#fucked up body horror but still shaped like bird wings

[cloud-ya]

sobbing.....her little brother is her guardian angel

[jadedandconfusedao3]

The Swan, The Boy and The Hanged Man

Gods, I hate her. Look at her, wandering about a meadow without a care, as if there isn’t a fucking war on. What a joke.

Luna didn’t know the swan was there until it made a pathetic sound that was halfway between a squawk and a honk. Its leg was caught in a snare trap and its wing hung unnaturally at its side. A deep gash in its underside was bleeding liberally, covering its body in swathes of red. Luna kneeled beside it to run a hand down its long back and when she raised it again, her fingers were stained in crimson.

The swan barely moved under her touch, only lifting its head to bleat at her.

“You’ve found yourself in quite the pickle, haven’t you?” Luna mused, “Well and truly trapped.”

With a swish of her wand, she cut through the rope and pulled the bird up into her arms. It tried to struggle and flap but the exhausted creature soon surrendered itself to her arms. She picked her way through the frost-covered ground back to her home. The fields were little more than scrubland and surrounded the large Rook-like structure making it seem almost desolate. Her home had never been pretty, a relic that poked out of the landscape, like a ruin from some long-forgotten time.

It was odd, Luna thought, that a swan would be caught out here. The nearest lake was not for another mile, along with the swamps and rushes they usually hide in at this time of year. That said, the swan was bony, and she could feel each one underneath its flesh and feathers. Perhaps it had simply gotten desperate and tried to eat the first bite of food it could find.

She opened the door with her wand as she tried to keep a hold of the bird, who appeared to be silently looking around with its beady black gaze. The table was the only surface large enough to hold him and she left him there as she fetched the dittany.

He hadn’t moved an inch by the time she had returned, barely raising his head to look at her.

Luna raised her wand, “Vulnera Sanentur.”

Her wand rolled around as the blood in the immediate area collected back up to knit the wound. When she was sure that it would no longer bleed, she stopped and picked up the dittany. It spread easily along the wound, and she watched as it healed even further.

He was surprisingly soft as she stroked her hand down his back. “You’ll be alright. A couple of days rest and some decent meals and you’ll be right as rain.”

She’s touching me. I hate it when people touch me. If the Dark Lord had not asked me to be here, I would peck her fucking eyes out.

Luna woke that night with the moon streaming through her window. It was lovely, this quiet time surrounded by blue. She breathed in and let it fill her, coating her insides with colour. Her limbs still ached from the aftereffects of all the Cruciatus this year and the tranquillity of night helped. Where before people had hidden her shoes or tripped her on the stairs, now she was a target for far more sinister things. She tried to tell them that they did not need to follow the Carrow's lead but they didn’t listen. It hurt to see their faces afterwards, masked in horror at what they’d done.

She frowned as she made out an unfamiliar shape on the other side of the room. Swinging her legs off the bed, she padded over to where she had left the swan, wrapped in blankets on the small couch. It wasn’t a swan any longer. The boy that remained was long legged and possessed a shock of brilliantly white, blond hair. It practically glowed in the ethereal light. He barely fit on the couch; his knees bent as he curled his body up. Thin wrist bones were clearly visible through his almost translucent skin and her heart ached at the thought of how the swan had devoured the little dinner she had given it.

Luna crouched down so that she could peer at his face from where it was tucked under his arm. Draco Malfoy. He looked far less frightening curled up here, his face slack with sleep. If she were truly honest, she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him. He had been like a ghost this year, hardly engaging in other people, doing the bare minimum that he could get away with. She could barely feel his Cruciatus, it’s effect as weak as static.

There could be no good reason for him to be here, but she couldn’t make him leave. Her father would not agree but Draco had not betrayed them yet. It would come, that much was to be expected, but what cost would he have to pay for her escape and was it worth her freedom? Or was she just delaying the inevitable? Her father had been rebellious, and they had both known that had a hefty price.

She pressed a thumb along his cheek, and he nuzzled into her touch. A subtle, unconscious action that spoke more than his words ever could.

Continued on Ao3

[thenixkat]

The generic pop culture dragon review (4 legs, 2 wings, 1 head) part 1

Meatlung the Gronkle from How To train your Dragon

[id: A render of the dragon Meatlug in flight smiling and looking upwards. She's wearing her saddle. /end id]

7/10. She’s lumpy, dumpy, cute and craggy. Her little wings buzz like a bee’s! This is a dog in the body of a lump. 

Red Death also How to Train Your Dragon

[id: A render of the Red Death standing with its wings folded ad with it’s mouth open. /end id]

[gd: A scene of the Red Death in flight swinging its head around and spewing flames while surrounded by smoke. /end gd]

10/10. This lady is absolutely lovely. She’s hefty and craggy and intimidating. The shape of her mouth, crest, eyes, spines, and tail club are delightfully odd. She’s got 6 eyes! She’s massive but not absurdly big, with nice understated but not murky colors. She’s just a fucking kaiju compared to the others in thsi series, even compared to the other big dragons that lack her heft and menace. Also she actually looks lizardy with her limb proportions and set up.

Saphira from Eragon (film)

4/10. While I love how birdy and functional her wings look, I hate her smooth face and human eyes. Her face gives me ‘how do we show this dragon is female?’ vibes in a way that I hate. Her coloring is too muted and uniform and her freaky human eyes don’t stand out as much as they should.

Saphira from Eragon (book cover)

5/10. She’s got a much more visually interesting face. Look at those tentacle eyebrows and horse nose/fleshy beak  combo. The lenth of the scales on her neck give of an impression of feathers. 

Dragon from Shrek

5.5/10. Visually she’s not much to look at. And her wings are very nonfunctional looking (they’re barely attached). But the make up is fucking wild. Also she straight up ate the bad guy, which is something I always want good guys to do. (Like Shrek, Fiona, yer fucking ogres. Ogres specifically eat people. Eat the fucker you don’t like). The donkey dragon babies she ends up having are certainly... a choice.

Draco from Dragonheart

7/10. One of those dragons who’s def a character with their own story. Not personally a fan of ‘the last dragon’ plots but I like that this dragon does have some magic. Also how many dragons have you seen that participate in conning people?  I dislike how his colors don’t really pop and run together, brown is a good color but ya gotta use it right. His wings also bother me. They’ve got good surface area but they don’t really attach to his body.

Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty

8/10. This is a lovely design. I love how chunky she is and how emotive her spines are. The color of her tongue makes it look like a flame. Also the big ass nostrils and beak are very fun. Her tail is forked as in actually forked. Also she’s a fairy dragon and compared to everything else I’ve seen labeled as a fairy dragon, she’s a breath of fresh air.

Slyrak from Dota: Dragon’s Blood

8/10. Hard to find good pics of this man. This dragon is voiced by Tony Todd, this dragon has a sexy voice. The whiskers/tentacles on his face are a good touch. He’s got an interesting aged and lanky feel, very craggy old man, with good wings that show tattering. What’s really impressive is how feared this dude is, his sheer fucking fire power, and also the fact that he’s intelligent and still fucks people up just b/c he feels like it.

Dark Dragon from Burn The WItch

8/10. Before its face slid off it was delightfully cute in a lumpy way. Then its fucking face slid off for a lovely dash of horror on this otherwise cartoony sauropod shaped dragon. I love it.

Cinderella from Burn The Witch

10/10. I love her. We see her in multiple forms. Her second form is so very Digimon, she’s so gangly and awful bird. She can turn invisible. Her majestic form only happens under moonlight and she’s so graceful and glittery. But the glitter is bombs and she’s mean. Also the lace-like patter at the edge of her wings is a nice touch. And so is the continued birdyness in this nigh-unkillable murder machine. My biggest complaint is that her name should have been something like Ugly Duckling instead of Cinderella b/c that fits so much better.

[sylverstorms]

Mother Miranda x Lawyer!Oc ----Tilted Scales

Hello guys :) This is another commission I wrote for the amazing, wonderful @saltwatereulogies

Your support has been insane, I can't thank you enough. Hope you enjoy the story ❣

Three days.

That is how long you've been in the village, after years of studying abroad, before everything turns to shit.

As you slowly blink focus back into your eyes, you try to clear the haze from your mind. It feels as though you've collided with a truck. Your body hurts, your wrists protest in their iron cuffs, stuck to the wall as they are, having supported your weight while you were unconscious.

Desperately, you try to recollect the events that led you here...

A grey sky. A bleak day. One moment you were making coffee for your mother, excited to be able to sit down with her in the mornings again... and the next you heard the echo of screams.

Overcome by adrenaline, you bolted out of your house, only to witness a scene straight from a nightmare; humanoid monsters ripping villagers apart, cries and blood and animalistic growls all blending together into one mad mix.

And before you could even warn your mother...

Damn it all, what the fuck happened!

You suddenly struggle against your bonds, hard enough to rattle your whole frame. Your wrists burn from the grind against metal, but you don't care–

“Stop that. It is pointless and you will only injure yourself.” A cold voice, strangely familiar, says from far to your right.

You peer deep into the shadows, searching for the only other person in the empty room... until you see her. A mask advances on you, gold and shaped like a crow's visage, then wings folded into a cloak come into view.

You would be a fool to not recognize her. The local saint. The village's prophet. The very 'saint' your mother prayed to, for your safe return, all these years. Mother Miranda.

The sound of her heels bounces off the walls until she comes to stand directly in front of you. Looking past the openings of her mask now, you realize....

This isn't possible.

She hasn't aged a day. Not a single day, since you left the village. The years should show around her deadly blue eyes, somewhere, and yet they don't.

“I see you remember me...” she says, while you're still trying to find your voice. “Miss Warren.”

“What is going on? Mother Miranda, what happened to the village?!” you demand.

Her expression shows nothing. “The village is in need of... renovation.” she speaks, even, regal. “Repopulation, even.”

You stare at her with wide eyes.

“Now, don't give me that look. You would not be here if you weren't of the ones I chose to keep.” she continues. “You see, from now on, every single person in my domain will make themselves useful in some way, or they will be replaced. And you... you have been abroad studying law for a while now, yes?”

“I... yes.” you reply, still not fully having wrapped your mind around your situation.

“Excellent. What I need from you is simple. You will make the village independent from the state’s taxes as a religious organization... and you will keep foreign investors out from that point onward.”

What... what part of that is simple?!

“Do that for me and in return I guarantee your mother and you will go back to your house safe and sound. You will have no shortage of Lei for as long as you live, Miss Warren.” Miranda promises.

But it is not the sweet part of the deal your mind stays glued to. “And if...” you gulp. “If I can't work around the law to do that...?”

Miranda blinks slowly at you, like you shouldn't even ask such a basic question. Like the answer is obvious.

“Well. Then I have no further use for either of you.”

It is in this moment that it dawns on you.

This woman is no angel and no saint.

She is a devil.

-

-

You spend countless sleepless nights pouring over every single paragraph, every little opening or ambiguity in the law you can use to free the village of taxes.

To keep your mother in the dark about this, you work in the office Mother Miranda has provided for you, in her very stronghold.

Although technically it's her home, you don't see her nearly as much as you initially thought. She is gone throughout the day and returns late at night, not even sparing you a glance before heading for her chambers, at the upper sections of the building.

The days she does come into your office to inquire on your progress are few and far-between, your conversations always short and cold.

This evening is different.

“How is your work coming along, Miss Warren?” the prophetess asks with her aggravatingly nice accent, seating herself like a queen on the chair in front of your desk.

Your eyes are tired, but you force them on hers, through the mask obscuring her face. “I think I've got it. I'll be sending the necessary papers tomorrow and the answer shouldn't take longer than a month.”

“Very good.” she nods, a miniscule curve to her lips.

Icy eyes then drop to the wine in the whiskey glass at the corner of the desk. You think she will make a comment about drinking at work, but instead she says;

“Pour me a glass, will you?”

You will your hands steady as you comply, then carefully slide her drink over.

Miranda takes her mask with claw-shrouded fingers... and soundnessly sets it on the wooden surface. Then she pushes the veil at her hair back, shaking long, platinum locks free.

You do a double take you hope she doesn't notice. Because what the actual fuck.

You didn't think her hair was that long, or that straight, or that it would fall over her shoulders like she's staring in a shampoo ad. You didn't think her lips were shaped like a cupid's bow or that her skin was this flawless and radiant.

The helplessly lesbian part of you could begrudgingly admit she was beautiful before... but now you arrive to the painful realization she's drop-dead gorgeous.

“So. I've heard you won cases others would describe as impossible.” she begins.

“Nothing's impossible. You just need to know where to look.” you reply. Law is your comfort zone and she is not that far above you here. “But how do you know that?”

“I have my sources.”

"Nobody truly leaves this village, huh.”

“Not without my consent, no. But I knew you'd come back.” At your slight frown, she elaborates, “You would never leave your mother behind.”

She's right. There was a whole world of opportunities waiting for you out there and yet... here you are.

“Good work, so far. You can take the next two days off. Your eyes could use the rest, Miss Warren.” Miranda speaks, finishing her wine.

“Sarah.” you say. 'Miss Warren' is for clients and she is your boss.

Miranda's lips give a slight quirk that may or may not be a trick of the light.

“I know.” she replies and exits the room, long hair billowing behind her back.

-

-

The taxes were only the first challenge. Now that the village is free of them, investors are flying in circles around it like vultures over meat.

In the meantime, Miranda comes to talk to you more frequently.

Lately, it seems she has more free time. You wish that was a good thing, but...

“So... are you like... going to stay here?” You ask after reading the same sentence five times to make sense of it, because her gaze on you is distracting as fuck.

“I'm not getting in the way of your work.” she says. You want to argue she is, but can't quite do that in a way that won't get you killed.

“I'm simply not used to working with company. Isn't this boring for you?”

“No, actually. I find it interesting, even though science is my field of expertise.” she answers. “And the way you take notes is… amusing.”

You try not to blush as you look down at your notebook, filled with different colored markers and post-it squares with tiny stick figures pointing to the more important paragraphs. You have been doing this for so long to sort out information you didn't even realize you were keeping it up in her presence.

“What is this supposed to be?” she asks with a small smile, the first of its kind you've seen.

To your horror, her clawed pointer aims at a particularly silly doodle, barely the size of a pencil's eraser.

“A... bird.” you grimace like you've been stabbed.

“Ah, of course.” Miranda holds back a chuckle but you can tell she's dying to make a comment.

Studying becomes hell for the rest of the time she's there with you, those sharp eyes picking apart every little move you make. At the same time, though, the hours you spend with her make you realize...

She's not a saint, though she may look like one. She's not completely a devil, either, even if she may act as one, at times.

She's human.

-

-

Miranda shares nothing about herself when you chat, but she seems to like it when you speak about your time abroad and all the things that left an impression on you there.

Your conversation over wine is cut short, however, when you receive a call from a number you learned means nothing but trouble, lately.

“Sorry, I have to take this.” you tell her.

The one calling you is none other than this month's rival lawyer, trying to dispute your claim over the land for his own boss. He's lost to you before, so it's also personal, but you are confident you have cornered them good with the latest papers you sent them...

And you are proven correct, when, a few seconds later, he is all faux polite on the other line, resorting to offering you money for you to withdraw your arguments.

Miranda comes to stand next to you, listening in to what he's saying.

The problem with that is, the second her arm brushes yours and you catch a whiff of her perfume –which always lingers in your office long after she's left— youare the one who stops listening to him.

Your attention flies to other things, like the inches she has on you, the exact color of her pale blonde hair, the little glint of victory in her stunning eyes.

Oh, no. God, no...

You know what this is, the feeling in the pit of your stomach. Alarm bells go off in the back of your head, as though your own mind is telling your body how foolish it's being.

There isn't a worse thing you can do to yourself than be attracted to Miranda.

-

-

Over time, familiarity with the prophetess brings higher levels of difficulty into your 'try to ignore your crush on her' game.

Miranda joins your side and leans over your shoulder, sometimes, to peer down at what you're doing. You don't move and don't breathe until she's within a safe distance again.

Then there are the wayward 'reward' touches, when you turn another investor away from the village. She may pat your back or leave her hand on your shoulder, or even scratch your nape with her claws as a job well done.

You hope your poker face hides the fact you feel her touch on you for far longer than you should, after she's gone.

Tonight, the situation is the toughest it's ever been for you.

There is a rainstorm going on outside; the waterdrops are tapping against the windows of your office as though they're trying to break it. Miranda has pulled her chair next to you so you can talk easier, without having to shout over the cacophony.

“And basically the judge's decision was that—”

You are interrupted by a blinding flash of lighting, during which your mind lets you know the stronghold is easily the tallest structure in it's vicinity—

When thunder cracks down the sky and strikes the building, you nearly scream. Your body tenses and you jump; but Miranda's hands come to your biceps and hold you steady, against herself and your desk.

Another flash comes before you really have time to think about your proximity. She covers your ears with her palms before the thunderclap can send you into overdrive again.

“You are with me and you're scared of a little thunder?” she teases when things quiet down and your heartbeat eases.

It's true; Miranda is the more terrifying force of nature. At the same time, however...

You feel oddly safe to be this close to her.

“Well... I'm not scared right now...” you quietly admit.

Her pointer comes underneath your chin and lifts it so you are looking straight into her hypnotic blue eyes. How is this color even real...

“And why is that?” Miranda asks, her wings coming around you both. They're curtains of black, cutting out some of the storm's sounds.

You want nothing more in this moment than to run your fingers through each individual feather.

You lick your lips. That's...not a question you can answer if you want the balance in your arrangement with her to remain.

Perhaps, though, the scales have tilted for you long ago. You just haven't been brave enough to admit it.

You have the courage to face it now when she leans down and covers your lips with hers, warm in a manner you never imagined she could be.

Her wings pull tighter around you and your mouths slide more firmly together. Lipbalm and creamy lipstick mix, tongues brush, tasting of wine. You are shaking so bad on the inside from how much you want this, more of this, the rumbling of the thunder be damned.

Miranda's palm cups your flaming cheek when she pulls back, perfectly composed and staring at you with a little smirk in place.

You dare to turn a little, lay a tiny kiss on the inside of her wrist, beyond her rings and accessories.

You aren't very fond of storms, but...

You willingly walk right into the eye of this one.

[hepalien]

Shrunkyclunks (Modern Bucky/Cap Steve) Fic Rec

Hate Sex & Hair Protocol by @maddiewritesstucky - Mature, 1.8k

SHIELD Agent Bucky, UST, Enemies to Lovers (in Steve’s head), Humor

They’re all full of shit, Steve decides.

His team don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, running their mouths about the way he and Bucky look at each other; the tension that seems to be at a constant near-snapping point between them.

'It’s called annoyance' Steve wants to yell in each of their faces, loud and one by one. It’s the pain of having to exist every day in close proximity with someone who drives you out of your fucking mind.

---

In which Steve discovers that ire and desire may just exist side by side in his brain.

Stop interrupting my grinding series by @rohkeutta - Teen, 2.5k

Nurse Bucky, Wrong Number, Fluff, Humor

“I tried to call Sam,” Captain America says, bewildered. He’s sprinting like Usain Bolt and doesn’t sound even a little out of breath. Fucker. “Who’re you?”

“Someone who’s watching you live on TV,” Bucky tells him as the tiny patriotic figure on the screen takes the turns like he instructed. Bucky should probably be a lot more freaked out about this, but honestly? After a tour in the Middle East and six years as a nurse in New York, even this isn’t enough to ruffle him. One sees a lot of shit in the ER. “Also, you better hang up now, that thing is behind the next bend.”

“Uh, okay,” Captain America says. “Thanks?”

“Whatever,” Bucky says, disconnects the call and turns the TV off to get ready for his shift.

Save a Horse, Ride a Captain by @galwednesday - Teen, 2.7k

War Vet Bucky, Meet Cute, Fluff, Humor, Modern Howlies

Bucky tapped him on the shoulder, swaying back and forth a little as he waited for the man to turn around. “Hello,” he said, and then promptly forgot what else he was going to say, because this guy was fucking beautiful. “Wow. Good face.”

Two of the guy’s friends, a man wearing a suit that fit so well it had to be bespoke and a man with a cute little gap between his front teeth, started cracking up. The petite redhead sitting next to them cocked her head to the side and pulled her phone out of her handbag. Beautiful Face just looked kind of pained, so Bucky redirected. He was a gentleman. He could take a hint. No hitting on beautiful guys who were uncomfortable with that sort of thing, no matter how lickable their jawlines were.

“Hello,” he repeated, doing his best to mind his manners. “I’m very sorry to bother you. Can I have a piggy-back ride?”

