#cw: dehumanization of infants

[sleepyfan-blog]

First Ripple

Author’s Note: Part two of Baby Primarchs being raised by the Emperor AU! Previous. Next

Warnings: dehumanization of primarchs, dehumanization of infants, manipulation

Tagged: @egrets-not-regrets

Summary: Erda inquires about the visions that two of the baby primarchs were so distressed by. The Emperor explains, after some cajoling. 

"Neoth it's been a week and a half, and you've yet to tell me what the contents of the visions that Eight and Nine had that caused you to decide to pull all of the primarchs from their incubation chambers until they were infants, like we had previously agreed. Don't think I haven't noticed the increase in security in and around the gene labs, as well as the entirety of the palace as a whole. You're preparing for something. Let me help. The only psyker stronger than I am on Terra is you. But I can't prepare for what I don't know is coming." Erda demanded, staring directly up at Neoth, hands on her hips as the two of them were overseeing the final touches being done to the Primarchs' nursery. All twenty of them would be sleeping in a single, heavily fortified room within the Imperial palace. The room in question was itself a secret known to herself, Amar, Neoth... And the entirety of Neoth's hand-crafted Custodes. This room had been repurposed from a large storage room to a multi-bed play and sleeping room. This room was positioned within one hallway of the throne room and Erda's own personal rooms. The room had one active Gellar field protecting it at all times, and had two separate back-up Gellar fields ready to activate, should the first fail or waver for the slightest moment.

Neoth briefly looked at her before staring at the last of the preparations - several of his younger Custodes were carefully setting up the last of the infant beds with deft and steady hands, though the small furniture looked almost comical in their large hands. He sighed before saying "If we left them to continue to grow within their maturation pods, within a year... Chaos would take them." 

Erda froze for a moment, her eyes widening in horror and confusion "But... But how, the Gellar fields keep The Enemy at bay!"

Neoth looked down at her, a troubled expression furrowing his brows "The visions were overlapping and unclear, but The Enemy sent agents that destroyed the Gellar fields protecting their pods, and -" He hesitated, looking searchingly at her. He still does not see or feel any Chaotic taint within her. "... For reasons I do not know, you were the one to rip open a warp portal, and cast the primarchs into that infinite abyss. You were trembling with rage and sorrow, and many died in the ensuing rampage of The Enemy's servants rampaging around the palace, as the gene-labs were collapsed as reality temporarily collapsed."

"I...  I would never cast our beautiful children away! Especially not into the Warp, the domain of The Enemy, to corrupt their souls and twist their brilliant little minds to cruelty... If they wouldn't kill our children out of spite." Erda spluttered, taking a half-step back in shock.

Part of him wanted to correct her, remind her that the Primarchs weren't their children, not truly. They were weapons, tools for galactic conquest and to bring the disparate colonies of humanity back under one unified banner. The rebuke was on his tongue, but caution stayed him. He would let her cogitate on her future self's potential betrayal - let the utter foolishness of such an act, no matter how well-intentioned she may have thought it to be in a moment of wrathful sorrow, before reminding her what the Primachs, which they had spent over a thousand years in genetics research, testing and experimenting, in order to create. "I am glad to hear that, Erda. I cannot say what drove you in their visions to such an act... But-" He deliberately hesitates, looking her in the eyes before letting his gaze sweep around the room, to the twenty-one bassinets arranged in neat if uneven rows around the room "I... Have a request to make of you, Erda."

She tensed at that, trying to catch his gaze "What... What request is that, Neoth?"

He lets her catch his gaze. He slowly reaches out to her physically, one hand coming to rest lightly on his hand, the other cupping her cheek. "You are a dear companion of mine, Erda. In these long, endless days and nights, and your keen mind and insights have been invaluable beyond words. I see you now, untouched by The Enemy, and I want to believe that-" Carefully, gently now. A light squeeze to her shoulder, allow his eyes to soften as his face shifts to a look of worry that he does genuinely feel. His gilded companions shift a little, ready and listening for the command. 

Good.

Hopefully he won't need to give it, but for the future he sees for mankind, and the necessary sacrifice and bloodshed that must be spilled for it to become a reality, he cannot allow his Primarchs out of his grasp. For eleven of them to become corrupted in one way or another by The Enemy or filthy xenos... No. He will not allow that to happen. He's keenly aware of the power she wields. Which is why this conversation is happening here, well before The Enemy's servants invade the palace and far from where his little generals are slumbering in their pods. "- whatever reasons your potential future self did that, you believed it was for the best. But the glimpses into their futures that I saw... Seventeen lands on a world of chaos worshippers and is slowly corrupted from decanting. Eight lands in a world of literal - and figurative - darkness and is forced to survive on it-his own, killing animals to feast on their flesh. Twelve is beset by Xenos upon decanting, and is then thrown into gladiator pits, with neural implants forced into his brain that torture him into madness. Fourteen lands on a world ruled by necromancers, found by the dread lord of that world and cruelly experimented on until it-he escapes. Twenty-A and Twenty-O are separated during the warp trip and Twenty-O is raised by pirates. Sixteen-"

she raises a hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, shaking her head, tears threatening to fall from her eyes "Please... No more. I can guess what you are going to ask of me. You want me to leave the Primarch project? Perhaps even leave the palace entirely. To avoid whatever temporary madness, or Enemy-fueled temptation I somehow fall for, yes? There is much I can do outside of the palace. Or would you rather I leave Terra entirely? I can assist in dealing with the tech-priests of Mars, or the Jovian shipyards."

Neoth kept his face and body posture gentle, regretful, though he allowed a small smile to lift the corners of his lips. "That I am, I am glad that you understand why I am asking this of you. Which would you prefer? To interact with the tech-priests, or wrangle the disparate forces of the Jovian shipyards? For security purposes, I would not be able to inform you of their growth and development until they are ready to be introduced to Terra and the Sol system at large. For their own protection."

"I... Of course, that makes sense, though I will demand that you take plenty of pictures and keep a log of how each of them grow and develop! Despite not being able to be there for their childhoods, I still want to have some evidence of them growing into the strong, handsome beings I know they will one day become. I would rather deal with the Jovian shipyards and deal with the Negotiator clans, rather than the worshippers of the Omnisiah. No offense meant, Neoth." Erda decided, a small and teasing smile appearing on her face.

Neoth rolled his eyes and huffed, grumbling "While it's convenient they decided I am their Omnisiah, it is not something that I encourage them. Of course I will be having their growth and development well documented by trusted people, which I will share with you once they are ready." The promise came easily to his lips. Whether or not he kept that promise depended on whether or not Erda turned to the Enemy in the ensuing years or not. 

"Very well. I’ll start to pack." Erda responded with a nod "I should be ready to leave by the end of the day."

Neoth hummed, nodding and said "I'll have Constantin help you pack, and see you on your way to the shipyards."

She chuckled a little and swatted at him playfully "As if that boy doesn't have enough to do! You don't need to have him fussing over me while I pack my things."

"I insist. He's currently at loose ends, and you know the mischief he can get up to when bored, Idle hands and all that." He responded, keeping his voice and body posture light and playful.

"Oh, alright. Send him to my rooms, and I'll get packing. Don't bully Malcador too much! Goodness knows that boy is entirely too serious as it is. Or Constantin! The lad thinks the galaxy of you." Erda hummed before she headed off.

"I know. I'll keep that in mind, Erda." Neoth responded, suppressing any wayward emotions behind the mask of calm he was projecting. It wouldn't be a true victory until she was off Terra.

Six hours later, and he got the confirmation from Constantin that Erda was well on her way to the Jovian shipyards, none the wiser of the two shadow keepers sent on the same ship to monitor her and report back to him.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

a secret I keep tucked inside my chest

After giving birth, Wake and the Bomb are both physically healthy.

Anon period for battleship is over! I can post stuff now! Though because there's a bunch of fics I'm gonna be posting them once a day for the next two or so weeks instead of all at once.

This was written for Gidaire on AO3, and the title comes from "Never Love an Anchor" due to that one animatic ft. Wake and this song.

CW: dehumanization, canon-typical planned infanticide

AO3

FFN

Squidgeworld

Awake Remembrance of these Valiant Dead was exhausted, and likely very lucky. She had just given birth alone, and while she felt very weak, she didn’t think she was in any danger of dying from complications of the birth, at least not in the next forty-eight hours. She wasn’t sure if the beast in the Tomb would kill her before it killed the Emporer. Just in case she had a chance of survival, she remained in orbit to heal. Surely she had thrown Gideon and Pyrrha off her tail for long enough.

The Bomb, too, seemed healthy. Ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. It – and it had to be an it, because a she would grow up into likely a little girl into a woman and it would not – had the echoes of Wake’s nose and chin. It wouldn’t grow up for Wake to see just how much of her was in Bomb. She could see whisps of red hair on Bomb’s head, so soft and fine. According to her parents, Wake’s hair had been very fine when she was born, and it had soon thickened in the months that follow. Bomb wouldn’t live long enough for Wake to see if the same was true for, for it.

Bomb didn’t need to be too healthy. It was going to die soon, but Wake needed Bomb to survive long enough to die at the Tomb and not any sooner. Plus, Wake didn’t want to listen to Bomb’s cries. She adjusted her shirt and bra to allow Bomb to feed. Bomb stopped crying; it eyes opened, soft gold staring up at Wake. Somewhere distantly, Wake remembered that Bomb’s vision was so weak that the furthest thing she could see was Wake’s face.

Wake’s top priority had always been the Blood of Eden, but she had tried to be a part of her family’s life as much as possible. Wake remembered the way that Pash would cry when she was hungry, the way that Kings and Monarchs of the Earth and her husband were both always tired before Pash started sleeping through the night. Wake tried not to think about leaving the Domincus system for good and taking Bomb home to meet the family. Tried not to think about the way Kings and Monarchs would coo over Bomb. Pash, at least, probably wouldn’t coo over Bomb. What ten-year-old wanted to be around an infant? Even as they grew up, Wake couldn’t see Pash particularly wanting to hang out with her baby, and then toddler, and then little girl of a cousin. Maybe it would be different when Bomb was a teenager.

No.

Bomb would never be a teenager. Bomb would never be a toddler or a little girl. Wake would never get to see her daughter and niece grow up together, because the Bomb was going to die today, and Wake would probably die with her. With it.

And then the sound of a ship docking pulled Wake from her hormonal musings. Gideon had caught up with her. Or maybe they were Pyrrha, but in this case them being Pyrrha wasn’t any better because she wouldn’t let Wake kill Bomb to unlock the Tomb.

“Shit,” Wake said as she pulled Bomb from her breast. She felt no remorse for swearing in front of an infant. She had taught her niece to shoot and swear; and if this was a daughter instead of a weapon Wake would have taught her as well. Wake put Bomb down on the ground, ignoring its fussing, and walked over to wear she kept the haz-suit and the bio-container.

Author's Note: Wake's sister's name, Kings and Monarchs of the Earth, comes from Henry V Act I Scene ii Line 124, which is the same scene where Awake Remembrance of these Valiant Dead comes from.

The amount I think Wake cared about Gideon depends on my mood. At least in this fic she was having regrets after Gideon was born, but wasn't willing to act on them (or maybe she will at the last minute after this fic ends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

[haro-whumps]

CW: semi-explicit dubcon, mindbreak, conditioning, sensory dep, kidnapping, dehumanization, yikes all around.

Based on this post by @angel-in-the-basement

---

“Easy, shhh, easy, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Please, please, let me go,” she begged.

“You know I’m not going to do that. But, I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice was measured. Elegant, almost, with a tone that would’ve been reassuring in literally any other situation. “As long as you don’t make me, I won’t hurt you, I promise. The only time you will ever feel pain from now on is if you bring it on yourself.”

“Please,” she whimpered, tugging on her restraints.

“Hush, shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay, sweetheart, this is going to be so much better than what you used to have, I promise.”

—

He started with sensory deprivation.

She was laid out on a bed, thin blanket over her naked form to keep her from getting too cool, but not so heavy that she ever started up a sweat, unless she pulled and twisted and thrashed. She was blindfolded (the room was windowless and pitch black, anyway) and there were headphones secured so she couldn’t get them away, an endless loop of his voice, sweet and smooth as syrup, repeating her new mantra.

