#drew him mostly from memory this time lets get it < hes infecting my brain
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brosif40 · 2 months ago
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I JUST NEED SOMETHING
flat version below bc i liked it
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brasskier · 4 years ago
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Inspired by @valdomarx, @therogueheart, and that one anon, here’s a post-mountain Deaf!Jaskier story. Read it under the cut below or find it on my ao3 here.
Geralt stumbled upon Jaskier for the first time since the dragon hunt early the next spring, at a crowded market a week or two northeast of Oxenfurt. He'd stopped into town to stock up on supplies and maybe pick up a contract or two before moving along. If asked, he'd insist it was a series of hunts that brought him so close to the Academy, that he might as well follow the coin. And if he happened to run into his bard (ex-bard?), and happened to have the opportunity to apologize, and the bard happened to choose to follow him again? Well, so be it. 
He smelled Jaskier before he could see him, head perking up and eyes searching the crowd for the flash of a colorful doublet and that soft brown hair. The market was teeming, thrumming with chatter, and just as vivacious as Jaskier himself. 
"You goin' ta buy that or not?" The stall keeper asked, jarring him back to his abandoned transaction. He dropped a few coins on the stall, pocketed the herb, and disappeared without so much as a grunt. Weaving through the throngs of people, he relied on smell - on that familiar chamomile and saffron - until he finally spotted a glint of emerald green, and the strap of a lute. He watched from a distance.
Jaskier's hands were flashing about as dramatic as ever, glancing back and forth between the balding man tending the stall and another man standing beside him. His companion was as flamboyant as he was, dressed in a regal blue and arms waving about just as exaggeratedly. But then Geralt realized he couldn't hear Jaskier, which was unusual, because the bard had never in the two decades he'd known him been able to keep his voice down. The crowd was certainly cacophonous, but not that loud.
"Jaskier?" He drew a little closer and called his name tentatively. The bard didn't seem to react, carrying on with whatever he was doing. He tried again, a little louder, and then a third time, increasingly forcefully. He was getting irritated now - how dare he pretend to not hear me - and was tempted to simply move on. With a heavy sigh, he approached even further, lingering just a few paces behind him. "Jaskier?" 
"Think someone's calling you," the stall keeper announced, jerking his head in Geralt's direction, and Jaskier waved his hands again before turning to follow the man's gaze. He blanched when his eyes finally met Geralt's, mouth hung open and hands dropping to his side.
"Geralt?" He squeaked out finally, dragging a hand up to his heart. There was an unusual quality to his voice, Geralt was quick to note. Not hoarse, like he'd heard him after many a late-night performance. Just different. 
"Jaskier," he repeated, casting his gaze down to the russet dirt at his feet. 
"Gods," Jaskier breathed. "Just - melitele's tits - I just…" He trailed off, wringing his hands together. Geralt couldn’t help but think he looked like one of the stray fawns that would occasionally stumble upon his campsite and linger frozen for a few moments, cast in the firelight and trembling with fear.
"It's okay, I know." He kept his eyes trained at his feet, trying to pin down the bard’s tone. The way Jaskier produced certain sounds, dragged over his vowels, a little bit of its usual edge missing. He must be overwhelmed, Geralt concluded, but he wasn't particularly convinced. "I'm sorry." He waited patiently, uncertainly, for either his acceptance or rejection. 
"I need you to look at me," he said instead, surprising Geralt. He did as he was told, lifting his chin to face him. "Can you repeat that?" 
"I'm sorry," he reiterated. He felt frustration welling again - he got his apology, does he really need me to repeat it? - but he quickly quashed it. 
"Thank you, Geralt." He could see the emotion brimming in Jaskier's eyes. "We have a lot of catching up to do." Jaskier glanced sideways for a moment, fidgeting with one of his rings. "Perhaps we could share a drink? There's a tavern not far from here." He jerked his head to the right. Geralt grunted, and Jaskier raised an expectant eyebrow.
"Sounds good," he clarified. He was becoming increasingly convinced that Jaskier was toying with him for pleasure's sake. He knew full well how to interpret the Witcher's grunts, after all. And yet the expression drawn across his face looked impressively genuine. Humans are weird.
Jaskier uttered his thanks to the stall keeper and turned to face his companion - who'd been waiting patiently behind him - again. He wagged his hands about wordlessly, and it finally dawned on Geralt that this was not his usual theatricality - this was common sign language, and he wondered when exactly Jaskier had picked it up.
Jaskier was quiet most of the way to the tavern but seemed to perk up once they were seated - in the far back corner, Jaskier's choice. Geralt spoke first, determined to get this apology over with and behind him.
"I'm sorry about what happened." Jaskier tilted his head as he listened, chin resting on folded hands. "What I said was wrong. I shouldn't have blamed you, and…" he exhaled sharply, as if apologizing - or, more specifically, being honest and vulnerable - caused him actual pain. "The best blessing life has given me is finding you again." Jaskier's head tilted impossibly further, and then came the tears, and - fuck - did Geralt say the wrong thing?
"That's awfully sweet, Geralt," Jaskier eventually choked out, and he relaxed a little. "I'm sorry, I just--" He dragged a hand across his face. "That was so kind." He sniffled into his sleeve before finally re-righting himself. "I guess I'm just a tad sentimental." Geralt forced the best smile he could manage across his lips. "Gods, it's been so long. Go on, tell me everything you've been up to." 
"Not much," he replied between sips of ale. "I'll tell you everything later." He chided himself as soon as the words left his mouth for just assuming there might be a later. "How have you been?" 
"Hmm?" He sighed, fighting hard to keep from rolling his eyes.
"How have you been?" Jaskier seemed to spark to life again at this. 
"Oh," he said simply, pushing his hair behind his ear and chewing on his lip. "Well, I returned to Oxenfurt, taught for the winter. I just headed out, actually. I've been a bit preoccupied." He leaned in closer, stared past Geralt at the wall behind him. "I, uhh, I got sick, coming down from the mountain." Geralt hummed, drawing a slow sip of his ale. "I mean, I kinda woke up sick, but then there was the dragon and…" He rubbed his thumb against the rough wood of the table. "Well, I was a little distracted. I don't even really remember making it off the mountain, to be honest."
"I'm sorry I didn't notice." Geralt might as well get all his apologies over with at this point, he thought. Jaskier waved a hand to hush him.
"I woke up at a healer's. Apparently someone had found me not far out of town and dragged me in." He let out a shaky exhale. "He said I'd had an infection in… In my brain." Geralt watched him with a sour mix of pity and regret, unable to shake the feeling that he should've been there. The image of Jaskier, waxy pale and slumped unconscious, trembling in a stranger’s arms, burned into his mind.  "Anyway, I'm lucky I survived. But my hearing did not." Oh. Fuck. Suddenly the pieces slid into place - the sign language, the strange quality to his voice, the incessant requests for Geralt to repeat himself. 
"Fuck, Jask, I'm sorry." He rarely shortened Jaskier's name, but he knew the bard liked the nickname, and it was the least he could do for him. His mind reeled with regret. He should've been there. A random stranger shouldn't have been the one to find him and rescue him. If he'd known, he'd have never - no. No, what he did was wrong outside of the context of what'd happened next, and he was not about to qualify it. Jaskier, for his part, seemed relatively unfazed.
"Nothing you could've done about it, really," he insisted, running his finger along the rim of his glass. "The healer said I just needed to fight it off on my own." This did absolutely fuck all to ease the guilt gnawing in Geralt's gut. Questions swirled in his head - how was Jaskier going to sing or play anymore? Could he still compose even? How was he going to survive; that was how he procured coin, after all? Was he… was he happy? Did he blame Geralt?
"I know, I just… can you still sing?" This question seemed to amuse Jaskier, who laughed heartily. 
"Yes, Geralt, I can still deliver my fillingless pie." Geralt couldn't tell if he was serious or not, and while he used to be able to read his voice a little more consistently, he was unsure now and kicking himself for not making a better study of the bard's facial expressions and body language when they'd been together. 
"You know I didn't…" 
"I know. I know you didn't mean that." They sat in silence for a beat while Geralt wracked his brain for his next question.
"How? Do you sing, I mean, if you can't hear. How are you even talking to me?" He shrunk behind his tankard, suddenly embarrassed by the utter lack of tact that'd never bothered him before. 
"Well, one of the perks of teaching at a premier Academy is access to some of the finest physicians this side of Nilfgaard. I'll be honest, it took a lot of work to relearn how to sing and speak; I was mute for most of my travels back to Oxenfurt, mostly out of shame." Geralt's stomach churned, imagining Jaskier entirely and utterly silent. That wasn't the bard he knew. His Jaskier never shut up, mouth constantly running faster than a horse, always a story to tell or a song to share or a joke to crack. And certainly never worried about whether anyone else wanted or needed to hear him. Jaskier was not quiet. "But fortunately I still have a tiny bit of my hearing - on the lower end, mostly, which is good for you. Plus I have decades of muscle memory, so it wasn't so bad. And as for right now? I'm mostly lipreading, though the pitch of your voice is helpful." Geralt couldn't tell whether he was being genuine or just trying to placate him. "It's just different. Have to feel it more than hear it, which if you ask me more musicians should try."
"I'm glad," Geralt gritted out, nodding at the bartender to bring another round of ale. "That you can still sing." Jaskier beamed.
"I knew you always liked my singing," he declared triumphantly, arms folded across his chest.
"Did you already know common sign?" Geralt asked instead of retorting with something snarky; let the bard have his victory.
"A tiny bit, but the language professor at the Academy was fantastic at teaching me." Geralt closed his eyes and tried to envision the odds and ends of common sign he'd picked up over his years of travel. "I made a lot of Deaf friends; they've been so supportive of me." With a sigh, Geralt decided to give it a try.
"I know a little," he signed, tentative and deliberate. Jaskier's eyes lit up.
"You do?" He signed back, eyebrows raised and grin spread across his face. 
"Not much. I can…" His hands slowed, wracking his brain for the sign for learn. He sighed again and said it aloud instead. There he goes again, assuming Jaskier will stick around long enough to warrant learning more. Jaskier teared up again, and he cursed inwardly, wondering for what must've been the trillionth time that afternoon if he'd messed up. 
"You'd do that? For me?" Jaskier squeaked, pawing at his eyes with a hand tucked in his sleeve. 
"Of course." For a moment Jaskier looked like he might fling himself across the table and into his arms, but instead he fidgeted in his seat. 
"That's enough about me now, isn't it?" Jaskier asked, always a master at changing the topic when he grew bored with it. "Tell me about your hunts." He leaned over, fished around in his pack, and plucked out his notebook and pen. 
"First was an infestation of drowners," Geralt began, taking extra care to face Jaskier as he spoke, and pausing when he went to scribble something in his notes. They spent the next hour like this until, just as Geralt was beginning to wonder if the bard was going to force him to talk all night, Jaskier was tugged to the front of the tavern while excited patrons clamored for a performance. Jaskier obliged, as always, and Geralt watched, as always.  
When Jaskier dropped back into his seat, shuffling his lute unceremoniously to the floor beside him, Geralt expected him to bid him a hurried goodnight, get on his way, and leave. Just a nice day catching up shared between two friends (?), and decidedly not the start of their next joint adventure. But instead of any of that, Jaskier called to the bartender for another mug, busied himself fixing his hair and his doublet.
"Told you I could still sing," he said with a wink as the bartender deposited his ale on the table in front of him. "And something to eat, please," he added before returning his attention to Geralt. 
"I never doubted you," Geralt's reply came easily. It was, perhaps, the truth.
"Now then, would you say it has more or less filling now?" He leaned forward on his elbows, cheeky grin and narrowed eyes, and even Geralt could recognize the facetiousness of his words. Before Geralt could answer, he waved a hand, as if dismissing himself. "So, where were you? Something about a missing cow?" Geralt nodded, leaning back in his seat.
"So the boy told me his father would pay me, if I could find the cow. So I said, 'how much?'" He continued on with his tales, no matter how excruciatingly mundane they felt to him, until Jaskier's head dips forward and then picks back up for a third time. "Think it might be time for you to get some sleep?" He asked, and Jaskier blinked away the sleep in his eyes.
"Yeah, probably," he muttered, scrubbing at his face with one hand, the other dipping down to reach his lute. "Are you staying overnight?" He asked, and immediately flushed at the confused look he received from Geralt. "I just mean… I don't… you can't leave before I get to say hi to Roach." 
"It's too dark now. I'll get a room at the inn." Jaskier’s face lit up, and he followed him in rising to his feet. "Just have to grab Roach first," he said when they finally made it out the door and into the cool early-spring night. 
"M'kay," Jaskier hummed with a fond smile. He rested a hand on Geralt's shoulder. "I'll see you in the morning." It was a firm statement, certain and unquestioning. 
"See you then," Geralt replied, heading back to the stable where he'd docked Roach so he could bring her closer to the inn. And he, too, was certain. 