You Make My Heart Skip A Beet by @musette22 - Teen, 3.8k

Chef Bucky, POV Outsider, Fluff, Humor

“I made soda bread.”

Steve lets out the 6’2” supersoldier equivalent of a squeak. “Oh, I love soda bread,” he says eagerly, rolling forward on the balls of his feet like he does when he gets excited. “My mom used to make it all the time when I was growing up.”

The tips of Barnes’s ears turn red, and he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “I know.”

more under the cut

Cafe Au Écoute by @littlesystems - Teen, 3.8k

Coffee Shop AU

No matter where Steve goes, there's always the chance that he'll overhear a conversation about himself - or rather, Captain America. This coffee shop is no different. The fact that he keeps eavesdropping well past the point of plausible deniability is another matter entirely.

#TweetMeDaddy by StarSpangled - Teen, 4.1k

SHIELD Employee Bucky, Misunderstandings, Crack, Humor

Coulson, for his part, stares up at Bucky with such a betrayed look of frozen horror that Natasha actually goes the extra step and presses another button, capturing the moment and airdropping the photograph to her phone for posterity. When he speaks, his voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “Why…?” He swallows and starts again, trying for some semblance of normality. “...Why would you tweet something like that?!”

“If you must know, sir,” and somehow he manages to make ‘sir’ come out with the same inflection most people reserve for ‘motherfucking son of a bitch’, “it’s because I have a difficult time doing my job when my job involves monitoring the man with the best fucking ass in the United States of America.” He slowly lowers himself back into his seat until he’s at eye level, making extreme eye contact with Coulson until Coulson turns away to make mortified eye contact in Natasha’s general direction through the one-way glass. Natasha would take another picture, if she weren’t too busy catching Steve’s red-faced sputtering. “Sometimes, I vent to my Twitter followers. Sometimes, it’s about hot men with washboard abs. Can I go now, or do you need a graphic description of how I pleasure myself at night?”

at first chance i'd take the bed warmed by the body by @spacebuck - Explicit, 8.2k

YouTuber Bucky

This close, Steve can see exactly how beautiful his hands are. He’s never really noticed before, or at least he’s never really had a reason to notice, but the man’s hands are large, tanned like he works outside all day. There’s an endearing callus on the heel of one of his palms, and Steve can’t quite work out when calluses became endearing.

Steve pauses the video. Swallows hard. Casts his eyes around for anything that’ll keep his mind off the hands on his screen, off the words inked into those hands, the delicate shape of a bird’s wing, the curling edge of a vine.

He looks down. The name of the channel is right there, blaring the man’s name right into Steve’s brain until it feels like he’s known it all along.

Bucky Barnes.

OR: the one where Bucky's a youtuber who solves puzzles on camera, and steve's smitten and horny

Came with my cool (I dropped it) by @liionne - Teen, 9.2k

Yoga Instructor Bucky

"When you said I need to loosen up, I didn't think you meant literally."

"I meant it every way. Mentally, emotionally, and physically." Natasha says, and thrusts a yoga mat at him.

there once was a diamond by bloobeary - Teen, 11.3k

Fluff, Thanksgiving

"You," Becca seethes, and hits him with a wooden spoon. "Could have told me," Hits him again. "You were dating Captain America." Final hit, Bucky laughs. He supposes he deserves it, giving her no more information than the fact he was bringing his boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner at her house and then showing up with Steve.

Salt by littleblackfox @thelittleblackfox - Mature, 12k

Bakery AU

The cinnamon roll is gone in four bites. Four indecent, jaw-unhinging bites, and Steve sucks the last traces of lemon and icing from his fingers with a low, throaty sound of satisfaction. He glances up at Bucky, who is leaning against the counter and watching him with avid fascination.

“Um…” Steve says around his index finger. There’s still a little icing on the bed of his fingernail, and he stops trying to work it off with his tongue.

“You know those movies where the girl eats an eclair or something, and it’s really, like, sexually charged?” Bucky asks.

Steve pulls his finger out of his mouth. He’s never seen that kind of movie, but the thought of Bucky eating an eclair is certainly… well, it lingers. “Uh?”

“Yeah, well that was the exact opposite.” Steve scowls, and Bucky cackles gleefully. “You are something else, Steve.”

Leg Day by Brokenpitchpipe - Explicit, 12.1k

Gym Thot Bucky

“So talk to him,” Sam says.

“I can’t,” Bucky groans. “I can’t, Sam, I. He just.” He fluffs his hair up and stares at Sam, distraught. “I want him to bench press me.”

“Okay, so it’s serious,” Sam interprets. “Got it."

(Or: The one where Sam is Bucky's long-suffering roommate, Bucky is a hot mess of a millennial, and Hot Steve spends far too much time on the Lat Pull-Down machine.)

Art Nouveau by voluptuous_panic - Explicit, 12.2k

Bartender Bucky, Tattooed & Pierced Bucky

Steve's on the worst date of his life. At least the bartender's cute.

much tattoo about nothing by @deisderium - Explicit, 14.5k

Tattoo Artist Bucky

Steve Rogers gets a lot of email requests, but never one like this: James Barnes wants to use his healing factor to practice tattoos.

Turns out tattoos give Steve boners.

No Wonder There's Panic in the Industry by sprinkle_of_cinnamon - Not Rated (I’d say Mature?), 20.5k

Stark Industries Intern Bucky, Team fic, Humor

In which Bucky Barnes and his BFF, Clint Barton, are NYU interns for Stark Media Group competing to be Pepper's favorite.

Or alternatively, the time Bucky assisted the P.A. team on the Steve Rogers piece and ended up (adopted) with a contact list full of Avengers.

Life of the Party by @aggressivewhenstartled - Explicit, 21.6k

Superhero Impersonator Bucky, Mistaken Identity

“You know, kids,” Steve heard from the backyard, “one of the most common threats a superhero has to face is inside an active volcano! We’re going to have to work on your evasion skills, so for the next five minutes, the floor is lava!” This was met by a sudden spike in both volume and pitch from the small children as they scrambled onto every raised surface they could find and immediately launched themselves right back off.

“I’ve never seen actual lava in my entire life,” Steve said, vaguely offended.

“You got a superhero impersonator for The Falcon’s niece’s birthday party,” Sam said, incredulous. “The Falcon, who is an actual superhero.”

Trust Enough by @geneticallydead - Explicit, 23.3k

Misunderstandings

“Saturday. Yeah, that’s good,” Steve says, and actually scuffs his shoe at the ground. Like a ridiculous shy superhero damsel. “Say eight? I live-“

“Yeah, big building with the A on it,” Bucky says, and can’t help a big stupid grin. Steve stares at him, looking a little dazed, and after their whole conversation it’s only now that Bucky’s brain catches up and realises Steve finds him quite attractive. So. Win for Bucky.

“Let me get your number,” Steve says finally, after they’ve stared stupidly at each other for about three hours, taking out his phone.

So they exchange numbers, and then Steve says he should go, and Bucky agrees, and they kind of stare at each other for a bit more, then Steve actually does go, but not before taking Bucky’s hand and squeezing it warmly in a way that makes Bucky want to shiver all over. Then Steve is gone, and Bucky is standing alone in the alley, grinning to himself.

Right up until the moment he remembers that Steve thinks Bucky is an escort he’s just hired.

Well fuck.

The Roommate by layersofart, Niitza - Teen, 28.6k

War Vet Bucky, Roommates AU, Humor, Fluff, Angst, Team fic

In which Steven G. Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, gets a roommate. Who rapidly turns into his "roommate"—in the euphemistic sense of the word.

It takes SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers an absurd amount of time to notice.

Brooklyn Baby by sprinkle_of_cinnamon - Mature, 33.7k

Coffee Shop AU, Modern Howlies, Mistaken Identity, Team Fic

In which Bucky is just trying to live life and enjoy his unofficial official table at the obnoxiously hipster coffee shop but some guy named Steve stole his spot.

Or, the time that Bucky unintentionally befriended the Avengers and had no idea.

Never Talk to Strangers by mambo @whtaft - Teen, 40.4k

Grad Student Bucky, Slow Burn

Never Talk to Strangers: or; How a Forgotten Childhood Lesson Led Bucky Barnes to Appreciate Charlie Chaplin, Befriend an A.I., Slip on Soap Bubbles, Be Mistaken for a Succubus, and Try to Woo a Superhero.

Sinking Our Teeth In The Heart Of The Sun by fallendarlings @pressrestartwrites - Explicit, 102.8k

Single Dad Bucky, Kid Fic, Slow Burn, Domestic, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Steve has Autism

Bucky Barnes never intended to become a single father at 25. But life has always enjoyed kicking him while he's down and it's showing no signs of stopping. A chance meeting with a brick wall of a guy named Steve in the formula aisle of the grocery store leads to a friendship it seems like both of them need. If only Bucky could remember that's all they are- friends. If only Steve didn't slot into their lives so perfectly and look so good spoiling Bucky's daughter (and Bucky, despite his protests).

Oh, if only Steve didn't turn out to be Captain America.

Steve Rogers is wandering around a world that he doesn't fit into, fighting for a government that he doesn't trust, just because he doesn't know what to do with himself if he ever relaxes long enough to actually think about anything other than the next mission.

And then came Bucky Barnes and his newborn baby.

More recs

[awwfuckno]

“Ayo do you wanna be? Ghost B!” Jiho screams excitedly, pulling a peace sign, everyone joining in with a “We are the GhostBusters, whaddup!” the gang tops it off with a very un-coordinated bow. Taeil doesn't bow, of course.

What a dumb way to start a ghost hunting show, Kyung thinks.

Jiho's amazingly overdramatic narration time:

'My name is Woo 'Zico' Jiho, lead investigator of Ghost B. I didn't believe in ghosts until I came face-to-face with one. So I set out on a quest to capture what I once saw onto video. [cue over-dramatic walking videos of all the crew members in various scary places]

Our crew has worked years to build our credibility, our reputation...'

“Bitch, we've been ghost hunting for two weeks, what the fuck are you talking about?!” Minhyuk is already pissed off.

'Working alongside the most renowned professionals in the field, catching groundbreaking proof of the paranormal. This is our evidence, our GhostB, Ghost Bustin.'

“Yo, guys, so we're here at the Waverly Hills sanatorium, in Kentucky. The sanatorium opened in 1910 and a two-story hospital to accommodate 50 Tuberculosis patients. After an outbreak of tuberculosis the number of patients reached to thousands...” The whole time Jiho keeps throwing in rap hand motions and information about the bat-winged building that has an underground morgue to get rid of dead bodies when it was being used.

They all stand in the outer wing of the building with the owner, asking her questions and all that jazz until a moth flies into Jihoon's mouth, the sound guy heaving the biggest and loudest squeal of all times, echoing throughout the building. Birds fly away from the noise in one giant flock like in horror movies. The sanatorium actually shakes.

There are other interviews as well but none that end as hilariously as the former.

They show some disgusting fake videos of open-chest surgeries they did in the sanatorium. Ew.

Apparently there's some compelling ghost photos and EVP-s and stuff that's been captured on the premises. Scary shit.

They do a full check no 2 of all the equipment for the shoot the day before (the first check is usually before they take off but Kyung manages to misplace half their stuff every time):

-8 cameras for Taeil and Ukwon with badass night vision

-10 thermal cameras to scan temperature changes

-2 digital recorders for EVP-s aka electronic voice phenomena, aka ghosties talking to them

-5 EMF detectors that detect changes in electronic fields, aka ghosties walking past will make the lights on them blink and ayyyyy TRANCE PARTY UP IN THIS JOINT UNTS UNTS UNTS i mean what who wrote that

-Spirit box, the ghostie goo can use radio frequencies to answer questions. Unnecessarily loud crap, and to be completely honest, half the time Kyung doesn't understand what is says anyway

-Shit ton of extra batteries and Taeil's custom-built battery carrier vest (cause that small man is the biggest camera nerd)

-200 kilometers of wires that mostly lead nowhere (some to the end of a microphone). 'Jihoon, darling, please' Kyung starts all sweet, a little motherly 'you need to fuckin' clean this shit up before someone gets tangled in these vines and dies, seriously.'

“Look at this, man, I can wiggle wiggle wiggle” Taeil does The Wiggle, “and the picture on the camera stays completely still, this new video stabilizer so fuckin awesome.” He shudders in excitement for their new cameras.

“I swear you look like you would come at any second.” Ukwon looks 50% understanding, 50% disturbed, looking at their main camera guy.

..

The evening after their initial shoot day with the interviews is always spent at a nearby bar.

“You heard about the creeper, though? The black creature who crawls in the dark like all over the walls n shit and kills the shit out of you? And there's supposed to be a doppelganger that's a demon that takes your shape and if you see it, you die?” Jiho is getting super excited about their lockdown already.

“Dude, I don't wanna hear about it!” Jaehyo covers his ears singing Mary Had a Little Lamb loudly.

“To be honest, I don't even know what Minhyuk's part in the crew even is. I'm pretty sure he's possessed by a ghost... I guess it makes sense he'd join us...” Kyung ponders a little, looking like he doesn't really care (he really doesn't, as long as he's Jiho's right hand man and doesn't get forced to go on solo trips to the creepiest parts of the haunted buildings).

Taeil meh's at that, sipping on his beer. The holy meh of agreement.

“Holy shit, why did I join this crew, I am fuckin terrified of ghosts???” Jihoon sits at the bar stool, kinda talking to Ukwon, kinda to himself, on the verge of an existential crisis. He's holding onto his head with both hands, rocking himself.

“Cause you're in love with Taeil and would follow him to the debts of hell? Aka this place?” Ukwon suggests, a small smile on his lips.

“Yeah.. - Uh-- What?”

“What?” the older of the two suggests, this little knowing smile on his lips.

Taeil joins them, putting an arm around Jihoon and he's like, fuck, Ukwon is right.

..

“Here we are, at the sanatorium, ready for our lockdown, bros.” Jiho is ready to do the do, “So let's gear up and have fun, kids!” Jiho always gives them a pep talk before they start their main shoot.

The first 30 minutes is spent putting up the cameras by Taeil, Jihoon tagging close by with all the wires, Ukwon setting up EMF detectors on the 4th floor, the outer part of the hospital wings where the creeper is supposed to hang out with his ghostie buddies; and two thermal cameras into the morgue (knowing Jiho he's probably gonna force some of the scaredy cats from the crew to go there alone).

“SHIT IT'S THE CREEPER!!!!!!!” It starts from Jaehyo, then Ukwon, then Minhyuk, then Jihoon and Jiho, then Kyung: they are all running towards their base camp and screaming at the top of their lungs.

The creeper is Lee Taeil. Of course. Makes sense. That little creep.

“Fuckin' stop lurkin' around, bro, holy shitballs.” Jiho holds onto his heart, pulling out his asthma inhaler.

“You told me to do the fuckin thermal sweep of the whole fuckin building, you moron.” Taeil growls back at him, violently wigging the two cameras in his hands for good measure.

Roll the cameras.

“Here we are!” Jiho screams to no one particular, probs the ghosties. It echoes throughout the building eerily.

Oh, that's a nice introduction, Kyung thinks.

“Come and say hello!” He's still lookin around, “Use our energy!” Jiho has his arms wide in front of him, twirling around,

Don't.. don't start taunting, please, Kyung begs in his mind.

“Do something to us! Hit Kyung!” Jiho motions to his right hand man.

Now, why you gotta say that? Kyung sends his bitchiest glare towards Jiho. Also a couple of curses.

Nothing happens for 5 minutes but Jiho insists they stand there with their recording devices in hand.

Another 10 minutes goes by and Jiho is getting pissed off. He decides they should split in pairs.

..

Jiho walks around for a full hour with Kyung until he decides they should go to their base where their tech guy Jihoon is currently sitting to see if he'd caught anything.

They are monitoring a video on the fifth floor, when they notice Minhyuk waLKING BACKWARDS ON THE LEFT OF THE SHOOT TOWARDS THE CAMERA, you can see only the whites of his eyes as he gurgles violently, standing in front of the camera for a full 3 minutes.

“Dude, stop acting like you've been possessed, man..” Jiho says into the walkie-talkie, he's so tired and in desperate need for a shower and 4 episodes of his favourite Hello Kitty show.

Minhyuk stops and walks away like nothing happened.

..

Ukwon has been walking alone on the first floor and catches an orange orb floating. He sends a message through his walkie talkie and Jiho gets super pumped up again. They all gather in the monitoring tent to marvel the finding:

“DUUUDEEE!”

“WOWW”

“BROOO, DID YOU SEE THAT, DUDE?”

“MANNNN”

“HOLY SHIT DUDES, THIS IS GREAT--”

“FUCK, BROS”

“YEAH BABE, DID YOU SEE THA-- I mean Jihoon did you see that???” Taeil hides behind his giant camera, Jihoon whines an answer.

..

2 hours into the investigation Taeil realizes he's been walking around with a camera with no power in it and the others have to hold him down to prevent him from throwing the camera out of the non-glassed window and 10 meters downwards onto the pavement.

..

“Okay, my dudes. It's time to take some action. Let's draw strings to see who gets locked up alone upstairs. We gotta get some good action so we'll get some views, bros.” Jiho says, pulling out the strings.

Jihoon looses. He always does. He's staring to think the string-drawing is rigged.

The tall manbaby has a face camera and an extra camera with him, you can see him panting and sweating in horror, mumbling 'omajgad' under his breath as he sits in the corner of the most haunted room of the whole sanatorium.

Jiho asks him to walk around and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT TO BREATHE SO LOUDLY

All you see is a crying Jihoon in green night vision, carefully walking around, three cameras on him.

There's a THUMP, then a weeping sound and a loud crash. The camera in Jihoon's hand shakes and falls. It's pitch black. The still cameras Ukwon had set up are too far to record anything.

Nobody even breathes, eyes wild and scared like saucers in the monitoring tent. Then Taeil shoots out of his chair, knocks over Ukwon and Kyung, speeds out of the tent to the attic to save his man child boyfriend person WE ARE NO DATING he yells but that gets edited out by Kyung and the only part of him running that is left in is Kyung cooing “ahh~ young love~”.

After a couple of minutes of excruciating silence, Taeil emerges from the darkness carrying Jihoon over his shoulders like he's a fluffy winter scarf. An almost 2 meter passed-out scarf.

Poor man got hit in the head with a small rock (that was definitely thrown by a ghost!!) and fell like a dumbass, passing out.

“Hyungs, I think I actually peed my pants before I passed out. Like at least a couple drops..” Jihoon is holding onto a chair to catch his breath.

..

“Now, that went super well, let's send Jaehyo to the morgue alone!” Jiho is as hyper as ever.

“Fuck, you can't make me go there alone!” there are actual tears in Jaehyo's eyes.

“Yes, I can, I'm the boss around here!” Jiho angrily whispers back at him.

Kyung beames, he's still the right hand man and Jiho defs wouldn't do something like that to him.

Next thing we see, Jaehyo is in the morgue.

He sits on a chair next to the fire places a couple minutes until he hears a creaking sound. Like a door opening.

“Oh my god.. Oh my god oh my god oh my goddd. I am too gorgeous and too young to die! I haven't lived long enough to see Zico's and Kyung's kids!” Jaehyo is now in the corner of the room kneeling and praying.

Everyone in their base camp is closely monitoring what Jaehyo is up to and holding in their laughter, Jiho's and Kyung's faces beet red.

Jaehyo sees a giant shadow move from the farther side of the room towards him and completely loses his shit

“I AM FUCKING QUITTING THIS JOB RIGHT NOW!” Jaehyo storms out of the sanatorium.

“Bitch did not just do that.” Minhyuk is amazed their self-proclaimed 'fuckin gorgeous guy' actually has balls.

“I hope he doesn't take the car--” Ukwon starts, they hear the engine of their van turn on and the scraping of pavement until the sound dissolves into the echoes of dead forest around them.

..

Taeil looks disgustingly old all of a sudden: “We should just quit and become like a boyband or some shit before it's too late.” They all look into the camera like in The Office.

[jackarychaoti]

DWC2021-10 - Feast/Sleepless

- [ MUSIC ] -

“I’m dying, Jackary.”

The words caught the beast off guard as he strolled through the quiet forest of Teldrassil, barefoot and allowing his ever-present trail of flowers to flow in his wake. Next to the tall blond had been a far shorter elf-shaped man, armed to the teeth in weaponry and dressed in form-fitting leather. While they were a stark contrast to one another, the words alone had drawn Jackary to a standstill.

“I... What?”

