucked you lay passively in his arm, your entire body feeling loose and untrustworthy.

After a minute has passed, Messmer speaks once more and his hoarse words are delivered to your ear as he lifts you slightly higher.

"My vague amusement with thee requires further consideration." As silken as before, you shudder at the close proximity as you rub your mess-slickened thighs together. "And so my offer is thus: remain in the Shadow Keep as a personal courtesan to myself, a role in which no other man nor beast shall lay hand on thee, or choose to return to ash and I shall grant thee a swift death until thy body is restored by the grace of gold which thee are unworthy of."

Your breath hitches, both options relaying in your mind as you recover from the shock of the unexpected offer. Messmer, however, did not appear to be a patient man and his arm jostled you slightly as he instsntly pushed for a response.

"Well, little tarnished, what is thy choice?"

[minkdelovely]

catharsis

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“we are more

than our disguises,

we are more

than just the pain.”

Alastor x Lucifer ; RadioApple ; MDNI 18+

tags/warnings: angst (w/a happy ending), established relationship, hurt/comfort, crying, mentions/allusions of abuse, mentions of death from illness, sexual content (biting, blood/blood play, kissing, palming)

word count: 2.5k

author’s note: guess who’s writing angst again?? this kinda hit me out of nowhere, but is fully inspired by @sunlit-mess / SOL 1 x 1 (on twitter) recent works (linked HERE and HERE) with alastor seeking luci’s comfort. seeing these back-to-back just set something off in my mind and i couldn’t rest until it was out. a special thanks and shoutout to our darling @fraugwinska for helping me get a title on this baby — without her y’all would have been reading ‘untitled’ 😂💖 quote is from twin flame by weyes blood. without further ado, buckle up and dive in; i hope you enjoy 😌 (also posted on my ao3 if that’s your preference)

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It was surprising, even to himself.

Alastor couldn’t recall the last time he had cried, much less in front of a witness. Composure and a display of strength were hard-won attributes he had built upon himself. Each unpleasant memory in his mind was a brick in his fortification; the tears he denied himself to shed the mortar between them.

He hadn’t always followed his own code of conduct and taken the ugliness of life on the chin. Before he had found his own strength, he could admit to being swayed by the will of others. Alastor found words to be harsher than the switch and was more than familiar with the sting of both. Though the switch was a boy’s punishment… A closed fist was more suitable for raising a man.

Or so his father had thought.

Mama’s boy… Just my luck. I got me a mama’s boy... C’mere you little pansy!

The repulsion in his father’s words hadn’t lost any of its potency, even after all this time. Alastor recalled them with more clarity than the face of the man they came from, which only served to plunge him further in his despair. Hadn’t he proven his resilience? Not only in body, but in mind and spirit? Perhaps not as much as he thought, with the way he was sobbing. If his father could see him now — bereft of stoicism and drenched in tears, drool, and mucus — he’d have been absolutely disgusted. Alastor loathed how much that bothered him. The fear of inadequacy lurching in his gut like a bad tonic.

Hot, angry tears flowed down the streaks that shame had carved on his face. Not that Lucifer would be able tell the difference with the way Alastor had burrowed into his chest. It was merely a fresh bout for the candy-striped vest to soak up. The saline fabric was beginning to chafe Alastor’s face, but he didn’t feel ready to surface; arms tightening around his lover’s waist as his hands gripped Lucifer with a desperation he assumed was buried long ago with his innocence.

Stop hidin’ behind your mama and come take your whoopin’ like a man!

Alastor choked on another sob and gasped for breath, heaving in Lucifer’s arms as the angel held him firmly. Gloved hands petting red hair and anguished, downcast ears. Hushed words of comfort spoken into the crown of Alastor’s head to soothe in tandem as they both shook from the force of the demon’s sorrow.

“I’ve got you. Shh, honey, I’ve got you.”

So much love conveyed in so few words. Alastor still grappled with accepting it. Evidenced by more tears fighting their way through his clenched eyes and a muffled, heart-wrenching cry into Lucifer’s chest. The pain of it went straight through the King’s heart as he pressed a firm kiss to Alastor’s head, feeling the distress on his face as he did so. How he wished to unburden the demon of his suffering. More than anyone, Lucifer could understand what it was like to be wracked with such melancholy.

If only Alastor could remember what had set him off, if he had, in fact, been triggered at all. He had just woken up this morning feeling low. Why was he dwelling so much on things that were better left to the past? Unbeknownst to either of them, they were sharing the same thought. And both knew that dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed did nothing other than inflict harm. Must they be plagued by the ignorance and rejection of their fathers for eternity? The cost of the scorn they’d endured seemed to grow ever higher some days.

That was one of the first things they had bonded over, sharing self-deprecating laughter to hide from their aching wounds. When love is built on a foundation of hurt, it’s only a matter of time before the walls crumble. Most times they were Lucifer’s, and sad as it was, it felt much easier to navigate. The angel was much more comfortable wearing his feelings, after all, and he’d had millennia of experience weathering his storms. Alastor was no stranger to being the shoulder to cry on. If anything, it came to him too naturally; a trait he couldn’t be sure was born in him or a side-effect of the wall he had built.

When Alastor buckled under the weight of his grief, it was devastating. He repressed himself for such long bouts of time that the force of his woe had the impact of an avalanche. Sadness, anger, shame, and regret cascading through his lithe frame until he was utterly hollowed out. Lucifer’s task of mending him was only beginning, he knew. It would be days before Alastor returned to himself, but he was more than willing to put in the work. Stitching his love back together with his needle of assurance and thread of devotion.

It was impossible to tell how long they spent this way. Alastor kneeling on the floor between Lucifer’s legs, knees sore and body aching, face still smothered in the drenched clothes donning the angel’s chest. Lucifer on the sofa in their bedroom, comforting the demon with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Until finally the tears stopped, replaced with uneven, sometimes stuttering breaths and hiccups. And soon enough those were gone too. Lucifer’s right hand rubbing Alastor’s back as his left cradled Alastor’s head. Before long, the demon was stirring. Sniffling a bit as he nuzzled his face into the mess of fluids he had left on the King’s vest and shirt. Lucifer didn’t mind, knowing that he could have it all gone with a snap of his fingers, but it wouldn’t do any good for Alastor to try wiping his face on his clothes in the state they were in.

“Let me clean your face, love. You’ll get a rash if you stay there,” Lucifer chided softly, manifesting a warm, damp handkerchief as he bent down to kiss Alastor's forehead for good measure.

It wasn’t a very convincing threat, both of them knowing that if Alastor did suffer a rash Lucifer would heal it in an instant. But Alastor conceded, and gingerly peeled himself away from the safety of the angel’s chest. His poor face was raw from tears, eyelids chapped red with irritation; dried salt crusted his cheeks like the vestiges of sea foam on the shore.

Alastor knew he looked awful. He could see himself reflected in Lucifer’s eyes proving as much. Every bit of moisture his body had was soaked into Lucifer’s chest, and he could feel the headache promised by dehydration blooming in his forehead. He was wrung out and exhausted but nearly began crying again, too moved by the tender act as Lucifer gently wiped his face. His Sire hushed him, voice calm and gaze full of adoration. Not even bothering to clean himself up before ensuring that Alastor was taken care of first.

The swell of affection Alastor felt in that moment was overwhelming, and he swallowed thickly as he closed his eyes, succumbing to the comfort of his lover’s hands tending to him. His father’s cruel words fading into darkness with every soft swipe of the warm cloth.

You’ll find someone special someday, mon amour.

Alastor was grateful for his mother’s memory, and wondered — not for the first time — what she would think of Lucifer. She had been a God-fearing woman, after all. A fear that she did not pass down to her son, choice of partner aside. He had turned his back on God long before his eyes had set their sight on the fallen angel. If she could see him from Heaven, he hoped that she would be happy. The Devil wasn’t all he was made out to be, if the way he cherished Alastor wasn’t proof enough.

His mother never pestered him about settling down, but worried for him deeply when they realized that she was sick and wouldn’t be getting better. Alastor was self-sufficient by then, with a year of working at the local radio station under his belt. Not that he didn’t take her concern to heart. If anything, when it came to her, he took things all too seriously. He wasn’t weighed down by the need for partnership or marriage, especially not when his career still had traction to gain. Alastor would try to tell her as much, assure her that she had nothing to worry about, and they would drop the subject and speak of other things. But he never left the sanatorium without receiving her prayers; his large, warm hands looking almost comical in her frail, cold grasp. Her hold on him was as fervent as the words and wishes she spoke to someone Alastor knew wasn’t listening. Though that didn’t make the act any less sincere or appreciated.

It was a brand of care Alastor thought he would never know again after his mother finally succumbed to her illness. The near-decade that passed after this had only cemented that fact. He didn’t seek companionship nor did he deny it when the mood struck. But beyond his small circle of friends, Alastor was content with his solitary life. Besides, a partner or spouse would have only made his nighttime affairs much harder to juggle — if not damn near impossible — and having the reputation of an elusive bachelor only helped with his fan base when it came to his radio segment.

It wasn’t until Lucifer had broken through his defenses that Alastor understood how he had barricaded himself from the world. And that he wanted support and comfort and understanding more than he cared to admit.

There are things you need that you can’t take care of on your own.

Basked in the warmth of Lucifer’s affection and his mother’s memory, Alastor hummed and opened his eyes, a tired smile curling his lips. Lucifer smiled back at him, expression benevolent and soft as his hands found their way back into Alastor’s hair to resume their petting. And grateful as he was, Alastor couldn’t ignore that Lucifer had yet to address the mess setting into his clothes. He fought against the pain as he uncurled his fingers, stiff from the grip on Lucifer’s waist, and silently began unbuttoning the candy-striped vest he had come to adore as the angel’s signature.

“Hey, you don’t have to —”

Alastor stopped him with a kiss, his fingers continuing their work as Lucifer sighed against his lips. The tension in both their bodies deflating as they shared hungry pecks and inhaled each other’s breath. All the while, Alastor’s hands remained busy with the undoing of buttons. First on the vest, then on the white shirt beneath it. Each open button providing relief like the snapping of a taut string.

Perhaps it was the musician in Alastor subconsciously rising to the task, but Lucifer would never cease to be caught flat-footed by the demon’s impeccable timing. How Alastor’s fingers managed to perfectly sync with his kisses was a feat Lucifer could only describe as divine. As if the acts were always meant to be one, never separate. It made the golden blood in his body turn molten; roiling through his veins as he sighed and chased every touch with relish. He was not often given these affections without needing to ask, whether with a look or an outright plea. Games that Lucifer was content to play, knowing that anticipation and a good tease left them both more than satiated.

With the collar of Lucifer’s shirt loosened, Alastor straightened his back and bent his neck to suckle and kiss down the angel’s pristine throat. The demon took his time with this, hoping to convey his gratitude and desire with every press of his lips against the milky skin beneath them. When Alastor made it to the junction between neck and shoulder, he was unable to resist the urge to sink his teeth in; the flesh yielding to his fangs like a ripened peach, and the nectar that soon coated his tongue was a gift in itself.

Lucifer hissed through the bite, hips jerking in space between them as Alastor groaned and languidly sucked and licked the blood rising from the wound. With his hands free from buttons, Alastor let them explore. How he adored the feeling of Lucifer’s small frame beneath them. Endlessly fascinated by the twitches and sounds he could elicit from the angel with little more than the slightest drag of his claws against sensitive skin.

Alastor released himself from Lucifer’s neck with a salacious pop and licked his lips for good measure. The whine that escaped Lucifer from the action had Alastor’s ears and groin at attention. The low creaking sound of antlers branching out mingled with their shallow breath. Alastor’s crimson eyes drank in the almost bashful look on Lucifer’s face, accented by a golden flush that made his abdomen tight with hunger.

How lucky he was, truly.

The silver lining of Lucifer’s descent was heavily in Alastor’s favor. Had Lucifer remained God’s favorite, he’d be in Heaven — a place Alastor had never planned to be. In truth, he never intended to be in Hell either, which is where luck came into play. He wasn’t destined for mortal companionship, but for something transcendent. Not a god to worship, but a sin. A king.

An angel.

“I’m unworthy of your benevolence,” Alastor lamented, desperately kissing and kneading the supple skin of Lucifer’s chest. “But I’m devoted to you, always.”

It was a sentiment he had expressed before, feeling much like Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her tears. But it made Lucifer’s heart jump all the same; its rapid beat calling to Alastor like a siren from under skin and bone as his teeth latched to Lucifer’s breast. Their pleasured moans harmonized as Lucifer cupped the back of Alastor's head, encouraging him to continue with a whisper of his name. Alastor happily obliged. Tongue lapping at the pert nipple, hot and fervent, as his mouth and teeth provided a deliciously sharp suction, drawing out the ambrosia in Lucifer’s veins.

Lucifer struggled to remain cognisant, lost and overwhelmed as Alastor’s mouth peppered a trail of kisses from right to left. Alastor shifted slightly between Lucifer’s legs as teeth sunk into the top of his left pectoral just as Alastor’s left hand palmed his groin. The wanton cry that echoed off the walls of their bedroom only served to make Alastor desperate for more. Eagerly succumbing to his need to worship the angel, the agony he had suffered earlier behind him but not forgotten.

An offering of gratitude and declaration of fidelity in a language they shared when words failed. When adoration was beyond articulation and the only thing strong enough to quell their aching hearts was propinquity. The evening had started with Alastor falling apart in Lucifer’s lap… but it would end with Lucifer falling apart in Alastor’s hands.

And they would wake in the morning with tangled hair in wrinkled sheets. Sharing hushed jokes and lazy kisses as the early morning sun colored their room in a hazy, pink glow.

Healing each other one day at a time.

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tag list: @fairyv-ice, @wat4r, @midorichoco, @raynerrold, @krak-jj, @tremendoushearttaco, @redfoxwritesstuff, @chibistar45, @kaylopolis, @cutiebimbo, @lousypotatoes, @rfox1998, @cosmiccandydreamer, @hyperfixations-keep-me-going, @cherry-cola-100, @wonderlandangelsposts, @catticora, @velvette3, @sailorsmouth, @reath-solia, @junieshohoho, @cxrsedwxrlds, @littlebluefishtail, @hazelfoureyes, @sugoi-writes, @nxcxllxsevens, @swagkittybear

[corazondebeskar-reads]

of rage and ruin - chapter two

of rage and ruin series

chapter two

series masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter

werewolf!alpha!Joel Miller x f!omega!reader

word count: 3.3k

summary: you come face to face with the beast.

chapter warnings: dark, dead dove do not eat, a/b/o, alpha/omega dynamics, omegaverse, captivity, canon-typical violence, genre-typical violence, horror themes, graphic violence, allusions to/threats of torture, abuse by captors (not by either joel or reader), depiction of injury, body horror, typical raider/hunter behavior, mention of cordyceps, angst, viewer discretion is advised,

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

They were careful never to touch you. The exam you’d been given when they first brought you here was done with thick rubber gloves, and no one has touched you since. 

But there are plenty of ways to teach you compliance without touching you. 

Before they moved you, you didn’t see a soul for two days. No one delivered or removed the cloth strips, food, or water. No one woke you up with a loud buzzer or dragged you outside to hose you down. 

No one hurt you.

The first few hours, you sit and do nothing as usual. You don’t really notice.

After that, though, you start to wait. This deviation, this anomaly, was far more terrifying than the wretched routine. And with no meals, you’re bereft of a way to count the passing of time. There’s no sunlight down here, after all. 

To your deep relief, the lights still go off at night. Until you’re lying awake in the dark and realize they’re probably on a timer. So maybe all your captors are dead. Made a stupid mistake and got their asses handed to them by FEDRA.

Which would be nice, but also, you’d still fucking die. Because you’re trapped in this godforsaken grimy ass basement, and somewhere on the other side of it is the only other resident you know of. Him. 

So either you starve to death, or he eats you. Or both. 

You spend the next day hoping to see Cheryl’s smug bitch face. 

When someone finally comes for you, it’s not Cheryl. It’s not Jim, either, but that’s not a surprise. He doesn’t like you, doesn’t like whatever Cheryl’s doing with you.

Not because he has any objections to the captivity or abuse. No, Jim’s been clear—you’re a waste of resources. 

Anyway, it’s fucking Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber who show up. They’re not real twins (you’re not even sure they’re brothers), but they’re a damn good argument for nurture over nature. Spending the apocalypse together has them moving in tandem, grunting and jerking their heads to one another in a language all their own. They’re built like oxen and about as polite. 

You don’t fight anymore, but they still tie you and drag you around. You haven’t so much as argued in weeks. You’ve heard that everyone breaks from torture eventually. You waved your flag from the start. 

You’re not made for this. 

They tie you up without touching your skin; hands layered in gloves just in case. They leave a length of rope from your wrists to pull you by, leaving the rope around your feet as it was. You had earned that six inches of slack, just enough to stand and walk to the makeshift toilet instead of crawling, after a solid week of good behavior. 

When you figure it out, though, you try to run. Every electric screaming nerve in your body says to go. Go where? Who fucking knows. Anywhere. Away. Run. 

The room they’ve brought to you is saturated in oaky musk, and you only need a glimpse of the little cage within before you’re jerking backward.

They must have gotten used to your compliance because the rope flies from Tweedle Dumb’s grasp. The three of you stand still for a moment, all shocked by the turn of events. 

You turn to run, but it’s too late already. One of them swept your fucking legs like this was an action movie, and bound as you are, that’s the end of the fight. You crash and earn yourself some new bruises, and they drag you into the room by the rope between your feet. 

One of them—you’ve forgotten who had which nickname in all the hubbub—snaps out a baton.

“Get in the fuckin’ cage, or I’ll break your ankles.”

It’s a strong argument that you have no desire to see if he’ll follow through on. Already hurt and humiliated, you crawl into the cage.

They lock it behind you and leave without another word. The lights go out with a buzz, casting everything you hadn’t taken in yet in total darkness. 

When the lights come back on, you wish they hadn’t. 

At first, you don’t even realize they’ve flickered to life, because what they’ve revealed isn’t real. 

It’s a big, brown Rorschach blob. It’s an oil spill. It’s moving, in a jerky, fluid way that should be impossible. The limbs have pointed bony joints, and you can only describe the way they crawl as spidery, though they’re thick and bulky. 

Jim is standing on the other side of the gate, holding onto a thick chain that rattles and creaks dangerously as the beast strains against the thick metal band around its neck. He looks bored, but he usually does. 

Cheryl, however. The way her lips are curled, eyes wide and bright… this must be him. 

