#fic brought to you by the cutscene where joel is impaled in tlou

[phonydiaries]

Darling, Dearest, (Dead) - P x Reader

Warnings: MEGA-ANGST. DO NOT continue if you don’t want to see P bite the fucking dust or if you’re generally put-off by kind of graphic descriptions of death or injury. Also, once again set way early in the game because I am slow and just can’t confidently write environments and enemies that I haven’t encountered yet. If that all sounds cool to you, read on!

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The inner chambers of Venigni Works seem to you an absolute nightmare to traverse, and quite frankly a shitty way to organize a factory. You wonder if it could’ve been much easier to navigate back in its glory days, you know, before it was crawling with frenzied puppets lurking in each shadowy corner. In its current condition, you don’t much care for the constant flickering of lights or the disorienting heat of steam which blasts unceremoniously from faulty pipes as you pass them by. You’re almost annoyed at the ease with which P navigates, head held high as he ushers you down a creaking fire escape. 

“If I’m being honest, I’m not entirely convinced that some puppet is worth all this…” you mutter under your breath, your grip tight around the rusty rungs of the ladder. The back of your mind anticipates a surprise attack any minute now; the factory is huge and cavernous and home to some of the most vile creatures you’ve had the displeasure of meeting. Personally, you would be thrilled to pack up and book it out of this place, dragging Mr. Venigni by the scruff of his beard but no. No, Pino is of course the more honorable and dutiful of you two, politely accepting the man’s fetch quest for his missing butler. 

P looks at you over his shoulder and gestures between the two of you with one finger, his brows crinkling in accusatory question, mouth pulled into a pout. You groan, rolling your eyes. 

“Obviously you would be a different story, don’t be daft. I’d sooner die than leave you in this dismal place.”

He huffs a bit at your response, shaking his head, but you know he’s grinning slightly beneath it all, pleased to know you think highly of him. Your feet meet the ground with a damp thud and you allow P to take up the lead again, starting down a winding tunnel. The sound of your steps carry here, and ripple like ghosts through the thick air. It’s dimmer here as well, and makes you a bit uneasy, though you would not admit this to P. Instead, you pipe up, hoping to distract yourself from the eerie feeling which settles uncomfortably in your stomach. 

“I think when we get back home the first thing I’ll do is sleep. All day.” You say, imagining that you are not here in this sweltering labyrinth of rust, but instead wrapped in cool silk sheets at the hotel, lazy and dozing. Any excursion for stalking purposes was bound to tire you out, and you often yearned only for rest upon returning home. Being a puppet, P couldn’t fully appreciate this, but he seemed happy enough to stay with you while you slept, reading at your bedside or sometimes even curled up with you, an arm thrown lazily around your waist. 

“What will you do?” You ask. Your puppet thinks for a moment, then holds both hands out in front of him, fingers splayed in playing position, thunking against the air. He presses his lips together and hums a few somber notes, his eyes lighting up at the idea. 

“Of course, you and that piano. Ever the tortured artist, you are.” You tease, nudging him in the ribs. He nudges back. You both chuckle softly and allow your gazes to linger on each other, just barely, before your attentions snap swiftly back to the task at hand. 

As you endeavor through the claustrophobic halls, a hollow sound of tittering stops you in your tracks. Your head turns, but you see nothing moving in the dark. You tug at P’s coat and place a finger over your lips. He heeds your warning and glances around, eyes narrowing as he peers down the hall. The tunnel is all echoes and distorted reflections. It’s quiet suddenly, too quiet, as if whatever you’d overheard was now acutely aware of your listening. 

P’s hand hovers over his weapon, and you follow suit, both drawing your blades slowly. A few beats of silence pass. Then a few more. At last, P’s posture relaxes some, and he motions down one of the winding paths with a tip of his head. You nod along and move carefully, but with the echoes of your steps the tittering returns, louder, faster, reverberating ceaselessly through the cramped space. Looking over your shoulder you’re met with the chilling visage of several bisected mannequins crawling towards you, their time-worn faces turned up in mindless anger. One clammy hand reaches for your foot and you frantically crush it beneath your boot, the sick crunch of fingers ringing in your ears. 

