#getting tattoos hurts to varying degrees

[youngpettyqueen]

Nessie tattoo has reached itchy stage please keep me in your thoughts during these trying times

[pranabefall]

ノㅤTHE DEVIL'S ANESTHETIC ;; blade.

syn. [ 22.2K ] you were just a doctor, at the start of it all. then came the chaos, the knife, the bits and pieces of madness and coming horror. and in the center of it all, stood him ( a gentle cruelty ).

CONTENT WARNINGS. slight yandere + dark content ahead. reader is south asian coded, blade is a little fucked up and inevitably fucks the reader up a little too. murder, corruption arcs i suppose, medical terminologies i only half know spare me i'm studying in aslp not pediatrics, breaking of medical ethics, the reader is a wet cat and is absolutely pathetic, gang violence, death, kafka being a manipulative milf, angst, acts of murder and mentioned dismemberment, suicidal ideation, SMUT ISTG SMUT, dub-con, non consensual kissing, hatefucking, blade having violent thoughts bc mara, seriously the reader is not daijobu, blade getting off on being killed.

ENTRIES. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING. ( this is my THIRD fucking repost because tumblr KeePS EATING MY TAGS )

playlist ノ author's notes ノ masterlist.

"you can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."

— FRANZ KAFKA.

I. NEWLY DECEASED

“We have another one.” The receptionist echoes out from the front desk.

Another one. The words still the twitch in your muscles, the incessant cleaning and arranging and scrubbing away blood from medical chairs and forceps that should not be here. There are thoughts in your head. They’re dangerous ones, lingering in places that are grimy and soaked in something tarred. They should not be there.

Another one and that’s enough to coat your stomach with ugly, stifling coldness. You don’t reply, keep your eyes down and let the man walk in.

There were never any faces to your clients. They had hands, ringed, tattooed, scarred. Some had suits. Some stank of iron. And they all had guns, or bats, or rusty crowbars and attitudes that were knife edged and brutally coarse. This one is much like the rest. He tells you he was shot in the waist and his voice is static and white noise and discord leaking out of your ears in droves till —

“— will you get moving?! It fucking hurts.”

“Yes.” you choke out. “Yes of course.”

It comes easily to you now, after months of repeating it over and over with varying degrees of perfection and prompt. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the —

( Your thoughts unravel and they’re a mess in your hands like several bits of coloured petals. The scent has washed away. They almost seem to wither, bit by aching bit. )

You step away. “Done.” you tell the suited man and ask for no payments. Your receptionist does not either when he strides outside and it’s smart because patience was a whim when you reeked of viscera. That brazen naivete was drilled out of her a long time ago ( and you too ) and the rules were set forth, rules that must never be broken. You’d seen too many zipped up body bags scattered in the gutters to dare to. You do not want to be one of them.

( Coward, that spiteful half of you snarls and you know it’s right. )

Only he does reach in and throw some loose notes against the counter. You shuffle up to her, nails crusted with brown and red and count fifty kaas. It’s peanuts. It will do.

You were a doctor.

Or at least you’re certain you were. You’d spent the better part of your decade rooted within a small university where standard IPC dialect was taught as a secondary language and the fans hadn’t been replaced for the last thirty years. It was torture during the summer and the hospital adjacent had patients who spoke in tongues you didn’t quite understand. But you manage. You tried, you graduated.

You were a doctor. Your license reads you specialised in paediatrics. Children were all you needed to deal with, some too loud to listen to their parents' chides for silence. Some so young they were small enough to fit in your desk drawer. Some of them liked to talk too and ask questions during checkups and vaccine appointments ( nerves, you reason and you answer the questions ). It wasn’t much. It was peaceful. It was alright. This is your clinic, something you'd built from sleepless nights and mountains of referral literature.

Then you’d see less children and more of those suited men as the streets grow with a cacophony you can’t call safe after this. The carpet was worn down by blood and heavy footfalls, over the thread work and your mother’s faded name in the bottom.

You weren’t treating children anymore.

Still, you hold it together. This is yours, all of this. This is yours and it's a feeling locked away in your beating heart.

When the man returns — and you know it’s him because the birth mark on his hands were hauntingly similar — he brings company. The company in itself would have seemed unassuming, and they were, lingering by the doors speaking in words too fast to comprehend till the gunfire rang out and the windows shattered.

A part of you is thankful that it’s so late, where the streets are silent and the bustle is calm. The files you were rearranging fall to the floor. You duck beneath your desk and stay there, enclosed within tumult, within chaos, within something you wanted no part of ( and you grip your hands tight, quietly wondering if that persistent cat would be fed, if your father would care to know what happened to you ).

