#but imagine Nexus is only thing make Ruin's eyes bleed

[goodolddumbbanana]

I love that while Ruin has to pretend to be insane for like hundreds of years, doing Creator's bidding jobs to survive, working with Bloodmoon for his purpose, and getting trapped and tortured by Dark Sun.

And many many things, what is really getting on Ruin's nerves, what Ruin couldn't stand and consider it is his torture is working and breathing on the same air with Nexus.

Like...

Seeing Bloodmoon, Creator, Creators, Molten, Dark Sun...: (terrified but still trying to be smartass) ooh dear... But There is nothing I couldn't fix with my tea.

Seeing Nexus: (dramatic crying) This is the worst day of my life. My smile is ruined and my day is disappointing. I never see a creature this ugly like Nexus.

[builder051]

Sorry, if I may, I had perhaps a thought/question/suggestion for daredevil? I haven’t seen the third season yet, but so far I perceive him to be someone deeply self-destructive but utterly unaware of that fact. If this rings true at all, I imagine that the realization would hit him hard, particularly since he’s Catholic. If this were ever something you’d be interested in writing, I’d be interested in reading it, but please don’t feel obligated. I hope that things are going well for you!

No need to apologize for talking to me.  As long as you’re not spewing hate, the askbox is open, and you’re not directly contradicting something I recently stated as a preference, I’m not going to explode at you.  

I’m in the process of watching season 3 now.  I’m really loving it.  The whole thing with messing with Matt’s public image to getto him, I relate so hard.

This is an awesome prompt; thank you so much for sending it. I know you probably wanted something set in the present, but the way this started coming to me really had to be set at Columbia.  I imagine Matthaving a lifelong struggle with self-harm, and Daredevil-ing is like a copingmechanism.  I wanted to explore it before he went that route.

That said, this story contains self harm, but it’s vague. It treats the essence of the issue, not the details.

_____

The chicken or the egg.  

It’s not a bad metaphor.  It does a decent job of summing up the thought circles that are impossible to understand, but insist on baffling Matt anyway.  Normally he’s perceptive enough to suss out the nexus of his issues, and if they’re worthy enough, address them at the source.

Not today, though.  His head’s cloudy and throbbing. He doesn’t think it hurt so much when he first lay down on his narrow dorm bed, but time has given up on being linear.  Matt’s no longer sure if it was the depression or the malaise that hit first.  The chicken or the egg.

Matt’s thoughts aren’t linear either.  Foggy insists on vegetarian fried rice when they go out for Chinese.  “Because it’s weird, Matt.  You can’t have the grown-up and the baby in the same dish,” he’d explained.  “Isn’t there something about that in the Bible?”

Goats, Matt had told him.  It’s about goats.  But Christ declared all foods clean, and that’s why his followers don’t keepkosher.  But Foggy grew up in a deli, so of course he’d see it from the other side.  Funny how the realization only hits him now, when the thought of food makes his mouth water in a way that’s distinctly unpleasant.  And lack of sustenance probably has something to do with the nauseous ache crashing around the inside of his head.

Matt lets out a dejected sigh and shifts onto his stomach, burying his face in his pillow.  He knows his glasses sit safely on his desk, but he still feels the shadowy indents of the nose pads.  It’s like rubbing his face in powdered glass.  He wishes twin extra-long sheets came in a higher thread count.

Matt’s eyes start to water.  Tears of pain pool beneath his eyelids and run out of the corners.  The pillowcase soaks up the droplets and spreads them, creating wet spots that press against his brows and cling to his cheeks.

The dampness is cold, but Matt’s wires are crossed, and it may as well be burning.  He smells the salt, the stress in his sweat, the sulfates in the laundry soap.  His brain throws in the memory of burned rubber and sunbaked asphalt, and before he can stop himself, he’s on his back, kicking off the covers and floundering.  

He can’t take this pain.  He can’t find his dad.  He can’t see.

But it’s coming through all wrong.  He went blind first. Then Jack died.  Right?  And the migraines came later, at the orphanage.  Along with the nightmares.

And that’s what this is, isn’t it?  Scratchy bedding, a roommate who only pretends to like him.  But Sister Maggie likes him. She comes when he calls out to her.  And when he calls out to his dad.  And even when his brain goes primal and fuzzy and he yells for the mother he’s never even known.

