#chapter 1 red | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pastafossa · 5 months

Text

Haunted (Matt Murdock x TRT!Reader, Fic, SFW)🌧️

Right, so close to 3 years ago, I had an ask in my box: 'what would happen if TRT!Reader/Jane Hind lost her memory just before returning to Matt after her three months away', aka: just before point where they both confessed their love and got together in mainline TRT. So I wrote up a fairly angsty, no happy ending sort of fic about it, which you can find here. But there just felt like there was more to the story, and the idea of a sequel wouldn't leave me alone, so I've worked on it in little bits and pieces over the past few years and I'm finally ready to unleash that into the world now that it's been edited to my satisfaction.

This will have a happy ending and hurt/comfort, once we swim through a lot of Matt Suffering. <3 Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Chapter Summary:

Leaving him like that shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did. You didn’t know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldn’t glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it. He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow. There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting. Matt was alone. You’d left him alone. It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back. So… why did you feel so very sick?

Wordcount: 11, 805 words so, hilariously, about 3 times the length of Part 1

Warnings for this chapter: angst, alcohol, matt spiraling fairly badly, he throws some things, LOTS of TRT references and spoilers so I wouldn't do this one unless you've finished the Miami arc in TRT.

Sad Matt gif as a reminder that the angst is pretty heavy here because I'm really going to emotionally beat on this poor man for a bit.

At Ciro’s insistence, you gave yourself one month in Hell’s Kitchen.

A month wasn’t much time, granted, but it would hopefully be enough to see if there was a chance of bringing back the memories you’d lost: memories of friends, of your life here, and of… of whatever it was that you’d had with Matt Murdock. Based on his grief over the loss of Jane Hind—not you, but her surely, the role, the mask you’d worn while here—his attachment to her had been deep and fervent, and those feelings appeared to have been at least partly reciprocated. The dangerously intimate photo you’d found in your memory box was all the proof you needed of that.

Your past self had already been accustomed to his touch when the photo was taken, based on the way she’d allowed him to press his head tenderly to her temple, his dark eyes warm and fond as he'd smiled in her direction even if he couldn't see her, his arm draped over her shoulders. She should have been put off by the proximity, by such a blatant show of physical intimacy, but instead of looking distressed, she’d been relaxed and comfortable where she’d confidently tucked herself up against his side. Try as you might, you hadn’t been able to find any hint of discomfort, any clue that signaled the obvious affection she’d felt was an act, her shoulder angled in a way that made you think she’d wrapped her arm comfortably around his waist, her grin bright and so very real.

This couldn’t be you.

When was the last time you'd looked that happy?

When was the last time you’d let someone hold you close?

And when was the last time someone had looked at you like… like they might…

“Did I… love him, Ciro?”

“I believe that… you might have, yes. Him, and this city. That is why I encourage you to stay, for a time at least. See if the memories return to you. Even should you leave, it would be wise to know of the life you led here.”

Ciro had sent a check to your office, booking you for the month and clearing your schedule. Just like that, you were free to focus on looking for something that might trigger the return of your memories. Though what that something might be, you weren’t really sure. A more thorough examination of the apartment had been your first step. Unfortunately, there’d been nothing there that seemed familiar beyond the same cheap decor and calculated set pieces you’d always used. You’d quickly ruled those out. They were meaningless distractions meant to reinforce the lie of whatever pre-planned identity you’d taken on. In this case, that identity was Jane Hind—practical, professional, detached, likes sailboat paintings and the color grey. Based on the fine layer of dust you'd found coating everything but the kitchen counter and a neat stack of mail, no one else had spent much time here during your months away. That, at least, fit your pattern. You weren’t in the habit of making friends or putting down roots. There was no point in doing so when you’d just wind up cutting them loose and running again.

What had unsettled you far more were the hints of connection you’d found quietly tucked away:

A fleecy stuffed bear holding a plush crystal ball, the threads connecting the two uneven as if hand-stitched. That kind of time and effort wouldn’t have been spent on anyone but a friend, and the bear’s prominent position on the counter lent it far more importance than any of the other decorations.

A tacky ‘Handsome Devil’ coffee mug, the curling red script and clichéd devil horns design bizarrely out of place amongst the rest of the plain white mugs in the cupboard. An identity like Jane Hind wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking from it, which meant someone else was here with enough regularity to have a mug of their own. Further digging revealed a second decorated mug, this one adorned with the name of the law firm co-run by Matt. You could have written off one mug, but two? Two was a pattern.

An entire drawer in the dresser devoted solely to a pile of dangerously soft shirts that clearly didn’t belong to Jane Hind, the fabric threadbare and worn. They looked about the right size to be Matt’s, though, the faint traces of scent a match for him. The fact that they took up an entire drawer indicated he’d visited often enough to need a space for his clothes.

You’d… made space for him in your false life. That wasn’t something you did.

Or had you been the one wearing them?

Maybe…?

You’d spent a long moment holding one of the shirts in your hand, rubbing at the fabric in hopes of stirring something. When that hadn’t worked, you’d even brought it up to your nose to inhale slowly, just in case the traces of scent brought some memory back.

Clean soap. Salt. Copper. Faint cinnamon.

All it had done was remind you of holding a grieving Matt in his kitchen after he’d realized your memories weren’t coming back. It was a gloomy enough memory, but ultimately unhelpful.

You'd tossed the old shirt on top of the dresser and moved on.

While you didn’t know who exactly you’d been here in New York, the longer you searched, the more it became clear what had happened. You’d started to slip, your years of isolation forming a crack in your layers of armor. That fracture had allowed an attachment to form, an insidious connection worming its way in through the open gap like poisonous roots through crumbling pavement. You’d grown weak, and careless. There was no other explanation for why you’d broken so many of your rules, dominoes tipping one by one until it cascaded into a waterfall of mistakes. You’d slipped before, of course—loneliness was natural and expected, which was why you had so many contingencies—but you’d never let yourself get in this deep. Not until now.

What you didn’t know was…

Why?

Why here?

Why these people?

And why the fuck hadn’t you followed your rules and run?

If there was an answer to be found in Jane Hind’s apartment, you couldn’t seem to find it, no matter how hard you look, no matter how many of her belongings you dug through. Even your memory box had failed you, the photo of you and Matt at the back of your stack of pictures an outlier you couldn’t explain, this fruit of an as-yet unidentified poisonous tree. You had no real leads, no faint ringing of memory to guide you beyond a vague sense that, somehow, this started with Matt. You didn’t even know where to begin.

At least, not until some shaggy-haired guy named Foggy—what the fuck kind of nickname was that?—showed up entirely and rudely unannounced at your front door, dressed in a cheap suit and wearing a bizarrely determined look. Despite your doubts, you reluctantly allowed him in. He made it pretty clear he knew you, and if you were lucky he could tell you more about your life here.

“So I know you usually skedaddle when things get uncomfortable, which I imagine they are at the moment. How long are you trying to stay?”

“One month.” You shrugged casually, a cover for just how warily you were watching him as he paced in your—in Jane Hind’s living area. He knew far more about you than you knew about him, a reversal you were uncomfortably aware of. That vulnerability was almost enough to trigger a retreat beneath that cold, brittle shell you’d used long ago, though you quickly caught hold of that instinct and buried it back down deep where it belonged. Still, you couldn’t quite hide the cool clip to your voice, your walls firmly in place. “Leaving after that. Don’t see the point in staying if the memories are gone. Truthfully I’m not sure why I stayed in the first place, especially once it was clear I was getting attached. No offense.”

“None taken, my hopefully-still-friend-when-your-memories-come-back.” He abruptly swiveled on his feet to face you, squinting at you thoughtfully. “How badly do you want your memories back?”

You thought of out-of-place mugs and hand-stitched psychic teddy bears; of faint cinnamon and a worn photo frame; of the way you’d held a broken Matt in his kitchen until he’d carefully pushed you away and asked you to leave, his face closed off and distant despite the tears on his cheeks and yours.

You’d… been someone here. Someone cared for. Someone whose loss was mourned.

Even if you left, you needed to know just who that someone had been, if only so you could make sure this never happened again. Not until you reached your island in the sun.

“Badly enough to stay for the month,” you said quietly.

“Then put some shoes on. We’re going on a memory hunt.”

Over the next few weeks, Foggy took you all over Hell’s Kitchen.

You visited Jane Hind’s office, abandoned warehouses, and empty rooftops covered in thick blankets of snow. He reintroduced you to Karen, to your upstairs neighbors, and to a bartender who didn’t seem all that inclined to be introduced to anyone. You drank crappy beer and slightly less crappy vodka, played pool, and went to the zoo to stare for far too long at penguins, which Foggy refused to explain no matter how much you pressed. He had you focus on sights, on smells, on sounds that might trigger a memory. He joked with you in between, and he was just funny enough, friendly and clever enough, that for the first week or so, you were consistently cracking a smile. Hell, you even laughed now and then, much to your surprise. He really did know you, enough so that you gradually began to relax around him, just a little. He was likely hoping the addition of a friend’s voice would bring back what you’d lost, especially when paired with all the other sensations.

But no matter how much you both tried, your memories remained lost.

God, you hadn’t thought this would… would hurt as much as it did. Yet with every day that you failed to find your way back to who you’d been, the more that fierce ache, that old longing inside you grew. Your smiles became brittle, your laughter fading, until both finally dried up like withered, crumbling leaves beneath a bitter frost. You couldn't help pulling away really, not when your soul curling up in the dark might protect you from the agony of knowing that maybe, just maybe, you’d finally found what you'd always wanted. How fitting that it had been ripped away from your bloodied, desperate hands like so many times before, one more square for the filthy patchwork quilt of shredded lives and possibilities you’d been forced to leave behind. What was worse: even your memories of that seeming joy had been stolen, too, leaving you with nothing left to carry but the tattered scraps of a ghost and the photograph of a stranger wearing your skin.

It shouldn’t have been possible to miss what you couldn’t remember. Yet here you were missing it all the same.

It didn’t help that Matt was avoiding you in every way that mattered. You’d thought about calling him if only to ask him questions about your life here, but you could never quite work up the courage to do it. He must have felt the same since he hadn’t reached out to you, either. And why would he? He knew as well as you did that your memories likely weren’t coming back. It made sense to cut that connection, tear it away like a weed before the roots could do more damage—something you should have done sooner, for both your sakes. What you hadn’t expected was just how good he was at dodging you, somehow absent no matter how many places Foggy took you to, places he swore Matt frequented with you when you’d lived here, as if Matt’s mere presence might be enough to trigger some memory in you. Had he been that important? Either way, it didn’t matter. You hadn’t seen Matt once since you’d walked out, doing your best to ignore his hitched breath as you’d opened the door. You’d forced yourself to ignore, too, the broken, agonized sound of grief that he’d let out as you quietly shut the door behind you, leaving him alone.

He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow.

There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting.

Matt was alone.

You’d left him alone.

It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back.

So… why did you feel so very sick?

Sympathy.

That was all you were feeling. Matt was grieving a woman he’d cared about, one who’d died and left a cold stranger in her place. It was normal to feel for someone in that much pain, and no one should be alone while grieving. Maybe this was for the best. The sooner you were fully out of his life, the sooner all his friends and family could step in, and the sooner he could move on. He wouldn’t be alone, then. And even if he was, his loneliness wasn’t your goddamn problem. You had more than enough troubles of your own.

Protect yourself.

Protect what you might one day have.

All else was irrelevant.

You just… hoped he was doing alright.

He did his best to avoid you, but that only grew more difficult once your ghost began to haunt his every step.

Even Josie’s quickly became off-limits—something he discovered one night when he stepped through the front door where he was promptly met with the familiar, comforting scent of you floating like a haze beneath the smell of cheap beer and sour sweat. His body went rigid the moment he recognized it, your presence across the room a sharpened knife that only widened the wound carved into him by your death. And if the scent of you was a knife, then your bark of laughter was a cruel twist of the blade, one that left him gutted and shaking there in the doorway. He drank in his apartment after that, waiting for that blessed moment when he would feel nothing, waiting for the very second the glorious shroud of night fell. Only then could he finally escape to the streets and drown himself in a far better kind of pain, taking his rage and his grief out on whatever piece of shit had the misfortune of falling into the Devil’s path.

But Foggy seemed determined to shove the specter of you directly into his face.

“You need to talk to her!” Foggy snapped, his voice only just shy of a shout. Matt ignored him as he headed for his office, desperate to retreat from your scent lingering on Foggy’s clothes. Foggy had taken you to a coffee shop that morning, one you’d frequented when you’d lived here, and now each inhalation was a vicious torment. It felt like breathing in shards of glass, the sharp pain of it throbbing with every stuttered, choked breath he drew in. If Foggy noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “Christ, Matt! You love her and we both know it. If you talk to her, it might trigger something—”

“Stop,” Matt grit out, reaching up to scrub his hand angrily over his face. He stalked his way over to his desk, still desperate to escape somehow, even if it was into his work. “Just stop, Foggy. I did talk to her, and you know what happened? Nothing. She didn’t remember anything at all. She’s gone, and you dragging this out is just making everything worse for all of us.”

“So what, you’re just gonna roll over?” Foggy scoffed, crossing his arms as he planted his feet in Matt’s doorway. “Are you sure you actually loved her? Because I’m pretty sure she loved y—”

Matt slammed his fist down on his desk, the furious crack of it echoing through the office like a gunshot as he shouted, “Don’t you fucking dare!”

Tension hung thick in the air as Matt’s chest heaved, his teeth bared, blood and adrenaline running hot in his veins as if Foggy were some sort of-of threat. Everything in him shook with rage, or maybe unshed grief, the burden of them both impossibly twisted and tangled beneath the sea of his guilt and his self-loathing until he couldn’t tell which was which. He just couldn’t—how was he supposed to force it all down when Foggy had just come so close, so dangerously close to shattering what few pieces remained of Matt’s crumbling armor?

It was bad enough loving you the way he did only for you to slip through his bloodied, desperate grasp like whispering grains of sand. What was worse, this entire disaster was one of his own making, a series of mistakes whose snarled, winding paths led inevitably back to him just like they had so many times before in his life. This loss of someone who’d truly understood him, accepted him, cared for him had already broken something inside him he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to repair. But that fracturing inside him would surely rise up to consume him if Foggy were right, if you’d truly cared for him that deeply before your memories were taken, so deeply that you might even have…

I miss you, sweetheart.

…loved him the way he loved you.

Abruptly Matt’s surge of rage drained away and his head fell, leaving him feeling all the more empty and broken. He braced his arms weakly against his desk, drawing in a shaky breath as he forced himself to confess, his voice gone hoarse and ragged with grief. “I loved her, Foggy.” He lifted one shaking hand to his face. “God, I loved her so, so much. I can’t… I don’t know what to do without her now that she’s gone.” “I know, Matt,” Foggy said gently. “I know.” “I loved how she always smelled a little like coffee, and the way she always managed to wind up climbing into the oddest places for a case. She had one of the foulest mouths I’ve ever heard, but I swear she could use it to talk her way out of almost anything or to bring someone up out of whatever dark hole they were trapped in. She was… far kinder than she’d ever admit.” His lips quirked, but there was no humor in it, the expression miserable and gutted. You’d have likely argued with him about how kind you were if you’d been here. But there was no chance of that now, no matter how much the scent of you on the air told him otherwise. “Some days it felt like she was the only thing holding me together, like the only time I could breathe was when she held me in her arms. She was always there when I fell apart, or when it all… when it all started to hurt too much. And I tried to give her whatever pieces of me the Kitchen hadn’t already taken, to be there for her like she was for me, to keep her safe. We were finally going to make our relationship official when she came back, her and me, even if there’d… already been something there for a while now if I’m honest.”

And it had, it had been there, this soft, tender thing that had developed slowly but surely between the two of you, a tangling that came by degrees rather than all at once. It had sprouted, grown, and blossomed so gradually that even now he struggled to point to any one moment where it had truly begun—the night he found you in the warehouse, maybe, or that first game of Devil Hunt, or when you’d both almost taken the leap before he’d realized you were drunk. But the question of where it began didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was there, something nameless yet still so good and warm and perfect, a connection nurtured in the low light and the blood-soaked soil of the Kitchen. You’d felt it just like he had, and you’d been willing to take that chance with him despite the baggage he carried behind him like an anchor destined to drag him down. You never would have agreed to kiss him when you came back otherwise. Now that chance was gone.

“How much did she know before she left?” Foggy asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe.

”She knew that I-that I wanted to be with her, but I never told her that I loved her.” Matt blew out a slow, heavy breath. “I was too scared of chasing her away, I guess. I thought maybe when she came back, if she still wanted me, I would… I decided that I would tell her. But I waited too long. Now she’s gone and I’ll never be able to tell her. All because of me.”

He finally lifted his head, tipping it at Foggy. Neither of them dared mention the wetness on Matt’s cheeks. Even speaking about this—about how much he’d loved you only for him to ruin it—was almost more than he could bear, the edges of the wound still fresh and raw. Then again, maybe he deserved that pain after how miserably he’d failed you, just like everyone else in his life. “I miss her. And what’s worse is even when she’s right there in front of me, she’s not. She’s not, Foggy. Because I-I fucked up. I’m the reason the woman I knew, the woman I loved, died. I’m the reason she’ll never remember what we had, why I’ll never hold her again, and why she’ll leave New York at the end of the month like she does whenever she’s afraid of forming a connection.” He let out a bitter laugh, waving towards the windows, towards the place you’d once held dear. “I couldn’t even keep her here before. She almost ran last summer and the only thing that stopped her was being kidnapped. That was what slowed her down long enough for our thread to turn red, not me. She won’t let that happen a second time, not now that she’s seen what happens to people I care about. Do you understand?”

The door to Nelson and Murdock creaked open, Karen’s voice making its way in first. Her voice was followed only a moment later by another’s, one still so familiar.

“—I mean, winding up in a pool while chasing a kid sounds about right for me, so even if I don’t remember, I won’t argue—”

“I had to keep you here somehow.” Foggy’s voice remained quiet, but there was no disguising the ferocity in it now, the fervent belief. “Get out of your own head and talk to her, Matt. Fight for her. She would want you to.”

No.

No, no, no.

Your body may have been here, whole and real, but the woman who’d known him wasn’t. The song of your voice, your sweet scent, the flames of heat and stirred air currents around you flaring into a familiar shape: all of it was nothing but a lie, a snare for his senses, a ghost of his own making, and he wasn’t about to be caught by it again.

He darted back around his desk, shoving his way past Foggy on the way toward the front door, his heart racing. If he was quick, if he just put up enough of a front, he could get out before they trapped you here with him like they’d planned. He wouldn’t relive this grief again, he couldn’t, not without falling apart. The moment he’d had with you in his apartment had been enough agony for one lifetime.

“Hey, Matt.” You cleared your throat, shifting awkwardly on your feet where you’d stopped by the front door. Your stance was cautious and guarded, almost wary of him. It was just one more reminder of how uncomfortable he made you now. “Are you—”

“Heading out,” he said stiffly, only belatedly remembering to trace one hand along the wall as if his heightened senses hadn’t given him a clear map of the room the moment his adrenaline spiked. That spike was a curse all its own. It made the scent of you so much stronger, the lie of it fresh and present as it twined around him. His chest hitched just once before he forced himself to breathe his mouth. But that route of escape had been cut off, too. All it did was shift his focus to the taste of you on the air, and the taste of familiar fabric once so tenderly given.

You were wearing one of his shirts.

He fumbled for his cane, his hands starting to shake before he finally found it where he’d left it against the wall. He couldn’t let you see him like this. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t remember him, nor was it your fault that he’d lost you. He’d done enough damage without adding a layer of guilt to what you were dealing with, too. But despite his attempts to hide what he was feeling, his face a hard mask, your fingers still brushed gently against his arm a moment later. It was an offer of help, or maybe an attempt to reach out, to slow him down, to connect. It was a kindness, a sympathy he didn’t deserve. Even now, you read him far too well, this touch the same as it had been that first night he’d met you when you’d gently brushed your hand against his arm. “Hey, do you need… I could walk you home.”

He shied away from your touch, finally managing to roughly unsnap his cane before going for the door. “I’m fine. I just—I have things to take care of. Excuse me.”

He went straight home and showered, but no matter how many times he scrubbed, he couldn’t seem to wash the ghost of your scent away.

You slowly wandered around Matt’s office, taking it in. This was another place you’d supposedly frequented, a place that should have been familiar, and one you'd avoided until now.

Even though Foggy had assured you it was alright, it felt… almost wrong to explore a stranger’s space like this without them present. But you couldn’t help but brush your fingers across the battered desk and the small labels in braille you couldn’t read, run your hands along the chair for clients that you might have sat in once, and trace curiously the small seashell next to Matt’s laptop. The base scents of Matt were stronger here where he spent so much time, only partly erased by the smell of coffee and paper. The room was clean, cared for, and well-organized despite how rundown the office was. Important to him. You could tell that much, even if the scents and sights had failed to spark any memories.