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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago
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Survey #340
“wash the poison from off my skin  /  show me how to be whole again”
What is one thing that you took to show and tell as a kid? I have this oddly specific memory of bringing my little Snorlax plushie for one in pre-k. I remember thinking everyone thought I was weird for liking Pokemon as a girl. Do you remember losing your first tooth? I don't. Have you ever been addicted to a game? What game? I think I was addicted to World of Warcraft at a point, but it's honestly hard to tell. My depression was just so abysmal that it was the one thing I got even a smidge of not even joy, but active distraction out of because the options of what you can do in the game are essentially limitless. Are you afraid to pop a balloon? Not really, but it does make me jump because I don't like loud noises. Name one person you’d like to see this month. Bitch we fighting Covid, stay away from me. When was the last time you laughed when you shouldn’t have? I don’t know. Which was better: the first The Lion King or the second? They're nearly tied, honestly, but I prefer the original. Do any of your grandparents have a tattoo? I KNOW my maternal grandmother didn't, and I don't believe any other grandparent did, either. When was the last time you had a bubble bath? Not since I was a kid. What do you usually buy when you go to the corner store? You mean like, a gas station or dollar store? Something small like that? In that case, I'll usually look for a Mountain Dew Voltage sometimes along with something Reese's-related. Do you believe that your pets feel love towards you? My cat, absofuckinglutely. He so obviously loves me. I know my snake doesn't though, considering reptilian brains just physically aren't capable of creating that emotion. She does, however, obviously trust me and definitely seems to enjoy coming out of her terrarium and thus hanging out by me. Bubbles or sidewalk chalk? I loved drawing with chalk, but I like bubbles more. I just love how they catch light and have such beautiful colors to share. What do you use to tell time when your gone out somewhere? My phone. Are you proud of your body? FUCK no. I wish I still was, goddammit. I used to be so fit, and it's funny, because even back then at like, 118 lbs at 5'4'', I thought I was kinda chubby. Like bitch shut the fuck up. Watermelon or cherries? I honestly don't like either, but I'll definitely pick watermelon over cherries. They're disgusting. What is your all-time favourite song? "False Flags" by Massive Attack. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Biiiiiitch guess lmao. I think everyone has, though. What is the band you’ve listened to most lately? Definitely 3TEETH. Love 'em. Favourite brand of cookies? Hm, good question. They've gotta be good at making SOFT chocolate chip cookies, though. I don't enjoy crunchy cookies nearly as much. If you could meet anyone who lived before your time, who would it be? I don't really know. Oh, y'know, chatting with Edgar Allan Poe would probably be cool. Do you pay for your own things? I literally can't. It's embarrassing. Have you ever been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance? No. What is one thing you’d never want your parents to find out? Certain sexual things I've done, probably. When you were little, did you like Dr. Suess books? Of course. Have you ever felt trapped in a relationship? I felt that way in my friendship with Colleen, but no romantic relationships. What would you consider unforgivable? Rape. Like no, go to hell. Do you like eating out at restaurants? Pre-Covid, yeah. What do you dislike the most about being the gender that you are? Probably how heavily judged women are for having ANYTHING "wrong" with their appearance. You could be five pounds over what is "normal" for your height and you're seen as fat. One strand of body hair, and you're disgusting. Bushy eyebrows, you're now manly. I could go on and on. Do you think that weed/marijuana should be legalized? Yes. Rate your typing speed on a scale from 1 - 10? 10. Do you enjoy tanning? Ugh, no. Just sitting there doing nothing but sweating. Have you ever written anybody an anonymous note? I have not. What is your favorite condiment to go with french fries? Ketchup. Have you ever laid in a hammock? Yeah; we used to have one. It was the best when we lived in the woods. Do you blow dry your hair or do you let it air out? I just let it air dry. Candles or incense? I prefer incense. Can you juggle? No. Your favorite vegetable? Broccoli. Do you catch lizards? No; I don't like terrifying wildlife. I'd much rather just take pictures of the little guys and let them go about their business. If we returned to a world without internet, what aspect of online life would you miss the most? YouTube, haha. It's more unique and personal entertainment than television, imo. Are you craving anything aside from food, and if so, what? I want a new piercinggggg. What was the last change you made to your lifestyle? I'm *trying* to get back into regularly making art, along with reading. I'm also really trying to implement drinking more water into my day. What was the last thing you gave up doing? *shrug* What was the last thing to boost your self-esteem? What sort of things typically make you feel good about yourself? It really, really helped to hear my PHP group enjoy my poem about gay rights so much. I was so terrified and did NOT want my therapist to share it, but it turned out being very beneficial. To answer the second question, it's pretty much stuff like I just mentioned: positive reactions to things I create. When it comes to food, do you prefer crunchy or softer textures? Definitely softer. Do you prefer savory or sweet things for breakfast? Hm. Depends on the day, ig. What is something small that you take extremely personally? I'm blanking. What was going on the last time you couldn’t sleep? I just... couldn't sleep. That's not rare for me. Have you drawn anything recently? I recently drew a picture of a still from Rammstein's "Mutter" music video, and I'm now working on Sara's 'kat Alucard. If you're going somewhere close by, do you walk? No. One simply does not walk in this town and not fear being shot. Do you prefer colorful notebooks over plain ones? I like colorful ones, particularly those with a nice pattern or something on it. What's your most ambitious goal? I'd consider wanting to be a successful freelance photographer to be rather ambitious. Do you know anyone named Alex? Well, knew, by this point. One of my closest online friends that just got a boyfriend and fell off the face of the planet when we used to talk every day. I'm still hurt about it, honestly. What's your favorite kind of pie? I don't like pie because of the crust being so, well... crusty and crumbly. Have you ever chatted someone up and scored a date? No. How far would you go with someone you just met? Not very far at all. All you're getting is a hug, if even that. What's your favorite meal to have for dinner? I mean, it depends on what I feel like having. I don't have a set favorite meal. What do you daydream about? The future, mostly. People I miss. Have you ever known someone online and then met them in person? If so, which website did you meet on? Yes, Sara. <3 We met via YouTube back when it had much more social connection. Have you ever been to the beach? Yeah, a good number of times. When was the last time you were sick and what illness did you have? I don't believe I've been ill in any sort of way since I had that ungodly ear infection a few years ago. Have you ever been kicked out of somewhere? Yeah, Colleen's house. Mom once tried kicking me out of the car one night otw home, but I didn't listen. Have you ever intentionally trolled? No. How many siblings do your parents have? Mom has two brothers and I think one sister, and Dad has one sister. Who last held your hand? My niece or nephew, dragging me somewhere, haha. Have you seen all the Lord of the Rings movies? No, not interested. What was the last thing you watched on YouTube? I'm watching John Wolfe's playthrough of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It's so funny how like... every let's player I watch doesn't enjoy the game, like they miss the incredible symbolism and shy away from the advanced language, and sometimes it's just frustrating to watch them; I only do because I enjoy the game and want to see more people experience it and relive it vicariously. It's very high on my list of favorite games. What sport do you find yourself best at? I wouldn't know; I haven't played any sports in years. I was pretty good at softball as a kid, though. Do you think makeup on guys is freaky or sexy? My opinion shouldn't matter; a man can wear makeup whenever he damn well pleases without worrying what others think. But anyway, I tend to find it attractive, especially if it's goth makeup. Have you ever been accused of a crime you did not commit? No. Do you like pickles? I love dill pickles. What was the craziest moment of your life? Probably just lying in that hospital bed following my OD, my mom and two best friends just sitting there with me. It was such a weird, weird feeling. Like I was just so done, frustrated beyond what I can say. I remember thinking it was almost funny, just how it all built up and went wrong. Where do you spend most of your time? In my room on my bed. What is your favorite muffin? Chocolate chip. Would you ever get a boob job? I already know when/if I lose the weight I want to, it will be kind of a big deal to me and my atrocious body image to get a breast lift. Being overweight ~does things~ you know, and god knows I want every trace of it that can be erased gone. Would you ever go on a reality TV dating show? That's a massive "no" from me, buddy. Would you rather be inside or outside? It depends on where I am and the temperature outside, but generally, inside. Do you like the current president? Well, I voted for him, so I can't shit-talk much. I don't know the true depths of him as a person and all he stands for, though; when I decided I needed to vote, I just did some research on his core values. I don't have any complaints yet, from what I've seen at least, which isn't a lot. Do you whiten your teeth? I've used whitening strips before, but I don't now because they're not that effective. If it's financially plausible at some point in my life, teeth whitening is another thing I want to have medically done because of my previous horrible self-care. My teeth have a clear yellow tint and I hate it. Do you get cold easily? No; it's actually the opposite: I get hot easily. What was the worst sickness you ever had? Probably this one stomach bug I had where I just threw up relentlessly. Like eventually barely even bile would come up; it was just dry heaving. My stomach muscles were in agony. Was your childhood wasted by something? No, thankfully. Would you rather die during an adventure or die like a normal person? A normal person. The idea of having such a sudden death stresses me out for multiple reasons; I mostly don't want my family to just be suddenly devastated, and I honestly want to come to peace with the fact I was dying. Like, find my life's own closure instead of just having it ripped away. Have your parents ever tried to commit suicide? Jesus, I sure hope not. Do you have a gag reflex? A very strong one. Do you ever fantasize about trying drugs? I've wondered before what the effects of weed would be like for me, but "fantasize" is definitely the wrong word. Would you rather have sex before you’re married or wait till marriage? It'd be up to my partner, honestly, because I'm fine with either. What is the nastiest dare you have ever committed? I never did dares because I thought they were stupid. Like I'm not gonna do dumb shit just to show you I can. Do you know anyone who has been raped? I think I might? Have you ever asked someone for a tampon? Yeah. Do you have any exes you can’t stand anymore? No. Are you more of a phone or a computer person? Computer. Do you prefer headphones or earbuds? Earbuds. Headphones are just big and clunky and in the way when you use a laptop in bed, plus they irritate my skin. I like how earbuds actually go in your ears for more direct hearing. Would you ever consider adopting a child with a severe mental illness? If I wanted children, no, because I don't think I'm capable to give a child like that adequate care, being so mentally ill myself. I wouldn't want to risk worsening their condition. Favorite thing to do with a significant other? Play games together, particularly cute multiplayer ones that are more about the experience of playing together versus getting past difficult obstacles and such. Like for example, one of my favorite memories with Jason is simply playing Little Big Planet together. Favorite ice cream topping? I don't like many toppings on my ice cream, but I do love melted hot fudge. First boyfriend/girlfriend’s name? Aaron. Do you support PETA? Considering they are incredibly self-righteous extremists, no. Do you believe in the Big Bang Theory? Well, I believe in some sort of "god" figure that created the universe, so I don't think so. A condensed ball of nothing exploding to create something so extravagant? It sounds pretty far-fetched to me. But then again, maybe that semblance of a "god" I believe in created the universe through that, idk. It doesn't really matter now, though, does it. What happened happened, I'm not very concerned with it. What insect can you not stand the site of? It's more so larvae that I can't stand the sight of, like maggots and stuff. They make me squirm. Do you like Doctor Who? I've only seen one or two episodes, so I can't say. Do you approve of gay marriage? Of course I do. I'm bisexual and would like to get married, so I might marry a woman. Are you into politics? I'm really not. Do you think the world is ending soon? Nah, even though it sure does feel like it sometimes. Ever been to a mosh pit? No, they don't seem very fun at all. Do you like to debate? NO. NO NO NO. Do you like the band System of a Down? Yeah, I do. Are you German? It's a big part of my heritage. Do your parents like your best friend? Yes. Who’s someone you can act your complete self around? Sara, 100%. She's the only person I feel entirely comfortable around when it comes to being myself. Do you believe in Friday the 13th? I don't believe in there being any supernatural power to it, no. Who is your favorite rapper? Eminem. What age is your youngest aunt? Uhhhh I have no idea. Do you like bowling? Sure, it's fun. Do you like roasting marshmallows on a bonfire? I do. What shows or characters scared you as a child? Ghostface from the Scream series was my worst fucking nightmare. I couldn't even see pictures of him without crying. The King Ramses guy from Courage the Cowardly Dog also gave me a number of nightmares. Something about the way he was animated was very unnatural and unnerving to me.
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megsblackfirewrites · 7 years ago
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Our Bond is Stronger than Death: Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Jack settled his stomach against the grassy knoll and got his rifle in position. In a few, swift movements, it went from being a short to medium range weapon to a sniper rifle powerful enough to bust through concrete. Few people knew that he was capable of being a sniper; they usually saw him as the man that charged in without a second thought. Usually, he was that reckless dumbass that charged in without thinking, but he was capable of taking an attack slow in the hopes of minimizing casualties. He shifted the scope and pressed his eye against it, taking in the scene below him.
Gabriel had directed him to the location he was being held at. Jack had expected heavy resistance. Apparently, Talon believed itself too obscure to require such heavy defences. He only counted three guards making perimeter sweeps and they were doing a messy job of it. They never did anything beyond looking at the ground under their wall. It was pathetic. How were these men even put on patrol duty? It was insulting.
