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angeart · 3 months ago

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hhau mimic arc rambles part III bonus: mimic, alone

(~2k words) // other parts & au masterpost here

[cws physical assault, mutilation, body horror, identity crisis, fear and guilt, self image and self worth struggles, survivor guilt? in a way, panic attack]

After the disaster of the weakness dosing and Scar finding out and running off, Juni does not try to follow him. He does not try to find Grian and Scar again—he knows he’s fucked that up irreparably. He made a mistake, and it’s not one that could be forgiven.

Just like that, all the comfort and sense of belonging (however false it was) is torn away from him. He’s plunged into solitude, with nothing but his guilt pressing down at his shoulders, and he knows it’s deserved. Aimless, he picks a random direction and goes, without any purpose or plan.

He knows he isn’t allowed to hold onto anything that was Scar's or Grian’s. But he still can’t put together a form of his own; through it all, he’s still running on borrowed things— No, not borrowed. Stolen.

None of him is him.

Briefly, he had a name. Briefly, it felt like maybe he could be his own person.

It feels like a faraway dream.

All sense of identity falls through his fingers once again. He lets it.

He doesn’t want to be Juni anymore. Juni did something awful. Being Juni hurts.

Once again nameless, he tries to shed the illusion of Grian that clings to his skin. (God. He left him to die, didn’t he?) Doesn’t even dare touch the likeness of Scar. But there’s nothing else to hold on. Nothing else to grasp at.

He tries. He tries so hard, to create something from nothing. But he doesn’t know who he’s meant to be. Doesn’t even know where to start. Or how.

He keeps pushing. Forcing it and adjusting until it hurts. It feels futile. It keeps coming out wrong and twisted. Like his body can’t remember how to be.

Wearily, he settles on something that passes as looking normal-adjacent—albeit tired and hurt—except it’s still kind of distorted. He keeps feeling sick. His body feels weird. Not his. Never his.

He still has wings. He can’t bring himself to take them away, separate that vulnerable part from his form. Maybe because he saw how an avian can be loved and cared for, and no matter how undeserving, he still achingly wants that.

… Well, if he won’t take the wings away, maybe someone else will.

At some point, he has a run-in with hunters.

The attack is vicious. It’s a blur that ends with Juni the mimic pinned to the ground. There’s not a sliver of empathy or care. An explosion of agony blooms across the mimic’s back, changing the pitch of his screams from sheer terror to something much worse.

Desperate and terrified, he tries to shift, right underneath their hands and blades. He wants it to stop. He wants to shift out of the parts that sear and hurt.

It doesn’t quite work. He writhes and morphs and glitches, screaming his throat raw. His wings burn, the point where they connect to his back is drowning in molten pain, nerves flaring and making him so thoroughly aware of them that he can’t unthink them. They’re actively in pain and he can’t will them away. (They were never meant to belong to him and now they won’t Go Away.) It hurts it hurts it hurts.

It’s so helpless and terrifying. He writhes and cries and wails in their grasp.

His wings aren’t real. (But oh god does he still bleed.) They aren’t the tangible prize that the hunters desire. And once they realise—as the feathers lose their shine and slowly fade in their greedy hands, without the mimic’s active participation in maintaining their illusion—frustration and anger takes over.

This isn’t worth their time. This hybrid has nothing left to offer.

They pierce him with a damaged spear they don’t care about keeping, pinning him to the ground so he can bleed out, forgotten.

And maybe it’d be better to stay put and let it happen. To wait it out until the pain merges into something duller, number. To fade out, right here, abandoned on the forest floor. (Just like he’s abandoned Grian—)

But he’s scared. He’s too scared of death, despite everything.

Sobbing, shaking, nauseous and dizzy and weak, he fights. He struggles to get free, morphing and shifting his boddy in horrible ways until he manages to slip his form past the spear prison tearing at his flesh.

He wails and crawls and bleeds, fearful he’ll become some horrid creature’s dinner.

His body keeps morphing and shifting in uncontrolled jerks and twitches. It completely messes up the mimic’s perception of his own body by the end of it. He barely knows how to rearrange himself back into something that makes a semblance of sense, but the pain doesn’t leave and he’s so alone and afraid and woozy.