It was right after a family feast, right after a great speech had been given about coming changes and freedom and how deeply the rogue appreciated the family he had built over the years. The pair had been laughing together, reminiscing about the past... And suddenly…

Suddenly it made sense.

“Don’t fuck around with me like that, Lok’,” Jack couldn’t help but awkwardly laugh as if it was some stupid joke that his cousin had decided to drop. If he, in his early life, was a sigil of life, his best friend was the sigil of death. They complimented each other, they went everywhere together. Of all things, Lokitan was the reason Jack wound up in Azeroth in the first place.

“I wish I could,” Loki hummed, slowing to a standstill where he could finally light a cigarette he’d fetched and drew in a deep inhale, calming the nerves that were rising in the conversation at hand.”I am fadin’ away and I can feel it, won’t be long now.”

Jack stood silently in disbelief, the reason they had gone walking through an Alliance claimed territory wasn’t to simply ruffle some feathers, it was because it was where their journey had begun together. It was made clear when Jack looked anywhere but at his cousin, realizing he was in the near exact spot he’d appeared in his own crash landing.

‘So, what? You brought me out here to--”

“To say goodbye, yeah.” Cutting off the emerald, Lokitan lifted a crimson eye upward, staring for a long moment. He gave a small smirk. “It’ll be alright, you’ll be fine.”

Would he?

Claws pushed through Jack's long, unruly locks of hair to pull them back and up into a ponytail, keeping the weighted tresses from his face while it gave him time to think, “So just like that, you’re… You’re gone then. When--?” As he questioned just how long Lokitan had left, when he turned to face his cousin, he could already see parts of the rogue turning brittle, fluttering away in the faint, cool breeze around them like nothing more than ash.

“We have outstayed our welcome, you and I.” Lokitan drew in another slow inhale of his cigarette, pondering over what he wanted his final words to be. “We’ve also been through a lot, ever since we were little. We always got into so much shit, heh...” The shadowed dragon smirked to himself, baring a set of fangs in amusement. Bittersweet really, that it was to be Jackary he spent his final moments with when it had also been Jack that helped bring him into the world to cause chaos.

“Do you have any regrets…?” Jack asked quietly, finding himself fidgeting with his own fingers.

“A few,” Loki replied rather abruptly, wetting his lips while his vision raised to look up at the trees above, noting the stars beyond the greenery. “I regret not coming sooner to help you that night, I regret you binding your wings to service. I regret falling in love…” He trailed off at that point, seeming less inclined to want to discuss it.

Jack frowned further, still attempting to wrap his head around what was happening, and yet there he stood, speaking casually with the man that may as well have been his own brother, they were of flesh and blood. Two princes that ran away from home and carried their heritage only by name. Chaoti meant nothing in Azeroth. Jaden and Heran meant nothing, either. They were just names, something no one even blinked at. And of all of the travels the two had been through, the endless adventures or bickering or laughter or beauty or horror, suddenly it was just… ending.

Just like that.

Everything had an ending, certainly, but…

“Don’t leave me…”

Lokitan barked out a bout of laughter at that, smiling as he glanced over to Jackary, though he could see just how much the Emerald was hurting. Such caused that smile to falter. “I can’t stay…”

“You can....” Jack furrowed, shaking his head a bit before throwing his hand out to the side. “You of all people can stay! You can’t leave me..! YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” The voice echoed through the quiet trees, ruffling the feathers of a few birds that flitted away, the echo faded soon after.

“Jackary... Don’t make this harder than it is.”

“No! Fuck you! Fuck you,” Jack inhaled a bit, eyes narrowed when the unnatural sting formed in their corners. Each motion became a pacing step back and forth, his hair swayed behind him. Flowers and grass only further grew outward from his position only to die once close enough to the stand-still rogue. “You brought me here. We came here together, I came here for YOU, WITH YOU! We promised each other we’d never leave one another’s side, you fucking LIAR! You promised, Lokitan Jaden! YOU PROMISED ME!”

Watching the Emerald struggle with anything brought on the protective nature of the small Infinite. Through the beast’s rapidly increased pacing, a hand reached over to suddenly grab Jack’s arm to yank him over and downward into a tight hug.

Loki never hugged anyone.

“Jackary…” He whispered softly, fondly in the captured drake’s ear. “You have been the only one in our family, our past, or history that has ever shown me kindness and love. You’ve had endless patience, you’ve also been a complete fuckwit and you deserve that scar on your chin for what you did, but… You’re going to be okay. You’re going to move forward from this and you will find a new life, a new love, and a new family. You will find people you belong to… Beyond our name, beyond our past transgressions…. Someday you’ll forget about the horrors..”

“I don’t want to…” When had Jackary hugged back? When had he been hunching and clinging so tightly that he could hear the groaning echoes of the leather giving way to the grasp? “Please, I’ve had you with me all my life… Please… I need someone to keep me sane, to keep me in check. Please don't go.”

“You’ll find someone who will stand up to you and your bullshit. You’ll find a warm home again. I know this…” Lokitan sank faintly into the larger male’s grip, feeling the weakening sensation growing even more. “I know this because you have an air about you and people will find you addictive to be around. Keep your wings... Keep your wings and soar…”

“Don’t make me stay here alone…” Nails bit into the leathers, though with every passing second, he could feel the tension of a body between his arms begin to wilt and crumble, he couldn’t even look. He couldn’t bring himself to see Lokitan fade away. A man who had saved his life and who had saved him from the horrors of his ex-wife. His best friend.

“I love you, Jackary Heran.”

Those were the final words that escaped before arms found themselves collapsing around nothing but an ash pile of leathers and knives. The weaponry clanked when it hit the forest floor, leaving the black dust to cling to Jackary’s figure.

When had he dropped to his knees?

When had it become so dark?

When had rain gradually washed the ash from his skin?

When had Loki known he was going to die and why hadn’t he told Jackary about it?

Rock after rock, stone after stone, a small, unmarked grave was built, tucked away where no adventurer could find it unless they knew where to look. A sleepless night was spent marking the spot where the rogue had finally fallen.

When had this happened?

When did the memory of it start to fade?

A grave that would be of importance later, but that was for another story.

| - @daily-writing-challenge - |

[justkeeptrekkin]

Your Life is Golden

a ficlet inspired by my need for angst and badass Aziraphale content. 

***

“Crowley. We’ve known each other for a long time, and… no. That’s not right.”

Aziraphale steps in a puddle, and it splashes muddy water up his leg. He sighs, continues walking. “Crowley, old chum. Six thousand years, eh? Or was it longer? We’ve been through an awful lot, you know, and… no, no, no. Bother.”

He passes a shop window and catches sight of his twisted, anxious expression. He tries to correct it, looks away. Shakes his head to himself and starts rewriting his speech in his mind. 

“I’ve been in love with you for a good few decades now, Crowley, and I think it’s about time I did something about it… how about we go a little faster, after all?” Aziraphale nods a little to himself. “Not perfect, but it’s something.”

Aziraphale turns the corner opposite the bookshop, a bottle of far too expensive wine in his hand. At roughly three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, Soho is still busy, still filled with tourists, the smell of beer and Chinese food in the air. For the rest of the world, life goes on; for Aziraphale, the world has changed. He settles into a familiar and delicious anticipation that has always prefaced seeing Crowley, but this time, things are different. The End of Times never happened, and since then, Aziraphale has waited for the moment he could summon enough bravery to invite his friend over.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you how I feel for a while, now,” Aziraphale presses on, muttering to himself and prompting a few funny looks from passers-by. “Naturally, if you don’t want them to, things needn’t change, but…”

It’s only as he’s crossing the road that he sees that the shop light is on. 

And it’s only when he steps back onto the pavement that he picks up the lingering taste of multiple demonic auras; the footprint in the sand betraying Crowley’s recent presence. Though he’s not here any more. 

It’s when he ascends the steps to the shop door, hand poised by the handle, that dread sits on his chest and makes him nauseous. 

Aziraphale pushes open the door.

He has never had his shop ransacked before. There have been moments where he’s imagined what he’d do, if someone broke in and tried to steal anything; how far he’d go to find and punish whoever did it; whether he’d simply forgive them like he’s meant to. Worse than that, he’s allowed himself to imagine what would happen if Gabriel and Sandalophon came back, like they did during his shop launch; what would have happened if they’d simply turned around and seen Crowley, top hat and all, holding a box of chocolates.

Now, the sound of his brogues against the wooden floor sounds more hollow than it ever has before. It fills the room too much. It aches. 

He casts his eyes about the fallen books; some of them are charred. Some of the bookshelves have come down. There are claw marks in the floorboards.

He puts down the bottle of wine. The door is left open behind him, and he can hear people talking about normal things. 

Aziraphale extends a hand- a hand that doesn’t feel like his own- and sees it land on a copy of Sappho’s poetry. The pages have fallen open to one of her lesser known elegies. The fingers dance across the words like they’re scribbles, silly little pictures that no longer make sense. Crowley had bought him this particular book. His eyes turn away from the book and scan the shop, trying desperately to absorb what’s in front of him and failing. Everything in chaos. The sharp tang of sulphur in the air; demonic battle. It isn’t a smell that he’s come across in a long time. 

“Crowley,” he says to himself. 

Then, as it finally begins to settle. “Crowley.”

He steps over the shattered splinters of a table, stumbles over scattered books. He turns on the spot, looks up, around, behind and below. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for; he hopes he’ll find something that will tell him who won this fight. At the centre of the bookshop, there are more claw marks across the floorboards, little troughs like Crowley had been scrabbling for something to hold onto. 

He’d been here looking for Aziraphale. 

He breathes in suddenly, gasps like the air is forcing its way into his throat, pouring itself inside him- and he feels his hands shake. He feels himself fall back inside his body again, sees his fingers trace the claw marks, feels the jagged wood beneath his fingers, trying to reach for Crowley- too late. 

“No,” he croaks. 

Aziraphale falls to his knees and clasps his hands together, almost in prayer. He unclasps them and presses his palms together instead, poised in front of his face. And yet, there’s the ache of knowing that no one is listening. And so he runs his hands through his hair, sitting on his heels and willing his mind to think of something. But he has only ever known how to pray and hope, not knowing how to do. 

“Where are you?” he asks Crowley, asks in a whisper to himself. “Crowley, please. God, please tell me he’s alive.”

It falls from somewhere above; it falls down in front of him, tickles his face and lands on his leg. Aziraphale looks at the single black feather, picks it up and holds it like it’s alive. All that’s left of Crowley.

Perhaps you’d expect him to cry. Perhaps you’d expect him to try praying again. Perhaps you’d expect him to remain paralysed in shock, or walk out the door, or figure out a rescue plan. You’d expect Aziraphale to reason with himself- remind himself that Crowley’s wily, after all, persuade himself that there’s no way he could have lost this battle. You might wonder whether he’d fall into his old habits of staying quiet, asking no questions, or whether he’d gather up his bravery and do something. Do something, for the one being he’s loved outside the appropriate realms of angelic adoration. 

There is no miraculous plan for this catatonic mind. What happens instead is this: hope and despair and fury. Incandescent, invulnerable fury that suddenly sparks into life. Something dormant and hiding in the heart of an angel that has not been unleashed since the stars were first moulded, since the volcanoes were first filled with lava and since the first lightning kindled. Something old and deep, something that lives only in divine beings that have seen the dawn of time, something that can only be described as titanic. 

Aziraphale falls into the centre of himself. He feels himself step back and feels something else take over; not quite displacing him, not controlling him, rather covering him like a cloak. He sees its blinding light, feels its scorching heat, and he wears it. He flexes his fingers inside its gloves and rolls his shoulders against its hot fabric. Wings explode into existence; eyes open, white and burning all over his body; hot tears run boiling down his cheeks like acid. He shines all over. A perfect, blinding ring sizzles above his head, appearing slowly as condensation does from a glass on a table. He bathes in his righteous fury until everything else evaporates. 

When he stands up, his fingers gently wrap around the single, black feather. 

***

At three thirty-two in the afternoon, on the streets of Soho, people stop and stare at the wind that gushes out of a bookshop doorway like a flood. They watch as sheets of paper- perhaps pages from books?- fly out of the doors like leaves in an eddy. They marvel at the strange, beautiful, blinding light that burns through the windows. 

People in the adjacent Chinese restaurant see the windows suddenly shatter and take cover. And everyone within a three mile radius suddenly presses their hands to their ears against a terrible, ringing noise. 

A screeching bird call, an angel crying in outrage. 

***

Crowley wakes up to the sound of nothing. He knows he’s in Hell. 

He opens his eyes. Black feathers- his own feathers- scattered across the floor. His pale arm stretched out in front of him, nails digging into his palm. The taste of blood on his tongue. He groans. It’s been a while since he’s bled. 

When he breathes in, something burns. It scalds his skin and he gasps, a staggered breath that only becomes more fractured when his ribs expand and touch the chain wrapped around them. Slow, careful movements- he tries to prop himself up as gently as possible to get a better look. He sees the metal wrapped around his ribcage, sees manacles around his wrists and ankles, tastes- tastes it. It’s not blood that he’s tasting, then- it’s metal, like a horse’s bit between his teeth. He’s chained to the wall like a feral animal. 

He’d like to say that it’s overkill, but he knows how frightened Beelzebub is of him, now. 

He rolls his tongue underneath the bit, tries to swallow- it hurts. His throat is dry and every breath struggles inside of him. The manacles dig into his wrists. But none of that hurts like the chain around his bare torso, his shirt stripped to reveal his pale, almost-translucent skin and the burn marks from adamantine. Crowley pants, teeth clenched against the bit, and stares wide-eyed at the red sores; stares in amazement and confusion and horror and eventually, acceptance. Because adamantine only burns angels. 

Well that’s new, he thinks. Aziraphale really has been rubbing off on him, it seems. 

The heels of his boots kick against the dusty floor. His cell is small, bare, dark. There are bars and a little post-box shaped hole in the door, like this is a pale imitation of a Hollywood movie set. 

He growls. They’d known. They’d waited. They’d somehow known that he’d decided to surprise Aziraphale by swinging by early; he’s just that fucking predictable. His dedication and loyalty to an angel, his puppy-dog pining for Aziraphale so blatant that they’d waited for him there and ambushed him. Hastur, Ligur, Beelzebub- the three of them cornered him and they fought, really fought tooth and claw, for the first time since the Fall. 

They’d torn his wings. 

They’d thrown him across the room. 

They’d dragged him across the floor like they were auditioning for Paranormal fucking-well Activity. 

“Azzurghs,” he tries, the cold metal in his mouth flaking and sharp. Bastards is what he’d been going for. Then, “Azzuruhuh.” Aziraphale. It just comes out a pained whine.

His back meets the wall. His head knocks against it. He casts his eyes up at the ceiling. 

God. I’d ask why you’ve forsaken me, Crowley thinks, but I’m getting pretty used to it.

***

The people of London go quiet all at once as they feel the Earth shudder. 

That moment of dread and confusion- the incomprehensible scale of whatever is coming, whatever’s out there on the prowl suddenly dawning on them. People in meetings stop mid-sentence, feeling the vibrations under foot- they look through the window down at the streets below. Tourists on the London Eye peer through the glass, seeing a blinding white light across the river. Children splash in puddles, see the water tremble with the footsteps of something huge. Pub-goers stare at the shattered remnants of their pint glasses. The ringing in their ears has subsided, but the anguish of it is still echoing in their head. 

Something’s out there. Something’s hurt. And it’s fucking angry.

***

Time in Hell runs differently. It isn’t just slower; it loses meaning. After all, time is angel-created. It’s something that brings order to the universe, something that contains chaos and makes everything just a little bit more organised and tidy. Something like that has no place in Hell. It’s therefore hard to know just how long Crowley’s been lying on the floor of his cell, adamantine burning his skin and bones aching. Dust in his throat. Eyes closed. 

He’s grown soft. No- not soft. Brittle. He’s become fragile, something hollow and aching and desperate to be filled with validation and love and attention and everything that Hell isn’t. It’s made him foolish, made him someone who waits. Like a dog at the door. When will they come? 

What’s worse, though, is that it’s not Beelzebub or Hastur or Ligur that he’s waiting for to walk through that door. It isn’t punishment that he’s waiting for in particular, even though God knows that’s what he should be used to by now. Trained to expect pain after waiting, alone, long enough that he begins to wonder if they’ve forgotten about him. Yes, even though he’s been trained to live like this, they’re not the ones he’s waiting for. 

When will he learn that Aziraphale won’t come? 

***

Even if he does come, it’s always when it’s too late. Crowley reminds himself of this, as he considers Aziraphale possessing Madam Tracy. It was only after he’d pushed Crowley away that he’d come back. And-

Well. Obviously Crowley’s forgiven him for that. Forgiveness; that’s one of the only angelic characteristics he has left. 

***

Aziraphale could come.

Endless time swims around him in a fog; Crowley has been lying on the floor, waiting, hoping, for some indefinite stretch of no-time. 

And Aziraphale could come. That part of him fights back- the same part of him that runs after Aziraphale time and time again, the part of him that saves books from burning ruins and begs for Aziraphale to run away with him. No matter how much Hell try and kick him down, no matter how many times Aziraphale proves it wrong, that little bit of hope always flickers back into life. 

It’s pathetic. It’s all Crowley has right now.

***

He hears his rattling breath and feels something wet on his cheeks. His wings have unfurled at some point, too exhausted to keep them in. They’re tattered and tired, draped across the floor.

***

There had been one afternoon recently, after the apocalypse. It had settled on them that they could be together without the weight of impending war sitting on their shoulders. So, they’d decided to be a little frivolous and go for a day out. 

Aziraphale had suggested the beach. Crowley had shrugged, closing his eyes in resignation behind his sunglasses. “Fine,” he’d sighed. Anything for you, he’d thought. And they’d hopped in Crowley’s Bentley and rolled down the windows, plummeting down the motorway towards the South West coast. Lulworth Cove was meant to be busy that day, the warmest day of the year so far, but he knew it would be quiet. Crowley had willed it so. 

Crowley had kept his eyes on the road, the white lines streaking till they blurred, the bad local radio station chattering in the background, soon to turn into Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy. Aziraphale was smiling so much that day. Aziraphale smiled in so many ways, and that day it was like the first: angelic and beatific, the way God had smiled the day She created the world. Maybe it was because he saw the world laid out in front of them, ready for them to live it in a way they’d never been allowed before. Maybe he was just in a good mood. Either way, Crowley had found it impossible not to stare. 

The wind had rushed through the rolled-down windows, and once they’d hit the country lanes, Aziraphale poked his arm outside and let the air pull through his fingers. Crowley had watched him close his eyes and smile again, that smile. 

“We could live like this forever, now,” Aziraphale had said. “You and I.”

Crowley had driven and known that that moment was important. Like initials carved into a wall, that moment would stick around with him. 

You and I, Crowley thinks now. Is it so naive to think you’ll come for me?

***

The ground shakes beneath him. There’s the sound of demons and poltergeists and incubi screaming down the corridor, outside his prison cell door. 

Crowley’s eyes snap open. 

There’s a screeching sound. It’s not anything demonic; he’d thought it was at first, but that was before he realised he could hear it inside his head. No, it’s something far too- far too something to be demonic.

Furious?

Hurt? Righteous?

It’s a sound that frightens him. It makes his heart stutter and his feathers ripple nervously. His pupils are dilated in the dark, but they narrow at the sound, fight-or-flight response kicked in. Something’s coming; something awful, something that Hell hadn’t prepared for. And just for a moment, the relief of that chases away the shadows in his mind. 

The sound of demons screaming, louder now, mixing with the ringing in his ears. A thud, as something- someone, more likely- is thrown down the corridor, landing close to Crowley’s door. And-

Oh, God. That light. It burns and it soothes all at once, it pours through the cracks of the door, stretching out towards Crowley like it’s searching for him, trying to bring him into its embrace.

The door falls from its hinges.

Crowley scrabbles up onto his knees. He hangs his head, turned away from the light, his hands splayed on the floor. Then he hears his voice in his mind. 

Crowley. 

The light doesn’t burn anymore. It’s like a switch is flicked and the anger in it simmers down; still there, oh yes, it still bubbles beneath the surface. But what Crowley feels overwhelmingly in that moment is not anger, but something kinder. The bright, shining feeling of his smile. 

He dares to look up. 

From his knees, prostrate on the floor of Hell, Crowley beholds the light of a star poured into the vessel of a human. The shape of Aziraphale, covered in bright, wide-open eyes and wings that encompass the room. They curve around him, like that very first day at Eden. And Crowley turns his head to watch them surround his broken body, a sunflower following the orbit of the sun. 