Jack shook his head before carefully taking aim. He breathed in, held the air in his lungs to steady his gaze, and squeezed the trigger. The guard toppled backwards off of the wall, blood and bone spraying from the ruins of their head. Jack popped the heat-sync so that the empty shell didn’t gum up the barrel and snapped the bolt back into place. He waited three minutes before the next guard arrived.
They met the same fate as the other guard, likely landing on top of the other corpse as they fell. One more to go and he would be fine for another half hour. Considering the other guard hadn’t even looked down inside the grounds of the facility, they were undertrained and completely useless at keeping the compound safe. Had Talon really cut that out of their budget? Or were they really that incompetent?
The last guard fell and he moved out of his foxhole. He slipped quietly down the hill towards the facility, keeping himself as low as possible to make sure he wasn’t easy to spot. He sidled up to the building, checking his path carefully with his eyepiece. Then, he set his foot on the bottom of an exhaust fan and hauled himself up the side of the building.
He dropped soundlessly onto the other side and moved towards the pile of bodies on the ground. He rooted through their pockets before he found a keycard. Judging by the numbers on the bottom, it was basic clearance only; he’d get through the front doors and that was it. That was all he needed though. Once he was in, he could focus on finding Gabriel.
‘Jack?’ Gabriel voice tickled the base of his brain. ‘You’re here?’
‘I’m coming,’ Jack promised. ‘Just hold on a little longer, okay?’
‘I was so scared you weren’t going to make it in time,’ Gabriel whispered. ‘Find Jesse first. I can’t…he’s not like us, Jack. He won’t survive.’
‘I’ll find our boy,’ Jack promised. ‘Just stay strong, starlight.’
Gabriel sent a liquid tremor through Jack’s guts and he grimaced at the sensation. Gabriel must have been terrified out of his mind if he was willing to admit that he wanted to piss himself. It made Jack want to find him immediately, but he had to find Jesse first. Their unofficial child would only survive so long without the enhancements that Jack and Gabriel had.
He swiped the keycard across the locking mechanism to the facility and slipped in. He kept to the shadows as much as he could, using the handheld device that Gabriel had rigged so that Nox could travel with him on missions to disable surveillance cameras until he was out of the way. He moved through the building systematically, clearing each floor out as he went. The fact that he found no one inside worried him; were they all waiting further below or were they really that incompetent to leave a building standing when they were done with it?
He licked his lips as he hurried down a flight of stairs and emerged into what he could only assume were holding cells. There were faint noises coming from the other side of the doors; mostly sobbing and broken whimpers; and he did his best to creep past. Who knew what sort of ruckus a disturbed group of prisoners could kick up?
His heart wanted him to save everyone in the cells, but his mind was in its cold and logical mode. He couldn’t save everyone here; he only had enough room in the getaway vehicle for himself, Jesse, and Gabriel. There wasn’t time to save all the other poor souls in here. He could, however, get a unit mobilized in a few days’ time and have them raid the facility. Nox would be sorting through the footage now even as Jack tried to figure out where Jesse was. The proper forms would be filled out and filed before he got back.
He froze outside of a cell and carefully looked through the small window set near the top of the door. Jesse was lying in a crumpled heap at the back of the cell, his signature Blackwatch uniform missing and replaced with bloody surgical robes. He was lying on his left side with his arm curled in against his chest, head bowed over as his breathing drew heavy tremors from his shoulders.
Jack set his hand on the handle of the door and pushed it open. It wasn’t locked. At first, he didn’t understand why Jesse hadn’t just left, but then he understood as he stepped inside the cell. There was no handle on the inside and since the door swung inwards, there was nowhere to grab it. Not even Jack would have been able to reef it open.
“Jesse,” Jack murmured as he wedged the door open. “Hey.”
Jesse lifted his head and blinked him. His eyes were feverishly wide and sweat covered his forehead, dripping down the length of his nose to soak into the hairs growing in on his upper lip. He blinked slowly before he shifted into an upright position.
“Jack?” he asked in confusion. “That you? That really you?”
Jack nodded and hurried forward, sinking down beside the young agent. “It’s me,” he soothed. “What happened?”
“Blindsided,” Jesse murmured. “Ash…Ash got the first shot in. Gabe…don’t know where Gabe went. Went down, lost sight of him. Been…been here ever since I woke up.”
Jack reached out and gently turned Jesse’s left arm over. Bile rose up at the poor state of his arm; in just a few days, it had turned black and the bullet wound through the center of his tattoo had been left to fester. Pus oozed out of the wound with every movement and blood thickened with coagulation dribbled pasted the flared edges.
“Why wasn’t this looked after?” he asked.
“Tryin’ out somethin’,” Jesse murmured. “Fuck, my head hurts.”
“Blood poisoning,” Jack grimaced as he looked down at Jesse’s arm. “And gangrene. There’s no saving it, Jesse.”
“Fuck,” Jesse whined.
“Come on,” Jack growled as he hauled Jesse to his feet. “Nox, get me in touch with medical; I need to do an emergency amputation.”
Jesse directed Jack to the medical bay. The traitors hadn’t bothered to keep his eyes covered while they were dragging him from one end of the facility to the other. They didn’t know how good his memory was or they would have known better than to let him see where they were taking him.
“In here,” Jesse murmured.
Jack shoved the door to the medical bay open and hauled Jesse inside. “Looks like they cleared out,” Jack growled. “Left you for dead.”
“They were more focused on Gabe,” Jesse shook his head as he hauled himself onto a bed and laid down. “Really wanted to see what made him tick. The docs were all talkin’ about it while they were pokin’ around in my arm.”
“Hmm,” Jack growled as he flipped a few switches on his handheld. “Nox?”
“I have Dr. Ziegler on standby,” Nox replied before the handheld zipped over to scan Jesse’s arm. “She was not happy to hear where you were, Strike Commander.”
“No one will be; don’t care,” Jack replied as he rooted around in the medical supply closet. “All she has to do is tell me how to safely amputate his arm. I can do the rest.”
“Didn’t know you were a medic, Jackie,” Jesse teased.
“Was what I originally joined the army for,” Jack shrugged as he walked over with his arms full of supplies. “Wanted to be a doctor, save people’s lives and make people’s illnesses go away. SEP put the kibosh to that and I haven’t been able to study medicine since. Basics I can do; amputation is not basics.”
“This is outrageous,” Angela’s voice snapped over the commlink. “How could they allow an injury to become that infected? Jack, I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I, but it has to go before Jesse dies from blood poisoning,” Jack snorted. “Walk me through it, Angie.”
“This isn’t something you can walk through, Jack! You need medical equipment, anesthetic, extra hands in case…!”
“We don’t have time for that, Angie,” Jack snorted. “I have one car and enough fuel to get me an hour down the road. There isn’t a hospital close enough for that and I’m not letting Jesse walk.”
“Fine, but he is to come to medical as soon as he returns to base,” Angela ordered. “Get the local anesthetic into him. I don’t like that you have to use it or that he’s going to be awake for the procedure, but that’s the best we can do.”
Jack measured out the necessary amount of anesthetic with a grimace on his face. Jesse watched him tap the needle to get the air bubbles out and spray a small amount out the top. They shared a tight-lipped smile before Jack carefully inserted the incredibly narrow tip of the needle into Jesse’s arm.
Jesse dented the table next to him as he gripped it. He hated needles. Always had. Guessing by the green tint to Jack’s cheeks, he wasn’t overly fond of them either.
“Hard to be a doctor when you don’t like needles,” Jesse laughed breathlessly.
“Wasn’t an issue until after SEP,” Jack huffed as he discarded the needle point. “I was stabbed with so many needles and they hurt like a bitch. Worse than one, actually. Let me know when you can’t feel anything above your elbow.”
“Was SEP really that bad?” Jesse asked softly. “So many…?”
“It was worse than anything I could tell you, Jesse,” Jack looked him in the eye.
For the first time in a very long time, Jesse realized just how old Jack Morrison was. It was hard to believe it sometimes with the way he walked and carried himself, but he was fifty and had survived a war unlike anything humans had endured before. If anything, Jack was lucky to be alive. It was easy to forget that with the way that Jack smiled and talked, the way he made everyone in Overwatch feel welcome regardless of where they came from or where they fell on the chain of command.
“Sorry,” Jesse murmured.
“For what? Taking your mind off of the problem at hand?” Jack gave him a gentle smile and Jesse immediately felt better.
There was just something about Jack’s blue eyes and sweet smile that made you feel better. Jesse couldn’t put a word to it, but even when he was stuck in medical for stupid sicknesses; strep throat at twenty-three, ugh; just seeing Jack walk around, talking and smiling with the patients made everything feel less taxing on the system.
“You woulda made a great doctor,” Jesse murmured.
“Mmm,” Jack nodded as he tapped Jesse’s numb arm. “Angela, you’re up.”
Jesse shuddered as Jack followed Angela’s instructions to a ‘t’. He couldn’t watch Jack work, struggling to keep from throwing up as he heard each slice of the scalpel through his ruined skin, every tug as the scalpel cut at his muscles, and heard the wet splatter of blood against Jack’s clothing and the floor. The stench coming off of his ruined arm was horrendous and he gagged. Jack paused long enough to shove a bucket towards him so that he could be sick without losing his lunch on the floor.
He almost passed out when he felt the saw digging into the bone of his arm. He did his best not to scream; he couldn’t feel any pain, but it was just the knowledge that he was losing his arm that was making him lose his mind.
“Jack, I can’t,” he whimpered.
“There’s no going back, Jesse,” Jack grit out as he continued sawing. “It’s okay. I’m almost done.”
Jesse sucked in a deep lungful of air and then there was the sensation of something giving away. He looked over as Jack set the severed arm on the side tray. It looked oddly small and rather pathetic lying there on the tray. He gulped down some air as Jack carefully folded his skin over the stump of his arm just below the elbow.
“Now you have to,” Angela started to say.
“I know how to close up the wound, Angela,” Jack said as he started stitching sutures into the stump of Jesse’s arm. “Thank you. Please, have the medical bay ready for other horrific abominations against humanity. You might need to send out a medical evac team as well.”
“It will be done, Strike-Commander,” Nox promised.
“How’re you feeling?” Jack asked as he bandaged the stump of Jesse’s arm.
“Light-headed,” Jesse murmured as he watched Jack work. “There was no saving it?”
“No, Jesse,” Jack reached up and carefully cupped his cheek. “If there was a way, I would have done it immediately.”
Jesse nodded his head and closed his eyes. He did his best not to start crying, but tears started rolling down his face anyways. He let out a broken sob and hunched forward, sobbing like a child as he pulled his stump of an arm in close to his body. Jack’s arms wrapped protectively around him and pulled him in close, offering all the comfort he could.
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the-happy-hellbrute · 7 years ago
Text
SUIT LOG 4
This is the writeup of the second-to-last part of the first ‘arc’ of the Black Crusade campaign I’m playing in. Other players are @imkelborhal, @metalboxes, and @screamingatthevoid. The campaign is run by @why-things-are-terrible. They have made a few odds and ends about the campaign as well, so check them out!
BEGIN SUIT LOG 4
For a split second after Dreadbringer ignited the pool of fuel, I was back on Icarus. I saw reaching figures in the flames as they washed over me, and heard their screams in the roar of the fire.
Then, as quickly as it began, it was over.
I looked over the scene as the remaining fires died out. The thralls that had been assaulting us had been driven off by the flames, some killed or wounded by the conflagration, but most scattered due to the purifying aspect of the flame, anathema to the simpler followers of the plague god. Dreadbringer and I were mostly unharmed, our armor being more than capable of weathering a simple fuel fire. Siodell was somewhat burned, but her respiratory implants negated any effect of smoke inhalation, and her Mechanicum robes protected her with their fire resistant properties, a product of the common hazards of Martian engineering.
My main concern was Ser Aifric. While his carapace armor would have protected him somewhat, he still had a large amount of his body that was only covered by his fatigues or was entirely exposed. This, combined with having been soaked in fuel, made it likely that he would have severe, perhaps life-threatening, burns. I also suspected that his throat and lungs could have potentially been damaged by inhaling smoke or superheated air from the fire. I quickly went to look him over. If I had been examining him for triage, I would have tagged him for lowest priority, as he would be unlikely to survive without expending supplies that could be used on those with a better chance of recovery. However, with allies currently in short supply, I decided that I would do my best to stabilize him. My initial examination showed that he had gotten very lucky. The fuel appeared to have burned off very quickly, and the way he fell smothered any of his clothing that had ignited. However, Aifric still suffered severe burns to his upper and lower arms, as well as some lesser but still worrying burns to his calfs and thighs. Most worryingly was the fact that his fatigues had bonded to his skin in some places, but as I did not have the proper tools or sterile environment to treat that properly, I focused on treating the most immediately dangerous symptoms.