“You are an owned thing, now. You are my possession. I own you. You did not have a life before I owned you. You don’t have a name. If you are very good, and very obedient to your master, I will give you a name. Your only goal in life is to please me. I am your sole priority. You are an owned thing, now. You are my possession. I own you.”

Over and over and over and over, the loop was endless. What could have been every other day, but felt like years, he’d come in and change the batteries and give her one cup of water, and one small bowl of soup, but he never removed her blindfold or touched her more than necessary.

It was hell. She was going insane. She would do anything, anything, to make this end. She couldn’t sleep, and when she did, it was restless, unhelpful, punctuated by the endless repetitions, the loop. 

When he finally took off her blindfold and freed her restraints from the bed, she collapsed on her knees in front of him and felt unthinkable gratitude.

“Alright, my little slave,” he said, and the words were blissfully new, so wonderously different from the same words she’d heard in that same voice for eons and eons of time. He was smiling at her, and shakily, she smiled back. “You should have learned your mantra by now. Repeat it back for me.”

“I,” her voice was hoarse and raw, raspy, and she coughed, doubling over, weak and shaky, but she tried again. “I am an owned thing, now.” She was barely audible, but it was enough, it had to be, “I am your possession. You own me. I did not have a life before you owned me. I don’t have a name. If I am very good, and very obedient to my master, you will give me a name. My only goal in life is to please you. You are my sole priority.”

“Good girl.”

The words warmed her more than she’d ever thought they could. She distantly felt disgust at her own easy breaking, but she’d been in hell for days and days and days on end, and if this was what it took to get out, she’d do anything. She was so grateful he was letting her out. That she would see light and another person, even if that person had kidnapped her, again. That she could move.

“Now come, you need to eat.”

—

He only let her eat when he was the one feeding her. She couldn’t touch the food or spoon or fork herself. He made it very clear that she wasn’t allowed. It was mortifying, being fed like an infant, but he told her that she was too shaky and weak to do it properly herself and that she should be grateful that he was doing her this favor and she wondered if maybe he was right…

He kept her naked, those first few days. She found tiny scraps of colored fabric in the fireplace, indicating that he’d burned her old clothes, but when she asked he’d struck her and made her repeat her mantra.

She had no life before him. She had no life before him. She had no life before him. She needed to remember that. 

She wasn’t sure if the continued nudity was punishment for that or not. 

He certainly used it to his advantage, if nothing else. He’d make her kneel with her legs spread and her ass held high, her holes on open display, face down against the carpet. Each time he ordered it, she was sure that this would be the time she felt fingers playing with her folds, hands on her rump, or even his cock forcing her open.

Each time he left her untouched. Humiliated but unmolested.

And each time he ordered her facedown, she grew more convinced that this was it, that this would be the time, and to her endless mortification, each time it happened she grew wetter from the demeaning position. From the anticipation.

It didn’t help that at night, she was given the option of lying chained up on the floor, or in his bed. He locked her in the bedroom with him, she couldn’t exactly go to the couch (and she wouldn’t go to the little bed in the sensory deprivation room, no way). And at first she’d slept in his bed out of pure fear, then she’d moved to the floor in her repulsion of him, but the floor was hard and cold and she was naked and shivering, so she’d given up quickly and returned to his warm arms and the soft blanket.

He wasn’t much larger than her, for all that he was stronger. He was graceful, and had a rare beauty to him. Long hair, narrow features, clean shaven and he smelled nice. He would hold her against him and she just fit so nicely, and her lonely mind couldn’t help but want him to take advantage of her nudity, of his ownership over her, of their endless proximity.

Every morning and every night, he had her get on her knees and bow with her forehead to the floor, and repeat her mantra to him. Then he would have her give him a “Good morning, Master,” or a “Sleep well, Master” before she could get up. 

She didn’t know his name. She wasn’t allowed to know. She called him Master, and only Master.

She was starting to forget her own name. She clung to it, in the recesses of her mind, but it was starting to feel less and less like hers. “Good girl,” and “sweetheart” and “dearest” were replacing it.

Two, maybe three weeks after she’d been let out of solitary, he let her wear clothes again. They were his clothes, of course, they smelled like him and were too loose on her, but they were clothes and he didn’t even have to order her to kiss his shoes in gratitude. He just set his foot forward slightly and she did as she was meant to. 

The clothes were comfortable and warm against the air conditioning, and she was grateful.

—

“My sweet girl, I have a gift for you today,” he said, taking off his light jacket. She smiled up at him from the radiator she was chained to—he never let her roam freely when he was out of the house.

“Yes, Master?”

“It’s been two months since you’ve been my possession! Your whole entire life is now two months long. I bought us mini cupcakes to celebrate.”

“Oh, thank you Master!” she said, bending to kiss his shoes as soon as he’d unchained her. He fed her the cupcakes off his fingertips, as he did all her food, and she didn’t even question it slightly. This was just the norm for her, now.

“And, since you’re now two months old, I figured it’s about time that you started fulfilling your other duties to me.”

“Yes, Master?” she asked, confused, but her cunt pulsing with a hopeful warmth.

“Go to the bedroom and take your clothes off. Get in position in the middle of the floor.”

Her body lit up like a nerve, her hole squeezing around nothing. Finally, finally! She rushed to obey, her legs shaky with numbness at having sat on them wrong, but he just chuckled at her unsteady footing. 

Face down, ass up, once again completely nude, she waited for her Master in his bedroom. But this time, he did not leave her untouched. He groped her and pushed fingers into her wetness and fondled and brushed his hands up and down the entire length of her body, before he finally ordered her onto the bed and speared her on his heavy cock. He kissed her and gripped her hair and squeezed her and made her come, and at the end he kissed her forehead gently.

“You’ve been a very good girl, my sweet. So good, in fact, that I think it’s time to change your mantra. From now on, instead of saying that if you’re very good, I will give you a name, instead, you will say, ‘I am a good girl for my master, and my name is Kitten.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” Kitten answered, breathless and flushed.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

WIJ Day 6: Hold On

CW: Pet whump, fire, burns, panic, referenced past burns, some internalized dehumanization, BBU

Marc Sonders, Maliyah Sonders, and Beringer made their original appearance in Telling Time. This is for the @whumpmasinjuly prompt for day 6: Hold On

-

554897 takes the third shift, shooing the other daycare pets off to their beds in the tiny, cramped dorm behind the child development center. Only one adult really needs to be awake during these midnight hours, anyway - someone to handle night feedings, hand out cuddles if there are nightmares, change diapers or offer glasses of water and a sense of safety to tiny little people whose lives are entirely held in someone else's hands. 

He knows how uncertain that can be - to know anything could happen, and you have to hope someone cares enough to help. 

There is always someone awake in the daycare at Facility 001. And 554897, who everyone calls Beringer, volunteered to be awake tonight. 

He's the one who knows how important tonight is, after all. The others couldn’t have been trusted with the truth. Beringer is the only one who can keep his mouth shut when a handler starts asking inconvenient questions. 

It’s never the right handler asking, anyway. Easy to lie to all the wrong ones.

He learned that lesson a long time ago.

Beringer pads on silent bare brown feet over brightly colored rugs in the shape of rainbows, hearts, happy faces, and flowers towards the big windows that face out towards the parking lot. There’s a temporary tattoo of a green triceratops still wearing slowly away on the inside of one wrist peeking out from beneath his long-sleeved plain beige pajama top. The temp tattoo was a gift from one of the daycare kids. It’s flaking off like pixels dissolving on a screen, leaving the image of his skin and blood beneath.

Dissolving like the image of the smiling compliant perfect pet he’s always had to use to stay alive in a pit of vipers, laced with a couple harmless garden snakes. Took him a long time to be able to see the difference. 

To figure out which garden snake will carry him away from here without swallowing him whole. 

He keeps one hand closed around the tag that dangles from his collar, so it won't jingle. Around his wrist is a colorful bracelet made with giant beads by Handler Sonders' daughter Maliyah. Marc Sonders had come by last weekend shyly offering the gift. Beringer had played innocent surprise with the talent of a natural-born actor. It had been his idea for Mallie to make one as a way to bond with him, he’d sent the little ziploc-bag of beads and plastic ‘string’ home with her. He’d expected it, and he’d wanted Marc to be the one to bring it. Made a production out of trading, insisting Marc wear it for me, when you come to see me. 

He hasn’t taken his off, either.

Beringer tries not to think too much about why.

He steps carefully around the occasional small air mattresses, each one with a child laying atop it, a blanket and pillow from home and a stuffie for comfort, too. They run the gamut of bunnies and puppies and kitties and bears, clutched in itty bitty arms. Along the walls are infants in cribs. They sleep with grunts and huffs and groans, shifting and moving their little bodies. He smiles at the sound. He might hate a lot of things here, but he really does love the kids. 

He fights how his throat wants to close. 

He’s going to miss them.

Time for regrets when you have what you want, he reminds himself. For now, only look forward to the future.

It’s sort of an exciting feeling just to have one. 

His eyes scan over the sleeping children with fondness. Some of them he has known since they were four months old, tiny infants he could hold in his arms turned into wiggly toddlers who never sit still. Some, like Mallie Sonders, will go on to real school soon and leave him behind. 

Beringer is always the one left behind, the one who cannot leave. Seeing them as big brothers to new classroom charges, big sisters, big siblings who smile and wave or give hugs and keep on growing, where Beringer can’t see. 

Can’t shepherd them, can’t help shape the grown-ups they’ll be.

The nanny pets are the lucky ones, he thinks, the Platonics who get to watch their children growing all the way through. Even some of the Romantics get to bear their own, hold infants in their arms that don’t get taken away at the end of the day. Daycare pets are damned to lose their babies after just a few short years, again and again, until they grow numb to the grieving.

But Beringer isn’t going to have to lose his any longer. He won’t have to watch them walk away, won’t have to give high-fives with tears in his eyes to eight-year-olds who barely remember his face. 

Not anymore. 

He has spent so many years in just these few rooms, staring through the crayon-scribbled drawings and painted papers at the parking lot outside, wondering at the suggestion of trees just a little further than he can see. 

Maintenance probably assumes he’s the lucky one, since he gets to see anything at all. 

The floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side, marked with the construction-paper flowers and plastic 'stained glass' projects they've made, are cold against his hand as he looks out, grazing fingertips along the glass. Beyond the parking lot, the fence winds around the perimeter, seven feet of concrete topped with razor wire - not to keep anyone out, but to keep potential runaways in. 

The gate the employees badge through before they can park - a little station where a man usually sits inside reading magazines and thrift-store novels while casually ignoring the gate going up and down and up and down again - is simply standing wide open.

The man who usually sits there is gone.

554897 smiles, a small and private expression. 

That's step one.  

There’s a deep breath behind him, and he turns, scanning the sleeping children until he sees little Jill Frugelmann, stretching her arms over her head. She yawns, eyes fluttering open, seeing Beringer and smiling hazily at him before she slides right back into slumber.

He smiles back. 

Maliyah Sonders pushes a blanket off herself and heads for the little bathroom off in the corner, never even looking at anyone. She’s the earliest fully potty-trained kiddo he’s dealt with so far.

The back of his neck prickles above and below his collar as he says nothing, waiting and waiting. It’s hell, staying in this holding pattern. He’s waited so many years for something to change - and it’s been weeks since the notes started appearing in Laira Grant’s lunchboxes, notes he answers in his own slightly childish scrawl and sends back.

If it had been a trap, he’d have been hauled away, downstairs to be refurbed or just handed over the maintenance, chained to a mop bucket for the rest of his life. If it had been a trap…

 But it hadn’t been. He’s sure of it, now. 

He’s sure because he has to be, because if he’s wrong the consequences are… not unimaginable, exactly. He can imagine them very well. But he doesn’t want to linger too long, or he’ll lose his nerve.

A flash of light catches his attention and he looks back outside. It’s coming from the parking lot, slightly off to the left. If he squints, he can almost see them out there, a group of four or five. There’s another ten scattered around, getting into place. He sees shadows moving, silhouettes that don’t resolve into details.

The light keeps going. One deliberately slow flash, then a quick one. A pause. Three slow flashes. A quick blink, two more slow. 

N. O. W.

It’s the sign he’s been waiting for.