He looks back up. Cannot look away; there is something about that light that is less like the sun, and more like the moon. Fascinating, hypnotising, calming. And he gazes into the pair of eyes in front of him, the pair that he knows, with blue irises, watching with love. 

There’s something else in those eyes, too. There’s love, and there’s also something destructive- something frightening, something he hasn’t seen since the days of the Old Testament. Something that threatens floods and plagues for anyone who stands in Aziraphale’s way. 

A scalding white hand reaches to touch Crowley’s face. He closes his eyes, and feels only a soft warmth. Soft. Just as Aziraphale always is, even like this.

My dear, he hears inside his mind. 

His mouth suddenly feels empty. The bit and the chains are gone. 

“You came. I wasn’t sure,” he laughs sadly. 

The hand on his cheek grows warmer, almost uncomfortably hot. Aziraphale doesn’t respond- out loud, or in his mind. He doesn’t need to. Crowley feels it in the heat of his hand, feels it pouring under his skin; that they are on each other’s side; that Aziraphale will never sit by and watch ever again; that he will always come. 

He feels it in the press of Aziraphale’s lips against his.

The ground fractures beneath them. Hot air meets cold air, rain meets sun, and water meets hot oil. The room shudders with it. Hell vibrates with it and Heaven feels it, too. Two sides coming together, the order of the universe disrupted. 

God smiles when She sees it. 

And perhaps it’s because Crowley’s been awake for what might be weeks in here. Perhaps it’s because he’s been waiting for Aziraphale to come for him, to save him like this for millennia. Whatever the reason, Crowley suddenly can’t keep his eyes open. He feels himself relax into Aziraphale’s arms, inside the cocoon of his wings. 

He holds onto consciousness and feels himself being carried through the seven circles of Hell, over purgatory and back home. 

[well-shit-im-a-morosexual-now]

"Chasing Stars" fic?

TW: BODY HORROR (sorry anon but it's like really fluffy if you just ignore the demons looking demonic part)

Different first meeting AU! The Fall happens later while MC is already alive AU!

LONG POST!

MC is studying to be a professional (wildlife) photographer (I've explained why this is my hc before) and as part of a project they are staying at a friend's cottage in the middle of the countryside for a week or two during their break.

One night they see a shooting star, its exact path is followed just a bit later by another (they seem extremely close to earth), then there's two more, almost next to each other, going in a different direction. Two more going in two seperate directions and they're sure there weren't any reports of a meteor shower... The last one is so close that they actually yelp and try to duck back inside when it passes, burning a fiery trail. They feel the impact on the ground when it hits the earth, somewhere in the woods.

And then they're running towards it, their curiosity has always been their biggest weakness. They're running towards a big crater at the centre of a clearing, only a small part in the back of their brain notices the burnt feathers on the ground and the smell of charred flesh. It's only when they get to the edge of the crater do they realise whatever is in there is definitely not a rock.

Rather it's some creature. And their heart is pounding and they're pretty sure they're hallucinating and the smell of burnt flesh is now pretty hard to ignore.

It's vaguely human shaped but much larger. Its feet are sharp bird like talons, its legs are bent in such a way that it would not be possible for it to stand up straight without hunching and its hands are spindly and tipped with long white claws. It's got a pair of large, mangled, burnt wings with only a few white feathers clinging desperately to them. Its skin is burnt to the point of being a pitch black and they can see more burnt feathers along its shoulders, there also seem to be smoldering vacant holes along its sides and back. Its hair seems to be the same grey-white downy fluff of a baby bird and its body is covered in splashes of some sort of thick glittery gold substance.

It's facing away from them making a loud keening sound and trying to curl itself into a tighter ball. They take a step back, maybe to run screaming, maybe to check themself into a hospital, maybe to gather their wits before they lowered themself into the crater.

Whatever it is the creature stiffens at whatever noise imperceptible to the human ear that their step made. It slowly turns towards them. The flesh on the lower part of its face is burnt off showing a full mouth of long gleaming fang like teeth. But that's not what catches their attention. Instead it's the eyes, surrounded by what looks like undamaged human skin. Even with the slitted pupils they look painfully human and terrified.

The creature growls when it sees them, low in its chest as its back tenses as if it was seconds away from darting (not that they think it can). 

And instead of running for their goddamned life like any rational human would MC is slowly lowering themself to their knees at the edge of the crater. Talking to it in a soft gentle voice, like they would a stray cat or rabbit that had been hurt/spooked.

"It's okay...look I'm not going to hurt you,,,,I'm going to - fuck what am i doing- I'm going to help you okay? I'm going to - going to go get my truck and some water and rags and we'll get you cleaned up okay,,,,,just please wait here I'll be right back"

Whatever it -he?- is it's definitely intelligent. It's still slightly snarling but they're almost sure it understood them. So they get up and slowly back away and then they're turning and sprinting. Loading the back of their pick up with blankets and pillows to make a comfy nest and grabbing their first aid kit and opting out of taking actual water they instead take wet wipes and food, a proper lamp and a bottle of water.

Then while driving (as we've established MC is v stupid pls don't ever do this) they frantically Google up how to fix broken wings and treat burn wounds also can birds grow up to be 8 feet? How big is an ostrich? What are the odds of an ostrich falling out of the sky?

When they get back to the clearing, the thing is still there and curls up into a tighter ball when it sees them and it watches them with suspicious eyes but it doesn't growl.

Grabbing some of their supplies they sit back on the edge of the crater and ask whether they can come closer. It growls. They sit back down and talk to it - him? - softly. They tell their name and ask for his. They tell him what they are doing here and asks what he is doing here. They tell him they don't have any living family and ask if there's someone out there looking for him. He keens at this and they immediately apologise. They tell him about the photos they have taken and roll the water bottle towards him. They are not sure what they expect but when he (despite struggling with his long claws) opens it with a practiced movement they aren't surprised.

They ask him if they can come closer, he growls and they apologise and sit back down. They talk about more things, stories and movies. They trace the stars and tell him any stories they know about them. They ask him if he's an ostrich. He growls. They laugh.

While their eyes are on the sky he slowly drags himself up from the crater towards them, they don't hear him despite how big he is but they do notice him out of the corner of their eyes. He sits by them and they keep talking, ignoring the heat radiating off him. 

Softly he coos before placing his fuzzy head on their lap and for a minute they're frozen in place before he growls and shifts more until they start running their hand through his hair. They feel two bumps on the top of his head and wonder if he had hit his head on the way down.

Eventually with the sun just starting to peak out they manage to get him standing up, sliding their shoulder under one of his arms and hobbling over to the pick up. He's a lot lighter than he looks. They get him settled in the back and cover him with blankets and drive back to their cottage thankful that the small town centre is a bit away from them. They talk loud enough that he'd hear them the whole time

There's a bit of a struggle getting him through the door and when they (stupidly) go to fold his wings which he hasn't been moving much he rounds on them, teeth bared and arm up to strike. They both end up flinching and then he's ducking his head and not meeting their eyes and they talk him through it as they fold his wings, and wince at the pained whining sounds

They move all the furniture in the living room to the sides and put down two of the blankets and get him sitting in the middle.

They aren't sure what to do about the burnt skin, it looks beyond repair and somehow like any rawness from when they first saw him had healed into a hard thick layer, he also didn't seem to mind when they touched him. So again walking him through their steps out loud, they dip a rag in a bowl of cool water and work it along his body. The gold substance has dried a bit and flakes off when they wet it, it reminds them a bit of dried blood but there are no visible wounds/scars/damage underneath it.Whatever it came from, whoever bled gold, it wasn't him.

The holes along his body look worryingly like what they'd imagine empty eye sockets would look.

They card their fingers through his feathers, gently plucking out anything that's loose (it's most of them). After that they rub an aloe vera ointment on the places where the burns seem the worse. While they do all this he watches them as much as possible, but immediately turns around if they catch his eye.

The wings. The wings are a problem. They are frantically scrolling through their phone reading articles while a YouTube video about splinting a wing plays on their laptop but they have no idea where to start or how to splint it or with what for that matter and whether he'd accidentally rip them to shreds if they tried to and actually they're pretty sure he's watching the video on their laptop and huh. So they talk to him, they tell him the problem and they ask him if it would just heal like his burns did if they set the bone (maybe it won't heal properly but maybe at least it won't cause him pain - they tell him this too) and he's watching them with bright, considering eyes and they're spiraling a bit and rambling and then he's nodding his head and rolling his eyes and turning his back to them. 

They set the bones and wrap them up as tightly as they can, he whimpers and whines and squirms but he digs his claws into the pillows instead of into them

Once they are done they bring the rest of the blankets and pillows to the floor (with his wings he'd be too big for the bed), giving him water and food (all they have is cup noodles but he doesn't seem to mind). After instructing him to sleep on his front they go flop on their bed and immediately lose consciousness.

Hours later (in the evening) they wake up and walk into their living room and SCREAM BECAUSE HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK THAT WASN’T A DREAM WTF WTF WTF WHY IS HE SCREAMING TOO

After their inevitable breakdown which isn't made any better because it happens simultaneously with his inevitable breakdown. They decide (the next day morning and fuck their sleep schedule is fucked) to deal with things one day at a time. 

The next week is all about cute bonding and shenanigans.

Healing is an accelerated process that only takes a few days but it's not a complete job.

The burnt skin heals into a pitch black shiny sort of leathery skin, with the skin healed they can see white markings along his front and back.

The last of the feathers fall out and new ones start growing back in. Unlike the previous ones these are a shiny black and remind them of crow feathers, they come up all through his legs, at the base of his wings, and a few along his shoulders/arms. To stop him from scratching at them they use a warm damp cloth to ease the irritation (when they'd initially just given him the cloth it had resulted with a lot of grumbling and huffing on his part until they'd taken the cloth with a roll of their eyes and swatted at his head - they'd immediately frozen because wtf was that he could probably realistically eat them but he'd only responded with a playful shove).

The bumps on his head turn out to be horns, that he's constantly trying to get them to scratch at.

The sockets and the missing skin on the lower half of his face don't heal & they should probably be more disturbed by it but for some reason they don't see it as anything too strange, it's just another part of their odd impromptu roommate.

The wings take the longest to heal and their bare skeletal form now looks more like bat wings than bird wings.

By the third day the tips of his horns are poking through his head and they distantly wondered while scratching around them if he was one of those mix & match animals from Australia like the platypus. Part gazelle, part bat, part crow and part human.

Once he heals he has boundless restless energy and is always skittering around the cottage, knocking things over like some large cat. (Part tiger?)

They have to convince him to let them file his nails so that the floor doesn't get scraped up

He's always talking. Even if they don't understand him and his words sound more like bird noises it's still him talking. If they don't listen or look distracted he'll caw at them loud and angrily.

He's very clingy and very warm. By the end of the week they find themself spending more time in the nest in their living room than in their own bed.

They don't even notice that stuff has been going missing until they one day go to kick some of the blankets outta the way and end up stubbing their toe on something hard. Underneath the blanket is a little treasure trove of shiny things from coins to the caps of pens.

He comes along with them whenever they go out to the woods with their cameras.

He seems determined to survive on cup noodles alone and honestly personality wise they're pretty sure he'd pass for one of the guys at their college.

They're pretty sure they walked into him crying while watching Cinderella, cuddled up under the blankets.

Wherever he's from they had technology because they once spent a whole hour staring at him and feeling like they were living through a fever dream while he hunched over their laptop and tapped away at it. He got caught to many many scams and they ended up getting a virus but it was worth it for that single image.

They're pretty sure he has some kind of system with the crows because suddenly there's a whole flock of them visiting the cottage and sitting around it and leaving more shiny things for him to add to his collection. They feed them just to be on the safe side.

He has nightmares. Things that leave him shrieking and growling and sobbing. They press as much of him as they can into their chest and vow to protect this monstrous creature from anything, even God himself

They sometimes catch him staring at the stars. They wonder if he misses whatever home he came from.

He avoids mirrors or any reflective surfaces. Goes so far as to flinch away from them. They preen his feathers and call him 'Pretty Bird', he grumbles and huffs and mumbles something that they think probably means 'Not a bird!' they cackle and tell him he's the prettiest ostrich they've ever seen, he shoves them and they shove back and soon they're playfully wrestling on the ground. He makes sure to be careful of his claws/talons

The first time they realise his marks glow in the dark they nearly have a stroke

He ignores them for a whole hour when they laugh after finding out he is afraid of horror movies. 

Their hands are running through his hair and scratching at the base of his horns while he is curled up around them, his tail (something which like his horns hadn't been there when they first met him and honestly they feel like they're missing some sort of symbolism here) wrapped around the calf of their leg. At first they think he is growling but have to stifle a laugh, lest he ignore them again, once they realise he is purring.

They call him Star purely because that's what they thought he was and he acts like he hates it but they've seen that small stretch of human skin on his face flush at it.

No one in town saw a meteor shower.

They're not sure what they are gonna do with him, not after their two weeks end but they know for a fact they're not leaving him

Both MC & Mammon are dumb af and don't realise how dangerous the other technically could be to them

One and a half weeks later there's a knock on their door and they're pushing him towards the back of the house before they go to open it.

There's probably the most beautiful man they've ever seen at the door and they're blushing because wtf.

He's dressed incredibly well and they're pretty sure they've never seen him at the town, they take a peak over his shoulder and there's no vehicle behind him. Looking closer at him, he looks tired with bags under his eyes.

"I'm looking for my brother" he says and they're blinking because they have no idea what to say to that. The guy almost looks expectant like they're supposed to come out and say that yeah actually they know exactly where his brother is. And they're opening their mouth to actually apologise to him when there's a loud noise behind them and the man's eyes drift past them and widen.

They're panicking 'cause they know exactly what they'll see when they turn around and when they do turn he's charging towards them and the stranger and they're yelping and jumping out of the way while screaming at him not to attack the guy wtf wtf wtf.

His body collides with the guy's and they both stumble out of the door frame at the impact and they are scrambling after the two of them expecting blood and guts. But instead their shooting star is purring loudly, tail wagging, clinging on to the stranger with a death grip and his face buried in the man's neck.

The guy is somehow managing to carry the whole weight of him and is clutching at the feathers on his back with just as much of a death grip.

Maybe one of them's adopted?

The man catches their eyes and his eyes glint red and his mouth twists in the beginning of a snarl but then their roommate is shifting in his grip and murmuring something and the guy's face is softening for a split second before it hardens again and he whacks the other over the head.

The two speak in soft murmurs but they catch parts of the man's words "Father", " Diavolo", "Lilith", "worried", "human body", "Wrath", " family", "Mammon"

He's nodding his head at the man then before disentangling himself from his (older?) brother and turning to them. He takes a few steps towards them and the man says in a warning tone, "Mammon".

He ignores his brother and walks up to them

"Guess your name's Mammon, huh?"

His eyes scrunch up in a way they know means he's smiling. 

"It's cute. Suits you."

And he's blushing and huffing and they're looking at his eyes that are still so human and suddenly they're hugging him tightly and he's hugging them back and they're squeezing their eyes shut and burying their face in the soft feathers at his shoulder.

"I'll miss you, try to stay out of trouble"

He huffs again and squeezes them gently.

They open their eyes wondering what the hell they're doing standing outside in the cold morning in just their pyjamas.

They walk back inside the cottage which for some reason seems much larger and emptier than it was earlier. There's a large bundle of blankets and pillows in the middle of the living room and they have no idea when they did that, they try to kick some of it away and end up stubbing their toe. Under the blankets is a large shiny pile of junk. Were they drunk last night?

They finish the rest of their two weeks at the cottage. They clean up the blankets and spend the nights in a bed that remains freezing even when they turn up the heater.

They go through the pictures they took over the last week and a half. There's some good ones but none that stand out. Nothing interesting or special

They feed the crows that frequently come to their window. 

When it's time to leave they get the biggest box they can and fill it with all the junk that they'd found under the blankets. The box sits at the back of their closet when they go back home

They manage to finish all of their studies during the next couple of years and somehow manage to cover all their student debt without any problems (their friends insist that they must have made a deal with the devil to achieve it).

They take freelance jobs as a professional photographer while they work retail part time. Somehow they always seem to have enough money to eat more than just cup noodles and they live in a pretty ok apartment.

They've also taken up driving away from the city to watch the stars during the weekends

Life is good. Normal. 

And then one day they're falling, ass first, into another world and meeting the most beautiful man they have ever seen.

His eyes widen a bit in something like surprise when he sees them but it's gone in a second and then he's telling them they're going to be part of an exchange program between three different realms and he's hoisting them on his brother.

And then they're begging him - Lucifer, that's his name, Lucifer - they're begging Lucifer to take them instead because one phone call with this Mammon guy and he sounds like a dick.

But Lucifer's shaking his head and he looks way too amused.

Then a loud is voice is coming from behind them, complaining about being lumped with a human.

And they're turning around to get a look at the asshole who was now responsible for their life and he screeches to a stop in front of them.

Eyes -familiar eyes, so very familiar- wide and surprised and confused, the anger dissolving from his face as his mouth opens and closes soundlessly.

And then he's saying their name, softly, softer than anyone has ever said it before.

This is posted on AO3 along with the other fake fic outlines/summaries! The link to it is pinned on my blog, feel free to leave a comment cause I feed off that shit :D

[mythrilhusk]

Korosensei Never Dies - Chapter 7

Words - 2,153 AO3 Version Chapter 6 (Last)

Chapter 8 (Next)

TW: vague body horror, violence, threats

The floor trembles as a nearby generator turns on to power the flickering lights. The sterile brightness slices painfully through Ranboo's head. He winces and tries to cover his eyes, only to discover his wrists are bound behind his metal chair. Out of curiousity, he tries to move his feet. Also bound. The taste of dry cotton in his mouth warns of the muffled noises he produces when he tries to shout. 

Lacking options, Ranboo takes in his surroundings. The tight, grimy walls and lack of windows hint that he could be in a bunker. For the moment, his mind is calmly blank, clear of panic, but that could change in an instant. Not this again. Ranboo shakes his head. His fingers reach and clench in thin air, desperate to cling to his book, feel the glittery cover, see the bright colors of the kittens dolphins. 

Sounds of muffled outrage echo through the otherwise silent halls. Ranboo perks up, listening intently. He can't tell who else is in this predicament with him. 

What happened? Blurry flashes of terror, of pain, of rage, boil just beneath the level of recollection. The dart in his neck, spitting poison into his veins, weakening his limbs- 

He can't recall anything. Not even the terror as his friends scream for help, scream in anger, what are they angry for, why are they scared, why are you scared? 

Ranboo clenches his eyes closed, trying to shut out the creeping panic and the soft voice. 

You're scared because you hurt them.

Ranboo shakes his head frantically. No! No, he would never hurt anyone.

But you would. And you did. They're all here, now, because of your little display. Oh, you won't die. But does he need them?

Who's he?? Ranboo glares at the wall, unable to visualize the voice that sounds so very familiar.

"Aren't you an unusual find." The man slouches in the door, draped in an oversized purple hoodie. "Heh. Techno will want you back, won't he." 

Ranboo scowls at the man as best he can with a sock in his mouth. Technoblade and Philza wouldn't care if he disappeared. 

"You want to talk? Too bad. Maybe later. You don't get privileges after what you did to us." 

The sock contains Ranboo's shouts and curses. 

The man smiles grimly and turns, limping out. "Your friends are fine. For now. Fuck up and one of them dies." 

Tears leak out of Ranboo's eyes, burning and blurring his vision. He hangs his head and trembles with small, miserable sobs. He can't even remember what he did to deserve this.

++++

It's the weekend after exams. Summer vacation. And that means time to fuck shit up. Philza has given out a schedule for the fighting classes, so he'll be preoccupied with that, but Technoblade has other plans. 

Techno strides out of the building, narrowing his eyes at the camouflaged form of Awesamdude in the trees. The government security agent has been watching him for a while. Techno's not technically allowed out of Sam's perimeter around the building, but rules are for losers. 

"Techno." Sam greets him as Techno strides past. "Where are you going?" 

Techno wrinkles his nose, wishing he'd transformed into his chrysaor state earlier. Human form tends to be limiting, and the boar-like attributes, not to mention the multiple sets of wings, are useful for intimidation purposes. "Oh, nowhere in particular. I just thought I'd boost the economy of the nearby town with some of your president's money." 

"Have you seen Tommy anywhere?" 

"Mm, no. I'd assume he's on vacation." 

"Interesting." Sam's expression is completely unreadable. The leaves behind him make a fascinating shape, almost like a dog. Techno stares at the waving greenery, failing to catch Sam's next words. 