I washed out his burns the best I could with my power armor’s internal water supply, and then wrapped them in all the sterile antiseptic bandages that I had. I was worried about the possibility of infection, not only due to the non-sterile conditions, but also the nature of combat with Nurgle-aligned warriors. Unfortunately, the only antiseptic I had on-hand was pure alcohol for tool sterilization, which would further aggravate his burns, so I had to hope the bandages would be good enough. I then checked his breathing with my auto-senses, to see if his respiratory system had been compromised. I observed a rasp to his breathing, though he still appeared to be getting oxygen, so it was not an immediate concern. It was likely that he had inhaled smoke from the fire, and that had resulted in irritation to the tissue of his throat and lungs. Moving on, I then injected him with a small dose of stimm, to get him moving, and a dose of pain suppressant, so he would be able to function for the immediate future. Normally I would not mix a stimulant and an analgesic, but conditions required he be able to move under his own power, so I judged it worth the potential danger. Soon after, he began to awaken. I preformed a quick examination to ascertain if he was coherent. While he was in pain, he was alert and capable of movement, albeit slowly.
With the most pressing concern out of the way, I moved to speak with Dreadbringer. I began by briefly berating him for endangering everyone by igniting the fuel, but only receiving a curt response of “It was the most effective course of action,” I decided to move on. We then discussed how to proceed. I was in favor of continuing on in the direction our guide had indicated, as he had said that the wreck of the Explorator was very nearby, and it was likely that the scanning systems aboard would be able to locate the exotic particle traces that would indicate a concentration of psychic individuals. It also would contain the valuable medical equipment and supplies that the merchant had indicated was there, which I would now need to provide adequate treatment to Aifric. Dreadbringer was less sure. He started to argue that we should go back to the market in the hanger and get a new guide, but slowly trailed off and said that he had a better plan, which he did not elaborate on. He walked to the lift platform, and then casually stated something that sent me sprinting after him.
“Warsmith, the thralls fled in the direction of the child. Is he able to protect himself?”
I was on the elevator in an instant. The grind up to the next floor was an agonizing wait, though my suit chrono marked it as only two minutes at most. While Dreadbringer was still and stoic as ever on the ride up, I found myself pacing up and down the platform until eventually, the bell chimed, and the doors opened to the landing above.
I quickly scanned the room. The guide was still where we had laid him, but Telemachus was nowhere to be seen. In that moment, I felt the closest that I have ever felt to true fear since I was uplifted to the Astartes. I ran through the passageways of the hulk, desperately bellowing out for Telemachus. The search felt like hours, calling out to him constantly. Thoughts of the dangers he could be facing, things that could have happened, and what I should have done instead raced through my mind. Eventually, I heard sounds of crying. Rounding into a small dead end corridor, I finally found the child.
Telemachus was huddled with his knees gripped to his chest at the end of the hallway. Though he appeared unharmed, he was obviously in distress. I can deal with a gunshot wound with ease, set a broken leg in a matter of seconds, attach an augmetic with such skill that it was like the limb was never gone, but this? Being presented with my son in tears, I feel more helpless than I can ever remember.
I did not know what else to do besides walk to him and sit by his side. We spent a long time like this, simply being seated next to each other. Eventually, Telemachus’ sobs quieted, and he spoke to me. He told me how he had been worried by the sounds of fighting coming from below, but then when he heard the explosion and the silence that followed, he thought that I had been killed. The thought of this terrified the child, and he ran back through he hulk, terrified and distraught. 
I let the child speak, hoping that by talking it through that it would help him. When he finished, I said to him that he did not need to worry, that I was safe and at his side. This seemed to calm him somewhat, and he responded that he would learn to be stronger. He ended this by holding up his hand and stating the beginning of the immortal words of the Iron Warriors: “Iron Within.” I gently took his hand and guided him to his feet, responding “Iron Without.”
Telemachus seemed to recover from his momentary panic, and slowly began to stand straighter as we walked back to the freight platform. Though I was worried by the boy’s momentary lapse, his recovery showed he had strength. I knew he would continue to grow, and that he had the will to become the heir I am raising him to be. This was tested once again moments later.
As we approached the cargo lift, I began to hear a cracking sound, followed by low, wet squelching. I motioned for Telemachus to stay behind me, and drew my boltgun. I prepared for another engagement with the shambling thralls, and then entered the lift chamber. In the low light, I found a large figure hunched over the remains of our guide. The figure had cracked open the man’s skull into a bloody ruin. Hearing our approach, Dreadbringer looked over his shoulder from where he was crouched to face us. His helmet was on the deck to his side, allowing me to see the man’s face for the first time. It was a horrific ruin, part of his cheek missing, metal plating replacing part of his hairless skull. His skin was the color of ash, pulled tight and thin over his features. But the worst were his eyes. The irises were shattered, spreading out haphazardly into sclera the color of yellowed parchment, shot through with deep red veins. His face was caked in blood, and I could see pieces of half-chewed brain matter leaking through the rent in his cheek, making it grimly clear what his plan had been.
The Omophagea. One of the more bizarre organs implanted into an Astartes, it allows us to gain memories from eating the flesh of a sentient creature. Dreadbringer had decided that it was easier to devour the man’s brain than to wait and see if he would awaken.
I began to berate Dreadbringer for his impulsiveness, but quickly gave up. He quite clearly didn’t care about what I was saying, simply stating that he now had the necessary information and that was all that mattered. I felt it was pointless to press the issue further, so decided to just activate the elevator and rejoin the rest of the group. 
It seemed as though Telemachus took the situation surprisingly well, possibly because he has assisted me with surgery in the past. He did now try to avoid looking at Dreadbringer when at all possible though. Having seen what lies beneath his helm, I don’t entirely blame him.
I did a quick check on Ser Aifric once we regrouped with the the others, and once I confirmed he would be able to walk, we set out. We walked for around a half an hour, before we came to an impasse.
Due to the way that the ships making up the hulk had smashed together, some did not tend to be oriented the way that their designs intended. This was shown rather obviously when we came to a breach leading to the ship connecting the Rad-Hulk and the Explorator vessel. It was situated nose down, making what was once a simple passageway into a hundred meter drop. We spent some time trying to figure out a way to safely make it down the shaft. I rather quickly tired of complaints about lack of rope and thoughts of reactivating the gray-plating, and decided to make my own way down. I securely grabbed Telemachus, and then stepped off into the inverted hallway.
Now, I am not a suicidal fool, so I had more of a plan than “jump and hope that I land softly”. A split second into my fall, I thrust my hand into the side of the passageway and ripped down through the plating until it slowed my decent to a stop. It was around that moment when my action registered with the rest of the group and the confused cries arose. I called up that we were fine, and I had possibly left a path for the others to climb down with. I repeated the process of falling and ripping down through the plating a few more times before I was safely at the bottom. Dreadbringer imitated my process and landed soon after. Siodell carried down Aifric on her back while she used her servo-arm to do a form of crack climbing down the rents Dreadbringer and I created. This took a bit longer, but got them both down safely.
Having made it past that obstacle, it was a short walk to the second breach leading to the Explorator vessel. We found ourselves in what appeared to be a research deck, filled with broken cogitators and dust shrouded laboratories. Dreadbringer continued to guide us through the vessel. Soon, signs on the walls began to point us towards the medical bay. 
Eventually, we stumbled upon a large room filled with specimen tanks. There were several xenos species taking up residence in the stasis tanks, a half dissected ork in one, a Hormagaunt in another, and the strange long limbed form of a Hrud in another still. 
But what stood out among the various aliens was the nude form of a human woman. She had dark skin, and the tell-tale scarring of neural implants ringing her bald head. They looked relatively recent, though that was potentially misleading given the nature of stasis containment. After all, if a person was asked to judge Telemachus’s age by look alone they would reasonably say that he would be in the range of 10 standard years. However, he has spent decades in a stasis pod as an infant while I looked for a place to safely raise him, making his chronological age something close to 121 years old.
Needless to say, this piqued our curiosity. Before we moved on to the medical bay, we decided to find a way to open the stasis chamber holding her and find out just what made her so special.
END SUIT LOG 4
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evangelene · 7 years ago
Text
To Take (Pt.2)
Summary: With all your memories gone, and the sudden information that you are now a vampire–who do you trust? Do you trust your mind that says to hate Yoongi? Or your heart that says you could never?
Part One / Part Three
Three weeks after your sudden awakening into the life of a vampire, you finally found the library. Turns out the entire basement of the castle was a maze of libraries--of which, none were labeled. The unhelpful nature of the castle and its books did not aid in your quest to remember/ figure out whom the hell you were supposed to be/ what were you now that you were a vampire.
The first room you stumbled upon was a mess: dusty and cluttered to the point that some rows of tables were positively littered with books, scraps of papers, quills, modern pens, random notes in languages you couldn't read nevertheless speak, texts that were in equally strange tongues, and piles upon piles of printed images ranging from frayed old parchment to newer, sleeker photographs. The mildew in the room caused you to sneeze practically every two feet; if there was one thing about immortality, it was that it did not clear your allergies.
You strode past the nearest length of shelving, brushing your fingers delicately over the spines of books covered in dust; several of them were so old that you could see the uneven pages aged and yellowed.  There were centuries worth of mystery and gunk that came off on your fingertips. These millions of books contained a history of worlds and universes that you were no longer aware of; it scared you to think that one of them could contain information of your past--information that was taken from you. You were sure that you could find answers within the pages, but you were aware that they wouldn't be the answers that would bring back the old self that everyone was so anxiously waiting for you to rediscover.
It felt like you were stepping into shoes three sizes too large for you.
You strode through to another library. This one had a table that drew you in almost immediately--on top of it was an array of withered lilies in different colors and varieties. Spread around the decayed plants were stacks of books about flowers and gardening, and large swaths of blueprint paper drawn out with different sketches for flower beds and garden designs that felt too familiar. As your fingers toyed with the edge of a white lily petal long since crinkled with mold, you heard the sound of a woman's laugh echo through the back of your mind. You tried to picture her face, what she sounded like or what she meant to you but, as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.
"Ah, I found you."
You nearly jumped to the high, vaulted ceiling, whirling around to face the ecstatic voice. Your hands ripped themselves from the table as if you were caught doing something you shouldn't. Hoseok only chuckled softly, keeping his distance from you until you calmed down enough that he deemed it safe for him to approach you. "Sorry, sorry! I tend to have light footsteps." He eyeballed the table that you had been staring at when he first entered, noting the way your hands twitched with want to touch the lilies again.
"Ah, that was Yoongi's last project. Aside from Namjoon, he's the only one that comes down here on a regular basis. The books were a source for him to search for an escape route out of this castle. He stopped coming down here for a bit, but, while you were out, this was practically the only place we could go to in order to find him." Hoseok grabbed a book from the table, flipping through page after page of intricately labeled seed packets. His hand fanned out on the blueprints as he snapped the book closed with a dusty thud. "These are for the flowerbeds outside in the clearing. Did you see them?"
You thought of Yoongi, his face illuminated by the sun as he saw you for the first time after you'd awoken.
"Yes." You whispered.
"He worked hard on those gardens for months; before his project, it used to be just a gazebo and millions of dandelions and crabgrass. He cleared it all, gathered the stones, planted and tended to those gardens as best as he could. He did so much research that we had to check that he was eating enough to survive. He may not look like it, but Yoongi is neat and meticulous--he never goes halfway on anything."
You stared at the lilies on the table, feeling your fingers already reaching out once more to grab it. The petal crumbled to dust under your touch; once more you heard that laughter, but this time you closed your eyes, visions of flowerbeds outside a small cottage overlapped with the sensation of a hand smaller than yours gripping onto the back of your dress. You opened your eyes, meeting Hoseok's gaze; he looked like he already knew exactly what you had seen and was waiting for a million questions to flow off your tongue.
"What do you want to know?" He murmured, his hand coming to rest between your shoulder-blades; firmly grounding you from the loose flashes of memory.
"I--why can't I hate him for making me like this?"
"That's not a question that I can answer for you." He chuckled, the moment of sadness suddenly disappearing as his arms wrapped around your middle. You found sunshine in the basement as he lifted you off your feet and spun you in tight, quick circles that had you both dizzy and elated. You screamed at first, but the shouting turned into bubbles of laughter that mimicked his own. Something about the sound of Hoseok laughing infected the confused synapses of your brain and you no longer knew why you were laughing; it was as if there were a thousand inside jokes that your body knew but your mind no longer remembered. And you didn't really care; Hoseok made the darkness seem bright.
You liked how you felt when you were around him. It wasn't heavy like it was with Namjoon, it wasn't confusing like it was with Yoongi, it wasn't brotherly in the same way that it was with Seokjin--with Hoseok it was like there could only ever be smiles. Tears weren't a concept in a world with this man.
He captured your face in both his hands to get a better look at your face the second he let your rubbery legs hit the ground, his eyes glittering with laughter that didn't make it past his lips. "You were--you are still--something special to all of us. We all needed you here in the castle for different reasons, you're not just a friend to us all, Y/N. You're our sister--and to Yoongi you're something far more. You were the warmth that melted the glacier Min Yoongi--we'd been trying to reach him for so long that we thought it was impossible until you came along." He softened. "But what we want and who you were isn't important because who you are now is still our sister. This new person is still precious to all of us regardless if you hate or love Yoongi."