Maybe… knowing his space wasn’t enough.

This was about more than just figuring out who you were, now. For some reason, you needed to know who Matt was, too: this man Jane Hind had cared so much about and who’d cared so much about her. You told yourself it was practical. Matt was your best bet when it came to remembering who you’d been. But some part of you deep down recognized the lie. No, there was something in you inescapably drawn to him, a pull you couldn’t quite explain. Maybe that strange, unnatural gravity was what had started this whole mess in the first place. What was it about him that was so different, that had driven you to break every last rule you’d lived your life by for over a decade?

And why… did you spend so long wondering if he’d ever climbed out his office window?

It had been twenty-nine days, and not a single memory had returned.

Oh, there were beats now and then when you thought that maybe, just maybe something was coming back, but those moments were painfully few and far between. Even in those moments, you couldn’t say remembered anything, exactly. It was more a frustrating sense of deja vu, a fleeting little itch at the back of your mind like you’d forgotten something important, flashing road markers to warn you of the dark, empty gaps in your memory. That sense was probably driven at least in part by Foggy’s growing desperation as he frantically hunted for something that might trigger a return of your memories.

But the rest of that feeling… the rest was all you.

There was no denying a traitorous part of you wanted to remember no matter how ill-advised it might be. You wanted to remember this bizarre little family you’d stumbled into and then lost, just like in Los Angeles. You wanted to remember the love you’d had for this place, this city, this taste of mutual affection that had grown up around you after going so long without. After endless ages and ages of drought, of starvation, you hungered for even these bare crumbs of connection, something to tide you over until you found safe haven on the distant horizon. What a tempting thought it was to slither back into the life of this woman who’d been so cruelly murdered and replaced by a stranger wearing her skin.

Was this what a demon felt like when it took over a body? To walk around with someone else’s face, to speak with the unnatural voice of the dead, tormenting the loved ones that remained?

That, ultimately, was why it didn’t matter what you wanted. Your presence in this city only spread rot and suffering. It would be better for everyone involved if you left like you should have long before now. Then they could all grieve without you tainting the very soil around them.

Especially Matt.

You’d seen him once or twice in passing as your time in New York wound down. Even at a distance, you’d marked the growing circles under his eyes, dark enough to be visible despite the glasses he always wore. The rest of him wasn’t doing much better. It seemed like every time he crossed your path, there was another bruise, another cut across his face or knuckles, a shifting canvas of pain painted across skin grown pale and drawn. He didn’t just look tired—that wasn’t what this was. This was something far worse, a haggard exhaustion, a weariness that couldn’t be solved with sleep, if he slept at all. This was someone being haunted.

Probably because the ghost of Jane Hind kept crossing his path. But that would be solved soon enough.

You’d already packed up your things, not that you had much to take. Just your bag and your memory box. You’d be leaving the next day. Foggy was still convinced he had a few more days, but you had other plans. You couldn’t give Matt back the woman he’d lost, nor could you give him a body to bury, a grave to lay flowers across, but you could give him what Jane Hind had carried with her until her dying breath.

“I thought you might… want these before I left tomorrow,” you said quietly. “I… sorry, it’s… it’s a bag with my—with her things.”

Matt took it carefully from you, the motion mechanical and stiff. He hadn’t really invited you the rest of the way into his apartment, the two of you now stalled out in the hallway just beyond the closed front door. He hadn’t taken his glasses off, either. It made it harder to read him, his face closed off and impassive, a wall of red glass placed firmly between you. Come to think of it, you hadn’t seen his eyes even once since that day you’d first come back, and you didn’t blame him. You didn’t like feeling vulnerable, either, though that was just a guess when it came to what he might be feeling.

“It’s the shirts from her apartment, which I think are yours. And the stuffed bear.” You bit your lip and released it slowly, shifting uncomfortably on your feet. “And the… the mug, which Nelson said was yours, too. The one you used at her place. I also put the hoodie in there, the one she had with her while she was traveling. And…” You reached into your pocket, fumbling for a moment. God, you were bad at this, unsure of just how to do this without hurting him any more than was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t a concern you usually dealt with since your goal was almost always the exact opposite, a precaution meant to destroy any threads of connection they held with you. Unfortunately, he wasn’t giving you much to work with, though you didn’t miss his subtle flinch when you drew the key from your pocket. “I thought you might want this, too.”

You cautiously edged forward, daring to breach the ring of radiant heat that surrounded him, the closest you’d come to him in almost a month. He went stiff as you approached, his jaw growing tight as the gap between you both closed. Another step, and his head cocked as if he were listening to your footsteps, or maybe… maybe he was just waiting to find out what you had to give him. But he wasn’t telling you to fuck off or just set your gift aside, which was a good sign. So you hesitantly reached out and brushed your fingers lightly against his bicep, a signal so he knew you were about to pass him something.

A breath.

He remained absolutely still amidst the sudden, crackling tension in the air as your fingertips skated gently down and around his forearm, stirring all the little hairs, his skin shockingly warm. All you’d intended to do to take his arm and guide it up so you could place the key in his hand, but you quickly found yourself distracted by a ragged scar along the back of his forearm, one your fingers seemingly made their way to on instinct. It was a deep scar, the original cut likely made by some sort of blade, the edges of it rough and uneven from messy stitching. Your curiosity got the better of you, so much so that you missed the way Matt had begun to hold his breath.

“Who fucked up the sutures on that?” You furrowed your brow, your thumb smoothly marking out the jagged line of it. “They did a terrible job. No offense.”

Matt’s face fell and you only realized too late just who it was that must have patched him up.

Before you could blink, he’d yanked his arm out of your grip as if your touch had burned him. “Don’t,” he grit out, his chest heaving as he put a few steps distance between you both. “You can—just put your key on the bench.”

“How did you know—” “Because there’s only one thing left it could be.”

You nodded weakly, taking a few steps back towards the little bench beside the door. That unfamiliar ache, that sense of wrongness was back, the weight of it settling uneasily in your chest like a stone until you almost wanted to retch. It didn’t help that Matt was just barely holding himself together while you were here.

Best to say what you’d come to say and leave him be.

You gently set the key down, and the quiet click of the brass against the wood seemed to echo in the hallway, a graveyard bell tolling with a looming sense of finality. What you were about to tell him would hurt, you knew it would, but maybe one day he’d find comfort in it. This—a sign of what she’d felt—was the real gift you’d truly come to give, the only true token of her you could offer. Your words, when you spoke, were almost as hoarse as his. “I thought you should know I… she wore it. The key. I asked them. She wore your key and she never took it off. Not once. Whatever you both had, she treasured it, and all she wanted was to get back to you. She didn’t leave you by choice, Matt. I hope that… that helps.”

Of all the things you’d said and done, it was this that finally seemed to break him. His face twisted in a sudden wave of grief, and regret hit you all at once. You quickly took a step towards him, one hand out, though you weren’t sure what you’d do if he reached back—it wasn’t like you knew how to comfort him, and you sure as hell didn’t know if he’d tolerate you holding him again, nor whether he was someone that needed some sort of touch when he was hurting. But before you could take another step he’d flinched away from you, retreating quickly back into the darkness of his apartment, his voice ragged. “Just go. Get out.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, backing away towards the door. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”

It shouldn’t have hurt as you closed that door one last time. But you cried all the same.

Somewhere within the apartment came the sound of splintering furniture and a hoarse scream wracked with grief.

“Look, Nelson.” You tiredly adjusted the strap of your duffle bag over your shoulder, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of your nose as if it would stem your growing headache. “I know it’s a day early. But another twenty-four hours isn’t going to make a fucking difference.”

“I don’t need another day!” he pleaded, his arms spread wide where he’d blocked your front door, ensuring you couldn’t leave your apartment until you’d heard him out. You’d had no idea he even had a key until today and, not for the first time, you cursed Jane Hind’s apparent lack of common sense. You did not give out keys, or at least, you hadn’t before coming here to this ridiculous fucking city. “Just five minutes. That’s all. I’ve got one last thing to try.”

“Maybe I don’t want to try one more thing!” you snapped bitterly, dropping your hand. That anger was a good cover for the way something sharp and prickly had begun to catch in your throat, the incident with Matt still fresh in your mind. “I’ve tried for a month, and it’s gotten me nothing. Fucking-fucking bars and random rooftops and a shitty little duck, goddamn penguins and keys, and none of it did shit! Jane’s gone, ok? She’s dead. And I’m sorry, I know you all cared about her, but I’m done—”

“Have you climbed inside a thread?”

“...What?” you asked in sudden bewilderment, your rage abruptly faltering in the face of pure confusion. “What the fuck does that even me—”

He let out a whoop, practically dancing on his feet. “Yes! I knew it! I can’t believe no one told you!”

“Told me what?!” You chucked your bag back onto your couch in sudden exasperation. If this was thread-related, at the very least you could stay long enough to listen. “There’s nothing to climb!”

“Ok, so stick with me.” He rubbed his palms together eagerly, a bright light in his eyes. “Because I’m about to get really metaphysical.”

It took you what felt like hours to climb inside the shimmering honey-colored thread that lay between you and Matt—a thread that sang with his sorrow and your reluctant sympathy.

It wasn’t right having your soul constricted like this, all of who you were narrowing down into something so small as you squirmed through a barrier that tasted and felt like dirt and earth, chasing after the sound of trickling water. There wasn’t supposed to be anything on the other side. It was an emotional connection, nothing more.

And yet here you were, standing in a place that had no reason to exist.

“Holy shit,” you whispered in amazement, spinning on your heels to examine your surroundings. “Holy shit, he was right.”

Despite the late hour, the air was full of a muted light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, tinting the world a hazy, eerie green. High up above you roiled thick, sullen black storm clouds, silent flashes of red lightning carving their way between swirls of charred smoke. It wasn’t much light, but it was enough to see by.

And what you saw was heartbreaking.

You stood in a dry, stony riverbed. The ground beneath you was cracked and brittle where the water had receded, leaving behind nothing but dust and broken branches. The river itself remained though just barely, the thin trickle of flowing water down the center of the riverbed a far cry from whatever immense force had carved its way through the landscape until the banks were a good ten paces from one side to the other. The terrain beyond the river didn’t look much better, wilted, drooping cattails dotted up the bank before giving way to endless forest that stretched farther than your eye could see. Like the cattails and scrub, the pine and fir trees stood withered and brown, casting their empty branches up toward the sky.

If it had been beautiful here once, whatever had happened to you had destroyed that beauty.

“Jesus,” you whispered.

“Can you hear me?” Foggy’s voice sounded distant and far away, tinny like he was talking through a long tunnel.

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“...Ok, if you’re trying to respond, I can’t hear you. But according to Matt, whenever you were here, it felt like memories. So poke around, see what you can find.”

You sighed and started down the riverbed. “Not super helpful, but ok. Let’s give it a shot.”

The water was the most obvious place to start, and you made your way over to the thin stream that ran raggedly across the parched soil. Much to your fascination, you quickly discovered that what you’d thought was one current was actually two, one layered over the top of the other, each flowing in the opposite direction. The first of those currents hiding on the bottom was fairly calm, steady if a little restless, swirls of pale color that almost felt like curiosity, though how you understood that translation was a mystery. The second current seemed far rougher where it roiled atop the first, its section of the stream cloudy and thick with swirls of black and the red of an open wound. You hovered over the second current for a long moment, working up your courage, before you finally knelt and hesitantly brushed against it with one finger. It was just water. How bad could it be?

The moment your skin made contact, your chest seized on a sudden swell of agony. Your mouth filled with the taste of grief, with the sound of an empty home, the lack of some familiar scent that meant affection and warmth and softness and safety, the ache of an old wound reopened just when it had started to heal. Alone, always alone, I deserve it, so many gone, he was right, when will I learn? There was no hope for comfort from that pain, no escape from the darkness into tender arms that could hold you just right when it all hurt. All you had to look forward to was more—

You threw yourself backward, scrambling away from that terrible current as if what you’d felt might rise up and chase after you, snapping its teeth the whole way. You didn’t stop retreating until your back slammed against the dry soil of the riverbank. Only then did you stop, panting, your eyes wide in shock as you cradled your hand against your heaving chest.

Emotion. It’s emotion.

That was what the water was. Matt’s emotion. Which meant the other current—one now shifting back to yellow despite a momentary surge of twisting, roiling black—was… yours.

Right. So you could rule the water out. But if that was emotion, where was memory?

Examining the rest of the river was the most obvious next step now that you’d ruled out the water. Based on what you could see, the original riverbed had been a mix of silt and stones of varying sizes, a firm foundation beneath a once-powerful river. Now, though, the grey, dried-out silt was covered in a strange sea of divots and dips, as if something—a lot of somethings—had been plucked up and removed. You traced one of the indents in the soil curiously, lifting your hand back up to consider the grit as you rubbed it between your fingers. Another glance around revealed the answer.

The stones.

There were still plenty of stones remaining in the riverbed, but the divots in the dry silt told you there’d once been far more. If that was what you’d lost, then maybe…

You rocked up eagerly to your feet, pacing around breathlessly as you searched for a promising stone to start with. Eventually you made your pick, plucking up a stone just small enough to fit in your palm, flat and smooth save for a little groove in it as if someone had run their fingers over it endlessly. Strangely, it smelled like honey and herbs, the surface oddly warm against your hand like the brush of a thumb against your mouth. You waited for a long, impatient moment, and when nothing else happened, you tapped it a few times.

Still nothing.

And something inside you… cracked.

“Fuck!” you screamed, hurling the stone back down the river in a sudden rage. The pain and the loneliness you’d been suppressing for the last month, the last year, the horrible, endless eternity since leaving your family in Los Angeles began to claw its way up your throat, the clouds churning wildly above you in response. A wild rain came next, each droplet sharp and cold and edged like the blade of a knife, bitter and biting as it beat against your skin. You grabbed another stone, one that tasted like shitty beer—Josie’s beer. You threw that rock, too, then another and another, throwing stones that smelled and tasted and felt like your shriek of laughter as he grinned and caught you against his chest, like torn flesh and a needle held by tender hands, like your face nuzzling fearlessly against Matt’s throat as he whispered comfort into your hair and held you close, like synced breathing and hearts and dances between binary stars as you both fell into sleep, fell into safety, fell into one another, phantom sensations that only made the fierce ache in you grow stronger because with every stone you snatched up it became clear that…

You’d been loved.

Not your identity.

Not the image you showed to the world.

Not the walls you’d put up in front of him before he’d found some way past them.

You.

And he’d loved you with every part of him.

You weren’t sure when you started crying, a violent, vicious stream of tears that was just as much a product of rage as grief. Here was someone who’d loved you fully, loved you despite every asterisk and bit of baggage and sharpened edge that came with being a broken hound, with being a former experiment still on the run. But you barely noticed your tears, spitting up at the unforgiving clouds and the howling wind, because you could howl, too, just as violent, just as much a threat as any storm in this place. “I want my fucking life back! I want him back!”

You hadn’t wanted it before, or maybe you had and you’d just been too afraid to ask for it. But now? Oh, oh, now you were furious, furious and hurting and screaming, because you’d denied yourself connection all these years only to find it in the last place you’d expected. That was what this had been—home, family, love. That had to be why you’d stayed in New York, why you’d risked everything for these people, for Matt. You weren’t an idiot. You’d have run the numbers and the math, made your calculations.

You couldn’t bear to lose this. Not… not again.

You threw stone after stone, hunting frantically as your fingers bled dry, desperate fury into the air, reddened drops disappearing before they ever hit the ground. The trickle of water in the center of the riverbed had churned itself into a frenzy, but you ignored it. There had to be something here that would trigger a memory, something that would let you remember being loved again, something big enough, important enough, so you grabbed and you grabbed and grabbed and grabbed and grabbed until at last, you found a stone the size of your fist. You snatched it up with a ragged sob, cradling it greedily against your chest as if doing so might let you carry it out of here, because you wanted it, you wanted him, wanted to remember more than anything in the world.

“Let me have it!” you snarled, snapping your teeth at the howling winds of the storm as if you might catch this place between your jaws and tear it open until you at last found what belonged to you. “Give it back!”

And with a blink—

He tore one of his bloodied gloves off, his hand shaking as he reached out to you.

You stilled the moment his fingertips brushed tenderly against your cheek, so very gentle, affection layered over blood and earth and hurt. And god, your skin was so terribly dry and cold, the beat of your heart uneven as it struggled to pump blood through your body, but he could feel you react to him, the barest parting of your lips as you dragged in a startled breath. He didn’t want to startle you further or risk you fighting him, so he let his voice drop into a whisper, soft as the brush of a feather.

“It’s me. I’m here.”

‘I heard you,’ he tried to say. ‘I heard you. I’m here.’

And your weakened heart… skipped.

He wasn’t sure if he reached for you or if you reached for him. All he knew was it was the sign he’d been looking for. In a heartbeat, he scooped you up off the floor, stealing you back from that dry, filthy cement and crusted blood that had tried to take you from him. He cradled your cold body against his chest, then, held you there where it was warm and where you were safe. You made the softest little noise, the sound choked and dry, but there was no disguising the heartbreaking relief in it. He pulled you in further, pulled you up until you were curled up in his lap, not an ounce of air left between your bodies, your head laying against his shoulder.

He would never let you touch the floor of this place again.

“D…” you mumbled, not one hint of fear in you despite what he’d just done, the blood on his hands and the burning heat of violence that still lingered in his bones. You wearily slid your head over, inch by inch, until you’d buried your face against the sweat-slick line of his throat, nuzzling in against him with a hoarse sigh that only made him hold you tighter. You inhaled slowly then, heedless of the blood and dirt and sweat that coated his skin, your fingers coming up to hook weakly in the collar of his shirt. “You came.”

And you… smiled.

He buried his face against your hair and let out a shaky breath. As he did, he dug down past blood and dust and dirt, dug and dug until he found the sweet, familiar scent of you, a scent he never wanted to leave him again.

The stone fell from your limp hands, a ringing in your ears you could barely hear beneath the sound of the water nearby, frothing and wild.

The increased sensory feedback had been bizarre, and there was… there was no reason he should have been covered in so much blood, his body burning as if he’d been fighting before coming to you. But…

“Hey, you in there?” Foggy called.

“D.” The letter felt strange, and yet… natural, as you cradled it on your tongue. “D?”

And you knew what came after that letter, shaping the word again in your mind.

You knew.

You… remembered.

“Always,” he’d said.

“Always,” you whispered, casting your eyes up the riverbed towards another large stone. “Always, D.”

He didn’t know what you were doing or why you’d climbed inside the thread.

“Always, D.”

All he knew was that it hurt.

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately for you.”

He’d thought catching your scent, hearing your laugh, being forced to take back the key he’d given to you had been the worst of it. But no. It was far, far worse having to relive these memories of your time with him over and over and over without pause, his senses filled with you: with your touch, with your scent, with the taste of you on the air. He heard you whisper, laugh, and sigh; felt the brush of your fingers in his hair and your body shaking with laughter when he snatched you up during a game of Devil Hunt and the safety of you as you’d held him so tenderly after his fight with Foggy. All of it was a reminder of what he’d lost, what he’d never get back.

“Don’t you give up on me, Matt. Ok?”

He was in agony. There was no blocking you out like this, no escaping your memory no matter how much he tried to push back or retreat, until he wound up trapped and spiraling in his kitchen.

“Kiss me when you come back.”

On and on it went, memories snapping at his heels until all he had left to hide behind was rage. He swept his arm across the counter, glass shattering as he screamed himself hoarse. Eventually he found himself backed up against the wall, sinking down as he hitched out something like an agonized groan, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart, please—”

“Adoringly yours, because I do adore you, you ridiculous man...”

“Leave me alone,” he whispered. “Just leave me alone.”

“...Remember that. if nothing else.”

In hindsight, it was a really bad idea to give back your key.

“Matt!” you shouted, pounding frantically on his front door. “Matt, let me in! It’s me, I swear, I can-I can—”

Silence.

And you weren’t willing to wait any longer. This wasn’t something you could explain through the door, out here in the hall where the neighbors could hear. You needed to get inside. You knew he was in there somewhere.

Red threads never lied.

You wiped the blood away from your nose and took off for the stairs. It was only one flight up to the roof, and sometimes he left the rooftop door unlocked. Even if it wasn’t unlocked, you’d use the key under the mat. You didn’t remember everything. But you remembered that. And if the key wasn’t there? You’d break that fucking door down.

He sat unmoving in his meditation pose on the floor, the sound of your attempts to get into the apartment distant and far away. Meditation had been the only thing left he could think of that would allow him to escape the pain and the memories of you that had flooded his thoughts. Like this, with his mind and his focus withdrawn until it lay deep within himself, he’d hoped he’d be far enough away from the world that the ghost of you couldn’t reach.

Yet even deep in meditation, his instincts were set off by the crack! of his rooftop door slamming open.