"What's that? The leaves distracted me." 

"I said, I got a strange call from him, but now I can't find him anywhere." 

"That's odd." Techno yawns. The kid is probably off gallivanting somewhere and laughing about pranking Sam. "Did you try Quackity's treehouse?" 

"No- he has a treehouse? Where?" 

"Forget I said anything." Technoblade waves a dismissive hand. 

"Tell me, Techno." Sam growls. 

Technoblade considers the effort of intimidating Sam, added to the potential backlash onto Philza, and decides it's totally worth it. "Oh, I'm keeping you safe. It's for your own good." 

"Huh? Techno, what do you mean?" 

"Quackity and the Ducklings will shoot first." Technoblade lets a slow smile crack across his face. He can see Quackity sneaking up behind Sam. 

"They're teens, how aggressive can they be?" 

"We sharpen the motherfucking bones of our enemies and use them to slaughter every bastard who stands in our way." Quackity drops down from the tree, grinning wickedly. "Oh, and Tommy isn't at our place, either. I was just looking for him." 

"Quackity." Techno greets the teen with equanimity. 

"Techno." Quackity returns in the exact same tone. 

"Uh, alright, I'm going to go see if Tubbo knows." Sam moves off awkwardly. "Techno, don't leave the perimeter. I will know." 

"Will you, now." Techno returns in a slow drawl. 

"I've got the kill switch, Techno. Don't push me." Sam scowls, then yelps as Quackity kicks him in the shin.  

"Fucking don't ever threaten the old man again, you bastard." 

"Don't let Phil hear you call him that." Techno reproaches with a grim smile. 

"Alright, alright!" Sam cries, losing the battle for his dignity as Quackity manages to steal his cap and then proceeds to wear it. "Techno, go ahead, but if you hurt anyone in the town, there will be consequences." 

"Who said anything about killing? There's no major governmental figures down there. They're safe from me." 

Sam gives a pained sigh and then strides off to look for Tommy. Quackity sticks his tongue out at Techno, then trots to catch up with Sam, still wearing the agent's hat. 

Techno heaves a relieved sigh at finally being alone and free to wander. Hidden in the seclusion of the trees, he stretches out his wings and breathes in the aromatic air. The thousands of souls murmuring in his veins hunger for blood. Not yet, though. Not quite yet. 

++++

Wilbur keeps his eyes closed, feigning sleep as he examines his situation. His feet are free, but his wrists are bound, and there's a gag tied around his mouth. He can hear Tommy beside him, raging through his own gag. Charlie whimpers on Tommy's other side. 

Where's Eret and Ranboo?? What the hell happened?? Wilbur tries to think back.

<<~rewind~<< 

Eret suggested building a treehouse like the Ducklings'. He said he knew a good place for it, so Wilbur and Tommy followed him. Charlie tagged along, cracking terrible jokes with Wilbur. 

After passing the perimeter, which seemed to have been deactivated, Eret stopped at a huge tree. Ranboo showed up out of the blue, disoriented and asking Eret why he was there. 

And then- and then- what happened? 

Wings, so many wings, bird and bat and beetle and butterfly- 

Ranboo transformed. There's no other way to say it. The quiet, creepy boy who had always sat at the back of the classroom went absolutely feral for no goddamn reason. 

A man appeared, dropping from the trees, buried in an oversized hoodie. He was unfamiliar, but Eret fought by his side like they'd sparred together before. Ranboo, or whatever creature Ranboo had become, grew weaker and slower by the moment, lashing out at whatever was closest. Wilbur dragged Tommy away from the fight and tried to flee. 

Charlie was wounded while trying to break up the fight and calm Ranboo down. Tommy screamed and tried to run back to save him. Wilbur had to follow, he couldn't let his idiot friend die on his own. 

Eret stepped back as Ranboo finally fell unconscious to the ground. The mutant-- or angel-- looked almost adorable, lying there in a limp puddle of wings and eyes and claws. Tommy pulled bandages out of his backpack and started binding Charlie's wounds. 

Wilbur remembers the next few moments vividly. 

"Eret, fucking help me!" Tommy snapped. 

"No hard feelings, boys." Eret said. 

A dart pricked Wilbur's arm. Tommy shrieked as he was darted as well. "You bastard, you fuckin basss..." He didn't get to finish his words. 

Unable to move, Wilbur soon followed Tommy into unconsciousness. 

>>~present~>>

Remembering the events only leaves Wilbur with more questions. But one of them is about to be answered. The man in the hoodie stands over him, his heavy footsteps so unlike Eret's. 

"I know you're awake, Wilbur." 

Wilbur opens his eyes and shrugs eloquently. 

"I want you to write a letter." 

Wilbur makes an agreeable noise through the gag.

"Alright, I'll take the gag off. There's nobody near for miles, so screaming won't do anything besides piss me off." 

"Who are you?" Wilbur asks as soon as the gag is off. 

"Purpled." The man checks his wrists to make sure they're still tightly bound. 

"What would you like me to write?" Wilbur attempts civility. There's no point in pissing off his captor yet. 

"A ransom note." Purpled doesn't smile as he moves to check Tommy's wrists. Tommy attempts to headbutt him, but recieves a smack for his trouble. 

"Don't fucking touch Tommy, you son of a bitch." Wilbur snarls, anger sparking in his eyes. 

"Alright." Purpled laughs, pissing Wilbur off further. "Eret, got a pencil and paper?" 

"Yes, sir." Eret limps inside, one arm dangling, broken. 

"I hope it hurts like hell." Wilbur glares at him, baring his teeth. 

"Ha... I assure you, it hurts plenty." Eret gives a small, guilty laugh. "But you'll all be safe. We aren't going to hurt any of you. All we need is bait." 

Purpled unties Wilbur's hands. "Be good." 

"He just said none of us will be hurt." Wilbur retorts, stretching his sore fingers. "What're you going to do if I try to escape?" 

"I'll kill Tommy." Purpled says darkly. 

Wilbur shoots a venomous glare at Eret. "Hm??" 

Eret puts the pencil and paper on a nearby table and moves to the door silently. Purpled answers for him, "We don't plan to hurt you if everyone behaves. But step a toe out of line, and someone will get hurt." 

"What do you want me to write?" Wilbur decides to change the subject. He won't let Tommy be hurt, no matter what. 

++++

Technoblade returns to the school at night, practically inhaling pockies from the several boxes he acquired in the town. The townspeople had freaked out upon his arrival, but they'd been amenable to contributing food in return for his timely departure without harming anyone. 

He enters the school building and flicks on the lights. Philza tilts his head up, raising the brim of his hat to peer at Techno with narrowed eyes. "You're back late." 

"I got distracted." Read: there were fluffy dogs, and Techno gave all of them pats. "Want some pocky?" 

"Sure, mate." Philza catches the box thrown to him, and snaps one of the chocolate-covered biscuits between his teeth. "I just got some troubling news, Techno. But I want you to stay out of this one. I have reason to think it's a trap." 

Techno shrugs with a dry grin. "You really think I'd let myself be taken down by a trap? What's going on?" 

"It's Purpled, mate." 

"Oh." Technoblade clenches his claws into fists, his eyes darkening. "What makes you think I don't want revenge?" 

"I know you do, Techno." Philza says apologetically. "But it ain't safe. He's gotta be working with Schlatt, you know that. If Schlatt is making a move, that means he's got something up his sleeve he thinks can take care of you." He chomps another pocky. "Look, I'll take care of this one." 

Techno strides up to Philza and snatches him up by his coat. "I can't let you be captured, too." He growls. He can't let Philza be taken away, not again.

"I won't be. I'll get help." Philza smiles and presses his hand to Techno's bristly cheek. Techno pulls him into an embrace. "There, there, you big lug, I'll be fine." 

"What happened?" 

"Purpled kidnapped some of your students. Wilbur, Tommy, Charlie, and Ranboo. Eret helped him. I just got the ransom note." 

Technoblade drops Philza with a gruff snort and turns away. "I'm coming with." 

"No, you're not." Philza retorts. "It's a trap." 

"How can you be sure it's not a trap for you, too?? I can't- I can't let them take you, Philza, I can't." 

"If Schlatt wanted me, he'd have me. He's got President Skeppy in his pocket. You know that." 

"Take Sam." Techno growls. "If you refuse to take me with you, at least take Sam." 

"I already asked. He's not allowed to interfere." 

"He will be held accountable if you're harmed." 

"I'll be okay, mate." 

"You better be, Philza. Or I don't know what I'll do." Technoblade gives a dry, ragged laugh. That's a lie. He knows exactly what he'll do. 

Chapter 8 (Next)

[polupenthes]

@mercysought​. | the gentleman: little towns late at night when no one’s awake and the only lights on are the street posts.

Storm Hag, they called her, and call her still. Her brother the Grey Pilgrim, and she the winter he heralds in thick clouds. Both siblings have gold in their eyes, flecking their irises. Her brother’s blue, so his gaze like a sunset. Hers, green, so her gaze like a forest fire.

Each winter she opens her jaws and swallows the moon. Her life as a weapon: unmarred. Sharp and sharpening still. In her existence as the manifest essence of her father lies her becoming, her hollowness, her grief. Her and her brother made to ensure continuity, blossomed from their father’s eye the way other gods may have asked for a writing desk. 

She is the winter, and as such she is cold. This is the dictate of her nature. Her nature demands, and she must answer. Her brother was a fool for thinking otherwise, that nature could be annihilated, ignored. It isn’t. It cannot. Nature is skin. It is muscle and the precision of sinew. 

And it is blood. On her hands. On the knife. The knife she left behind on the wooden floor (clatter!) and the blood didn’t wash off of her hands even now as she melts from raven-form to human again and her knees give. 

No one to catch her. Her palms smack hard on the cobblestone. The late night lights from the windows, flickering pressed up against the darkness, eyes of the great beast of life. She did not look where she flew: she flew, out the window on dark wings and Símidh’s voice still ringing in her ears as his hands grabbed her shoulders and shook. Shook her.

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU D--

No. None of that. The sting of her palm exorcises the last of the sound from her ears. Her blood, or the blood of this shape, at the tip of her tongue when she bites it. What will drown her, now? She had done what she had been made for, begun to. 

Death was not beyond her. It was her: death and the rebirth of her nature. On the gravel of time her hands laying divots, making mountains and forming, forming, breaking. Water was of her as much as ice. 

She could make it storm, if she wanted to. She could scream and the sky would split open with thunder. And the sound would be a sound of reckoning, discovery. Instead what she has is the deep heaving sobs that vomit inside her an agony. She claws at her collar, tries to catch the terror and pin it down to name it. But it just exists. It exists and it has a name: Medrawt, one she does not discover but rather look in the mirror at. The anger at his reticence, the terror at his horror, and the love beneath it all still hiccuping through her chest making it all of it so raw, so skinless in the sun. 

The storm comes. Heavier rain than the village elders expected. The clouds bruised black, the thunder voracious. Her hair sticks to her forehead. She stands but her knees cannot, cannot hold her. Even her body unravels, rebels, refuses. Refuses. A word she barely understands. A word she barely knows in its entirety. Instead holds it fragmented in her chest like shrapnel, refusal, as if even the possibility of it were too much.

If she were to refuse, refuse her father and refuse the fate he made for her, where would that leave her? What would that make her? Betrayer? Scion? Of self and of purpose, of blood. Blood-breaker. But when she closes her eyes she sees Medrawt cradling Akua’s body, and sees nothing beyond that. Her knees will still bruise in the mud and her hands still grab those fistfuls of wet dirt. 

His hand appears just above her line of vision. He stands completely dry, untouched by the rain she has brought. The rings glint in the lights pouring from the porches, those lanterns swaying lightly in the wind and inside them the bright flame of civilisation. 

A child sits at the window and looks into the darkness of the night pressed up against the warm light of the fireplace, a membrane of thin gold to keep such relentless black-blue at bay. She cringes as she squints past the glass to the wind and the storm and the rain. She does not see the two figures and they do not want to be seen. 

Bheur takes the hand that is offered her, and he pulls her up so she stands. She looks at her stained hands and not at him.

“You always come when I need you.”

He says nothing. Half-shadowed. Like an apparition. Like hallucination.

He comes because her knot in the tapestry has come unraveled. He comes because he has been asked to watch. He comes because if a tree does not fall it cannot be heard. What does it matter why he comes? He comes, always, as the water rises and she drowns in it.

He takes her hand. She is already cold, she is already rotted: the anaerobic environment of her pain peat that seeps into her clothes and skin, digesting, unmaking and re-making into dirt, into rock, into land. She is land. She was giantess before she was daughter, and before she was daughter she was sky.

Elsewhere she would be half-dead. 

She is animal wounded. She is darkness devouring, devourer. 

He says nothing and she knows he is thinking. Of what? How he will sketch her and rot her in his painting of this moment, done yesterday and in a hundred years and while she was still thinking of her act as salvation and not murder? Before. Before. The sun had set upon her and she had been too foolish and happy to notice and by the time she had blossomed red with her dagger the knowledge of her nature had erupted bright and foolish in its half-innocent surprise. 

No beauty, now. Hag bristling and her eyes hardened to granite-marred stones. Volcanic rock. The earth in all her splendour, coagulated and bending upwards in constructions of chert. Around her all the storm, fanged and vengeance-hungry, of a winter come early and merciless. 

She pulls her hand out of her grasp. He thought too long. He said nothing.

“Will you stop us? Can you, stop us? Now, with the die set and my destiny aching to be held?”

Can that which is not born but created have destiny? Hold destiny, understand what destiny is? Can story made flesh choose its own ending? She turns to look him in the eye and find she cannot pin his eyes into any shape that can be seen. It’s maddening, it maddens her. Knees muddied and dress all torn and hands stained with red and then with rich, dark earth, and the wind that howls. 

“SAY SOMETHING!”

Her hands, palms splayed, to his chest. To shove, a child with a broken toy. Were she to rage any louder the ground would shatter into splinter. Beneath her feet it tenses, a skin waiting to be cut, and she feels all of her power condense in the middle of her.

What a reckoning silence can bring. 

His. Her father’s. Her brother’s. 

She knows why he is silent. Because this is choice, litmus test, threshold made specifically for the threshold-dweller. He cannot stop her and he will not: he will not make that decision for her.

So she is alone with the thought of it. So she is alone, then, with the pain and the consequence of it. A loneliness unending and unyielded, one she cannot parse. She lacks the tongue of it for it though she is older than many tongues in many skulls, soothsayers or just simply marsh-dead. Her hands are so cold. Her body so cold, also. 

The blood will not be washed so simply: the blood will be her testament and undeniable legacy. To be bloodied. To be of blood. 

The bright winter cracks across the sky in the shape of lightning. White-hot, veins carved into the pliable fabric of a night as merciless as it is cold. He wants her to think the decision has not yet been made, that the hope for redemption is pliable.

Sweet enough and close enough she could pick it ripe from the vine.

But this is storm, the first deep storm of winter. Any fruit would not survive the unyielding barrage of the rain. Any fruit she could have tasted she has already cast aside, the flesh peeled back to reveal all the ways in which she tricked herself with freedom.

Medrawt will learn it too, she knows. She will make him learn how freedom has a price and the price for them is to break each other’s hearts.

No.

She made her choice long before she crumbled here. She made her choice in the sunlight, the sliver of it, she made it when she decided to silence Akua forever. And in Símidh’s eyes was a rage that had no other name but hate.

The Gentleman’s silence demanded this choice be brought to the present. But there’s none of it left, and it is spent. And it was made. And to those that she loved most she has become monster-creatue-animal. And to her old dance partner who offered her his hand she is none of those things.

But the innocence and compassion he may have been able to gift her is spent, emptied. Lies in their hands, bird skulls emptied of summer. Too thin and light to survive this torrential rain.

In the rain the strong beating of wings: her form of black raven (twin to her brother’s white) takes flight, and with it the rain stops. 

His silence opens chasms. And it is too late to close them.

[dicebox]

The Challenge of Fears - Alisaie

At some point in the darkness, from one second to the next, the texture of the ground beneath Alisaie’s feet changed. While tracking wasn’t in her primary skill set the way it was Ava’s, five years in the frozen wastes of Eun-Bac had taught Alisaie to pay attention to what her support surface was doing. The stone upon which she stood was smoother, and there was a general sense of a reduction in unimpeded space around her, as if she were suddenly walled in. Not just physically, either: between heartbeats, that sense of magic inside her - both the internal rhythm she drew upon for bardic things and the celestial hum that bore her wings and all other abilities great and small that came with her species - clenched at the heart of her, beating against ephemeral walls like a bird in a bottle.

That was her first clue that this was bigger bullshit than ‘someone turned out the lights so hard not even someone with darkvision could see in it’. She hated it immediately. She opened her mouth to start swearing ... and stopped as she realised that nothing was coming out but air.

No voice, no wings, no magic, no light, no freedom ... no friends.

No Remi.

Lacking verbal ability, she immediately went to her fallback, learned with painstaking care in the culture she’d called her own for a few years. When the lights came back up, she was mid-invective, using Eun-Bac specific idioms that somehow managed to wed grace and obscenity. Upon seeing the night-cloaked archfey looking at her from about three feet away, she directed the rest of the profanity (the People’s short-hand for ‘pus from the cock of a pox-infected dire moose so stupid it chafed its own penis mounting an iceberg it took for a female in estrus’) at him before raising her hands and slamming both palms into the almost invisible barrier she’d already felt was there. Her glare was pure challenge; she didn’t need her words or her hands to tell him to come and have a go if he thought he was hard enough.

“We’ll cut straight to the chase,” the archfey told her, meeting Alisaie’s hate-filled look with one of tolerant amusement, a blade master watching a five-year-old with a wooden sword issuing formal challenge. “You’ll be under an illusion in a moment, and then you’ll be fighting a certain paladin of your acquaintance. The terms are to the death.”

Alisaie’s response to that was no less eloquent for its silence. Her hands flew in the worst invective she could come up with.

“Of course, she’ll need a moment to see you. Proof of life and all that,” the archfey went on with a smirk. “So she’ll be permitted a brief look. But I warn you - either before or during the combat, if you intimate to her in any way that you are other than a shambling horror needing to be culled ... I will end her. And I will ensure it’s painful. That would be on your head. So choose your course of action wisely.”

Alisaie stopped signing, hands clenching into fists. While as passionate as any barbarian or bard had ever been, one of her key elements of value to the group she’d fallen into was her common sense. She employed it grudgingly, every conclusion a dagger in a heart already lacerated with what had been taken away.

The archfey - Eryn’s “Lord of Chaos and Misrule”, probably; there was a note to his taunts that indicated the contempt bred by familiarity - wanted them to suffer. For Alisaie - the pain of either having to knowingly kill her girlfriend, or letting said girlfriend kill her, all unknowning ... until the end, at least. For Remi, the flip side of that coin; either finding out that she’d killed her girlfriend at the last possible second ... or being shown with her last breath that her girlfriend had knowingly cut her down.

Ignorance could be forgiven. Deliberate murder could not - at least without mind control being involved in some way, and fuck her life that this was the sort of shit she now had to think about. Plus, Remi had the means of restoring life, if caught quickly enough, while Alisaie couldn’t guarantee getting Remi’s body back to Hazel. She didn’t even know where Hazel was. If their flaily-cute cleric was in the same kind of mess, she might not be in any shape to resurrect Remi in time, higher-powered resurrection spell with its highly expensive diamond or not. Even then, resurrection spells weren’t guaranteed to work.

...Which meant Remi’s might not work either. Still, Alisaie would bet on her Ree, and on Ziriel. What’s more, she could not knowingly attack Remi with intent to kill. It was literally impossible for her. She was a Protector. Sometimes that meant more than just killing those who would do harm. Sometimes it meant taking the blows so someone else didn’t have to.

The archfey was gone by the time she’d worked that one out; Alisaie cut her pondering short as the barrier in front of her shimmered, clearly about to be a two-way illusion. Which meant that Alisaie had a part to play, and she’d better play it lest His Majesty of Misrule take it as an attempted warning. She knew it was pointless to punch the barrier in front of her; she knew how this had to end. Still, it was as good a way as any to vent frustration and misery. At least she had that outlet. Remi, as Alisaie saw when her small, sturdy, adorkable girlfriend’s expression went from exasperated sarcasm to frustrated rage as she saw Alisaie banging on invisible magical walls, did not. All Remi would be given as a vent to her anger was ... someone she’d regret hitting, later.