You stared up at him with furrowed eyebrows, cupping his face in your hands much like he was doing to you. It made him chuckle and, in turn, it loosened the knot growing in your chest. For some reason, you couldn't find it in yourself to allow this man to be sad for even a second.
"Please forgive us. What happened was mostly out fault, but we couldn't watch you die."
"I died?" But there wasn't any fear in it; instead you were using your thumbs to smooth out the worry wrinkles on Hoseok's forehead.
"Almost; you almost did."
You couldn't find any words to say--partly because the fact didn't seem to surprise you and partly because it felt like an answer that you already knew. Instead, you just let out a small hum and waited for him to continue.
"He--he can't let anything slip out of his control. Yoongi, he needs to make you happy--it's in every pore and cell of his body. He wants you to live a life free of pain and sadness. Everything that Yoongi has done has been to protect you. Therefore, we're all afraid to ruin his work by telling you too much." His smile grew into something warm, something that reminded you of the sun; you couldn't help but beam a grin back up at him.
"It's not life without pain--you need the bad to appreciate the good." You whispered, dropping your hands from his face to cup them around his own on your cheeks. "Yoongi..." Something flashed before you and you were back in the garden meeting the stare of the man with the cold, hard eyes that both drew you in and pushed you away. "Yoongi only wanted me for this castle...he only wanted me because...because..."
"Because you reminded him of your mother?"
As your stare shot up from a point far off in the distance to the reality of the man before you, Hoseok continued; he had already anticipated your questions. "I can't tell you too much, but your mother was very close with Yoongi's family--she would bring you to this castle often. The you who doesn't know any better is probably thinking that he only wants you here because you remind him of his deceased parents."
"They--"
"Y/N, to many people we are monsters--some of us deserve that title and others don't; the village that you came from is blind to that fact." He sighed. "Your mother stopped coming when you were old enough to speak and that had been the last that we'd heard from either of you."
There was a ghost of a red ball bouncing off the floor once before landing into tiny, child hands that led up to a pale face with little fangs. Those eyes were bright with innocence and almost nothing like the darkened impassivity of the ones that haunted the male now.
"Yoongi chose you, Y/N--not because of his parents and not because he needed to fill an empty role in order to survive--he chose you because you are someone special. Like your mother, you find humanity in monsters and you love them for it--but unlike her, you are not blinded by it."
"My mother." You murmured, feeling tears slide down your cheeks--tears quickly wiped away by Hoseok's thumbs and then his shirt as he pulled you in for a tight hug. He was the glue that kept all your pieces together in that moment--you wanted to thank him but flashes of white lilies lying on a grave stopped you. "She's dead...isn't she?" You whispered, hating how your voice cracked.
"No matter how hard your mother tried, she couldn't believe that there were monsters who didn't deserve to be loved."
"Lilies." You sobbed into Hoseok's shoulder. "She loved lilies."
"Yes," he chuckled softly, swaying with you in his arms. "But they are also your favorite flower. Both are reasons why Yoongi made that garden for you; he wanted to see you smile when you awoke."
~.~
You stood at the very edge of the forest, staring into the dappled depths of the woods where sunlight slipped between the leaves. For some reason, you couldn't take that first step forward into the shadows. There was something in your chest--some sort of déjà vu that had you feeling like you would throw up if you even dipped a toe past the first line of trees.
Those woods meant something to you--leaving the castle was something the past you dreaded to the point of sickness. 'Why?' was a question that you didn't want to find the answer to just yet, but the call of the woods was stronger.
You swallowed down your doubt despite it all and stepped forward, your bare feet digging into the mossy and woody ground. You weren't wearing shoes purely because you couldn't figure out where the hell your shoes were; you didn't feel like asking either--something told you that the boys didn't want you to go into those woods by yourself.  But it was that fact that made you all the more motivated to see just exactly what they were hiding.
The second your skin became shrouded in the shadows, goosebumps spilled across your spine. You continued forward despite how heavy your body felt. The farther you got away from the castle the more dangerous the woods felt--the trees seem to reach for you with branches for fingertips, clinging to your hair and your clothing.; the very grass beneath your feet felt sharp and the air was musky and hard to breath in. You swallowed, hearing whispers in the noises of the animals of the forest. The woods were deep and thick; there was seemingly no end to how far you could walk. Even though it had been morning light when you entered, it was now starting to darken. Then and only then did you see hints of fire in the distance and, suddenly, the trees broke to a meadow no man's land.
You stayed within that ending line of trees, staring at the cottages and cobbled roads lit by lanterns and shrouded with fields of crops. Ghosts of yourself as a child came running at you from the misty dark, only to pass through you with giggles. Cold fingers seemed to tap up your spine until you shivered just to shake the feeling.
This had to be your village--the place you came from; the place that you grew up in. Despite the answers that flickered in the torch light, you couldn't make yourself leave the woods to find them.
You were gathering the courage to move your foot, the energy to press forward even though the weight of the air felt like it was trying to drive you deep into the earth, when you heard the hurried crunch of footsteps running through the forest behind you. The labored breath and hiss of your name startled you out of your skin, causing you to spin around only to have a warm body crash into you. You were wrapped in muscled arms, held so tightly that you believed--if you were still human--you would have broken something; as the vampire you were now, it was somehow a comforting pressure.
"Jungkook." You let out a breath you hadn't realized you'd been holding in.
"What are you doing out here?" He hissed into your shoulder, but it sounded more like worry than a warning.
"I--I wanted to see my village." You whispered. "But in the end I couldn't go all the way."
He let out a sigh, leaning back to stare at you. "You scare us too much, you know that?"
You grinned up at him as an answer to his rhetorical question, cocking your head to the side. "Why are you here? Did the others send you?"
"I came when I couldn't find you."
Your eyes softened on him, on this boy in front of you; your heart seemed to be entirely aware of what he meant to the you that had been erased. Even though you couldn't remember any of your time spent with him, you knew instantly you would do anything to protect him from the world.
He's the youngest. You don't know where the thought came from, but it was there all the same and you knew that it had to be true--all flashes and whispers in your head had been true so far.
"Jungkook, I won't go to the village yet, okay? I--I'll let you know when I decide to."
His eyes lit up, a small bunny smile brightening up his darkened features. "You will?"
You nodded, unable to help the way his grin infected your own. "I will." You smoothed out his wild hair, brushing it back off his forehead. "These woods are dangerous aren't they? And you ran here all by yourself."
"For me they're not--for you...it's different."
"Different how?" You bit your cheek, feeling dread leak from the village up into your chest.
"Female vampires are rare--very rare; something about the breeding process and/ or turning process makes it extremely difficult to produce a female. Because of this, it makes you prime prey for the monsters in the woods--both human and not."
You stared at him, about to open your mouth with a snappy retort when he cut you off.
"Y/N, please. There's a lot you don't know right now, so please just promise me that, when you decide to come back here, you won't go alone."
You knew that you couldn't keep that promise, but you agreed to it anyways--if only to ease the youngest's mind for now.
He wrapped his arms around your shoulders, pausing when he felt your bones through your skin. "When was the last time you drank blood?"
"I--"
He didn't hesitate to bite the inside of his wrist with his teeth, holding it out to you. "You need to drink--I know it's hard at first, but it's important."
"No...Jungkook--please don't make me." You tried to shove him away but he was much too strong for you in your weakened state.
He brought his wrist closer to you, just under your nose. You caught the hints of copper and suddenly your lips were on his skin and you were drinking in thirsty gulps.
The smoke ripped you from the moment of ravenous hunger.
You were a smoky ghost watching yourself amongst seven boys--all seven boys. Quickly your gaze searched all their faces until you found the one that you hadn't met yet.
Taehyung.
You found him just in time to watch him pick the past you up by your waist, hoisting you up over his shoulder only to run with you into the water. Unceremoniously, he crashed down in a heavy splash, surfacing with you with laughter. The you from Jungkook's memories giggled and splashed wildly as you screeched his name with crazed laughter and chased after him. You had barely gotten a few trudging, watery steps before Jungkook burst from underneath the water and wrapped his arms around your middle, yanking you out deeper into the lake with him.
The lake--it had to be the one from behind the gazebo. When the smoky you turned over your shoulder, you could barely see the outline of said structure across a field of grass and dandelions. Though you didn't remember this lake's name, you felt that there was something sacred about it--at least sacred to the boys and yourself.
The past you kicked at the youngest until suddenly there was another pair of arms around you, pulling you free from Jungkook's grip. Yoongi twisted you around, hiking your legs around his hips so he could look up at you. With your wet hair dangling down on his face, he leaned up to kiss you--almost jealously eyeing the maknae. It was a sight that made your chest twist and drop; there was so much kindness, so much love in Yoongi's eyes that he seemed like an entirely different person than the present Yoongi.
Taehyung grinned devilishly and kicked the back of Yoongi's knees, knocking both of you into the water. "Get a room you two!" He chuckled, his hand snatching out to grab your arm in order to keep you above the surface; he seemed to care less about Yoongi who came spurting up water moments later.
Jungkook, who appeared almost sullen that you were taken from his grasp, turned his back to you--giving you the perfect opening to splash your way on over to him like a bull in a china shop; it was clearly apparent that you were a land mammal. You clung to his back, reaching up with one hand to ruffle his hair. "Yoongi's a butt, isn't he?"
His chuckle vibrated through your chest. "Y/N, you love him."
"And I love all of you too, ya know? There's more than just one type of love."
"You're going to make an annoying cousin-in-law."
"Sister-in-law sounds better." You giggled, squeezing your thighs and gently kicking him in the shins with your heels. "Now giddy up! We have a Yoongi to wrestle! Chicken! Chicken!"
Jungkook's wrist was taken from you and, immediately, you were out of his memory, back into the reality where you were no longer human.
Something in your heart tugged at the pain in Jungkook's eyes; you wanted to fix it but you couldn't place the cause--as a result you could only stare up at him hopelessly.
"Taehyung." You managed to choke out even though you already had this horrible feeling that the answer wasn't one you wanted. "I want to see Taehyung."
Jungkook's eyes filled almost instantly, leaving you to move on instinct--your hands coming up to cradle his face and feverishly wipe away his tears. "What? What's wrong?" You said. "Are you okay?"
The youngest's lip quivered, his head dropping to rest on your shoulder so you couldn't see him break. "You're back--I can see it in your eyes. A part of you is back." His breath was hot and tired. "Taehyung would love to see this version of you again."
"Where is he?" You choked out.  "Jungkook, where is Taehyung?"
He didn't say anything for a while; he just stood there with his face buried into your shoulder. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and pleading. "Let's go back to the castle, Y/N. We can still go back--this can still be okay."
"Jungkook--"
"Please, Y/N. Don't make me show you."
"I want to know. I need to know."
His wrist was in front of you once more; even though you were no longer thirsty, you let his blood pass your lips.
The smoke wasn't gentle; this time it took you violently--ripping you forcefully from the safety of Jungkook.
"Taehyung." You felt an immense sense of déjà vu watching yourself stand in the woods with a man curled over on the ground. It was difficult for you to see past the way the past you stood with shaking shoulders. When you finally got a good look at what the man was holding, you felt the urge to throw up.
Blood. So much blood. Even as a vampire this blood smelled like flowers--overly perfumey in a way that made you shudder just thinking about drinking it. It was the blood of someone important to you.  
"Taehyung, it's not your fault." Your shadow self stepped to the side to get a better look at the past you's face, your throat constricting at the sound of your past self on the verge of tears. You couldn't recognize the body beneath Taehyung--it was too bloody, twisted, and bruised beyond compare. "Taehyung." Your past self practically shouted, trying to bring him back to you. "You know it's not your fault."
"Maybe...maybe we could have saved her--you don't know that!" He screamed back at you, his eyes flashing a vivid red as he snapped his head up to meet your gaze. "If I hadn't tried to turn her maybe she could have--"
"She asked you to!" You shouted back, your chest heaving with the effort it took to make the words come out. When you turned away from the scene to let your present self catch your breath, you spotted past Jungkook crouched by a tree, his hands in his hair as he looked on in shock. He was frozen; you were positive he wasn't letting any air get to his lungs.
"Us vampires, we kill, Y/N." You whipped back around to see the sorrow in Taehyung's eyes, the absolute hopelessness. "We kill so fucking easily. How am I supposed to believe that this isn't my fault?"
"She asked you to." You whispered, your past self's fingers twitching as if you wanted to reach out to him but couldn't. "She asked you to turn her even though she knew that it wouldn't work--she asked you to turn her because she wanted you to have all of her memories. She wanted to live through you."
"Why would she do that?" He hissed, his fingers tightening around the body. "Why? She knew that 99% of females won't turn--she knew that she would die and she wanted me to suffer--she wanted me to--"
"No, Taehyung--" You dove for him but it was too late, he was dropping Jia's body to the ground and taking off into the woods on a howl that broke what was left in you. The past you, instead of breaking down in front of the body like you wanted to, turned to take care of the frozen Jungkook. "Hey--Hey Kookie, it'll be okay, it'll be fine." But you were crying all the same.