A fragment of memory comes to him. Scar and Grian talking about potential future. Of finding safety up in the tree branches. Of making nests, safe little islands high above the ground.

Juni is terrified of heights. But right now, it doesn’t seem so scary. Not when everything else terrifies him far more.

He picks a tree, and he climbs.

And man, does climbing hurt. Straining the muscles along his shoulders and back. (He sobs and chokes all the way, but perseveres, desperate for a sliver of safety. Somewhere to try to patch himself up as much as possible.) (He can’t even really reach his back properly though—)

It strikes him as odd, how much he wants to live.

He used to treat the missions from the hunters as something that could kill him. Each could be his last, and he’d be okay with it. Because maybe he’d deserve it, after tricking and luring so many hybrids in. He kept yearning for something else, something more, but would just roll over if the blow was coming.

And then Scar and Grian happened, and— And Juni tasted life.

And he still tricked them. He still brought terrible fate on them. He’d still deserve death—now more than ever.

And yet he can’t seem to let go.

The (physical) healing is an arduous process. He falls sick. His form keeps shifting. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. Where to go. Who to be.

But he survives.

He survives, and then the day of the eclipse rolls around.

Thankfully, the mimic doesn’t have animal hybrid instincts that could be warped here. Although he’s donned wings again—maybe unwittingly, but he doesn’t feel right without them anymore. (A part of him still craves to be loved. Yearning helplessly and achingly for a sliver of safety and affection back. For fondness turned his way despite all his faults and flaws.) (A wholly different part of him still thinks he ought to be punished. Wearing wings is now more terrifying than ever, after surviving that attack. And yet here he is, with their weight on his back again, right over what’s meant to be horribly scarred skin.) (Because how could he take the wings off so easily, when he left Grian out there like that? Grian with his shiny wings, unable to hide them away? How could the mimic ever deserve to simply shed that danger from his own back after what he’s done?)

It’s on this day when he stumbles upon an avian caught in a net trap. A real, living avian that the hunters haven’t had the chance to get to yet. Moments before the sky would turn dark. Before all the hunting truly sets off.

The avian looks at him with so much hope. Placing his misguided, frightened trust in this seemingly winged person. Begging for help, so very scared.

And the mimic tries. He tries.

The net doesn’t give. The avian is bleeding heavily. There’s a telltale sign of the hunting party setting off. The sky darkens. The avian keeps squirming, tangled into ropes, and—

They lock gazes.

Two terrified sets of eyes. One captive, one free.

The sun is gone.

The avian chirps, high-pitched, a distressed beacon. They try to reach out for the mimic. Help help help.

The hunters approach, and the mimic panics.

Without thinking, he copies the look of the trapped avian. (He can’t keep a stable form; he can’t go back to Grian’s either, doesn’t want to, can’t can’t can’t.) He doesn’t even really realise he’s doing it, as he takes in their fear and sees his own reflected there. And— He turns away.

He runs.

He runs and he feels so indescribably horrible about it. Stacking his guilt until it’s tripping his feet, suffocating his lungs. He’s scared. He’s too scared, he couldn’t stay, they’d just both die, he couldn’t do it—

Is this all he’s good for?

He’s tired of saving himself.

(Who even is he anyway?)

His surroundings turn nightmarish and harrowing. A myriad of noises rises in cacophony—all the chirps, howls, laughter. The rise and fall and plunges into silence. The vex hollering. Wails and screams.

Tumbling down, he curls up in a ditch, shaking and trying to breathe through an incoming panic attack. His mind spins a million miles an hour, dizzying. His hands feel like they’re drenched in blood. (They are. They’re stained from the wounds of the avian he left to die.)

He listens to bird chirps come and go, a sharp echo of what he’s just done.

An echo of what he’s already done before.

His bloodied hands shake horribly. He’s wheezing, gasping for breaths that evade him, pressing himself against soil in attempts to be quiet.

But he can’t, he can’t—

He left Grian to die.