Alisaie couldn’t give a warning, a clue, anything. Even if the archfey wouldn’t understand it, neither would Remi. Determined to teach Remi more of the language of the People than endearments if and when they got out of this alive, Alisaie signed the first bit of her chosen culture’s language she’d ever taught to Remi: cupped hand to the heart, nail of the middle finger being the only part to actually make contact, before held out in a gesture of offering. My heart is yours, it said ... but it said more, in posture and nuance and all the other little things the People used instead of inflection and stressed words. It said I will never hold this against you. It said This changes nothing of how I feel for you.

It said: Whatever happens, I will live on, and if your heart is the only place where I still live, it is still the best home I can ask for.

As her perspective changed again and her illusion-draped form appeared in front of Remi, she took a moment to hope that she’d be able to explain the full meaning of that last gesture before, reluctantly playing the part of the shambling horror, she aimed her first strike at Remi’s shield.

[shapeofreality]

Shape Of Reality

Blinding light fills your vision, prompting you to close your eyes. Soon after, searing heat surrounds you. An unpleasant burning scolds your skin and the urge to cry out is making itself clear when half a second later, it vanishes.

“What the heLL-“ you start to hiss, but your mouth suddenly snaps shut abruptly without your will, and your eyes widen in slight panic at the bizarre action.

All you can see is bright whiteness that threatens to shine too brightly, but you can tell that you’re floating. Somehow you are.

You squint your eyes and attempt to pinpoint your surroundings, more importantly an exit, but to your dismay, you see nothing.

Suddenly, the white scenery around you glows more fiercer and sharper than you thought it could, taking you by surprise.

For a couple moments, you go blind.

Then, excruciating pain courses over your body, ten times worse than the previous blistering on your skin from before.

It ripples through you like electricity, and when you open your mouth to scream this time, whatever unknown force that resides here lets you.

The agony lasts a bit longer than the burning, but only by a few moments.

It’s gone, but something feels different. Drastically different.

Your fingers feel numb and there’s two twin weights seated heavily on your back. Your limbs feel oddly longer and sturdier.

Before you can open your eyes, wind whips harshly at your face and you can feel yourself hurling through the air.

Everything is a blur.

You hit what feels like soft grass, but you crash into the ground so fast that you flip over and tumble a few times.

During the commotion, you had bitten down on your lip to withhold your scream, but now, you can taste blood.

One last ache washes over you and you wince, but finally will it in yourself to blink your sore eyes open.

At first, everything seems normal.

You had landed in the middle of some lovely meadow. There are a few trees around, accompanied by several bushes and flowers. The sound of birds singing pleasantly resonates in your ears.

The sunlight is warm on your skin.

And then you look down.

Your own sharp scream of pure horror and shock that flies out of your mouth uncontrollably startles even you, but it isn’t as startling as what you’re screaming about.

You don’t have skin.

You have scales.

You don’t have hands, you have fucking paws.

And it takes you a moment to process that the heaviness on your upper back near your shoulder blades are also wings, and that you have talons and a tail.

A second screech rips out of you - or maybe you were still screaming - and you panic fully now, clutching wildly at the grass with your new... claws.

“HOLY SHIT-“ The first tangible words shoot out of your mouth as you move to stand up. Or, well, attempt to stand up.

Your mind isn’t quite catching up with what your eyes are seeing, so you automatically try to stand on two legs, only to fall down not so gracefully on your back.

“FuCk-“

You land on your wings and flinch at the foreign feeling.

Humans are supposed to have four limbs, not six.

But... you’re not a human anymore. You’re a fucking dragon.

You must be dreaming... right? It has to be the only reasonable explanation. People can’t just morph into fucking dragons.

“This can’t be happening-“ you cry out in alarm, rolling over and wincing in fading pain.

You hesitantly sit up and out stretch your right wing to examine it. The new limb flexes and moves, and you can’t help but be mesmerized by it.

Curious now, you twist your head as much as you can to get a good look at your new body. Surprised, you find yourself satisfied by your appearance; your scales are a mix of your favorite colors in a nice, blending way.

With this thought, you jerk your head back to stare at the sky, eyes widening.

Where the hell are you?

How the hell are you going to get back?

What brought you here?

This time, when you try to stand, you make sure that you use all fours... instead of standing up. It’s incredibly strange, but it obviously works, considering your new state.

You wince one last time, and awkwardly fold your wings against your sides.

The blades of grass are soft underneath your paws as you start to walk. Maybe you could find someone to help you. Hopefully.

Someone had to have heard you with all your earlier screaming.

“There’s gotta be someone here that can help me...” you mutter half-heartedly. A little prick of doubt is rustling inside you, but you push it away.

A couple minutes pass by, seeing that the sun hasn’t moved much from its place in the sky.

You twist your head around to examine your surroundings. For some reason, it feels oddly familiar. Like you’ve seen it before.

Your eyes start to widen in realization, whispering to yourself, “Oh my god, it can’t be-“ You turn around in a circle, blinking furiously to try and see if what you’re thinking is true. “I’m-“

You get cut off when the sound of approaching, loud wingbeats resonates nearby, making your new ears twitch and perk in awareness.

“Hey, you!”

The voice sounds behind you, and then the landing of paws on the ground.

You have never heard that voice before, but you felt like you knew it.

And when you turn to see the source of all the noise, you can’t help but gasp in mixed surprise.

A particular group of four dragons and a sphinx are staring right at you.

“HOLY FUCKING-“

Amen takes a step forward with a stern lash of his tail, snapping, “Quiet! Do you have any idea where we are right now?”

His black eyes seem to bore into your soul and you snap your mouth shut.

“I- I think-“ you stammer, your wings flaring out a little, but you don’t notice. If you‘re correct, you are near the cult clearing.

You were in the fucking game. Or- story?

“Your screaming might’ve attracted-“

“Easy, Amen,” Devotee snorts, shifting his weight on his paws. “This girl doesn’t seem like she’s in an okay state.”

“This could be a cultist playing dumb, Dev,” Serqet cuts in, her fur bristling just a bit. She casts you a narrowed glance. “We should be careful.”

Poison lifts her chin up a little, looking at the others briefly. “If they were a cultist, I’m sure they would’ve dashed away by now,” she reasons. “Maybe she just escaped the cult, thus her screaming.”

Serqet’s whiskers twitch for a moment and she seems to be considering Poison’s reasoning.

“Well, maybe Ser’s right,” Apollo chimes in. “She could be faking it- what dragon is dumb enough to scream after escaping? This could be a trap.”

You continue to stare wide-eyed at them, too in shock to speak up.

You’re a dragon. You’re in fucking Dragons’ Life. You’re standing in front of your beloved characters that you had made with your friends. You‘re in the Gospel Cult Roleplay, the story that you all had been doing for over a year.

To see them in person, to see them right there? It absolutely went beyond your belief.

“I’m- I’m not a cultist-“ you finally force out, your words not as confident as you’d like them be.

“Oh, really?” Amen huffs skeptically.

“Uh- yes,” you cough anxiously. How can you convince them?

Telling them that you are technically one of their creators of their lives and actions wouldn’t exactly be a good option. They will think you’re crazy.

But... maybe you could use that to your advantage.

“My name’s (y/n),” you introduce yourself, swishing your tail instinctively. “I’m not a cultist, I swear- I know your names are Amen, Serqet, Poison, Devotee, and Apollo. I know that both of you-“ You gesture to Devotee and Amen, “grew up in LA. I know Apollo was on the run from the cult. I know that Serqet was banished from her home because of an idiot named Nimbus. I know Poison lost four children before. I know that Amen lost his sisters because of his father, I know Devotee wants out of his father’s organization-.. I- know a lot of things...”

The squad gapes at you with seriously widened eyes and they share alarmed glances with each other. The information you had just spilled contains some facts that the cult couldn’t have learned, and it was staggering.

“How-“

“I come from another world,” you explain hurriedly. “And- and I have no fucking clue how I got here in the first place so-“

“Slow down, slow down-“ Devotee intrudes in your explanation, shaking his head lightly. “I think you’ve made it clear that you’re not a cultist.”

Serqet still looks a bit unsure but seems to agree for the most part, while the others nod.

“(Y/n), you said, right?” Amen speaks up, tilting his head slightly.

You shiver momentarily as your name rolls effortlessly off his tongue, but you will yourself to nod.

“Well, uh- assuming that you know everything, you know Edgar, correct?” he inquires.

You nod once more. “I do.”

“Well, maybe she could help you find a way out of our world and back to yours,” Amen points out. “She’s pretty skilled.”

You feel yourself brighten up and nod again. “That sounds great- thank you.”

Devotee steps forward to stay alongside Amen, twitching his ears.

“You know Emperor then,” he quips, narrowing his one eye at you. “You know things about him? Maybe you could help us defeat him.”

You blink. You hadn’t even thought about the demon cult leader yet. You know he is the villain, obviously, but you can’t help but wonder what it would be like to see him in person.

“I do know a lot of things about him- I guess I can help-“ you say, your brows furrowing. For some reason, you are unsure even though the words had already slipped out of your mouth.

“Great,” Serqet says in obvious approval, flicking her tail. “But we really gotta move- we’re in cult territory right now. We came here to find some good ambush spots but I think we found someone more helpful.”

She shoots you a somewhat grateful look, and you summon a small smile at her.

To your surprise, she smiles faintly back at you.

Apollo perks up from beside the group, chirping, “Let’s go-“

He stops short when shadows cross over the ground, and you hear more wingbeats. Judging by the heroes’ tensing stances, you assume that who is arriving is someone you know.

“Well, well, well,” a deep voice coos from behind, and you freeze. “What do we have here?”

It has to be who you think it is.

Not daring to even breathe, you slowly steer yourself around and once again, you’re hit by a tremendous amount of shock.

Emperor is standing right there in front of you in the flesh, his beady emerald eyes gleaming with confidence and a hint of curiosity, and the way he holds himself up radiates dominance.

His feathers ruffle a bit in the light breeze, and you see his dark, sharpened talons flex in an also subconscious way.

But what strikes you the most is the fact that his beaming eyes are locked onto you.

You can’t help but stare back, seemingly fixated into his trance.

It is only when he speaks, do you blink and finally inhale sharply again.

“Aren’t you a pretty thing?” he hums, an obvious smirk playing on his jaws.

It takes you a couple heartbeats to realize that the compliment from the demon is directed to you, and you blink rapidly for a few times.

He must see the disbelief on your face because he chuckles, then drags his gaze off you to the main squad that is now behind you.

“You must’ve experienced quite the scare for your screams to be that loud,” he continues, examining the heroes behind you. “I understand you, really, mortal. These heroes are quite horrifying to look at.”

You hear them mutter curses directed to the demon and you can practically feel them roll their eyes.

Emperor hums, lashing his tail. “What’s so special about you?”

If he knew of your knowledge, there would be no doubt that he would try and take you.

“Nothing you need to know,” Amen snarls protectively.

Devotee lashes his tail as his talons twitch, adding, “She’s with us.”

The two heroes’ claims makes you glance back at them, but the squad soon walks up to stand beside you, all of them glaring at Emperor.

It is only until now do you notice Aqua and Cryptic holding themselves up beside Emperor, along with several other cultists you don’t know the names of.

“I can sense something about you, dear,” Emperor purrs, ignoring the defensive statements and locking gazes with you again.

You stare back helplessly.

“You’re... different,” Emperor continues, flicking his tail. His next sentence is clearly spoken to the heroes’, but he is still staring at you. “I’m afraid she won’t be yours for much longer.”

You step back, taken aback by his statement.

This time, Amen and Devotee move forward and use their wings to shield you.

You blink in surprise at their protective gestures.

“Alright, we’re leaving now, Emperor,” Devotee snickers, his left wing tip brushing your snout a bit.

Amen’s right wing tip brushes against Devotee’s on your snout, and he chimes in narrowly, “We can do this the hard way or the easy way, demon.”

Emperor tilts his head back and laughs, his wings flaring out slightly and his feathers shaking a bit.

You see Amen and Devotee tense while Emperor laughs for a few more moments.

Suddenly, the demon’s head falls back forward and his face becomes coated with an expression of darkness.

Two words slip blankly from his mouth.

“Get them.”

You can’t help but shriek in slight fear when Amen lounges forward to crash into Emperor himself, and the demon’s goons rush to the heroes.

From the corner of your eye, you see Poison knock Cryptic off her paws, resulting in the mage hissing in fury and throwing Poison back with a burst of her magic.

Serqet charges in on the other side, barreling into some cultists and using her own magic against them.  

Devotee stays near you, and you squeak when he suddenly uses his left wing to pull you against his side.

“Stay close, (y/n)!” he barks out gruffly, using one of his trembling paws to knock an incoming cultist away, sending their jerking body to the side.

Apollo, on the other side of the group, throws a stick at one of the cultist’s eyes, and with that one winded out, he claws at another’s one neck and shoulder.

Devotee’s wing brushes your side as he fends off another attacker with bared jaws.

You observe the battle, panic slowly rising in your chest again. What will happen if you die here?

You definitely didn’t want to find that out.

Amen’s snarl is loud amongst the sounds of the battle and you jerk your stare to see the red and black scaled dragon slice through one of Emperor’s tendrils.

Emperor dodges one of Amen’s lunges and two large tendrils slam into Amen from his side, sending him flying to the side of the meadow.

Devotee’s eye widens and then narrows when he sees the demon racing forward towards him and you, and you shuffle back in fright.

The former cult leader raises back partially on his hind legs to bring his undoubtedly twitching paws upon Emperor, but the demon snarls knowingly and summons several tendrils to wrap around Devotee’s wrists and yanks themselves to the side.

Devotee crashes onto the grass and his paws don’t affect the shadowy tentacles. More of the snakelike entities hold him to the floor and he snarls furiously.

Emperor snickers triumphantly as he approaches you, and you find yourself unable to move as he starts to tower over you.

You should run or fight back or something, but before you put your mind to move, Emperor is clutching your left wrist tightly, his talons threatening to dig beyond your scales.

Up close, you could feel his aura stirring and his smirk is bright and twisted.

“You’re coming with me, strange mortal,” he declares.

You try to respond but he turns swiftly and uses his right wing to pull you close to his side now, and you flinch at the sensation of his feathers brushing your scales.

You gasp when there’s suddenly a tendril shaped into a form of a spear pointed at you, dangerously close to your neck.

The heroes cease fighting when they take notice of your state, and the still standing cultists retreat to stand behind Emperor.

The tendrils release their holds on Devotee and he immediately scrambles up onto his paws from his spot on the ground.

Three cultists are dead, and Emperor tuts lightly at the sight of the sight of his defeated followers.

“Shame,” he notes breezily, then straightens his posture. “Thank you for my lovely prize, mortals,” he tells the squad in a slight snicker.

You gaze at the heroes whose expressions are a mix of disappointment and frustration, and you freeze when Emperor’s feathers brush your scales again.

You blink in surprise once more when you see that Amen and Devotee are both staring at you with look like seemingly worried gazes.

“You won’t get away with this,” Serqet snaps, her golden glare piercing through the demon.

Emperor simply scoffs and though the spear-like tendril vanishes underneath his shadow, it is clear that the threat of you gaining a sliced neck is still present, so you and the others don’t make a move.

“But you see, Serqet,” Emperor chuckles dourly, “I already have.”

With those words, a tendril or two wraps around your torso firmly and you squirm when you find yourself somewhat chained to him.

His feathers shake and he takes off into the air.

“W-wait!” you announce meekly, ducking your head in slight embarrassment. “I- uh, can’t fly..”

You have never used wings before; you’ve only been a dragon for a good couple of minutes. You’re sure that if you attempted to fly, you’d be more of a mess.

Emperor hovers in the air for a few moments, the sound of his soft wing beats the only thing filling the silence as he narrows his eyes at you as if he was evaluating your statement.

“You really are a strange mortal,” he mutters, then he motions an arm up stiffly, and soon, the tendrils lift you up into the air as if you weighed nothing.

As the ground seems to fall underneath you, you stare at the heroes in a frightened manner, and they stare back with seemingly frustrated and determined gazes.

Emperor throws them one last snicker before flying off, and you squeak when you start moving in the air as well, the tendrils keeping you bound to him firmly.

The wind softly strokes your scales and you force yourself to breathe in and out, trying to calm yourself as the forest underneath you blurs.

You find yourself glancing at Aqua and Cryptic, who are flying on each of Emperor’s sides, while the remaining cultists surround the other sides and the back.

Even if you were to break free, even if you knew how to fly, you know you wouldn’t make it far.

The wind actually starts to feel nice on your scales, and though there are cultists soaring behind you, you decide to extend your wings out to get a sensation of soaring yourself.

Suddenly, you feel eyes on you again, and your wings immediately hug your sides when you see Emperor glancing back at you blankly with a hint of curiosity.

You lower your gaze away quickly back to the trees, but as you continue to move, you see that the forestry is starting to space and clear out.

You feel your fists clench in anticipation; you must be getting closer to the notorious clearing.

Soon enough, the trees disappear, and you seen the slight ravine leading towards the entrance. You lift your gaze up, and if you focus enough, you could see the magical barrier surrounding the cult area.

Emperor and the others slow down, and you see the demon leader wave a paw in the air. He waits for a few moments before moving forward and through the barrier.

You brace yourself as your form approaches the wall of magic, and you flinch when you feel it cascade over your body like a cold wave.

The others follow you and Emperor, gliding effortlessly down into the clearing.

At the sight of them returning, you are finally aware of the amount of many eyes of cultists and demons directed towards, mainly, you.

There are cultists guarding the entrance, some outside of their dens, some in the many sections of the clearing, and others standing on ledges. All of their gazes are a mix of curiosity, coldness, and suspicion, and you find your wings clinging even more tightly to your sides.

Emperor had landed on the far side of the clearing you had seen in a screen so many times, a bit secluded from the workers of the clearing.

You feel relieved when you feel the grass underneath your paws again, and then the tendrils are tugging you closer to the demon who has had made you land near him.

The rest of the patrol lands near you two as well.

He turns and waves a wing at the cultists, and they promptly leave to refresh themselves. Aqua and Cryptic remain standing with you.

“Cryptic,” Emperor addresses her, and the lead mage obediently raises her head to acknowledge him.

“Please let the mages that I have found the source of the burst of strange magic we sensed earlier,” Emperor continues, “I’ll question her, but make sure that they’re ready in case I need their assistance.”

Source of strange magic? You’re pretty sure your head is spinning again. Did they sense you coming into their world?

Cryptic flicks her tail and nods. “Of course, Emperor,” she quips. She waits for a moment, and only does Emperor gesture with his wing for her leave, does she saunter away.

Emperor finally looks to Aqua, who noticeably straightens her form when she sees that his attention is now on her.

“Aqua, you can tell the cultists the same thing. Make sure you lead another patrol tonight though,” he orders.

The young mage dutifully nods as well. “I will, sire.”

Emperor does the same wing gesture again to send her away, and you watch her fly up to one of the ledges to a cultist group.

You stare at her, confused. You have no idea what time in the plot you were in right now, but since the cult noticeably had more demons, Emperor and Aqua weren’t hiding their relationship, right?

Or maybe you‘re wrong. A lot has happened, and your mind is still rushing with the fact that you are with the characters in the first place.

Then, a sense of awkwardness creeps up onto you, and the realization of being alone with the fearless leader finally dawns on you.

You force yourself to stare down at your paws, refusing to meet his gaze that is undoubtedly focused on you.

His tendrils haven’t let go of you yet either, and when you feel them tug you again, you look up, a bit scared.

“You still cannot fly?” he inquires blankly, and you merely nod in reply.

He narrows his beady eyes at you and lifts off again, the tendrils yanking at you suddenly so you’re lifted up with him. You yelp momentarily.

You can still feel eyes on you so you shut your mouth and place on a blank expression. You cannot look scared in front of these dragons.

The demon observes you briefly before flying to his den. His tendrils tug you inside impatiently and you make haste to follow him inside.

As you walk in, you take a moment to examine his den.

You don’t see Aqua’s flowers on one of the shelves - they may have wilted, depending on the time of the plot you were in - and there’s a desk with several books against on section of the wall.

There’s a small bonfire in the corner of the room, and near it is a nest made of many leafy bedding and soft moss. You blink curiously when you see claw marks on the wall near the nest.

Emperor stops in the center of the den and turns to you, and the tendrils release their hold on you, sliding back to him.

You freeze, your breath catching halfway up your throat again. You know you can’t run; he most likely locked the entrance to his den with magic.

Like when you first saw him minutes ago, you find yourself unable to speak as you stare back into Emperor’s unnerving gaze.

