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wolveria · 9 months ago

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The Raven's Hymn - Ch 50

Pairing: SCP-049 x Reader

Series Warnings: Eventual smut, dubcon, slow burn, violence, horror, death, monsters, human experiments, dark with a happy ending

Chapter Summary: “This is insane. We’re going to die down here.”

Chapter Warnings: SCP-106's pocket dimension

AO3

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It wasn’t infinite darkness once you had a moment to let your eyes adjust. It only seemed infinite in the dim light and the oddity of the room. You stood within a central foyer constructed of colorless brick, gaping doorways, each leading down a dark tunnel away from the circular room.

The purpose of the room was obvious. It was the beginning of a maze, a game that would be played among unwilling participants for the sadistic pleasure of their captor. You weren’t sure how the game was watched, but you doubted 106 would want to miss any of the fun and games.

This was his domain. Perhaps he saw all. If he saw you coming, that was fine with you. Better that then to surprise him.

Each doorway looked the same, equally dark and foreboding and entirely unhelpful. The shadows pervaded everything without a source of light, an unnatural realm that didn’t obey the laws of reality as you were used to. You had a feeling that was important. Maybe it didn’t matter which way you chose, just as long as you had a destination in mind.

You turned to Leahy, about to order him to move, but he was hunched over as if to catch his breath. He also gave you a strange look, and you automatically glanced down.

You were… glowing. Or not glowing, but as if the darkness of this place didn’t touch you, and in the end, it was the same result. You shone like a soft beacon, and it would be impossible to hide your presence.

Leahy’s uneven, labored breaths continued, his skin pale as he clutched his leg above the wound, and it seemed to grow worse by the minute.

“What’s wrong with you?”

He didn’t, or couldn’t, respond, as if it took all of his concentration to remain upright. You made a frustrated noise, stalked forward, and grabbed the sleeve of his dress shirt, yanking it up his forearm. As soon as your fingers clasped around his wrist, he took in a large gulp of air.

The same glow/absence of darkness surrounded him, and some color returned to his cheeks as he no longer looked on the verge of death.

Great. You fixed the problem, but now you had to hold onto him like a wayward child dragged around by his mother. His expression wasn’t far off, a bitter, wary frown that made you want to grab him by the scuff of his nape instead.

He didn’t thank you, but he did say, “This is insane. We’re going to die down here.”

An interesting way to put it. This dimension did feel downward, as if you were buried beneath the layers of reality in a place no digger could reach. Not a comforting thought.

But all you said was, “Be quiet,” and tugged him along. He followed, albeit unwillingly and at a slower pace thanks to his limp, but he did follow.

The corridor stretched onward, and even after several minutes you felt like you hadn’t gone anywhere at all. So, you stopped trying to go somewhere and just… walked. You emptied your thoughts until nothing remained, a blank determination to keep moving.

The labyrinth wanted you to grow tired, panicked, and riddled with fear. When you gave it nothing it could find pleasure in, that’s when you felt the way give, and before you lay a dark, open room. Only a narrow walkway over a chasm could be seen, and you walked forward without pause, otherwise it might be seen as hesitation.

Leahy didn’t make it easy, his uneven gait behind you threatened to throw you off balance. He better hope he didn’t, because you would take the bastard with him.

You did jolt to a stop when something massive and heavy whooshed inches from your nose. A large stone something moved in the dark, weaving in and over the pathway, a mad man’s puzzle that one was meant to solve while blind.

“We have to turn around,” Leahy growled past your head. “It’s a trap.”

“It’s a test,” you corrected him with a snap. Funny how he thought his opinion was wanted in any shape or form. “And if we go back, I guarantee we’ll end up right back in this room. Now shut up and let me think.”

There wasn’t much to think about. It was all timing, and you couldn’t see the way the pillar moved in the dark to find the rhythm.

Fuck it.

You dug your fingers into Leahy’s wrists and moved as soon as the pillar slid past your face. Your movement nearly tipped the man off balance, but he found his footing and stuck annoyingly close. Unfortunately, it was the best plan. The smaller a target you made, the less likely to go plunging into the depths.

The pillar continued to move in the darkness, an ominous low vibration marking where it passed, sometimes so close the displaced air tugged at your clothes and hair.

And then you were on the other side, untouched and unbroken. The rush that flooded your veins was dangerously satisfying, like you’d played Russian Roulette with the devil and watched as he blew out his own brains.