Matt‘s throat is working, his vocal cords pulsing like plucked guitar strings.  But he can’t hear the notes.  He’s too disconnected, his mouth and ears too far apart.  Matt rolls onto his side, dragging his knees to his chest and clamping his arms around them, squeezing himself into aball.  He wraps his palm around the opposite wrist for good measure,sliding the chain on a door that’s already bolted.

But someone’s rattling the knob.  Matt hears metal on metal, the scrape of a key.  There’s a creak, then a slam, then, “Whoops.”

A couple shuffling footsteps.  “Oh, hey, Matt.”

Matt flinches at the sudden influx of sound.  He couldn’t hear himself groaning a moment ago, but Foggy may as well be speaking through a bullhorn.  The jump in logic makes Matt’s temples throb sickeningly. But if Foggy’s here, then Matt’s definitely now.  Pinpointing the x,y, and z of location on coordinate plane grounds him in the fourth dimension too, even though his math classes haven’t taught him how to do that yet.

A bitter taste pools under his tongue.  Matt swallows to slow his racing heartbeat.  He takes a breath.

It’s 2009.

He gets a whiff of candy corn coming off Foggy.  It’s October.

The streetlamp hums outside the window.  Matt can smell beer, too.  And Vaseline.  A hint of latex.  It’s the middle of the night.  He’s definitely in college.

“You ok, buddy?”  Foggy flips on the overhead light. The fluorescent bulbs sizzle to life, and Matt’s stomach flips, bubbling like a cauldron of vomitous witch’s brew.

“Fine,” Matt croaks.  He lifts his head an inch from his still-wet pillow and loosens his tightly wound posture.  His hackles are still up, but Foggy’s buzzed and blissful.  He doesn’t need to worry.

“You sure?  You were in bed when I left,” Foggy says. “And that was, like… early.”

“Hm.”  Matt’s hand is wet, too.  He wipes it on hissheets.

“Party’s still going on, if you wanna drop in.  I’ll go with you.  It’s…”  Foggy laughs.  “It’s a good party.”

“Nah.”  Matt’s senses are going off again.  He smells metal.  But that could just be the nausea crystalizing in his sinuses.

“You really should.  If you’re just sad, you should get up. Do something.”  Foggy’s uneven footsteps approach Matt’s bed. “Come on.”

“Not sad.” Matt means to add some more detail, like the building migraine, the rising urge to throw up.  He means to add the just, theway Foggy did.  He doesn’t mean to lie.

“Yeah, right.”  Foggy grabs Matt’s wrist.

“No, Fog—”  Matt isn’t expecting to be pulled out of bed. And he isn’t expecting searing pain to lance up his arm.

“You’re not— Jesus, Matt!”  The exclamation comes across suddenly as Foggy’s fingers find the half-moon scratches on Matt’s forearm. Surprise ups the spit and anxious vibration in his tone.

For a second, Matt’s lost again.  But then the blocks stack up.  The memories, the hurt, the cycles of illness he has trouble labeling as physical or mental.  It’s happened before.  It makes a sick sort of sense, made sicker by the fact that Matt knows he deserves it.

“You’re not Jesus.”  It’s clear it’s not what Foggy meant to say, but his friend runs with it anyway.

Matt makes a cynical noise.  His mouth is too dry and wooly for him to force out more than one syllable.  If Foggy’s contradicting something, it didn’t come from Matt’s lips.  Even if his head hurts enough to make that kind of gibberish a real possibility.

“You don’t have to suffer.  And, god, I can’t believe you did this to yourself.”  Foggy doesn’t want to touch the wounds anymore. He’s sticky with Matt’s blood.  Matt can hear him bouncing the pad of his index finger against his thumb, repeatedly breaking the seal as the viscous fluid starts to dry.

Matt’s going to tell him he didn’t mean to, but Foggy makes to walk away.   Matt decides it’s not worth opening his mouth.  He turns inward again and tries to talk himself through relaxing the tension in hisneck.  

He doesn’t expect Foggy to swoop back in and pull him out of bed by the shoulders.  “No, no, Fog,” Matt protests, attempting to push him away while also being conscious of the facts that blood is running freely down his arm, and he’s perilously close to vomiting.  “I—my head—”

“Cut it out, Matt.  You’re depressed.  You’re bleeding!”

It’s the middle of the night.  Foggy can’t be dragging him to the campus health clinic.  Matt’s clearly in no shape for a party. He gets a mental image of himself sitting on the bathroom counter, slumped against the mirror, explaining in broken sentences how this is not an intentional act of self-flagellation while Foggy applies Neosporin and Band-Aids.