He finally breaks the silence, drawling out slowly, “So...”

You finally breathe again when he starts to near you, his movements straightforward and smooth. He then swiftly moves to the side, and soon, he is circling you, analyzing you.

“What is your name, strange mortal?”

Oh, telling a demon your name was truly unwise. But he would know if you lied, and you weren’t going to take the risk of facing the consequences.

“(Y/n),” you tell him quietly, meeting his eyes every time he passed in front of you. You find yourself slowly sitting down, flinching and curling your tail to you when you feel his tail brush yours.

“Lovely,” he hums, but you are unsure if he means your name or the fact that you responded without much hesitance. Yet, the word makes you lower your head slightly.

He stops in front of you, and you shrink down a bit, feeling small underneath his stare.

”Well, (y/n),” he starts lowly.

Your name coming from his voice makes you shiver and blink hard, and he continues to speak.

“My name is Emperor.” He pauses and smirks. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

This time, you blink in surprise and you lift your form up a little. “W-what? But how do you-“

“You’re not from this world, are you, (y/n)?” he presses, taking one step forward. “The demons and mages, along with I, sensed your upbringing here, dear.”

“Oh-“ you whisper, your tail curling towards your legs even more as you tilt your head back to stare wide-eyed at him.

“Yes,” he affirms, swishing his tail once. “There is magic radiating off of you right now, strange mortal,” he comments, tilting his head ever so slightly. “It is.. fascinating.”

What were you going to do? “We are going to have a very interesting time together, (y/n),” he suddenly purrs.

You exhale shakily.

What have you gotten into?

—

It has been a week since you were captured by the cult.

Emperor has ordered you to stay in his den, and if you were caught outside without permission, he had promised there would be severe punishments.

He did allow you to peek outside every once in a while, and you were always grateful for the moments of fresh air.

He had spent most of the time with you simply studying you and asking you simple questions, mostly about your unknown sense of aura that surrounds you.

Thankfully, he never seemed to need sleep, so sleeping right beside a demon was the least of your worries.

Though he was rightfully frightening and rough, considering his well-being and status, he never made a move to hurt you.

Despite his odd treatment, you didn’t want to live like this. Like some sort of piece to study, to keep and feed like some sort of pet.

You still had your family back in your real world. Were you missing in your world? Were your friends and family looking for you?

And you have yet to tell him about your knowledge of him and the rest of the characters. If you tell him what you know, he would undoubtedly use it to his advantage.

You shake your head, a popping crack from the bonfire startling you and breaking you of your thoughts.

Emperor refuses to let you touch his work, but lets you read some books he had deemed safe for you to use to pass the time.

So here you were, laying in the nest and flipping through a book. The language was something you had never seen before, but the demon leader had given you a little sheet to help translate it. It helps pass time indeed.

“(Y/n),” a familiar voice announces at the entrance of the den, making you snap the book shut instantly.

Emperor stands, partially inside of his living space with his feathers ruffling a bit.

You stiffen, unsure of what he wants. You prick your ears, awaiting what he has to say with you.

“I have decided something,” he says almost absentmindedly as he saunters further into the den, closer to you. His stare suddenly focuses into one of concentration when he finally reaches you.

His emerald stare is calculating and curious.

He tilts his head slightly at you, and you stare back silently.

His next words are a shock, and you cannot hide your surprised expression.

“Would you like to go out on a walk? Or stay here?”

Go on a walk? Stay in clearing?

[enderprtl]

chasing down the devil part three

we are Not Done (there’s one more part too), here is part 3 of me and @betweenlands​‘s shadow au fic (by the wonderful @mine-sara-sp​) for reason you shouldn’t piss off the shadow-vex

p.t 1// p.t 2 

WARNINGS FOR FIC: BODY HORROR, ANOTHER BIG ASS FUCKING FIGHT, BLINDNESS (APEX CAN’T SEE). 

iii.

Scar’s shadow and Paladin stood in eerie silence over Apex’s sleeping form, both heads tilted in curiosity at the aggressive shadow (who was currently out cold).

Paladin kicked him with their foot. “He’s strange.” 

Scar’s shadow just hummed in response - its partner had come back with nasty wounds, the magnum opus being a gouge in the center of the shadow. Paladin, of course, had found it hilarious, sticking a shadowy hand through the hole, giggling wildly as the two shadow-vex conversed. The knight had begged them to be able to go see Apex, wanting to see if the shadowy arm Avarice had described was still there. 

It wasn’t.

Paladin kicked Apex again with their foot, backing up quickly as Apex stirred. Paladin giggled. “He’s waking up! Keloid, look!” 

Apex dragged himself up off the ground, head snapping towards the sound of Paladin giggling, lip already curled into a snarl. “Keloid. Move closer so I can kill you.” He still couldn’t see - the visor wasn’t exactly organic, it wasn’t going to grow back onto his face.

He could feel Keloid’s cold glare in response. “Why? I could easily crush you here. You cannot see.” 

Paladin giggled softly, skipping across the room, dragging their fingers across the gouges in the wood. “Did you do this?” 

Keloid stared down Paladin with disappointment, and Paladin’s grin fell into a soft pout - he went and stood behind a decaying statue, blending in with the shine of the room. 

Apex pushed himself up further, onto his knees, standing shakily without his sight as he tilted his head to the side, tried to pinpoint where exactly Keloid - Scar’s shadow, it had to be - was. He took a step forward, pounded one fist against his battered chest.

“I can still move. You aren’t safe.”

Keloid laughed - not a garbled or glitchy sound, but something soft, real, like Scar’s loud, jovial laugh from a room miles away. It stepped forward, using a hand to hold Apex’s jaw firm, making him face it eyes on.

“You have no weapons, you have no eyes. You are useless, android.” it said, voice a glitchy and droning sound.

Paladin smirked from their hiding spot. “What did you do to Avarice?” They climbed up the statue and sat criss-cross atop it, leaning forward.

Apex tilted his head towards the sound of Paladin’s voice, twisted his face into a grin. “Move a little closer and I’ll give you a demonstration.” He grabbed at the hand he knew was somewhere near his face and held onto Keloid’s arm with as tight a grip as he could muster. “Unless you wanna volunteer, shadow-vex?”

Keloid let out a low growl, only to compose itself. It wasn’t going to act a fool, not like Avarice; it tightened its grip on his jaw, another free arm holding up his right arm, gripping it with malice. Its voice was still soft, emotionless. “It came out of this one, did it not?” 

Paladin kept giggling, their head rolling back with a loud laugh that bounced around the room and grated against Apex’s ears. “I want to see him do it! Keloid, make him do it!” They tilted their head and pouted, wide yellow eyes going wider. 

Apex gritted his teeth, curled his free hand into a fist, tried to step closer to Keloid. He couldn’t see anything - his vision was filled with yellow light and pretty much nothing else - but he knew generally where the shadow-vex’s body mass was, now. “Why d’you want to know? Cub’s shadow is the bruiser out of you two, do you really think you’re going to survive this fight?” He spat towards the ground, doing his best to glare up at Keloid without actually having eyes.

Paladin giggled, jumping down from their little seat and skipping over to stand right besides Keloid - they looked over the dull and blurred yellow outlines of Apex’s eyes before drawing closer to him. “Oh, don’t underestimate Keloid! It looks harmless, but it could kill you in a sundry of ways!” They poked his cheek, voice too cheerful and bright, and he lunged at them - a bit too slowly, though, his hands caught nothing but empty air.

“So can I,” he snarled. 

Paladin cackled, a cheerful, almost terrifying laugh - it bounced off walls, it rang in Apex’s ears… and it was infectious. He felt the ends of his lips pull up into a smile, fought back hard against the urge to laugh and instead curled his grin wider and angrier.

He lunged again, wrestling out of Keloid’s loosened grip as he smashed directly into Paladin, grabbed them by the shoulders. “You wanted to see what I can do, huh?” 

Paladin grinned. “You fight dirty.” They tilted their head back, then smashed the bridge of their helmet into his face. “So I think I will too.”

Apex felt his nose break, saw stars against the yellow background of noise on his blind eyes, and something in him snapped again - he started laughing, a low, garbled chuckle as he wiped his face off, as his jaw distorted out of place. “All right. My turn.”

He pulled Paladin closer, yanking them forward by one arm as he raised his right arm again - felt it distort and crack, a new limb clawing out of his shoulder as his ordinary arm hung uselessly by his side - and slammed one shadowy fist into their face, knocking them flat on the ground.

Paladin spat something yellow, the shit-eating grin growing wider on their face. They reached up and brought down their visor, whistling softly. “Whoops.” 

Something yanked Apex right off Paladin and slammed him into a wall - the thick, glitchy growling coming from it confirmed what he suspected, Keloid had ambushed him. He rubbed his head, pushed himself up off the ground once more, tried to figure out where the two enemy shadows were in the haze.

"This is what I mean. Your precious little Paladin really can't fight someone who's blind and wounded on their lonesome? Gotta help them out?" Back to his feet. One shaky step forward. "Trophy got a little rusty all locked away with nothing to fight? Pathetic."

He took a deep breath in, then roared again, as loud as he possibly could - felt his mouth open further than it should’ve been able to, teeth where there should have been none, he was screaming at the top of his lungs with a thousand voices in chorus - "COWARDS!”

Keloid snarled, baring every fang in its wide mouth and swung at Apex, talons extended in a flurry of blows, going at his strange arm, every blow getting more aggressive than the last. 

Paladin giggled wildly, “Keep going!” They scrambled on top of a pile of rotting metals, watching the fight from a fair distance. They pulled their visor up, wide yellow eyes watching the shadow-vex claw at armor and shadow. Each hit made them erupt in a flurry of cheers and wild laughter, metal clinking against metal as they clapped, their grin growing unnaturally wide. 

Apex was getting sick of that stupid laugh. His vision was still gone, but… just faintly, in his haze of anger, he could make out a fuzzy grey shape among the blinding yellow. A bit of a stretch away... it had to be them.

"Shut UP," he growled, pivoting on his heels and lunging at the distant shape. Keloid's claws came down on his back as he turned - leaving a scar behind, he was sure it'd hurt when he wasn't totally enraged - but he slipped away from the shadow-vex and barreled towards the wavering grey silhouette of Paladin.

Paladin laughed, and stood up, boots sinking into the pile of metal underneath them. They pulled out a thin, shining yellow blade and raised it up, waiting patiently. As Apex’s form barreled closer, they stuck just a sliver of tongue out, and brought the blade down slashing into his chest. 

He didn't flinch. Didn't even pause anywhere but internally to register the pain of yet another wound on his body. He probably should've died by now, but that wasn't going to stop him - Apex was running on nothing but spite and rage and pure energy at this point.

He grabbed Paladin's sword-hand with his shadowy arm, let out another roar as he tightened his grip, aimed their arm back, and forced their stupid glinting sword into their chest point-first, pushed it right through their armor. "Shouldn't have done that.”

Paladin cried out in pain, eyes narrowing as the blade dug deeper, then looked up, smiling. Claws dug into Apex's back as Keloid once again grabbed him by the shadowy arm and pulled him off Paladin, throwing him into a pile of metal. 

It was getting harder and harder to stand up again, but that's what Apex did - slowly, shakily. "I told you. As long as I can still move, you aren't safe." The wound across his chest hurt even more than he'd thought it would now that he was actually bothering to register the pain - he wobbled on his feet, but managed to stay upright.

Paladin pulled the blade out of their chest as their grin fell quickly into a pout. Keloid growled and stepped forward… and then stopped short. 

It paused, stared over the wounded shadow, at the thousands of gold scratches on grey and black. Fragile. Glass-like. A stained glass picture of a bird, two bright yellow gems for eyes, its wings broken off from abuse and wear. Keloid hunched over, picking up Apex gently. It tilted its head curiously, and began to leave the room. Paladin stared in shock, hands now on their hips, “What are you doing? Keloid? Keloid!” 

Keloid ignored the knight, walking out of the room. Paladin ran out, following the shadow-vex, eyebrows knitted, eyes locked on Apex’s blind ones. 

Apex, for his part, was not enjoying this one bit. He struggled weakly against the vague shadowy blob holding him, trying to escape Keloid’s grasp - unfortunately, though, while it was holding him gently, this was still a firm grip, and every single motion he made was starting to hurt. He scrabbled at the ground with his shadowy hand, trying to pull himself away, but Keloid just kept moving. And frankly, he was too exhausted to ask where it was taking him or why.

Keloid slammed a free arm onto a button and a door clicked open, pistons creaking as the entryway slid open. Paladin walked in and groaned - this was their vault. The room with their diamonds, their gold, emeralds. All of their shiny things. Keloid placed Apex down with uncanny gentleness. “Be nice,” it said, looking over towards Paladin.

Apex was not feeling nice. The second his feet touched the ground of the new room, he lunged at Paladin again, lurching somewhat unsteadily on the new terrain. He didn’t have the energy left to actually say anything, but the snarl he made was a fairly obvious declaration of his intentions. As far as he was concerned, he’d been moved to a new arena - and he was still going to kick the snot out of Paladin, make them regret messing with him.

Paladin wasn’t in a good mood, either. Keloid put the shadow that’d stabbed them in their room, and told them to “be nice”? They weren’t in the mood to be nice, no, they wanted this shadow out of their room. The piles of gems began to rumble as they backed up from the charging shadow. Their pout fell even further - they weren’t acting anymore, they wanted this stupid shadow gone. 

Paladin backed up against one wall as piles of gems started to shift around them and the gold chandelier began to sway in circles. They were angry; angry at Keloid, angry at Apex, angry at everything and everyone that wasn’t them. Paladin wailed, their foot slamming into the ground. “It’s not fair!”

Two dozen emeralds flew through the air, somehow reacting to Paladin’s explosive tantrum. One sliced right past Apex’s cheek - he couldn’t see these projectiles, and another one hit him blunt-side first in the stomach. Still, he stumbled forward, even as another emerald caught his shadowy arm in its elbow, ripped through so hard that it dissipated.

Paladin was outright frowning now; Apex had made them ruin perfectly good emeralds. They stomped forward, every step closer to Apex making more and more gems bounce higher into the air. They grabbed him by the collar, spitting in his face as they yelled at him. 

“You’re ruining everything!”

Gems got pushed back in waves like a shockwave tearing through the room, pushing gems and statues up against the wall and spinning the chandelier in circles. Apex just gritted his teeth, grabbed Paladin by the helmet with one hand and slammed his fist into their face. “You’re going to regret taunting me,” he spat back. “I don’t lose my quarry.”

Paladin pushed Apex back into a pile of gems with surprising force. The diamonds and emeralds were sharp - they poked small holes into Apex’s back, and he winced in discomfort. Meanwhile, Paladin stormed forward, teeth bared, their cheerful nature completely diminished. They reared back, winding up to to punch Apex in the jaw, only for a claw to pick them up and set them aside. 

Keloid, looking quite distressed, came over and scooped up Apex and threw him over its shoulder - Apex struggled again, but he was in a pretty inconvenient place and couldn’t quite reach any weak points.

Unbothered by Apex’s squirming, the shadow-vex left the room, sighing as it looked over the damage caused by the two shadows. It clambered up even more stairs before coming to another door. When it opened, Apex could hear birds chirping, and the sound of flowing water. He was set down in lush green grass. “Don’t break anything,” Keloid grumbled.

And it left.

[lassieposting]

Do you have a HC on angel/demon bodies in the Lucifer universe? Like, it seems that the goddess never her own physical body based on what Maze said about when she was in hell. And we know that demons possess humans, but do you think they have their own bodies as well? If they have their own do they leave them behind when possessing? Do you think Maze’s form is her own or did Lucifer allow her to possess a recently deceased human so that she could accompany him to Earth? What about angels?

oh my god i have so many thoughts on this i dont even know how to structure this post, literally this is me rn

post under the cut because yet again this bitch be ramblin

ok so, starting with the celestials

GOD

I’m not gonna elaborate too much on God, because I’m in the middle of writing a fic which elaborates on how I see his body/physical shape working and it would spoil a twist. But a few non-spoilery thoughts: 

- God and Goddess are completely different species, from different universes

- God is - as far as he knows - the last of his kind. The universe he was born in was destroyed by a massive war; his species are naturally peaceful and he had no part in it. 

- His species are immensely powerful; he can cross between universes with ease as an adult, and the ability to create universes is a species talent, not an individual one. They can all do it. They live for billions upon billions of years in deep space, so that’s how they pass the time. 

- He’s naturally telepathic. Goddess is not at all, and the angels inherit this from him but only to a very minor degree - they can sense when another angel is in the area, but can’t actually perceive one another’s thoughts. 

- He doesn’t originally look like us. Not in the slightest. But changing his shape is very easy for him, and he is capable of “modifying” his own internal biology, so he can and does choose to take a human shape - having hands with which to manipulate objects is useful when you’re no longer living in deep space, and being able to communicate verbally is useful when you’re the only major telepath in your (very large) family. 

 GODDESS

- Goddess does have a solid, physical form, and she actually has our basic shape too. “Two arms, two legs, a head and a body to hang them on” is a popular evolutionary route in her native universe. 

- Humans and demons, however, don’t have the right eye equipment to see her properly. Humans see in three dimensions, demons in one or two more, but neither species has enough perceivable dimensions or colours to actually make sense of Goddess’ true form. We see her as a blur of light, because that’s all of her that’s visible to us. We’re actually only able to see like, 30% of her and it makes our brains freak out some. 

- Lucifer knows this, but neglected to mention it to Maze when she was torturing Goddess in Hell. He did nothing to defend her when God kicked her out, because he’s smarting over her abandoning him, but at the end of the day she’s his mom and he loves her. He’s the only one in Hell who can see her properly and interact with her physical form, and there’s no way he’s going to actively participate in his mother’s torture. 

THE ANGELS

Now, I believe “canon” says that the angels were created as adults, but fuck that, because baby angels. 

- The angels were created with wings, but they don’t get their first feathers until they’re toddling, so they’re like weird little naked birds for a bit. 

- They moult every few hundred years while they’re still growing, and they don’t get sharp primaries until they have their adult feathers. Once they’re fully grown, they won’t moult again, but they’ll grow new feathers if the ones they have fall out or are damaged. 

- No one actually knows how long their lifespans are. No angel has ever died of natural causes. But they’re long. The angels Chloe knows are archangels, the oldest, and even though they’re physically full-grown adults they’re barely out of celestial puberty. Tom Ellis plays Lucifer as having the emotional maturity and worldview of a teenager. Amenadiel is the overtired early-20-something having to live away from home for the first time. 

- Their abilities are genetic - they were born with them and have a chance of passing them on to any nephilim they create - and they start manifesting around the toddler stage. 

- The toddler stage is fun, actually. Way worse than the terrible twos for humans. Their first set of feathers come in which is itchy, they’re teething, they can talk enough to be defiant, they’re climbing up/falling off everything, their powers start developing, they’re clingy, and the tantrums are spectacular. 

meanwhile, in hell

in my headcanon, hell is home to three classes of demons:

ELDRITCH DEMIGODS

- the oldest, most dangerous and rarest creatures in Hell. They did not create the dimension Hell is located in, but they did shape the landscape and were the original rulers of the dimension.

- the original users of what demons call magic. lucifer learned some of this during his time in hell - illusions, levitating his pentecostal coin, his desire ability, the fine art of binding someone with a deal and get yourself out of any situation with a loophole. 

- the eldritches feature prominently in my fic but have absolutely nothing (as far as I know) to do with canon - the only reason I’m including them here is because my personal headcanon is that Lucifer’s angelic gift is his light. His “hypno eye thing” is something he learned while he was in Hell. he wasn’t lying with what he said to chloe - it’s a gift from a god, but not a gift from his father, god. 

HELLBORN DEMONS

- these demons have no human DNA at all. 

- they’re older than the lilim, and more physically powerful, but they’re less adept at magic (glamours, for example) and mind games. 

- hellborn demons look nothing like humans. they might not be bipedal at all; leviathan is a giant sea serpent. spines, extra jaws, multiple sets of teeth, a ridiculous number of limbs, too many or too few joints, no eyes at all, exoskeletons etc are all perfectly normal demon traits.  

- those that have eyes are red, yellow or black. my hc of hell is inspired by the very deep ocean though, so it’s just as common to have no eyes and a superior sense of smell, or electroreception, or sonar, instead. 

- they can learn to glamour, but they still wouldn’t look right. there would be something subtly off about them, something in the mind of any human looking at them screaming at them to run. they’re the basis of those horror stories where someone looks just a little wrong; they don’t blink enough, or seem to have too many teeth, or they walk wrong. 