As P’s eyes dart back at you, more of the wretched creatures are already piling upon each other, their creaking limbs tangling together like spider’s legs as they stretch towards you. You lurch forward, shoving your puppet sharp in the back shouting, “Shit! Go!”

The two of you sprint down the hall, the ugly click-click-clicking of the mannequins trailing close behind. As you nearly crash head-first into a dead end, a standing enemy, fully formed and armed, makes a swing for your head. With a yelp, you smash the hilt of your sword through its head, leaving a deep crater in place of its dead eye. 

P whistles quick and sharp and points in the direction of a flashing light in the distance, offering refuge from this particular chamber of darkness. He ushers you towards him, frantic and wide-eyed with concern. You waste no time making a mad dash for the exit, your feet close on his heels. Just as you’re about to escape miraculously unscathed, practically touching the end of the tunnel, something pushes you to the ground.

The thing lands on your shoulders, a mechanical hand shoving your head against the floor, its worn-down fingers snagging in your hair. You make a cheap grab for your blade, but it’s knocked out of your grasp, skittering across the floor and away through a grate. A dull and throbbing pain begins to radiate from the center of your face. You reach madly behind your head, clawing away at whatever nightmare is currently wailing on you from above. As it lifts your head, rearing back and preparing to slam your face into the floor once again, it’s ripped away from behind. 

Gasping, you push yourself up onto your elbows and watch as P grabs the mannequin by its arm, bashing it brutally against the wall. It shatters to bits in front of you. You scramble out of the tunnel, still reeling to catch your breath. 

As your palm presses into the ground, seeking stability, P approaches and extends his arm to you. His face is streaked with worry, but he offers you a familiar twinge of a smile, oil-specked cheeks rising just-so. You know it’s meant to be soothing, and in a way it works; you do feel safer with him around, even at the worst of times. A thick curtain of dark hair falls over his eye and you resist tucking it away behind his ear. You grab him by his outheld forearm in a less-than-elegant roman handshake and he hoists you swiftly to your feet. His face hovers around yours, inspecting it meticulously for signs of harm. He pauses for a moment, and his finger sweeps delicately across the bridge of your nose, coming away bloody. 

“Dammit…” you mumble, and swipe the back of your hand across the broken skin, leaving a thin smear of blood in its wake. You grimace, unsure if it's broken, but you wouldn’t be surprised. P tips your chin upwards in both hands, tilting his gaze every which way. His brows knit in concentration, assessing just how much he should be fretting over what is -in the grand scheme of things- a miniscule injury. You capture his hands in yours and squeeze gently. 

“Pino, it’s fine.” You assure him. “And could’ve been much worse. If not for you.” 

At this, his eyes waver towards the ground, humble as ever as he offers a one-shoulder shrug. His modesty is infuriating. Your palm cups his cheek, turning his face back in your direction. 

“I mean it.” You say, with fierce sincerity. You’re not sure he ever truly grasps the scope of his own bravery. Perhaps to him it seems only the dutiful thing to do, but you hope some bit of your appreciation, of your deep fondness for him is conveyed. He has stood between you and death more times than you can name. 

Your thumb drags softly along his cheek and your head dips in to meet him. From so close, you can feel his breath just barely grazing your skin, and as your lips brush there is an awful succession of sounds one after another. 

First, is the dreadful creaking of a long-worn machine, rippling along the walls in fruitless warning. 

Next is a gut-wrenching crunch, and the awful scraping of metal against metal. 

Last is a voice haunting and hopeless, some pained cross between a gasp and a choke, forced from Pinocchio’s lungs. 