“Don’t you know what happens to the others? The alphas?” she had teased the night of all the howling. She had laughed at the traitorously dumbfounded look on your face. 

You do now. 

A long pink tongue has unfurled from his massive jaw, flopped over far too many teeth, and dripping thick saliva onto the floor. The… fur, for lack of a better word, around his muzzle is matted with something dark that you can’t look at anymore. 

Jim yanks him by the chain, and the creature lets himself be pulled to the door, barely holding still while the padlock and chain are removed from his collar and the cuffs from his paws. 

He’s at the end of your cage before you realize he’s moved, and you scream, scrambling back as much as you can into the corner. The spaces between the bars are thin enough for just his… good god, are those fingers? They certainly aren’t canine toes. They’re tipped in thick, long claws packed with soil and detritus.

“Hey,” Jim barks, and the beast side-eyes him. “Remember what I fuckin’ told you. You break or eat her? That’s it. I’m not getting you another one.” 

Eat? Eat?  

Oh god.

Your stomach swoops and falls, abdomen clenching and drawing attention to your too-full bladder, unlocking a new fear that you’re going to piss yourself if he comes closer. 

He does. You don’t. But just barely.

That long, dark snout pushes against the cage, as if it could nudge through to reach you, pink tongue lapping against the air. The oak musk is so strong now that it lines your throat and makes you gag.

You choke back a retch-turned-sob and he rumbles, a strange vibration that rattles the bars where he’s pressed against them. He rises, stretching up up up on his hind legs until he towers over your little cube, enveloping you in his shadow, and you can’t help it. You start to cry. 

He can’t reach you, not when you’re tucked back in the corner of your cage. But he can smell you, and he can smell the rich iron soaking into the ropes around your wrists. It’s not yet visible, but the skin squishing through the edges is red and rough. 

He whines, pushing his muzzle against the bars, long tongue flopping out like he can reach. 

The sharp battery acid edge of your fear spikes, and he growls. Stupid girl. Stupid fucking omega. He’s trying to help you, and you’re—you’re— 

You’re starting to cry again. 

He can’t make human words like this, can’t enunciate or even really remember them. He tries to reach you through the bars again, snarling when they burn against his knuckles. Even the distended bony fingers of his full form can’t reach you there, not even with the tip of his claw. 

You’re shaking now, body twitching and jittering beyond your control. Everything inside you is screaming white-hot and dissolving; vomit tickles the base of your throat, and you just can’t stop crying. It hurts; it’s ripping your throat and lungs to shreds. It’s a violent, tumultuous thing, and you can’t stop the wounded keening of your cries. 

He’s pacing in front of your cage now, the beast, on four mangled limbs too long to be canine and too warped to be human. His huffs startle you, long snout returning, again and again, tongue darting out for a taste. 

A little drop of blood slides down your hand from where the rope’s edge cuts into the bottom of your palm.

He freezes, nostrils flaring. You freeze, barely breathing. 

He looks right at you and then tips his head back to howl, the sound like icy water through your veins. 

You can’t help yourself. You scream, broken as your voice is from all the tears. 

Between the cacophony, Jim stomps into the corridor and slams his hand on the wall. “Shut the fuck up, both of you!” 

“Help me,” you yell. 

I’m trying, the wolf howls. 

“Please, please help me,” you gasp, sobs reaching new highs alongside your panic. 

“If you don’t quiet the fuck down, I’ll open up your goddamn cage and let him eat you,” Jim snaps. “I said you were going to be more trouble than you’re worth, and I was fuckin’ right.”

The beast snarls, snapping his sharp teeth at the air. 

Jim regards him with a sneer. “And you! Giving her a heart attack counts as breakin’ her.”

The words don’t make sense, but you don’t really hear them, anyway. “Please, I want to go home, please, please,” you whisper. 

But no one’s listening. 

The Wolf is listening. 

He prowls back and forth on all fours, which really, isn’t any more or less terrifying than when he rises up on his haunches. Neither image capitulates to your need to make it make sense. There is no sense, no logic, no reality that can hold him.

The wolf, for really, that’s what he is, isn’t he? God, you don’t want to say it. Unbidden, a memory works loose in your brain, slipping out of the crates of nonsense stored away in favor of survival, and rattles around.

I know what you are. But you won’t say it. 

Did you bring this upon yourself for reading trashy supernatural romance novels? Did you watch Underworld too many times? Did the shot actually put you in a coma, and you’re living in some kind of nightmare?

The wolf is watching you. There are no whites in his eyes, just pools of gasoline on muddy puddles. 

You close your eyes and pretend you can’t hear the way his claws click against the tile. 

While Laura had fed them stew, she told them about the trials. 

They had been the first. The first taken, before volunteers were called. Before they knew they’d need secure places to hold them, they had been gathered for observation in an old YMCA, packed in racketball courts so the doctors could stand outside the large wall of glass and watch them all at once.

They stood outside that glass and watched them change, in one way or another. The ones who turned, as she called it, went first. The ones who would become test group alpha. More than half of the overall subjects, who became suddenly, violently ill. 

They left them all in there with the rest, waiting, watching them cry out, watching them vomit and sweat and break impossible fevers. Temporal thermometers reading 105, 106, before they’d succumb to unconsciousness. 

If they woke, they were… inhuman. Something more. Something hungry. 

A lot of the first round of test data was lost when the subjects were eaten. But some were lost to the turn. Test group beta, Laura’s brother among them, didn’t survive the fever.

Laura’s husband turned but didn’t lose himself to the beast. Something in him stayed present, alert enough to protect his wife from the others. Or rather, something in her kept him that way. Something that had turned in her too, albeit without the violence, into something more than she’d ever been before. 

“They drove us out of the QZ,” she said, picking idly at a gouge in the table’s surface. “To shoot us where they could burn all the bodies and forget.”

“And what happened?” Tommy asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

“We ate them.”

They come back for him that night but he’s not waiting for them. He’s sat with his big, furry back to you, close enough to the cage that you could pet him. The thought crosses your mind in a moment of delirium. You could stick your fingers through the little bars and feel the coarse hickory hair. You know, if you were clinically insane. 

You’re not about to offer him a little snack. 

He’d given up on reaching you a few hours ago, content to sit there unmoving once your tears dried up. It’s only slightly less terrifying.

But when they take him out, you only get to sit with the relief for a moment. Minutes pass in the dark and silent room, but you regret letting your guard down when footsteps echo through the cavernous halls beyond. 

The Idiot Twins are back, and they’re not taking chances with you this time. Oh, no. When they unlock the cage, you’re faced with the barrel of a handgun that doesn’t leave your temple as they pull you out by your bound hands.

They don’t bother to stand you up or give you a chance to move on your own, just dragging you out of the room and across the hall. You’re sprawled on your stomach across the frigid floor of the new room, with the door slamming shut behind you without so much as a word. 

The rusted pipes on the wall in the beast’s room make more sense now, once you take in your shadowy surroundings. This room has the same shitty tan tile over every inch, but the walls are lined with blue (or what used to be blue) lockers. Not a single one is intact, whether rusted or dented or doorless, but they’re unmistakably lockers. 

There are two lines of seamless benches, though half are rotted to oblivion. But it’ll be a better bed than the floor.

This is practically paradise. There’s a tray by the door that you don’t see for a while, but when you do, you almost cry again. Might have, if you hadn’t spent the day in tears. 

It’s just broth and water, long gone lukewarm and dusty, but you set upon it like a vampire upon a vein. Wait, no, you really don’t want to think about that right now. But it’s not your fault you’ve got monsters on the brain.

Your reprieve is not long. The sun rises. 

The beast returns.

Oh, and he’s pissed that you’re gone, based on the fucking racket that brings you back to the waking world. 

“Oh, did you think you’d been good enough lately for a treat?” Cheryl taunts him. 

The steel doors between you aren’t enough to hide the sounds of his fury. 

“You’ll have her back when you’ve earned her,” she tells him amidst the cacophony of snarling and gnashing. 

It’s ten days before they return you to the cage. Ten days of poking around the abandoned lockers and finding nothing. Ten days of broth delivered at dawn and dusk. Ten days of your back no longer appreciating the bench to stretch out on. 

Ten days of listening to the nonstop scratching and growling and whining from across the hall. And worse. Oh, much worse. Wet squicks and splatters and harsh groans. You’re not sure if he’s eating or masturbating or what, but it sends shivers through your whole body each time. 

It also sends the weird, sticky slick pooling between your thighs, but you ignore that. It’s been happening since the shot, one of the weirder side effects, but it’s gotten downright fucking annoying since you got here.

You try not to think about it. 

It’s not long after they drag you back to the little cage that they drag him into his. For that’s what this room really is, you know that, even if it doesn’t make you feel better about being in there with him. He’s trapped, too, but you’re the one in danger.

They haven’t untied your wrists since the first time, which have blistered and bled and scabbed until the ropes rubbed the scabs raw and started the whole thing all over. 

He smells it before he sees it, any interest in the slippery sweetness on your thighs gone when he tastes the blood in the air. 

Hurt, he whines, though you can’t understand. Help.  

You don’t cry this time, don’t split the sour tang with salt, but the fear and pain and exhaustion are enough to center him. If he tries, if he could just focus…

And there it goes. You watch, mouth agape and eyes blown wide, as he shifts in front of you for the first time. He backs away while it happens until he’s on the other side of the room and sits his very bare ass on his bed. 

You watch the way his bones jerk and his body shakes and cracks and huffs out sharp, agonized grunts until he’s just a man. Just a man, nothing more. Just a beast masquerading. Worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you think, because you know he’s the wolf, but right now? 

He’s just a pathetic, broken human. Bruised and bloodied, though his marks are rapidly fading as the healing takes over, but his face is edged in nothing but pain and sorrow.

“M’not gonna hurt ya,” was the first thing he croaked out. 

You startle, rattling the cage a little, which makes you wince. 

But he stays on the other side of the room. He’s sitting on his mattress, legs bent up and crossed, as if he had anything left to hide. As if you hadn’t seen too much already.

He tries not to think about it, but jesus. It’s a fucking struggle. As he takes you in this way, unclouded by the hazy moon, it still punches him back. Your smell. 

Joel’s never really liked tart things. Too much of a secret sweet tooth, of a deep yearning for the char and depth of anything fresh from the grill. 

But even now, even nearly fully man , he’s salivating at your green apple tang. Of uncovering the sweet ‘n sour burst of you on his tongue. Of letting his sharp teeth fall sharper through the tough act you fail to wear right, too bruised and soft underneath. 

To feel the way you’d give beneath him. The way you’d spill down his chin. No. He has to get a fuckin’ handle on himself. He can’t even look at you, not now that he knows you can smell the salt of his own slick where his swollen cock sits sobbing, neglected and furious. 

“I’m not,” he protests against your silence. 

He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. 

But he doesn’t stay himself for long. Not after he thinks instead, suddenly, of autumn. Of the sweet smell of the orchard. Of taking Tommy’s truck up up up into the places where seasons meant something. 

The roads sprawled like veins and they followed them with no end just to see the way the trees curled overhead, branches reaching and burning with dying leaves—a sight so devastating that Joel considered leaving Texas behind for somewhere he could start to take this beauty for granted. 

Chasing the colors led them first to a field of corn, blustering amber in the setting sun. They had returned the next day, fresh from the motel with burnt coffee and warm flannels, parting with precious dollars for the privilege of picking pumpkins and apples and a little corn husk doll. 

He’d have paid every cent ten times over to see Sarah smile like that again. 

This is where the man breaks and bows out. Where the wolf at its weakest is still stronger than Joel. He gives in, gives into the grief, gives into the wolf, and shifts back. He stays curled up on his bed, though, and doesn’t look at you.

He doesn’t speak to you again for a month.

next chapter

[girlsdads]

let us unfold one another; maxiel | 1k | explicit

cw: gangbang

Max's garage has a tradition. This year it's extra special.

read on ao3 or below :)

Max’s thighs ache where they’ve been spread for the past hour, one of his mechanics on either side of him with arms wound under each leg to keep him propped up and open. He knows their names, under normal circumstances. Right now, all he can do is feel—the hot hands on him, the sheen of sweat that’s starting to cool, a relief to his flushed, bare skin. The smooth carbon beneath his back, still warm. The phantom hum of the engine that surely is why his whole body feels like it’s vibrating.

His hole, still pulsing softly after the last of them withdrew. The tickle of lube as it dribbles out of him and down his crack to make a little puddle on the car. He has a flash thought that this car doesn’t deserve to share this with him, not like Rocky had. Then he feels the blunt press of several thick fingers at once and he’s not thinking about anything anymore.

Well—he’s thinking about one thing.

Whoever’s got their fingers in him rubs at his prostate and Max strangles a sob as his cock blurts precome onto his already soaked belly. The hand that’s been stroking his sweaty hair moves to cup his cheek and jaw. Max turns his head and mouths wetly into their rough palm.

“Don’t—I can’t—not before—“ Daniel. Never before Daniel.

His team knows the arrangement. They get to use him however they like, for however long it takes Daniel to get here. They can come on him, but not in him. Max doesn’t get to come at all. Not until Daniel.

It’s never taken this long before. The last three years Max had barely been fucked once before Daniel was there, sliding into him like no one else belonged. But it will be better this time, Max knows. Max got to share the podium with Daniel again, and soon, when Daniel is finished beaming to reporters, he’ll come find Max and share this with him too.

It doesn’t make the here and now any easier, as someone else slips their cock into him. He thrashes and keens as he’s taken apart again, large hands on his hips controlling the pace. He’s trembling. He needs to come or he might actually splinter into a million pieces. A hand grips the base of his cock and Max wails. Someone else feeds their cock into his mouth as it hangs open, and Max is grateful for something else to focus on, besides the pounding pulse he can feel in his balls that’s probably spelling out Daniel’s name in morse code.

They’re speaking all around him, in hushed, reverent tones, telling him he’s so good, he’s driven so well, he looks so good, he deserves this. Max believes it. Every time he believes it, when they do this. It’s not enough, right now. He needs it to be Daniel, saying these things. The voice closest to his ear coos Daniel is on his way, Max, be good for a little longer, you can do it.

Max whines pitifully around the cock in his mouth. He gets more soothing pets to his hair and his neck and down his chest that do little to settle him. The one fucking him shudders and drops his weight onto Max as he comes, breathing heavily. The tip of Max’s neglected cock smears onto a taut pelvis thick with hair as he’s pressed down. Max tries to jerk away from the sensation but there’s nowhere to go. His hands clench and unclench uselessly at his sides.

Both the softening cock in his ass and the one that’s still rock hard in his mouth leave him suddenly. Max feels bereft for a moment until he hears footsteps from the other side of the garage. It’s like the air shifts the second Daniel enters, bringing with him an electrical current that zings up Max’s nerve endings and has every molecule calling out for him. Max would run to him if he could move at all.

Soft voices again, this time Daniel’s in the mix, then some shuffling around, more footsteps, a door closing—

“There’s my World Champion.”

Daniel is there, above him, backlit by the harsh garage lighting and looking all the more beautiful for it. He’s still wearing his race suit, like Max had asked, unzipped and fireproofs pulled down enough to get his cock out. The picture it makes, navy on flushed, tan skin, is indecent and wonderful. His smile is bright and wide and real. And the way he gazes down at Max, like he’s the only person who’s ever existed—Max could float away on the feeling.

As it is, Max can only make weak grabby hands and croak out a Please.

Daniel sinks into him and it’s the only time in his entire life Max has felt perfectly, utterly whole and right.

“Oh fu-uck, Maxy,” Daniel groans, shoves his face into the damp space behind Max’s ear, angles his hips to hit that spot that makes Max scream and shake. Daniel is shaking too, and Max knows neither of them is going to last very long, now.

Max winds his hands up to where Daniel’s arms are bracketing his head, taps the tops of his palms until Daniel gets the hint and twines their fingers together, rests his chest fully against Max’s. Max lifts his arms up over his head and pulls Daniel’s along so that Daniel’s lovely body is stretched out and blanketing him completely. Daniel’s thrusts are getting sloppy, he’s not hitting Max’s prostrate dead on anymore, but it’s even better like this, with Daniel’s breath in his mouth and heartbeat against his own. It’s perfect. It’s everything.

Each time Daniel comes inside him it feels unsurvivable, like Max will actually die if he doesn’t get to have this again. Now, as Daniel is whining high in his throat and filling Max with everything he has to give, as Daniel is kissing Max like he needs it to breathe, as Max spills all over Daniel’s torso and those two red bulls, it feels like coming alive again.

[teshadraws]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Seekers of Soul

[Chapter 61]

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AO3 Link

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Tobias and Nia fight to stay alive.

CW: Discussion of death, survivor’s guilt, and vaguely suicidal thoughts in the last scene. Stay safe!

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Without another word, Dismas launches himself at them. Nia yelps and dives out of the way. Tobias rolls the other direction. The pangoro’s fist swings past them, hard enough for a gust of wind to follow.

Tobias has enough time to lock wide, terrified eyes with Nia before they’re forced into battle in earnest.

The pangoro kicks out with a low sweep of his leg, probably hoping to get both of them. Tobias stumbles back to avoid it while Nia hops over the attack. She wastes no time summoning her aura, pulling it into the form of a staff to deflect another swing of the pangoro’s fist. It’s glittering with ice in the blue glow of her energy.

Tobias can’t get between the two in such close quarters without causing problems for Nia, so he skirts around Dismas to attack his back with bursts of flame. The pangoro is distracted enough to send a move Tobias’ way, but he quickly focuses on Nia again. His onslaught is relentless, slowly pushing their battle closer to the wall.

Tobias continues his assault and tries to keep a handle on his frantic thoughts, but the loud rush of water spilling through the window behind him isn’t helping. Think, Toby. They can’t win a battle of pure strength, not against Dismas. They’re outclassed and Tobias knows it. So they need a plan.

Tobias’ eyes flick around the cell between attacks, trying to find something to help. They can’t escape the room—the door crank is too heavy, too far off the ground. The guards are both unconscious on the floor. The rest of the room is bereft of exits, unless they manage to float to the top of the room and crawl up the air vent before the water catches up to them.

No, that won’t work. The water would swallow him and Nia, short as they are, way before it impeded Dismas. And Tobias can’t swim.

Tobias’ eyes catch again on the cracked window, gushing water at a steady rate. He’d thought at first that the water was just to slow them—him, specifically—down. But Dismas can’t be thinking they’re that much of a threat. He’s clearly confident in his abilities, and for good reason.