- they’re more durable than lilim demons. short of a celestial, an eldritch or a bomb, nothing stops these fuckers. they can come back from insane injuries that would absolutely kill most life forms. if you leave one critically injured but don’t finish it off and make sure, chances are it won’t die. it’ll crawl off and recuperate and come back for you later. 

THE LILIM

- the lilim are the descendents of lilith and, as such, they have human DNA. the closer their link to lilith, the more human they appear - maze, for example, is almost entirely human in appearance except for one half of her face. the more distant the link to lilith, the less human DNA they have, and the less human they appear. 

- really common lilim traits: claws, fangs, scales, horns

- almost all lilim have the human body shape and facial features arrangement, so they’re bipedal with two eyes, a nose and a single mouth. yellow, red and black are all pretty standard demon eye colours, but lilith’s eyes are white and her children tend to inherit them. the more diluted her blood gets, the less likely a child will have her white eyes.

- with practice, the lilim can glamour their demon features and pass undetected among humans, unless they choose to reveal their real face.  their physical strength, speed and heightened senses remain the same even under a glamour. 

- because of their human ancestry, lilim demons don’t need to possess a dead human body. but it’s a lot more convenient. to leave Hell in your own body, you need to a) leave through the front gate and b) have a way of generating enough energy to shunt you across the divide between dimensions. for maze, this was lucifer; he carried her out of Hell. but she can’t return (or get out) without him. God, Goddess or any of the eldritch abominations would also have that level of power. 

- plus, like. with a dead human body, you can take as much damage as you like or commit as many atrocities as you fancy and just change your body when you’re done. you don’t need to be careful of injury or worry about sustenance. and you don’t have to compete with anyone else in the same head, which is a vast improvement over possessing someone living.

[syxjaewon]

part 2 ; vaster than empires, and more slow

the ship that hovers over the window of serenity’s front view aperture is a calamity, a disaster, a catastrophe, shattered into too many pieces to count, spread across about a mile-wide radius, its engine in three different places, its wings shredded like a tortured bird, metal and glass and fiber floating cold and empty through space. the light from distant kalidasa casts monstrous shadows, makes beasts and nightmares from every angle, giving more fear than illumination, and jaewon reminds himself that this is what it means to be doused in the radiance of a vengeful goddess, a hungry queen, a bloodthirsty sun.

henry and harper are on the bridge with him, standing apart from each other, their eyes locked on the scene before them just as steadily as jaewon’s, even if their sight isn’t as mechanically enhanced as his is, just as intent on the panorama, sifting through what’s really there and what might be illusion, what’s part of ‘the emerald dragon’ and what’s part of the cygni contra system. he has the scanner going, beeping out a radius around them, the signal desperate to pick up signs of life amidst the debris, but it’s difficult, he reasons, for any sort of wave to capture those readings, because of the asteroids, because of the meteors, because the belt itself is a hodgepodge of minerals and stone and every sort of interference imaginable.

that’s the only reason they’re not picking up anything.

“jaewon,” harper tries and he can feel her eyes cut to him, but he ignores her.

“we need to get around all this mess, there’s too much for the scanner to pick up on.” he moves serenity slowly through the cascade of rock and rubble, careful not to bump into anything larger than she is, mindful of the occasional avalanche storms that fall through this area. the cygni contra system is known for its turbulent formations, boulders knocking into each other, causing rifts and bursts, sending hundreds of smaller stones spewing outwards like bullets, hazardous to passing ships and nosy neighbors. he’s endangering them all, and his serenity, just by being here, by lingering here.

“we can’t get closer than this, we’ll hit something,” henry’s voice is solid, logical even if jaewon doesn’t want that right now. it’s true enough and the captain hates him a little bit for saying it.

but he needs to get closer, needs to see it clearer, needs to reach his hand out and thread his fingers through the remnants, touch the bow of this derelict, feel its pulse, feel its heartbeat, feel the cold from its corpse; to be sure, to be certain, to be absolutely fucking without a gorram doubt, because he cannot sit all the way back here and wrap his mind around the loss of this wreckage and everything it housed inside it. his chest churns like a sputtering engine, gold eyes glued upwards, every nerve in every cell in his body aching, yearning, tensing.

but henry continues, “we’ll need to take one of the shuttles, we could fly those into tighter spaces than serenity.” he and jaewon exchange a glance, heavy with the understanding that neither of them could stand back to something like this and jaewon remembers that henry knew saito for as long as he knew vera, working on the ship for a year before jaewon had returned from the war. saito is nowhere near as igniting as vera was, measured and calculated, unphased and immutable against the verse, but jaewon knows from experience that that’s never been something to stop henry from connecting with a person before.

he shifts the gears to pull back slightly, and then burns the engine at a low, parking the firefly a safe distance away, where the asteroids are small and few and she has a better chance of floating undisturbed. “harper, you stay here and man the controls, in case something large and threatening tries to poke a hole my ship.”

and just then, something pings on the radar, faint at first but getting stronger, as though it’s spinning into their net. life.

the captain is out of his chair and down the bridge steps like a gust of wind, into the hall and flying down the stairs to the cargo bay where the exosuits are hanging, his boots thundering across the metal as he runs, echoing through the corridors like serenity’s heartbeat pumping back to life. he meets henry in the left shuttle, already flipping on the dials and revving up the engine, lights flickering on and a hum vibrating through their shoes, and jaewon shuts and locks the door.

he turns on the communicator still connected to serenity’s frequency and tells harper, “give us the coordinates of that beacon.”

“jaewon, there’s two now. in two separate places. i think they’re escape pods.”

he turns away from the comm as henry pulls the shuttle away from it’s hook up at serenity’s side, and sheds his coat before stepping into one of the exosuits, fitting the legs on first and pulling it up over his pants, attaching the straps, locking the buckles, syncing the gear. “send them both. send whatever signs of life you get.”

jaewon dresses as henry drives towards the coordinates, wondering who else was in that ship with saito, who else might have survived, might have escaped, might have dodged death in its most horrific format. how many were on board, what was the ship for? why was saito driving it? what were they running from so distraught that they felt the only way to survive was a suicide attempt through a volatile asteroid belt? saito should have known better than this, he should have been smarter than this, even jaewon doesn’t peel his way through death clouds just to shake a tail-- there have got to be safer ways than that. how hopeless had they become?

there’s no definitive reason jaewon should think that saito is in any of those pods, but he’ll check every last one of them to find out.

so they spend the better part several hours collecting escape pods scattered throughout the area, focusing on those first before getting to the emerald dragon itself, finding three with life still strong inside and bringing them into the shuttle. jaewon is about to open them up and wake whoever might still be breathing in there, to check if any of them are saito, but henry doesn’t let him, reminding him that the life-support in the pod might be all that’s keeping them alive and they might need doc’s medical attention immediately; they should wait until they’re back on serenity.

most of the time though, they are sifting through tragedy, coming across too much ruin, too much skeleton, too many fragments. they find over a dozen dead pods and jaewon insists on opening every single one, no matter how mangled or destroyed the bodies inside them are, his eyes hungry, searching, clawing through the probabilities, the statistics, breathing a little bit harder after every one. saito isn’t in them. his fury climbs, his frustration tearing at the edges of his vision, the sharpness of him amplifying, his impatience growing. if he’s not here, he’s in the emerald dragon, but when they search the emerald dragon, and he’s not in there either. he finds more bodies, looking at them all carefully, memorizing the horror, the savagery, the looks in their frozen faces, their wayward limbs, the way the verse has swallowed them whole, the way none of them look like who he’s looking for. food for the reavers now.

for a moment, the gold in his irises peer up at the depthless black sky, dots of burning stars blinking down at him, his kin, his heart, his love, everything he’s always ever wanted, more freedom and space than any human could ever need, and he feels it yawn over him, extend outward from him, impossible, impossible, impossible. his sight is mechanically enhanced, but nothing can reach out that far. did the universe consume saito? is his body somewhere out there, lost in all that freedom, in all that void?

“we still have three pods,” henry attempts to console him with. “there’s still a chance.”

jaewon doesn’t say anything, doesn’t mention about the odds of that chance, the impracticality of it, but they return to the shuttle and then return to serenity, his blood boiling the entire time, churning through his veins, every second stretching like a thousand years, every moment unbearable even as he bears it in absolute silence. he thinks about valluria’s sands, about valluria’s rites, the sound of singing and the scent of spice, about the pyres they make for the dead, the long desert, the long night, the jan’hazal.

when the doors open, adrien is already there, him, harper, and the little robot bringing the body trays with them into the cargo bay railing to better transport the survivors off the shuttle and down into the medbay area. “we still don’t have a lot of supplies, you know,” he warns the captain, something heavy and born of war-time supply-suffering in his voice. he’s used to this, but they both know what it’ll mean.

“hopefully whoever’s in here, they’re not in too bad shape.” he begins hauling the pods off each other, unstacking them. “henry, go fly the ship out of this belt, would you? we need to get out of here before things get tight.”

the first pod opens up to a woman with black hair and only half an arm and half a leg, passed out from the blood loss no doubt, her wound sealed rudimentarily by the pod’s freezing measures, the skin around the gashes burned and charred. jaewon curses and helps the doctor get her down to the bay, stung by how much she looks like sonmi, small and helpless and quiet. he doesn’t need adrien to tell him that there’s little they can do for her, a few bandages and some tourniquets cutting off her likelihood of bleeding to death, but doing nothing for the probability of an invading infection that’s already set in.

harper and jaewon leave her to adrien and his robot to deal with for a moment and head back up to the pods, opening the second one to find an older man, white hair, white robes, also passed out but without any visible, obvious trauma, his coma a possible side effect of the pod’s life-support. together, they bring him down to the medbed as well, setting him up on the side gurney carefully, harper getting to work on hooking him to an iv.

jaewon doesn’t wait for her, doesn’t pause for her, can’t hear her or adrien over the rushing in his ears, the blood in his veins, the adrenaline coursing through him like a storm; one pod left. he gets back up the stairs to it, unlatching it, unhooking it, opening it, his fingers claws, his teeth biting at the brim of his mouth, everything singeing, everything hanging above his head.

he pulls the hood up and feels the universe freeze, his eyes pinned down to the body of a boy, young, thin, unconscious, not saito, and all the stars around jaewon’s head begin to fall, begin to cascade, the sound of his own heaving breaths too loud in his ears, his muscles sore, his chest curling. not saito. there are no more chances left, no more options, no empty derelict left to sort through, no more pods to open and pour himself down into, pour his hope and his hopelessness down into.

how is he going to give saito’s ashes back to the desert, when he doesn’t have saito’s body?

suddenly the boy inhales like he’s never tasted air before, his eyes widening, his mouth opening, his arms jutting out, and jaewon realizes, a little belatedly as the other reaches out for him, that he’s holding a gun. “mittaga iso!” the boy screams, his hands lashing out, striking jaewon in the face with the blaster handle, shoving him backwards as he crawls out of the pod and rolls across the metal plating of serenity’s platform.

jaewon falls back but he’s quick to draw his own pistol, aiming it at the ungrateful whelp as he tastes blood in his mouth, his lip probably cut, his face immediately morphing into a rage, into a snarl, into a blaze. he reasserts his balance, standing up and stepping forward, glaring down at this fool who’s just woken up from a drench-coma like a hurricane.

the boy is dressed in too many robes, green and gold fabric drowning him as he struggles to stand, the pod’s efforts to keep him alive making him wobbly and woozy and off-center, like a newborn deer straining to bring himself upright. he sheds what he can of the mantle and uses the railing grip to pull himself up, too obviously disoriented to be any real threat, even with the blaster in his hand. “do meymasa?” he demands and jaewon sneers.

“you’re welcome for the rescue, you gorram idiot.” the captain lowers his gun even though the kid doesn’t follow suit, but at least he’s holding it the wrong way, his fingers wrapped around the barrel, confirming jaewon suspicion that he’s too oblivious to be wary of.

now the boy finally looks over at jaewon, dark eyes unsteady and unsure, absorbing him in the space their in, the cargo bay opening up around them and below them and harper coming up carefully from the stairs, her hand on her gun as well, although still holstered. “are you,” he tries to speak, clearing his throat, every dreadful, chaotic, confused emotion playing out across his features. “are you the other vallurian? the desert rat?”

“you don’t get to call me that,” jaewon tells him definitively. “my name is yang jaewon, i’m the captain here. you--”

“where saito?” the kid seems like he’s having a hard time breathing, a hard time thinking, a hard time standing by the looks of the way his hands are gripping the handrail, begging for it to hold him up.

hearing saito’s name come from someone else, a stranger, strikes at jaewon’s core like a blow, setting his nerves on fire, twisting in his gut like a bad omen. “that’s what i’d like to ask you. he’s the one who called me.”

“he told me he would try to get into a pod, he told me…” he blinks hard down towards the cargo area, as though remembering is painful. “did you wake him from one of the other pods?”

jaewon chooses to skip right over that. “how do you know him?”

the kid gathers more of himself together, as though he’s dragging shattered pieces of himself back into his body, as though he’s tethering broken limbs back to the core of his chest with tight fingers and unfocused eyes. “he works for my family. for my brother. he was gathering intelligence for us, he was in the imperial palaces when we were attacked.”

“palaces?”

the kid’s voice begins speeding up, like the words just falling out of him, vomiting up without hindrance, without delay. “we were escaping through space but they caught up to us and tracked us through the asteroid belt and i told them we should just use the mechs to get them off our trail, to fight back, to save everyone, but they fired on us too soon and saito forced me into that pod and-- and i could have beat them back, i could have fought them off, i’ve trained, i’ve worked hard, but saito-- hit me and shoved me in, and i just--”

“stop!” jaewon howls at him, cutting the waterfall of sound off, cutting the bullshit nonsense in half, none of this making any sense, none of this meaning anything to him, his voice ringing out with enough authority and power that the shorter male finally manages to look over at him solidly, just for a moment. “just stop.”

but it doesn’t last long for this guy, his mind still spinning, still spiraling, remembering too much and not enough. “wait, i have-- he gave me-- wait.” he stumbles down to the floor again on his way back to the pod, dropping the blaster and hunting through the corners and crevices of the bed. “saito gave me something, said to show it to you.” he roots around like his life depends on it and perhaps it does, perhaps it would if jaewon’s headache made him more homicidal than exhausted, if the gun in his hand stayed there instead of slipping back into its holster. 

the other male gasps slightly and holds a small digital stick up towards jaewon like an offering, like a relic, like salvation, like the answer to every question they both have, all two million of them, and jaewon stares at it for a moment, flashing back to the last missive saito had sent him, the one passed on from vera, last farewells, final goodbyes. he snatches it up quickly, taking it in one hand and grabbing him by the collar of his tunic with his other, turning and dragging the kid along with him down the trail, thick combat boots thudding. they pass harper, pass the doors into the aft passage on the top level of the ship, the kid tugging and struggling the whole way, but too weak and unstable, too deranged and floundering, to break free.

they pass henry on the way, henry who is stunned, henry who is startled, henry who is looking at the kid with something remarkable in his eyes. “endymion? is that you?” he asks, his brows furrowing, but jaewon doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t allow them a moment to reconcile, doesn’t give the kid time to reply back, hauling his ass through to the mess hall and only letting go once they’ve gotten to the table and jaewon has inserted the driver stick into his tablet.

endymion, or whatever his name is, clatters into the chairs, his fingers curling and clinging to them, and finally, finally, when he looks back at jaewon, there’s a fire there, anger, wrath, his temper striking as his teeth shine. “how dare you! what the hell is wrong with you?!”

but jaewon ignores him, jaewon ignores way he hates him, jaewon ignores the way harper and henry come into the room behind them, all eyes pinned to the length of his figure, the way he sets up his screen and lets the thing play, whirling and buzzing until it comes into focus. he ignores everything else in the universe right now as saito’s face comes into focus.

“jaewon,” saito addresses in the video recording, the setting familiar to what jaewon had seen only hours before; the older man in a bridge cockpit, flying a ship that’s breaking apart around him, things crashing and blaring and flashing red. “my transmission cut out, so i’m making this recording and giving it to endymion to give to you, because he’s the one that has to survive; i’m going to get him on a pod as soon i finish this. it’s important, alright? his name is endymion adakiel qalaedes jade fatherstone, he’s--” the ship in the video shudders and saito winces and grinds her around an object in his front view. they’re still running. “he’s the last of the zephyrian dynasty. i’ve been working for their government for three years now, for his older brother anjadakar, against angelan insurgents, and then last night everything went to hell--”

the picture cuts out a bit and buzzes as the ship takes another beating and in jaewon’s peripheral, he spots endymion shaking his head, his face dark, his eyes dark, confusion growing stronger. “no, that’s not-- i’m not the last… my brother was--”

“it’s the alliance, jaewon,” saito interrupts and the word ricochets through his chest like a bullet in a hollow, metal room, clanging around like a curse in his ears. “the alliance and angelan forces combined, that’s who’s chasing us now.” behind saito, jaewon can hear men yelling, people falling, screaming, dying. “i’m going to do my best to get out of this, but i need you to keep him on your ship, until he’s safe.”

“what?” both jaewon and endymion snap simultaneously, neither of them very happy about that idea.

“i promised his mother i’d do everything i can, and you, jaewon, you’re everything i can. he has to stay hidden, from everything, it’s important. i don’t have time to explain things right now, but--” again a crash, again turmoil, again convulsing, saito’s eyes meeting jaewon’s through the space, through the timelapse, through the havoc. “do this for me! i’ll contact you when i can.”

and then for the second time today, the veil between them goes completely black.

absolute silence descends through room as jaewon stares, burning, at his tablet, the equipment resting dark and empty in his grip, and a strange, maddening urge to shake it back awake rises inside him, to force it into telling him more, to force it into revealing saito more.

“no,” endymion says after the pause. “no no no no no, no! no, that’s not-- no you have to take me back, i can’t stay here, i can’t-- captain.” he reaches a fist into jaewon’s sleeve and jaewon shakes him off violently, the two of them glaring at each other, feral and vicious, neither of them backing off, neither of them any less of a storm. “i have to go back to zephyr!”

jaewon doesn’t even know what to say to that, his eyes blazing, his last nerve raw.

“i have to, my people are dying, my brother-- he’s still there, my sisters and my mother-- you have to take me back!”

“i have to think.”

“no! i can’t stay here, they need me!” the boy says it like a command, like an order, and jaewon nearly shoots him dead just for the insolence of it.

suddenly however, adrien is here-- when had he arrived?-- his brow creased in concern, his hands warily outstretched towards the newcomer. “endymion? you need to calm down, you’re going into shock.”

endymion acts like he hadn’t even heard him, shivering and half-insane, infuriated and stuttering all over his words, but angry, angry, angry. “they’re going to kill my father, everyone in the capital city is tied to the rocks, if they bomb the stronghold, everyone will die-- i have to be there, i have to save--”

“you need to breathe.” adrien, steady as ever.

without warning, jaewon throws his tablet hard against the wall, hearing it smash and crack against serenity’s metal, quickly stepping around endymion’s panic and adrien’s pressure, the intensity of the room too heightened, too thick, too choking. he heads for the door, his fists wound tightly, his jaw clenched, the sun seeping out of him through every toxic pore, the venom of his aura flammable enough to destroy a planet.

“captain! i have to get back to zephyr!”

“jae?” he hears harper.

“i need to think.” he doesn’t look back at her, he doesn’t look back at any of them, the mess of them, the tangle of them, even as endymion, his newest charge, suffocates under anxiety and disbelief, collapsing to the floor in the heap adrien warned him about, his eyes rolling back, his teeth locked together, angry, angry, angry.

            *********

the room is much too cold, but that’s the least of his worries now.

he hangs by his wrists in a nearly strangled position, his shoulders in a constant war to keep from pressing too hard against his neck, to keep from cutting off his own air supply even as blood drips into his eye and down from his nostril and into his clothes. he doesn’t think they’ve shattered any ribs yet, but they’ve bruised him plenty, broken his nose, busted his lips, given him enough to throb and ache over for a good long while, even though he knows they’re not finished. men like this are never finished, alliance dogs like this are never satisfied.

he spits blood down onto the floor just as the door opens and light floods into the dimly lit cell, the force of it blinding him, making him wince, until he can blink up at the silhouette of a tall man in a grey-cut coat, the lines of him sharp and precise as a drawing, as a knife, as a nightmare. “saito kyoji,” the low baritone announces to the singular recipient. “my name is salathiel godkiller. it’s time you and i had a conversation.”