He had a chance there and he didn’t take it. He turned his back. He walked away.

He did that. It was all his doing, start to finish. All his decision.

He killed him.

A sharp howl makes him flinch, panicked gaze peering through the eclipse-induced darkness. He catches a glimpse of the vex hunting party, wild and dangerous, their magic shimmying through the air in their wake.

He wonders if Scar is out there on some vex rampage. If he’s aimless and destructive, betrayed and grief-stricken, uncaring for his own wellbeing. If he ever stopped searching for his bird.

Or if he’s dead, too.

He’s convinced he got them both killed. And for what?

He wasn’t working for the hunters anymore. And he didn’t even get what he wanted, either. He might’ve just gotten two hybrids killed for a week or two of fleeting, misplaced affection.

He used to think the world was cruel and awful and had nothing good. And then he found something good. And he snuffed it out himself.

Because as it turns out, maybe he is the wrong and cruel thing. And he doesn’t want to be. He desperately doesn’t want to be, but— He already did those awful things. He can’t take them back.

He’s got wings now that aren’t Grian’s. (Though they belong to another doomed soul.) (Another soul he doomed.) He knows he’s no longer allowed to have anything of theirs, and he can’t form anything definitely his own, and— He thought this would feel better. No longer stealing from Grian.

But it’s still so wretched. Still stitched together with blood and fear.

The black wings on his back belonged to a trapped creature. And maybe that’s a reflection of how the mimic feels, too. Trapped. And like he deserves to die. (But he’s still afraid of it. So, so horribly afraid.) And avians… die easily, right?

(A horrible thought, considering he can’t stop seeing the way he abandoned Grian, defenceless on the forest floor—)

In the end, he doesn’t pick a new name for himself. He doesn’t figure out who he is. (Besides a monster.) He doesn’t know why he’s still alive.

But he keeps surviving.

Keeps walking aimlessly, shackled with his guilt and fear, with black wings on his back, aware that their previous owner is no longer around to accuse him of theft. (His fault his fault his fault.)

He’s left to wander the world, thinking he’ll never again feel the warmth of affection he so soul-shatteringly craves.

But maybe… Maybe he’s wrong about that.

Maybe the future will be kinder to him than he’d ever dare to hope for.

(And maybe it will still amount to nothing anyway.)

#hhau #mimic arc #our little mimic </3 #pls like him despite everything he's done 🥺🥺🥺#this might be the last time we see him #(or?)#do u want good things for him?#or do u want him to keep hurting?#scared and alone #eclipse mention #he genuinely thinks scar and grian are dead #because of him #i think the line that hits me personally the most in relation to juni here is #“he's tired of saving himself”#also the whole. “he doesn't want to be juni anymore. being juni hurts.”#but come tell me yours 🥰

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arsenicflame · 5 days ago

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It's a time-honoured tradition- every time Sam comes across Izzy (and Ed) in their travels, he asks Izzy to marry him. And every time, Izzy turns him down.

At this point, Sam is asking more for the sake of it than any belief Izzy will ever say yes, a remnant of childhood dedication touched with 30 years of heartbreak and regret- though even now, a small part of him still holds out hope. Sam's promises have only got more extravagant over the years, from a job as his first mate, to a captaincy, a fleet at his command, a whole fucking island if that's what Izzy wants- but he knows it isn't though, not really. If Izzy was ever going to agree to marry him, to leave his life and go with Sam, it wouldn't be for anything Sam could offer him. Izzy never did care for flashy shows of wealth, for a ship or to be captain. The only thing that ever mattered to him was loyalty given, and loyalty shown in return.

It all comes to a head after Stede left and came back, after Izzy lost a toe, lost his leg. Sam hasn't seen him since before things with Ed started to really slide off the rails, before stress permanently set into the lines of Izzy’s face. So, when he sees a dishevelled man with a hoof for a leg in a no-name port, he doesn't even consider the idea that he might know him. It's only when he turns towards him, and Sam catches a glance at those oh too familiar tattoos, he realises this is Izzy, his Izzy, that stands before him.