You hear glass break, fall, fall and hit the floor with a sadistic sort of tinkling.

You hear frantic footsteps thundering up by the door.

You hear the screaming.

( You hear your heartbeat. You want it to stop. )

Something crashes into the storeroom. It was large, heavy, clothed and it let out a strangled cry before iron clogs up your nose and heat and cold fizzles up and hammers into every crevice and pore and turns your chest inside out. The man tries to shift, to get up and out of the way, shoulders knocking against the shelves in panic that feels painfully palpable. He’s crying. You see that when you bundle into a corner, eyes burning.

His body jerks and is dragged to the door.

“Don’t,” he begs till the desperation chokes his reasoning and it meters into panicked threats. “You’ll be torn apart by this, I swear, you’ll be hunted down — ”

He’s pulled at again, his limp form slipping out of sight. You hear a sick sound — a squelch, the dripping of blood and viscera and the gamey crack of bones. Your teeth dig into your cold fingers. The stinging is numbed, dim and distant, while you press against the wall and try not to wail.

There is only a single set of footsteps now. It paces like a starved animal, like a caged beast. Leave, your thoughts scramble and correct themselves. Just leave. And it repeats, over and over like a maddening chant. Please leave, leave, leave. The footsteps stop at the door followed by a slow scrape against marble. A shadow falls over the doorway. That’s when you see him.

You think he could have been pretty. But there's terror beneath that veil of frozen numbness. You don’t think he’s pretty now, when he’s stalking into the room, bloodied sword in hand ( it’s mired and cracked and mended like kintsugi but twisted and terrible ). He walks like a man who’d been broken and sewn together and he reeks of death and a sickening sweetness.

His gaze meets yours for that fleeting moment.

( it felt like that throbbing helplessness. Of everything going wrong. )

One of the suited men had not died. Not yet, in some inane act of stubbornness. He’s tackled down immediately and you flinch back and finally scream, watching the writhing pile of bodies smack each other down with ease. The swordsman ends it. There’s a chilling disparity in strength with how his bare hands tear into flesh and rips his opponent’s arm off. He’s laughing, laughing like a madman and the insane hysteria sparks a primal instinct nestled in your mind.

You’re moving before you realise it, when you spot his fingers twitch for his fallen sword. Your hands close around metal. You’re surging forward, taut at the edges. That part of you screams into the void, stripping away morality, reason, the simpler parts of shame that could have stopped you then and there.

When your fractured mind pieces together and lets the spinning room rest into clinical stillness, you’re aware of the hysterical laughter that man trembles into. He slumps against your legs, weighted, boneless. He’s still laughing, like the world had whispered a funny joke into his ear and left him to rot.

The dislodged pole slips out of your hands. You watch him crumple down onto the floor, staining the tiles. A swing, a hit to the back of his head, a break to the vertebral artery, a medullary haemorrhage, a stroke, neuron death —

You spend the next hour tucked away in that storeroom, watching the man’s body convulse, then his breathing still and his body run cold.

II. DISTENSION

Once upon a time, you told yourself that you could get by. You could get by and let yourself think you were a good person despite the ugly cracks tucked away and the bated disappointment breathing down your neck. It’s the human experience, a conditioned way of convincing yourself, a way you wish to live in the quieter corners of you.

It’s a lie. A lie. A lie.

The body does not move, as dead bodies usually do. As a frame of reference, dead bodies don’t do much to begin with. You stand back up and feel nausea coat the back of your throat, then wordlessly stumble to the man. Your fingers press against his pulse. Nothing.

A part of you wants to laugh at yourself for hoping.

The police take it all away. They don’t know what you did. Or maybe they do and care so little they swat that detail aside. Death is so natural here, so common and where is the sympathy for the damned when the damned were everywhere and your kindness wears thin?

( You’re left to pick up the pieces. The cracked photo frames, the toys and magazines salvaged, the bowl of tamarind candy tipped over. Bits and pieces gathered together and sewn back together. There was a heart in these walls. The pain was always there, but a dogged part of you loves this place. )

You answer what questions were asked and let them walk away, knowing they’ll do nothing about the situation to begin with. They never do. Most policemen were tucked up in the pockets and played dogs to gang members. Some lost themselves to apathy. Money could buy loyalty in droves. It was an open secret.

You get back home and let the hot water run into your bucket. You feed the visiting cat. You wipe the counters down and unearth some food from the previous night. You turn the water off. You bathe. You eat.