He gives one last mournful look at the latest round of art projects - macaroni glued to paper, some paintings and drawings, tissue-paper flowers. He’d been so proud of how well the kids had done with all of them. At least some of the parents have taken photos, anyway…

Right on time, the scent of smoke starts to settle slowly downwards, piped through the vents. The first round isn’t real smoke, but it’s meant to look and smell like it, and Beringer moves fast towards the bedroom the daycare workers use in the back.

He sticks his head in. “I smell smoke!” His voice is a little too flat to sound sincerely surprised, but they’re all asleep, the other five, some until he literally shakes them to get them to start swimming back to consciousness unwillingly. “I smell-... there’s a fire, come on, we have to get the kids!”

223654 groans and swats at him, pulling a blanket over her head. Beringer has to yank it off, irritated, even as the others wake with shouts of alarm as the scent of smoke gets stronger, the haze a little more complete. It’s not real, yet - Beringer knows how real smoke feels when it stings your eyes, although he isn’t sure why he knows that - but it will be, and he’s on a time limit before people could get hurt.

“Hold your effing horses,” ‘654 mutters, then goes still. She pulls the blanket back and blinks, looking upwards. “D’you smell smoke, ‘897?”

“Yes. That is why I just woke you up at 2 a.m., you piece of dull cheese, come on! We have to get the kids!”

“Right, right-... darn it… oh, heck-” ‘654 finally manages to essentially just roll off the bed onto the floor, but she’s on her feet a second later. Around him, the others murmur in worried voices. This is new, unexpected. There’s no direction from a handler, no one but them to take care of their charges in what they believe is an emergency.

Beringer swallows, squares his shoulders, and steps up.

“654 and 339, grab the walkies strollers, they hold six apiece and that’ll take care of our 1s and the young 2s. 504, have the older 2s, the threes, and the fours hold hands behind you and walk in a line. 505 can help you. 112, you take the cribs for the two little ones. I’ll make sure everyone is out and nobody is left behind.”

He smiles at them, projecting confidence and strength. The others, clearly relieved to see someone who at least pretends to know what to do right now, immediately follow their assigned tasks. 

Beringer takes a deep breath.

The smoke is settling in his hair and sleeves, and he has a painful flash of the idea of a bar, a cigarette in his mouth, laughing while holding up a lighter to a smiling girl-

He shakes off the pain and keeps moving. Memories just get in the way.

For a while, he just flits from one to another. He helps 112 to get the two cribs pushed out into the lobby first, moves along the mattresses to shush the crying toddlers and young children as they’re reluctantly woken and realize something is wrong. No one pays much attention to him, not right now. 

Especially not when the fire alarm goes off suddenly, a shrieking repetitive wail broken only by a disembodied metallic voice announcing EVACUATE BUILDING ONE, EVACUATE BUILDING ONE.

That’s the sign that the fake fire has became a real one.

They promised him, in those secret notes, that only this building will burn, and that they don’t want to hurt anyone. They promised, and like all the good little pets, Beringer has to hope and trust that the promises aren’t lies.

Once everyone is out, he heads back to finish his own part of the job. In the supply closet next to the potty-training bathroom, he finds the small can of solvent cleaner he’d stolen from a maintenance cart a week ago, a few old rags, and a matchbook. His heart is starting to pound, banging around within his chest, screaming at him for his betrayal. 

The handlers will be upset.

The handlers will be angry.

The handlers-

He pushes past the terror and closes trembling hands around the can and the rags, carrying them out and pouring solvent on one, another, yet another, until seven rags are soaked and lined up along the outside wall. It doesn’t matter if it’s obvious arson, because the people who set the first fire have promised to claim this one, too.

Then, finally, he goes to the little bathroom for his final act before whatever the hell this is about to turn into - and finds Mallie, right where she’d gone for the bathroom break she takes every single night around two in the morning, her dark eyes big and scared.

 “It’s so loud!” She shouts, and reaches for him. “It’s so loud, make it stop, make the noise stop!”

“Hey, Mal-pal,” Beringer says, voice as soothing as he can make it when he’s nearly shouting to be heard. “There’s a fire, but everyone is safe. We just need to go and find your daddy, okay? Things are about to get kind of scary, and we should find your daddy so he can take care of us now. It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you. It’s okay, come here-” 

She nods, chin wobbling, and Beringer’s heart hurts at having to scare her like this. But it’s the only way, he tells himself. It’s the only way he can get away clean in the chaos and confusion, the only way it might take a couple of days for anyone to care enough to look for him. 

He sweeps her up into his arms, carrying her back towards the door and setting her down on her feet. Out in the lobby, chaos is starting to reign as the few handles on duty this late at night come boiling up to evacuate. Beringer swallows back his loathing - if it were a real fire, those bastards would be abandoning the trainees in the cells down below. Sure, there’s a sprinkler system and big locking doors and some other things Marc Sonders explained to him when he, ever so innocently, asked about what would happen in case of fire, but…

But it’s still leaving them to be terrified and alone in the cold light, not knowing where the fire is or if it will roast them alive in their cells.

He hates them all.

He doesn’t hate Marc, but he should. But he doesn’t. But he should-

He shouldn’t. He can use Marc, at least, for now. That’s all.

“Stay right here,” He says, setting Mallie slowly down near the door. “Okay, honey? Stay right here. I have one more thing I need to do. Then I’m going to take you outside to be safe.”

The alarm pauses, briefly - then starts again, at a slightly higher pitch. That’s two fires.

Beringer digs the matchbook back out of his pocket and heads for the window, ready to set the third. It’s easy - light the match and drop it to the cloth, wash the fire kick up, watch it take the edges of the papers he purposely hung too low in the windows. Set one more fire by the art supplies, knowing the paint cabinet burns easy, too. Set a couple of the rugs and mattresses on fire, pretending his heart doesn’t ache at knowing so many stuffies will be burned beyond recognition.

But the kids are safe.

He would never have done this if it would have hurt the kids.

He clings to that - he isn’t totally selfish, he isn’t a monster trying to be free when he doesn’t deserve it. No, he’s just… taking his chance, and hopefully no one will get hurt. That’s all. This is… this is understandable, and he’s done everything to make sure the children, the babies, are safe. 

With the flames making their slow way up the window behind him, he turns with the warmth at his back to see Mallie still standing by the door, tears running down her heels. Crying with a silence he can’t bear, louder than the crackling of the flames. He grabs her up in his arms again and pushes open the door with his shoulder, running out to join the people who are streaming towards the exits. Handlers, the upstairs maintenance staff - not the pets, those will be trapped down in the basement levels, too, but the paid maintenance who put on a good show up here where it’s all above-board and normal. He even sees a couple marketing people who must’ve put in an overnight to finish a project. 

Demo pets, holding their handlers’ hands, are rushed past him. Perfect actors with perfect hair and perfect clothes, as frightened as any bad pet before a refurb. Beringer can smell the smoke out here, too. 

“You made fires,” Mallie wails, but her arms are tight around his neck. “I saw you!” You made the scary sounds! You made the fire”!

“Ssssshhh.” He doesn’t have time to explain. Can’t even begin to know how he could explain it, or convince this absurdly honest perfect little girl to lie for him. “Sssshhh, let’s just get outside now, okay? Let’s just get away from it.”

“You made it-”

“Mallie, hush baby, let’s just-... oh, here we go.” He sets his expression to one of wide-eyed shock as he sees Marc Sonders, pushing past others to make a beeline for the daycare. Beringer grabs him by the arm with his free hand, his other arm holding up Mallie, watching Marc look at his daughter with a stricken relief that she’s all right, hands to either side of her face, before he pulls her away from Beringer and holds her tightly, gripped on as though she’ll fade away if he lets go even the slightest bit. 

“Mallie! Oh, Ber, you’ve got her, thank God. Oh, thank God. Just hold on, baby girl, we’re going to get out of here.”

“Daddy,” Mallie cries. “Daddy, it’s so scary, I’m so scared!”

“I know, honey. I know. Come on, Ber, you come with us, you can wait in my car with me.”

 “No!” Mallie looks over at him, wide-eyed, and Beringer swallows against the guilt in his heart, seeing the little girl he loves - one of the children he has loved so much - fear him. “He can’t come!”

“Mallie, the rules don’t matter right now.” Marc shushes her as she tries to protest again. “Honey, let’s just get somewhere safe, okay?”

She swallows, and pushes her face into the side of his neck. “Okay, Daddy.”

Beringer exhales, closing his eyes. He can apologize to her later, he can, he’ll make it better-

His eyes fly open again. “Wait. Just-... one sec, Marc, please, stay right here.”

“Uh-... okay?”

Beringer doesn’t explain. He just turns and pushes his way back into the daycare’s main room. He’s met with a blast of heat, his little fires meeting the bigger one the pet lib group he’s helping set to cover their tracks as they break in. He inhales and the air is too hot and full of smoke to make it to his lungs. He  coughs as he drops down to crawl on his hands and knees, trying to get under the smoke, squinting as his eyes sting. He reaches out-

So close-

His girlfriend is screaming as she’s pinned under burning wood and if he can just reach a little further-

His heart splits in two from the sudden burst of agony, and he groans, dropping limp to the floor. He can’t stop coughing enough to inhale, his hands are groping blindly along mattresses holding to find the right one.

Then, he’s got it. Two small round shapes, soft with age and washings, and the flutters of blankets attached to them. Maliyah’s loveys, Mommy and Baby Lovey, are in his hand.

His face aches from the heat, he can feel it blasting against his skin. What did they start these fires with? It’s spreading too fast, too easily. He runs out of air to cough with, wheezing hoarse and weak. He doesn’t turn around, just crawls straight backwards. Turning around would waste precious time, what little air he has left.

His feet bump wood that clunks, the door, and he sits up with his back against it, feeling blindly with his hand. He can’t breathe-

He can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe-

The door smacks him as it opens, pushing him forwards, and there’s a strong hand gripped round his arm that pulls him out of the blistering oven of heat, yanks him to his feet, and he turns to see Marc, blurry, crushing him close in a hug. He coughs, inhales, coughs again.

“What the hell-” Marc starts, but Beringer pushes the loveys into Mallie’s arms even as a coughing fit wracks his entire body, and he fits himself against Marc.  The frightened pet desperate for leadership, even though he is a leader, when he wants to be. 

“You saved Mommy and Baby Lovey!” Mallie says, eyes wide, and hugs them close.

Beringer’s voice is a rasping whisper when he tries to speak. “Please, Marc, just, just take me outside, please.”

Everything smells like smoke. He keeps reaching, but she isn’t reaching back any longer. The heat-

It hurts-

His skin cracks, it blisters and peels all down his back, he screams but her silence is so much louder-

Marc nods and pulls him along, out the double-door entrance, a place Beringer has never been before. Behind them there’s a cracking that’s far too loud, the groan of the structure struggling with the flames. 

Once they push through the door, the crush of people around them, the heavy scent of smoke suddenly lightens.

The ghost of the fire before - the one that turned his back and arms to twists and ropes of scarring he hides under long sleeves even in summer, burying the flickers of memory as far beneath himself as he can - fades. Beringer takes a breath as he feels a breeze against his face and his hands, feels the concrete still holding a little warmth from the day under his feet. He almost stops, just to experience it, but Marc yanks on his arm and they keep moving, weaving through the others who stumble with the same desperate fear and confusion Beringer is trying to fake. Around them, people yell, the sound of fire sirens starts to rise and fall from a distance as the first trucks head for the Facility.

“Oh my God,” Marc whispers.

Mallie’s voice is a whimper. “Daddy? What’s happening, Daddy?”

“It’s a fire, baby, but it’s okay, it looks like-... it looks like everyone is out, it really does. I think everyone’s going to be okay, baby girl. Just keep holding onto Daddy, just keep holding on.”

She nods against his shoulder. Baby Lovey peeks up over her arm, flopped slightly, its odd stitched-in face eternally looking just a little bit surprised. 

The sirens don’t sound at all like they do on the cartoons the children watch. Beringer frowns, wondering what else the television shows have lied to him about.

Before the three of them get any further than the edge of the sidewalk where the parking pavement begins, there are a series of loud booms, one two three four, and the people scream. Beringer skids to a stop as the ground shakes under his feet - he didn’t know anything about this - and looks over his shoulder.

The windows of the daycare show a growing inferno inside, but one side of the building - a long, low-level area that holds the currently-closed cafeteria and a bricked-in walkway to the pet clinic off to one side - no longer exists.