But there wasn’t time to gloat. You tugged Leahy along before he could fully catch his breath again, but at least he didn’t complain past a weakly uttered curse.

This corridor was different. It seemed to expand the longer you traveled, the bricks made of tan-colored stone, the grout crimson and tacky like blood. It gave the uncomfortable sensation of walking in a house made of flesh, and the rooms you passed with stone cells hanging from the ceiling did nothing to help that image.

You pushed forward and did your best to ignore the soft crying and moans that came from within.

The crimson grout seemed to spill outward until the stone was drenched in the color of blood everywhere you looked. The passage continued to expand until you stood inside a space that could only be described as a throne room. There was no lighting, no decorations, save for a massive stone seat that sat in its middle. The room was so dark it took a moment to realize the chair was occupied.

106, a grotesquely large version of him, leaned forward in his throne. There was a curious glint to his endless black eyes, his skeletal grin depicting malicious glee or hunger of the flesh. It was difficult to say.

The entity didn’t speak, if he even could. Instead, he simply… waited. Watching.

He knew why you were there, then.

By Leahy’s pale expression as he sized up the behemoth, he was starting to figure it out, too.

Your words were flat.

“Get on your knees.”

“No.”

To his credit, his voice didn’t shake, but you could feel the tremble that had started up within his bones.

You released his wrist. The glow blinked out like a burnt bulb, and he immediately gasped for air, gravity doing the work of collapsing him into a kneeling position.

The entity eyed the Site Director with barely contained hunger, but you stood behind Leahy and grabbed him by the nape of his neck, just as you imagined earlier. The glow returned, as well as the air to his lungs, and he spit out a guttural, “God… damn you, Reid.”

You ignored him, your hold on him firm when he attempted to struggle. But he was too weak, too overcome with pain and blood loss, and you didn’t need 714 to keep him under control.

You looked 106 in the eye.

“Am I to assume the Site Director had countermeasures in his office you couldn’t breach?”

Leahy had been entrenched, trapped, easy prey. 106 hadn’t attacked. A clever fox wouldn’t enter the hen house when the floor was covered in snares, but he would wait for them to come out, feeling safe and assured by the light of day.

Silence. Or… mostly silence. There was a low, gurgling noise coming from somewhere within the anomaly, like an eternally ravenous stomach that demanded to be fed.

“Well, here he is. And you know what I want.”

You said it anyway so there was no mistake.

“SCP-049.”

You were forced to hold on tighter to the back of Leahy’s neck as balked.

“Reid,” Leahy gasped out, desperate. “You can’t trust him. You can’t trust them!”

“Like I could trust you?”

Your words bit, colored by the rage that always simmered beneath the surface.

“Like you gave me a choice? As if I wanted to put the entire facility at risk? Put my friends and coworkers and the anomalies in danger? As if I wanted any of this—Shut up!” you snarled and cut through whatever he was going to say.

The entity remained silent, but the glittering eyes spoke of interest and amusement.

“I want to see him,” you hissed through your teeth as you glared upward at the entity. “Alive, or no deal.”

What you lacked in confidence you made up for with anger. There might not be much you could do if 106 decided to dismiss the bargain and simply take what he wanted. But you were done with anomalies using you for their own means, and there was no guarantee he could overpower you.

You remembered the test. Those black eyes glittering with something other than malice and hunger. You didn’t forget the fear you saw, and you were sure he hadn’t forgotten either.

Come on. You were counting on his predictability. 106 was a predator, but not always the pursuing kind. Sometimes he would lie in wait. Other times, perhaps he just wanted an easy meal.

This was a show for his benefit, proof you were a hunter, too. All you were doing was swapping prizes. His prey for yours.

Come on, you bastard. Come on.

And then 106 moved. He leaned back in his throne, his posture relaxed, lazy, a king before his trope of jesters.

You ground your teeth together. He wasn’t going for it. Why would he? Even if you escaped the pocket dimension, he count hunt Leahy on his own terms. You weren’t giving him anything he didn’t already have—

The wall to your right moved in an odd way. It bubbled outward, as if boiling on the surface, and then something broke through. It was difficult to make out the shape, nondescript and dark, some kind of fabric��

…And a white beak.

The figure slid from the wall, and you released Leahy the moment it hit the ground.