But they’re not going to make it that far.  They’re not going to make it out of the room.  Matt gags and claps his hand over his mouth.

“Shit.”  This time, Foggy interprets correctly.  He shoves Matt into his desk chair and thrusts the trash can into his lap.

Matt coughs harshly.  He heaves up a dribble of bile, then waits for the room to stop spinning.  He’s definitely dehydrated. Some simple carbs would probably do him good too, but Matt’s not ready to brave anything that will require chewing.  Or anything with a flavor.

“Sorry.”  Matt scrapes his tongue with his teeth and wills them to stop chattering.

“You didn’t have a headache when I left,” Foggy says, a little defensively.

It’s probably true.  Matt doesn’t remember the details well enough to refute it.  “I do now,” he murmurs.

Foggy sighs.  “Yeah.  You do now.”  The mini-fridge opens and closes.  He cranks the top off a bottle of water and nudges it against Matt’s hand.  “Here.  Rinse.  I’ll get you back to bed.  And put something on those scratches, if you want.”

He thinks about it as he swishes the water and spits it into the trash.  The wounds themselves don’t hurt.  But the drying blood itches.

“Or I could go, if you’d rather…” Foggy waffles.

Matt’s taking too long.  Foggy doesn’t want to leave him alone, but he’s going to come out and say it.

Matt hates that he does this to himself.  He hates even more that he’s ruining his friend’s night.  But, truth be told, he doesn’twant to be alone either.

“Sure,” Matt finally says. “You can stay.”  It’s too demanding.  He quickly revises. “I mean…you should.  I want you to stay.”

[ezrisdax-archive]

blood of my blood

@bioware, I need a whole series about Drack raising Kesh so I don’t have to write these stories. (also here on ao3)

~~

Kesh was much smaller than Drack ever imagined. Just a tiny little creature who fell asleep in his lap as soon as she was dumped in to it.

 He was never around to take care of his son, too busy being a merc and nothing really mattered to him back them but now his bones are only just held together by metal rods and he’s got no hearts to spare. There’s nothing good about a Krogan who’s lost that much, there’s no point to him anymore and he knows it.

 Except that the same people were saying the same about Kesh and while she was struggling to breathe she was still holding on to life to prove them wrong.

 “We’ll show ‘em, hey kid?” He rumbled, resting a gloveless hand on top of Kesh’s head. She squirmed a little at the pressure until he lightened it. He sighed, scooping Kesh up carefully and standing with far too much noise. “Too bad you’re stuck with me.” He told Kesh, shuffling around the room and trying to find something suitable for a Krogan child to sleep in.

 Her head plates hadn’t even hardened yet or formed properly, he wondered if she’d always suffer from that or if it was something that would change in time.

 His place really wasn’t set up for a kid, even a Krogan one, and Drack had to give up the hunt for something suitable, heading back to his bed and lowering Kesh on to it. “You can have the bed for now. I’ve slept on plenty of floors in my day.”

 Kesh made a noise, making him narrow his eyes, and she continued to protest, even going so far as opening her eyes though she couldn’t focus on anything yet. When he reached out she grabbed his hand and seemed to sink in to the warmth.

 Drack shook his head, “Demanding thing. Ha, true Krogan knows what they want. All right kid, you win for now.”

 Kesh practically rolled in to his neck when he laid down, sprawling out over him as best she could.

 “Don’t worry kid, I’ll look out for you.”

 Kesh made a gurgling noise that could have been a snore or agreement but Drack was betting was the former. He settled down to let himself go to sleep as well.

 ~~

 “You’re not my father.” Kesh spat it out after another argument about letting her go explore ruins came up.

 Funny how it hurt Drack no matter how true it was.

 “I just worry about you.” Drack admitted, “Maybe I’m getting too damn old for this.” He looked away, “You’ve proven you can take care of yourself.”

 Last week Kesh had headbutted Wratch and come home bleeding but grinning victoriously. She’d shown that she wasn’t a weak child to be abandoned after all.

 Except that Drack could still see the cracks in her headplates that hadn’t connected yet. He had a feeling he always would.

 He stood up, ready to tell Kesh to do what she wanted but his leg crumbled on him. “Shit.” Drack scowled at it, it would mean another surgery for him.