It’s just rubble, and a big hole torn in the side of the building. More flames, crackling and reaching greedy fingers to grasp at the oxygen outside. Beringer stares through it at smoke and dust. Figures dart inside, dressed all in black and wearing respirators with small tanks on their backs.

Everyone else is fleeing, but these seven run in. 

The pet lib group who has been sending the notes, he thinks, and swallows, hard. There’s no one in the cafeteria at two in the morning, he tells himself, but if they lied to him about explosions, what if they lied about not wanting anyone to get hurt, too?

What if the trainees locked in their cells down below-

“What the fuck was that?” Marc gasps, looking as well, sliding his arm around Beringer’s shoulders. The two of them stand there, Mallie’s face buried against Marc’s neck, and stare together. 

“I don’t kn-know,” Beringer says, and he’s not lying. He can hear wailing children through the noise and the chaos, and strains to see until he catches sight of the other daycare pets, circled far enough away to be safe with all their babies and children in tow. He tries to count, although the light from the streetlights isn’t great. It casts shadows too starkly, it’s hard with al the children clinging and crying and moving to be sure. 

One-... two-... two cribs. Two infants crying, so that’s Yolanda and Markus. The six ones in their stroller - Hailie, Bethany, Myklaylah, John, Brayden, Ben... the six twos in theirs Addysin, Ophelia, William, Peter, Edward... a parent picking a three up - Elizabeth - and clutching them to her chest, weeping, two handlers together for one of the fours, that’d be Henry… He doesn’t breathe until he knows they’re all there, every single one - except for Mallie, of course, safe in her father’s arms.

“Marc…” He turns to look at the man, who looks back at him, dazed and struggling to process what he sees. Another boom rattles the parking lot, setting off car alarms and adding to the commotion - it’s a car, off to the side, suddenly going up in flames as well. Then a second car. Then a third. 

Mallie screams. “Daddy!”

Marc shudders and pulls Beringer close, turning him so their foreheads rest against each other, Mallie sandwiched between them. She’s crying, weeping openly, but the sounds all around are so loud Beringer can barely hear her. 

“I don’t even like this fucking job,” Marc says, in a voice like a faint, thin, strained wire, pulled tight enough to snap. “And people want to kill me over it, B-Ber.”

People like me, Beringer thinks.

His back itches, phantom aches from the scars that make up most of his skin from the collarbones down.

 “She was probably still alive when you freed yourself-”

“Because you have to hurt us,” Beringer says, finding his opening, his way in, his escape in the pain in Marc Sonders’s voice. “To make us good. And we don’t want to be hurt, Marc. None of us want to be hurt.”

“What? But you-... you sign up for-” There’s a pause, and a look passes over Marc’s face that Beringer can’t read in the darkness. “Ber… if I told you I looked at your acquisition paperwork… I know I’m not supposed to, but if I said I did-”

“No,” Beringer says, and isn’t sure why. He shivers as he sees two of the daycare pets catch sight of him in the crowd, waving at him, trying to wave him over. He looks back to Marc, speaking as fast as he can. “Please, just put me in your car and drive and we can talk about it then. Get me off the grounds. Please, even if you bring me back later, just let me see the stars before I have to go back in there. Please.”

Marc looks at him, startled by the desperation in his usually-placid voice, the intensity. “Beringer, you’re-... you’re not allowed-”

“Please,” Beringer whispers. “Please, just let me watch TV with you in a real house. Just one time, Marc, please, I’m begging you, please-”

“Well…”

Beringer takes a chance and pushes forwards, pressing a kiss to Marc’s unresisting lips, pulling back to see an expression of such comical surprise he even finds the time to laugh despite his racing heart, and kisses him again. It’s a breathless, terrified laughter, but it’s laughter nonetheless.

“Come on, Marc. Just this once. Let me be a person, just for a while.” He nuzzles against Marc’s cheekbone, lips grazing stubble. “Let me be your person.”

It works when the Romantics do it, right?

Marc swallows, touching his own fingers to his lips, and then nods. He pulls Beringer to his car, unlocking it before they get there, even opening Beringer’s door so he can slip inside quickly. “I’ll get Mallie in her carseat, you get on the passenger side. Hold on, Ber, you’ll see stars tonight.”

“I hope so.” Beringer smiles at him as he buckles his seatbelt, watches Marc climb into the driver’s side. Marc starts the car and flies out of the lot, past the emptied open gate, and down the road just as firetrucks come screaming past them to go in. 

Beringer catches the barest glimpse of the looks of shock on the faces of the other daycare pets, and then they’re gone. It’s gone, the whole damn place is gone. 

One hand goes up to his collar, to rub his thumb over his number, his name. 

He’ll wait a couple of hours. Do whatever it is Marc Sonders needs him to do, to make it worthwhile. He won’t be very good, but maybe Marc doesn’t need him to be. Then, once Marc’s guard is down, he’ll knock him over the head and get the hell away from this place for good. 

He just has to wait for his chance. 

If he does it right, he won’t have to kill him. He can just, just maybe get him to drink too much, or see if he has sleeping pills. Beringer has watched television late at night where they crush up sleeping pills into someone’s hot chocolate or pudding or whatever to drug them. Maybe Marc has trouble sleeping, Beringer offers to help… Maybe he can do this with no one getting hurt, he doesn’t really want to kill him, he’s the only person who has ever been really nice to Beringer, maybe he can-

Marc clears his throat, breaking into Beringer’s thoughts. “Um. Hey.”

Beringer finds himself looking over with a wry smile - not a feigned expression at all. He really doesn’t want to have to hurt Marc Sonders. “Hey?”

“What if… um.” Marc clears his throat again. Even in the dark, it’s clear he’s probably blushing. A streetlight briefly illuminates his face as he glances over, then back at the road. Behind them, Mallie whispers to her loveys. “What if, we… uh. Never came back, actually? Like... what if I just kept driving?”

Beringer blinks.

Waits a second.

Blinks again. 

 Then he whispers, “Wh-... what?”

Marc looks away. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s probably a stupid idea, just-”

“N-no, I didn’t say, uh, I didn’t say not to, you just surprised me.” Beringer leans over, worried this brief bright chance will be lost, and lays his hand over Marc’s where it rests on the gear shift between them. Marc swallows, an audible click in his throat. Shifts so they’re palm to palm, then pulls Beringer’s hand up until he can kiss the back of his knuckles. 

“I don’t want to go back to work,” Marc confesses, turning left at a stoplight. The world seems empty at three in the morning, devoid of everything but the streetlights and the three of them here in the car.

“Me neither,” Beringer replies, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“I hate everything about my job except for you. You and paying the rent are literally the only reason I keep going and, you know what, if we just leave, then... then i don’t have to pay rent anymore...”

“Oh.” Beringer hadn’t considered that, that Marc might... not actually want to be a handler. That he might be willing to take the risk of quitting, or even just... vanishing into the darkness after the fire, just like Beringer plans to do. “Oh, uh. Then... where do you want to go?”

“I’ve heard about a town for people like you,” Marc says. He merges onto the interstate, heading due north. As they leave the heart of the city, the orange glow of all the lights starts to fade and the stars wink into existence one by one. “We know kind of where it is. What if-”

“Take me there.” He doesn’t even need Marc to finish the sentence. “Take me to that town.”

“I mean, I don’t know exactly where-”

“Take me as far as you can. I want to see it, I want to see-... everything.” He laughs again, more sincerely this time, as the city - the only place he has ever known - is finally and fully behind them. “I want to see anything.”

“I want to see you,” Marc says, voice low.

Beringer thinks of the scars under his clothes. Fifty-five percent of his body, something deep within him whispers. Weeks in the hospital fighting to heal. Twisted into a shadow of someone else long before WRU took his mind. “No you don’t.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“No-”

“Ber. Just let me feel something for somebody, it’s been a while and I’m not great at it, but... I know what I feel about you. Let me have that.”

Beringer looks over at him, and his heart… shifts, in a strange way. It’s almost a fluttering, as if his racing heart has found something new to fly towards or away from. His nerves feel like they’re on fire, like he’s made of sparks burning away the edges, showing something else beneath. 

 Something... clean.

“Yeah,” He says, and leans back, closing his eyes. He can smell the smoke all over himself, clinging to clothes and hair, even his eyelashes. 

He discovers, to his surprise, that he wants more of this new kind of burn. 

-

-

P.S. No one is actually hurt in the fire, for the record.

-

Tagging people who have expressed interest: @astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @peachy-panic @winedark-whump @boxboysandotherwhump @whumptywhumpdump

[shywhumpauthor]

Rune’s Story Part 6- Spoon

Masterlist

Okay you know when you have a plot all written out, but then your characters just go and fuck it up? That is exactly what Rune did. I no longer control these characters. They control me. 

Cw: pet whump (not bbu). female whumper, beating, forced into a cage, cursing, forced labor, pet names, hit with a spoon, affectionate/kind of intimate whumper, dehumanization, conditioning/past conditioning, 

Rune carried the basket of dirty clothes into the laundry room, careful not to knock anything over with their wings. 

Balancing the laundry basket in one arm, they pulled open the washing machine, and began to put the clothes inside. 

“Thank you, Sugar, I’m sorry for asking you to do so much, especially since you just got here,” Mabel offered them a soft smile as they finished putting the laundry into the wash, and stepped aside as she moved forwards. 

“For this, we do about half a cap of detergent, and you put that in right here,” Mabel spoke as she grabbed the detergent off of the top of the washer, and twisted the cap off. “Then you press this button to turn it on, turn the dial to normal, and press start,” 

The washing machine hummed to life, and Mabel turned to them. “See? Easy as pie,” She smiled. “Come on back to the kitchen, I’ll make us both lunch before we get down to the real cleaning.” Mabel placed a hand on Rune’s shoulder, and ushered them out of the bathroom. 

“Here, you take a seat over there, I got that nice little cushion just for you!” Mabel exclaimed, pointing to a floor pillow by the table. Rune bit their tongue, and took a seat. 

Why couldn’t they just sit at the table? There were four chairs, that was more than enough! They didn’t dare say anything. Mabel made it clear she wanted them sitting on the floor, so that’s what they would do. 

But as Mabel handed them a bright green sippy cup, they had to fight to keep a neutral expression. They had seen human infants and toddlers use these! They weren’t a helpless little baby! And they weren’t a dog, either! They shouldn’t have to eat on the damn floor, or sleep in a fucking cage!

“Are you okay, Rune? You’re making a face,” Mabel asked, as she emptied a can of pork and beans into a pan. 

“Yes, Miss, I’m good,” They answered, wrapping their wings around their shoulders. 

“You can tell me if something’s wrong, you know,” She turned to look at them. 

“I- thank you, miss,” Rune thought better of saying anything. They looked down at their feet until Mabel turned away. They had already broken so many rules, they were surprised they hadn’t been punished yet. 

Rune had been through a lot of shit in the past year. They had been captured by a group of hunters, taken in by Darius of all people, tortured and beaten on a daily basis, and stripped of every last bit of dignity they had. And they had managed to survive all of that without yet breaking down. 

But when Mabel served them their lunch in what looked suspiciously like a dog bowl, they fucking lost it. 

“I’M NOT A FUCKING PET!” Rune exploded, throwing the dog bowl across the room as hard as they could as they jumped to their feet. It crashed against the window, and the shattering of glass filled their ears. 

Just as quickly as it had come, the anger left them, and the harsh reality of what they had done sank in. 

Mabel stared at them in shock, a large hand raised to cover her open mouth. 

“I- I’m so sorry, miss,” Rune whispered, as they dropped to their knees, bowing their head. “I-“

“Don’t talk.” Mabel whispered harshly, and Rune shut their mouth. 

“Never in my life have I seen such an ungrateful little-“ Mabel took a sharp breath in, and slowly released it. “You stay right there, don’t move.”

Rune barely dared breathe as Mabel crossed the kitchen, and yanked open a drawer. They stole a glance up, just to see her pull a large wooden spoon out, before slamming shut the drawer. 

“I know this day has been stressful, but it is quite unacceptable for you to act like this,” Mabel huffed, as she advanced on them with the spoon. 

Rune had been hit with many things. Belts, whips, canes, even a rolled up magazine. Never had they been hit with a wooden spoon. 

The pain was more dull than the splitting one of a whip. For a woman of her age, Mabel’s hit was surprisingly hard, as the spoon cracked across their cheek. 