He was on his feet in a heartbeat, his heart racing as he bared his teeth, his body prepared to face whatever threat had just broken in. The sensations of you, at the very least, had quieted during his meditation, which should have left him enough space for some small margin of peace as he threw himself into a fight. But that peace was nowhere to be found, because you were here again.

He recoiled from that thought the second it crossed his mind. This wasn’t you, that much had become painfully clear. You’d passed away somewhere far beyond his reach, away from the home, the life you’d lived here. The woman that stood on his landing now was nothing but a ghost, a fading memory and a terrible reminder of what he’d had and lost, what he’d earned by daring to reach for something good. There was no undoing it, no washing away the blood on his hands. If anything, how he felt for you had doomed any hopes of you staying long enough for him to reform that connection with you. He knew how you operated—hell, you’d tried to run on that hot summer night so many months ago after seeing just how much he’d cared, even if you’d ultimately changed your mind. At the time, he’d thought it was Destiny, the hand of God ensuring you remained in the Kitchen where Matt could keep you safe from the Man in the White Coat, here in this place where you both might… might shape something good out of all the broken pieces you’d both been left with. He knew better, now. Even the hand of God couldn’t break the curse Matt placed on those he loved. You would leave, leave like all the others, and he deserved it.

The only question that remained was why you seemed so, so fucking determined to make him suffer.

“Matt.” Your voice cracked as you stumbled down the stairs. “Matt, I—”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone, sweetheart?” he grit out, reaching up to fist his hands tightly in his hair. He’d never known you to be unnecessarily cruel, but there was no other explanation. “God, I-I can’t—you can’t keep doing this to me.”

“Matt, just let me—”

“Do you even care how much you’re hurting me?” He hitched out a broken laugh, something bitter and tormented, the sound absent all humor as you made it down the stairs. “All those months, all I wanted was for you to come back. I begged. I prayed to God, over and over again, that he would bring you back to me. And now that you’re gone, you just won’t leave. I can’t get away from you no matter what I do. Do you know what that’s like? To lose someone you love only for their ghost to haunt you every time you turn around?”

A soft intake of breath.

There it was. Now that he’d said it, you’d leave. There would be nothing more frightening to the You he’d first known than a word like love.

“I just…” His breath hitched again, something thick building in his throat. It was just another sign of his weakness, the same weakness that had gotten you killed.

‘I warned you, kid,’ came Stick’s voice, so smug that Matt bared his teeth. ‘I fuckin’ warned you the night I opened up her eye. But you didn’t listen.’

He started to pace wildly, ignoring your voice as he hunted for some opening through which he could escape, flee from Stick’s voice hiding in the corners of his thoughts, from your ghost. With every step his movements grew more frantic, more furious as his rage built like a rising wave: rage at himself, at God, at the monster who’d taken your memories and the possibility of a life for you here with Matt, and at you, too, because you just didn’t get it. “I just want to grieve, and God can’t even give me that much, can he? Is that what this is? Punishment? Revenge? Congratulations. Job well done. You can go.”

You tilted your head as you watched him pace, the same cock of your head you got when considering your potential routes forward. As far as he was concerned, the only route he’d give was a route out the door.

“I don’t know why you came back, and at this point, I don’t fucking care,” he told you hotly, nothing but burning smoke and thick venom in each word. “We don’t have a red thread anymore. There’s nothing to keep you here. Leave. Now. I’m not asking.”

Your soft response was a single letter, one that struck directly at the open wound inside his chest.

“...D.”

He snatched up an empty beer bottle from the kitchen counter in a sudden rage, turned, and hurled it past you.

You didn’t so much as flinch as the bottle came within inches of your head. Nor did you react to the distant shattering of glass, the sound of it barely audible over his anguished roar.

“Leave me alone!”

And then he froze in sudden horror at what he’d done, his heartbeat almost drowning out the soft sound of your steps. All he’d wanted to do was scare you away, frighten you away so he could break where you couldn’t see, because it had hurt, it had hurt to hear you call him—

Wait.

You’d… you’d called him…

“My Devil Man, my Saint Matthew,” you whispered, the touch of your hands cool and endlessly gentle as you cupped his face. His skin was wet, damp beneath your thumbs as you swiped them across his cheeks, when had he started crying? You brought his head down until you could lay your forehead against his, the taste of salt hanging in the air. Your voice grew achingly tender, so longed for that he swayed helplessly on his feet, wanting nothing more than to be held like you’d held him so often before when he was hurting. “I’m so sorry, D. I’m so sorry I left you alone, sweetheart.”

He closed his eyes tight, his breath growing shaky. You couldn’t know that he was two steps away from crumbling in your arms, fractures widening with every breath. He had no energy left to fight your touch, your misplaced mercy, but giving into the lie was another thing entirely. He couldn’t bear to hope again, not when it would crush him if he were wrong. “Foggy told you to… he told you to call me that, didn’t he? To see if you’d remember. But I can’t—you’re going to leave me, you’ll—” “Do you remember what I said before I left? Because I do.” You swiped your thumb gently against his cheek, your uneven breathing skipping and falling into rhythm with his as his hands shakily rose. They hovered hesitantly a few inches away from your face, terrified that you might vanish beneath his hands like a ghost. “I don’t leave my box behind, and I won’t leave you behind, either. I told you that you were stuck with me after Nobu. I meant it. It’s really me. I know you’re tired and hurting, sweetheart, but listen to my heart. What does it say? Truth or lie?”

…Steady.

Truth.

Could it really be you?

He held his breath as he dared at last to touch your cheek, stirring the fine hairs as he stroked his way along the familiar shape of your face, one he’d traced so often in his dreams. Your skin was damp with tears just like his, another sliding down to bump against his thumb as your lips quirked up into a brilliant smile. And the moment his trembling fingers passed your lips, you kissed the tip of each with a warm fondness, a mirror of that night you’d held his broken, torn body and he’d kissed your fingers and palm.

“How much do you… do you remember?” There was a ringing in his ears as the world beneath him seemed to roll beneath him. “Everything?” “Not everything. Some pieces are still missing, with Foggy and Karen and my job, but I-I remember enough. I remember you, and what I had with you.” Your voice grew fierce and fervent then as you drew in a sharp breath, preparing yourself. “I remember you, D. And I remember that I love you. I love you, Matt Murdock, all of you, so, so much. And I will never leave you alone again.” You loved him.

You loved him.

The weight of it—being forced to let you leave the city, the ensuing months alone, the agony of the past few weeks thinking he’d lost you entirely, and now this, this, knowing you loved him like he loved you—hit him all at once, and with a sudden groan he started to drop. You caught him in your arms, the two of you sinking to your knees as you held him tight and he wound desperately around you in return. Only then did he start to fall apart in your arms, shaking in your hold, his grief, his hurt, his relief spilling out in choked gasps where you’d tucked his head down against your neck. He fisted his hands in your shirt as you both rocked, and a ragged moan tore free from him, spilling against your skin when you lifted your hands to trail your fingers lovingly through his hair. You knew, you remembered just how to hold him when he was hurting, a balm across every last wound. His shivering, touch-starved body remembered your touch, too, drowning beneath the sudden surge of good, warm, safe, soft after months of nothing but pain, so much so he couldn’t help but gasp out your name.

“I’ve got you now, D,” you whispered, burying your face against his shoulder until he could feel the heat of your tears against his shirt, too. “I’m here, now. You’re not alone. I’ve got you, Matt.”

“I thought you were gone.” There was no way for him to truly sync his breathing with yours, not with the way you were both crying, but still his body tried on instinct, tried and failed over and over again. He closed his eyes tighter, burying his face deeper against your throat as he pulled you in even closer, until there wasn’t an inch of space between your body and his, where he could feel every beat of your heart against his skin, as if to make up for the way he’d almost… almost chased you away. “I thought you’d left me and I was alone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder, and that I didn’t-I didn’t go with you, but I couldn’t—I’m so, so—”

“Hey, hey, it’s ok.” You kissed shakily at his hair, his shoulder, and whatever other parts of him you could reach, your breath, your tears, your absolution washing over him like rain. “It’s not your fault, D. It’s not your fault sweetheart. None of this was your fault.”

“But—” “Hey. Listen to me, before you get any further down in that hole.” You lifted his head from your shoulder, cupping his tear-stained face in your hands again. For a moment you both simply breathed with one another, your forehead to his, soaking in the contact, the affection that you’d both dearly missed and needed. “What happened to me outside New York, my memory loss… all of that is not your fault. It never was, D. There are-there are a lot of things we’ll have to deal with in the future, things I need to tell you. Consequences of what we’ve done, and—but this isn’t one of them. Never this. You’re what helped bring me back.” “How? I didn’t…” He let out a breathless, watery little laugh. “I didn’t do anything but try to chase you away.” “Some part of me couldn’t help but be drawn to you. I remembered, deep down, I think.” You gave an amused little huff. “And once Foggy showed me how to get into our thread, all your memories are what brought me back, helped me remember, because I could feel it, how you loved me. That was the key. Speaking of which…” You leaned in to nuzzle up against his cheek, your voice lowering to a whisper. “I think I made you a promise, you ridiculous man. And it’s one I intend to keep.”

And with one small tip of your head, and a single slow breath…

“Kiss me when you come back.”

…your lips brushed against his for the very first time, tender and achingly soft, and so full of love that it would have stolen his breath away if he’d had any left at all.

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d envisioned months ago just before you left, something triumphant and wild. Nor was it anything like the first kisses he’d imagined before that, the first kiss he’d thought this journey with you might lead to. And God only knew he’d considered kissing you for the first time more than was healthy.

Your first kiss with him was, instead, shaky and gentle, tasting of salt and tears and the fading shades of grief retreating like streamers of night before a welcome sunrise. Slowly, and then more surely, his lips began to move against yours, finally allowing himself to truly taste you for the first time, his eyes slowly falling closed as your fingers ran fondly through his hair, you, it was really you, you remembered. With a quiet moan, he breathed you in deep, calling your grace, your love deep into him until it settled there against his heart, knowing that, no matter what else might come, he would never lose it again, one of his hands rising to tenderly wind around your throat, his other hand finding yours so he could lace his battered fingers tightly with yours.

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d expected, but it felt perfect all the same.

Because all that was left was him…

And you.

180 notes · View notes

plainclothesdisaster · 2 months

Text

Red Knight Chapter 6 - Masks

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Beginning | < Prev | Next >

---

Some nights later Jason was wrapping up some Red Hood business outside a local pub when he noticed something off about the ghosts. But not the curse ghosts— the regular spirits around Gotham that he’d started to see after his first encounter with Danny. Ever since he’d started fighting the curse ghosts with Danny, the regular crowd had stopped actively causing him trouble, but it didn’t change the fact that seeing all manner of bizarre and terrifying creatures that no one else did could be incredibly distracting. Like it was right now.

Dozens of ghosts of all sorts were running (flying, jumping, what have you) down the streets, away from something. A look in that direction didn’t reveal anything obviously wrong, and there were no sirens ringing. Regular people on the street were still just going about their business, so it couldn’t be that bad, right? He didn’t know enough about ghosts to know what could spook them like this. Jason, perhaps noble and perhaps stupid, set off in the direction they came from, toward whatever had made them run.

He followed the trail of fleeing ghosts and the growing sense of unease in his stomach. It led him downtown, under one of Gotham’s many bridges– a wide interstate overpass that let large shadows pool underneath. The few streetlights that worked did very little against the darkness.The unsettling energy he’d followed was so strong here it made him want to turn tail like all the other ghosts had. Every instinct said it would be unwise to stick around.

Then he recognized Danny’s voice. The clipped tones of the conversation made it instantly apparent he wasn’t catching up with a friend. From this distance, stationed behind a graffiti-covered concrete pillar, Jason couldn’t make out exactly what was being said.

He risked getting closer, turning invisible and maneuvering to the next column in. It was enough to finally parse the words of a voice he didn’t recognize, with a formal accent he couldn’t place.

“How much longer are you going to play this silly game?”

“I have a good reason for being here. An entity like this can’t be allowed to stay topside unchecked. You’re the ones who pointed it out, remember?”

“Irrelevant! You are stalling. the lesser kings grow restless.”

“You know I don’t give two shits about what those uptight raisins-“

“You are well aware that there are more important matters that need your attention. Your duty is to—“

“I don’t work for you.” Danny’s tone gained a dangerous timbre that sent a shiver down Jason’s spine. He caught his breath behind his teeth.

The warning also shut up the other speaker. The silence hung for a long moment. Then Danny spoke again.

“I will make an appearance in the Zone when I get a chance. Until then get lost.”

Jason caught a whorl of green in his peripheral and assumed it meant the other speaker obeyed Danny’s command. He had to fight his own instincts to abscond as well. He was certain if the words had been directed toward him he wouldn’t have been able to resist either.

He still wanted to bolt. He wondered if Danny had sensed him lurking there. That was a conversation he certainly was not supposed to hear, and the smart thing to do would be to get out of there before he got caught. But some of the uneasiness had faded from the atmosphere when the other speaker left, and Jason reminded himself that this was Danny. Danny wouldn’t hurt him.

Probably.

He came out from around the corner before he could chicken out, striding over like he’d just walked up. Danny brightened as soon as he saw him, which made Jason’s gut do a funny little flip.

“The ghosts are acting weird. Everything okay?” Jason kept his voice even.

“Oh, yeah,” Danny replied breezily, “Nothing to worry about.”

Lies. But Jason didn’t press even as he burned with curiosity. Better not to raise suspicion. Danny didn’t seem interested in questioning what Jason was doing here either, equally avoiding having to talk about the previous conversation.

“So.” Danny got that familiar conspiratorial look. “Since we’re already out here. Let’s go hunt some curses.”

A curse ghost gnawed on a gaudy statue of a golden bull in the financial district. The ticker on the outside of a gleaming skyscraper scrolled, reading some headline about record stock prices. A man slept on the bumpy ledge beneath the statue. He shivered as black goo, invisible to him, dripped down onto his side. The curse ghost loomed over him, the same shape as the bull, as if it were its shadow.

Then, without warning, Danny was on top of it. He whooped as the bull bucked, but he rode it rodeo style, holding on to its neck with one hand like some sort of gothic cowboy. Jason stared mutely, aborted plans replaced by incredulous disbelief. Maybe this was how Bruce had felt when he jumped into fights as Robin.

“Where the hell did you learn to fight?” Jason pulled his sword, positioning himself to help corral the beast away from the buildings.

“Self taught, mostly. Can’t you tell?” Danny wielded a whip of green energy in his off hand, snapping it at the bull’s sides when it got too close to anything breakable.

Of course Danny had no formal training. Nobody who had any sense of self preservation would fight with such reckless abandon.

“But you know what they say about grabbing the bull by the horns.” Danny did just that. Jason rolled his eyes. But a moment later he felt a buzz of power in the air and Danny wasn’t smiling anymore. He was focused on his hands, on the bull, almost like this stupid stunt actually had a purpose.

Then the bull let out a piercing shriek, twisted in a horrible convulsion, and launched itself sideways like a cannonball.

It crashed into the side of Gotham Central Bank, taking Danny with it completely through the stone brick wall. Alarms immediately started ringing. Shit. Jason jumped through the hole in the wall after them. With the amount of times this place had been targeted by rogues, Batman had it at the top of their surveillance priority. They had a matter of minutes before one of them showed up.

“We gotta go!” Jason shouted through the dust of falling rubble. “Fast!”

Danny faced off against the bull in the middle of the lobby. “Going! As fast! As I can!” He punctuated each phrase with a blast at the bull. Jason felt the power behind each one in his throat.

The curse dodged a blast. Then, as if Danny were a matador flashing his red cape, the bull charged.

Jason reacted before any thought surfaced. He strode once, twice, then swung his sword in a wide arc. It sliced through the curse ghost’s side, knocking it away from Danny and sending it sprawling to the marble floor.

Danny recovered quick enough to whip out a thermos and zap it up. Jason’s heart thudded. He’d panicked for a moment. He’d panicked when he thought that thing would hurt Danny.

“Thanks,” Danny tossed over his shoulder with an easy smile.

Jason nodded mutely.

He didn’t look after other people. Everyone was disposable and replaceable in this line of work. Bruce taught him that. He couldn’t start worrying after someone else’s life, not when they chose to risk it. Especially not someone who was practically a stranger.

But this wasn’t a stranger. This was Danny.

“We’ve got company,” Danny muttered, eyes toward the hole in the wall where they’d crashed in.

Spoiler stood in the gap, silhouetted by hazy moonlight. “You doing bank robberies now, Hood?”

He wouldn’t get any sympathy from Steph, but then again he hardly knew her. At least it wasn’t Tim. Or Bruce.

“Mind your business,” he snapped. “But no. You can check. Money’s all still there.”

“Right, right. And would he have anything to do with the giant hole in the wall?” She gestured to Danny, who gave a meek little wave. “Your new… partner?”

Danny choked on a chuckle at the same time as Jason barked, “Not my partner.”

Steph smirked. “Sure. Anyway, Batman is on his way, so you can explain it all to him.”

Danny froze, tension in every muscle. Jason shifted, angling himself in front of him.

“I’m actually gonna skip this session with Dr. Bats. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

Jason gestured to Danny with a tilt of his head, and Danny fell into step beside him as they bolted for the atrium stairs.

“Shit,” Steph hissed as she leapt after them. “Oracle, you tracking them?”

Fuck. Babs getting involved spelled signs of having their shit wrecked and on display for Batman to see before the sun rose. Jason lifted a hand to scan the frequencies on his helmet coms, hoping, halfheartedly, that he was still coded into their channel.

Batarangs whizzed past their heads as they careened up the stairs and burst out the doors onto a mid-level courtyard. They ran to a stone railing that looked over the street two stories below.

“This can be easy if you just answer our questions.” Steph appeared in the doorway as Jason turned. His eyes darted, scanning for options. Flat walls on either side of them. No good grapple point off the edge. They could go back the way they came- through Steph- but he wasn’t confident they could get past without having to hurt her, which. No, he wasn’t going to do that.

Beside him Danny practically bounced on his toes, his eyes doing the same dance. They had a lot more options for escape if they relied on Danny’s powers, but that meant outing him as meta-adjacent. That couldn’t happen— in that they both seemed to be in silent agreement.

“ETA 5.” Batman’s voice crackled through Jason’s helmet. They still used the old frequency after all.

“I have visual.” Oracle now. “Spoiler, keep him talking.”

“What are you doing here tonight, Hood?” Steph took a step closer, but she still maintained a healthy distance. She wouldn’t make a real move till backup arrived. Smart.

He just had to give Danny enough of a window to get out of sight. Then Danny could disappear for real, and Jason could deal with the Bats on his own. He just had to have hope that Danny had enough self preservation instincts to run when he had the chance.

“Who’s your friend?” Steph continued despite his silence.

“I’m Danny,” Danny replied, again with a chipper wave. Jason glared at him through his helmet.

“Danny, did Red Hood put you up to this?”

Danny snorted. “No. I mean, not really.”

Funny to think that Jason could make Danny do anything at all.

“It’s alright. We’ll make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

“That seems unlikely.” Danny threw him a glance.

“Shut up,” Jason hissed.

“We’ll take him from here.” Spoiler took another step forward. Batman would certainly swoop down at any second.

“Thanks for finally giving us an excuse to bring you to heel, Hood. I hear Arkham is real cozy this time of year.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. Of course he’d be treated like the other Gotham rogues. Foolish of him for expecting any better from the old man. He clenched a fist.

“Oh,” Danny stopped his fidgeting. The air around them went still. “Nah. I don’t think you will.”

Jason blanched. Danny couldn’t be stupid enough to use his powers now, could he?

“Losing visual.” Oracle’s voice crackled through static. “There’s– it’s some kind of interference.” Around them the landscaping lights in the courtyard flickered. Jason swallowed. Yes, it seemed, he could be that stupid.

“Danny, what–” Jason began, voice low, but before he could finish he felt a hand grab the back of his jacket. Suddenly he was invisible, and then suddenly he was weightless, and then suddenly he was flying. Spoiler shrunk beneath them as they crested the rooftops. Up he went over Gotham, dragged by Danny’s firm grip on his collar, streets whizzing past at dizzying speeds below.

Jason opened his mouth and a thousand things didn’t come out. He just gaped, strung along behind Danny like a fish on a line.

Cold wind pulled at Jason’s jacket as he glanced up at Danny. His face was a shadow, unreadable.

Danny didn’t slow down until he circled down onto their usual Crime Alley rooftop a few short minutes later. Jason felt gravity turn back on as Danny released him, gentle enough that he didn’t even stumble. Like he’d done this before.

“Fuck,” Jason half whispered.

“Sorry. Would have given you more warning, but it kinda would have defeated the purpose if she caught on to the escape plan.”

“No, that’s–” He rubbed a hand over his mask. “Now they know you’re a meta.”

“Not a meta.”