 Kesh was at his side in a second, holding him up. “Forgot to look after yourself again.” She sighed.

 But she stayed.

 ~~

 “…god damn Varren spawned quadless little shit.” Drack swore at the power unit. Behind him he could hear Kesh stifle a laugh.

 “Move.” She nudged him out of the way with her hand and reached in to the unit.

 “You know what you’re doing?” Drack asked, watching her try to navigate the thing.

 “Better than you do.” Kesh retorted and Drack laughed loudly at it. She was only twenty, had really only just started talking it seemed Drack and yet here she was fixing controls like it second nature.

 Except that she’d put a lot in to the work to make it look second nature already, he’d caught her reading articles written by Salarian engineers and scowling at them as she tried to make it work with her larger hands.

 The lights flickered and came back on line and Drack pounded his fist in to his other hand. “Ha, looks like that did it.”

 Kesh grumbled about the wires, still poking at them.

 “C’mon kid, let’s get back to our game. Didn’t fill these mini flamethrowers for nothing.” He could tell that Kesh’s attention was solely fixed on the controls.

 “These could be made better.” She was saying, talking to no one in particular and Drack knew he’d lost her to the puzzle she was trying to figure out.

 He took a seat, watching Kesh work and idly thought it was too soon for him to lose his ru’shan like this – which was ridiculous because he wanted Kesh to succeed, she was brilliant and was going to something amazing some day and Drack damn well wanted to be around to see it. He just also didn’t want to lose time with her while it was happening.

 It took nearly half an hour but Kesh finally noticed him staring. She tilted her head to look at him and then sighed. “Move over old man, it’s my turn.”

 “Age before wisdom.” Drack said, picking up the flamethrower to continue the game of firebreathing thresher maws of doom. His arm hurt, moving like that but then again to him everything hurt those days.

 Kesh noticed of course and that night he caught her reading up on medical journals and tried to swallow that guilt.

 ~~

 “It’s a whole other galaxy.” Even with all her blunt way of speaking Kesh couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice, or at least she couldn’t keep it from Drack who could pick it up.

 “I’m too old for this one.” Drack shook his head.

 “All of clan Nakmor is going.” Kesh continued onwards like Drack hadn’t spoken, barrelling through the conversation.

 “Yeah and some others, I heard the spiel.” Wouldn’t it be strange to not have clan Nakmor on Tuchanka? Would that tip the balance in favour of clan Urdnot taking control of all clans. Wrex had already absorbed so many of them and Drack couldn’t help but approve of it, it might mean there was hope for them yet.

 “Will I have to headbutt you to convince you to come?” Kesh finally asked.

 “Kid not even Morda tries that with me anymore.” He followed more out of respect for the Krogan rules and Morda wasn’t always the smartest but she knew that Drack had lived that long for good reason. Kesh still looked like she was considering it so Drack huffed. “Fine. Wasn’t about to let you head off to another galaxy without me anyway. Still want to see this Nexus achievement of yours.”

 He was proud of her and all she’d done for it. There was nothing that would stop him from making sure she knew that.

 Kesh grinned sharply suddenly and Drack tensed, “Just so you’re aware, Vorn is coming.”

 Drack groaned, “Not that idiot.”

 “We need a botanist.”

 “Yeah yeah.” Drack didn’t want to admit to that. “Tell him to at least bring those roots I like.”

 “I already packed them in the seed vault.” Kesh assured him.

 Drack grunted and then out of sentimentality he figured he was allowed for his old age dragged Kesh in close to press his headplates against hers gently. “You done good Kesh.”

 “You got me there.” Kesh reminded him. “I’ll get us the rest of the way.”

 He knew she would.

[ikamigami]

LMAO but it's true 😌

I love that while Ruin has to pretend to be insane for like hundreds of years, doing Creator's bidding jobs to survive, working with Bloodmoon for his purpose, and getting trapped and tortured by Dark Sun.

And many many things, what is really getting on Ruin's nerves, what Ruin couldn't stand and consider it is his torture is working and breathing on the same air with Nexus.

Like...

Seeing Bloodmoon, Creator, Creators, Molten, Dark Sun...: (terrified but still trying to be smartass) ooh dear... But There is nothing I couldn't fix with my tea.

Seeing Nexus: (dramatic crying) This is the worst day of my life. My smile is ruined and my day is disappointing. I never see a creature this ugly like Nexus.