( “I’m fine.” you lie to Aleena when she calls you, frantic, scared. More frantic and scared than you present yourself to be. You don't tell her you’re a murderer.

“I don’t think you should go back tomorrow. I’m not saying this to get off of work or anything but after all that?” she falls silent.

“Maybe. But I need to keep the income coming in somehow.” )

Walking into the bedroom feels harder than it should. Lead bleeds into muscle as you patter along and try to keep yourself steady against the walls. For a moment, you stop and lean your forehead against it and tell yourself not to cry ( because cowards cry, and idiots cry and it was a pointless endeavour anyway because nothing — nothing about this would change ). Your degree falls into your line of sight, framed up against the wall.

You are a doctor. You are a doctor. You are a doctor.

That guilt knocks you in the knees. The guilt, the disgusted guilt that comes from killing a man.

( It’s engulfing, like tar and cloth pressed up against your face. The breathlessness, the storm rattling against the window, the messiness of it all. You’re screaming at the pillow. You’re clawing at it. You swipe till your arm bleeds and the cacophony dies down. )

The veneer shatters and the frame is clenched and thrown to the floor. The casing cracks. You heave, look at the mess at your feet and think to yourself :

What were those eight years for?

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

A gasp tears through. It's painful, heavy and it's glass and shrapnel. The voice in your head whispers. Nothing. It's all for nothing.

Another one crackles through the muffled distortion, straining and rattling. A clear “I told you so.” grating past the chaos, disappointed, smug, knowing.

You shut your eyes and dream of jasmine and marigolds.

( You listened to Aleena when you passed the register and took a day off in the end. It’s the one kindness you let yourself have.

You did not eat for most of the day. Your gut gnaws. Your limbs feel weak. But food, as delicious as the thought seemed, invoked a visceral response. Of corpses and blood and things that you thought yourself too far removed to disgust you. A caved in skull did all this. A caved in skull made you retch and empty your stomach out into the toilet.

You think you deserve it. )

Your watchman stops you when you head back out again a few days later for a grocery run. "Are you alright?" he asks, peering through sleep. The cat curls round his legs and he gives it a gentle pat. You can hear the content purr it lets out from where you stand, and you venture a little closer.

"A little." you reply, smiling a little. The watchman tilts his head in consideration. You'd lost count of how long he's been here. Some of the older tenants mention he'd settled in over a decade ago, when the building still had four floors instead of five and a little more space to park out back.

"You still seem scared is all." he glances over at you again. It's the worry in his furrowed brow that makes you give pause. He reminded you of your grandfather then, strong jawed, stern eyed before that softness pervades through when he'd let you scoot over next to him to sneak a look at the newspaper ( cricket scores and stock prices were all he looked at. And the Sudoku ) .

You shift in place, tugging at the hem of your jacket. "It was a little jarring. The sudden attack, that is." you admit. You don't tell him about the death, the way deceitful monsters do.

The watchman shakes his head. "Horrible thing to go through, I agree. Especially for one as young as you." The cat slinks pat his legs and under the bed. he leans forward, tire heaving at his bones and his joints. A decade. One would assume he'd retire at this point given his age. "Try not to let it wear down on you, is all."

"It's easier said then done." You mumble.

"It is." the watchman snorts. "I told my daughter about you though. She's taking medicine too…Oncology. I scraped together every Kaas I had to pay her tuition fee off." he flexes his arthritic hands. You keep listening, that sliver of curiosity winning out. "She hasn't met you…but she knows about your clinic. the children your helping…suited men aside. It gives her a bit of spark at least. So you keep going too."

You feel gutted, eyes stinging a bit. He puts too much faith in you, you realise. But there is a small touch of warmth against the rattling cold. "Thanks…" you nod. The watchman leans back.

Keep going. What a mess, really.

You return to your clinic, the day after. You decide it's the last time you'd let reckless hope bar the instinctive tearing in your gut.

There is a woman sitting on the waiting room chairs with a dangerous smile. She’s dressed well, like those elegant omen-bringers or dapper businessmen. She’s dressed like the coming consequences and it’s there, that sadistic delight, hidden behind that lazy tilt to her head.

“Good morning.” she greets, like she hadn't broken into your clinic. “Hope we’re not intruding.”

You look to her companion next to her.

The dead man ( and he was dead. He was supposed to be — you were certain ) stares right back.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“There’s a coffee machine…”

“Hm, never mind. I was never too fond of the instant stuff. What do you think Bladie?”