“Whatever. Now they know you’re someone they should know about. Once you are on the radar of the Bats you don’t just get off. They’re going to come after you.”

“They can try.”

Jason paced across the roof. “I’m serious. You should have gotten out when you could have. I could have dealt with them alone.”

“I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“It was stupid of you not to.”

Danny stood across from him, arms folded petulantly. “You cowing to their interrogation wasn’t a smart option either.”

“I would have been fine. I’m very good at lying. And if that was another bull pun I will strangle you.” Danny smiled sharply. Jason groaned. “And they wouldn’t really hurt me. Family, remember?”

Danny fixed him with a glare. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt you.” The words were icy. Jason bit his cheek. From what he’d shared, Danny would know first hand how much family could actually hurt you.

“Whatever. I’m going home.” Jason turned to leave. Danny hmphed but didn’t press it. They exchanged curt goodbyes and parted ways.

Jason simmered with annoyance the whole way home. He could see it now, how it would pan out. Bruce would find out about the ghosts, about the curse. He’d swoop in and try to fix everything, and then he’d try to fix Jason. This was the crowbar that Bruce would use to pry open the door back into controlling Jason’s life.

And Danny— he tried to imagine a world where Bruce tolerated Danny. Removed from all the ghost weirdness, he was prime adoption bait, from the looks to the tragic backstory and the fraught familial relationships. But he was certain Danny would also react very poorly to Bruce trying to control him. And Bruce would absolutely try to control a powerful meta in his city.

None of this changed the fact that the city was still cursed. Nothing to do but keep fighting. Only now they’d have to always be looking over their shoulders.

The next morning he dressed as Jason and took his bike to Gotham University. He posted up outside the science and engineering building where he knew Danny had class. If Bruce had tracked Danny here, Jason wasn’t about to let him face Batman alone.

Maybe he was being paranoid— They only had Danny’s first name and his face, nothing else. It had been less than 24 hours since their encounter with Spoiler.

Yeah. No. He wasn’t going to underestimate them.

The towering oaks and manicured lawns of the campus felt foreign to him. It hardly felt like Gotham at all, not the real Gotham. The tall iron fences around the grass made sure to keep the real Gotham out. He scanned the doorways for campus security. Jason stuck out enough he wouldn’t put it past them to try to kick him out. He considered just aborting this pointless escapade and leaving when a stream of students began wafting out of the doors.

Danny appeared among the crowd. Jason’s feet froze to their spot. Danny smiled when he saw him, surprised.

Danny made his way over to, breaking off from the other students. “Isn't this a bit far from your radius?” He looked natural here, a bookbag slung casually over his shoulder, notebooks under his arm. Like he belonged.

“Gotta get some fresh air once in a while.”

The corner of Dannyʼs mouth quirked up and Jasonʼs stomach twisted.

Danny waited for Jason to, presumably, provide a reason for being there. “Making sure Batman doesn’t come after you” seemed like a crazy, unreasonable thing to say. Especially in that moment, as a sunbeam poked through the clouds and students chattered around them about homework and sports and parties.

As if reading his mental gymnastics, Danny offered a lifeline. “You want to join me for lunch?”

“Sure,” Jason replied almost too quickly, grateful for the excuse. He allowed himself to be led toward a cafe a few blocks away. He couldn’t help but scan the streets as they walked, looking for any hint of potential snoopers. The fact that there were so god damned many Bat-minions now made it more difficult to hone in on any one obvious tail.

Danny nudged him with an elbow, a questioning glance on his face. Was he being that obvious? Beside him Danny walked with the casual air of an ignorant civilian. More relaxed than a native Gothamite. Like he hadn’t just barely avoided a disastrous confrontation with the Batman. It only made Jason more paranoid.

They made it to the cafe without incident and found a table among the crowd of other University goers on their lunch break. As they ordered and settled in, small talk came as easily for them over pastrami on rye as it did between punches. Danny told him about the complex physics theories he was studying in class and Jason listened earnestly. Jason reminisced about his own schooling, non traditional as it were, and talked of the hours he spent in Bruce’s libraries.

His gaze wandered to a table by the window where a couple sat, laughing. First date, maybe. A next thought tried to follow that one but he strangled it like a firm hand around a throat.

“Itʼs not often I get to see your face in the outside world.” Danny pulled his attention back.

“Appreciate it while you can.”

“I am.” Danny smiled and Jason was suddenly acutely aware of his gaze focused only on him. “It’s unfair really. You get to admire these good looks all the time.” He gestured to himself and put on a false pout, hair flopping over his face.

Jason rolled his eyes playfully, but it stirred up a lingering concern. Oracle had caught Danny’s face on camera. That meant it was only a matter of time until she- and Bruce- found him. All that could have been avoided if Danny had a hero persona like the rest of them.

“Why donʼt you wear a mask?” Jason asked. “Itʼs like hero 101 shit.” He didn’t mean for it to sound as accusatory as it did.

Some of Dannyʼs brightness faded. “Iʼm not a hero.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So youʼre just a guy with superpowers fighting monsters every night. In jeans.”

That earned him a reluctant smile. “Pretty much.”

Jason lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Batman has your face now. He knows you have powers. He knows you work with Red Hood. Wouldn’t it be easier if you kept that separate from-“ he gestured to the books, the cafe, his life- “this?”

Danny sighed, leaning back and folding his arms. “There’s not really a point in keeping secrets. Batman can’t stop me. We’re careful. And it’s not like the ghosts are gonna talk to the tabloids.” “Weʼre not that careful. One wrong move or stray camera could destroy your life.”

Danny laughed, dry and harsh. “Danny Fenton is dead. I donʼt have a life to destroy.”

Jason paused. He hadnʼt found anything in his searches to suggest that was true. And it made no sense. Danny Fenton had dreams. He wanted to finish his degree. He hoped to work for NASA. Jason hadn’t imagined that conversation. Something didn’t add up.

“How does a dead man register for college?”

“With some half-baked forgeries and an excellent hacker on speed dial.”

“And wouldnʼt it still be bad if the undead college studentʼs life got ruined?”

Danny looked away. “It doesnʼt matter.”

“It doesnʼt matter?“

“I’m here to fix a ghost problem.” His voice got tighter.

“You said you werenʼt trying to do ghost stuff full time.”

“Trying, yeah. Emphasis on trying.”

“Not very hard, I guess.”

Danny grabbed his bag and stood up from the table in one abrupt motion. He looked down at Jason with cold eyes. “At least I try.”

Jason flinched at the hint of malice behind the words. Danny wasn’t wrong. Jason Todd was dead, and he had no intention of changing that. He didnʼt need to. He had his mask and the kingdom he’d built with it. He didnʼt need to be Jason.

But Danny had dreams as Danny. Jason had seen the yearning determination in his eyes as heʼd looked at the sky. Danny was a good liar but not good enough to fake that.

“Where are you going?” Jason snapped.

“Why do you care?”

Danny turned and brushed past tables of other diners as he stormed out. Jason clamped his mouth shut to stop himself from snapping back. He didn’t move from his seat. He fumed silently. Nothing that he’d found online had pointed to Dannyʼs death. No death certificate, a hospital stay, an obituary, a gravestone. Nothing.

He thought about going after Danny. A good friend probably would have. Instead he remembered snippets from that overheard conversation. Duty, the other person had said. Something about Danny’s duty. Nothing to do with fighting Gotham’s curse, from the way they said it. Some other thing entirely.

Danny didn’t show up that night. Jason waited on their roof (fuck it all, he’d started to think of it as theirs) but midnight came and went with no sign of him.

Jason tuned into the Bat coms after barely fifteen minutes of silent sulking. A pang of worry lingered in his gut. Batman could have found Danny, and— and what? He doubted they could lay a finger on Danny, let alone capture him. He’d already been in and out of Bruce’s security undetected.

Still. He listened on the coms for any mention of their escaped meta, but it was just a standard night of patrol. Tim and Cass out in the field, Oracle guiding them. Bruce must not have been listening in closely because they’re lax on chatter on the frequency. It’s like a personal radio drama just for him, except it’s a window into the life that was no longer his.

Still, Danny’s silence didn’t feel good. Jason remembered the hardness in his eyes from that afternoon, The apathetic bite of his tone. But Jason banished any hint of guilt that tried to squirm its way out of him. Fine by him if Danny wanted to ruin his own life. That clearly wasn’t his responsibility.

“Disturbance at Robinson Park. Destroyed property. Perp unclear.” Oracles voice came steady and clear over the coms.

“On our way. Is it Ivy?” Tim responded, businesslike.

“Negative. The path of destruction points to something large, animal-like. But I can’t spot it. It’s like it’s invisible.”

Jason’s ears perked up at that. That was a curse ghost, no way it could be anything else. And as much as he loved to imagine Tim getting his whole ass handed to him by an invisible monster, he really should go deal with it because the bats would be in way over their heads.

Well, except for the fact that Danny wasn’t there. He’d never fought a curse ghost alone. For as good as he’d gotten with the ghost weapons, he didn’t always come out of these fights unscathed, even with Danny’s backup.

He sent Danny a text with the location- curse ghost here. Maybe that would make him get over his sulking and get out here to help.

Minutes ticked by with no response. Tim and Cass sounded more harried on the coms. Danny would almost certainly tell him not to fight it solo if he were here. He gritted his teeth. Jason didn’t need Danny’s approval. Or his permission.

He checked the straps on his holsters and sword then took a running leap off the roof.

By the time he got there the park was already in chaos. Tim stood on the path and swung his staff at nothing. Cass crouched by the swing set which was sprawled in a half crumpled mess. Neither of them looked at the curse ghost, which gnawed on a corner of a park bench.

In an ideal scenario Jason could lure the curse ghost away to avoid explaining anything to them. Then Tim’s head snapped toward the bench, alerted by the crunching of old wood between invisible jaws. Cass also tensed, ready to pounce. Fuck.

Together they attacked. Predictably, Cass’s foot and Tim’s staff went right through the mass of oily shadow with no resistance. It took actually seeing it happen for Jason to fully appreciate just how screwed they were. Normal weapons couldn’t hurt it. They couldn’t even touch it.

Annoyed, the beast stopped snacking and with a massive clawed hand it took a swipe at Tim. Tim didn’t see it coming, obviously, so he took the hit hard to the side, sending him tumbling to the dirt.

“Red Robin!” Cass leapt after him only to catch a lazy swipe from the ghost's tail, knocking her down into the bushes.

“Backup heading your way, hold on,” Oracle's strained voice came through his helmet. More Bats wouldn’t solve this. It would only end up with more of them hurt. But they knew too much already without Jason exposing his ghost powered weapons too. He just needed the right opportunity.

The beast prowled toward where Tim was still righting himself. It cackled like a hyena, jaws wide and full of sharp teeth. It lunged.

Jason was faster. He took two bounding, half-floating steps, swung his sword and caught the ghost in the jaw. He shoved it back from Tim as it yowled.

God fucking dammit. So much for laying low. But he couldn’t just watch them get hurt.

“Hood?”

“Infrared.”

“What?“

“Use infrared vision.” He looked down at Tim as he found his feet, keeping the ghost in his peripheral. He remembered Danny calling out the infrared detectors as part of his arsenal of gadgets (“Helpful if you can’t already see them.”) and he didn’t want Tim and Cass flailing around totally blind.

“And stay out of my way.”

The ghost lunged again and he met it with his sword. They clashed, and for all Jason’s bravado, his arms shook as the beast parried his swing. He threw it off with a surge of effort. Thankfully Tim listened and had scattered to the edge of the lawn where Cass had resurfaced from the bushes, out of the radius of the fray. But looking to check on him had been a mistake— Jason felt a claw slash into his calf before he could dodge. He sucked a breath through his teeth. He’d had worse. But he was reminded again that he’d never faced the full ire of the curse ghosts alone. He’d always had Danny to trade blows with.

Now the ghost looked at him, only him, with hungry black eyes and that insufferable cackle dripping from its lips.

“I’ve got visual on infrared.” Oracle, still in his ear. “It’s showing up as a cold spot—some kind of giant wolf.” Hyena, Jason corrected mentally before barely dodging another swipe of its claws.

“Got it,” Red Robin chirped. Jason dared another look to see he had indeed donned infrared goggles from his kit. “Going back in.”

Jason’s heart clenched. “No,” he grunted over the coms he was definitely not supposed to have access to, “Stay out of it.”

The ghost took the opportunity to launch itself at him. Jason found himself pinned under its massive paws, staring up into that gaping, laughing mouth.

“Hood!” If he didn’t know better he’d think Tim actually sounded concerned. Which—fuck, that didn’t mean anything since he couldn’t do shit to help.

Jason found his pistol and wiggled himself just enough room to press it to the ghost’s belly. He pulled the trigger and green energy exploded into the shadow, tossing the ghost off of him and fully exposing Jason’s own ghost shit for Oracle and everyone to see.

“You can’t hurt it,” he barked at Tim as he rolled to his feet. “Stay the fuck back.” Tim didn’t protest. For once.

Now that the guns were out he gave up any attempt at subtlety. He got nasty with his blasts and pulled nothing from his punches, calling every ounce of that green energy to the surface. He must have looked like a glowing menace to Tim and Cass, but he had little room to care. The ghost fought back with eager viciousness. Jason ignored the snap in his wrist, the teeth grazing his side, drawing blood. He just had to beat it down enough to capture it.

After another round of traded blows finally, finally, the curse ghost started looking worse for wear. It panted heavily, long black tongue lolling out of its mouth, and it oozed black sludge where Jason’s sword had left the deepest marks. He holstered a gun long enough to pull the thermos instead, and as it lunged toward him one more time he sucked it up in a beam of light.

The silence that followed was beautiful. He bent over halfway to catch his breath. He did it. He fucking did it. He did it without Danny.

From the other side of the lawn, Cass whistled. Jason stood and turned to face them, intending to take a quick bow before exiting stage left, but— there was Bruce. Batman had arrived sometime during the brawl. He stood protectively in front of Tim and Cass.

“Red Hood. Report.”

Nice to see you too. He rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

Then Bruce tried a different angle.

“Where is your new partner?”

Jason bristled. Batman being suspicious of him was one thing, but bringing Danny into the equation made the pit under his heart roar in protest. He turned back before he could think better of it. “None of your business, old man. Stay out of it.”

He didn’t appreciate the thin press of Cass’s lips or the hint of Tim’s chuckle.

“Let us help you.” Batman extended a hand. And oh if Bruce didn’t sound just a bit soft, and the offer sounded almost genuine. It only made his hackles raise further.

“You can’t help,” he ground out. And it was true. If Bruce couldn’t help him before all the ghost stuff, he absolutely couldn’t help now.

Jason took off toward his bike. If he was fast they wouldn’t catch him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to dissuade them further.

“Jason!” Batman broke his own rule to call out his name, and it was almost enough to get him to stop and go back. Almost.

He slipped between the trees and ran deeper into the shadows.

Jason had two more nights of worrying. Of listening in on police scanners (since he hadn’t been able to reconnect to the coms since revealing he had access) for any hint of Danny. Nothing.

Maybe Danny got wise and skipped town. Jason went to Danny’s apartment to check if he’d left. When his knock went unanswered he phased himself in through the door. A quick glance around said all of Danny’s stuff was still there. No sign of a fight. Jason stood in the center of the tiny apartment feeling like an ass. Now that he’d been there with Danny’s permission it felt wrong to be breaking in unannounced. Danny wasn’t just a suspicious unknown meta anymore. He was— well, he was something. Still suspicious. But undeniably on his side.

Danny could be MIA for any reason. Something could have happened with his mysterious family maybe, though that thought did nothing to calm Jason’s nerves.

He let himself settle into the more likely possibility that maybe Danny simply didn’t want to see him. It wouldn’t be hard for him to avoid Jason, break ins aside. Danny could simply vanish anytime he sensed Jason nearby. Maybe he’d been stupid for pushing Danny to talk. Dumb of him to think that Danny owed him anything real.

He opened his phone like he was going to text Danny, but after typing and deleting various attempts at concern or apology or both he just shoved the phone back in his pocket, message unsent. Their text chain only pertained to the curse ghosts after all. It’s not like Danny owed him a response for anything else.

On the third night, out of nowhere, Danny sent him a text.

You up?

Jason nearly frisbeed his phone across the safehouse when he saw the notification. It was just barely 2 am- he had finished his rounds and called it a night early. He hurriedly tapped a reply.

Where have you been?

Meet u at roof.

Jason didn’t know whether to be mad or relieved. He ended up pulling his pants back on and rushing out while feeling a strange cocktail of both.

As soon as his feet hit the roof Jason could tell Danny was off. His shoulders sagged, his face looked less full, eyes filled with less light. Suddenly Jason was less certain his absence had anything to do with their fight and instead everything to do with whatever caused him to look like this.

“What happened to you?”

“What are you talking about. Iʼm great.”

Jason raised his eyebrows, asking for more. Danny sighed and changed the subject. “Sorry I didnʼt reply about the curse ghost the other night. Did it do any real damage?”

“Tried to eat the park benches.” Jason leaned up against the stairwell wall next to him. Danny grimaced, and Jason left out the part where it nearly wasted Tim and Cass. “But I handled it.”

A bit of sharpness snapped back into Dannyʼs eyes. “Wait, what?”

Jason tapped the thermos on his belt. “Added ‘em to the soup collection. What, didnʼt think I could do it on my own?”

Danny hmmed in reply, his usual enthusiasm still dimmed. But Jason could see wheels turning behind his eyes.

“No faith at all. I’m insulted.” Jason cracked a smile.

“Did you get hurt?”

“Do I look hurt?”

Danny tilted his head knowingly. Jason pulled his jacket closer.

“I’m fine. And Either way, it was probably a good thing to keep you off the Bats’ radar for a bit.”

It wasn’t, however, a good thing that Danny looked like he’d been chewed up and spat out. Jason bit his tongue to keep himself from prying.

“The Bats were there?”

“Tim and Cass. Couldn’t let them get their shit wrecked by an invisible ghoulie.” Then he added, quieter: “Or Bruce’s.”

Danny let out a huffed pained noise under his breath. Suffice to say that his opinion on Batman hadn’t changed.

“We have limited time till they get more involved.” Jason leaned closer, trying to catch Danny’s eye. “So I have to ask— Where is this all going? Weʼre bagging these things night after night, but that doesn’t stop them from appearing. There has to be an end.”

“There is.” Danny pressed his lips together.

“The curse is actually just one entity,” he continued, “These ghosts we’ve been fighting- they’re like offshoots of it. The root is like… the queen of the curse. She’s the oldest one here, the initial kernel that grew into something powerful enough to spawn all the others.”

Jason blinked. “Then why havenʼt we gone after her?”

“I have. When I first got here. It sucked.“ He pushed up off the wall they were leaning against and paced across the roof. “She’s dug her claws in real deep, and all the power her minions get feeds her too.”

Jason did not like the sound of a foe that even Danny had trouble facing.

“But we’ve been cleaning up curse ghosts left and right. That must be putting a dent in her, right?”

“That’s the hope, yeah. So that next time I face her, it shouldn’t be such a disaster.”

“We.”

“Huh?”

Jason got off the wall to follow him. “Next time we face her. No way I’d miss out on sending her packing after all this.”

Danny was quiet a moment. “Right. Yeah.”

The hesitation in his voice was certainly not a vote of confidence. Jason did his best to ignore it.

“Anyway.” Danny said, shaking off a bit of the funk hanging over him, “It’s been too long since I’ve bashed curse heads. You up for a little tête-à-tête?”

“Always.”

They tracked a curse ghost to an old office building at the edge of Crime Alley. It was a remnant of when this place used to be Park Row, an imposing tower adorned with art deco details, now crumbling with neglect. They followed Danny’s senses up to the executive floor, where large wooden desks and rows of retro office chairs sat fading.

For a couple of long minutes as they stalked the dark halls, Jason feared the trail had gone cold. Then, from the conference room in the corner, he heard a pale keening moan. Danny flashed him a look, and then they began their usual dance.

Danny took the opening, crashing in through a half-screened window. Jason followed, blocking off the door. The rhythm came easy, like a set of ping pong across the conference table with the curse as the ball. He matched Danny’s pace more easily than normal, and he felt a curl of warm smugness in his gut before he took a glance at Danny. He looked downright sluggish compared to normal, like gravity had turned against him for once. His limbs moved heavily through the air, and when he twisted too fast Jason caught a wince snarl through his features.

The beast hadn’t stopped keening, but it was slower to get back to its feet now. Just a few more good hits and then they could wrap this up and Jason would demand Danny tell him what was wrong.

Then something happened that Jason never thought heʼd see.

Danny went down, hard. A sudden whip from the beast's tail sent him plowing through the wall, then another, then deep into a stack of ancient metal file cabinets with a nasty crunch. He didnʼt get up.

A spike of fear shot down Jasonʼs spine. A flicker of his old rage laced the next few swings of his sword, but right then he was grateful for it. It was enough to give him an opening to pull out the thermos. He sucked the curse up before it got any closer to Danny.