Jungkook's lip quivered as he looked up at you, glassy-eyed. "But what if you don't make it when Yoongi turns you?"
You grinned at him despite the tears rolling down your cheeks. "I'll stay human, Kookie. I'll stay human and then you will never lose me."
You felt Jungkook's arms around your waist, the dampness of his blood seeping through the side of your dress--but you couldn't see; the smoke still blinded you. It was too much, all too much. "Y/N." Jungkook sounded so far away, but he got closer with each repetition of your name until, finally, you were back into the woods, staring up at the darkening sky.
"Jia." You croaked out, feeling unconscious tears dribble down your face and dapple your dress. "Jia is gone."
"Yes." Jungkook whispered. "Yes, she is."
"She--she was my sister." You croaked, unable to help the way your entire body wracked with the beginning of sobs as you stared up at Jungkook. "She...she didn't die because of Taehyung, did she? She didn't." You don't know how you knew this for sure, but something about the sound of her name and the image of Taehyung's back curled over her body had you positive that the words tumbling out your mouth were true. It was a fact that made you sob harder.
"He didn't." Jungkook whispered, this time it was his turn to be the rock for you. He held you up, wiping away your tears with his free hand. "Taehyung didn't kill her--she was already dead when she asked him to turn her. But, he loved her so much that when she ultimately died, he couldn't take it. He stopped drinking blood entirely."
"Where is he?" You whispered. "Where is Taehyung?"
Jungkook licked his lips, shaking his head. "We had to keep him chained in the woods and force feed him blood so he wouldn't become an uncontrollable vampire driven only by thirst. There are monsters in these woods that have fallen to such lows--we couldn't let him become like that. We--we couldn't we couldn't let your village hunt him down and kill him for turning into a monster."
You clutched Jungkook's shoulder tightly, whimpering. "Where is he now--I want to see him. Jungkook, I need to see Taehyung."
Jungkook lifted you up onto his back, hooking an elbow under either leg. "Hold onto me." He murmured softly; he was so grown up now--even if his appearance didn't show his true age. Somehow you wanted him to be back to that innocent child that you comforted in the woods--but the current you wasn't bred to be strong enough for all this yet.
"Where is Taehyung?" You cried into his shoulder-blade. "Where is he?"
"One step at a time, Y/N." Jungkook murmured. "One thing at a time."
And it was the first time that you felt so incredibly safe and broken at the same time that you grabbed fistfuls of Jungkook's shirt and thanked him even as you sobbed into the silken fabric.
~.~
You treaded through the halls, trying to make your way to the kitchen. Unfortunately, the map of the castle in your head was horribly flawed and that left you somehow on the third floor staring into an open room where Yoongi sat asleep at a desk completely littered with scraps of paper. He was a mess; for some reason Yoongi not being an absolute neat-freak surprised you.
You couldn't make yourself leave the frame of the study door and continue on your quest for the kitchen. Instead, you watched him. The icy Min Yoongi was completely and utterly passed out to the point that he was drooling on his papers. It looked to you that he hadn't slept in years; it was a complete 180 from the Yoongi you knew, and it was that fact that made the sight of the stoic man lying prone and sleeping was cute to you.
You knocked on the door, expecting him to wake up. To your surprise, he didn't even shift in his sleep other than the tiniest of snores.
He's normally such a light sleeper. Another thought that had to be true--he really must be exhausted.  You stepped deeper into the room, approaching him slowly as if he was a tiger that might wake up any second. It was the papers that had you curious; what could Yoongi possibly be slaving over at this hour to the point that he passed out on top of them?  
There were letters, years and years worth of letters written in his insanely beautiful scrawl. You read bits and pieces of sentences, finding the letters to be a diary of sorts--a diary entirely written to you about the happenings of his mind. Before you could sneak closer and read carefully, he started to sleep talk.
"Y/N." He whispered, your name ending on a snore. Yoongi's brow furrowed as he shivered and crumpled his hands into the papers on his desk.
Your mind empty and running on instinct, your hand reached out to press against his cheek.
Your skin had barely touched his when his eyes flew open and his head popped off the table. His hand snapped out to grasp yours--tightly as if he awoke to someone about to murder him. When Yoongi's eyes finally adjusted and recognized you, he loosened his grip.
"What are you doing here?" His voice was sharp, but it felt like a defense of false thorns thrown up to get you to leave--to forget that you saw him so vulnerable.
"You looked--I--the...never mind." You stared at where his hand met yours, waiting for him to realize what he was doing.
He followed your gaze when you stopped talking and let go quickly. "Don't come in this room again--if you do I'll take away your freedom to roam the castle."
Finding a bubble of rebellion in your chest, you lifted your chin to meet his stare for deathly stare. "But it's my castle now too, isn't it? You changed me, so now you don't get to decide what I can and can't do."
His eyes darted to you, something flashing across his irises too fast to catch before he was kicking his chair back with a sound that had you flinching automatically. Despite his size, he seemed to tower over you, causing you to back up instinctively.  He kept getting closer and closer until he backed you up against the nearest wall. Yoongi's body caged yours, seeming to tighten closer and closer until you felt that he was taking your air as well. Your heart told you that you were a rabbit and this was a wolf, its beat threatening to break your sternum at a rapid fire pace.
"You are just a changed being--I am born." He hissed like a wooden stake to your chest.
You dug your fingers into the wall, fighting against every nerve ending that told you to run. This was Yoongi--this was the man that was supposed to love you, the man that you were supposed to love. You couldn't run away. "But changed vampires are physically stronger, no?" You raised one eyebrow at him and tried your best to give him a smirk--but you felt it quiver at the last second.
The castle started to shake beneath you; it started off slow and low, building up to high-pitched tremors that seemed to ring in your ears. Yoongi's icy eyes captured you into tunnel-vision, making his stare the only thing that you could focus on. Your body trembled, but you were hypnotized by the man before you. "You may be physically stronger--"his voice seemed to echo and come from several different places at once "--but the castle listens to me."
"Y-You're scaring me." You whispered; your voice was so soft that you almost thought that you didn't say anything at all. Almost.
Yoongi leaned in close to you, his breath hot on the shell of your ear. "Good."
"You're too good for me, Y/N." You heard the flash of the past in Yoongi's voice--it was the only thing that kept you sane enough to bring your shaking hands up to Yoongi's face. He flinched at first, but you forced yourself to hold onto him until the castle snapped and cooled around you; you were no longer prisoner to Yoongi's gaze--it felt like two-ton weights had been lifted off your shoulders.
The man that had made you afraid wasn't the real person in the body before you; Yoongi was still in there.
"I will rip this mask off you." You hissed, your fingers pressing gently into his cheeks.
His eyes darkened immediately, shutting down the quick glimpses of the man the old you had loved. He pushed you away, whipping backwards towards his desk and as far away from you as he could. "You don't want to do that, your life will be much happier if you be who you are without your memories. Start over as you are."
"But I loved you, didn't I?" You said, your nails cutting into your palms from the loss of his cool skin on your heated hands. "And you loved me."
He didn't look at you; instead he scooted his chair closer to his desk and picked up his pen. "You did, but that Yoongi died with your human self. Leave, Y/N."
"I--"
"Leave." His voice echoed throughout the entire castle; this time you obeyed, the study door slamming behind you even though Yoongi was still seated and you had not closed it.
~.~
You found yourself back in that clearing, past the lily beds and at the very edge of the woods.  This time, you did not cross that line. Instead, you just watched the shadows dance with the wind. It wasn't long before you heard the light but tell-tale signs of someone creeping up behind you. For once, you were able to catch them off-guard.
"Seokjin." You said without turning around.
But Seokjin wasn't so easy to surprise--he was the oldest after all; he already knew all the tricks. "Are you alright? I felt the castle shift the other day and then I couldn't find you." You felt the protection in his voice, the readiness to hug you if you even started to show signs of fear or sadness.
"I'm fine; I was just talking with Yoongi." The shadows shifted as the wind rustled the leaves.
"Oh? How did that go?"
You turned over your shoulder to glare at him, your lip curling as he only grinned at you and patted your shoulder.
"He wants to protect you the best he can."
"I don't need protection, I need answers. Everyone wants me to be someone--even him; I just don't know what or who."
"You are yourself, Y/N. You always have been and still are, even without your memories. But, I am not one to keep you from doing what you please; you will do what you want regardless of what I say anyways."
You snorted, leaning into his shoulder--he was so tall; he felt more like a pillar to lean on than a man. "How did I ever fall in love with Yoongi? He's so....ugh."
Seokjin let out a laugh that seemed to reverberate off the trees. "Yeah, he's always been...ugh. But, that's where you balance each other out--you make him smile and he brings you out of the clouds."
"I..." you worried your hands in front of you, "he's cute when he sleeps."
Seokjin chuckled. "That's because he can't pretend that he wants you to leave when he's asleep. It's rare for him to fall asleep though lately. Did you manage to catch him in a moment of exhaustion?"
You looked up at Seokjin, half pouting, half glaring at your remembrance of how well that had worked out for you. "He said my name...and those letters..."
"Letters?"
"N-never mind." You murmured, lifting your gaze back to the woods with the intent to change the subject. "Taehyung is out there, isn't he?"
Seokjin sighed, wrapping his arm around your shoulder. "That is something that I am not going to tell you since it is not my place to do so."
You let out an impatient groan and lazily smacked the older male's chest. "Well, were we at least close?"
"You're close to all of us, Y/N--but Yoongi was the one you were most drawn to--the two of you were polar opposites who balanced each other out better than any of us expected. Yoongi, at such a young age, had never met someone with a heart crafted purely from gold; he'd only ever lived here and known the pain of people that hated him."
"I don't hate him." Your stomach twisted at the memory of the young boy with the red ball in his hands.  "I want to--but I don't think I can."
"You're not capable of hate--you're too much like your mother. You never broke despite everything that happened to you; because of that, you became the person that Yoongi wanted to be."
"Taehyung." You whispered, trying to forget the feel of Yoongi's skin on your fingertips. "Taehyung was close with my sister."
You could feel Seokjin's eyes on the side of your face. "Yes."
"Seokjin? What am I to you? To the boys here? To...to Taehyung?"
He curled you deeper into his chest as if he thought you might break once more--but you were tired and drained of tears. "To Taehyung you were the first friend he made with no strings attached, to Jungkook you were a big sister that he could always rely on--to the others you were an irreplaceable friend and cousin; though we all deemed you more sister than cousin."
It was your turn to stare at the side of his face while he got lost in his memories. "And you? What am I to you?"
"Someone I would give my life for." He murmured, turning to look at you out of the corner of his eyes. He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, smiling at you. "You are my most precious sister--I love the boys but I would never give myself up for their stupidity. You--you I'd do anything for."
There was something warm in your chest, like you'd found a long lost relative--a brother not by blood but by heart. "So I shouldn't go searching for my memories in those woods? Because that would be stupid, right? And then you'd have to come and risk everything and--"
"I won't say anything." He cut you off, squeezing your shoulder once before letting go entirely. "I will worry endlessly and do what I have to do to appease my aching heart--but I can't stop you from the inevitable. You are your own person, even without your memories. As long as you know who I am to you, you can be whichever version of yourself is easiest." He patted your head before turning back towards the castle without a second glance towards the woods. It was like he'd thrown a coin up in the air and was waiting to see what side it landed on--the truth, or momentary ignorance.
You stood there for a while--staring between the castle and the woods before you finally turned your back to the tree-line and ran towards the castle front doors where Jimin was waiting for you with a smile, and a maknae wrapped in a headlock.