It wasn’t a great distance to run, maybe seven meters, but by the time you reached him it was as if you’d run a marathon, your breaths harsh and hitching. You grabbed his shoulders and rolled him onto his back, your hands desperate on his robes as if to prove he was real.

He was barely conscious, his grey eyes hidden behind heavy lids, unable to focus as his gaze slid past your face. The same glow illuminated him thanks to your touch, but he didn’t recover like Leahy had. Whatever had been done to him wasn’t surface level damage.

There was a scream, so full of agony and fear that you froze, instinctively looking up for the source of what could cause such a noise.

Leahy was sinking into the ground, or it was swallowing him. One of his hands had gotten free, but the other vanished into the black floor, his legs and knees already disappeared.

The hand that remained clawed outside the ravenous circle, as if to pull himself free. Leahy’s fingers dug at the tile for purchase, but he continued to sink, the floor now up to his waist.

You turned back to 049 and pushed out everything else. He must have been able to feel your grasp on his shoulders, his head tilted in your direction, but his eyes couldn’t focus—

Another panicked scream. Another involuntary turn of your head. Leahy wasn’t clawing at the ground now. He was reaching out. To you.

You tried to ignore him. You did, up until he cried out your name. Not your last name, but your first. You hadn’t known he’d even bothered to learn it.

Your hands shook as you pulled 049 into a sitting position, his weight difficult to move. You had to get him out. He wasn’t going to get better, not here, and you had to leave.

You had to leave.

“Get up,” you choked out with a desperate tug on his arm. “049, get up!”

Bit by bit, you managed to get him to his feet. He staggered and swayed dangerously, but you kept him upright, propped against your shoulder. Your journey back to the corridor was a drunken shamble, but there was progress.

You shut your eyes tight, fighting to block out the cries of Leahy begging you not to go, not to leave him like this. His pleas for mercy created a trapped scream in your throat.

Why didn’t 106 just kill him already?! But you knew the answer to that. 106 couldn’t have fun with them after death. You wished he would just end it, if only to stop the screams.

Each step was a battle, each breath too fast and shallow. 049 didn’t sound much better, his lungs rattled and wheezed, his arm draped over your shoulders heavy and boneless.

You couldn’t tell if the screams had finally stopped through the ringing in your ears, and you couldn’t see past the faint glow that surrounded you both. Like a lantern-lit ship in the mist, you sailed through a sea of inky black, unable to tell the waves from the sky. There was no direction, no physical space, not even a change of temperature. The darkness was so complete it suffocated.

It might have continued for minutes or centuries until your foot caught on a hard barrier and launched you forward. You clung to 049 as you fell, and fell, and hit the ground with a surprisingly soft landing.

Not that the ground was soft. It was hard, cold, and entirely too bright. Everything was bright, and you blinked the pain away until the room came into focus.

The medical bay, exactly as you left it—or almost. Aside from you and 049, the room was empty. 682 and 079 were gone.

Behind you, the black portal in the wall faded until it was a faint rust color, the surface stained but solid. It seemed 106 wasn’t in the mood for any more visitors.

Your hands were immediately on 049’s robes, checking for any obvious signs of injuries, feeling for his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his chest. He was unconscious, the last of his strength used to get him this far.

It was the last of yours, too. You pressed your cheek against his shoulder, curled up against him where he lay on his side. He smelled of things tainted from entropy. Rust and ruin and dust.

But his scent was still there, trapped under the bitter note of 106’s noxious lair. You buried your face in the hollow space under his hood, your nose against his neck. His familiar scent was there, both a comfort and an ache in your chest.

He was alive, he was breathing, but what if he didn’t wake? You didn’t know what 106 had done to him, or how to help him. No one at the Foundation had ever been able to keep 106’s victims alive more than a few hours, and you had no working equipment even if you knew what to do.

You were exhausted, in pain, tired and filthy. Worse, you were helpless. 049 was here, but he might already be gone.

What had been the point? What had been the goddamn point of it all if you couldn’t even save him!

You’d taken too long, been too slow. You were too late. You were too late—

Faint pressure on your back as a pair of arms slowly encircled you, and 049’s cheek pressed against the side of your head. Careful, gentle, and warm.

Alive.

You breathed.

Next Chapter

#scp 049 x reader #scp 049 fanfiction #the raven's hymn #scp fanfiction #scp 106 #my writing #source: me stumbling through 106's pocket dimension way too many times #each time i made it out was a miracle

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