Then Jason stopped thinking as his legs carried him to the divot in the cabinets where Danny laid unmoving.

“Danny?”

Danny groaned, still alive. Half alive. Whatever.

Jason didnʼt know what to do. He reached out his hands and they hovered over Dannyʼs crumpled torso. The white of his t-shirt revealed growing red stains. And also, worryingly, green.

This was the part where Danny would sit up and crack a joke. Where he would tease Jason for worrying. Where heʼd smile that infuriating smile. But he didnʼt. His breath came in shaky rattles. His eyes stayed closed.

“Fuck.” Jason stopped hesitating and put his arms under Danny, lifting him gingerly from the dust and debris.

“Wha-?” Danny mumbled.

“Iʼve got you.”

Danny relaxed into his arms, his head resting against his chest, and Jason felt his heart stutter. Danny was too cold in his grasp, too light. But Jason didnʼt have time to worry about that. He needed to get Danny somewhere safe.

In a daze, he made his way to Dannyʼs apartment. Danny didn’t wake throughout the trip, just let out little pained sounds whenever Jason jostled him too much. When they arrived at the apartment, Jason used his jacket to phase them through the door. Glancing at the unmade bed, he opted to lay Danny down on the torn up couch instead— better to not get blood all over the sheets.

Jason knew where the first aid kit was from when Danny used it on him, so he grabbed it from the kitchen. Then he took the hem of Dannyʼs torn shirt and pulled it over his head. Any qualms Jason had about the invasion of Danny’s privacy died when he saw the wound on his side.

Huge gashes raked across his abdomen in parallel, torn deep into the skin. Claw marks, Jasonʼs brain provided numbly, though these claws must have belonged to something even bigger and nastier than the curse ghosts. Something worse than anything Jason had seen.

What the hell did this?

“Jason-?” Dannyʼs eyes fluttered half open.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jason admonished.

Danny blinked slowly, still out of it. “Didja get ‘em?”

He was still worried about the curse ghost? Jason nearly bit his tongue. “Yeah.”

Danny leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Good. Thanks.”

Fucking hell.

Jason turned off his brain and let his hands do the work of patching up Dannyʼs side in mental silence. Danny didnʼt stir as he disinfected the wounds, as he taped butterfly bandages over them, as he pulled a fresh shirt over Dannyʼs head. If it were anyone else Jason would have needed to do stitches, but with Danny he knew better. His accelerated healing would take care of it quicker than he could pull the stitches back out.

The pack of bandages had been nearly empty. Seems it wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt. Something ugly twisted in Jason’s stomach at that thought. So instead Jason looked at Dannyʼs face, free from worried creases in sleep. Danny looked so vulnerable, so peacefully human. Jason fidgeted with his hands.

“Not so invincible after all, are you?” he breathed.

The space between them felt smaller than it had before, all pretenses of keeping his distance shattered. What once had been a wide gulf, gaping like the wounds on Dannyʼs side, collapsed like an imploding star.

Jason couldnʼt stop himself. He reached out with a timid hand and closed the remaining distance. He pushed aside the lock of dark hair that had fallen in Dannyʼs closed eyes, his fingers brushing featherlight over Dannyʼs forehead. Reverent and tender. Danny shifted and sighed.

Jason froze. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. He couldnʼt do this. It was like holding an overripe strawberry in his palm— he didn’t trust himself not to crush it. He shut his mind off again as he fled for the door, leaving Danny to wake up alone.

Danny showed up on their rooftop the next night, no sign of the injuries from the night before, looking chipper as the day they met.

“Thanks.” Danny said, handing Jason a paper wrapped burger.

Jason took the gift without rising from where he sat. “For what?”

Danny responded by lifting his shirt to reveal the gashes in his side. They had sealed over in puckered pink scars. Fast, maybe even more so than Jason had expected.

“For the patch up.” Danny pulled a second burger out of the bag and sat on the ledge next to him.

Jason waited for him to say more. To offer an explanation for the wounds, or what gave them to him, or where he’d been. Danny just bit into his burger and chewed wordlessly. He looked off somewhere in the distance.

“I could have handled it.” Jason broke the silence. “You shouldn’t have been out fighting like that.”

“I’ve had worse. Plus, now I’m fine.”

“Not caring about getting hurt just because you heal fast isn’t a good battle strategy.”

“Who said I was good at strategy?” Danny had that damnable smirk on his face.

“Either way. You could have left it alone for another night. Gotham’s been cursed as long as I’ve been alive.”

“Longer than that.”

“So it can definitely survive one night without its blue-jeaned protector.” Danny scowled, but didn’t argue further.

Jason reminded himself he shouldn’t care. Danny didn’t owe him anything, and he liked it that way. Any more info on Danny’s life would just serve to entangle them more than they already were, which he very much didn’t need. The only answer he really needed at this point was how to stop the curse ghosts.

He still hadn’t had any luck in cracking the pattern though. Even with the added info about the heart of the curse- the queen- progress was slow going. He’d shifted his efforts to finding her specifically, but so far she’d proven incredibly elusive. There was just too much violence in Gotham to parse what was tied to the curse and what wasn’t.

They finished their meal in silence as sirens wailed in the distance.

Jason stood and stretched. “Almost can’t imagine this place without a curse, though. It’s part of the charm.”

Danny crumpled his burger wrapper and tossed it in the bag. “Once it’s gone you and the Bats will actually be able to change things for the better though. It won’t be such a Sisyphean fight anymore.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sisyphus? Didn’t peg you for a mythology fan.”

“I’ve, uh, taken some practical mythology courses.” Danny blushed, which sent Jason’s stomach tumbling.

Jason honestly couldn’t picture a Gotham without all the corruption and violence and greed. What would that place even look like? Would that Gotham even need a Batman? Or a Red Hood?

Or a Danny?

“What about you?” Suddenly Jason had to know.

“What about me?”

“After the curse is gone. Will you stay?”

Danny’s lips turned down. Thoughts spun behind his eyes. Jason’s gut dropped and he regretted asking. He didn’t know which answer he wanted to hear. He didn’t know which would be worse.

Danny opened his mouth to reply. Then a curse ghost crashed onto the balcony below them, stealing his answer away.

Another week went by with no lead on the curse’s cause or its queen. Jason, for his part, had kept it professional when it came to Danny. They met nightly, hunted curses, then parted ways. Like following a script. He ignored, with great effort, the spike of worry he felt every time Danny took a hit, or the way his whole body clenched whenever he thought he saw the shape of a cowl following them in the shadows. He couldn’t let himself lose focus.

Find the queen. End the curse.

So far the bats hadn’t actually bothered them any further, which meant that either they had bigger fish to fry, or that he still had one scrap of good will left in Bruce’s eyes. But he wouldn’t bet on it. Which is why they needed to find the queen and finish this quickly. Then everything could go back to normal.

He’d go back to running the Crime Alley scene uninterrupted, and Danny would go back to… something else. College? Jason wanted to believe it, but after their conversation in the cafe, he couldn’t be sure. He thought about never having to fight another curse ghost with Danny and it made his heart do an unpleasant twitch. He wanted the curse to be gone, he reminded himself. Wanted the bats to have no reason to be suspicious. Wanted to be done with all this ghost bullshit.

At least that’s what he told himself.

Jason had gone out scouting for leads on the queen when he found himself at the graveyard. The slant of the evening sun had turned the familiar stones a shade of pale golden even through the overcast sky. It wasn’t the first time he’d been back here.

He stopped walking at a particular knoll. The headstone at his feet read Jason Peter Todd. The grass had long regrown over where he’d dug his way out. He wondered if Danny had a grave, one that had been erased from the records.

Ghosts- regular ghosts, not curses- floated about, semi transparent. They must be pretty weak if they were only half visible even to him. Or at least he thought so, based on what little Danny had told him about how ghost biology worked. The ghost of a woman, older but not old, floated closer. She looked at him expectantly.

He gestured to the headstones around them. “One of these yours? I can, uh, clean it up a bit for you? If that helps?”

“I don’t- I can’t- remember—“

“I’ll read some names. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“Abigail? Chelsea? Lorraine?” He stopped at a grave with fresh soil. “Sarah?”

The light shifted as the sun slanted lower. He noticed her neck- deep purple bruises wrapped around her windpipe with the distinct outlines of fingers.

Anger twisted in his stomach. “Or maybe it would help more if I found who did that to you.”

The spirit’s eyes snapped to him, suddenly sharp.

“Hurt.“

The tone of her voice sent a spike of fear down his spine, gravely and staticy and filled with so much anger.

“Whoa, whoa. You okay?”

The ghost woman shuddered and changed in front of him. She warped into a heinous visage with sharp teeth and pointed fingers, her hair twitched at wrong angles in a writhing cocoon, her eyes turned to pools of inky black.

“Hurt. Hurt him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him kill him kill him kill-”

Jason’s own rage leapt to a sudden, blinding boil. It felt like fire ants swarming under his skin, hot and sharp and bright. He felt the woman’s pain as if it were his own, and felt the need to cause pain ten fold in return. The beast under his heart roared, hungry for revenge.

He relished how familiar it felt, the clarity of purpose, the surrendering of will, the open bleeding wounds that could only be paid back with more blood. He thought about the relief he’d feel if he finally put a bullet through the Joker's brain. Better if he made Bruce do it. He’d hurt the other Robins as a motivator, kill them if he had to. He’d do whatever it took to make that bastard feel hopeless, to make him bend, to bleed, to make him suffer like he had—

Oh, fuck. Jason blinked away just enough of the green in his vision to stumble backwards. He needed— he needed to feel the crunch of bone under his hands, the taste of fear–. No—no. He needed to get away, needed distance between himself and the vengeful ghost. He ground his teeth as he fell to the earth. He dug his nails in the dirt as he clawed backwards, away.

He spat blood— he’d bit his tongue. He scraped at his holster, whipping his pistol out. Its weight steadied his hand as he trained it on the spirit.

“Knock if off,” he spat at the ghost, poisonous heat still raw in his voice.

The pressure of her pain didn’t relent, still clawing at his insides, scraping into the oldest parts of his anger with black heat. He pulled on his own energy in return, desperate. It leapt readily to his call, building at the tip of his gun.

“I said fuck off!”

He shot, and the cannonball of green energy barreled into the ghost. She wailed but she didn’t stand a chance. Her form dispersed in green flames. The claws around his heart vanished with her, leaving him feeling raw.

Easier to beat than a curse ghost. But the encounter left him feeling more than twice as rattled.

Then he rolled onto his knees and dry heaved over the grass. Flashes of what he’d wanted to do to his brothers, to Bruce, surfaced through the clearing haze in his mind. He could have done it. If he’d had any less awareness of the cause of those thoughts, he was certain he would have.

Cold sweat simmered over his skin. He curled his arms around his legs like it would make him warmer, or settle his stomach. It did neither.

He could have killed them.

Danny would have stopped him, he thought. The thought had no real backing in reality, but he believed it all the same. If Jason had actually gone after Bruce and the others, Danny wouldn’t have let him do it.

It provided enough hypothetical comfort to allow him to remember how to breathe.

He raised his eyes just enough to look at the empty air where the ghost had just been. He almost didn’t see it, but once he focused it was unmistakable. A wisp of black shadow, identical to what it looked like when Danny blasted apart a curse ghost. But she hadn’t been a curse ghost. Had she? She’d been completely harmless. Normal, until—

Jason leapt to his feet, wallowing forgotten. He had to get to his computer.

“I figured it out.” Jason had the patience to knock at Danny’s door when he got to his place instead of crashing through the window like he wanted to.

“Figured what—Huh?” Danny, in sweats, coffee mug in hand, allowed Jason to barge past him into the messy apartment.

“How the curse ghosts show up. The pattern. The cause.”

He pulled the thumb drive from his pocket, plugged it into Danny’s computer and sat down in the desk chair. “They’re connected to deaths.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Shut up and let me finish. Not just any death.” He pulled up a map with an overlay with points for all Gotham deaths. They far outnumbered the curse ghosts.

“You said not everyone comes back as a ghost, right? What makes them more likely to?”

Danny leaned on the arm of the couch. “A death or a life that’s especially violent or unjust, usually. Combined with a strong sense of purpose unfulfilled. But the curse ghosts aren’t like that. They’re the kind that exist without consciousness. They are the abstract purpose of fear and suffering.”

“But what if they didn’t form like that from nothing?”

Danny tilted his head, bidding Jason to continue.

“What if the most violent, least just deaths-“ he pressed a key isolating those points on the map- “resulted in ghosts that somehow got turned into curses.” He clicked another key and brought up the layer of curse ghost sightings. It matched nearly perfectly.

Danny’s eyes widened. “It all tracks. Except for the fact that ghosts can’t just majorly change their nature like that.” He paused. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Something more powerful than them triggers it. Something else is actively changing them.”

Jason smiled. He could tell they already made the same conclusion. “The queen?”

Danny nodded, excited now. “The queen.”

“We just gotta find deaths that are likely targets for her. She’ll come out to change them, and then we zap her up.” Danny pulled out his phone and began tapping furiously. A moment later the familiar sounds of the police scanner came through the tinny speaker. ‘Retired’ vigilante his whole ass.

Jason was infinitely relieved that Danny didn’t ask him how he’d had this epiphany. He very much did not want to tell him about the ghost from the graveyard and what he’d almost done. Or the fact that the woman had warped into something like a curse ghost because of him, not the queen.

“How will we know which death she’ll use?” Jason pulled at a cuticle. Night had fallen since the graveyard, and the scanner was a constant buzz of chatter and codes.

“We’ll know.” Danny tapped his leg with restless energy. They waited and listened as the minutes turned into nearly an hour.

Eventually Danny broke the silence. “You don’t have to come,” he said quietly. Guiltily.

“Are you joking?”

“The queen- the true curse- I encountered her once. Before. She’s– she’s not like the others.”

“So?”

Danny fiddled with the half-finished belt on his desk. “This junk only does so much. You’re still fighting with a handicap.”

The unspoken offer was there- a cure, a fix, a permanent silencer for his rage. A fix which was tied up in his own power- if he could even really call it that. It still felt borrowed more than something of his own.

He folded his arms. “Almost everything I’ve ever fought has been stronger than me. Why would I stop now?”

“You sure I can’t talk you out of this?”

“I’m insulted you even tried.”

The chatter on the radio crescendoed, pulling their attention back.

“Killer Croc and Scarecrow reported at the North Docks. Batman spotted on scene, perps still on the loose. Two DOA.”

Jason jumped to his feet. “That’s gotta be it, right?” Danny stayed where he was on the couch a moment before he rolled to stand.

“You ready?”

“Always.”

“Let’s go.”

They rode their bikes side by side through the streets till the apartment blocks turned to squat warehouses at the harbor’s edge. They ditched the bikes when they spotted police cruisers, opting instead to weave their way between shipping containers on foot till they found the scene.

A handful of cops lingered around a shipping dock. Cameras flashed as they took photos of something near the water’s edge. No sign of Croc, Scarecrow, or Batman. Whatever confrontation had happened it was already long since. Danny led him to the top of a container where they waited and watched.

“I take it she won’t come out with Gotham’s finest hanging around?” Jason asked below his breath.

“Doubtful.”

Minutes ticked by as the crowd of cops began thinning. The energy in the air practically crackled. Danny had lost his usual nonplussed air- he shook out his fists and paced the length of the container. They waited until the last of the cops drove away, leaving the dock in a deceptively peaceful sort of silence. Anticipation coiled in Jason’s stomach.

“Maybe I’m wrong. She might not show.” Jason crouched, unmoving.

“She will.” Danny spoke with zero doubt. Through all his impatient fidgeting his eyes never left a spot at the end of the docks. Where, Jason assumed, the man had drowned. He couldn’t see a body. But Danny had a sense for these things.

Suddenly Danny stilled, and Jason snapped to attention. He crouched beside him, looking out to the dark water. Nothing changed for a long moment.

Then the light shifted colder and dimmer, like the streetlights suddenly weren’t as effective at pushing back the dark. Their sodium yellow glow turned pale sickly gray. A thin layer of mist rolled across the water and over the shore.

Jason knew what the curse ghosts felt like. He’d felt it nearly every night for the last six weeks. This wasn’t that. Where the curse ghosts were hot fury and gunshots, this was a slow smooth knife of dread, cutting deep and settling in.

Danny sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. It sounded more like a hiss.

And then Gotham’s curse herself appeared.

A black cloaked figure glided across the water, barely distinguishable from the black of night around her. a circlet of shadows hovered over her head. As she moved Jason realized that it wasn’t just a cloak— the figure was shadow all the way down, writhing and shifting in the illusion of human form.

Around her a pack of curse ghosts followed at her heel like obedient hounds. The dripping goo of their bodies looked garish next to hers, all shimmering mist and elegance. As terrifying as she was, there was something deeply familiar to her. Both elusive and enticing.

Jason chanced a look at Danny. He’d stopped pacing. He had never seen such dangerous focus on his face before.

The queens entourage stopped at the dock Danny had been watching. Out of the water in front of her something blue and luminescent rose up— a ghost. The ghost they’d been waiting for.

Whispers filled the air in lower frequencies that thrummed through his body more than he actually heard them. He couldn’t parse words at this distance, but the meaning became clear enough. The queen extended a claw-like hand toward the fresh ghost. And, just like the one at the graveyard, it began to warp into something awful right before their eyes.

“Stay here,” Danny bit out below his breath. Jason recoiled at the thought of hanging back, but Danny shot him a look with such intensity that he choked on his retort.

Danny jumped down. He landed on his feet in the open cement of the shipping yard, fully visible under the glow of the desaturated street lamps.

“That’s enough.”

Danny’s voice shook with the same rumble as the whispers, cutting through them like ice. The curse queen and her entourage turned their attention to him instantly.

“Come out to play again little king?” The queen's voice was unexpectedly smooth, like cool silk down his spine. “I do find our games so enriching.”

“I find them rather dull personally,” Danny answered. His body language was nonchalant, but there was still an edge to his voice. He tilted his chin toward the warped ghost. “Neat trick.”

“You like it? Gotham’s restless dead truly thrive once I remake them in my image.”

“They’re not yours.”

The temperature dropped ten degrees in the span of a heartbeat. The queen’s pack of curse ghosts began lurking onto shore and positioned themselves in a wide circle around Danny. Jason tensed. “This city is mine. Anyone who comes here is mine to keep.” She turned her attention back to the new ghost. “And mine to devour.”

The shadows around the queen flared and the new ghost convulsed with a horrible garbled cry. Black goo exploded from its eyes, its mouth until it was covered. It fell to the queen's feet, a heap of sludge that writhed like worms. She laughed, a haughty rumble that had Jason’s hair standing on end. When the ghost rose a moment later on shaky, inky legs, it took the form of a hound. Just like the others.

Around Danny the lights flickered and popped. The queen laughed again, this time a piercing cackle.

And then the hounds attacked.

In the analytical parts of Jason’s mind, he had accepted that he’d never seen Danny fight with his full strength in any of their brawls. He hadn’t truly understood what that meant until now.

Barely a week prior Jason had managed to scrape a win against just one curse ghost by the skin of his teeth. Now Danny fought seven. At once. The shipping yard turned into chaos as Danny blasted curse ghosts in rapid succession, throwing them into shipping containers with such force the containers bent and toppled. Swaths of black goo splattered across the dock every time Danny landed a hit. Flashes of green and shadow exploded against one another like toxic fireworks.

Danny spared no breath for his usual quips and banter. Instead, his lips pressed into a firm line, broken only sporadically by a flash of his fangs as he tore into the hounds with easy viciousness. Jason practically chewed through the inside of his cheek. He could barely keep up with the pace of the fray as Danny’s glowing form darted through the gauntlet of claws and ink. He gripped the hilt of his sword from his hiding place. He could help. He couldn’t just watch. But just being in the queen’s presence still felt like a skeletal hand around his throat.

Danny faced off against two hounds from the dock side. He didn’t see the one from behind. Fuck that. Jason jumped.

He swung the sword in a wide arc downward and, just as its jaws reached Danny, relieved the curse ghost of its head. Goo splattered to the dock with a satisfying thunk.

Danny whirled on him, palms alight with energy. His eyes went wide in a kind of panic. “What are you–”

“I’ve got your back.”

Before Danny could protest, Jason stepped for another swing of his sword, catching another hound in the side. No room for Danny to argue. They fell into the rhythm of battle.

This Jason knew how to do. Armed to the teeth with Danny’s gadgets and weeks of practice, the clawing fear became background noise to the rush of adrenaline. He slashed heads and unleashed blasts and zapped with the thermos. Sounds of metal slicking through muck rang out, alongside the pained grunts and roars of the curse ghosts and his own frenzied breathing. As the dock got covered in more and more goo, he found himself grinning. He’d gotten rather good at this.

He looked to Danny, hoping for one of those sharpened smiles. Instead, Danny looked back at him with that same strained panic.