The chilling sound touches your lips, and for a moment you’re not sure if you or he are its origin. But this soon becomes achingly clear as you look down at the gruesome scene before you. A great rusted hunk of scrap, at least a foot wide, protrudes from P’s chest. The very edge of it grazes your clothes, just barely piercing your skin. You turn your gaze upwards and your heart falls. P looks back at you, through you, his eyes wide, mouth agape, the corners of his lips twitching in shock. You can’t recall ever seeing him so frightened, not even once. 

The hand that’s still holding you tightens to such a degree you feel bruises begin to form along your arm as the weapon is yanked cruelly from its lodging in the puppets chest. A deafening shing reverberates around you. 

P crumbles to his knees immediately; the weapon being the only thing holding him upright. A hulking enemy emerges from behind, spurting steam, it’s heaving limbs clanking together in awful dissonance. You reach instinctively for your weapon but find it missing from your previous dust-up. Thinking quickly, you pull P’s sword from his belt and land a blow to the monstrous head of your attacker. It’s not fatal, but you have not the time nor wherewithal to execute a proper hit. The thing staggers backwards long enough for you to haul P’s arm over your shoulder. You kneel beside him and lift with all the strength you can muster, grunting at the exertion. As your enemy advances, you manage enough of a standing position to move forward and you. Fucking. Run. 

You don’t know how you do it. You can’t explain what numbs the burning in your legs, the throbbing pain in your head, or the sandpaper-rough raggedness in your lungs as you book it down the hall. You’re still terribly lost, and in a frenzy you duck frantically in and out of alleyways, taking your turns sharp and reckless. Frequently your clothes catch on the lip of a door or a bit of exposed machinery and your skin is quickly rubbed raw, paper-thin streaks of crimson cross-hatching your limbs. 

As you move, your surroundings begin falling into a haze, your mind slowing to accommodate the wickedness of  physical strain. Puppets creep out of the darkness and you raise the sword of your fading companion in defiance, hacking away with a blind fury. You’re plagued by faraway cries of anguished exhaustion and far too late realize that they hail from your own mouth. Oil spatters across your face, stains your hands and clothes, mixing so easily with the streaks of blood which run from shoulder to wrist. 

As the unceasing sounds of the factory’s monstrosities die down, finally outrun, you collapse against a wall. You throw your head back as you gulp down air, and even this stings. Hair clings to your face, sticky with sweat, and you tremor under the weight of Pinocchio’s body. You look at him, struggling to stand, and imagine him a staggered princeling, a circlet of blood and silver dripping from the crown of his head. You push his hair back away from his face. He’s in a state like you’ve never seen him. The vibrant blue of his eyes is dulled, a stormy gray overtaking them as they peer bleakly at everything and nothing. His mouth comes in and out of a tight grimace, allowing only staggered breaths which sound to you more like the wheezing of a dying machine. His head lolls against your shoulder, his eyelids fluttering. At this, you swat at his cheek with your open palm.

“Hey- stay awake, now! I’m not done with you!” You snap, shaking his heavy head in your hand. He shudders with exhaustion but obeys, his weary gaze falling to you. The guilt swelling in your gut nearly kills you. It’s torture, you think, bearing witness to the condition of this poor boy, hardly conscious. You wrack your brain as your eyes dart wildly from wall to wall. There must be a way out, a path to safety, somewhere he can be tended to before it's too late. With a start you realize you recognize one of the winding paths before you. You’ve seen it before, yes, yes! You came this way at the beginning; the stargazer can’t be far away. 

“I’m getting you out of here.” you mutter, in honesty more to yourself than to him. “Everything… everything is going to be just fine.” 

Groaning, you heave yourself away from the wall, P tumbling unceremoniously along with you. You feel sorry for making him stand, much less run in such a fractured state, but you have no choice. You persist, and his heels drag heavier and stiffer with each step. The enormous weight of it all staggers you both, practically doubled over. You trudge through a tunnel which eventually lets out at a murky pool of corrosive water. You stumble through the shallows, readjusting your weight in a fruitless attempt to find some configuration that doesn’t feel so unbearable to the both of you. 