Is it some kind of sick power play to mess with Tobias? Is Dismas so confident that he put a self-imposed timer on himself just for fun? Or is he hoping to take the entire prison down with him? Punch the door down and let the whole place flood? Tobias wouldn’t be surprised if the pangoro’s escape plan was to just keep swinging until he was free and cause as much damage as possible on the way out.

Either way, it adds a whole new layer of terror to a situation that was already bad enough. The seawater spilling into the room is already reaching them, lapping at their feet in a thin layer. It burns underfoot, and Tobias grits his teeth against the sensation.

Nia gasps as the water reaches her. She ducks under another fist. “Tobias! The guards!”

It takes a moment for Tobias to understand what she’s talking about. Then he curses, glancing at the quagsire and malamar lying unconscious on the floor. Which is now flooding. They don’t have anywhere safe they can put them, even if they had the time and safety to, but they can’t just let them drown, either.

Maybe that’s what Dismas was aiming for.

Tobias growls, dodging a retaliatory kick from Dismas and going for the malamar first. He avoids looking at where the Pokemon was stabbed through the gut, and instead puts his whole body into rolling the malamar onto their back.

Tobias looks frantically for any sign of gills. The malamar’s body seems like it could be conducive for swimming, but Tobias can’t be sure considering he was breathing air earlier.

Then his eyes catch on the suction cups on the malamar’s tentacle-like arms.

…Oh, this is such a stupid idea.

Tobias glances back at Nia. The riolu is just barely managing to ward off Dismas, aura staff helping her sidestep and deflect heavy punches, but she’s clearly struggling to keep up. Tobias has to hurry.

Tobias puts his whole body into shoving the malamar the few feet over to the wall, then props the psychic type up against the metal. Then he grabs the malamar’s tentacle-like arm and jumps as high as he can to slap it sucker-side-down against the wall.

When Tobias lands with a splash, the malamar’s arm hangs securely to the wall. It’s holding the guard upright, so that his face is now a few feet above the rising tide.

Good enough.

Tobias looks at the quagsire. She’s already lying face-up and doesn’t have anything obvious that could help her stay upright like the malamar’s suction cups. He could try to prop her against the wall so she’s at least sitting up, but he’s honestly not sure he could move her. She looks even heavier than her colleague.

A loud BANG comes from Nia and Dismas’ fight. Tobias glances over his shoulder, terrified of what he’ll see, only to find that Nia has just barely evaded a punch that put a giant dent into the metal wall.

He doesn’t have time to sit here and figure something out. Nia needs him. The quagsire is a water-type—he’ll just have to hope that she’s either naturally buoyant enough to float, or that she can breathe underwater somehow.

Tobias runs back to the fight, noting how strange it was that Dismas hadn’t gone after him at all in his absence. The pangoro has been pursuing Nia almost single-mindedly for most of the fight, only attacking Tobias when he needs to get him off his back. At first, Tobias had just figured he’d picked a target at random between the two of them, or maybe he wanted to be extra sadistic and take out Tobias’ partner first.

But even now, as Tobias sends a dragon rage at the pangoro’s back that actually makes him grunt, Dismas only retaliates enough to send Tobias on the retreat before bearing down on Nia again. It’s not until Nia uses the opportunity to take a swing of her own with her aura club that Tobias realizes why she’s the target.

Because Dismas dodges, jerking away from the hit.

Nia’s strong, but no more than Tobias is. So why would Dismas be wary of her hits and practically ignore Tobias? It’s not like her moves are—

Oh, of course. Dismas doesn’t know that Nia can’t use fighting type energy. He’s expecting super-effective hits, and trying to avoid any of them landing, even if that means he has to wall Tobias’ attacks in the meantime.

He’s trying to take out the bigger threat first.

Okay, that’s not great, but maybe they can use that to their advantage somehow. They certainly need every advantage they can get, Tobias thinks, distracted by the water now covering the entirety of the floor in a thin sheen, lapping and rippling like a spring. It splashes underfoot with every step.

Tobias sends another glance at the door. He really doesn’t think they can open it, but they need out of this deathtrap just as much as they need to get away from Dismas. They can’t dodge forever, and he doubts anyone on the outside even knows what’s happening down here.

…Wait.

Tobias glances again at the window, at the glow of green visible past the break.

This much water should disrupt the currents around the prison, and there are guards outside. Surely water types meant to be patrolling the area will notice that something is drawing water in towards the prison, right? He has to believe they will. If a guard notices the break, then they’re sure to investigate and send someone to help, which means…

They don’t have to win this fight. They just have to outlast Dismas until reinforcements arrive.

Nia is already panting hard, though, having had no chance to catch her breath despite Dismas’ slower speed. They can’t risk either of them getting hit by a single move head-on, so evasion is top priority. She needs a break.

Tobias will just have to give her one.

He leaps up onto Dismas’ back, grabbing fistfuls of thick fur and pulling himself up to the pangoro’s shoulder. Dismas growls, irritated, and tries to shake him off.

Tobias holds tighter, calling his fire to his mouth and puffing his cheeks. He hasn’t tried this move before—he doesn’t like the brutality of biting if he doesn’t have to—but if anyone deserves it, Dismas does.

Fangs molten with heat, Tobias clamps down as hard as he can on the segment between Dismas’ neck and shoulder, past fur and straight into flesh. Dismas snarls, trying to grab Tobias to wrench him free.

Nia hesitates for a second, but then uses a quick attack to dart to the other side of the room in a flash, stumbling over her paws and leaning against the wall to recover with heavy  breaths.

Dismas finally manages to snag Tobias’ side with a sharp claw, yanking him off. Tobias is thrown heavily into the thin layer of water, but he rolls to his feet relatively unharmed. Blood drips down his side, but the gash doesn’t seem deep. He licks his fangs, grimacing at the taste of iron there.

Dismas doesn’t give him time to think, immediately coming at him with a bullet punch. Tobias jerks away, and the ineffective move doesn’t do more than graze him, but he’s still sent staggering by the sheer force of it.

Before Dismas can attack again, Nia shoots past Tobias, quick attack making her a blur of blue. She swings her aura staff and slams it into Dismas’ hip. He grunts, but simply catches the staff before it can retract, snapping the aura in half as easily as a twig between his fingers.

Nia watches her aura flicker out, ears pinning flat.

Dismas’ gaze narrows. “…No fighting type moves, Riolu? You’re either real soft or real stupid, and they’re the same in my book.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, lunging into an attack that has Nia and Tobias scrambling away again.

Dismas must suspect that something’s off about Nia’s attacks after that, but if anything it only seems to make him more suspicious, bearing down on Nia even harder than before. She uses small patches of protect to avoid getting hit, rather than dodging around every attack and wearing herself out so quickly. Their satchel swings and bounces with each blow, and Tobias’ eyes lock onto it.

Do they have anything useful in their bag? They passed by that item shop earlier, but Tobias didn’t buy anything despite the fact that he should know better by now, with their record of running into trouble.

But wait—Xander and Avery, they gave them—

Tobias sucks in a deep breath, then releases a thick gray cloud of smokescreen.

Just in time, too, as Dismas gets sick of Nia’s protection strategy and uses a brick break to shatter her next shield. She cries out, stumbling back.

Luckily, the smokescreen spreads quickly enough to give the pangoro pause. The already dim green light of the room grows even hazier, Dismas and Nia melting away into vague silhouettes before vanishing almost entirely.

Tobias squints, grateful that his eyes are sharp enough to pick out Dismas in the smoke, stance wary, and Nia, who has backed away from the fight to look around frantically.

Tobias moves to her side, grateful that the dull roar of water pouring into the room hides the sound of his splashing steps. He grabs her arm, slapping a hand over her mouth to stop her from yelping.

“Gimme the bag,” Tobias whispers.

Nia quickly complies. She swings the satchel around for Tobias to dig through, and he finds the smooth surface of the orb within. He pulls it out, then grabs Nia’s paw to place it onto the item as well.

“Tobias, what—"

“Close your eyes.”

Tobias has heard about orbs before from passing Seeker teams, so he hopes he’s remembering how to activate one correctly. He squeezes his eyes shut and twists the top half of the orb. A blinding blue-white light flashes through his eyelids.

And then he feels it. The energy contained within the all power-up orb rushes through his body, making him feel stronger. His fire burns hotter in his belly.

Nia blinks at the hollow shell of the orb, then at him. “What..?”

Tobias flings the orb aside. “We’ll be stronger for a while. C’mon, we can’t waste this chance. We have to stall him.”

Nia bites her lip, but nods. “I’ll have to wait for the smoke to clear a bit so I can see.”

“I’ll start, then,” Tobias says, darting in to attack.

Dismas’ ears twitch as he tries to track the sound of Tobias’ approach, luckily distorted by the water and the metallic enclosure. Tobias doesn’t give him the chance to figure it out. He unleashes a dragon rage on the pangoro’s side. The purple flames light up the haze of smoke, and Dismas slashes blindly in his direction.

Tobias dodges and switches to flame bursts, trying to use the lingering smokescreen to his advantage to circle the pangoro and disorient him.

After a few blows, Dismas snarls.

The sound is weighty, carrying with it some kind of move energy. It hits Tobias in a dark wave, strong enough to hurt but weak enough for him to keep his footing. His fire suddenly feels less powerful, though.

Before Dismas can continue his attack, a sphere of blue aura launches from the smoke into Dismas’ back. He growls and spins, seeing Nia’s silhouette in the fading smoke just as she can see him. Still, she takes the opportunity to throw another ball of aura as he lunges for her. Nia rolls out of the way in a loud splash, but then is back on the defensive, using a staff of aura to deflect and dodge his heavy hits.

Tobias growls and launches himself back into the fight, the two of them once again dancing around the lumbering Pokemon’s devastating moves. But they’re getting knicked more and more as the fight drags on and they slow down, their movements growing sloppy. It doesn’t help that the water underfoot continues to rise, now up to Tobias’ ankles. It adds an extra weight to each of his steps, making him slower and clumsier.

They can’t afford to keep this fight going much longer.

Nia must think the same, because after she narrowly avoids a terrifying shadow claw to the chest she calls out, “Tobias! Use smokescreen again!”

Tobias can’t spare Nia a glance, but his voice is bewildered as he shouts, “What?!”

Sure, Tobias would have an advantage with his sharper eyes, but Nia would be just as blind as Dismas.

“Trust me!” Nia says, slipping into Dismas’ space to…tap him with her paw?

Tobias has no idea what she’s planning, but he listens. Dismas doesn’t seem to like the idea, because he turns and takes a swing at Tobias. Tobias hops back from it, then spews a dark cloud of smoke, even thicker than earlier. It hazes the room in seconds

Dismas makes a frustrated sound, punching in Tobias’ direction. Tobias takes his chance to back up and take a breather. He glances at Nia.

The riolu has also backed up. She’s panting hard, but a rest doesn’t seem to be her plan. Instead, her aura staff vanishes, and she closes her eyes. A moment later, the faint blue of her aura outlines her, the appendages on either side of her face lifting.

Then Tobias feels it. It’s faint, almost unnoticeable, like Nia has brushed up against him. Not forceful, but definitely present.

Her aura. She tagged him. That explains what she was doing earlier, too, when she made such light contact with Dismas. She’s tracking the two of them by their energy.

Nia moves. Her steps gain confidence as she runs to Tobias’ side, giving Dismas a wide berth. The pangoro’s head snaps side to side, trying to find them in the impenetrable smoke.

“Aura,” Nia explains breathlessly, eyes still closed. “I’ve gotta thank Val later for making me brush up on my training. Now what’s the plan?”

Tobias looks back at Dismas. “We’ve mostly been dodging, but we need to get some hard hits in before the orb wears off if we want to have a chance at outlasting him. I’ll keep the smokescreen up if you can keep using your aura.”

Nia nods. “I-I think I can. Flank him?”

“Circle him. Keep moving. He’s still dangerous even if he can’t see exactly where we are.”

“Right.”

As one, Tobias and Nia run at Dismas, splitting around him like water. Dismas must notice their presence, because he bares his teeth, crouching lower in preparation to strike.

Tobias begins the attack, trying to keep his distance as much as possible by using his flames. He starts at Dismas’ back, then his side, then his chest, focused on staying moving. Each hit lights up the smoke in a bright, dizzying haze.

Nia joins in with her own attacks, sometimes throwing messy aura spheres and sometimes darting in to take a swing with her aura staff before vanishing back into the smoke just as quickly.

Dismas is clearly irritated by the tactic, swinging for them blindly with heavy paws. At one point he tries to use another snarl attack, and Tobias only avoids the shockwave of sound because Nia is crossing by him and blocks it with a flicker of protect.

Dismas sees the bright blue of her energy in the fading smokescreen, and lunges. They separate again.

“Tobias—more smoke!”

“No,” Dismas snaps. “Your little game ends here.”

The words are thick with frustration, but that’s not what makes Tobias’ skin tingle and a hot fog fall over his thoughts. Distantly, he recognizes the energy projected through the words themselves.

Taunt. No more smokescreen, then. Tobias has to fight. He feels the heat of it in his bones.

Tobias growls and launches himself at Dismas, strategy thrown to the wayside in exchange for claws and teeth.

Dismas grins, welcoming the full-frontal attack. While Tobias gets a slash or two off on the pangoro in his frenzy, slicing through pelt and skin, both blows land on Dismas’ arms, relatively harmless.

In such close quarters, Dismas is able to grab Tobias easily. He swings him around before slamming him down into the water covering the ground. Tobias’ spine hits the metal underneath painfully hard, sending a spike of jarring pain through his body. Even worse, the cold ocean water laps over his body, burning against his skin and leaving him gasping.

At least his head feels a bit clearer.

“Let him go!”

Nia flickers between them and wheels her staff back to smack the pangoro’s arm away. To Tobias’ surprise, there’s enough power there to make it happen.

As soon as he’s released, Tobias scrambles back.

Nia is on the offensive, now, slamming her staff into the pangoro’s legs and sides and leaping around his retaliatory blows using little bursts of quick attack. Her hits seem to be landing harder, not just making Dismas brace against them but actively chasing him backwards.

Is she just that angry, or did she sneak in a work up, boosting her attack even more? Tobias knows they can’t afford to hold back, but he’s getting a bit worried about her energy reserves.

As if to spite him for the thought, Nia stumbles as she tries to dodge Dismas’ next punch. Her quick attack falters, and she can’t move fast enough with the water lapping at her ankles, slowing her down.

Dismas’ fist doesn’t hit her head-on, but even a blow to the side is enough to send her flying back, skimming across the shallow water like a stone before slamming into the metal wall and slumping to the ground.

“Nia!” Tobia screams.

He stares, seeing Vivi and desperately thinking Get up get up get up you have to get up—

He only dodges Dismas’ incoming attack on instinct, feeling the pangoro’s fur brush his side. With Nia down, Dismas has officially switched targets.

Tobias is more worried about his partner, though. He tries to get to her, but Dismas blocks his path, using Tobias’ obvious distraction to his advantage. He’d had a hold on his fear before, but it has returned in an all-consuming wave of terror.

Tobias dodges attack after attack, trying to create an opening to check on Nia. Finally, after a particularly large burst of fire that makes even Dismas step back, Tobias manages a glimpse in the riolu’s direction.

His heart skips a beat.

Nia is leaning heavily on the wall, one paw braced against it. The other is pressed tight against her side. Her face is twisted with pain.

But she’s alive. She’s standing.

Dismas follows Tobias’ gaze, clearly weighing whether or not to go finish the job. Something protective and feral and furious rises in Tobias’ gut in response. He’s done playing fair.

“Hey!” He snaps.

Dismas glances down at him, and Tobias spits fire directly into his eyes.

The pangoro roars, stumbling back. Tobias takes his chance and sprints to Nia’s side.

“Tobias,” she wheezes.

“You’re hurt,” he says, like an idiot. He peels her paw away from her side, doing his best to ignore her pained whine.

No blood, thank Arceus, but that just means the damage is internal. Which is almost more worrying.

“Think it’s my ribs,” she murmurs, looking like she’s fighting to stay conscious. “I-I don’t…”

“Shh, don’t move. I got it. Just…"

Tobias looks around, hoping that help has somehow magically appeared in the last ten seconds. But no, it’s still just the two of them and Dismas, who is scrubbing at his eyes. The guards lie unconscious nearby.

The water is rising higher. The green glow from the window reflects onto the rippling waves, the whole room a surreal fractured mirror. It’s already up to Tobias’ knees.

Wait.

“A mirror,” Tobias breathes.

Between the dim lighting and the constant ripple running through the water, the reflection isn’t super clear, though, the image fractured and faint. Will it be enough?

Dismas finally lifts his head, locking eyes with Tobias. He snarls, fists clenching.

Tobias can’t afford not to try.

“Giratina!” He shouts, desperate.

Nia blinks, mind clearly clouded with pain as she struggles to understand what he’s doing.

And then, a moment later, Tobias sees him. In the rippling reflection below, a familiar pair of glowing red eyes and a golden mask-like face. Giratina glances at the pangoro across the room, then glares at Nia and Tobias.

“Get us out of here or we’re dead,” Tobias says, less of a command and more of a plea.

Dismas roars, charging them. Tobias steps in front of Nia. He presses them both back against the wall, praying under his breath and fighting to keep his eyes open against the charging outlaw.

And then, as Dismas nears with his fist raised, Tobias and Nia

are

yanked

down.

Tobias stomach flips. Gravity itself seems to turn, the air suddenly much drier, and nearly silent. He lands hard on rocky ground. Nia cries out as she lands beside him.

Tobias looks around wildly, only to find himself in one of the strangest places he’s ever seen. It’s an endless indigo abyss, like a starless night. Chunks of land float throughout the space like islands that escaped gravity’s grasp. Patches of light hang like colorful windows throughout the void, glimpses into brighter worlds.

And above them floats a banished god, easily the largest Pokémon Tobias has ever seen.

Giratina leans closer to them, looming with all the ire of a furious parent. “What in the gods’ name is happening here?”

“Long story,” Tobias says, kneeling to help Nia into a sitting position. “But we need help.”

“That much is obvious.”

“Before that,” Nia rasps, coughing then wincing. “C-Can you bring the quagsire and malamar here too? They were in the same room as us.”

Giratina’s eyes narrow, but he wordlessly moves up to one of the patches of light, a larger one with a familiar green glow to it. Tobias realizes all at once that it’s a portal. Likely the one they were yanked through—the reflection created by the water on the prison floor. Giratina uses a wing-like tendril to touch it, and a moment later, the malamar is pulled through, limp, and laid onto the rocky ground beside Nia and Tobias. A few seconds later, the quagsire joins him.