Jason saw now that Danny was focusing on keeping the curse ghosts away from him, enough that he’d taken more than one nasty hit. It threw Jason’s rhythm, enough that a hound got its teeth into his arm. He hissed in pain. Danny was there an instant later, ripping the beast off of him by its neck and tossing it back into the harbor.

“Quit hovering. I’m fine.” Jason growled.

“I told you to stay back.”

“I came here to fight.”

“Just let me handle it.” Danny stepped in front of him, throwing up a green energy shield to push back another curse ghost.

Jason ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be scolded like a child. He’d had enough of that from Bruce.

They were down to just two hounds left. The queen watched from the end of the dock. Danny went for her, two bounding leaps and a green sun in his fist. The newest curse ghost— the one they’d just watched turn— leapt out from behind her. They clashed and tumbled back through the open large bay doors of a dry dock warehouse.

The queen stalked forward after them. Neither of them reappeared, but the sounds of crashing metal and breaking glass rang out from inside. Jason ran toward it.

He got inside the warehouse just as Danny subdued the new curse ghost, sucking it up into his thermos with a grimace. The queen stopped before him, her shadow wide and menacing like wings surrounding her.

“What I don’t understand is why you keep playing this little game?” Her voice filled with cloying sweetness as she bent closer to Danny. “Why not just end it? What are you waiting for?” Dannyʼs eyes shifted across the room and found Jasonʼs. A mistake.

The queen whipped her head around with a crack. Her eyes- two black holes in her face, somehow darker than shadow- locked on him. His stomach dropped.

“Or should I have asked who?” The queen's full attention hit him like a flood. She had no mouth but Jason could hear her smile. Every nerve he had left was telling him to run. Every muscle in his body refused to move.

Her whole body twisted to face him, slow as dread. Jason gripped tighter on the sword in front of him. He swallowed a shallow breath.

“What do we have here? One of my wayward knights? So wonderful to finally meet.” The queen took one smoky step toward him.

Then every lightbulb in the warehouse exploded.

“He’s not yours.” A snarl ripped out of Danny like an earthquake. It cut through the sudden darkness, layered with unnatural echoes and tones that Jason felt under his skin. He tore his attention away from the queen to look back at him.

His eyes burned bright like a signal fire under heavy eyebrows, even more prominent with all the lights out. But that wasnʼt what made goosebumps rise across Jasonʼs skin. He’d never seen Danny angry. Heck, heʼd rarely even been more than annoyed. But now he was outright furious.

Sure, the weight of the queen's presence had struck a chord of fear in Jason, deep and instinctual. But that didnʼt hold a candle to what he felt now. He looked at Danny and his mind filled only with terror of the primal sort. Like a hare caught in the jaws of a wolf. Prey amongst a predator.

The queen threw back her head and laughed once more. It sounded like groaning metal and dissonant strings.

“Then stop me!” She screeched, and she lunged toward Jason.

As the swirling mass of shadows convulsed in his direction, Jasonʼs reflexes kicked in and he threw the sword up to block. It didnʼt matter. A shadowy talon sliced clean through it. The top half of the blade clattered to the ground unceremoniously.

Shit. Heʼd really started to like that sword.

Then he realized the sword wasnʼt the only thing the talon had cut.

He looked down. A thick spear of shadow extended through his stomach and out his back.

The queen laughed louder as she pulled it out of him with a wet schlick. He put a hand to the spot. Instantly his palm was drenched in red. Blood, so much blood. Warm and sticky and wet. Running out of him like a faucet.

Distantly he heard Danny yell out to him. He wanted to lift his broken sword to strike back, but his mind hadn’t caught up with what his body already knew- the fight was over. He’d lost. Embarrassing, really. After all his bravado he still wasn’t even in the same league as a real threat. Not even close.

A dull fuzzy feeling started overtaking the sharp bite of adrenaline in his system. That wasnʼt good. That felt like dying and he really didnʼt want to do that again. As his legs gave out and he fell to his knees, he realized he didnʼt really have a choice.

He looked up across the room again as his vision started to blur. Dannyʼs face was warped in absolute fury. The shadows around the edges of the room cowered back. He blinked and there was a flash of blinding white light. Every nerve in his body iced over with terror.

His eyes wouldnʼt focus. The world turned into a slideshow, flashes of images and sounds that lingered on the back of his eyelids. He clung to them like a lifeline.

A flaming crown. A starburst of shadows. The pungent smell of gasoline and ozone and iron. Cold, so, so cold. Black being ripped from black, pained terrible screeching. Neon green, brighter than the sun. Cold, deep chasming cold, down to his bones.

He crumpled to the cement.

A howling wail that nearly broke his heart.

And then blissful oblivion.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #danny phantom #dp #dp x dc crossover #dc x dp #danny fenton #jason todd #dead on main #dead on main ship #dp x dc fanfic #danny x jason #fanfic #red knight fic #long post #happy almost 1 year to this fic #i write.....so slow lmao #tumblr readers we are diverging from the ao3 chapter count bc I combined the previous two chapters

87 notes · View notes

glitter-stained · 2 months

Text

"It ends like this: a warehouse, a child, and a bomb. It's magic, in a sense, the way a moment you have everything in the world and then nothing at all. Call it the miracle of death: a child is only a child until the screaming stops, and a bird is only a bird until you twist its neck.

It starts like this: Jason digs up a grave, and is surprised by what he doesn't find."

#sneak pick at chapter 1 of The Protector!!!#snippet #the protector #jason todd #red hood #batman #batman and robin #batfam #dc #batfamily #jason todd fanfiction #red hood fanfiction #ao3 batfam #ao3 jason todd

63 notes · View notes

eddiekaspbrakirlsblog · 3 months

Text

Richie Tozier you would’ve loved Chappell Roan

#specifically #the talking part at the end of hot to go #and the beginning of naked in manhattan #but also red wine supernova #guilty pleasure #and casual #richie tozier #it 2017 #it 2019 #reddie #it chapter 1 #stephen kings it

73 notes · View notes

outlawruben · 4 months

Text

No I’m not thinking about Hosea Matthews living up to his name and being the prophet of doom in the Van Der Linde Gang..

But not only that, I’m also thinking about how Arthur seems to be turning into his own prophet of doom.

I always think about these two Hosea quotes that were both directed at Dutch:

“They want to parlay? it’s a trap!” Which is what he predicted, and Arthur agrees. Of course, Hosea and Arthur’s opinions are overruled by Dutch and Micah, and Dutch, Arthur, and Micah meet up with Colm O’Driscoll. This leads to Arthur being bushwhacked and kidnapped by the O’Driscolls, and nearly beaten to death within an inch of his life, and shot point blank in the shoulder. Arthur barely makes it back to camp, when he brings up his and Hosea’s argument from earlier. “I told you it was a set up Dutch.”

The next quote I’d like to mention is:

“You’ll damn us all.” Which was of course a cutting remark Hosea shot Dutch’s way. This quote was said in the mission before Bronte’s death, which lead to the story- let’s just say- concluding.. (we all know how it ended for Hosea and the rest of the gang) Aka, Dutch damned them all.

And as for Arthur, we see him become Hosea in many ways in chapter 6. Before we play the mission: “That’s Murfree Country” Dutch states: “You sound like Hosea.” When Arthur suggests saving the women, and children (aka something that Hosea’s been talking about since chapter 1) and several times Micah makes comments on how Arthur is becoming like Hosea. Especially in the mission: “The Delights of Van Horn” you can have a hidden interaction with Micah where he mocks Arthur’s “whiny” tone and then states: “You almost make me miss Hosea.” both of these prove that the only thing Arthur became as he was inching closer to death is a carbon copy of his father figure/mentor.

#also in chapter 1 when Arthur tells Hosea: ‘We told them it was a trap!’ (Blackwater)#Hosea states: ‘yes but who listens to me anymore?’ which is a similar sentiment Arthur had in chapter 6 #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 fandom #I love digging too deep into red dead redemption 2 #hosea matthews #arthur morgan

70 notes · View notes

i-am-roadrunner · 4 months

Text

Katrina Law - "The Strangers: Chapter 1" World Premiere Arrivals Photos -> [x]

#Katrina Law #public appearances #public event #klawedit #nyssa al ghul #arrow cast #KatrinaLaw #red carpet #The Strangers: Chapter 1 #she is so beautiful #my edit

83 notes · View notes

olavored · 4 months

Text

Ralsei by the tree

I still like Deltarune

this animation doesn't really loop but I'm tired of working on it, it already has 54 frames and I'd need to put like the double if not more for it to loop sooooooo... But as a first attempt for looping pixel art, I think it's pretty good, learned a few things

69 notes · View notes

kscs-the-radiostar · 2 years

Text

Your connection is pleasantly quiet, not a stir in the room. It's boring, actually. The only sign Galvan is even there is the sound of papers being filed. Every tap is uncomfortably loud now, and the cabinets are deafening thunder.

But you wouldn't call it the sounds of life.

Is this what his work is like? Is this it?

:Yeah, yeah it is:

How sad...

What a thrill Scrollen must have been last week.

:the connection has expired:

:would you like to redial?:

#delta!au #collidrune #chapter 1 red

2 notes · View notes

the-real-treasure · 2 months

Text

Treasure Treasure!

A OPLA Sanji x Reader

Master List Here

Chapter One: Shipwrecks and Hopeless Dreams

Summary: There’s a boy in the kitchen you would rip out your heart for. He hopes it will never come to that.

Trigger Warning: Threats and descriptions of violence, blood and gore, starvation, depressing language(?), Reader's Devil Fruit power is overwhelming and overstimulating Word Count: 2,828 **Edited 12/09/24**

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Standing in the crows nest of the mizzenmast, the sea salted wind burned your cheeks. Two years aboard the Orbit, and you still weren't used to the grittiness of the air when out at sea. The whipping winds and swirling storm clouds did not ease your discomfort, especially with the growing height of the waves and the discontented rumblings of the wood beneath your feet.

Before you had stepped foot on the Orbit, before your and Sanji's new lives had started, if someone, anyone, had told you that ships could have dreams, you would have called them crazy. What would wooden planks and cloth sails know about dreams, wishes or aspirations you would have wondered to yourself. Now though, now, with the Orbit creaking and moaning for more adventurous tidings than carting cruising passengers across the seas of the East Blue, you knew better. Anything, anything, if imbued with enough spirit and life could dream of more.

You closed your eyes. You couldn't think about that now. The storm was already causing a headache.

Then, amongst the screaming of the wind and the roaring crash of the heightening waves around you, the sound of splintering wood cracks below you. Snapping your eyes open, you peered through the darkness below you, only to spot another ship lurching through the water towards you, yellow duck figurehead near indiscernible in the darkness of the sea's blackness.

Pirates.

The shout rang out alongside the continuing of cannon fire. The man in the far crows nest screamed as he toppled from his perch into the frothing and dark water below, but you paid no mind. It wasn't the most brutal death you'd seen and it wouldn't be the last, you were sure of it. There were more pressing matters to attend.

Sanji. I need to find Sanji.

Your heart was pounding in your ears as you scrambled down to the deck, guns firing and people screaming around you. To others, it would look disconcerting how calm an eight year old appeared in the presence of the scourge of the seas but in that moment you were solely focused on escaping below deck to find your reason for being your best and only friend aboard.

SANJI-SANJI-SANJI

Your mind screamed his name along to the roaring of your heartbeat, pushing, punching and driving through crowds of panicking cruisers, crewmembers and cackling pirates equipped with cooking utensils and wicked sharp knives.

(The planks below your feet roared with joy and ache. Finally something, finally adventure)

Finally reaching the door to the galley, the roaring of your heartbeat turned into an all out shriek, seeing your Sanji, your Sanji, held to the wall by a giant with a stupid braided moustache and a knife to his throat.

Your mind went blank and your blood boiled. The act was on of instinct as you leapt onto the pirates back with a ear rending screech, tearing at his face and eyes with your nails, desperate to pull his attention away from your Sanji. The blond idiot decided to ignore your obvious attempt to save him as he joined in your screeching and clawing of the giant man between you, wracking his nails against the hand holding him hostage as the ship around you roared in encouragement of your bloodthirsty nature.

So enraged were you with the threat to Sanji, that you didn't realise the roar was coming from the tearing of the wood as the combined rage of the storm, the boundless strength of the sea and the continued barrage of cannon fire tore the hull in twain, the entire ship toppling into the salty water.

(The Orbit ached. She was so alive, if only for a moment, she lived.)

It was as the sea lapped your ears, soaking the bandages wrapped around your palms and weighing down your forearms, that your blood pressure cooled and your thoughts started to drift away from you, all fight and blind rage lost to the frigid water. You didn't register the desperate arms of a terrified child wrapping around your torso, or being scooped up like a sack of potatoes as your consciousness slipped into the dark depths of the East Blue. All you could see in front of misty eyes was the warm glow of yellow light on a stormy night, a blonde haired blue eyed figure looking down at you. Making you promise to try.

I'm sorry. I really did try.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

It was the unfiltered sunlight and warm stone below your cheek that woke you. Prying open your salt encrusted lashes was a trial, but catching a glimpse of Sanji lying strewn across the rockface beside you spurred your body to action, legs launching you up right and towards him before your surroundings had even registered.

You nearly collapsed on top of him, grasping desperately at his clammy and bloody cheeks. He was breathing and you joined him after a moment of pure stillness. Rage began to rattle trough you as he roused and you made eye contact with the man who had held him in harms way, stupid braided moustache drooping in the intense sun. Sanji's voice called from behind you to the man perched on the rock's edge.

"What happened?"

"A storm." The man's voice sounded gritty, like the wind had felt last night. Your nails dug into your palms. "Sunk both our ships."

"But..." His voice was weak and tired. "But the crew?"

"They're dead, aren't they?" It wasn't a question, not with the way you snarled it around your mouth like a sour juice. "Your pirates killed them all, left us to get shipwrecked!"

"All dead," he didn't blink at the accusation, "except for us."

You could hear the shuffling on the rocks as Sanji sat up behind you. "What d'we do?"

"We wait. And we hope that a passing ship spots us before that sun," he gestured to the horizon, "bleaches our bones."

“Now. This is all the food we got.” He stands from his perch at the edge, grabbing the smaller of 2 canvas sacks and tossing it at the two of you. “So eat slow. There’s no more after this.”

Rage swells in you but, still weak from the sea water and already starting to bake under the bright sun, you know none of you are in a fit state to start picking fights just yet. Sanji disagrees with you, glaring between the old man and the larger sack behind him.

”Why do you get the bigger one?!” H pulled himself up off the rocks and lurched into your back, steadfastness refusing to let him approach the pirate in front of you.

”’Cause I’m three times your size, that’s why!”

”There are two of us!” Sanji roared back.

The man snarled down at him over your shoulder and you nudged him further behind you.

”You know something? You should be glad that I’m giving you anything at all. Now,” Looking between the pair of you with a glare, “go over to the other side and keep lookout. And I mean it. Don’t bother me unless you see a ship.” He tilted his head, “You got it?”

He makes eye contact with you and crowds your space, spittle flicking into your eyes and making you yearn for the salty winds of the crows nest.

”I said, you got it?!” You feel Sanji shying into your back, he was two years your senior but you refused to do anything other than put yourself between him and potential threats. “Now go!”

Sanji grabs the sack and begins storming his way up the rock face behind you. You step back, intending to follow but refusing to be the first to drop eye contact. Deeming you no threat, how could you be with no weapons and nails torn blunt and bloody from the scratches in his face, he turns and returns to his sea-facing vigil. You turn and follow Sanji over the rocks.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

The island was cone shaped from what you could gather. Peering over the edge as you skirted around the perimeter, you saw the rock fall away into the sea, having worn away from decades, maybe centuries of corrosion by the sea. Thick needles jutted out of the surrounding water, and you think for a second on how funny and strange the luck of your life was. Any other group thrown against these rocks would have been naught but shreds of meat, not even a carcass left for seabirds to pick at but no. Not you and Sanji, you just had to survive and be left stranded on a ridiculous rock in the middle of the ocean with a blood soaked, waterlogged and irritable pirate to boot.

(Hatred, paranoia, apathy. They rang through your bones like vibrations through a bell, ringing through your head. The island hated you being here as much as you hated being here.)

It had been almost a month on the rock and as the rain pelted down on you and your golden boy, a familiar hopelessness had landed squarely in your mind. Hidden in a small outcropping in the barren rock, you both shielded yourselves as best you could from the torrential downpour. You were barely dozing, trying to keep in front of the idiot boy beside you as the wind howled across the darkness of the sea, soaking you in cold and noise and bells-

Bells? Both your heads raised as the faintest ringing of a ships bells echoed out of the storm, and in the distance you could barely make out the outline of a ship on the horizon. Wild panic seized you both as you leapt out of your cover screaming for its attention. You both pushed through the hunger and exhaustion and screamed at the top of your lungs, begging for them to hear you.

They didn’t.

(Hatred, paranoia, apathy. Hatred, paranoia, apathy. The cycle rang and rang and rang.)

A few days later you both sat at the edge of your island. It was yours now. No one else would want it and the only other person here was an awful silent pirate you hadn’t seen in weeks.

(You quietly hoped he was dead.)

You both looked at the last loaf of bread, blue mouldy and hard. Sanji tore off two pieces, handing one to you and quietly looking at the other.

You both eat in silence.

Over two months had passed on the barren rock. There was no food left from your sack.

(You had stopped counting the cycles.)

You had lost the sense of hunger to a complete emptiness a few days ago, after having spent days passing back and forth the tiniest morsels of anything, both refusing to take the last bite until you were trying to shovel crumbs into his mouth. You had nearly broken your promise already and you refused to let hunger make you break it truly this time.

(But they just wouldn’t stop ringing.)

Sanji sat beside you with his arms wrapped around his stomach, grimacing and quivering almost imperceptibly.

”The old man had twice as much food.” Your eyes moved slowly over to him as his trembling grew more noticiable.

(Hatred.)

”We can last a few more days.” His head snapped to you.

”Can we?” He was near hysterics.

(Paranoia.)

”Give it a few more days, we can’t afford to be stupid-” He staggered to his feet ignoring you.

”We can’t afford to be this hungry. He has twice. As much. Food.” And he was off. “If he won’t give us any, I’ll kill him myself.”

(Apathy.)

”No, Sanji-” You pulled yourself up after him, scrabbling for purchase on the rocks as your torn and blistered hands pushed you up.

(The ringing won’t stop)

He grabbed the knife and climbed over the rock separating the two of you from the old man. The bedraggled pirate, hair a mess but moustache still neat looked up at you as you both stumbled down towards him.

”Thought I told you both to stay put?” Sanji gasped and panted as he reached the sack on the ground, you barely caught yourself from falling into his back as you caught the back of his shirt.

(Hatred.)

”You still have some food. You gotta give us some!” Metal clinked against metal as he tore through the bag with the small knife, ripping the canvas and allowing the contents to spill on to the stone.

(Paranoia.)

Gold and jewels tumbled out of the bag, no food in sight. You pulled yourself away from Sanji as he gutted the bag, slowly approaching the worn down man as the boy was yanking out more and more gems and treasure in a desperate search for sustenance. You stopped short of him as Sanji gasped behind you.

”Where is it?! Where is it?” He advanced on you both waving the knife through the air, “There’s no food, how are you still alive?!” He stumbled to a stop beside you, following your gaze to the tied off and bloody trouser where the man’s limb used to be. Your voice was barely a whisper, throat dry and cracking from dehydration.

(Apathy.)

”Your leg…” Sanji finished the question for you.

(The ringing stopped.)

”What happened?” Two pairs of eyes followed his averted gaze to the sharp flat rock a few feet from him, the tip coated with a small layer of gore and stained in blood. “You ate it?! You ate your own leg?”

A wave of exhaustion hit you, and you slowly lowered yourself to sit again on the rock, eyes focused on the gorey sight but unseeing.

”You gave us all the food. Why?! You don’t even know us, why would you do that for a stranger?”

”Because, little eggplant…” His voice suddenly sounded as tired as you felt, head sinking, “I have been searching for the All Blue… my whole life. But now my time has come to an end. You share the same dream as me.”

(Your head pounds and the feeling -ever present, ever cloying- in your chest swells. Something inside you whispers thrills to you.)

”Believe me, the All Blue is real.”

(Believe me)

“It’s real. And if I can’t find it, then maybe you can.”

(Swirling blues, giant fish alien to you swimming in endless circles)

”So I’m gonna need you to live on. And I’m gonna need you…”

(Crystal waters as clear as glass)

”…to fulfil that dream…”

(Far far away, but it pulses and you feel it in your heart and your mind and your whole being)

”…for both of us.”

Sanji collapses onto the rock beside you, his head rested on your shoulder as, not for the first time, you wish that stupid disgusting fruit you were force fed as a child was actually useful. Of the three left for you to pick from, of course yours was a compass for the fools and idiots who had a hope of an immense and impressive future.