Rune swallowed back a cry, but stayed still. They deserved this. They had been terrible, awful. They deserved the whip. They should be thankful that she was going so easy on them. 

But all they felt was bitter resentment, towards Mabel, and towards humans. It was so fucking unfair. They weren’t a pet! They had been free, and happy, until both of those things were ripped away from them! By the fucking hunters! Who were they to decide that Rune didn’t deserve freedom? That Avians didn’t deserve freedom?

Rune flinched as Mabel hit the spoon across their knuckles, white hot pain shooting up their arm. They deserved this. 

The beating didn’t last half as long as one of Darius’s did. With one last forceful whack across the base of their wings, Mabel huffed out “Get to your crate!”

Rune didn’t bother to pick up their pig plush as they hopped to their feet and ran from the kitchen. 

The cage… wasn’t as small as it looked from the outside. They could just about sit up straight, and stretch out their legs. Rune glanced down as something squeaked beneath them. They reached under their leg, and pulled out a small little rubber pineapple. A dog toy.

With a half stifled sob, Rune threw it out of the cage, where it bounced harmlessly off the carpet. 

Mabel huffed in exasperation, as she bent over, and locked the cage shut. “I really expected better of you, Rune,” Mabel sighed, noticing the pineapple toy. She picked it up, and set it on top of the cage. “Take some time to think about what you did wrong, I’ll come back later. You still have chores to do.” Mabel pushed for a moment, but Rune didn’t even look up. They tucked their head in between their knees, and brought their wings up to shield their body from view. 

As Mabel walked away, they couldn’t bring themselves to feel guilty. Regretful, sure, but not guilt. They could handle being treated like a slave. They could handle being treated like a toy. But they could not handle being treated like a pet.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

tag list:

@just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi​ @myst-in-the-mirror

[gottawhump]

Treasure

Young Adulthood

Here. Have something that insisted on being written long after the sleep hours started.

Also, character backstory.

CW/TW: dehumanization, slavery, nudity (nonsexual), childbirth referenced, breastfeeding, an actual baby, lady whumpee, elves, misogynistic term for a woman

Father kept his Treasure in the kennels, with the hounds. In her own kennel, like a prize bitch. Which he said she was, from a distinguished pedigree.

Last night, he’d been busy with her. Fussing over her, Mother said. He’d stayed with her until the early dawn hours, when she whelped her pup.

Now I knocked on the kennel door, feeling foolish. Father would laugh. But it only seemed polite, even if I knew Treasure wouldn’t invite me in.

I waited a few moments, then opened the door and entered. Father’s Treasure reclined on her rough bed of hay, a coarse blanket pulled over her. Her loose fire-copper hair curtained her face, until she lifted his head and shook it back. Her emerald green eyes met mine, just for a moment, before looking down respectfully. As Father required.

“Young Master.”

“Hello.” She shifted, moving the blanket, and I saw the baby, nursing at one breast.

She looked down at her baby, brushing her free hand over the small head, stroking the silky dark hair. She smiled, a small curve of full lips, but a real smile, making her green eyes sparkle.

It was rare and beautiful, and I wondered why Father didn’t spend his days with her trying to coax more like it from her.

When the baby finished nursing, her eyes flicked to me again, then away. Wary, wanting to know what I wanted, why I was here.

“May I see the baby? Can I hold it?”

“Yes, Young Master. It’s a boy.” She sat up, and the blanket fell further down, showing she was fully bare, not wearing the wisps of silk and satin Father liked to decorate her with. She handed me her baby, helping me hold him properly, before drawing back.

Now I stroked the dark infant head. Newborn, hard to tell if his ears would be blunt or pointed. A baby, not a ’pup’, healthy and whole. Probably my brother. Half-brother.

“He’s beautiful,” I said. “What will you name him?”

“Master will name him, if he wants.” She swallowed hard,and blinked several times.

“Yes I know. But what would you call him?”

“I—-don’t know. Maybe... maybe Daniel for my grandsire, or Damon, for m-my friend.”

I nodded. “Those are good names.”

“Ma-May I have him back, Young Master?”

“Of course.”

She held her baby close, tight but careful. She pressed kisses to his head, before flicking a glance at me.

“Ma-May I ask a question, Young Master?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you know what will happen to him?”

I knew she was asking How much time do I have left with my baby? I shook my head, because I didn’t know. She blinked hard, and I saw a tear fall.

It made me angry, my fists clenched tight at my sides. She was a person, not some pedigreed prized bitch, and she deserved better than this.

She whimpered an apology, and I realized I’d frightened her. Consciously, I relaxed my hands. “It’s okay, Treasure.” What was her real name, and why hadn’t I thought to ask before now? “You’re fine. You’re a good girl.”

She smiled again, the one she always gave Father, a too-wide baring of teeth showing fear mixed with relief. Right now it made my stomach turn.

[sleepyfan-blog]

Midnight Blues

Author’s Note: This is the fourth part of the Big E raising the Baby Primarchs fic. First. Previous. Next. 

Warnings: dehumanization of infants, Jealousy, Big E being a shitty parent

Tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @the-pure-angel @sharenadraculea @whorety-k @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan 

Summary: The Emperor is about to take a late night nap when another’s psychic distress draws his attention. 

Neoth closed his eyes for a few moments, having just laid down for a quick nap, late into the terran night when feelings of intense discomfort, pain and fear that were not his own washed across his mental landscape, pure and bright. The Emperor of mankind leapt to his feet, blue eyes turning sunfire gold as he reached for his blade, searching swiftly for the source of disquiet, psychic flames lighting up his room in sharp relief. 

Nothing. No dark creatures, no scheming sorcerors, no mad-jabbering witches calling to their false-gods to unleash misery and pain upon his subjects. And yet, another wave of fear-discomfort-unhappiness washed through his mind. Neoth swiftly followed the mental link back to the person radiating such intense emotions at him to find -

Fifteen, kicking and wailing in it’s crib, blanket off, pacifier nowhere within it’s grabbing range, tiny limbs flailing wildly. He could hear twelve start to sniffle and wail - it’s empathic powers going to be useful when it was older, but now only served to upset it when one of it’s siblings were distressed. Neoth pulled back into his own body and rushed into the primarchs’ baby room, which was only a short distance from his own personal rooms, ignoring the way his golden companions startled and moved around him in tired confusion.

He needed to move quickly or all of them would wake and begin crying and it would take hours for all of them to calm down - and they’d need additional feeding and hydration to replace the fluids they’d lost while sobbing. He scoops fifteen up from it’s bassinet and began rocking it back and forth in his arms as he floated a warm bottle of formula into his free hand, gently pressing it to Fifteen’s pouty lips “Shhh… Come on now, quiet down… Are you hungry, fifteen? Hmmm? Is that why you were crying? You woke up at least one of your brothers… It’s alright… I’ve got you little one, it’s alright, papa’s got you.” 

Fifteen latched onto the bottle and sucked on it a couple of times before spitting it out, shaking it’s head and snuffling, though it’s cries were quieter then before. Neoth frowned, before setting Fifteen down, checking his cloth briefs, cleaning the little one up and changing it to a clean diaper “Ah, you needed to be cleaned up. There now, are you more comfy now?”

FIfteen latched onto one of his fingers with a tiny crimson fist, yawning hugely before settling back into it’s bassinet with a pleased sound.

Neoth sensed the lingering surprise, mild confusion and was that… Jealousy amongst his golden companions in the room? He looked around at a moderately sullen looking Constantin, who was hovering near Twelve, having checked and changed the fussy little empathic primarch, from whom the emotions were radiating most strongly from “Is something bothering you, Constantin?” He asks as he tucks fifteen in, laying it’s blanket over it’s small form, ensuring that it’s pacifier was within grabbing range.

“You referred to yourself as Fifteen’s father, sire.” Constantin murmured, voice low and quiet “I hadn’t thought that they would begin forming memories so early in their life, to be referring to you in such a way, to reinforce their obedience to you.”

“They… They shouldn’t retain any emotions, beyond vague feelings of attachment and care. And I didn’t refer.. To myself… as Fifteen’s… fathe… Yes I did.” Neoth internally cursed. He couldn't get too attached to them. They were to be his transhuman generals. His first and foremost warriors, to unite mankind and ensure humanity’s dominance in the galaxy over all that would see them enslaved and weak,fearful and ignorant. “... I need to step back from caring for them. They are taking up a great deal more of my time than I was expecting them to, and I am beginning to lose the distance I need to maintain from them due to their bodily and emotional needs as infants.”

“Entirely understandable, my lord. But who will be taking care of them  in your place? The Lord Sigilite is just as busy as you are, my emperor, and I am still daily dealing with fools who try to sabotage your efforts in any number of ways, as are the other captain-generals of the different arms of the Adeptus Custodes. And the Shadowkeepers are still keeping watch for the invasion force of Chaotic fools who intend on stealing away the primarchs.” Constantin murmured, practical as ever.

“They will need caretakers who are competent, but who will not grow unduly attached to them as the infants they appear to be, rather than the tools they actually are. Constantin, I will leave finding appropriate caretakers to you, as I will be negotiating with the Martians and the Jovians… Again.” Neoth orders, keeping his voice low and quiet, so as to not wake his tiny generals. If he spoke more than a whisper in their presence, even if they were sleeping, they would wake and their attention would inevitably fixate on him. It was only normal, of course. He was their liege lord, their creator. His presence should attract their attention whenever he was nearby, no matter how old they are.

“As you command, my lord. I will have prospects for you by the end of the month, background checks permitting, my lord. In the meantime, I will double their Custodes guards and have them by taken care of by them.” Constantin offered, bowing before taking his leave, a dataslate in hand, already working on the task that his master had given him.

Such a dutiful man, Constantin. A small, pleased smile touched Neoth’s lips. The other custodes returned to their usual posts as Neoth turned and started to leave the primarchs’ room, before twelve started to wail.

Neoth sighed and walked over to the infant, scooping him up. “You’ve been changed… You aren’t hungry… Why are you upset little one, hmm?” He rocked twelve back and forth, ensuring that the little one could hear his heartbeat by pressing the other’s head on his chest, as he knew that was one quick way to get any of them to settle down. “Or are one of the others having a little nightmare? Probably Eight or Nine, as both of them have future sight.” He hadn’t expected their future sight to manifest within them so young.

Not that the glimpses of future sight that he caught second hand from either infant primarch was at all actionable or at all sensible. Mostly just fuzzy impressions and dizzying emotions, just enough to distress either or both of them tremendously when it happened. He’d called in a Sister of Silence last week when their nightmares had gotten particularly bad. Not that he had allowed her to touch any of the infant primarchs, unsure what or how their nascent warp presences would react to being touched by someone so anathema to their souls. Her presence had dimmed their connection to the warp so that they could sleep peacefully.

Of course, her presence had tremendously upset Fifteen, who wouldn’t stop crying until she left the room. Not even when Neoth held him and rocked him back and forth, singing an ancient lullaby he barely remembered that usually soothed the little shapeshifter. She’d also upset Six as well, who would not stop growling and wuffling aggressively in her direction, having managed to get on his hands and knees, snapping his gummy mouth at her as if he had a mouth full of sharp teeth with which to bite her. She’d made the unfortunate error of getting too close to One’s bassinet while he was awake, causing the tiny blonde primarch to hiss at her as he hid under his blanket, green eyes glowing up with itty bitty fury at this stranger in his domain.

Each of theirs usual Custodes’ guards had been able to mostly settle the upset little ones down, but none of them had truly calmed down until the sister of silence had left the room entirely. 

Neoth shook himself out of his musings, to find twelve sound asleep, tiny head pressed against his chest, one of it’s little thumbs stuck firmly in it’s mouth. “Ah… You just needed a heartbeat to fall asleep to… I’ll need to look into finding something that mimics a human heartbeat well enough for each of you… Fussy, fussy.” He murmured as he slowly removed twelve from his body and set it into it’s bassinet.

He started to back out of the room where his infant generals slept, confused as to why his chest was aching a little. Why his hands longed to hold one of them in each of his arms. Settle into one of the chairs for the comfort of one of the people who was in charge of feeding the little primarchs and fall asleep with them in his arms. Perhaps Eight and Nine, who had nightmares most often, as a side effect of the future sight they’d both been gifted with. His mental shields would easily be able to protect them from fragmented futures… Perhaps fussy little Fourteen and Seventeen, who were the clingiest of his infant generals - especially since Fourteen had shown the alarming trait of teleporting short distances when it wanted to be held and that wish wasn’t fulfilled.