Knowing Izzy's discomfort with pity, he doesn't treat him any differently than he would in years gone by, positioning himself in Izzy's line of sight before approaching and sweeping him up into a bone crushing hug.

“Israel-goddamn-Hands!” he exclaims, as Izzy grumbles back a begrudging “Samuel-fucking-Bellamy”, a tradition almost as old as their friendship itself. Izzy might not hug him back, but he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from twitching, just for a second.

(If Sam holds Izzy a little tighter and a little longer than usual, well. That's his business)

By the time Sam lets go, most of the crew has appeared in the town square, drawn in by the commotion. They may have given Izzy his leg and welcomed him as one of them, but still there’s an underlying tension, with nobody quite ready to set aside everything that happened before the Kraken. Seeing him cosying up to an unknown man sets everyone on edge, unsure whether to come to their first mate’s aid, or to assume that they've been betrayed once again.

When Ed sees that the yelling was Sam, his hand goes tense where it's held in Stede's. He knows the routine, has seen it more times than he can count, but as he watches them part he realises that this is the first time in a long time he's unsure of what Izzy's response will be.

Knowing that something’s different, knowing that Izzy's feeling vulnerable already, Sam doesn't go for the same flashy proposal he’s been giving for years. He doesn't promise Izzy the world, he doesn't cause a scene (or, any more of a scene than he already has, anyway). He looks at the fractured man in front of him, takes his face in his hands, and says the exact same thing to him he said when they were little more than boys. “Israel, I have to ask you. I know what you'll say, but I have to try. Come with me. Marry me and sail away with me. I'll keep you safe”

And Izzy… hesitates. He glances over at Ed, at Stede, and says to Sam “...We’re staying in port for a week. Ask me again then”

That's the moment Sam knows there is something deeply, horribly, wrong. He's not just looking at an Izzy who got seriously injured in a fight and is struggling to cope, this is something so much bigger than that- and that Ed has something to do with it. Izzy wouldn't even be considering leaving if he didn't. Whether it was negligence or something more sinister, Sam doesn't yet know, but he intends to find out.

#i feel like the little paragraph about the crew is real clunky and out of place but i wanted some kind of establishment of where those #dynamics are at. its important that the crew is something for izzy to consider in his decision; but also that their relationship isnt so #solid he would stay for them alone; yknow?#im sorta aiming for a s2e5 era but like. early in those themes. he cant be all sorted yet i need him to be struggling #anyway this is part of a much larger scenario in my head that im never ever doing anything with but i wrote THIS bit in a daze in like. jun #and i got thinking about it again and i think?? it holds its own as a 'hey think about THIS' snippet. idk you decide #youre welcome to interpret this as solo bellhands but in my head it Has morphed into sam/izzy/ed/stede #because i cant not put edizzy in things any more. izzy has two hands #i also think the comedy potential of one of your boyfriends HATING your other boyfriend is gold. 10/10 dynamic #stede is mostly along for the ride in this but also i think they need him #aaaaand. the sam/ed bracket i think can only be closed in exceptional circumstances. i think they 'hate' each other too much #...which is WHY someones getting kidnapped!!! yay #anyway its all irrelevant because ill never write it out. i can do silly chill things but thatll require work #nyxtalks #ofmd #our flag means death #izzy hands #israel hands #sam bellamy #bellhands #i wanna also say. the general concept of repeated sam proposals has been floating around my head forever #it used to be a more silly thing like i referenced at the start but. s2 gave me angsty feelings i guess #i cant not have izzy have feelings for ed right now which inherently adds layers to Any bellhands scenarios i think.#but yeah. its a Classic Bellhands vibe for me. sam seeing izzy at sea or on shore and asking him to marry him (again)#i like to do this with jackie too. i think i just want that man to be obnoxiously desired #(theres also layers of my personal hornigold era lore built into this but i hope it holds up without u knowing it. tldr. sam lost izzy by #being an idiot n fumbling the bag. thats what matters. izzy went with ed and sams been trying to fix it ever since)#i probably should have readmore'd this but i didnt think it was Quite long enough. or had a good break point. sorry <3

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