“Good,” Tobias says. Then he cranes his head back to meet Giratina’s eyes. He would probably feel intimidated if he were here in any other circumstance, but all of his adrenaline is still locked onto the battle with Dismas. “Keep them safe. Nia too.”

“What?” Nia asks, head snapping up. She tries to push away from him to stand, and nearly falls on her face. Tobias settles her back onto the ground

“Keep her here,” Tobias says to Giratina, voice hard. “She can’t fight in this condition.”

Nia whines a protest, trying and failing to get to her feet again. He ignores the way his body itches to help her. She can’t possibly think he’d let her back in there with Dismas, not with that kind of injury.

“You want to return?” Giratina rumbles to Tobias.

“I don’t want to,” Tobias admits, watching Dismas through the reflection they arrived in. It’s a surreal view from below, as if they were seeing him through a glass floor. His paws are sharp against the glass, but everything else is blurred and distorted. The water ripples green and black, warping the view of the ceiling. Even still, Tobias can tell the pangoro is looking around the room in a battle stance, suspicious about their sudden disappearance. “But if no one’s there to keep him occupied, then he’s going to rip his way through the prison and destroy the whole place in the process. He might kill someone.”

“He’ll kill you!” Nia says.

“He will if he gets the chance, but unless you or Giratina have any other brilliant ideas, then…”

Nia looks up at Giratina, tears in her eyes. “C-Can’t you grab Dismas? You’re a god!”

“He is powerful, and a dark type as well,” Giratina says with a rueful shake of his head. “I cannot drag him here against his will. Not at my current strength. I can slow him down, but that is all.”

That would help, but it wouldn’t be enough on its own. The water in the room is still rising, and soon it’ll be too high for Tobias to move through at all without wading, which would render him practically useless.

No, he needs another form of attack. Something that’ll keep him moving quickly enough. But there isn’t any higher ground to stand on in the little prison cell, or even floating debris to hop between. It’s practically empty, the pangoro and the pool of water the only things of note.

Tobias stares up at the portal, imagining what he’d do after Giratina flung him back through.

And then he gets his actual stupidest idea of the fight. His breath catches.

“Tobias?”

“Giratina,” Tobias says, slowly. “What happens if you throw someone through a portal?”

Nia and Giratina stare at him with equally dumbfounded looks.

“Well?”

“If you were to go through the portal at such a speed, you would continue your momentum into the mortal realm,” Giratina says.

“So I’d just shoot up out of the water, right?”

“In theory, yes.”

“And you could catch me again when I landed. Bring me back here.”

“You’re going to play whack-a-mole with a murderer,” Nia says, in disbelief. “Tobias, no, that’s so risky!”

Tobias doesn’t admit that she’s right. He flattens his mouth, looking up to meet Giratina’s eyes. “You willing to help? The water’s too deep for me to fight otherwise.”

Giratina doesn’t answer.

Tobias swallows. “Please. He can’t be set free.”

Giratina rumbles a mildly irritated sort of noise. “Do not expect this to become a habit.”

Nia makes a sound of protest, but Tobias just gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile before hopping onto Giratina’s offered wing-tendril-thing.

Tobias is lifted up to the portal. “All right. Let’s try this. Ready?”

“Mm.”

Tobias braces himself. Giratina lowers his wing, then launches him up with surprising force. Tobias resists the urge to close his eyes, rocketing through the portal and—

And flying up into humid air, the sound of rushing water in the enclosed space like a slap to the face. Green light and metal surrounds him once again. Dismas whips his head around, staring at Tobias as he slows mid-air against gravity.

Tobias, with a vicious grin, spins to thwack the pangoro with his tail before gravity takes him and he drops again. Dismas, completely unprepared, stumbles back with a grunt.

Instead of landing in the water, Tobias phases through the reflection and into Giratina’s dimension, caught by the tendrils of the legendary in question.

Tobias can’t believe that worked. He laughs, probably a little hysterically. “Can you keep doing that? Just…keep me coming in at different angles so it’s less predictable.”

Giratina doesn’t look thrilled by the prospect, but he wordlessly braces himself for another throw. Tobias tenses.

Giratina chucks him again, and this time Tobias re-enters the battlefield from behind Dismas. The pangoro spins to meet him, but not before Tobias spits another flame burst at his face, dropping again just as quickly.

Just as before, he phases through the portal and back into the dry, quiet air of the distortion world. Giratina’s tendrils catch him, cold against his back.

He’s launched back up for another attack. And another. And another.

Each time, Tobias gets more confident. He hits the pangoro with a burst of fire or dragon rage, or swipes at him with his claws or a swing of his tail before falling back to safety. Dismas starts trying to grab him, but Giratina keeps Tobias’ entry point random each time and drags Dismas’ feet as much as possible to make him stumble and slow.

Tobias would almost say Dismas is starting to lag, the slightest bit.

Tobias’ own muscles burn with overuse, screaming for a break, but he needs to stall for as long as physically possibly, until help arrives.

He grunts as Giratina launches him through the portal once more. Tobias summons his fire for another flame burst—

Dismas snatches Tobias out of midair. Before Tobias can even register what’s happening, he’s being swung around and slammed down into the water again. His back presses against the metal floor, and burning cold water closes over his head. He chokes on it, struggling against the massive paw holding him down.

It’s loud under the water, an endless roar in his ears, and Tobias realizes that the pangoro has pinned him closer to the crack in the window. The water is likely too agitated here for a reflection to work as a portal.

Panic sets in immediately.

Dismas doesn’t move, as unyielding as a statue as he holds Tobias down. He’s not even going to crush Tobias—he’s going to make him suffer. Drown him slowly.

Tobias is going to die here.

He’s going to die to the same monster that killed his family. He doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want to die.

Tobias hears something, a vague yell that sounds suspiciously like Nia. He cracks his eyes open against stinging saltwater just in time to see the water above light up with the blue of her aura.

Of course.

The weight of Dismas’ paw is suddenly gone.

Tobias sits up, coughing and spluttering. He gasps in air, lungs burning, skin numb with pain. He feels too heavy to stand up.

A quiet splash and a whimper, nearly lost to the torrent of water gushing in, is the only thing that manages to lift Tobias’ head. Nia, hand still pressed to her side and visibly trembling, limps to his side.

“T-Tobias! Are you okay?”

“You were supposed to stay with Giratina,” he says, glaring at her.

“Change of plans?” Nia says with a shaky smile.

As one, he and Nia see movement and look over. Dismas is pushing himself to his feet against the far wall. He’s soaking wet, and he looks livid.

Nia presses silently against Tobias’ side, the two of them facing the pangoro head-on.

A piercing crack comes from behind them. Tobias stiffens, glancing back.

The pressure of the water against the window has finally gotten to be too much. The cracks around the break lengthen, branching out in loud, jarring jolts.

…Wait. Is that the shadow of a Pokemon on the other side of the glass?

The rest of the window suddenly shatters. Water comes at them in a wave.

Nia grabs Tobias’ arm, and the blue of her aura flickers to life around them, encasing them in a bubble of protection. Against the semi-translucent barrier, seawater crashes in, swirling against the surface in whorls and waves. Tobias can feel the pressure of the ocean settling around them, like being jammed into a too-small space.

Through the frothy water, Tobias sees Dismas get slammed by the current. The water rises immediately to his waist, then incrementally higher. For the first time, the pangoro actually looks afraid, trying to back away with nowhere to go.

Then, Tobias sees them: Pokemon. Bright streaks of light as guards swarm the room through the broken window. Tobias recognizes the yellow glow of the lanturn he’d noticed earlier, as well as the crawdaunt with his mossy green lantern. A dewgong and an octillery swim by as well, their tones bright against the dark green water. A kingdra and vaporeon slip past the window’s jagged edges with ease. Finally, a sharpedo barrels through and attacks Dismas immediately, latching onto the pangoro’s arm with razor-sharp teeth to hold the outlaw in place.

It’s chaos, but it’s clearly controlled chaos as they all follow some unspoken protocol, three or four of the water types corralling and containing the pangoro in seconds. Moments later, they tug him out of the cell and through the window, presumably up to the surface.

Tobias is relieved when he sees the octillery and dewgong speed out of the room as well, the two injured, unconscious guards held tight between them. Giratina must’ve slipped them back into the room amidst the flurry of activity.

At this point the room has flooded almost entirely, making the water seem almost calm outside of their bubble. Only one or two ‘mon are left after the rush, and the sudden stillness is almost unnerving.

Tobias jumps when he turns his head and notices a giant blue face peering in at them, barely small enough to fit through the broken window. His fanged mouth is large enough to swallow them whole, but he nods reassuringly when he meets Tobias’ eyes. He has a crest at his forehead, fins framing his face, and long blue whiskers.

A gyarados.

The gyarados swims through the window, carefully avoiding broken glass, and wraps his long tail around their protect bubble. Tobias holds Nia to his side, stumbling when their bubble is easily picked up in the gyarados’ grasp and maneuvered through the window into the open ocean beyond.

The gyarados doesn’t move nearly as quickly as Tobias would like, seeming almost leisurely as he swims up to the surface. As the pressure in Tobias’ ears shifts uncomfortably, he figures the gyarados probably has his reasons for the slow ascent, but he still can’t help wishing the water type would hurry up.

Nia is breathing hard, shaking like a leaf in a storm, likely on her very last restores of energy after such a tough fight. Tobias has no idea how she’s still holding on to the protect at all, honestly. He pulls her into a hug, letting her lean most of her weight on him, and she squeezes him hard, fingers digging into his skin. He uses his thumbs to rub circles into her back in return, murmuring encouragements.

Slowly, the surface comes closer. The ocean around them fades from heavy black and bright green to a gentle, sunlit blue. And finally, finally, they break the surface. The gyarados lifts their bubble onto his broad back, finally safe in the open air.

“You can relax, Riolu,” the gyarados says, just loud enough to be heard through the barrier.

Nia doesn’t, arms still locked tight around Tobias.

Tobias taps her back. “Nia, you can let go.”

She whimpers quietly. A questioning, uncertain noise.

“They’ve got us. We’re safe.”

Another beat of hesitation, and then Nia releases the protect. Bright sunlight and fresh, cool air hit Tobias’ chilled skin. Nia slumps against him, complete deadweight.

“Nia?”

Tobias feels a sudden rush of fear, remembering Vivi’s small body doing the same. He hurriedly sits and eases her into his lap, face-up. To his relief, her brow creases with the movement. Her chest rises and falls, shallower than he would like but otherwise steady.

She’s fine. Out like a light, but alive.

Tobias exhales, leaning forward to wrap his arms loosely around Nia’s shoulders. He presses his face into the ruff of fur around her neck.

Alive. She’s alive. He’s alive. They fell into a deathtrap with Dismas and survived.

Tobias barks a laugh, eyes stinging with tears. Then he can’t seem to stop laughing, until he’s gasping for air and crying too, shaking. Nia’s going to have to wash her fur.

The tension and terror that has been sitting like bile in his gut since they first saw Dismas finally starts to ease. It feels like breaching the surface all over again. It feels like relief.

The gyarados brings them to a dock at the edge of the city, where officials are trying to keep a gawking crowd of bystanders at bay with shouts and only half-succeeding. Word must’ve spread that something exciting was happening.

Tobias barely registers it, only focused on sticking by Nia as they’re handed off to another ‘mon and carted off somewhere.

He doesn’t come back to himself until two healer ‘mon try to separate Nia from his death grip. It’s likely for treatment, considering that when he lifts his head they’re in what is clearly a small clinic, but he’s still reluctant to part from her.

“I’m her partner,” Tobias rasps, though it comes out as more of a whine.

The Pokemon trying to see to their injuries, an audino and a clefable, exchange looks.

“We aren’t separating you,” the audino assures, voice low and soothing. “But you have to let go so we can look you both over.”

Tobias reluctantly releases Nia, relieved when they’re only parted by a few feet so the medics have enough room to work.

“She got hit on her right side,” Tobias says to the clefable looking him over, letting the fairy type move his limbs around as she checks for mobility issues. “Check her ribs.”

“Lerin knows what he’s doing,” the clefable says, though she sounds more amused than anything. “Don’t worry. Your partner is in good hands.”

Tobias nods, forcing himself to relax and follow the clefable’s directions as she gives him a thorough checkup. After cleaning and bandaging the gash on his side and running him through a heal pulse session, Tobias is feeling fuzzy-headed and ready to sleep for a week, but otherwise significantly better.

The clefable eases Tobias into a large, mossy nest, soft against his raw and water-chafed skin. Sleep tugs at him, but…

“Nia?” Tobias mumbles.

“She has a fracture on one rib,” the audino answers, carefully laying Nia into the nest next to Tobias. “Otherwise, only some nasty bruising. It’ll hurt and she’ll need to take it easy for a week or so—no combat—but the heal pulse kickstarted the healing process. She’ll be fine. Probably up and about in a day or two.”

Good. Tobias hums his thanks, wiggling closer until he can lie right next to Nia, tucking his face into the fluff around her neck to feel her breathe.

And then he’s out.

—————————————————————————

It feels like Tobias has only just closed his eyes when he’s woken by a quiet, cut-off sound of pain. His eyes snap open in an instant.

Nia stares back at him like a child caught doing something they shouldn't be. She’s still lying down, but her paw is pressed against her injured side and her body is curled tight with tension.

“Careful," Tobias mumbles, reaching up to rub at his eyes. "You cracked a rib.”

“You don’t say,” Nia huffs, somewhere between pained and amused. She visibly forces herself to relax, gingerly laying her arm down and trying to uncurl.

It’s early morning, warm sunshine just starting to filter into the room through sheer curtains and painting everything in a golden light.

“So we didn’t die?” Nia asks, only half-joking.

Tobias breathes a laugh. “We survived. Somehow. You got the worst of it.”

“I’d say. Feels like I got hit by a truck.”

Tobias’ smile falters. “They said you’ll have to take it easy for a couple weeks, but you should be able to walk around in a day or two.”

Nia tries to take a deeper breath, and winces when she can't. She exhales with a forced steadiness. “Junie’s gonna kill me.”

“You? I’m definitely getting the blame for this.”

Nia laughs, but quickly chokes off into a pained sound.

Tobias’ heart sinks. He looks away. “…I’m sorry. That you got hurt. And for, uh…getting us into that situation in the first place. Every time we try to learn more about Team Zenith, I feel like we end up fighting for our lives.”

Nia is quiet for a moment. Then she reaches over and takes his hand, uncurling his fingers to intertwine their hands and give a squeeze. “This time wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m the reason we were there at all.”

“It was important to you. You couldn’t have known he’d break free like that.”

“Still. You got hurt.”

“That’s just part of the Seeker lifestyle, Tobias.”

“Wish it wasn’t.” Tobias finally works up the courage to meet Nia’s eyes again, feeling unworthy of the soft affection he sees there.

But then her expression falls, brow furrowing. Hesitantly, as if afraid to hear the answer, Nia asks, “Have you heard anything about the guards? Did they..?”

Survive? Tobias feels more guilt pile onto his shoulders.

Tobias shakes his head. “I don’t know. I know they got ‘em out, but I haven’t heard anything else.”

Nia hums, but doesn’t push. Then she runs her thumb over the back of his hand. “How about you? How are you feeling about…everything?”

Tobias knows what she’s asking. How is he handling what he learned from Dismas? What he remembered about that night?

The fact that his family died just to cover Team Zenith’s tracks.

The reminder makes hot tears prick at Tobias’ eyes. He takes a shaky breath. “Honestly? Not great.”

Nia makes a wordless sound of encouragement.

“It’s just...I always figured there had to be a reason, you know? Something I could point to and say, ‘This is why that happened.’ Some big, important motive. And knowing it was all just bad timing? Just Sulien covering his tracks? It feels…wrong.”

Tobias sniffs. He feels a few tears spill over, streaking sideways down his face. He lowers his chin, but doesn’t bother wiping the tears away. He knows there are more coming. His throat is tight.

“They never deserved to die, but at least if there was a better reason, there would be some kind of logic to it, y’know? But no, it was all just…chance.”

The knowledge leaves Tobias feeling strangely unmoored. He would’ve guessed that this revelation would stoke his rage more than ever. Instead, the burning hate that has kept him going the past eight years, that has driven him to hunt down the outlaws and make them pay, has…dampened.

He still hates Team Zenith, of course, and Sulien still needs to be stopped, but for the first time ever Tobias is realizing how…insignificant all of this is, in the grand scheme of things. This whole city has no idea who Dismas is, or what he did to Tobias’ family. They’re just tourists and locals going on with their lives, happily unaware.

That night destroyed Tobias’ world, but for everyone else? For Sulien? It meant absolutely nothing.

Does it even matter that Tobias survived? He wasn’t the one who stopped Asra, or who brought Dismas to this prison. Sulien will likely be caught by some random high-ranking team without Tobias even knowing it.

So what’s the point? Why is he still here when his family isn’t? He’s justified his survival with vengeance for so long, but when that isn’t a real factor, all that’s left to ask is why he got to live when they didn't. Once Sulien is taken care of, what is he even supposed to do with his life?

To Tobias’ surprise, a sob rips from his throat. This time, the shame is too much, and he curls up tighter in the nest, covering his face with his hands so he can cry without Nia seeing him.

Of course she won’t let that stand. Nia’s soft, cool paws tug at his shoulders, coaxing him closer until he can bury himself in her neck, crying into her soft fur. One paw comes up to cup the back of his head, the other stroking at his shoulder blades while she murmurs words too quiet to understand.

For a moment, Tobias is torn between mortification and relief, before grief hits him like a wave and buries it all. It drowns him more thoroughly than the ocean had, leaving him gasping for air and trembling with pain.

“I miss them so much,” he whimpers.

Nia’s hold tightens. He can feel her swallow. “I know.”

“I-I don’t—they should’ve lived. Vivi should’ve lived."

“I know. But you did the best you could, Tobias. It’s a miracle you even survived.”

“I shouldn’t have!” Tobias cries. “I should’ve died with her.”

Nia’s breath hitches. She holds him even tighter, voice shaking. “Well...I’m glad you survived, for what it's worth. And your family would be happy you did, too.”

Tobias shakes his head. “But I couldn’t even avenge them! I-I didn’t catch Asra, or Dismas. I-I…What good am I if I can’t even do that? That’s all I’m here for!”