Perhaps Nineteen and One - as they could also teleport short distances as well… Nineteen also had some sort of camouflage ability that rendered him nearly invisible to everyone apart from Neoth himself. The day that had been discovered had been a terrifying one indeed, as his loyal custodes had tried increasingly hard not to panic as they searched the palace, searching for the wayward little primarch as Neoth himself had been off-world at the time, speaking to the leaders of the asteroid miners beyond Pluto until the little shadow weaver had revealed himself to be gumming determinedly on a sweet treat package, clawing at it.

Each of them needed dedicated and competent caretakers, and Neoth could not in good consciousness spend so much time with all of them. Not when the internal alliances of Terra were shaky at best. Not when his command of the Sol System could potentially be questioned and threatened if he did not show a sufficient display of force. Not when agents of the enemy were still to come and try and steal away his children primarchs. He had innumerable duties, and he had to offload these onto others. 

Neoth would insure that he had a presence in their lives, as they grew up, but as infants, his presence was not necessary, apart from an occasional one. Eventually he did give into the urge to gather a bunch of spare pillows and blankets, making a comfortable makeshift fort between two of the chairs. This one last time, before he stepped away from caring for them directly until toddlerhood, he would allow himself this last indulgence. He scooped up each infant and brought them into the blanket fort before settling down in the middle, insuring that he was touching each of them, as they nuzzled into him. 

Soft, warm feelings that Neoth would deny having bubbled in his chest as he fell asleep surrounded by his sleeping infant sons.

[sleepyfan-blog]

Almach's Care

Author’s Note: This is the next part in the Raised on Terra AU! First. Previous. Next. A big thanks to @undeaddream for allowing me to borrow Almach and @kit-williams for letting me borrow Apollo!

Tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @the-pure-angel @sharenadraculea @i-am-a-dragon34 @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan

Warnings: dehumanization of infants, dehumanization of infant primarchs Ask me to tag, if there’s something that I missed/bothers you

Summary: A typical day of Almach’s, since he’s been assigned to care for three of the infant Primarchs. 

“Come here, little one. You’re doing so well.” Almach encouraged, a warm smile appearing on the Blank’s face as he watched Primarch Eleven crawl on his hands and knees towards him. He was kneeling down on the very comfortable carpet that lined the room of the Primarchs’ Creche, and didn’t even try to hide the beaming smile, nor the pride in his voice as the tiny Primarch crawled over to him.

The much younger Blank paused for a moment, sitting down and going “Bah!” Reaching out towards Almach with both hands before yawning sleepily.

“Come on, young one. I know that you can get a little bit closer. You’ve done so well so far.” Almach encouraged, still smiling encouragingly at the tiny child. He had no idea how much he would come to adore the posting that he’d been given, but there was nothing else in the entire Imperium he would rather be doing right now, than helping to raise these amazing and sweet children.

Eleven yawned, rubbing one of his dark eyes with a curled little fist before going back onto his hands and knees and crawling the rest of the way over to where Almach was, flopping down next to him and rolling onto his back, waving his arms and feet in the air with a happy little giggle. “Hehehe!”

Almach beamed brighter and he carefully scooped Eleven up, murmuring quietly “You did such a good job, little one.” The Emperor of Mankind had yet to see fit to give them names, and the Sigilite was deferring to Him as to the matter of names. Privately, Almach had begun to ponder nicknames to call his wards, as it left a very bad taste in his mouth to keep referring to them by numbers, rather than to give them some kind of proper name. 

“Abababa!” Eleven babbled cheerfully up at Almach before he shoved his fingers in his mouth, gumming on them industriously. 

“That’s not good for you, little one.” Almlach corrected gently as he carefully pulled the tiny Primarch’s fingers out of his mouth.

A small frown appeared on the tiny Primarch’s face as he tried to shove his other hand inside of his mouth.

Almach patiently blocked him from chewing on his other fingers. He grabbed one of the teething toys and gave it to Eleven “I know… Growing teeth isn’t any fun at all. But biting your won fingers won’t help you either, little buddy.”

“Bababah!” Eleven babbled,s seemingly in response before starting to gnaw on the teething toy, the cooling properties of the toy helping to numb the pain from the infant’s growing pains. 

~

Five was one of the best crawlers of the Primarchs, from what Almach noticed. No, he wasn’t biased towards his primary wards, how dare anyone accuse him of such. Five had been one of the first to start crawling, though Six and One had been close second and third. One and Six also liked to try and bite him, whenever they were out of their cribs and able to freely move about their creche. 

Six would baby growl at him, his blue eyes almost luminous, despite his Blank aura, clearly convinced that he was an Enemy that needed chasing off. It certainly didn’t help that he and the Custodian who was in charge of caring for Six and One did not get along very well, though ALmach tried to be polite and cordial to the powerful warrior, keenly aware that were the two of them to come to blows, he was likely to lose such a fight. One hissed at him, bright green eyes glaring mistrustfully at him from whichever corner he was hiding in.

An amusing thing is that One had to defend whichever slightly darkened corner he was lurking in from a number of his fellow Primarchs, most often Eight, Nineteen and the twins. But, given that those five primarchs were apparently meant to hold secrets, were meant to use stealth tactics, and were to be the spymasters of the Imperium once they were old enough and trained enough, this was not surprising.

Almach had learned to keep a close eye whenever Five was out of his crib - especially as some of the other caretakers were near the door, as Five was very fast and had a penchant for trying to crawl at top speed towards whichever open door, window or open vent cover he thought that he could get through.

Scolding the little one did nothing, as the dark haired baby would just stare impassively up at him with hawk-gold eyes before continuing to do whatever it was that he had wanted to do. Five seemed to be fascinated by Fifteen’s nascent shape-shifting abilities and would sit near his brother and watch him for hours, when he wasn’t trying to escape out of the room at any and every opportunity. 

Almach had asked if he would be allowed to bring his charges out of their room, to broaden their horizons and experiences a little but apparently there was an impending threat to the Primarchs that required that they stay in the most heavily guarded section of the palace at all times until the window of danger had passed.

This had led to Almach sleeping in one of the very comfortable chairs meant for himself and his fellow caretakers whenever he wasn’t awake and caring for his charges, or helping the others wrangle their own charges, as his nightmares when he was away from them as to what might happen… Especially to young Eleven, who had all the makings of the most powerful Blank to ever exist among Humanity… 

He had to stay close, and guard them carefully.To keep both eyes on them and devote every spare bit of energy and care he had to each of his three precious charges, and to aid in the care and raising of their brothers, so that they had the best possible start to life. Not because of the grand destinies awaiting them, but because the galaxy was a cruel and unforgiving place, especially to Pariahs, and he did not wish a fraction of the misery he’d gone through before The Emperor had found and saved him on anyone else.

“Bah!” Five called out, gently poking one of his cheeks with a tiny finger. 

A rueful smile appeared on his face and Almach hummed “I’m sorry, my little Sparrow, was I not paying attention to you? What is it you wanted to show me?”

Five leaned into Almach instead, pressing one small ear near where his heart beat, tiny hands coming up to grab onto the fabric of his shirt, golden eyes closing shut, as a happy sigh left the infant. “Mmm…”

Almach beamed, his heart achingly full of affection as he pressed a fond kiss to the top of Five’s head, one hand coming up to support the little one as he leaned over to one side slightly, snagging a blanket to lightly drape around FIve’s tiny body. “Ah, alright. Naptime I guess.” A yawn left the Blank and he carefully scooped up the little Primarch, walking over to a chair and settling in to allow Five to sleep - Elven and Two were playing with Seventeen, Ten and Fourteen, while Thirteen and Seven quietly parallel played near each other. Four was watching Thirteen and Seven play, grabbing a soft toy and butt-scooted over to seven, placing the plush toy next to the neat pile that Seven had made.

~

“Heeere comes the Thunderhawk! Brrrrrrrrooooowwwmmm… And open your mouth, sweetling! That’s it, it’s breakfast!” Almach cooed as he slowly brought up the spoonful of densely nutritious and carefully balanced baby food up to Two’s mouth, getting the little Primarch to open his mouth.

“Abha?” The Tiny Primarch babbled before the spoon entered his mouth. The little one made a face and turned his head away from Almach, the contents of the spoon smearing across one chubby cheek. 

Almach sighed, gently scraping the baby food off of Two’s cheek with the side of the spoon and tried again with a different colored bit of mashed food. None of it smelled very appetizing to him, but he’d been told by no less than a half-dozen nutritionists who were part of the Primarchs’ medical care teams, that these baby food had been specifically formulated to support their growth and immune health.

The fact that it smelled like it tasted of bland vegetables and sadness was simply a result of having the best of the best food available to feed the little ones. They shouldn’t deal with something as stimulating as food spices beyond a little bit of salt for water retention purposes for reasons that he had been assured were very good. Avoiding honey at this age, he did understand… But surely they should get something that tasted a bit better? 

Two was the fussiest eater of his trio of charges. While he would eat as much formula as Almach would let him drink in a feeding, Two had definite opinions on what he was fed from the carefully curated selection of food mashes that were supposed to be fed to the infant Primarchs. “Muh… Muh!” The little Primarch protested, turning his face away as Almach tried feeding him another spoonful of the vegetable mash.

“Come on, it’s good for you, little one? … No? Maybe we will like this fruit mash a little better. It’s sweeter, at least, from what I can smell.” Almach sighed, clearing the spoon of the ground up vegetable paste, and switching over to the fruit-mash. 

Two immediately focused on the paste being offered to him and ate every bite of it, babbling happily between bites. After that, he did have several bites of the vegetable mash before turning away from the spoon once again. Two started trying to escape the feeding chair that Almach had put him in, trying to wriggle his way to freedom.

A sigh left Almach and he carefully wiped the baby’s face and hands before unstrapping him from the feeding chair and putting him down to go play with the brothers who’d been fed in the previous hour. “Alright, there you go, young one. That’s enough food for now, I guess.” He noted down in Two’s food journal what he had eaten, what he had refused, and how much he’d eaten before washing everything up and getting Five’s food ready.

~

“... How did one like you become part of the care team for the Primarchs?” Apollo demanded, his eyes narrowing as he glared down at the Blank, arms crossed over his chest as he watched as the other was attempting to care for one of his charges.

One wasn’t having any of it, however. The tiny Primarch was growling and swatting at him, the three baby teeth that he’d managed to grow in bared in a valiant attempt to be ferocious. One had woken up unexpectedly from his nap and had been crying.

Apollo had been on his way over to care for the little one when the Blank had shown up first, and had attempted to check One’s diaper, in case he needed to be changed. 

“And just what does that mean?” Almach asked, glowring up at the giant golden fucker, trying to avoid angry baby fists in order to care for him. “Mind helping me change One? He needs it, and if he keeps being this noisy, he’ll wake up all of his brothers.” He kept his voice light and calm and quiet, despite the irritation bubbling under his skin. 

“Pariahs aren’t known for their social skills. Move, he dislikes your… Everything, and for good reason, considering how unpleasant you are to be around.” Apollo growled to the mortal blank hip-checking the other out of his way, before reaching into One’s crib.

The infant primarch started to calm down, now that the idiot Blank was out of his immediate sight line.

“See? He’s gone now. I’m here.” Apollo attempted to soothe the still unsettled little Primarch, running a couple of fingers through short blonde hair, ignoring the way that he’d sent the Blank sprawling to the floor. 

“You fucker! That hurt!” Almach hissed in indignation, staggering back up onto his feet. He glowered at the Custodian for several moments, internally debating on whether or not he should respond in kind… But Apollo was currently in the middle of cleaning up One… And the Blank was keenly aware of the fact that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was going to win a fight with a custodian one on one. 

The Custodes smirked down at him before saying “Hand me the clean diaper you were clumsy enough to drop, would you?”

Almach’s glare intensified and he viciously picked it up before throwing it at the large gold fucker’s head “Fine, bastard.” 

“Mm, of the two of us, I know who both of my parents were, and had been well-loved by them before being chosen by Him to become one of His Companions. I’m not sure what gutter He found you in.” The Custodian taunted, a cruel smirk on his face as he finished cleaning up One, tossing the dirty diaper at Almach “Dispose of that for me, would you? You are capable of following basic instructions, yes?”