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ixurian · 6 years ago
Text
REMNANTS OF A THRONE
Large beads of sweat roll down Dagger Ixur's face. His breathing labored, he was outnumbered as the group of assassins closed in on him without a sliver of mercy. Why would they? His family never did. Their blasters pointed at him with dead-on precision, he was finally cornered to no chance of survival after four years on the run. Untrained and subjected to the cunning schemes of those responsible for his fall from royalty, Dagger educated himself on the laws of primal survival and all that it entailed on the streets. From 'spoiled' prince to fugitive with a staggering price hanging over his head, his descent was grand but his rise into being Dagger Ixur was nothing less than impressive. If only his captors hadn't underestimated him, they might have collected the money for his capture, or death. He could practically hear Eriadne's insidious laughter ringing in his ears as she held onto his head, severed from the rest of his body. Confidence grew among the bounty hunters, greedy for the ridiculous amount of credits promised as reward. As soon as they had him sprawled on the ground, Dagger played the waiting game as one of them hunted for the cuffs to ensure his stay in their custody. The one holding him down, forcing him to breathe dirt and dust into his lungs, protested in annoyance for his companion's lack of efficiency. “What? Did you bring your makeup too? Fetch those damned cuffs already!” The angry rant went on and on until the other had finally managed to retrieve the shackles and hand them over. And still, Dagger waited. Click. One wrist left to bind. Absolute relief poured over Dagger from the one with his knee (and most of his damn weight) crushing his spine. The metal slid around the remaining free wrist, but the click never came. In a move of boldness, or reckless stupidity (depending on the perspective), the fallen prince wheels his body, swiping the bounty hunter's blaster. The surprise painted on the collective faces of the small group of greedy bastards, who were only in the business for the profit, amused him. But Dagger Ixur wasn't born of amusement. Driven by cold, unmitigated vengeance, he rose to unleash all he knew of. Pain and death. Assuming the blaster's settings had been switched from stun to kill, he aimed the weapon with impressive skill and speed to his first target —the one that had made eat dirt. Literally. And shot. The unceremonious tumble of a lifeless body to the ground, drawn by gravity's pull, rammed home the meaning of his name in his native language. Dagger Ixur, a dark blade through the heart. Mayhem brought chaos, and together they rose from the sands in literal geysers as the remaining assassins rained down blasts on him after the death of their accomplice. Four years, Dagger would have been already lying dead in a pool of his own blood after the stunt he just pulled. Back then, he lacked the ability of recognizing the telltale signs of the peril he was walking into and the vultures that lurked in eager expectancy of consuming his rotting flesh. Today, he bore the scars of hard lessons that had brought him to the brink of death on multiple occasions. Courtesy of his dear grandmother and Tadara of Andaria, Eriadne eton Anatole, after deeming him as a criminal for crimes he didn't commit. High treason. Murder. Attempted murder. Assault. Theft. Kidnapping. Terrorism. Cyber crimes. Arson. The bitch did it only as another of her valuable lessons. That no one crossed the Tadara without ending up dead. —Duly noted. For the whole of his miserable life, he had been a pawn in Eriadne's hands. One slip had him disowned, exiled and marked as Outcast. For all of that, he'd been on the run since his warrant had been issued. Rolling his now athletic body, a drastic contradiction to his overweight body from a time he wished he'd forget, over the grains of sand, a cloud of dust emerges in camouflage against the nonstop rain of blasts meant to kill him. As he moved to be lying on his back in full offensive mode, both hands gripping his blaster, he shot the other two who shouted angry expletives at him. In the midst of madness, he found the time to appreciate old paranoias and gaming addictions. Dagger could only attribute his impeccable aim to that and the valid fears of being shot in the back by one of his cousins. Apprehensively, he rose to his height whilst scanning the surrounding area. He was sure there had been four after him. Assuming the last one ran for his life in the face of Dagger Ixur's merciless death, he slapped his legs, arms and chest to make himself more presentable before heading to his initial destination. The filthy hole they call a bar where most criminals and pariahs seek asylum for limited time to escape the blistering suns of Steradore. He could practically feel the relief found in darkness of the dimly lit establishment when he felt the stinging bite of metal on his side. Cursing his inability to learn from past mistakes, he drew his blaster from the inside of his coat to shoot the bastard who had escaped him earlier. Fire erupted from his wound into his veins. “Minsid hell.” Closing his fingers around the poisoned knife, he pulled it out of his flesh slowly to avoid quicker infection of the poison. Not that it would matter. The stench of the poison told him all he needed to know. He'd be dead soon enough. Staggering his way to the dead bounty hunter, he brought his boot to the body paralyzed by the stillness of death to roll it over and verify he wouldn't get back up again and finish the job. “Eriadne won't be pleased to know I died and she didn't get my head.” Misplaced laughter left his lips in his continuous vexing of his grandmother as he dragged his feet into the bar by sheer will only. With fingers pressed against the bleeding wound, he walked toward the table in the farthest corner before sitting down with a grimace of agony. He knew it was imperative to demonstrate no weakness or else he'd be dead sooner than expected. The parasites crawling the bar would be ruthless in their attack were they to find out how badly wounded he was. Especially if they learned the price on his head. Hell, if he had half a brain, he'd turn himself in for all those credits. Panting, he tugged his coat to cover the blood seeping into the t-shirt that had seen better days and less holes before drowning in the seas of stoicism to conceal the pain under a mask of boredom as the waitress approached him. “You got thirty cronas, slag? You can't stay otherwise.” The smugness exuding from her smirk would have been wiped out in another times if he ever were to venture into this place as the heir of the two largest fortunes in the Nine Worlds. On this day, he was only the heir of shit. With a condemning sneer, he tossed the coins at her. With the creds in her possession, his gaze wandered as he asked for the one drink known to be forbidden in most planets for the dangers of its consumption. “Tondarion Fire.” In a forsaken place like this, he knew the only kind he'd drink would be bottom shelf shit. Garbage. After confirming the authenticity of his money, she left him with his thoughts and fetch his drink. From behind red-tinted glasses that sat over the bridge of his nose, Dagger concealed the slapping truth of his genetic code and the ill fate the union of his progenitors marked him for. A hybrid, he was both human and Andarion. And he was neither. The humans curled their lips over his abnormal height, claws and the red rimming his eerie hazel brownish-green eyes. Andarions prouded themselves of their beauty, strength and warrior race. To be ruled by a half Andarion/half human reject was frowned upon amidst their society. And his grandmother had never been shy to deal that hand and trap him to the point of yielding beneath her iron fist. Hissing, he prayed for a quick death as he bled out. And at the rate he bled, he wouldn't hurt much longer. Perhaps the gods would finally grant him the peace he sought for all his wretched life. His thoughts took a drastic turn as he pulled his link out of his coat to study the picture where the undeniable love his parents felt for each other was imprinted upon. And it slapped him until he was bleeding. Why couldn't they love him too? He wondered what scalded him more, the flames of that fire darkening his soul. The venom pumping through his body at an alarming tempo or the loneliness that clawed at his heart with mocking laughter. No one gave a single shit he was dying. Haunted by that truth, he slid the link back into his pocket. Drawn to the commotion to his left, his fingers flew to his blaster out of habit in expectation of it being more assassins or enforces looking for him. When it turned out to be just two humans and an alien dragging in a weeping kid in chains, Dagger let out a breath of relief. Assuming it was just a prisoner being transferred, he started to revert back into his sorrows and near death when the kid gave fight to those holding him. He seemed to be around the age of fifteen. The alien brought his large hand to the kid's face in a move of brutal intimidation. The resounding slap carried unwanted memories from his own 'happy' childhood as tiziran. “Don't bruise the merchandise, asshole!” The human with money in his hands snarled angrily. “He won't be worth this amount of credits I'm paying you if he's somehow injured.” Flinching at the cruelty of the slaver who was looking for quick profit over a child's innocence, Dagger was already on his feet. He refused to stand on the sidelines while a child was robbed of his childhood like he had. The boy was supposed to be at home, surrounded by friends and family. Not in the hands on a greedy slaver. Besides, he was already dead anyway. Best to go down fighting the good fight than to die in the corner of a bar, drinking the shit version of Tondarion Fire. His thoughts consisted mostly of his own selfish fears in the past and how they had paralyzed him to the point of bending him to others' will. Back then, he had convinced himself that had been his only option of survival. Moron. All it had gotten him was a premature death in a backwoods planet. Alone. Probably lying, face down, in a pool of his own blood. And his, still warm, corpse raided for whatever values he possessed. A few creds, his signet ring and weapons. Pulling his coat back to reveal the glistening of the sleek metal from his blaster, Dagger ensured everyone that he wasn't in the mood for verbal exchanges. The cold killer, Dagger Ixur had been reborn as he faced his defeat and fall in a cracked mirror of an abandoned building on his lonesome, sober for the first time in years. What a piece of shit he was. Today, as he inserted himself in a transaction that didn't concern him, he hated himself for knowing his old self, the chemically-numbed Jullien eton Anatole, would have stepped away without a second thought given. Thankfully, he had buried that version of him four years ago. And today, he would live up to no one's expectations but his own. “Let the kid go.” A few pairs of eyes trained on him, some more amused than others. The one buying the kid snorted and dismissed him. But the one selling the kid turned to him with a sickening smile. “And what do we have here? You're a fancy one, aren't you?” The sound of stupefaction that clashed with rolling tension made him question the human's sanity. “Really? Because of what? The shower I took last week?” Smelling like a rotten corpse already, he was bloody and sweaty. The opposite of fancy. Even he couldn't help but being disgusted by his own stench, a true offense to his regal upbringing. “Shoot him already, Eben.” He demanded with an eye-roll meant to judge the weight of sarcasm drenching Dagger's words. The man had barely raised his arm to level his blaster when Dagger shot him, driven by quick reflexes and a shit-ton of hours spent gaming in his youthful years. A blast that landed right between the human's eyes with frightening aim. Once again, Dagger found himself in the midst of an outlaw showdown. Screams and angry bellows left those who either ran in fear of being caught in the middle of an exchange of shots or those who strived for the appropriation of his weapons. As if that would ever happen as long as he has life coursing through his veins. Twirling to escape incoming blasts, his arm stretched to shoot the other three who promised no mercy in their approach to him. Muscles, honed by experience gained during his years of running from the authorities, acted swiftly in the physical exchange of defensive moves as he danced between those attacking him with the recurring offense that returned to bite them all with vengeful interest. When the alien made another move to neutralize him, Dagger wasted no time in kicking him back with a rain of punches and kicks that pulled him into unconsciousness. Dropping to his knees, Dagger unshackled the frightened kid before letting his gaze examine the boy to make sure he stood unharmed. Then, he quickly pushed his link and wallet that housed nothing but a few coins and his royal Andarion signet ring. The only thing that held any real value and the last piece of his old life he still carried with him. The reasons why, he was unsure. For some reason, he could never part with it. Until now. At last, he gave the innocent kid the only thing that became his lifeline throughout the years on the run. His fully charged reserve blaster. He reached for the holster on his back, retrieved the weapon and made sure to unlock the biolock on the trigger so the boy could defend himself if necessary. The astonishment written on the kid's face was nearly comical, but Dagger encouraged him with a subtle inclination of his head. “You should have enough in there to get you home. And don't stop for anything until you're home, surrounded by your family. Shoot anyone who tries to keep you from getting there. Conscience be damned. Whatever it takes, chizzi, you get yourself home. Now, run!” Shouting, he pushed the boy out of harm's way as some of the others started to regain consciousness. Pulling himself up to a stand, he groaned as his wound scorched his sensory nerves, drowning him in pain and misery. But the boy refused to leave. Instead, he curled his fingers around Dagger's coat, coaxing the bleeding fugitive to join him in his return home. “You need to come with me. They'll have you for sure.” The boy's cryptic words gave Dagger pause. He leaned and whispered, “I know who you are.... tiziran.” Shit. No, double shit. Bewildered, he stared at the kid, wondering how in the Tophet he knew his real identity. He quickly decided it wouldn't matter in a few minutes as he was a walking corpse. The Korilon was coming for him. Dagger closed his hand around the boy, hoping to pull him from the mess he left behind as far as he could. In their escape and in a most ill-fated plot-twist, another group of outlaws barged in. Armed and looking for trouble. Dagger knew enough of Tavali pirates to recognize their gear. And their thirst for profit. Well, at least his luck never ran out. More accurately, lack thereof. They would gut him faster than the rest of the vermin crawling this bar if they were to smell money. And Dagger was a bottomless pit of it if captured. Instinctively, he hauled the kid behind him in protective impulse. He would fight to the very end, even if the charge of his main blaster had run out. He still leveled it to the female leader who stormed into the bar, wearing a dark red leather outfit that outlined her curves to perfection. Her red lace mask concealed her features to his gaze in a most mysterious fashion. In turn, she angled her weapon at his heart. Before Dagger got the chance to speak up, the boy inserted himself between the duel, crying in loud supplication. “Don't shoot him! Auntie, please. He's the one who saved me.” The laser dot, targeting his heart, wavered for the first time as doubt shocked the woman. “What?” “Just look around! He was helping me escape after freeing me.” The bodies scattered supported the boy's claims, somewhat easing the ruthless female's rattled nerves. Weakness overtook him, bringing Dagger to knees. The buzzing in his ears made it nearly impossible to pay attention at his surroundings, he tried but failure was unyielding. His arm suddenly heavy, he lost his aim but directed all his remaining energy on what truly mattered. The boy's safety. “Are you safe, akam?” The tone of lingering protectiveness and desperation surprising him and those witnessing the moment. “Yes.” Letting gravity take its toll on his dying body, his blaster dropped on the floor with a sobering thump right before his quivering body followed suit. And he embraced the darkness, at last.