At that, Nia wrenches them apart. Through Tobias’ tears, she looks on the verge of tears herself. “You’re here to live, Tobias. You don’t have to do anything to deserve that. I…I didn’t know your family, but I’m positive that’s what they would have wanted, too.”

The words strike Tobias in the chest. They feel blasphemous. They feel like a gasp of air after drowning for nearly a decade.

“I don’t deserve it,” Tobias whispers.

“You do. You deserve to be happy, Tobias. It wasn’t your fault.”

It feels shameful, admitting that some part of him wants Nia to be right. Wants that burden lifted off his back.

“It’s not fair,” he rasps, “That I got to live and they didn’t.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Nia’s words are sympathetic. Forgiving. Tobias can’t ingest them, not with guilt still choking him like a physical thing. Like Dismas himself is here with his fingers around Tobias’ throat.

Tobias doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forgive himself for not doing enough. For not saving them, somehow. For surviving when they didn’t.

But...Nia’s also right. His family wouldn’t have wanted him to be miserable his entire life. They definitely wouldn’t have wanted him to die with them. They loved him as much as he loved them.

When Dismas was trying to drown him earlier, Tobias remembers thinking that he didn’t want to die. He was scared, sure, but here with Nia he realizes that it wasn’t just fear talking, or a desire to take down Team Zenith.

He’d wanted to live, too.

Tobias had thought he didn’t care whether he lived or died, after the mines in Fort Asra. But…he does care. Surprisingly, he doesn’t actually want to die.

The thought feels selfish and too large to comprehend, almost heavier than the shame and hate he has carried around all these years. He wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of freedom, with his life not constantly weighed down by thoughts of the outlaws and his family’s tragic deaths.

...Could he really do that? Choke down the guilt and live a life for someone other than his ghosts? Live purely for himself? It sounds so wrong.

But…Nia says he deserves it. And he trusts her.

Maybe he could just try it. Try…living for the sake of living, rather than as a means to an end. For Nia’s sake, and for Maggie’s, and for the Pokemon at the guild he’s starting to think of as friends.

Maybe Nia’s right. Maybe he wasn’t just left alive as some sick memorial to the worst night of his life. Even when guilt threatens to consume him whole, maybe it’s okay for him to try to be happy.

Maybe one day he’ll even believe he deserves it.

[anxietycroissant]

So I’m doing something fun with @turbulenthandholding , per usual. We are exchanging prompts for sydcarmy stories. I’m going to post a bit from two. Please vote for the one you want to keep reading, and that will be my next story on AO3. Scroll down below the poll to read the stories before you vote!

Prompt 1: Syd finds out Mikey’s grave is near her mom’s. (I actually came up with this one for @turbulenthandholding but accidentally started writing it before I realized what was happening.

The Cemetery Story

Every year leading up to April 8th, she forgave herself in advance for not finding the time to come and visit her mom’s grave on the anniversary of her death. But like always, she somehow found herself here. She brought the same last minute bouquet of white flowers from Whole Foods to lay on her mother’s grave. She knew both that the bones of her mother rested quite literally six feet under where she stood, and that she wouldn’t feel her mother’s spirit. It couldn’t be found on top of or underneath this quiet stretch of grass. She didn’t know where else to go, though, so she came to this place, where she could rub her fingers across the carved letters of her mother’s name.

She allowed her eyes to look anywhere they liked, anywhere except at the dates of her mother’s life etched into her headstone. She had died so young. It was too sad. She sighed loudly, biting her lip. “Love you, mom,” she murmured under her breath. “My life is just as fucked up as when I stopped by last year. I own a restaurant now. Well, co-own, I guess?” she amended. What more was there to say, when you had so many things to say that nothing would come out?

She crouched, letting her fingertips brush the buttery flower buds nestled in the bouquet she’d brought. She tapped one finger to her lips, and then gently touched the headstone. It would have to be enough. Pushing off the wet grass with her finger tips, she stood up quickly at the sound of crunching gravel nearby.

She glanced into and through a large bush, and could just make out someone on the other side of it. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but then the guy started to speak. She knew the voice, had memorized every variation in tone and pitch that it could produce. She knew its whispers, and lately she had become very familiar with what it sounded like screaming in her kitchen. The voice now sounded soft, bereft. She couldn’t hear any specific words he said, which assuaged her guilt over being nosy. She turned around slowly to begin walking away, and then he spoke her name.

“Syd, um. Remember how I told you I was so afraid she’d leave The Bear?” She couldn’t see his face but she could hear him practically sucking on a cigarette. Their location was so quiet that she felt trapped now. She couldn’t leave without revealing herself. The most she could do was turn her face further away.

He cleared his throat. “She um. She didn’t… leave? Exactly? But she told me, that, you know… this real fucking prick, Shapiro- we worked together a long time ago. He’s not that bad I guess? Uh anyway, he offered her CDC at his new spot. She said she really thought about taking it but ultimately just couldn’t.”

He sat in silence for a minute, moving the gravel in front of his foot back and forth in the silence. When he continued, it was almost a whisper. “I fucking know it’s my fault, too,” he admitted. It was strange. She didn’t feel Mikey’s presence exactly, but the air felt thicker. “How do I tell her? That I have no- fucking idea how… to do any of it? Mikey, if you could meet her, you’d get it. She’s so, so good. She doesn’t need me. I have no idea why she’s staying. I’ve been such an asshole. To everyone, to her,” He sighed.

she heard rustling. “I never told you, but when she started at The Beef? I was so fucked up, and she- she, right away, I could see it. I knew her. I knew she was brilliant, to good for that place. Too good for me. Too good for anywhere. But I just wanted to keep her,” he scoffed. “Mike,” he whispered, sounding spooked. “She made this risotto. You would have died. It just… it just needed, like, the tiniest tweak. But, anyway I was a dick about it. But I could taste her future. Her talent is so much bigger than like, I can even comprehend.”

He was silent for so long that she had to peek to see if he was still there. He was. Elegant fingers messing up his own tangled curls, he was biting his lip with red eyes. “I wish I could tell her, Bear,” he said, his voice raspy. “I want to give her everything she wants. Everything. Probably too much. Even if I don’t know how,” he added, that last sentence slipping out in a rush.

She heard his jacket rustle as he shifted. She could hear him humming, almost as if he was reacting to something another person said. And who was she to judge? Maybe he was.

He was quiet for a long moment, his hand worrying over his chin. Syd stared openly at Carmy as he marinated. She watched his face as different emotions danced across his finely carved features. She was pretty sure she saw sadness, frustration, humor, and maybe even a smidge of hope. Or maybe she was just a stalker.

“What would I say if she were here now? I- I don’t know, Mikey,” he admitted, choking out a meager laugh. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Syd, I’m sorry I’ve been such an unbelievable asshole to the one person I want to be better for? Oh, and yeah. I know you wanted to work together but I apparently never learned? And you should be the one teaching me?” He laughed bitterly, on a roll now.

“Or how about this? I tell her, “Oh and Syd, the thought of you working with Shapiro - that fucking prick, Jesus, Mikey, if she had actually said yes to that asshole I’d have never forgiven myself- anyway, the thought of you rather working with him than with me… learning that broke me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Syd. How do I tell you? How do I show you? How important you are? How do I do that without making you feel less than?” He had tears in his eyes.

The weak sunlight cast his hair in a golden glow. In that moment, he looked like an angel who would never be so cunty in the kitchen. She almost admonished herself for using that label. But, she reasoned, men could be cunty too. She almost laughed out loud, but slapped a hand over her mouth.

The gentle slap of her fingers over her open mouth was not what she’d describe as gentle or silent. It was, in fact, audible in the empty cemetery. The smile disappeared from her face as Carmy whipped his head around, his eyes finding hers. They widened first in recognition, then disbelief.

“Syd?” he breathed. “Is that you? What… what the fuck are you doing… here?” he asked quietly, gesturing between them to the bush. Having lost the ability to speak, Syd pointed at her mom’s grave. Carmy took that as an invitation to walk over to her. He stood next to her, and then kneeled down to read her mother’s name.

He smoothed his forefinger over the inscription reverently, just as she had done. He was silent for a long moment before doing something that surprised her. “Hi, Mrs. Adamu,” he whispered. “I’m Carmy. It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said awkwardly. Syd’s heart swelled. “Your daughter… I know you’re really proud already, but… I wish you could see her now. She’s really something special,” he muttered, looking down at his feet.

“Carmy,” Syd said hesitantly after making sure he was finished speaking. “Can you look at me, please?” she asked softly.

He looked at her then, his piercing blue eyes meeting her own. She couldn’t swear on it, but she thought she could see his pulse making the skin of his rose flushed neck stutter. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “How much.. um, of that did you- did you hear?” His voice shook slightly.

Syd winced. “Once I figured out it was you, I tried to tune you out but I couldn’t. And I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but like, there’s no way I have left without announcing I was here,” she said simply. “So I stayed.” She twisted a ring around her finger over and over, smiling nervously. She took a shaky breath.

“I believe you, Syd. But uh, how much? Were you here the… the… all that time?” His eyes searched hers.

She nodded, unsure what to say. She moved closer to him. He startled, eyebrows raised. She curled her fingers into the soft cotton covering his shoulder. “Carmy,” she breathed. She nodded. “I heard it,” she confirmed. Carmy closed his eyes, nodding once. He opened his eyes again and held her gaze. “Is there, um. Anything else you… you wanna say?” They were so close now they were almost touching.

His answering nod was so small that she almost didn’t see it. “Yeah,” he replied, his lips all but disappearing into a thin line. “I wanted to say some of this… you know, at the funeral. But then the guy that made me this way was there. And I had to confront him. You know, he’s why, Syd. He’s why New York was so shitty, why I have panic attacks. Why I… why I can’t just be-“ he broke off, his eyes shiny.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I confronted him. He’s still a piece of shit. He will- never change. But then, later, you were gone. And I, I realized. I’m putting all of this shit on you. My shit. Ruining this for you, taking away all the good parts. The things about it you love. I made it all about me, like you said. Syd,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, for all of it.”

Syd wiped at her wet cheeks, taking deep breaths. Looking down, she saw that she had moved even closer to Carmy. She was holding onto the tips of two of his fingers.

Prompt 2: Syd and Carmy are catering a party for Jimmy, post -season 3, in a fancy high rise apartment. Maybe the review came out and it's not bad but it's not stellar and Jimmy is trying to figure it out, so he asks them to do this. Syd and Carmy get trapped in the service elevator with trays as they are cleaning up afterwards

The Elevator Story

The service version of anything was always- by design- less than. Service entrances were often discreetly located on the side or around the back. Service staircases were simply adorned, with no frills. Who would they be for, after all? Utilitarian double doors, forlorn potted plants, and overstuffed cigarette receptacles were some of the glamor one could expect to grace a service entrance. Likewise, service elevators didn’t claim to be anything they weren’t. They were just to get from point A to point B.

Syd, however, would argue that it was more like rising from point A to B on the Y axis. There was not a cute way mathematically to say that she was ascending vertically in a shitty service elevator in a fancy high-rise building in a gentrified, annoying little bubble of Chicago with her business “partner”. They had been down and up a few times, sullenly taking their gear back to the van. But anyway, if the Y-axis was this shitty elevator, shooting straight up toward this building’s event space, then the X-axis was the things left unsaid between herself and Carmy. Things on the x-axis weren’t great. They hadn’t been for a while.

She noticed him looking at her. He had a little smirk on his stupid face. His strong cheekbones and soulful eyes fucking pissed her off. With all of the bullshit he’d put her through, he deserved to have an actual asshole instead of a mouth. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What?” she asked aggressively, unintentionally flaring her nostrils. His eyes widened in surprise. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of surprise these days. How he could ever be surprised by the situation he found himself in, despite being responsible for it, blew her mind daily.

“Nothing,” he said in a low voice, sighing. “You were mumbling something about math. It was…” he stopped talking, catching sight of her expression. It was their day off, and she was in no mood for his shit. She had ultimately decided to reject Shapiro’s offer, but that didn’t mean much had changed. The big review that came out on the night of the funeral at Ever had been just decent enough escape the total wrath of Cicero. He still threatened them with data from Computer regularly. Hence the catering side job they had both agreed to do tonight. Everyone else had begged off, probably because the tension between Carmy and Syd was thicker than cold veal fat on a chilled plate.

“It was what?” Syd asked neutrally, daring him to say anything. “Nerdy?” She scoffed. She had heard that one before, although Carmy would never insult her in such an obvious way. He would insult her by excluding her. It was much more insidious, eating away at her one small bite at a time.

“It was fucking cute,” he muttered loud enough for her to hear. She could tell he didn’t mean to say it because his eyes grew impossibly wider. He cleared his throat. “Last trip back up there, I think,” he said quickly, clearly keen to change the subject. Syd was glad for the stainless steel utility cart in between the two of them. She’d take any distance she could get.

Syd rolled her eyes inwardly. Outwardly, she tried to keep a neutral expression. But had he truly called her cute? She was torn between smiling and being (even more) annoyed. She felt crabby, and he was picking at her. “You know what would have been cute?” she asked in a neutral tone. Carmy raised his eyebrows, looking earnest. He reminded her of one of those sad old men she saw who sat waiting for their wives on benches in the mall outside department stores. “It would have been a lot cuter and more cost-effective if we hadn’t done that fucking caviar station. But as usual, you didn’t listen to me. I don’t know why I’m even here anymore.”

Carmy had the nerve to look wounded. “Syd, where is this coming from? I agree with you completely! The fucking caviar thing was Cicero’s idea. You believe me, right?” he pleaded with her. She glared at him, one side of her mouth puckered.

“Forgive me for finding that hard to believe,” she said tonelessly. “You know what? Forget it,” she said, waving her hand. She wanted to avoid whatever arguments he desperately wanted to hold onto. “I don’t know why I bother anyway. Let’s just get this over with so we can get the fuck out of here.” At that moment, she noticed that they had been ascending very slowly for quite some time. How long had this little exchange been going on, anyway? They should have made it to the top by now. And she certainly hadn’t heard that whining mechanical noise during their last ascent.

“Carmy, shouldn’t we be there by now? This is taking for-” she broke off as the elevator slowed to a halt. They looked at each other. They heard and felt a grinding shudder below their feet before the elevator was finally silenced. “Fuck my life,” Syd uttered, sliding down to sit on the floor of the elevator. She just wanted to go home and mindlessly disassociate like a normal person. She couldn’t even look at her phone in this elevator; there was no signal.

Carmy held the call button for a long time until someone came on the line. He tried explaining their situation to the operator, but she could not have been less interested. “Sir, let me stop you there. This is a modern elevator. I can see your location in my system. I can also see the error code on the elevator. The motor has overheated. But the ventilation system appears to be in order. I’ll put in a work order for this elevator and call someone out to your location,” she recited robotically.

Syd huffed, sharing an incredulous glance with Carmy. “Um, sorry, but how long will that take?” she asked. Carmy’s brow was furrowed as he stared holes into the speaker.

The lady’s tinny voice responded almost at once. “Oh, no idea. I’ve called them out, but it’s late. I’m sending them to you, but the elevator will probably cool down before they get here. I’ll also alert the building’s management, but they’re not the most-” she stopped talking suddenly. Syd suddenly understood that this probably wasn’t the first issue this lady had logged with this particular building. She sighed.

“How long do you think it will take? Until either the elevator cools down enough, or the technician gets here?” Syd asked, her voice calmer now.

The lady’s tinny voice sounded once more from the speaker. “Thirty minutes to an hour is my best guess,” she said. “Just sit tight. Like I said, ventilation is working properly and this is a really minor issue. There’s nothing wrong with the motor or any other systems. You’re safe,” she assured them.

Seeing Syd’s dubious look, Carmy grimaced.

Ok I am tagging the blog names I can remember off the top of my head but I know I’ll forget some geniuses so please add them if you feel like it’s worth their time! ❤️

@turbulenthandholding @currymanganese @unbeweavvveable @moodyeucalyptus @bioloyg @sashafiercest @fpink202 @thoughtfulchaos773 @sydneys-adamu @purposechef @ciaomarie @amieraisposting @ambeauty @houseofevangelista @devisrina @angelica4equity @imliterallyjustablackgirl @inalltheirgorgeouscolors @laviejaguardia @kdbleu @mitocamdria @sydcarmy @sillygoose375

[total-drama-brainrot]

I’ve never seen someone else in this fandom actually make content for Chris and Noahs dynamic, I GENUINELY LOVE THEM SO MUCH, THEIR SNARK MAKES THE DUO SO FUNNY TO ME. Theres not enough Chris and Noah enjoyers in this fandoommm

Assistant!Noah really was a blessing to the fandom that we've taken for granted. I love the concept of it, and I adore the idea of him and Chris and Chef having this bantering back-and-forth whilst he's working for them; it starts out as him genuinely insulting his bosses but evolves into a weird sort of bonding activity. Throwing insults and barbed comments at each other like they're compliments. It's enrichment for both parties.

The Chris (and Chef) and Noah dynamic is one of my favourites to explore, simply because there's so many different ways you would take it.

Having Chref as sort-of parental figures to Noah is the most glaringly obvious, and it's hilarious every time because neither of these men should be trusted with the wellbeing of a teenager, certified genius or not. You could take it in a fluffy 'Chref learn how to become decent people through the Powers Of Pseudo-Parenting A Snarky Teenager' direction, or have the two of them act as fun morally bereft uncles that Noah simultaneously hates and begrudgingly cares out.

Or, you could flip the script and have Noah act as the 'authority' in their dynamic instead; Local TV host is such a disaster of a man that local hyper-competent (and incredibly lazy) teenager takes it upon himself to micromanage him. This one's a great avenue of opportunity for crack fics.

There's so much angst and hurt/comfort potential in any interpretations of their dynamic, but I'm not gonna go into that because. Well. You'll see soon enough.

I reccommend the series kijosakka has on their Ao3 that explores the relationship Chris and Noah share through their shared struggled with ED, though I know the subject isn't exactly palatable for everyone (no pun intended), and there's a tonne of really cool fics exploring their dynamic on the Chris McLean & Noah tag on Ao3 too, so if you're looking for more content with these two there's plenty there to peruse. At the moment I'm really enjoying the Chref&Noah dynamic in This Superhero AU Fic by Noah_bout_it.

[ahiddenpath]

Hidden's Digimon Fanfics

Happy Odaiba Day! I'm so happy to celebrate with Chosen around the world!

I've listed my Digimon fanfics beneath the cut!  If you’re looking for some digifics to read on this beautiful Odaiba Day, oh boy, have I got you! :D  I’m ahiddenpath on both AO3 and FFN. Please log into AO3 to see all of my works, and please note that some of my older works are only on FFN.