'The man named ‘Bladie’ does not respond. You’d have laughed a little — if your nerves weren't frayed. You’d have laughed over a silly, inconsequential nickname slapped onto some scary looking man, then gone on your way. But the scary looking man was a murderer. And you were certain, so certain, that he was dead.

( His blood coated your hands days ago. You can’t have imagined it — not something so innately ingrained within your psyche like some sadistic firebrand.

How is he alive? How is he alive?! Why is he — )

“I could pick up some tea.” you suggest, because playing meek was the way of a coward and you were that in the end. You still had to open your clinic in another half hour. There are still parts of the storeroom that need cleaning and a window that needs replacing. The woman laughs. She looks at you like you were an adorable specimen. A pet…or perhaps a bug to be stepped on.

( It’s a cruel sort of beauty that edges her face. You’d hate to admit you were staring a little longer than you should be. )

“There’s no need for that.” she looks to the side for a moment. “Bladie was here a few days ago, you know.” you flinch, perhaps knowing the ugly scene to follow. “Got into a bit of a tussle. Of course, I wasn’t worried…he’s got a knack for seeing things through, you know…” She’s staring straight at you now. “And he’s good at not dying, one could say.”

“That’s nice.” you mumble, shifting uncomfortably. Your cheeks are cold. Don’t look at me, you try to tell the should-have-been-dead swordsman. Like that would have worked ( he keeps staring ).

The woman continues. “It's funny though. After that affair at your clinic, I had to pick Blade up at some hospital’s morgue of all places. Quite the detour if you ask me.”

You still.

She knows.

Fuck. She knows.

“I…I see.” you play into stupidity, wring your hands a bit and force a far away smile. “I wonder how that happened.”

“Yes.” she nods, solemnly flicking dust off of her velvet coat. The playful lilt to her tone is back, delicately poking and prodding away and you feel the walls close in bit by bit. You can see the man tilt his head. You want to disappear. “I’d think you know though…so how about you tell us?”

You don’t look at her. You can’t, with that horror filtering through and spotting your vision.

“Now….listen to me.” she stands, saunters up to you and you stay rooted. Your mind fogs over with cotton wool and the aftertaste of wine blooms through your mouth. There is consideration there, her pointedly dragging her eyes across your figure and taking a sick pleasure in the fear that trembles at your fingertips. A tiny part of you that still remains too torturously aware recoils. “Were you the one who killed Bladie?”

“Yes.” you reply and it isn’t you. You wouldn’t have said that. You wouldn’t have.

Her lips curl. “How did you kill him?”

“I hit him on the back of his neck.”

Her face glows. “Good girl.” she pats your cheek. “We have a favour to ask you. How about you hear us out?”

She gives your shoulders a squeeze and you’re gasping for air. “That wasn’t so hard.” she grins. The cotton wool strangles and is caught at the edges, whisping, grasping, stubbornly trying to stay. You still pull at it incessantly while you back away from her touch. It burns. What did she do to you? What did she fucking do to you —

You’re pulled closer. It’s just a tug, a simple coil of her fingers round your arm. “I’m sorry.” you blurt out. “I’m sorry. I never meant it.” There are cracks against the surface, a spiderweb and it keeps going and going and going the more you talk ( you need to shut up ).

“There there.” She coos. “How about we sit down, hm? Bladie, think you could make some space?”

You don’t want to sit down with them. You try to pull back, to run because that’s what you should have done in the first place; instead of entertaining a pair of strangers with that stupid, naive hope of safety. She pulls back. Bladie catches your wrist when you try to squirm free and you’re half dragged onto the seat between them. “Honestly. A drink would have been nice. Oh don’t worry. I could hardly blame you for that.”

The woman fixes her sleeve. “I take it you don’t know who we are?”

“No.” you admit.

“Ah. the IPC influence here isn't as deep, huh? I heard there was an overhaul a few decades ago. The revolt drove most of them out…I wouldn’t count on it staying that way.” She passes you a measured flash of her teeth. It’s all good manners and etiquette you can’t return. “But we’re not here to talk politics. I’d like you to babysit Blade for a while.”

Blade seems to be expecting it. He does not mirror your dismayed shock.

“Why — ”

“Can’t say. It’s all a part of some very important work.” She holds a finger to her lips. “Would you be a lamb and do it?”

You grip at the metal armrests hard. The room is a blurred scape, a watered down stain ( ink tracked against damp paper ). “I won’t.”

“Come now. After that stunt you pulled with him, it’s the least you could do.”

It settles hard. “I told you I didn’t mean it.” you snap. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you.” Your unravelling seeps into something dangerous. You try to step back. To keep it together. It tangles, knots, frays and snaps and tangles again and the foundations crumble. You cannot think despite the clarity slowly creeping and the fog metering out. You cannot think because the man you killed is alive and right next to you and dead men don’t just come back to life.