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indurarinks · 7 years ago
Text
REMNANTS OF A THRONE
Large beads of sweat rolled down Dagger Ixur's face. His breathing labored, he was outnumbered as the group of assassins closed in on him without a sliver of mercy. Why would they? His family never did. Their blasters pointed at him with dead-on precision, he was finally cornered to no chance of survival after four years on the run. Untrained and subjected to the cunning schemes of those responsible for his fall from royalty, Dagger educated himself on the laws of primal survival and all that it entailed on the streets. From 'spoiled' prince to fugitive with a staggering price hanging over his head, his descent was grand but his rise into being Dagger Ixur was nothing less than impressive. If only his captors hadn't underestimated him, they might have collected the money for his capture, or death. He could practically hear Eriadne's insidious laughter ringing in his ears as she held onto his head, severed from the rest of his body. Confidence grew among the bounty hunters, greedy for the ridiculous amount of credits promised as reward. As soon as they had him sprawled on the ground, Dagger played the waiting game as one of them hunted for the cuffs to ensure his stay in their custody. The one holding him down, forcing him to breathe dirt and dust into his lungs, protested in annoyance for his companion's lack of efficiency. “What? Did you bring your makeup too? Fetch those damned cuffs already!” The angry rant went on and on until the other had finally managed to retrieve the shackles and hand them over. And still, Dagger waited. Click. One wrist left to bind. Absolute relief poured over Dagger from the one with his knee (and most of his damn weight) crushing his spine. The metal slid around the remaining free wrist, but the click never came. In a move of boldness, or reckless stupidity (depending on the perspective), the fallen prince wheels his body, swiping the bounty hunter's blaster. The surprise painted on the collective faces of the small group of greedy bastards, who were only in the business for the profit, amused him. But Dagger Ixur wasn't born of amusement. Driven by cold, unmitigated vengeance, he rose to unleash all he knew of. Pain and death. Assuming the blaster's settings had been switched from stun to kill, he aimed the weapon with impressive skill and speed to his first target —the one that had made eat dirt. Literally. And shot. The unceremonious tumble of a lifeless body to the ground, drawn by gravity's pull, rammed home the meaning of his name in his native language. Dagger Ixur, a dark blade through the heart. Mayhem brought chaos, and together they rose from the sands in literal geysers as the remaining assassins rained down blasts on him after the death of their accomplice. Four years, Dagger would have been already lying dead in a pool of his own blood after the stunt he just pulled. Back then, he lacked the ability of recognizing the telltale signs of the peril he was walking into and the vultures that lurked in eager expectancy of consuming his rotting flesh. Today, he bore the scars of hard lessons that had brought him to the brink of death on multiple occasions. Courtesy of his dear grandmother and Tadara of Andaria, Eriadne eton Anatole, after deeming him as a criminal for crimes he didn't commit. High treason. Murder. Attempted murder. Assault. Theft. Kidnapping. Terrorism. Cyber crimes. Arson. The bitch did it only as another of her valuable lessons. That no one crossed the Tadara without ending up dead. —Duly noted. For the whole of his miserable life, he had been a pawn in Eriadne's hands. One slip had him disowned, exiled and marked as Outcast. For all of that, he'd been on the run since his warrant had been issued. Rolling his now athletic body, a drastic contradiction to his overweight body from a time he wished he'd forget, over the grains of sand, a cloud of dust emerges in camouflage against the nonstop rain of blasts meant to kill him. As he moved to be lying on his back in full offensive mode, both hands gripping his blaster, he shot the other two who shouted angry expletives at him. In the midst of madness, he found the time to appreciate old paranoias and gaming addictions. Dagger could only attribute his impeccable aim to that and the valid fears of being shot in the back by one of his cousins. Apprehensively, he rose to his height whilst scanning the surrounding area. He was sure there had been four after him. Assuming the last one ran for his life in the face of Dagger Ixur's merciless death, he slapped his legs, arms and chest to make himself more presentable before heading to his initial destination. The filthy hole they call a bar where most criminals and pariahs seek asylum for limited time to escape the blistering suns of Steradore. He could practically feel the relief found in darkness of the dimly lit establishment when he felt the stinging bite of metal on his side. Cursing his inability to learn from past mistakes, he drew his blaster from the inside of his coat to shoot the bastard who had escaped him earlier. Fire erupted from his wound into his veins. “Minsid hell.” Closing his fingers around the poisoned knife, he pulled it out of his flesh slowly to avoid quicker infection of the poison. Not that it would matter. The stench of the poison told him all he needed to know. He'd be dead soon enough. Staggering his way to the dead bounty hunter, he brought his boot to the body paralyzed by the stillness of death to roll it over and verify he wouldn't get back up again and finish the job. “Eriadne won't be pleased to know I died and she didn't get my head.” Misplaced laughter left his lips in his continuous vexing of his grandmother as he dragged his feet into the bar by sheer will only. With fingers pressed against the bleeding wound, he walked toward the table in the farthest corner before sitting down with a grimace of agony. He knew it was imperative to demonstrate no weakness or else he'd be dead sooner than expected. The parasites crawling the bar would be ruthless in their attack were they to find out how badly wounded he was. Especially if they learned the price on his head. Hell, if he had half a brain, he'd turn himself in for all those credits. Panting, he tugged his coat to cover the blood seeping into the t-shirt that had seen better days and less holes before drowning in the seas of stoicism to conceal the pain under a mask of boredom as the waitress approached him. “You got thirty cronas, slag? You can't stay otherwise.” The smugness exuding from her smirk would have been wiped out in another times if he ever were to venture into this place as the heir of the two largest fortunes in the Nine Worlds. On this day, he was only the heir of shit. With a condemning sneer, he tossed the coins at her. With the creds in her possession, his gaze wandered as he asked for the one drink known to be forbidden in most planets for the dangers of its consumption. “Tondarion Fire.” In a forsaken place like this, he knew the only kind he'd drink would be bottom shelf shit. Garbage. After confirming the authenticity of his money, she left him with his thoughts and fetch his drink. From behind red-tinted glasses that sat over the bridge of his nose, Dagger concealed the slapping truth of his genetic code and the ill fate the union of his progenitors marked him for. A hybrid, he was both human and Andarion. And he was neither. The humans curled their lips over his abnormal height, claws and the red rimming his eerie hazel brownish-green eyes. Andarions prouded themselves of their beauty, strength and warrior race. To be ruled by a half Andarion/half human reject was frowned upon amidst their society. And his grandmother had never been shy to deal that hand and trap him to the point of yielding beneath her iron fist. Hissing, he prayed for a quick death as he bled out. And at the rate he bled, he wouldn't hurt much longer. Perhaps the gods would finally grant him the peace he sought for all his wretched life. His thoughts took a drastic turn as he pulled his link out of his coat to study the picture where the undeniable love his parents felt for each other was imprinted upon. And it slapped him until he was bleeding. Why couldn't they love him too? He wondered what scalded him more, the flames of that fire darkening his soul. The venom pumping through his body at an alarming tempo or the loneliness that clawed at his heart with mocking laughter. No one gave a single shit he was dying. Haunted by that truth, he slid the link back into his pocket. Drawn to the commotion to his left, his fingers flew to his blaster out of habit in expectation of it being more assassins or enforces looking for him. When it turned out to be just two humans and an alien dragging in a weeping kid in chains, Dagger let out a breath of relief. Assuming it was just a prisoner being transferred, he started to revert back into his sorrows and near death when the kid gave fight to those holding him. He seemed to be around the age of fifteen. The alien brought his large hand to the kid's face in a move of brutal intimidation. The resounding slap carried unwanted memories from his own 'happy' childhood as tiziran. “Don't bruise the merchandise, asshole!” The human with money in his hands snarled angrily. “He won't be worth this amount of credits I'm paying you if he's somehow injured.” Flinching at the cruelty of the slaver who was looking for quick profit over a child's innocence, Dagger was already on his feet. He refused to stand on the sidelines while a child was robbed of his childhood like he had. The boy was supposed to be at home, surrounded by friends and family. Not in the hands on a greedy slaver. Besides, he was already dead anyway. Best to go down fighting the good fight than to die in the corner of a bar, drinking the shit version of Tondarion Fire. His thoughts consisted mostly of his own selfish fears in the past and how they had paralyzed him to the point of bending him to others' will. Back then, he had convinced himself that had been his only option of survival. Moron. All it had gotten him was a premature death in a backwoods planet. Alone. Probably lying, face down, in a pool of his own blood. And his, still warm, corpse raided for whatever values he possessed. A few creds, his signet ring and weapons. Pulling his coat back to reveal the glistening of the sleek metal from his blaster, Dagger ensured everyone that he wasn't in the mood for verbal exchanges. The cold killer, Dagger Ixur had been reborn as he faced his defeat and fall in a cracked mirror of an abandoned building on his lonesome, sober for the first time in years. What a piece of shit he was. Today, as he inserted himself in a transaction that didn't concern him, he hated himself for knowing his old self, the chemically-numbed Jullien eton Anatole, would have stepped away without a second thought given. Thankfully, he had buried that version of him four years ago. And today, he would live up to no one's expectations but his own. “Let the kid go.” A few pairs of eyes trained on him, some more amused than others. The one buying the kid snorted and dismissed him. But the one selling the kid turned to him with a sickening smile. “And what do we have here? You're a fancy one, aren't you?” The sound of stupefaction that clashed with rolling tension made him question the human's sanity. “Really? Because of what? The shower I took last week?” Smelling like a rotten corpse already, he was bloody and sweaty. The opposite of fancy. Even he couldn't help but being disgusted by his own stench, a true offense to his regal upbringing. “Shoot him already, Eben.” He demanded with an eye-roll meant to judge the weight of sarcasm drenching Dagger's words. The man had barely raised his arm to level his blaster when Dagger shot him, driven by quick reflexes and a shit-ton of hours spent gaming in his youthful years. A blast that landed right between the human's eyes with frightening aim. Once again, Dagger found himself in the midst of an outlaw showdown. Screams and angry bellows left those who either ran in fear of being caught in the middle of an exchange of shots or those who strived for the appropriation of his weapons. As if that would ever happen as long as he has life coursing through his veins. Twirling to escape incoming blasts, his arm stretched to shoot the other three who promised no mercy in their approach to him. Muscles, honed by experience gained during his years of running from the authorities, acted swiftly in the physical exchange of defensive moves as he danced between those attacking him with the recurring offense that returned to bite them all with vengeful interest. When the alien made another move to neutralize him, Dagger wasted no time in kicking him back with a rain of punches and kicks that pulled him into unconsciousness. Dropping to his knees, Dagger unshackled the frightened kid before letting his gaze examine the boy to make sure he stood unharmed. Then, he quickly pushed his link and wallet that housed nothing but a few coins and his royal Andarion signet ring. The only thing that held any real value and the last piece of his old life he still carried with him. The reasons why, he was unsure. For some reason, he could never part with it. Until now. At last, he gave the innocent kid the only thing that became his lifeline throughout the years on the run. His fully charged reserve blaster. He reached for the holster on his back, retrieved the weapon and made sure to unlock the biolock on the trigger so the boy could defend himself if necessary. The astonishment written on the kid's face was nearly comical, but Dagger encouraged him with a subtle inclination of his head. “You should have enough in there to get you home. And don't stop for anything until you're home, surrounded by your family. Shoot anyone who tries to keep you from getting there. Conscience be damned. Whatever it takes, chizzi, you get yourself home. Now, run!” Shouting, he pushed the boy out of harm's way as some of the others started to regain consciousness. Pulling himself up to a stand, he groaned as his wound scorched his sensory nerves, drowning him in pain and misery. But the boy refused to leave. Instead, he curled his fingers around Dagger's coat, coaxing the bleeding fugitive to join him in his return home. “You need to come with me. They'll have you for sure.” The boy's cryptic words gave Dagger pause. He leaned and whispered, “I know who you are.... tiziran.” Shit. No, double shit. Bewildered, he stared at the kid, wondering how in the Tophet he knew his real identity. He quickly decided it wouldn't matter in a few minutes as he was a walking corpse. The Korilon was coming for him. Dagger closed his hand around the boy, hoping to pull him from the mess he left behind as far as he could. In their escape and in a most ill-fated plot-twist, another group of outlaws barged in. Armed and looking for trouble. Dagger knew enough of Tavali pirates to recognize their gear. And their thirst for profit. Well, at least his luck never ran out. More accurately, lack thereof. They would gut him faster than the rest of the vermin crawling this bar if they were to smell money. And Dagger was a bottomless pit of it if captured. Instinctively, he hauled the kid behind him in protective impulse. He would fight to the very end, even if the charge of his main blaster had run out. He still leveled it to the female leader who stormed into the bar, wearing a dark red leather outfit that outlined her curves to perfection. Her red lace mask concealed her features to his gaze in a most mysterious fashion. In turn, she angled her weapon at his heart. Before Dagger got the chance to speak up, the boy inserted himself between the duel, crying in loud supplication. “Don't shoot him! Auntie, please. He's the one who saved me.” The laser dot, targeting his heart, wavered for the first time as doubt shocked the woman. “What?” “Just look around! He was helping me escape after freeing me.” The bodies scattered supported the boy's claims, somewhat easing the ruthless female's rattled nerves. Weakness overtook him, bringing Dagger to knees. The buzzing in his ears made it nearly impossible to pay attention at his surroundings, he tried but failure was unyielding. His arm suddenly heavy, he lost his aim but directed all his remaining energy on what truly mattered. The boy's safety. “Are you safe, akam?” The tone of lingering protectiveness and desperation surprising him and those witnessing the moment. “Yes.” Letting gravity take its toll on his dying body, his blaster dropped on the floor with a sobering thump right before his quivering body followed suit. And he embraced the darkness, at last.
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