A low, frustrated growl left Almach and he just barely managed to catch the dirty diaper before it opened and caused a larger mess to clean up later. He silently stomped over to where the disposal chute was and threw it away, still scowling heavily, muttering to himself “At least I don’t have a twelve-foot pole shoved up my ass, making it difficult to do the job I signed up for.”

Apollo turned to glare at Almach, his voice glacially cold “And just what do you mean by that? I am following mission parameters. You are the one who has been coddling the -”

“Don’t you fucking start with that again. Human infants need physical touch and to be held regularly, or they will die. It’s been well-documented that infants who don’t receive the physical comfort and care that they need suffer later in life. If they are starved of too much physical touch and affection they will die of loneliness. We are a social species, and that has not been genetically cut away from the infant Primarchs. They are still human. Elevated far beyond what I, as a humble baseline could ever hope to be, but human nonetheless.” Almach growled, his eyes narrowing a little. After his younger sibling had been killed because they had been a Blank and had been caught out at the wrong time… He had sworn that if he’d ever been put in charge of other Blanks in any capacity, he would do his utmost to care for and protect them.

And Eleven had the makings of being an incredibly powerful blank. He would doubtlessly struggle in social interactions with non-Blanks, possibly for the entirety of his life due to the nature of being a Pariah, but Almach intended on giving Eleven the best chance he could to succeed. 

“I do give my charges the touch that they require. You indulge all of the Primarchs far too much. They are meant to be our Lord’s best and greatest generals. To help him in conquering the galaxy and bringing it into the dominion of Humanity. It’s possible that some of them may die during this most Glorious of purposes. Coddling them and being so soft on them will not do them any good in the long run.” Apollo pointed out, shaking his head a little “I did take the same childrearing classes that you did. But coddling them runs the risk of blunting them from being the weapons they are supposed to be.”

Almach ground his teeth together, trying to swallow down the words that beat in his breast. These were children. Infants. Genetically modified and enhanced yes. But that did not make them weapons of war, and treating them as such would only cause far, far more problems down the line. But to say that out loud directly, would get him pulled off of the Primarch Project… And very probably killed or imprisoned. “Just because they are meant to be living weapons, does not mean that is the only thing they can, or should be. Allowing them to become full people will encourage their loyalty to Him, and ensure that they are more useful in a variety of ways, rather than simply as tools of war.” Almach hated, hated referring to the Primarchs as tools, but that is what He viewed them as, and He had said as much.

“... I suppose those points do have merit. I will ponder them. For being a quarrelsome Pariah, I do admit you have moments of cleverness.” The Dread Spear murmured, a thoughtful expression on his face before turning away from Almach, as One had settled back into sleep.

Almach closed his eyes and counted to twenty twice, as the wildly foolish urge to attack the Custodes after the other had turned his back to him clawed at his self-control. He would care for his charges and their brothers to the best of his abilities. He had to keep his temper, if he were to stay on the team caring for them, so he let the Custodes leave without another word.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Barrage

For @whumptober2021 day 3:  taunting | insults | “Who did this to you?”

CW: War whump, WWI, dehumanization, vampire whumpee, degrading language, negative/panic stimming due to sensory overload, casual ableism (it’s not intended as such, but effectively is), period-appropriate xenophobia, implied future loss of limb, brief religious talk at end

1918, the Western Front of World War One

-

If he’s screaming, he can’t hear himself over the sounds of the artillery.

Shells fly through the air with the only warning a high whistle before they burst apart in blasts that shake the trenches like an infant with a rattle, knocking free dirt from the sides of the trenches.

It drifts down to land on his shoulders, settling over the hands he has over his head. His palms press against his ears and it does nothing, absolutely nothing. There are tears in his eyes, fear bleeding pink into mud that simply turns darker, seeing no difference between vampiric saltwater and blood. 

Not that there is much of a difference, really. 

His mouth is wide open against the ground, throat taut, lungs tight with the expulsion of air but the vibration of sound in his throat is so overwhelmed by the rumbling of the earth and the barrage slamming into the ground around him that he can’t feel if he’s making any sounds or not.

If he had a beating heart it would be pounding, but it lays still in his chest, locked in the final heartbeat he’d had more than a decade before. 

That he is already dead never quite undoes the visceral horror of sounds too loud for a human mind to understand, destruction too total and complete. The part of him that is still human shrieks at him to run, but there isn’t anywhere to go.

The barrage is everywhere, it’s in everything. The trees blast apart above their heads, branches and fragments of bark and leaves rain down into the trench. 

The other men hunker down, trying not to look directly up, each of them with eyes closed or staring off into space, flinching now and then, hands trembling so hard their rifles rattle. There’s no point in moving - the shells will find them if they so much as pop up over the bags. All they can do is wait, and wait, and hear the sounds without knowing which come from their own side and which from the enemy.

In a moment like this, the human body knows only terror, and there is nowhere to run to escape it.

Finally, the sounds start to die off. A final whistle, a single explosion, and then everything falls silent.

Not that the vampire boy can tell, not at first.

His ears keep ringing, painful noise that is inside him and not without. He slowly pulls his hands off from his ears and pushes up to his knees, shuddering, rocking back and forth in an attempt to soothe his nerves. He can feel, now, the vibration in his throat. He can’t hear himself but he must be humming, low and tuneless, trying to drown out the panic. 

Once the shells have finished, the gunfire begins.

“Here they come! Steady aim, boys, the Krauts are on us!”

The sound of the soldier’s voice seems tinny and small, so distant, trapped behind the ringing in Tristan’s ears. He screams himself, into the mud beneath him. Someone races past, stopping briefly to pat his head. If they speak, he can’t hear them over the shrieking noise inside his mind.

Short reports break through the air like thrown knives, the soldiers in the trenches alongside him popping briefly up from behind their protective shield of sandbags to fire on the German infantry who come out of the shell-smoke like a swell of horrible phantoms. 

They fall, they cry out, they hit the ground.

Sometimes the Americans let out a cry themselves, someone is fired upon and falls. Someone else yells in fierce victory. Someone shouts a curse. 

He hears a man shout, “I won’t die today!” and hopes it’s true.

Tristan loses time, shivering compulsively and curling into himself, humming and rocking until the ringing finally starts to die down. Longer, still, as long as the rifles continue to fire. He hears a wild, high-pitched cry, and glances up to see a German with a bayonet through him drop to his knees and then fall into the trench, landing less than three feet away.

The man’s probably dead before he hits, but Tristan still screams and pushes back, scrambling until his back hits the wall. His knees are damp from the mud he’s curled up in and he doesn’t care, he’s never cared. All that matters is finding some small hint of peace.

It seems like an eternity before even the gunfire starts to go quiet.

There’s a voice that calls, but he can’t care enough to let the sounds filter into understandable words. He smacks his hands into the mud, again and again, pushing himself forward and back, finally leaning down to knock his head into the ground, over and over. Each contact with solidity is a soothing rush, slowly working its way down his spine and through his muscles, reminding him that the noise is gone, the noise is over.

The voice calls again.

There’s no more guns firing, no more shells. The world settles into an awful heavy silence that is nearly worse than the sounds. They’re in the middle of a forest more vast than any Tristan has ever seen before, and there are no birds, because there are no more trees for the birds to live in.

Only the doughboys and the enemy, everyone the walking dead. They’re as dead as Tristan is, their bodies just haven’t figured it out yet. And they won’t get back up when they fall.

The vampire keeps knocking his head into the ground. It helps to stop his thoughts from spinning and swirling in a mad spiral inside.

It doesn’t help enough.

He’s brought back to himself by a kick, a fellow soldier’s boot knocking hard into his hip and sending him onto his side. He grunts and looks up, squinting. The German soldier’s corpse is gone - they’ve moved it while he was locked within himself, within his terror. The sky above them has a sickly glow beneath heavy clouds brought on by smoke from the fires and explosion. 

The soft sound of distant wounded calling for help filters into his understanding. 

The soldier that kicked him, Kirk, gives him a grin. The man’s face is streaked with mud, dark with it, and only his teeth and his eyes show white. “Hey, medic. Didn’t you hear the officers?”

Tristan looks up at him, and slowly shakes his head. His ears ring, a little, but all their ears ring. They’re all shouting just to be heard.

“Huh. Well, trench got blown apart off to the east. It’s your time to do what you do best, fangs. Go sniff out the ones we can save.” Kirk grins. “Like a fucking dog.”

The vampire closes his eyes, shuddering, looking away, shaking his head more in denial than in real refusal. It feels like the shells are still breaking apart inside him, shuddering rumbles inside his nerves now, not up in the sky. His whole body shakes. “I, I, I c-c-can’t, can’t, I-... I c-can’t go, go up there, c-can’t-”

“Doesn’t matter what you wanna do or not, bloodfuck. You think any of us would be here if anyone important gave a damn about our feelings? Gotta earn your bloodbags, don’t you? Get up there with the dogs where you fucking belong. ”

The other soldiers laugh as Kirk kicks him again. Their laughter isn’t even mean, exactly, but carries an edge of hysteria. It’s a release of tension after the barrage for them, after the gunfire, after the loss or three or four of their own, listening to how Kirk talks to him. It makes them all feel better, reminds them they’re still alive by reminding them that the vampire isn’t.

And, for whatever it is worth, it seems they’ve held the line.

To Tristan’s mind, a bit of land doesn’t seem worth what they are being asked to suffer.

He uncurls himself slowly, his bones aching in protest of his movements, his body begging him not to show himself above the bags, to be potentially seen by a German sniper just waiting for the American soldiers to pop up thinking it’s all over and make excellent little targets.

The vampire reaches out with a trembling hand to pick up his helmet where it’s been discarded beside him, stuffing his hair up underneath as he pulls it on. He tries to buckle it, but he keeps dropping the straps. His fingers won’t close, they’ll only shake. 

Kirk finally huffs a sigh and leans forward, grabbing him by one arm and yanking him over, taking the straps in hand and doing the buckle himself, jerking it too tight until the vampire whimpers at the pinch. “You’re fucking useless, bloodsucker. Go on. Serve your fucking country, like the rest of us. We’ll see you later. Hey. We made it, huh? This time we keep breathing. Well, we keep breathing, anyways. You keep… uh, whatever it is you do.”

The vampire nods, slowly, eyes searching Kirk’s for some hint of something other than his hatred. 

For the first time since they were shipped out, Kirk’s expression does soften. 

Just a little bit. 

“Come on, bloodfuck.” He says the insulting name almost like an endearment. “Don’t look like that. You’ll be all right,” He says, voice low, giving the vampire’s chin a playful little shake. “It’s just the artillery, just a little scrap. They brought out their big guns, and look at us, we still got our limbs, ain’t we? You still got those chompers. Hell, none of us wet ourselves this time, so we’re doing a sight better than last time.”

The other soldiers chuckle, a little. Someone mumbles, “That was once.”

“Oh, hush it, Fallows, nobody looks down on you for it, everybody’s a bit crackers the first time they get shelled.”

“Yeah, Fallows, we’ve all been there.”

“Listen, after my first time it took me three weeks to go to the latrine without a buddy just in case, you’re all right.”

The soldier who must be Fallows shifts, but he half-smiles, a little, comforted by the camaraderie around him. Tristan’s heart hurts, wishing he could be part of it, not kept apart by the curse in his blood. 

A different soldier - Tristan thinks the man’s name is Davies - pulls out a canteen of what is probably supposed to be water and almost certainly isn’t. The American army doesn’t imbibe, officially, but Tristan’s never seen an officer who didn’t look the other way after a battle if his men needed liquid courage to make it to the next one. 

“I, I, I’m scared,” The vampire whispers. A tear trickles down the cleared path along the dirt in his face, following the trails of those he’s cried before. Kirk looks at him and rubs his thumb over the vampire’s high cheekbone, smearing dirt back over. Like trying to fill in a dried riverbank. “I’m, um, sc-scared of the sounds, Kirk.”

“So’re the rest of us. Fritz never does it halfway, does he? I get you. We’re still here, for now.” Kirk pats the side of the vampire’s face, almost gently, and then pushes him backwards with a sudden resurgence of his usual careless violence. “Now go find the crump-hole Fritz made of the others and pull out the wounded.”