Canon Setting Stories

After August

Status: complete, Ships: none/general, Rating: general

Summary:  “A few days ago, they were the Chosen. Now they were just a bunch of bereft, displaced kids.” When the Chosen return to earth, they have difficulty resuming their old lives. The story dips into everyone’s perspectives as they struggle to overcome the trauma they faced in the Digital World and their longing for their digimon so they can rally around Taichi once more.

Infinite Possibilities

Status: in progress, Ships: none/general, Rating: teen

Art commissioned from kbondoxxxxav.

Summary: As more people meet their digimon partners, the challenges of digimon and humans coexisting on earth cannot be ignored. College student Anami Eimi begins her career in digimon research, hoping to help digimon and humans understand one another. When she discovers caged digimon in her new lab, she contacts the Japanese Chosen, setting off a chain of events that force the Chosen and their digimon to reevaluate the dynamics of their partnership.

This fic is set pre and post Kizuna, and is a mostly canon compliant expansion. It's a three phase story, the first starring OC Anami Eimi, then Izumi Koushiro, then Yagami Hikari. It explores the realities, challenges, and politics of digimon living on earth, and the nature of the Chosen/digimon partnership.

Can the Chosen and their digimon find the infinite possibilities that will sustain their partnerships into adulthood?

Ladybug House

Status: complete, Ships: general/Taishiro-ish, Rating: general

Summary:  After his seniors graduated and Mimi moved away, Koushiro is the last of the older Chosen attending his high school. Although Koushiro doesn’t let it show, Tentomon senses that he’s lonely and joins him on his commute to school. When the harsh cold of winter makes Tentomon shut down, Koushiro asks him to stay home instead of braving the elements. Tentomon refuses, citing Koushiro’s loneliness. This pushes Koushiro to reconnect with his friends, and he starts with the one he misses most…Focuses on the relationships between Koushiro and Tentomon and Koushiro and Taichi. Taishiro written in such a way that it can be interpreted as platonic or romantic. Explores what it means to be an adult and forge an adult life. Post Tri, pre Kizuna, canon setting. Complete oneshot.Minor characters: Kae Izumi, Daisuke, Miyako, Takeru, Hikari

Masks

Status: Complete,  Ships:  None/general, Rating: general

Summary:  Following the events of Kizuna, the Chosen slowly lose their digimon partners, all while struggling to launch their adult lives. Takeru has been smiling through it all, but Yamato is beginning to sense that he needs more help than he lets on… A story exploring grief, seeking, giving, and accepting emotional support, and navigating the line between expressing what you’re comfortable expressing and knowing when to seek help. Complete oneshot.

Sans San

Status: Complete,  Ships:  None/general, Rating: general

Summary: It’s New Year’s Day, and Koushiro and his parents are observing Hatsumode, the first shrine visit of the year. There, he runs into Taichi, who helps him achieve last year’s resolution. A short story about support and being loved as you are while still committing yourself to growth <3 Cover art gifted by a dear friend.

Mostly Canon Setting Stories (ie, canon setting with some differences, like OCs, non-canon couples, etc)

Growing Up with You

Art commissioned from Mitty (Tumblr deleted).

Status: complete, Ships: Koushiro x OC in the later half, Rating: general to teen

Summary:  A slow, simple story about relationships over time. The story focuses on Koushiro and OC Anami Eimi, following them through their childhood through the events of 01, 02, some of the movies, and beyond. This story is great for you if you love Koushiro and stories that are mostly canon.

Tri: Integrity Lens

Status: In progress, Ships: Koushiro x OC, Rating: teen

Summary:  Sequel to Growing Up with You. Follows Digimon Adventure Tri primarily through the eyes of OC Anami Eimi and Izumi Koushiro. This story is fantastic for you if you love Koushiro, or if you’d enjoy a retelling of Tri that emphasizes Chosen proactiveness.

A Gentleman’s Wager

Status: Complete, Ships: Koushiro x OC, Daiken, Taichi x OC Rating: teen

Summary:   When Taichi notices Koushiro’s stubble, things somehow snowball into a facial hair growing contest between most of the male Chosen Children. Humor/romance/drama. One shot.

Public Eye

Status: Complete, Ships: Daiken, Rating: teen

Summary:  Despite their best efforts, the Chosen couldn’t escape fame following their digimon adventures. When Daisuke and Ken’s relationship is exposed in a local tabloid, the backlash threatens their tenuous romance.

Exploration

Status: In progress, Ships: OC x Daisuke, Daiken, OC x Koushiro

Summary: An AU story where Motomiya Daisuke, Anami Eimi, Ichijouji Ken, and Izumi Koushiro are undergraduate students in 2024. This four chapter explicit story follows their exploration of sexuality and relationships in a consensual, queer-friendly way.

See You Soon

Status: Complete, Ships: Jyoumi, Rating: general

Summary:  Two independent Jyoumi short stories themed on long distance relationships.

AU Fics

So You Were Alive

Status: Complete, Ships: none/general, Rating: general

Summary:  Greymon meets Garurumon in the network and is glad to see that his friend is alive. Explores the possible (if unlikely) connection between the Agumon in the Digimon Adventure Reboot (Digimon Adventure:/Digimon Psi) and the Digimon Adventure Agumon. Oneshot. Contains spoilers for the Kizuna novelization and the first two episodes of Digimon Adventure:/Digimon Adventure Reboot/Digimon Psi.

Puits d’Amour

Art gifted by a dear friend.​

Status: In progress, Ships: Sorato (main), Jyoumi, others to come, Rating: general audiences

Summary:  Yamato and his brother, Takeru, were born to royal parents from different countries, who wed to seal the peace between their warring nations. The brothers were sent to live in Autun, their mother’s country, until coming of age- and now, Yamato is old enough to return to Hakone, his father’s country, where he will one day rule. Displaced and missing his home and his brother, Yamato wanders into a café selling pastries he often ate in Autun… And meets Sora, a woman who exudes welcome and comfort. A bakery/royalty AU about finding your home and your path.Main characters: Yamato, Sora, Jyou, Takeru, Mimi, but the entire Adventure/02 cast is included

Four Years

art by beeps (Tumblr deleted)

Status: In progress, Ships: Izzy x OC, Sorato, Jyoumi, others to come, Rating: mature

Summary:  An AU story where the older Adventure kids go to an American college. English dub names and personalities. Izzy/OC, Sorato, Jyoumi, Tai/?, some Takari. A story full of romance, laughs, drama, and fun things like partying and classes. The kids still have a lot of growing up to do, and they need each other to heal old hurts and go forward.  English dub names and personalities.

An added note for this one- I’m slowly editing and reposting.  There are a lot more chapters on FFN than AO3, so if you want to read everything available, go to FFN.

The Ouija Board

Status: Complete, Ships: Izzy x OC, Sorato, Jyoumi, Tai x OC, implied Daiken, Takari, Rating: teen

Summry:  Companion piece to Four Years, set in the future of the story.  English dub names and personalities.  Tai and Davis drag the boys to a local cemetery to invoke the spirits on Halloween night. Strange things start happening afterwards, especially to Izzy. When the boys finally own up to their seance, Amy is aghast to learn that they broke all of the rules a Ouija board puts in place to keep spirits in their own world… A four chapter humor/horror story.

Seeking Resonance

Status: Complete, Ships: Koushiro x OC, Takari, Sorato, Mimi x OC, (Included couples that are not end game: Koumi, Jyou x OC) Rating: teen

Summary:   An AU story that follows Koushiro as his long distance relationship with Mimi begins to falter, then branches out to include the friends who touch his life.  This is an emotionally complex story about the Adventure gang in their late 20s/early 30s trying to figure out what they need and how to be happy.

Voices

Status: Complete, Ships: Sorato, Jyoumi, Koushiro x OC, Taichi x OC, Takari mentions Rating: teen

Summary:   An AU fic set in Odaiba, featuring the older Chosen (Taichi, Yamato, Sora, Koushiro, Jyou, Mimi, and OC Eimi). The story follows them through their first year of high school in real time using journal entries, focusing on portraying character, and on delivering an authentic Japanese high school experience. Read on for teenage hijinks and school life :)

Crackfics

A Debtor’s Hell

Status: Complete, Ships: general/Taishiro-ish, Rating: teen

Summary:  Koushiro is in danger of failing his gym practical, and Taichi spends hours coaching him to pass. Suddenly, Koushiro finds himself in debt to his best friend, and when Taichi calls in the favor, our favorite nerd has no way out… Part actual content, part silly humor. Oneshot. Cross-dressing and some OOC moments.

[wtfanworkclassification]

Tour de France Fanwork Classification 2024 Results

The winner of le maillot scintillement, who unexpectedly managed to complete every stage as well as the rest day goals is @legendofthefireemblem who is officially the GC winner, who has been thus taken out of running for the category classifications as the Honourable Overall Winner. Congratulations!

And now onto the category classifications! The category classification results are a bit complex- I’ve ranked everyone by how many stages they passed within that stage category- and if you completed both rest day goals, you’re ahead of people who completed the same number of stages! Because this is the first year, it’s a little haphazard so if you think I’ve missed any of your submissions please let me know! I’ve ranked these in order of number of stages- if you won a category classification with a higher number of stages you’re out of contention for the category classifications below it (mainly so more people can win, this may be tweaked for further iterations).

Category classifications winners:

The winner of the Flat Classification (which was single word prompts) was WhiteWeasel! Congratulations on your Accessory PNG!

The winner of the Mountain Classification (which was trope prompts) was @leadouttrain (ao3) aka Mod Inky! 

The winners of the Hills Classification (which was AU prompts) were jointly @kingfisherprince (ao3) and @etapereine (ao3) Well done to you both! Enjoy your little hat!

The winner of the ITT Classification (which were the challenges) was hoelywritingsx! Chapeau to you for persevering! And enjoy this chapeau!

And finally, a warm round of applause for the three people who completed both of the rest day goals! Have some glasses to look like the distinguished members of the cycling fanwork community you are!

@thedeadparrot, @legendofthefireemblem and @indie-summer

If anyone wants to know their ranking in the various classifications or just chat, feel free to contact this account or Mod Inky's account @leadouttrain (where I will happily go in Depth about top 3s and so on)

Thank you all so much for participating no matter what you did, from commenting to a full sweep! Cycling fandom doesn't exist without you all!

And if you're feeling bereft without a challenge in your life, stay tuned....

(You think that the glitter jersey only comes in yellow?)

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

"T" is For Tomb - a Magnus Archives one-shot

THIS IS A DARK FIC, OKAY?????

Post MAG-200 spoilers.

Jon. Jon is somewhere.

(Or Jon is nowhere, and he is imagining, he has gone mad, he’s landed where the Fears wanted to go and the Web decided and Jon is eaten, Jon is dust, Jon is—)

Jon is somewhere. Martin will find him (or what was the point of any of this), even if it takes a thousand years.

AO3

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

“What do you want me to do with this?”

Footsteps, distant voices; the crunching of rubble, both falling and loose.

“Leave it. We’re done with tapes.”

Closer steps, grinding grandeur into dust. “Want me to smash it?”

Guilt tinges this voice now, guilt its owner wants to deny. “I think… we can probably just turn it off.”

“Okay.” That voice moves away.

The guilty one (only the smallest bit, only a little aware of what she’s done) approaches, and for reasons unknown, speaks. “If anyone’s listening…” The tape whirs, voices mumble, someone shouts to someone else. “Goodbye,” says she. “I’m sorry, and…” The guilt. It is there, but too late. This cannot be undone. “Good luck.”

#

Martin wakes screaming, and he wakes alone.

He wakes, bereft in terrible discovery of self-without-him in a place of ruination.

Jon! Jon! Jonathan Sims! Please, for the love of God, answer me!

Shouting into a sea of screams, loved ones crying for loved ones, an empty spot beside him where Jon should be. Jon’s blood coating his hand, the knife, his clothes. Jon’s life coagulating, going dark, gathering rubble and dust, less like blood by the hour and more like tar.

Jon! Please!

Martin hears him. He’s sure he does: Martin. Find me, Martin. I’m waiting for you.

But where? Where? How? Jon sounds as calm and inviting as he’d ever done in the weeks before Elias (no, Jonah) sent that letter and ruined it all.

But it's not coming from anywhere. There’s no direction. It’s outside Martin’s head (he’s reasonably sure), but he can’t find it.

Can’t find Jon.

At the end of the day, the first day, the last day, the first-next-day of hell, Martin faces the truth that Jon might be gone.

He refuses to swallow it down.

#

No one sees Martin Blackwood. Not as he is. Not as he was.

Basira does, sometimes. She’s vague about it, knows his name, does not seem to remember what he’s done or whose he is. The rest of the time, she looks through him. Like when he asks about Jon.

Perhaps that’s fortunate. He runs into her a lot, and is sure she would stop him.

His key works in his apartment door (and he feels guilt for leaving the site of destruction, guilt for abandoning the place where hides Jon’s voice, guilt for going to his nice, soft bed when others huddle on rocks that used to be flats and weep for those they miss).

He should be with them. Searching. Helping.

No one searches for him. No one helps him.

He can’t.

#

He goes back the next day. Wanders, calls. Sometimes Jon calls back– just his voice, that gorgeous baritone that first hooked Martin’s thoughts then affection then desire, once Martin had learned to speak Jon and understand how quirky his new boss was, to translate from brusque and maybe mean to he’s fucking scared and lonely so it all made sense.

He hears the voice, but it is further away, and that makes him panic.

He searches, overturning brick, plunging into risky crevasses and disintegrating doorways.

No one sees Martin Blackwood. He walks past police and emergency services, past fucking Basira (who is smug, who is in charge, who seems to think she earned something for putting down a monster, but Martin knows the only thing that earns is pain).

Jon’s voice is further. 

By mid-afternoon, Martin can no longer make out words.

By dusk, it’s gone. Gone. He never found a direction. 

Martin screams.

#

By dark, he doesn't even remember going home, but finds himself there, a path walked in emptied endlessness over many years, and the silence is Buried, constricting his lungs, and the silence is Vast, endless insignificance, and he cannot breathe  at all.

He bathes, and he prays to no one, and he lies in his bed. And he’s hot, and he sweats, and his heart burns within him, and his throat twists to something it ought not be, and his skin crawls with bugs he can neither find or kill.

Jon. Jon is somewhere.

(Or Jon is nowhere, and he is imagining, he has gone mad, he’s landed where the Fears wanted to go and the Web decided and Jon is eaten, Jon is dust, Jon is—)

Jon is somewhere. Martin will find him (or what was the point of any of this), even if it takes a thousand years.

#

Somewhere around day three, he realizes he has not eaten.

He doesn’t feel hungry. Should he? He didn’t feel hungry in the apocalypse, either (and memories of bringing tea, never drunk, break him down, crush him onto the sidewalk like preserved peaches), but after his weeping, Jon is still gone.

Martin will not stop calling.

Jon!

Nothing. 

Jon!

No voice. No—

Wait.

Jon?

There is… something. A touch, a breeze, a memory of breeze, an instinct that says Jon is not too far. Jon is alive. Jon is there. Jon is—

Jon is.

Martin runs. Runs, tripping over rubble and dandruffed concrete, at last fleeing the wrecked, wry circle of the Panopticon’s fall. He ignores Basira’s shout (of course, now she sees him), following not a sound not a sight not a knowledge but an instinct, something born of faith and will and maybe madness, something he will follow even if it is right off a damn cliff.

#

It is not dissimilar to the Apocalypse, in many ways. He runs until he can’t, then walks until something kills him (and nothing does), north, following that wrong and reminiscent beckoning, through roads clogged with abandoned cars and cracked glass and memories of terror.

And he has not eaten, and it does not matter. 

Jon.

#

The sun rises and sets and rises again, and Martin wipes his face to find he sweats but does not thirst, and wonders if he will die on this trip.

It does not matter. Maybe this is the last walk. Maybe today was the last of his final days alive, and if so, he does not care. He’s done.

He had to stab his beloved. He had to do the worst thing. What more can the world ask of him?

Jon.

He feels Jon. Senses.

He walks.

#

Sun rise.

Sun set.

Sun rise, sun set, sun rise, sun set, shoes worn, hole in sole in soul in mausoleum of thought and mind and pattern, and all he can do is walk. Nothing besides remains.

Sun rise. Sun set. And on the seventh day, like creation, not terribly far from Aberfeldy, he knows that he will rest.

#

He descends into the grassy valley, past the place where good cows once stood, but the cabin is not there. Something else is. He stares, stunned in ticklish grass that lightly scratches his dried, dirty hands, and stares some more.

It is a tomb.

Above ground (necropolis like New Orleans). Burnt and blasted, abandoned and rust-stained, and its dark, decorative door hangs wide open.

(He has neither drunk nor eaten since waking, and sure he must be hallucinating now at the very least.)

And Martin opens his mouth, and for the first time since waking, truly speaks. “Jon?”

Martin

on the breeze on his cheek on his lips skipping the bother of ears—

Martin come to me

Martin comes.

It’s over. The end. Whatever comes next in this helpless world is not his to do.

“I paid for my peace,” he says like dry bones, squeaking together under sun and gnawed by something dark. “I paid for my peace! ”

(And thinks, as his dirty, frayed trainer-toe just dips into the impenetrable shadow, that this is what They were waiting for, that They are bound to Jon and he to Them, and it should not have been possible to disappear into the Lonely since Martin woke up, but it was, it is, because something went wrong, and oh, it will go so much more wrong, but Jon waited because Martin wasn’t here, and once Martin is here, it will continue to wrongness, and Martin does not care, and Martin paid for his peace, and Jon did too, and maybe Jon’s peace is no longer what it was when he was human unstabbed alive appeasable —)

Martin, whispers the tomb-wet breeze.

“Jon,” he creaks in tomb-dry tone.

Martin

Martin steps into the dark, sees nothing, feels

Finds

“Jon,” he says, falling into familiar arms, into that known funny scent of ink and electronics and spiders, does not care that he is seen and stripped and flensed in this dark of all-sight, does not care about pain or grief or anything but this, does not care that (Jon died this is not Jon this is something else) whatever remains is enough of Jon to want him back, and what more matters now?

Martin paid for his peace.

Jon doubly so.

“I’m home,” Martin whispers, crumbles, disintegrates, rests, and as he is held, the door, in need of oil, screeches closed as the world finds screaming again.