There was a world in which your ridiculous Treasure Treasure fruit had been replaced with the Gem Gem fruit, at least you could have created a shelter, as sparkly as it may have been, or the Pal Pal fruit and you could have enlisted the assistance of some dolphins or sharks, maybe even a passing Sea Beast to aid you off this rock.

No. You were left with the image of a brilliant swirling cerulean lagoon, teaming with fish and plant life the likes of which no man could even dream of in his wildest most ludicrous musings. You couldn’t even pinpoint it on a map if you wanted, only the vaguest of directions and destinations were afforded to your brain.

You raised your arm, jostling Sanji’s head and both men turned their head to follow it as you pointed off into the horizon. A small smile grows on his exhausted, sun soaked, blood encrusted face as he realises where you’re pointing.

”It’s still far away.” Your mumble barely audible.

(It reminds you of hiding in a dark dank corridor, clutching a book to your chest as you stare into the sobbing eyes of a terrified child and your chest clutches at the memory.)

”Too far?” The man is looking at you both like you’ve finally lost it, but this is a routine, well practiced but almost forgotten to the hopeless situation you’re all in.

(You wished you had remembered earlier. This will have to do.)

”Never too far. Not for us.” Your misty eyes turn to meet cloudy blue that start to clear for the stars to sparkle in.

”Have you worked out how long it’ll take to get there yet?” You chuckle and smile, the first real one in weeks.

”No. Weeks maybe. More likely months, could even be years.” Your eyes clear up with his and you turn a bright grin to the confused pirate beside you. “But the All Blue is out there.”

”And I can lead you to what you'll treasure most!”

Next Chapter: Straw Hats and Treasure Maps

52 notes · View notes

thesleepyskipper · 4 months

Text

Seven Sentence Sunday!

Thank you, dear friends, for the tags @onthewaytosomewhere, @kiwiana-writes, @blueeyedgrlwrites and the open tag from @myheartalivewrites!

It's an extra special one today, as my first chapter for good neighbours is now live on AO3! PLUS the first chapter of this @aroyallybigbangrwrb fic includes the AMAZING art too!!! 😍

Here's a little snippet from a future chapter!

Later that evening, he calls Bea for their weekly FaceTime chinwag. He gets to see David, which is often the highlight of his day, though he did see Alex in those grey joggers today so David’s got stiff competition. He won’t be sharing that with Bea though. He does, however, tell her all about how Alex had fixed his drawer.

“This Alex fellow sure seems to be at your flat quite often, Hen. What’s happening there?” she inquires, waggling her eyebrows at him.

“Nothing’s happening. He’s my neighbour and he was doing me a favour, Bea.”

And here's some tags for some other dear friends!

@rmd-writes, @celeritas2997, @cricketnationrise, @cha-melodius, @welcometololaland

@orchidscript, @three-drink-amy, @iboatedhere, @alasse9, @sparklepocalypse

@nontoxic-writes, @indestructibleheart, @maxbegone, @noahreids, @firenati0n

@anincompletelist, @anchoredarchangel, @priincebutt, @emmalostinwonderland, @getmehighonmagic

@heysweetheart-writes, @jmagnabo92, @suseagull04, @duchessdepolignaca03, @hgejfmw-hgejhsf

@dragonflylady77, @theprinceandagcd, @henryspearl, @agame-writes, @fullsunsets

@nocoastposts, @inexplicablymine, @na-dineee, @notspecialbabe, @benwvatt

@cactusdragon517, @onetwistedmiracle, @tinyarmedtrex, @caterpills, @tailsbeth-writes

@ninzied, @porcelainmortal, @littlemisskittentoes, @miss-minnelli, @kordeliafawkes

@stratocumulusperlucidus, @bitbybitwrites, @idealuk

And open tag to anyone else I missed!

#rwrb #rwrb fic #red white and royal blue #firstprince #fandom event #a royally big bang #rwrbrbb #seven sentence sunday #neighbours au #they were neighbours #chapter 1 is finally here #hope you enjoy #thoughts and opinions welcome

59 notes · View notes

bigtreefest · 7 months

Text

Chapter 1: Breakin’ Up With a Broken Heart

From: Bigger Houses Series

Pairing: (Future) Mountain Ranger! Ari Levinson x Reader, mentions of past ex x reader

Summary: A year after a breakup that left you shattered, you’re ready to start life anew in your secluded Colorado mountain cabin. Just when you swear off love is when a new beast crosses your path.

Word Count: 1,896

Content/Warnings: Mentions of heartbreak, in-depth description of a breakup and feelings regarding that, safe driving in juxtaposition to a reckless person, deep introspection, enjoyment of mountain cabin vibes, lmk if I missed any

Author’s Note: This serves as a lot of exposition for what I hope will be a very lovey story; everyone knows you’ll probably face some heartbreak first. Also, yes, this is heavily based on my first heartbreak. What about it? Anyway, please enjoy the start of this long-anticipated fic. Likes, comments, reblogs, and asks are appreciated more than you know. And in case you didn’t hear it yet today, I love you.

Dividers by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

I STRONGLY suggest listening to this song, not just because it’ll help get across the vibes I’d like, but also because it’s a really good song.

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist | Next >

Your break-up

It’s been months since you walked out on him and left town in a cloud of dust. It didn’t end well, but you’d be lying if you said you thought he was right for you.

One year ago

It ended in a text. Nine months gone in a text.

I’m done.

To which you responded: You mean our relationship? Ok.

It was honestly a relief. You had been looking for a way out, but couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Maybe a part of you wondered if someone would ever want you that much again, even though he only ever showed it in words and not action. Your head was okay with the situation, but it seemed your heart didn’t get the memo. Even though it ended by what you considered a mutual agreement (if that’s what you call him dumping you over you not visiting on a weekend you were spending with your family since he didn’t prioritize anyone’s time but his own), it still hurt. Three days later, he posted a pic with a new girl and a new car the same price as the ring you two had looked at.

He was a textbook narcissist with mommy issues, how’d they always find you? It was the kind of relationship where three months in, you should’ve ended it, but stuck around for another six. It was full of late-night calls, but not even the good ones. These were the ones that happened because he never seemed to have time for you during the day. The attention seemed good at first, but the calls would leave you tired the next morning, unable to get up as early as you wanted to so you could be productive. And you couldn’t talk to your mom and sister about it. They hated him. They saw through his selfish behavior before you and you wish you would’ve listened before giving him everything you could, which still wasn’t enough.

He said he wanted to get married hardly a month in because he loved everything about you. At first, you thought it was a joke, but the more he said it, the more you somehow convinced yourself that was what you wanted, too, but it could not have been more far from the truth. You wanted a happy life with a partner, but not like that and not that fast. Well, was it too fast? Or did it just feel that way because it was with the wrong person? Plus, it was less of a partnership, and more of a continuous compromise put on your part. Either way, as time went on, you realized that every small conversation was leading to a fight and your work and other relationships were suffering from the time he expected of you, but never returned. All he did was expect you to give, not holding himself to that same standard, but for some reason, you kept holding on. You had even looked at rings, not committing, though, because he knew you’d want him to speak to your mother first and she would never go for it. So, the relationship continued to drag on until he got upset since you said no to him one too many times.

But that was so long ago now. You did your time crying, listening to all the sad songs, wondering where you could have possibly gone wrong until you had enough. The only thing you really did wrong was not trust your instincts. You went too far following his heart and not far enough with your own mind. Love can be cerebral, right? It should be. There was no reason to feel sorry for yourself, you were better off and doing all the things you wanted that he’d held you back from before. He had very evidently moved on, and so could you. Sick of feeling down in a town that only reminded you of heartbreak, you found what you needed right now: a new job and an open Zillow posting you’d been watching for forever: your ticket out.

You were taking a vacation to your brand new start, tears long gone and dried with the wind that blew through your hair as you drove through the wooded mountainside. The sun was warm on your face, all loneliness was left in the darkness you left behind. Boxes and bags graciously organized by your mom filled the back of your SUV, and her’s sat just as full, driving behind you up the mountain passes. Before you’d gotten up here, the two of you had stopped at the last gas station, filling up your cars, getting a couple snacks, and stretching your legs before the final couple miles upward. Standing outside your cars gassing up, she looked over to you.

“Hey, just a reminder to be careful in the mountains. You don’t know what’s up there. Mountain lions, bears, snakes.”

“Oh my” you said giggling at your own Wizard of Oz reference.

She smiled and rolled her eyes at you “haha, very funny, but I’m serious. Not just about living there, but driving, too. You never know when a deer could jump out.”

You’d heard this a thousand times, being from wooded, albeit less dense, areas before. Plus, your mom was always concerned about you. Perks of growing up with a dad who was never really present. All of her focus could go to you. Never seeing a proper model relationship was probably half of the reason you had gotten into this mess, too, but you’d never blame that. She’d given you all she could and done a darn good job raising a driven, successful daughter (in every aspect except romance). You were eternally grateful for her support of moving where you had always wanted. It was honestly the perfect opportunity. Once the pumps clicked and the gas was finished, you both prepared to hop back into your cars.

“And remember, don’t talk to strangers.”

“Mom, we’re driving. I doubt we’ll run into anyone else up there.”

She shrugged and you responded with a small smirk, shaking your head as you put the keys in the ignition.

Back to driving higher and higher in elevation, you were drumming your fingers on the dashboard to the songs on the radio that you had blasting. Benefit of driving alone: no interrupted music. As you kept going, the road was becoming narrower and windier, pairing with the dimming afternoon sun. As you were rounding a big bend, you saw something step out into the road and you immediately swerved around it to avoid crashing, pulling over onto the side right after. What was that? A bear? A deer? No, not a deer, too tall. Your mom pulled over right behind you and rolled down her window as you got out of the car and walked back to hers to fill her in.

“What happened?”

“Something stepped out into the road. I’m not sure what it was.” A tall man with cascading brown hair and a full, fitting beard stepped into your vision through your mom’s passenger window. “Or should I say someone. I’m gonna go talk to him, make sure he’s okay.”

“Alright, kiddo. Be careful, though. I’ll be right here.”

You stood up from leaning against your mom’s driver side door and made your way around the front of the car, your eyes drifting upwards from the ground to a narrow waist and broad shoulders, chest rising and falling with deep breaths, eventually meeting with the most gorgeous pair of ocean blues. All these features belonged to the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, but that didn’t excuse the fact that he ran out into the middle of the road and could’ve killed either of you.

Caught off guard by the whole situation, your brain defaulted to panic and defensive mode.

“Oh my gosh! I thought you were a bear! I almost hit you!”

The man looked at you with wide eyes and simply blinked, unable to form a response until he stuttered out

“I-it’s really my fault. I’m not sure what I was thinking.”

Even when evidently distracted and out of it, he was still insanely attractive, making you grow more anxious by the second under his intense stare and scrutinization as he continued to stand there, taking you in and then catching himself and looking anywhere else. You were self-conscious of your hair that was tucked under a beanie to combat the cold mountain air and likely disheveled from your long day. He was obviously in a state where arguing wouldn’t benefit either of you, and honestly, you were in the same boat, ready to get to your new home and start unpacking. The sun was starting to set already and you definitely didn’t want to be out after dark, plus you knew the exhaustion from the drive would be catching up soon.

“Um, it’s ok, I just think you need to be more careful next time. Listen, I don’t wanna be pulled over on this stretch of road for too long, God forbid a real bear, or someone without good reflexes comes around, but, I’m glad you’re not hurt. Take care.”

Wanting to avoid any more awkward interactions and the opportunity of embarrassing yourself in front of an adonis, you rushed back to your car and started back up the mountain. You could see the image of the man in your side mirror getting smaller, his gaze still fixed on your car, until you turned and lost sight of him.

Once you pulled into your new home, your mom met you with a suitcase, ready to take the stairs to the entrance.

“Well he was cute, albeit a little reckless. Wonder what was going on”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever see him again, though. Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t need to make a habit of almost hitting things when driving around up here.”

You unlocked the door and held it open for your mom as she walked in and turned back to look at you. “Well, by the looks of how small this town is, you might. And once you figure out whatever’s going on in his head, maybe he’ll be a nice new friend to have up here.”

“Um, yeah, I guess. Maybe. After all this time, I think I’ll need a friend. Someone to restore my hope for humanity.”

You tried to lighten the mood regarding your distaste for others that had grown from feeling so deeply betrayed and your mom gave a knowing glance in response. But it seemed there was something more to it. It was knowing in more ways than one, hardly noticeable, as you turned to go get another load to bring in from the trunk.

Your mind raced with thoughts of having to get all of this junk into the house. You stepped out into the crisp mountain air, admiring the deepening blue sky and unobstructed stars, the darkness in contrast to the way your mood had brightened slowly from something similarly dark over the past year, becoming more like the stars that glowed in the beautiful night ski. As you trotted down the stairs, your tried to convince yourself that being here was going to be everything you hoped for yourself and your future ticket to happiness. That the last thing on your mind was love.

Next >

#Ari Levinson #ari levinson fanfiction #ari levinson x reader #mountain ranger! ari #mountain ranger Ari x reader #mountain ranger! Ari x reader #Red Sea diving resort #Chris Evans #bigger houses #bigger houses series #chapter 1 #bigger houses chapter 1 #bigger houses chapter 1 breaking up with a broken heart #breaking up with a broken heart #Dan and Shay #dan + shay #Spotify #SoundCloud

94 notes · View notes

animasolaoriginal · 5 months

Text

(1) I n n o c e n c e L o s t

He finds her in a brothel of all places. A chance encounter, but one that will change his life – and hers – forever. – or: A story about a cowboy who falls in love with a prostitute, who happens to be so much more than that.

GENERAL TAGS: NSFW! Explicit! Size difference, age gap, slow burn romance. Cowboys, outlaws, prostitutes. Historical inaccuracy. Horses, guns, violence.

Chapter 1▫️2▫️3▫️4▫️5▫️6▫️7▫️8▫️9▫️10▫️11▫️12▫️13 ...

Chapter 1: The Girl

m!OC x f!OC -- WORDS: 5.9k -- READ ON AO3

when a cowboy meets a prostitute

-- Chapter 2

Bourbon, rum, whiskey, anything that burns on his tongue, spilling liquid fire down his throat. It all blurs in the end. There's laughter, slurs, hands slapping backs, stumbling, murmurs, more laughter. That post-heist-haze sinking into his bones. Everything whirls inside his head as he makes it up the stairs. “Gimme your best...newest,” he hears himself mumble.

Last door on the right. Somehow he makes it there, leans heavy on the door knob, twists it, almost falls as the door swings open. There he stiffens, blinks slowly, his motions so heavy, frozen in time, slow as molasses. The door closes behind him, he stares ahead, blinks again, eyelids almost stuck to his eyeballs.

And yet he sees her.

The room is dark, small, a large bathtub in one corner, a four-poster bed in the other. An old armchair next to a fireplace, the fire roaring within, the only light source. And in front of it, between the flames and the chair, kneels a girl, pale legs illuminated by the orange glow next to her, skin, so much skin, not everywhere though. Her slender torso is covered by a loose blouse, unbuttoned in the front, falling off one slim shoulder, held together by a tight corset that pushes up her small breasts, creating a cleavage that doesn't suit her. Thin arms in wide cotton, or satin, he can't be sure, it doesn't matter.

He's fixated on her bare legs. The blouse barely covers the hint of hair between her legs, peeking out despite her kneeling position, thighs pressed tightly together as she sits on the heels of her feet. Her hands rest folded on her lap, the chest is moving up and down, and his eyes wander again, to her face. Pale. Soft edges on the jaw, high cheekbones, a small straight nose, lips... full lips, pink and shiny, a tongue darting out and wetting the bottom one.

And those eyes. Big eyes, glowing in the dim light, greenish, blue maybe, like the deep sea at midnight, a wave illuminated by the moon. They look both surprised and eager, but the flutter of her nostrils tells him she is more surprised and shocked by his sudden entrance, by the unsteadiness of his large body.

She looks so young.

Something stirs within him, and not just the strain in his pants, but something more like a knot in his stomach. This is wrong. He stumbles further anyway, watching her closely. She flinches when he comes closer, but doesn't move. Somehow he makes it to the armchair, flops down in it with a heavy grunt, his belt tilting even more on his hips. He shifts his holster away. Her eyes follow him.

He stares at the girl in front of him, immobile, waiting, patient and yet anxious. What is she waiting for? Why isn't she moving? Why is she here? When she eventually moves, only slightly, a little shift on her knees to face him, he lets out a groan, and she stops, eyes wide.

“How old are you?” he slurs, tongue heavy in his mouth.

She tilts her head, long brown waves falling over her shoulder, some strands gathering in the cleft between her pushed-up breasts. “Old enough to please you, mister,” she replies, her voice feeble and quiet, but there's a fire behind those words, uttered in confidence as if she's done it before, many times.

“Age,” he grunts again, staring at her. She holds his gaze, jaw clenching slightly.

“Eighteen,” she says quietly, her chin tilted up a bit.

He narrows his eyes, he's noticed the twitch in her folded hands, the tension in her slim shoulders. “Really?”

“Yes, sir,” she whispers, tilting her head. “Why does it matter?” she then asks, a little louder, batting those long eyelashes. “You're here to have some fun, aren't you?”

“You're young,” he simply states. Not too young, maybe, but young... young enough to make him think despite his drunken state. This is wrong. She shouldn't be here. “How long have you been here?” Done this?

“All my life, mister,” she answers, and he frowns, deep creases on his forehead that hurt inside his temples. “I was born here.” The ache grows. His head thumps to the beat of his thundering heart, mirroring the throbbing behind stiff fabric.

He leans forwards then, causing her to flinch once more, as he rests his elbows on his thighs and stares at her, scrutinizing her, takes in her young face. Pretty, no, beautiful, in spite (or because) of the rounded edges of her face. She's slender, sharp collarbones visible in the wide opening of her blouse. Those soft mounds tease him, urge him to release them from their unnaturally squished state.

His hand twitches, itches to touch her, but something holds him back. She's young. And... weirdly familiar. His eyes narrow even further as he squints at her, her small frame dark in front of the crackling fire. She shifts under his intense gaze, body stiff, hands wringing in her lap.

“Sir?” she whispers, lips moving slightly, a sweet voice like honey falling from them. Lips... full, shiny, wet, and a sudden image presses into his hazy mind. Lips parted, closed around –

He clears his throat and leans back with a grunt, wiping at his face, the scrape of his beard against his calloused palm a rough noise in the quiet of the room. He sighs deeply, lowering his hand, resting it on his upper thigh as he watches the girl.

“You shouldn't be here,” he huffs out, wetting his dry lips.

“It's my job, mister,” she says, tilting her head to the other side.

He shakes his head. “This shouldn't be a job... not for a young girl like you...”

“I'm eighteen –”

“You're a child!” he grunts, louder, rougher than intended.

She flinches, inhaling sharply, lowering her big eyes. “Do you want somebody else?” she whispers quietly, almost disappointed.

Suddenly he is aware of the noises around them, bleeding through the walls from the other rooms. Moans and cries and squeaking wood and metal. They crawl over his spine like ants, making him shiver as he stares at the small figure in front of him. Why is he here?

She is still sitting on her knees, stiff and immobile, waiting. For what? Her eyes look up at him, chin tilted, the slender column of her neck visible between her silky hair, soft skin, untouched (really?), innocent. Why is she naked below the waist?

He waves a hand at her, his arm stiff, heavy, the alcohol making everything harder to do. “Shouldn't be here,” he growls, tongue twice its size in his mouth. Does he mean her? Or him? Or both? He doesn't know. His mind is fuzzy, spinning out of control. His cock strains against his tight jeans. But his heart is protesting.

“Sir?” she asks again, blinking slowly, dark lashes batting against pale skin.

He leans back into the chair, inhaling deeply, closing his eyes, relaxing. Big mistake. Suddenly there is a warm hand on his knee, a touch like a pistol shot. He jerks awake, stares down at the girl, who has shifted, kneeling between his spread legs now, the same position, just closer, frozen in time with her other hand hanging in mid-air, ready to touch his other knee.

“What are you doing?” he grunts.

“Giving you a good time,” she replies quietly, and a shy smile curves her full lips. Lips around – He groans, rubbing his face again, his tired eyes. “You paid for this, mister. You should get something for your money.”

He shakes his head, hands back on his thighs, staring down at her. She is closer in her new position, backlit by the fire behind her, features blurring. Both hands are on his knees now, warm and small, hesitant but eager. Her pushed-up breasts nearer, the cleft between them deeper. His hands itch.

“Do you like doing this?” he utters, the words spilling without being processed in his muddled brain.

There is a flinch, a wince, a visible reaction in her tense shoulders. She swallows, her throat moves, but the smile on her lips is there, the lie tangible. “Of course, sir,” she whispers. “Let me show you how much...”