He has to do this. It’s his job, and it’s the only reason he hasn’t been staked out like the ones who refused to go willingly. The vampire swallows, nodding slowly, and turns away. He has to jog down the narrow line of the trench, past rows of soldiers who watch him with dulled eyes that stare far, far past him. Twice he pops his head up, just for a second, to get a better look at where he should go. 

Ahead of him, the No Man’s Land stretches. It’s a hellscape, cratered and with any hint of greenery long gone. A morass of mud and the still-standing stump of the occasional tree. There are dead men out there, he can smell them. Some new dead, mostly old, the ones that aren’t worth pulling back behind the lines, not yet. Some wounded men who call for water, for help, but who mostly call for their mothers.

Tristan would call for his, too, if he thought it would help.

There’s dead Germans out there, he can see their uniforms on the prone, still bodies. Some of their wounded cry mama, mutti, mutterchen. A few cry papa, vaterchen. Tristan has seen enough dead - some by his own hand, though he never wanted to kill anyone, William didn’t tell him how not to and he had to find that out on his own - to know that nearly everyone, at the end, thinks finally of who they love most.

Someone cries, in a broken voice, “Cady, help me,” and Tristan closes his eyes against the pleading in the sound. 

Seems like more Germans than Americans, this time, and he might see some French, too. It’s hard to tell, with the smoke is still rolling over the land.

He hopes they don’t try to gas each other again. It doesn’t affect the vampires, but he’s seen too many men die choking on their own lungs already, he’s ready to never see such a thing ever again. 

He sighs, gets back down into the trench, and keeps moving.

The ranks thin out, and he finds himself utterly alone for the last few hundred yards.

There’s a brief burst of gunfire that has him shaking again, flinching and stumbling into a depression underneath the top, where a soldier might sleep at night. The vampire stays there, curled up tight staring in fear, until the gunfire subsides.

Once it fades, he hears the barking.

Ambulance dogs.

“Medics! We have wounded!” A man’s voice cries, rough-edged. “We need help!” Ahead of him, the trench collapses in on itself, blown apart by shells. A soldier’s rifle lays in the mud, bayonet glinting faintly. Next to it, a photograph, a young man and woman standing next to each other, dotted with dirt. The woman has a slight smile on her face, and the young man’s arms are around her waist. They look happy.  

The vampire’s throat closes as he looks at it. She’s very pretty, he thinks. She’ll be very sad when she hears that her soldier isn’t coming home. He wishes he had any photographs of his parents. 

If he must be damned to never see them again, even in Eternity, it seems doubly unfair that he can’t even find an image of them to remember them by. He’s sure there were photos taken at the island where they were processed, but those photos weren’t for them. They were kept by the men and women who barked orders at the young Tristan and his parents as they went through the line. 

“We have living wounded!” The man calls again, much closer, and the vampire jolts back into motion. He picks up the photograph and tucks it into one of the pouches at his waist, next to a small vial of plain alcohol he uses to wash out wounds.

He can see the dogs up top as they dig, paws burying themselves with incredible speed in loosened mud as their handlers move next to them, encouraging them. Every dog wears a big white square patch with a cross on each side, marking them as ambulance dogs. The vampire has a patch on his left arm like that, marked with a cross for medic - and a V to make sure he is always known for what he is by anyone who sees him. 

As if the fangs don’t give him away. As if the way his eyes look in the darkness isn’t a clue all its own. 

There’s a high-pitched bark and a shout of triumph, and the vampire looks up and sees a man so covered in dirt he seems less human than golem being helped to his feet. He’s miraculously uninjured except for having been half-buried in mud. 

“Let’s go, soldier,” The dog’s handler says, and then moves quickly away. The soldier follows him, shuffling more than walking, staring around in amazement that he’s still alive.

The Germans could fire again at any moment, of course, and the vampire finds himself frozen, staring up into the yellow-tinged dark sky. There’s a low rumble, a whistle and boom, and he flinches before he realizes the sound is so distant that it must mean shelling much further down the line than he is.

That doesn’t mean what they’re doing is safe.

He’s still staring up at the sky, waiting for the barrage to begin again, when something closes tight around his wrist and he jolts to the side with a cry of shock and fear.

It’s a hand.

A hand, reaching out from the mud. Dirt is ground into every knuckle, under the torn fingernails, into the callouses worn into the pads of his fingers. The hand grasps wildly, blindly, trying to find anything to hold onto.

There’s a living man buried under the mud.

The vampire has to work his throat to find his voice, and when he does he cries out, “We, we, we have living wounded! Living wounded! B-buried, buried, help! I need help!”

There’s a flurry of movement as the vampire lurches forward, gripping onto the hand and digging with his other, trying to give the man who must be in there some reassurance that he is felt, seen, found.

Trying to give him some air before whatever he’s got runs out. 

One of the other medics hops down and lands roughly on their feet next to him. It’s another vampire, one that Tristan has never seen before. They’re older-seeming, with straggly long dark-blond hair barely held back in a plait down their back. The vampires aren’t usually allowed to speak to one another for fear that they’d plan some sort of mutiny, and so the other medic is silent other than a soft grunt, digging into the dirt with their bare hands with inhuman rapidity, uncaring for the possibility of injuries because they simply cannot hurt their muscles any longer.

Tristan feels the hand he’s holding squeeze and he gives two squeezes in return. We’ve got you, just hold on, hold your breath, just a little longer.

Eventually the frantic work of the other medic reveals dirtied blond hair, helmet-less, marked with mud and blood in equal measure from a cut they can see as the man’s forehead is revealed. Then his eyes open wide and very blue, he gasps in air.

“Pl-please,” He manages, his voice a rasp. “Please, help me-”

Tristan exhales an unnecessary breath in relief, and smiles. “Hold, hold, hold on, hold on, we’ve got you, soldier.”

The man sees his fangs but he’s too full of the rush of adrenaline at the prospect that he has been saved from suffocation to be scared of them. Instead he starts to cry, weeping and holding onto Tristan with a bone-crushing grip. 

The other medic hisses as they dig in and find a dead soldier on top of the living one. This one has the telltale slightly-open eyes of someone long gone, body still warm. There’s an awful caved-in look to one side of his head that Tristan refuses to allow himself to see. “Must have protected him that way,” The vampire notes, coldly informative, uncaring. “Dead took the brunt of the blows. One lucky man, one unlucky one. Flip of a coin, living or dying.” They sound like they don’t care at all.

Tristan wonders how long they’ve been a medic. If they maybe felt more at the beginning.

The smell of blood moves through the air like a bubbling stew, making Tristan’s mouth water. He holds back as best he can, pulling to help dislodge the survivor from the dirt his compatriots have died in. 

Some of them still haven’t yet - the vampires can scent the difference between dead and living, and there are more soldiers still breathing under the rubble. He can smell that some are so wounded they won’t last long. Others, though, they’ll get out in time.

Tristan doesn’t look at the slack expression of the dead soldier whose body kept this one alive as he is revealed. The survivor comes free - first his shoulders, then his arms come up to grip tightly around Tristan’s waist. His torso is revealed, his hips…

It’s only when they finally get him fully freed, laying on the ground, that Tristan realizes one of his legs is… wrong. Bent wrong, nearly blasted off. He swallows at the sight.

“We, we, we need a stretcher,” Tristan says, frowning. The soldier groans, as if only now beginning to feel the pain of the shattered bones from his thigh down to his foot. “He, he, he can’t walk. He’s gonna lose the, um, the the the leg.”

“God, no,” The soldier pleads to no one in particular. “Please, no, not my leg…”

“Hush. Better that than your eyes or your face, mouthbreather.” The other vampire launches themself at the side of the trench, clambering back up - only for there to be a sudden burst of new gunfire, and Tristan stares up in panic as the vampire’s body jolts as three bullets pass through them.

They stumble backwards, briefly, then bare their fangs in the direction the gunfire came from and hold up their hands with middle fingers raised high above their head. They give a loud, half-mad trill of laughter.

“Have at it, Huns, I’m already dead!” 

Then they turn on their heels, moving at a rapid jog towards the medical tents nearby. There are bullet holes in the back of their uniform, new fresh ones alongside several that have already been patched up from earlier hits.

“Please, I have to-... have to go home,” The survivor of the bombardment says in a whisper, and Tristan turns back to him, nodding slowly. The man’s face is pinched with agony, but… but he’s familiar. “I can’t die here, fangs. I can’t.”

“Don’t, um, don’t don’t don’t worry… you’ll go home, you will.” He doesn’t know that, not really, but it’s what every soldier wants to hear, and the doughboy beside him lets out a breath of relief and smiles, a little, trusting him. Tristan hitches in a breath, and digs into his belt-bag, pulling the photograph out. It’s the same young man as the subject of the photo, his sweetheart next to him. Maybe she’ll see him again after all.

He holds it out. He sees the soldier blink, struggling to focus.

Tristan clears his throat. “I, I, I… um, I found this.”

The soldier grabs it with his free hand and gives a hysterical, relieved laugh, pulling it to his lips and giving it a kiss. “Marta,” he breathes. “Oh… thank you, fangs. Thanks for finding it.” he looks up at Tristan with a bright smile, teeth seeming terribly white in his dirt-coated face.

They are so rarely kind to him, the soldiers. 

The vampire closes his eyes against a new rush of tears. He whispers, “Look, look, look at the, the, the photo for just a moment for me,” and lifts the soldier’s wrist to his mouth. The soldier knows the score - he doesn’t even go tense. He's probably been bitten a few times before.

When the vampire sinks his teeth in, it’s as gentle as possible. He takes little blood, only pushes venom into the wounds until the soldier’s body goes limp and relaxed, his eyes still locked on the photo of the woman he wishes badly to go home to.

“Tell, tell, tell me, um, about… about, about Marta,” The vampire says, glancing up. He can hear further shouting. The other vampire’s voice, which  means help is on the way. “While we wait for the stretcher.”

The soldier’s eyes drift shut.

“She’s… she’s nineteen. Preacher’s daughter, her ma and two sisters died from the flu this year. She’s got four little brothers who made it, though. We were married just before I was sent to basic training, last fall… Hey.” The soldier looks right at him, meets his eyes. “What’s your name, fangs?”

No one ever asks him that.

He blinks once, twice, three times. “What?”

“Your name. What can I call you?”

“Uh, Tristan, um, Medical, um, Un-dead Medical Private Tristan Higgs.”

“Huh. I’m Dennis. Just… I don’t care for all the titles we get. Just say Dennis. Tired of bein’ called by what I am and not who.”

He nearly laughs. He knows the feeling. “Nice, um, nice to meet you, Den, Dennis.” 

“You, too, Tristan. You’re Irish, right?”

Tristan nods, a little, his smile widening slightly. “Was. Been in New York since, ah, before the turning of the, um, the the century.”

“Were you a vampire when you came here?”

Tristan swallows, looking away. “No.”

“Oh.” Dennis falls silent, for a moment, then squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to bring on bad memories.”

“That’s, um, that’s all right.” Tristan settles onto the muddy ground, with the body of the soldier who didn’t make it visible in the dug-out part of the cave-in, and listens. The other soldier, he thinks, likely would have his own people waiting for him, who now must be told the terrible news - but this man, Dennis, he’ll go home to his Marta, one-legged but alive. 

Dennis never lets go of his hand. 

Whenever his face starts to show his pain again, Tristan lifts the man’s wrist back to his mouth, fills him with venom again, and asks him more questions about home.  

Dennis thanks him for it, every time. 

He says Tristan reminds him of his own brother, who’s still back home working the dairy farm he grew up on. “He’s always been better with the cows than people, anyway. He’d hate all this racket,” Dennis murmurs.

“I, I, I hate it, too.” Tristan smiles, just a little. “I’d say you, um, you get used to it, but…”

“You don’t,” Dennis says, heavily.

“Right. You… no, um, you don’t.”

Tristan hopes Dennis gets to go home to his pretty Marta, his brother and the cows, and never come back to this hell the rest of them are trapped in until its bitter end. He hopes, deeper than that and in a secret place within himself, that he will redeem some of the damnation of what he was turned into by doing as much good as he can while he’s here.

He can’t go home.

Home is people, not a place, and his are long, long gone.

But maybe if he suffers for the good of the living, he’ll be seen as redeemed enough by God and His angels to be allowed to see his mother and father again.

-

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