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

Notes:

So, uh. This is my 200th fanfic. I did not exactly plan for it to be sad? Here we are, anyway! I'll create some proper fluff to make up for it. Scout's Honor.

[sisterspooky1013]

Gaslight, Chapter 15/48

Rated X | Read it here on AO3

PART THREE

Ellicott City, MD

The moment she pulls Abby’s bedroom door closed, she feels tears sting her eyes. 

She’s beginning to seriously consider the possibility that she’s having some kind of psychotic break. She was so sure, so sure that her dreams were real memories, that Mulder was a real person. But that man in the coffee shop saw her as a complete stranger. There was no flicker of recognition, no I swear I know you from somewhere, I just can’t place it. 

But the moment she begins to accept that conclusion, all the questions come tumbling up and knock her off kilter again. What about the medication? Who orchestrated her taking it, and why? If Mulder isn’t real, where did her dreams come from? If Michelle isn’t hiding something, why is she so doggedly trying to keep Dana under her thumb? What about the song, and what Abby said to her at the bus stop, and every other little thing that doesn’t quite make sense?

She’s bent over the sink in the master bathroom, splashing cold water on her face to calm the puffiness in her eyes and wash away her tears. What does she do now? She certainly has no intention of seeing Michelle again, nor taking the medication, but what if her dreams just keep getting more frequent, more intense, more…revealing? What if she’s never sure whether the people in her life who claim to love her are lying right to her face every day?

“How was your appointment?” Cal asks, and she startles, reaching blindly for a hand towel. 

She blots off her face, trying to decide what angle to take. Should she interrogate him, or play dumb? She could let him hold her, try to find some kind of comfort in his gentle touch, but she suspects that her distrust will hold her back from actually receiving it. 

“Um, okay,” she says blandly, tossing the towel back over the rack and reaching for her moisturizer. She avoids looking at him, both in their reflection in the mirror and the flesh and blood man, her husband, standing beside her. “Actually, I think I may stop going. I don’t think she’s the right therapist for me, in terms of client-provider compatibility.”

“Oh?” Cal says, and she can hear the concern in his tone. “You sure that’s a good idea, mija? She helped you before. And you seem…you seem like you’re having a hard time.”

She flicks her eyes to his in the mirror and her belly twists. He looks bereft, much like he did in her first days home. Lost, and hurt, and missing his wife so badly. She was here for a moment, but she’s gone again, and either Cal is genuinely concerned for her or he is putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. 

“I am,” she says softly, looking at the sink. “I feel like…like something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, taking a step closer. 

The hair on her arms stands on end, cortisol spiking. Danger. 

“I don’t know,” she says shortly. “I don’t—I need some space.”

Her heart is thrumming, and she flashes her eyes to the bathroom door. Cal is standing in her path to it, and she’s not sure if he’ll try to block her from exiting. She’s not sure of anything, anymore. 

“From me?” he asks, wounded. 

How she can concurrently feel so much affection, empathy, and wariness for the same person is nauseating. She stares at the countertop, hot tears running down her cheeks. She wishes she could go back to his birthday, to that little sliver in time where she knew who she was and her place in this world. When she let him hold her, and touch her, and love her, without wondering if those touches were born of deceit. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

She hears him suck in a shuddering breath, followed by a sniff. 

“What did I do wrong?” he asks tightly. “Just tell me, and I’ll fix it. I just want—” A pause, a series of sharp breaths as he tries to regain composure. “I just want you to be happy, Dana.”

Her face contorts. What is happy? Where is happy? Another place and time, perhaps. 

“I’m sorry,” she says again. 

She steps away from the counter and avoids his eye as she passes by him and exits the bathroom. He doesn’t try to stop her, nor does he come to her in the guest room, though she’s sure he can hear her racking sobs and the start of her waking from another dream. He gives her the space she requested, and it feels like a bottomless chasm. 

-

His fingers are twisted up with hers under the soapy water. He lifts them up and out, wrapping both their arms across her torso as he takes two steps back, towing her along with him. Dishwater runs off her elbows as he spins her around and then pulls her close, his hand on her waist and hers on his shoulder. She looks up at him, finding that impish half-smile on his mouth that makes her heart ache. Overwhelmed, she rests her head on his chest and listens to the rapid flutter of his nervous heartbeat. They sway in lazy circles around the kitchen and she feels the heat of his mouth against her scalp, a featherlight kiss followed by the brush of his breath as he sings.

“At first I thought it was infatuation, but ooooo, it’s lasted so long. Now I find myself wanting to marry you and take you home.” 

A flash flood of every emotion shocks through her veins, heightening her senses. Fear, excitement, arousal, love. 

“Fuck, Scully. I love you.” 

“I love you, too.”

-

Dana heaves a sigh as she walks through the sliding glass doors of St. Agnes, tepid vestibule air ushering her from the antiseptic halls of the hospital into the warm, sun-drenched afternoon. 

She moves mechanically through the motions of her day while a storm rages just beneath the surface. Outwardly, she is wan and unemotional, smiling when social convention calls for it and forcing dry laughs from her throat in response to Tiffany’s jokes. Internally, she is raw and unsettled, on the constant verge of tears. She has no plan, no next steps, other than to keep living this life that she woke up to one chilly April morning. She’ll get Abby from the bus, pick up Peter, make dinner. She’ll live, in a literal sense. She’s been shocked to learn how much living can feel like dying. 

She’s passing through the narrow space between cars in the parking lot en route to her BMW when she senses the presence of another. Instinctually, she lifts her head and squares her shoulders, projecting confidence and strength. Fishing her keys from the pocket of her lab coat, she readies them between her fingers like talons. 

“Dana Scully,” says a male voice, and a cold wash of fear runs down her back. 

Still walking, she turns her head in the direction of the voice and sees a man. Thirties, clean shaven, short, dark hair and a narrow jaw. He’s standing near her car, one hand in the pocket of his leather jacket, which strikes her as an unseasonable wardrobe choice. ��

“Can I help you?” she asks, freezing in the middle of the aisle. If she comes any closer, he could pull her between two parked cars, obscuring them from view. 

“I was actually thinking that maybe I could help you,” he says haughtily. 

“Please leave me alone,” she says, taking one step back in the direction of the hospital. If she can make it back inside, she can ask a security guard to walk her to her car. 

“I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say,” the man says, taking a step forward as she slowly retreats. 

“About what?” she asks shortly, prepared to turn and run. 

“About Mulder.”

Her ears short out and then begin to ring. She looks at the man, scanning his face for clues. She must know him. He called her Scully. Her survival instincts war with her need for answers. 

“You know Mulder?” she asks, and the man smiles. 

“Quite well. I know you quite well, in fact. I know you don’t remember me, but we go way back, Agent Scully.”

Agent?

“What do you want?” she asks, her tone petulant and childlike. 

He shrugs. 

“Nothing, other than to tell you what I know.”

“What do you know?”

The man looks around, then back at her. 

“Not here. We need to go somewhere more private.”

Dana scoffs. 

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says firmly. 

The man sighs. 

“Fair enough. How about…there’s a little park near here with chess boards on the tables. Meet me there in twenty minutes?” he suggests. 

Dana waits a moment, trying to read him. He doesn’t seem as though he wants to harm her, but he also doesn’t strike her as someone with good intentions. But if her options are to die trying to find out what happened to her or keep living the way that she is, it suddenly becomes an easy decision to make. 

“Okay. Twenty minutes.”

The park is busy on a summer afternoon, children slowly trickling in as they finish up their school day. She’d called Amanda from across the street on her way over and told her that something came up, asking if Abby could go over to their place after school for a while. She’s not sure what to expect from this impromptu meeting, and decides to wait a bit before worrying over who will pick up Peter from daycare. 

She spots the man already at one of the small cement tables with a chess board etched into the surface. He’s arranging the pieces with black on his side, white on hers, using one hand with the other tucked into his lap. She approaches cautiously, waiting until he sees her and motions to the seat across from him before she sits down. 

“You any good at chess?” he asks, and she stares at him. 

“Who is Mulder?” she asks, unable to keep the desperation out of her voice. 

“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but you have to at least pretend to play. It’s risky meeting in public like this, and I can’t afford to draw attention.”

Once he’s finished setting up the board, he looks up at her and lifts his eyebrows. She picks up one of the pawns on her side and moves it two spaces forward. 

“Who is Mulder?” she asks again. 

The man picks up one of his own pawns and moves it one space forward. 

“He’s your partner. Or he was, anyway.”

“Partner?” she repeats. “We were in a relationship?”

He nods towards the board and she moves another pawn. 

“Well, yeah, actually. But you also worked together.”

She blinks at him. 

“Is he a doctor?” she asks. 

The man gives her a perplexed look. 

“Fuck, I think I need to start at the beginning,” he says, shaking his head. He moves a pawn and then sits back. 

“Who are you?” she suddenly asks, realizing that it might be helpful context. 

He tilts his head to the side, pondering. 

“You can call me Alex,” he finally says, motioning for her to take her turn. 

“Okay, Alex,” she says, making her move. “Will you please tell me what the hell is happening to me?” 

Her voice is tight and shaky, and he seems to realize that continuing to obfuscate won’t be fruitful. 

“Your memory has been erased,” he says coolly, casually, like it’s a thing that happens all the time. “Going back to 1992, before you joined the FBI.”

“The FBI?” she repeats. “I didn’t—I missed my interview,” she tells him, remembering what Cal told her at O’Blarney’s. 

“No, you didn’t,” he corrects. 

She continues to move chess pieces when it’s her turn, and Alex quickly collects all her pawns as she does not have the wherewithal for strategy. Memory erased? How is that possible?

“You were partnered with a man named Fox Mulder, working in a division known as the X-Files. The two of you investigated unexplained phenomena, and after an impressive number of years, you finally got around to fucking.” He pauses, looking up at her to gauge her reaction. “Or so I’ve heard,” he adds with a smirk. 

Her mind feels like an oversaturated sponge. Unexplained phenomena? Memory erasure? What about Cal? What about the kids?

“Anyway,” he continues, “earlier this year you got a little too close for comfort in terms of obtaining tangible proof regarding one of their more nefarious programs, and the guys at the top decided it was time to find a permanent solution to what they called their ‘Mulder and Scully problem’.”

She waits, her chest heaving. The questions are so innumerable she can’t decide which to ask. She just wants him to keep talking. She advances a knight. 

“There’s a project that’s been in development for decades, known as Spurious by those involved. After Roswell, it became clear that there would be a need to alter the memories of the general public in order to keep state secrets safe. You and Mulder became guinea pigs, in a sense, and the big guys are shitting their pants right now because it clearly didn’t work.”

He looks up at her and she stares back. She could not have anticipated that actual answers would leave her even more profoundly confused than a lack of information. 

“I don’t understand,” she says quietly, her eyes wet. 

“I underestimated how hard this would be to explain,” Alex huffs, running his fingers through his hair. “Everything you woke up to in April: Cal, the kids, the job at St. Agnes, your swanky colonial in the ‘burbs, none of that is real, Agent Scully. It’s a farce, a fabricated life designed to keep you from remembering.”

The validation is sickening. Even though she knew, in her heart of hearts, that something was off. She knew in her very bones that they did not belong to her. And still, she feels a gut-wrenching surge of grief. 

“Then who are they?” she croaks. 

Again, Alex shrugs.

“People no one would be looking for. I don’t know, exactly, but I’d guess they came from the prison system, foster care. It’s not a bad deal on their end, to be honest. I’m sure they’re much better off than they were before.”

“But they know me,” she counters, finding herself disbelieving despite everything. “They remember things that happened before. And my mother—”

He holds up a hand to stop her. 

“You’re not understanding the scope of this, Scully. To pull this off, they had to act on a national scale. Every person you’ve ever encountered has had their memories of you erased, and sometimes replaced with new memories, depending on how closely you knew them. Everyone, Agent Scully, including your mother.”

Her mouth hangs open, rooting for words. It’s incomprehensible. 

“How?”

“A combination of things. I won’t claim to understand the tech, but they discovered a way to selectively block memories in the brain. Once that procedure had taken place, they found that daily medication to suppress long term memory recall helped keep things from triggering the memories back into the conscious mind.”

“Numerol,” Scully says quietly under her breath. 

“Hm?” Alex says, then continues talking. “That’s just on the memory suppression side, but in order to create new memories, there’s a chip implanted in the base of the neck that stores them. Between the procedure, the chip, and the medication, their trials were highly successful.” Dana’s hand moves to the back of her neck, feeling the small, raised scar there. “It’s also a tracker, so they can locate you if they need to. As long as that thing is in your neck, you can’t hide from them, Agent Scully.” 

Her eyes snap up to his, finding a genuinely stern expression on his face. 

“But to answer your question, they did it with the Manatua virus outbreak.”

Dana narrows her eyes at him, recalling what her mother said. 

The vaccine was awful. People were vomiting, passing out. It was so painful, they started using general anesthesia to administer it. But the virus was so aggressive, it had to be done.

“Why?” she asks, flabbergasted. How could she, Dana Scully, be important enough to fabricate a national pandemic? 

“To keep you and Mulder separated,” Alex says, capturing her queen. “Together, you’re a threat. He’s got his own little set up out in Philly, a wife and a dog and all that shit.”

“His wife has had her memory erased?” Dana asks, comparing her life to Mulder’s. 

“No,” Alex answers flatly. “They actually did know each other before. You knew her too, and didn’t like her much. This is a big redemption for her, given how badly she fucked things up last time they brought her in. They faked her death just to get her the hell out of there, and I guess this was her way back in. She gets Mulder, and a chance to get back into the inner circle. My guess is that she’ll be willing to go to great lengths to keep it that way.”

Dana absorbs this, realizing that her greatest fear—that Cal is somehow involved—is Mulder’s reality. 

“Why not just kill us?” she asks. 

Alex sits back and smirks at her.

“Valid question. They wanted to, but someone in the ranks preferred to keep you alive. Seems like he successfully made the case that doing a test run on the Spurious Project was the best of both worlds. They get to separate you and Mulder while proving out the success of the program. Or at least that was the hope, but your little run-in with Mulder in Baltimore has them scrambling.”

A cold slice of fear cuts through her. 

“Why are you helping me?” she asks, still not trusting him. 

“Let’s just say I have a bit of a bone to pick,” Alex says as he re-sets the board. “Despite my significant contributions to this effort, I have yet to be fully compensated.”

“You want money?” she asks, wondering if this is all a twisted attempt to extort her. 

“Not necessarily,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug, “though it wouldn’t hurt. I just want to see them go up in flames.” He looks up at her and his expression softens. “And I’m somewhat attached to you and Mulder, as a duo,” he admits in an apparent moment of earnestness. “It’s kind of…wrong, you two not being together.”

Dana swallows, thinking of her dream. 

“What do I do?” she asks. He’s given her many things, but a way forward is not one of them. 

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Alex says as he stands. Dana stands as well, feeling alarmed. “I guess that’s your call. But the reason I contacted you is to make you aware that you’re no longer safe. They know you remember Mulder, and that you aren’t taking your medication. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you.”

“What will they do?” she asks, a wave of nausea rolling through her. 

“Not sure,” Alex answers honestly. “They might try to run you through the program again, or they might just kill you.”

“I should find Mulder—”

“That’s probably the worst thing you could do,” he interrupts. “Mulder doesn’t remember you, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way. If you try to contact him, they will kill you, Agent Scully.”

After holding her eye for emphasis, he turns and begins to walk away. 

“How can I find you again?” she asks, panicked. 

Alex turns around, walking backwards as he calls to her over the din of the park. 

“You can’t.”

Tagging @today-in-fic

[fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic]

Good Omens Fic Rec: Among the Stacks

Nearly a year after Aziraphale returns to Heaven, he vanishes from existence, leaving Crowley bereft on Earth. Just when the demon has finally started to heal and move on with his life, he finds his angel by chance in a library. But Aziraphale has no memory of his life as an angel, or of Crowley. How will our hero cope?

Length: 65,227 words

AO3 Rating: Not Rated / Spice Level 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Best for: Mostly safe in public, memory loss, romance

Triggers: None

Read it here, fic by MeinirRhos

*Minor Spoilers* I know I say this about all the fics, but I love this one. This is a story where Aziraphale has lost his memories and has become human. I've read a handful of this trope (genre?) now and I love how unique they all are. One of the best elements here is the way it talks about grief and Crowley's mourning. You feel it, and it breaks your heart, it's a widow's grief. But it's not a bummer of a fic. It's not fluffy, but it's not too heavy and depressing. It finds an excellent balance. The love story between Crowley and Azariah is gentle and warm. I love Azariah, he gets to be his own person with his own agency. Loved for who he is, not just because he's Aziraphale. Obviously, they move fast in their relationship, but I love how they get to date. To have very domestic moments, fall in love all over again. It both warms my heart for Crowley to have this, and makes me want to sob. The plot progresses very well, and ends in a way that's satisfying and unexpected.

Most of it is safe in public. There are a couple chapters of explicit content, but they are made to be able to skip if you'd prefer. And those chapters are not softcore, so unless you want a full body blush, read those bits at home. Final note, this fic gets an extra 6000 points because of perfect baby boy Tug the cat. I'm literally on my knees begging yall to put more cats in good omens fics.

Read it here, fic by MeinirRhos

[seiya-starsniper]

Hi! For the February prompts, I was thinking #20 for Morphienne💕

MORPHIENNE MY BELOVED 🥰💖

This was such a delight to write, and especially for Fluffbruary, I hope you enjoy friend!

Fluffbruary Prompt List || AO3 Link Here

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

Repairing the damage done to the Dreaming during Rose Walker’s time as dream vortex is a long and arduous task for Dream. The realm had already been in a precarious state prior to that due to Dream’s imprisonment. Now there was even more work to be done. 

Recreating Gault as a dream instead of a nightmare had been a good first step. Gault was acclimating beautifully into her new role, and it served as a reminder to Dream that while the execution was different, the lessons imparted by both dreams and nightmares were meant to ensure that humanity continued to grow, to change, to adapt to the changing times. Two sides of the same coin, as the phrase went.

The look of pure awe and admiration in Lucienne’s face had also solidified his decision to be more…open to changes. Both big and small. Lucienne had not smiled like that in a long time, Dream realized. She smiled more now, more than she had even in the centuries before his capture, and Dream did not know how bereft he had felt without her smile, her joy, her adoration, until now. Every small acquiescence, every small bit of advice from hers he heeded, Lucienne’s smile would start first in the brightness of her eyes, then slowly traverse throughout the rest of her face until it finally completed its journey in the quirk of her mouth.