She leans up then, lifting from her knees, her hands sliding up his thighs, almost brushing against his. Actress, he thinks. Nothing more. He can't imagine –

But then he does: full lips around a variety of different – He clenches one hand into a fist, presses it to his upper thigh, straining, ignoring the tension in his stomach. The image stays. Lips, a wide mouth, bulging cheeks, closed eyes, tears streaming down a pale face, slurping sounds, helpless gurgles, muffled gasps, rough hands in her hair as her head is pushed deeper onto –

A groan escapes him. “Fuck,” he growls, shaking his head. His eyes find hers, his breath heavy, his body on edge, the strain in his pants almost unbearable, and yet...

She is settled between his legs, shoulders pressed against his thighs, hands inching closer to his belt. “Don't,” he hisses, and his hands grab hers, making her gasp, her lips parting, eyes widening. His long fingers curl around her smaller ones, holding her, inches from the tent in his pants. She looks startled, then confused.

“But mister...” she whispers, letting him hold her hands, her wrists. His hands are large enough to wrap around it all. Lashes flutter, the tip of her tongue sliding over her upper lip. She trembles slightly.

And then he lets go, and his hands grab her face instead, careful, as careful as he can in his dazed state. She lets out a surprised yelp but stays perfectly still as he cups her cheeks with his big hands, his fingers slipping into her soft hair, his thumbs wiping at the corners of her mouth. She holds his gaze, holds her breath.

“You look like...” he starts, quiet, a low rumble in his chest as he stares at her, his mind spinning, new and old images whirling together.

Soft lips, wet, full, strained around –

Green eyes, sparkling in the sun, a smile, a laugh like honey on his scarred soul.

“Her,” he mumbles, tilting his head, leaning closer until his nose brushes against hers. She stiffens, but doesn't move, can't move with how he holds her face. She swallows slightly, lips trembling against his thumbs.

“Who, sir?” she breathes softly, warm and cautious against his dry lips. Her eyes are on his face, taking in every detail with how close he is. Scars, wrinkles, creases, his rough beard stretching along his jaw, up his cheeks, around his lips, fluttering slightly as he breathes through his nose.

“Keira,” he finally utters, the image clear in his dazed mind. The same woman. No, not the same, similar, and a woman, not a girl. The same hair, the same small nose, the same eyes. “You look like Keira.”

And that's why it feels wrong to use her like he wanted to when he first entered the room, to be here, in this house of moans and grunts and creaking wood and metal.

The girl stares at him, lips parted, face warming under his palms. There's recognition in her deep eyes, darkened by the fire glowing behind her, the only light source. “You... knew my mother?” she whispers, barely audible, shifting back onto her knees, bare legs folded beneath her, her hands straining against his thighs.

His heart sinks and swells at the same time. Mother. Her mother. She looks like her. Like Keira. But what is she doing here? I was born here, she has said. Bound to a life of... servitude. Pleasure for others. A slave, a body to use, for money. The moans and grunts of the other rooms flood his ears, louder than before as his mind clears up, as the shock settles in.

“No,” he says apprehensively, a low hum over his dry lips, and his hands tighten around her delicate face. The girl frowns, he notices his mistake. “I mean, yes, I knew her,” he utters quietly, staring at her, gently caressing the corners of her lips with his thumbs. “I didn't know... about you...”

She blinks slowly, watching him, curiosity in her big eyes. Her lips part, a flood of questions ready to spill over them, but he lets go of her face and leans back, shaking his head.

“What happened to her?” he asks, already afraid of the answer as he drives a big hand through his messy hair.

The small figure between his legs shrinks as she sits down further on her knees, her hands leaving his thighs, resting on her lap. She lowers her eyes, inhales sharply. “I don't know,” she whispers. “She... left me here.” There's a hint of resentment in her soft voice, and he can't blame her. Anger rises in his throat like bile.

“She did what?” he hisses, leaning closer again.

She flinches, looks up. “Madam Claire said she worked here, got pregnant from a customer, gave birth to me, and then left, ran away, without me...” Her voice breaks as she retells her story, and his gut clenches.

The tiny frame in front of him shrinks even more, falls into herself, and he can't stand it. He leans in, brings his hands under her arms and lifts her up, easy, as if she was a doll, her wavy hair bouncing slightly. She struggles in his grip, but then she's sitting sideways on his lap, her very bare bottom warm against the fabric of his jeans. She stiffens when he pulls his arms around her shoulders and her against his broad chest.

“I'm sorry,” he slurs, his tongue heavier than ever.

“What for?” she breathes against his collarbone, where the buttons of his black shirt are open, revealing weathered skin.

He sighs, his hand wide on her back as he holds her, his breath making strands of her hair fly before he presses his dry lips to her warm forehead. She lets out a strangled gasp, tenses in his embrace, her hands squished between his chest and her own. “If I'd known about you – I... wouldn't have left you to this – to endure this fate...” he mutters, his heart as heavy as his tongue.

“Why do you care?” she asks, her voice quiet but curious.

“I loved your mother once, many moons ago, twenty years it must be by now,” he says into her hair, his own voice a deep thrum in her ears. “She left me, one day, and I made the mistake of letting her go. Maybe I pushed her to end up here, maybe she wanted to work like this... she's always been a free spirit, couldn't stay long at one place. I guess... I learned that from her.”

He feels her fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt as she slowly relaxes on his lap, leaning against him, warm and tiny and frail. “What do you mean?”

“I travel a lot,” he says simply, sudden images of tents and horses and wagons filling his mind. But also of masks and guns and blood and shouts, and comically large bags filled with money, cowering people, screaming women, the rattle of a train, the silent squeak of metal doors, splintering wood. And pictures of him, drawn, some more flattering than others, and his name printed all over them. Dead or alive.

She tilts her chin up, big eyes looking at him, her lips parted slightly, long lashes grazing pale skin. He sees her better now, in the orange glow of the fire. She looks like Keira. But she's alone, left to her own devices, forced to work a profession she was born into, that she didn't choose. “What's your name, mister?”

He frowns at her innocent question, trying to forget the Wanted posters. “Ben,” he growls, a deep thrum in his throat. “And yours?”

“Nebbia,” she replies quietly, her eyes wandering over his face, her small body molded into him, warm on his lap, pointy bones digging into his thigh, pressing on his erection. Nebbia like Neigh-bee-ah, long e, more like ehh, short i, like an e, and the little ah at the end, like a soft moan. Rolls off her tongue like honey.

“Nebbia,” he repeats, her name rumbling out of him as he tries to figure out why Keira would name her daughter this. But then a smile crosses his lips. “Fog in Italian,” he whispers and watches how she nods, the same kind of smile curving her lips. He wonders if Keira has made it over the pond, finally seeing the country she always wanted to visit. But why did she leave her kid?

Free spirits can't have children pulling them down, grounding them to the earth, binding them to one place. The poor girl... If Keira knows what happened to her? What she has to do?

Full lips around –

He clears his throat, his big hands resting on her small waist. She still looks at him, somewhat hopeful, big eyes, there's innocence in them, but also something else. A shadow in her green irises. A stain.

“Why aren't you wearing any bottoms, Nebbia?” he asks quietly, his fingers teasing at the curve of her rear.

He sees her blushing, red spots dancing over her pale cheeks. She looks away, a shy smile tugging at her lips. “I figured it'd be easier for you...”

“Easier for me?”

“I heard you were drunk, very drunk,” she whispers into his neck, her fingers fidgeting with the buttons of his shirt. “And I thought –”

He stares at her. In his mind, he can see her lips straining around a variety of cocks, but he can't see her lying on her back with her legs wide open, taking any of those wretched members into her sweet little – “Have you ever...” he starts, furrowing his eyebrows. “Am I your first? Would I be your first?”

She licks her lips, then chews on them. A nod, short and jerky. Eyes dancing over his chest. The sigh that escapes his throat is both filled with anger and relief. She is young. Inexperienced, has never learned the reason why those women in the other rooms cry out in pleasure. She (her mouth) has only been used for the pleasure of others, and that fact only spurs his anger, makes the vein on his forehead pulse.

Why did they choose her to satisfy him? Gimme your best...newest, he hears himself mumble. Newest. Freshly eighteen, huh? Just come of age, open for business. (To think this filthy little brothel has actual rules and has given her time to develop is almost absurd.) He closes his eyes for a moment, relieved it was him who found her without bottoms.

Because he knows he will not soil her innocence.

“I'm gonna take you with me,” he mutters as he closes his arms a little tighter around her, holding her safely on his lap.

“What?” she breathes, trying to look up despite his bear hug.

“I can give you a better life,” he says softly, tilting his head to meet her gaze.

“Why?” Despite her innocent tone, there's doubt in her voice. Disbelief. Why would anyone want to be nice to her?

He laughs darkly. “Because you deserve it?” One of his hands moves up, caresses her warm cheek. “Unless you actually want to keep sucking dicks.”

His lewd words make her flinch, her face flushed as she looks away, takes a sharp breath, her fingers clawing at his shirt. She shifts on his thigh, her body tense. “I... don't...” she mutters under her breath.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks, pressing his thumb under her chin to make her look up. Her eyes are wet, glistening, her lips trembling.

“Can I?” she whispers, a tiny flicker of hope in the green pools that stare at him.

He smiles, a genuine smile that lights up his rough face, deepening the dimple on his cheek. “If you want to. I can get you out of here, no one will notice anything...” he tells her quietly, watching her closely.

There's turmoil behind her eyes, shivers running down her body, her throat moves when she swallows hard. “They'll be angry with me,” she breathes, blinking, looking away, her eyebrows furrowed. “The women...”

“You don't owe them anything,” he says, the hand on her lower back applying soft pressure, fingers playing with the laces of her corset. “They may have raised you here, but they made you do heinous things that no girl your age should do! No respectable woman without her consent...”

“And the men? Some of them come here only for me...” He stiffens at her words, imagining those sleazy men, salivating at the thought of shoving their cocks down this poor girl's throat. “I bring good money...” He scoffs at that, shaking his head.

“And how much of that do you see, hm?” he asks her, tilting her chin back up so she looks at him. She inhales deeply, avoiding his gaze once more. “Yeah, that's what I thought...”

“I have a comfortable life –”

His hand closes around her throat, long fingers pressing into her skin. She stares at him, gasps, eyes wide. “Sweetheart, you're eighteen now, you're fair game. Men will do anything to you now, fill every single hole you have!” She gasps again, cheeks flushing at his blunt words. “You might have gotten used to sucking dick, but believe me, opening your legs will be a whole other ordeal.”

She frowns at that. “Is sex really that bad?” she whispers, voice feeble, bashful, he's surprised she is able to get these words out at all.

A laugh rumbles through him as he eases his grip on her neck. “No, sex can be amazing, but with the wrong person, there can be a lot of pain and discomfort, and the consequences...” He looks at her, holds her nervous gaze. “You're so young, you deserve better than a drunken guy forcing his cock into your hole, leaving you either completely soiled and sore, or sick, or pregnant...”

She cringes and pulls a breath through her teeth, averting her eyes once more. “You talk so obscenely, mister,” she mumbles.

He breathes out another deep laugh. “It's the harsh truth, darling. That's how the world works, get used to it,” he says matter-of-factly.

“And you want me to go out into that world?” she whispers quietly.

“Trust me, out there you'll be better off than here, if you stay with the right people. I'd worry about your current world,” he mutters, listening to the noises from the other rooms, remembering, despite his haze, how run-down this building is, its clientele, and the state of the whole town.

She can't stay here. He won't leave her, now that he knows of her existence. She's Keira's kid, and unlike her mother, he will never abandon her.

Sighing deeply, he moves his hands along her body, encircling her waist, gripping her gently, before he picks her up and puts her on her feet next to the armchair. She stares at him startled, her hands immediately going down to cover her modesty. He grunts and stands up too, towering over her. She takes a cautious step back as he starts swaying, the alcohol still buzzing inside his head.

“I could really use a bath,” he growls, wiping at his eyes, trying to dispel the dizziness. The girl stands next to him, so tiny and frail, the gentle curves of her legs backlit by the fire, her soft face tilted up to look at him, her long hair cascading down her shoulders. For a moment he is mesmerized by the sight, by how naturally beautiful she is – how out of place she feels.

When he feels the strain in his jeans, he sighs again and turns away, stumbling past her towards the tub in the corner. There's already water in it, a thick layer of soapy foam even, and when he dips a few fingers into it, he notices that it's still a little warm. He can't remember it, but he must have left a good penny in this establishment, for booze, a hot bath, and the best...newest –

He turns back to her. She is still watching him, standing behind the armchair, her hands on the backrest, biting her lip. “Hey kid, you wanna join me?” he calls to her, his fingers already at the buttons of his shirt.

She inhales sharply, then walks around the armchair, her naked legs catching his eye for a moment. “I'm not a kid, mister.”

“Ben,” he corrects with a smirk, now working on undoing his belt. It creates a thud when it falls to the wooden floor, his holster and the heavy pistol pulling it down. Her eyes follow his movements as he undresses, kicks off his boots, steps out of his jeans, shrugs off his shirt. Then her feet tap over the ground as she rounds the tub and stands on the other side.

“Not a kid, Ben,” she whispers, chewing on her lips, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her blouse as she drags it lower to cover the hint of hair between her legs.

She doesn't look away once he is completely naked in front of her, his clothes, gun and bags discarded on a chair, but he can see the red in her cheeks when her eyes flick down to his hard cock, bouncing slightly when he raises a leg and steps into the tub. The semi-warm water lulls his muscles as he sinks into it with a groan, stretching his long legs, leaning back, placing his arms on the edge, before he looks up at her.

“I meant it, Nebbia,” he says softly, tilting his head. “Come join me. I promise you don't have to do anything but sit with me.”

“I... shouldn't...” she whispers, her eyes trailing over his naked chest, half-submerged in the tub, before she looks towards the door. “We're not allowed...”

“I paid for you, didn't I?” She looks back, meeting his gaze, and he smiles at her. “Technically I can do anything to you. But I just want you to enjoy a semi-hot bath. There's still enough room,” he adds and spreads his legs, creating a space between them on the other side of the tub.

She hesitates, and he wonders why. Moments ago she seemed content to give him a good time, as she has called it, but now she is strangely coy for a prostitute who's had her throat fucked countless times before. The image of her lips strained around a cock – his cock maybe? – comes back into his mind, and he has to clench his jaw tightly to fight the urge to grab her and pull her close, do all those things to her that he has warned her about. That he's promised not to do to her.

Eventually she turns around, presenting her well-formed rear to him, those plump little cheeks, well-rounded, squeezable, the cleft between them guiding his eyes between her legs, but when her hands move up to the string holding her corset, he sighs, nodding to himself when he sees her predicament. He reaches out and tugs on the bow with one finger, loosening the tight laces slowly, carefully, and she lets him do so.

The stiff thing falls down her hips once it's loose enough, and she steps out of it, slowly turning back to him as she unbuttons the rest of her blouse and shrugs it off her slender shoulders. He can't help himself, he stares at her naked form.

Keira's kid. Half his age. He's promised her a better life.

And still he can't look away, taking in every detail of her body. How her small breasts perk, nipples hard already, the gentle slope of those mounds he wants to weigh in his big hands. How her hair falls over her shoulders, soft springy waves, silky, the same color as her mother's. His eyes trail down her chest, over the shimmer of ribs under thin skin, the flat stomach and little indent of her belly button. And that small waist, the swell of her hips, soft pale legs, cushioned thighs, and between them, the hint of hair above her sex.

Her skin is pristine, pale like alabaster, unmarked, pure.

There's a blush on her face that slowly spreads down her shoulders and between her breasts, and he has to force himself to close his eyes as she steps closer and lifts a leg to step into the tub – even though he wants nothing more than to take a peek at her sweet little cunt. Unused and innocent. He has to keep it that way.

Water splashes against his stomach when she sits down opposite him, knees bent and pulled against her chest as she settles between his outstretched legs. He looks at her with a gentle smile, and she smiles back, her eyelids fluttering.

“Not bad, eh?” he laughs quietly, moving a fluff of foam towards him with his big hands, then lathers his arms with it. She just sits there on the other side of the tub, watching him.

“Do you really mean it?” she whispers after a moment of both of them just soaking in the water.

“What?” he grunts, leaning his head against the edge of the tub as he slides a little lower, using the space she's left to fully stretch his body.

“That you're going to take me with you,” she replies, her eyes scanning his face.

He sighs, his breath blowing a tuft of foam towards her. “Yes, I mean it. I won't let you stay here, objected to all these... things,” he says. “You're Keira's daughter, and even if she might not have wanted you, I will take care of you.”

She frowns, trying to ignore the sting in her heart, the flinch of her tense shoulders at his words. “But why? You don't know me! And I don't know you! Why should I go with you?”

“You wanna stay here? Rot away and die in ten years or sooner?” His voice is harsh, his eyes dark, his jaw tense. “There's no money to be made if you stay under your Madam's thumb. You'll just be another body with a bunch of holes, destined to take it all, if you want to or not. How is this a life you'd want to continue?”

She licks her lips, her arms hugging her knees tighter. “I have food and a roof above my head...” she says quietly, averting her eyes.

He scoffs. “If that's your standard, then I can assure you that you will never go hungry, always have a comfortable bed, be safe from the elements, when you come with me.”

“But why?” she asks again, finally looking back at him. “Why are you so... nice to me?” She takes a shuddering breath. “Just because I'm the kid of a love lost?”

“I thought you weren't a kid,” he teases, and she groans with a slightly exasperated smirk. “I know it's a rare thing for people to just be nice nowadays, but you can trust me. I'm a good guy,” he lies through his teeth, a glint in his eyes.

“And you expect me to believe that?” she says, shifting in the tub, extending her legs slightly, her feet brushing against his inner thighs. “I might not know how the world works, but I see the men coming here. I've seen all types. And you look like the type I might encounter on a Wanted poster.”

He raises his eyebrows, his lips twitching. “Interesting assessment, missy. And you can tell by just looking at a man's cock?”

She grunts in indignation and splashes water towards him. He laughs and shields his face with one arm. “A fine gentleman would never talk like that...” she mumbles.

His laughter gets even louder. “And you expect a fine gentleman to walk into this establishment? Do you know where you are?” She scoffs and crosses her arms in front of her chest, slowly stretching out her legs until he can feel the soles of her feet pressing right against his groin. “Careful now,” he warns.

Her cheeks are flushed, but that doesn't stop her from rubbing her foot upwards and along his hard shaft, pressing it into his lower stomach. He watches her closely, holding in a groan. And she looks right back, green eyes hard and a dark smile on her full lips. Lips around his cock. He leans back and lets out the noise he has been suppressing. Her toes curl around his tip, his breath hitches in his throat.

And he savors the moment, just a moment, a few seconds, because it feels good. She is good, doing what she does. Would be a shame to stop her now, hm? But then he leans in and lowers his hands into the water, grabbing her ankle, stopping her after all. She yelps quietly as he pulls her leg towards him, causing her to slip. Her hands squeak along the edge of the tub as she tries to hold onto it, but before her head submerges, he lets go of her, letting her leg rest on top of his thigh.

She scrambles back into a sitting position, her eyes on him, her lips parted. “I don't have a choice, do I?” she then whispers, allowing him to put his big hand on her shin, holding her there.

He smiles at her, his eyes twinkling. “Correct, sweetheart. I will force you to have a better life, no matter what,” he says quietly, rubbing his hand up her leg.

She inhales deeply and leans back, her arms resting on the edge, hands hanging off, as she relaxes in the water, under his touch, with her bare chest exposed to him. Trusting. “You're a strange man, mister... Ben,” she whispers, smiling softly as she watches him.

He grips her thigh gently, winking at her. The buzz from the alcohol is as good as gone, replaced with a different kind of vertigo. Ignoring the twitching of his cock under the water surface, he keeps his eyes on the girl in front of him, taking in her features, a strange warmth gathering in his stomach.

He came here to celebrate the successful heist, drink himself stupid and have a good fuck afterwards. He hasn't expected to meet Keira's kid here, to be this attracted to her, to tell her he wants to take her with him. But he has, is, does, all of it, he wants her by his side, wants to give her a chance at a different life, away from pleasuring strangers every night of the week.

Does he want her for himself? Maybe. But he still also genuinely wants her to be happier, be herself, have the freedom that he has. She deserves it. And he does too, selfishly so, to have her.

-- Chapter 2

END NOTES: Hello and welcome to my first original work (that I share with you)! Thank you for reading!

Please note that I am no expert on anything wild west/western/horses/cowboys/brothels/etc. - I write silly little love/smut stories. This story, even though it's not mentioned, is set at the end of the 1800s somewhere in the west, I'm keeping it vague on purpose, this is about Ben and Nebbia.

Picture credits to their respective owners. I don't own anything. I gathered these from all around the Internet. If you see your picture and would like to have it removed, please tell me!

AO3 -- MASTERLIST -- INSPIRATION POSTS

60 notes · View notes