As you do this, P’s arm slips from its place over your shoulder and he crashes into the water below, knees buckling. Panicked, you crouch in the muck, wrapping both arms tight around the puppet’s chest. You heave him out of the water, the tendons of your fingers straining as you claw at his soaked clothes. You manage to drag him onto the gravelly shore and immediately collapse beside him. Breathing hard, you cradle his head in your hands, wiping his face clean of all the grit and grime you’ve endured. He hardly responds to this, a miniscule twitch in his eye the only sign of life. Your chest tightens. You’ve come so far, gotten so close, and yet a terrible truth is beginning to dawn on you. 

“Can’t you get up?” You beg, your voice wavering. “It’s not far I can-I could-” you stammer. You can what? What can you do in your condition? The puppet lying before you doesn’t budge, though you swear in his eyes there is something, a longing, a desperation to live; a fear of what awaits him should his story end here. Your eyes sting. “Fucking get up, please!” 

Your throat burns as your idle cries echo across the dark pond. Beleaguered sounds leave P’s cracked lips, pained whimpers, breaths that seem to catch on the mechanical gore in his chest, strained and splintered. His face is that of a strangers, glassy silver eyes and pallid skin, the color in his lips shifted from pale pink to a frigid blue. His gaze doesn’t meet yours, eyes pointed upwards at the cavernous ceiling, seeming to stare past everything. You press your forehead to his, cold and clammy. In your mind you recite prayers, half-remembered, in panicked worship of whatever god cares to listen. 

“Please. You can’t leave me alone.” Foolishly, you hope that guilt, pure obligation will keep him tethered here; perhaps strike up that deep-rooted sense of crushing responsibility. It’s a selfish appeal. You don’t care. 

Suddenly, P gasps and his hand searches frantically for you, tremoring as it clambers blindly up your arm. His fingers bump against yours. Before he’s able to thread them, you feel them fall limp.

Little by little, so does the rest of him. His limbs go slack and his head rolls to the side, chin just grazing the edge of his shoulder. His eyes freeze half-lidded and cloudy, his lips part barely in echo of a final breath. He is the striking image of a fallen angel, lying pale and languid in a puddle of pitch darkness. 

Time screeches to a halt. The air stands still and acrid around you, the unceasing sounds of motors and the turning of gears fade into a dull buzz. There is a dead boy in your arms. 

Where you expect a piercing and unrelenting grief there is nothing. Numbness. An absence of thought or feeling or sense. In an unthinking daze your fingers fold together over his chest, trembling and cold and marred with viscera. The crater of a wound is large enough that it swallows both your hands up, and you stare into the ruins of your companions heart blankly. This feels wrong, violating, like the desecration of a fresh grave. It turns your stomach and still… you press down once, hard. Something cracks under the weight. The boy is still. You push again. Nothing. You push again.

And again. 

And again. 

A sickening thunk accompanies each futile chest compression, along with a shooting pain in your wrist, a hitch in your breath. You don’t let up until the palms of your hands come away sliced and bloody, your face wet with salt and oil and mud. What an awful shame; despair has made a madman of you. 

It’s pure bodily exhaustion which finally forces you to cease this miserable ritual. Your head crashes, throbbing, against your departed’s cold stiff chest. Your hair falls in a matted sweep over your eyes, and you stare through the curtain at nothing. The scene is haunting and dismal in its strange beauty. Your bodies both lie limp, entangled at odd and unnatural angles. 

You hold no concept of what’s to come. Returning to the stargazer alone is simply not an option. The thought of facing Sophia, much less P’s father after this makes you want to vomit. Your eyes fade back into focus. The silhouette of your puppet’s discarded sword in the water whispers to you intelligibly, bloodthirsty and cruel. Your hand, now numb to the dull pain the water inflicts, closes shaking around its hilt. Wrecked beyond recognition, you stagger to a standing position and will yourself not to look at the dead boy at your feet. You can’t bring him back. You may not make it out of here alive. You may not make it out of here at all. 

But you are armed. 

And you are angry. 

And you will kill whatever unfortunate thing crosses your crimson path.