Dream was no mere god. He did not need his subjects to worship him. To give him praises and smiles and offerings. But every smile and every positive word Dream receives from his raven-turned-librarian fills Dream with a warmth he had missed dearly in his days spent as nothing more than a zoo animal in Roderick Burgess’s basement. Lucienne does not look upon him like he is some feral beast rearing to strike, or as some poor creature to be pitied. She looks at him as she always had, only now with more—more.

Dream realizes later, much later than he should have for a being such a he, that she loves him. Perhaps she had always loved him, and he had never noticed. Her love was nothing like what he had experienced with lovers past. Those loves were quick and passionate, and perhaps more destructive than affectionate, in the end. He had been consumed by them, had been driven half to madness in his attempts to woo and then later, control. All his lovers had left him in the end, unable to endure his strength, his power, his unending presence within their unconscious minds.

Lucienne, by contrast, had learned to live harmoniously alongside it. Had embraced it, embraced him, in all his facets, both good and bad. She had once obeyed all his commands without question, trusting him to always know and make the right decisions in the end for the Dreaming and its people. Now she pushed boundaries and made her opinions known to him, and Dream realized he found that attractive about her. She did not believe she could do his job better than him, but she did believe that he always knew the right answer, she only need lead him towards it. 

She had also waited for him, had been the only one of his subjects confident that he would come back, while the rest assumed that he had grown tired of his duty and simply left. She knew that when he finally returned, no matter if it took a hundred years, or a thousand, that he would need support in rebuilding the realm. And she had offered herself up to him without question, had maintained as much of the realm as she could without him, without him having even asked that of her. 

She had always been his partner in all things, Dream realizes. And now the thought that he could ask for more of her, that she would give it to him willingly, thrilled him in a way he could not describe.

“Lucienne,” Dream calls for her one night, when he is tired and lonely and missing her. “I require your presence.”

“My lord?” Lucienne asks when she enters his sanctuary. She is buttoned up and put together as always, the purples and reds of her outfit a deep contrast to the blacks and whites of the room. She is radiant, and Dream wants.

“Will you sit with me?” Dream asks, patting the empty space next to him along the sofa.

“Of course,” Lucienne replies.

She leaves a respectable space between them that Dream does not want, and so when she turns to look at him, he moves into her space and presses his face into her shoulder, before wrapping his arms around her waist. Lucienne yelps in surprise. Her arms suspend mid-air for a few awkward moments, before finally landing on his shoulders.

“Sir?” Lucienne asks, mildly alarmed at the blatant show of vulnerability. They have never held each other like this before, and Dream realizes this has been a grave oversight on his part. “Is—is everything all right?”

“Hmm,” Dream sighs, breathing in the scent of her. She smells like lavender and old books. “I am tired,” he adds, “and I have been thinking quite a bit lately.”

“About what?” Lucienne asks.

“About you, in fact,” Dream answers, pressing his face further into her shoulder.

“Me?” Lucienne asks, a small amount of concern creeping into her voice. “Have I done something wrong, my lord?”

“No,” Dream answers. “The opposite, in fact.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucienne says, now clearly confused by his vagueness.

“How long have you loved me?” Dream asks, deciding to be blunt instead. He lifts his head from her shoulder so that they are face to face, and so he can see her reaction. He sees first the shock, then the fear, and then the acceptance that he has figured her out. She sighs a few times, then lifts a hand to run her fingers through his hair.

“I no longer remember,” Lucienne answers softly, a sad smile now crossing her face. “I think I have always loved you, in different ways.”

Dream hums, and then readjusts himself so that he is no longer lying atop Lucienne, but instead sitting upright and looking down at her.

“You have done a remarkable job of hiding it from me for all these years,” he tells her, a wry smile crossing his lips. Lucienne chuckles in response, and it is more self-deprecating than he would like it to be.

“That was rather the point, sir,” she answers, her voice now tinged with a melancholy he does not like. “I would argue that I have actually failed in my duty to keep my personal feelings private, if even you have taken notice of them.”

“If even I have taken notice?” Dream asks, affronted. Had he really been the last to notice? Lucienne’s laughter seems to confirm his suspicions.

“Sir, you are not the first to point out my affections for you,” Lucienne says, her mouth still caught in a small smile. “Matthew had made a comment earlier today, in fact.”

Dream was going to have words with Matthew later. For now, he had more pressing matters in front of him to attend to

“Lucienne, you may drop the formalities,” Dream says, reaching a hand up to cup her face. “It is only you and I here.” 

Lucienne’s eyes widen, but then she turns away from him, unable to meet his eye.

“You know I cannot,” she replies, her voice returning back to that melancholy tone. “It is too intimate, and if I am allowed to call you by name, I may actually start to believe that I am—”

Dream cuts her off by pressing his mouth against hers. Lucienne lets out a small gasp when he does, and though he is tempted to deepen the kiss, Dream restrains himself, and pulls back from her mouth only the barest of inches. Her lips are warm and soft against his, and the fact that he could have had this sooner than now is almost enough to drive him to madness

“You are mine,” Dream murmurs, practically growling against her mouth. “Perhaps I am slow to catch on, but now that I am aware of your affection, I would have as much of it as you would give me.”

“Oh,” Lucienne breathes, “I—I see.”

Then she is the one kissing him now, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulling him flush against her body. Dream growls and then finally, finally, lets himself go for her. 

[see-arcane]

Of Debt and Death

And a dream that flows between them like a river.

Ao3 link here

“Centuries. Centuries he has been doing this.”

Jonathan looks up. He doesn’t remember how he got here. A moment ago he was sinking. Or was it floating? Either way, he drowned. Smothered. There is a certainty now as there was before that the Count is near. The closeness of him in Piccadilly had struck a deep and profound cord in him even in the crowd. Now that cord is an entire hellish violin playing until it screeches.

Here! He is here! Up, go, hurry!

But there was only the drowning. The sweet-bitter crush of a blanket around a strengthless babe who kicks and struggles to no avail.

Then, suddenly, here. The boat.

The ferryman has his back to him, hood drawn up against a frigid mist. Black shores hint at themselves through the fog.

“He has done this for almost half a millennium. Did you ever suspect as much in the castle, even with his dust-choked riches? An old monster, surely, but not ancient. Surely he couldn’t be. The people knew him. The people feared him. The people knew then all that the professor had to scrape from a library. You would not have lasted were it not for them and their holy icons, their gifts and knowledge. They know what it is to slay his kind.”

Still though he is, something thrashes violently in Jonathan’s heart. Wanting, needing, fighting to move. To be aware.

The Count is here.

Somewhere close. Near enough to touch. Jonathan eyes the mist warily.

“Do you truly think none have tried what you and your little pack mean to attempt in so many hundreds of years of horror under his reign? None at all? In times of war, in hours of bereft madness, they tried. Lances before the stake, sword before the saw. They tried. The most he lost were new conscripts and his temper. Ash to flesh, mist to teeth. He came back. Through steel and Cross and fire, he has always come back. And taught grave lessons to his enemies each time. He means to teach you all the same. Only he will not waste you on mere slaughter.”

Figures move on the black shore now. Watching them pass. Hazy as they are, Jonathan knows them all. Children. A mother. Sailors. Lucy’s wedding band glints as she waves.

“He will not let you go, Jonathan Harker. If he must lose any of the other jackals in potentia, you will still go on to suffer him. Through her. Through the cudgel he means to make of her and your heart. You have cost him too much to go free and he will have you bowed and bloodied at his feet. You may yet let him for her sake. Once he lures you back. All of you, so sure, so prepared, will lope after him to the genius loci, his realm of power. The land that worked against you from every angle, every muscle of Nature and Supernature. And there you will all do worse than die.”

Let me go. Please, something is wrong, I know it, I know the Count is close, he has done something, he is doing something, I need to go—

 “Oh, yes. He has, he is, he shall do worse. God has not seen fit to stop him in four hundred years. He left humanity a few holy tin shields and wished you all luck. And when the Devil’s best student marks a soul to be his in eternity, he shrugs and lets the game go on with a lenience to make Mephistopheles seem a prude. Both will burn you, burn her, as they have burned untold victims in the past. Which is all to say that you will do as all the men and women of history have done when pitted against him.”

The mist thins. What had been a sparse milling of figures now revealed itself as a legion. Dead faces staring out at the river in an endless menagerie of souls reduced to cattle.

“You will lose. Because you are only what all his enemies have been before, what he sold his own soul to conquer unfettered. Mortal meat waiting for the butcher. If you want to win, to save her as more than a lifeless corpse or a mobile one, you must be something other than that same heroic chattel.”

I am no Faust.

“Nor could you be if I desired someone worth making the offer. I may not have time to rest on my laurels, but I have counted him as a nuisance not worth bothering with so long as he kept to his mountains. There are so few of his kind that make true trouble. But now he means to play a global tyrant. England is only the first step. Its colonies will follow. Its neighbors after them. The world is a throat and he is the tick who wishes to drink it dry. If God and the Devil consider Earth forfeit to laissez-faire, it falls to us and our like to do the work of seeing him pay a toll long overdue. So, to you I make my offer. To make you something else. To make yours what is mine. To end what should have ended on a battleground lifetimes ago.”

Jonathan rights himself on the boat. The river is leading into a cave vaster and more lightless than the void between stars. He tries not to stare at it, to focus on the back of the ferryman’s hood.

I will make no promise I do not understand the facets of. I will not be trapped again by details never given to me.

“As is wise. But desperation ever makes decisions on our behalf, Jonathan Harker. Your choice will be no airy whim. It will simply be the only choice to make. I do apologize for that. Gods and devils are not alone in rigging their games. Know this, at least. There shall be no need for a contract. No signatures in blood or fealties sworn. Such pageantry is not for us. No more than it was the day Peter Hawkins signed you on. The offer and its vocation will simply be ready and waiting for you. Make the decision. It will be done.”

Jonathan’s hand lands on the ferryman’s shoulder.

The Ferryman turns.

His eyes are burning hollows. His eyes are all that is left that could be called a face.

“Wake. She is calling to you.”

And he is in the bed with Mina.

And he is in a nightmare.

And he does not wake from it as she tells them all of the Count’s visit, her blood and the Vampire’s staining his breast.

And his body sits and breathes and listens.

And as his mind swims back to a boat on the River, a sickle grows where his soul should be.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #5: Levin Deals

Prompt: barbarous || Master Post || On AO3

--

“You are completely lacking manners,” Aymeric said, voice dry and flat. “Utterly bereft of decorum and good sense.”

Affronted, Ixion snorted.

“Don’t you sass me, sir.”

Behind him in her lounging chair, Synnove stifled a laugh. Aymeric pointed at her without looking. “And you stay out of this!”

Synnove stopped bothering trying to hide her amusement at that.

The yard and its garden—both the myriad flowers and the kitchen garden—were typically Synnove’s domain at her Cedarwood home, but over the years, Aymeric had developed an affinity for tending the kitchen garden. The simplicity of digging in the soil, trimming back the herbs in their pots, keeping the rows of vegetables free of weeds, even readying the empty beds for winter, were chores that soothed his mind when the work of governance set him on edge. His developed green thumb proved useful, too, now that Synnove was still in recovery from her injuries and horrific aethershock sustained from the Final Day; she simply couldn’t do most of the work of keeping her home in order until she regained more of her strength.

His lady was also horribly indulgent of the overgrown colt that constantly snuck through the skies all the way from Gyr Abania to eat his vegetables.

Aymeric used the same finger he had pointed at Synnove to jab Ixion’s muzzle. The great unicorn jerked his head back with another snort, and glared at him with one baleful red eye.

Aymeric had regularly faced the might of the Dravanian Horde his adult life, and now regularly butted heads with the worst sorts of nobles and politicians in Ishgard. A spoiled unicorn, living legend or not, was not going to cow him.

Amandina, perched between Ixion’s ears and with only her head visible above the fluff of his mane, chittered, He says your dam was a hamster and your sire smelt of elderberries. Papa, what’s a hamster?

(Synnove’s laughter turned to outright cackling.)

“My mama was a saint and my da a gentleman, and I’ll thank you to leave the questions of my parentage out of this discussion,” Aymeric bit out, crossing his arms.

Ixion whickered, dipping his head, and Amandina peeped, He says sorry!

(Trust one the carbunclets to figure out how to communicate with a god’s steed or a Mhachi experiment or whatever Ixion actually was via “sympathetic aetherial resonance” as Synnove had put it, and we’re both levin! as Amandina had said.)

Sighing, Aymeric dragged his hand down his face. He’d been at this for over half a bell now, since discovering Ixion rampaging among the tomatoes and beets and radishes. And Ixion had been decimating the kitchen garden on a semi-regular basis for a few years now. It was far too late to actually put a stop to this, but he wasn’t going to let Rhalgr’s steed rule the roost.

Therefore: compromise.

He set his gaze on Ixion again and said, firm, “I’ll set aside one row of vegetables of your choice if you leave the rest of the kitchen garden alone.”

Ixion flicked an ear and pawed the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times, five.

Aymeric clucked his tongue and shook his head. “No. Two.”

Ixion pinned his ears back and flared his nostrils.

Aymeric raised an eyebrow.

Ixion’s ears slowly half-perked again, and he pawed at the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times.

Aymeric shook his head once more. “Two, final offer.”

Ixion grumbled, tossing his head (Amandina squealed in delight), then turned his head to look him straight on with one eye. He raised his hoof up, set it down. And, after another moment of thought, pawed at the ground. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Aymeric made a show of narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin, even as mentally he patted himself on the back. Three had been his initial thought, but the intelligent man did not let his opponent know his full hand in a negotiation. “Acceptable,” he finally said, and held out his hand.

Ixion tapped his palm with his horn. Deal sealed.

Synnove clapped behind him. Amandina cheered, then peeped as Ixion did a victorious piaffe as though he was the winner, Papa? What’s a hamster?

PREVIOUS || NEXT

[etoiline]

stars and scars

(read with characters and tags on AO3 instead)

Cal stares out at hyperspace from the captain’s chair of the Mantis, letting its blue streaks send him into a waking meditation. BD hops about somewhere on the console, occasionally trilling Binary at him, but the droid knows more about the ship than Cal does, and doesn’t require any responses.

When a body sinks down into the co-pilot space Cal doesn’t turn. He’s used to the carefully heavy sounds Bode makes as he moves through a space, and even the null sense of him in the Force doesn’t surprise Cal anymore after fighting next to the man, knowing that nothingness has his back.

BD boops at Bode, and Cal smiles. “Greez kick you out of the kitchen?” Cal says, still watching the hyperlane.

Bode chuckles, and Cal feels his cheeks pinken for no reason he can discern.

“He still hasn’t forgiven me for breaking his favorite spatula,” Bode says, and Cal laughs.

“At least you didn’t accidentally pour the entire shaker of mitzagaram in the soup,” Cal says, kicking a foot onto the console. He’s apologized for that several times, but Greez won’t let him touch any of the spices anymore.

“Yeah, you didn’t get a burn from the blasted thing,” Bode says, and Cal finally does turn to see Bode rubbing at the bandage across his wrist. “Not bad enough for bacta but it itches like a rancor tongue.”

“I don’t believe you actually know what a rancor tongue feels like,” Cal says, and BD beeps his agreement.

“It burns, believe me,” Bode says. His eyes flick up to Cal’s, and Cal feels caught. The streaking stars are echoed in his dark eyes, and though Cal wets his lips with his tongue he can’t seem to form any words.

BD chirps a query and Bode blinks. “Say, scrapper, speaking of burns, how’d you get that one on your cheek? Couldn’t have been another spatula incident, with how angry Greez was about the one I broke,” he says.

Cal looks back at the stars, and blames their brightness for the tears pulling at his eyes, for the tightness in his chest, for the ache across his skin. He brushes his hand along the rough line, then realizes what he’s doing and clenches both hands in his lap. He’s not ashamed of his scars but thinking about how he got them makes him want to hide.

There’s a clatter of metal and BD skitters across the console and into Cal’s lap, chittering. “Yeah, buddy,” Cal says, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I’m okay.”

Bode clears his throat. “Hey, I’m sorry, you don’t have to say. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. I was just—I’m sorry.”

The mercenary pushes out of the chair, and BD warbles a sad note. Cal grabs Bode’s arm before he can leave the cockpit, his thumb just brushing the edge of the bandage. Bode hisses but stays, and Cal can feel his warmth on his shoulder as Bode places his other hand on the back of Cal’s chair.

Cal opens his mouth but nothing comes out at first. When he finally shapes a word it’s a whisper, spoken into the embrace of the Force. “It was the Purge,” he says, and he hears the leather of Bode’s glove creak against the chair. “Our clones attacked us, and I tried to stop them with the Force because they hurt my Master, but I wasn’t good enough. Didn’t know what I was doing. Couldn’t hold it, and when I lost my hold I caught a blaster to the face. Spun me around and into that escape pod, right on top of my Master.”

He tilts his head back and exhaled. “Master Tapal used the Force to jettison the pod, even as he was dying. I could barely breathe around the pain and every tear made it burn worse. And then—well. You know I was a scrapper on Bracca. I’m sure you can imagine the sort of ‘care’ I had there.” And if he’s eliding those first horrible days and weeks and months on the scrapper planet, bereft of his Master and the Force and his brother clones and anyone who knew he was a Jedi, Bode doesn’t have to know. Cal doesn’t care to dwell on them at the moment.

Bode’s gloved hand descends on his shoulder, a comforting weight, and Cal leans into it for a moment, his scruffy beard catching on the leather, the blaster scar rubbing on the greeble on the back of the glove. Just a moment of touch.

The mercenary’s words are almost lost in the hum of the Mantis’ engines. “I’m sorry, scrapper. Nobody should have to go through something like that,” Bode says, and squeezes his shoulder, then draws his hand away. Cal misses the warmth, and relishes the little sting as Bode’s glove pulls on a few strands of his hair.

Cal forces out a choked laugh. “No, I’m sorry,” he says, “you have a right to know how awful a Jedi I am.”

Bode snorts as he sits back down in the co-pilot chair, rubbing at his injured wrist. “You’re probably the least awful person on this ship, Cal,” he says. “Jedi or not. We all have our scars. Some are just less obvious than others.”

BD trills out that Bode has spoken wisdom, and Cal huffs. He wonders what scars Bode carries alongside the new one he’ll sport. But he doesn’t ask, because he’s torn open enough of them already.

Cal gives BD a pat on his chassis, the little droid leaning into the caress, then all three of them stare out at the careening stars.