The woman forces you to turn her way. “You didn't mean it?” she repeats, inquisitive, amused. “Doctor please, any normal person would have gone for the head. You made a very calculated move there…and I'm sure that pretty little brain of yours knows the consequences that come with it.”

It’s a coveted part of you that dies there, withering, burning, clipped away and cast aside and you shake your head as you’re retrained. “Don’t touch me!” you scream. “Don’t touch me!”

Because humanity despises the naked truths in the world. They’ll deny, deny, deny what stares them in the face for those fleeting, selfish little comforts skewed in ignorance. Better the downy coverlet to the thin blanket, better the sweeter lie that bitter sincerity. You’re no different. Not really. You’re not different at all.

And that woman was not a liar.

III. RUPTURE

Aleena doesn’t take well to a strange man lurking within the backrooms. Her eyes always flit to the doors and her shoulders stay tense as she directs a few straggling patients to the waiting room and updates their details into the salvaged computers. “I don’t like the look in his eye.” she whispers hurriedly. “Doctor. Have you seen him?”

“Yes . I have.” you reply simply. “Could you pull up the files from a month ago? We have a follow up due today.”

She hums, and you nod to the messy clattering from the keyboard. “He’s not from here, is he? His clothes aren’t local.” her voice dips. “Is he an outworlder?”

“Yes.” You flit through a case history. The ink has run a bit, the edges flicked a dirty red. Bile and acid sears the edges of your mouth. You don’t think throwing up here and now would be professional. And your receptionist has a very nice shawl on. “Have the police called?” you add, helplessly rubbing away at the browned stains.

“You know they won’t.” she clicks her tongue, wrinkling her nose to the injustice of it all. You bite back your tired humour. She might descend into an angry little ramble then curse those men in three different tongues. You were guilty of listening in ( it’s amusing, and she had plenty of anger for the two of you, and then some more for the smaller things ). “They’re too busy sipping cha at the local angadi.”

She keeps tap tapping away. “Do you want me to send a soft copy? Or will you directly look into the logs?”

You cease flipping through the files. “Just send me a PDF.” you mutter. “You still have a few cases to input from yesterday right? I won’t hold you up.” Another report is pushed your way. Two more patients, two more medical histories to pore over. The throbbing in your forehead is incessant and stubbornly clinging on.

Gang activity in your neighbourhood has stifled from its initial raucous to a cautious thrum. There were still glimpses and the ignored nods, and that delicate rope-work still standing strong despite men from their brackets dying some terrible death. They don’t suspect you. It would be stupid to ( because you could hardly hold a gun in their eyes, or fight back. Your claws are chipped and your fangs blunted. It’s not a mystery ).

It does not stop the occasional loitering goon up front as parents grow a little braver and a little more desperate to bring their sick children in.

You settle with your work email, tapping your foot against the faint buzz from the streets outside and the waiting area. There is the occasional loud call. Kids being kids, shushed by mothers and fathers with warnings of naughty ones being fed the nastiest medicines for bad behaviour. You’re not cruel enough to do so maliciously, but it quiets them down amidst the worried ogling.

A ping pulls you from sinking further into your pit of thoughts. The document pops up in your inbox and Aleena slows her typing to two finger taps. “Can I take a week off?” She pipes up, nervously picking at her fingers. “Next month, that is.”

“For the agelu?” you guess, a new sort of weariness settling. “I suppose you can.”

Aleena stifles away a relieved smile followed by a : “You're not going?” She looks a little surprised, then lets her eyes sweep across the clinic. “I mean…yeah I guess you won't, given the state things are in right now…”

You wince. Your father had sent a text in. He asks for you, in his own, distant way. Maybe he misses you. Maybe you miss him beneath the hurt and the anger. But feelings were messy, scary things and it was better to look away and stick your head into papers and books and words that could be read. “I’m not sure.” is the soft admission. “It's a little early, I think, for me to make a proper decision.”

( Going home feels like a fever dream now. You’d almost come to loathe the smell of marigold and incense smoke. )

That and you can't be certain if Kafka would pick your guest up any time soon. She never gave you a timing, or any sense of clarity and control in this mad scramble. Blade was to lurk in his little window in the backrooms with all the year-old files for as long as he should.

“Besides.” You finish with a hint of good humour. “I'll take full responsibility for any ancestral hauntings after. Maybe my great grandmother could make a nice home on my couch.”

Aleena purses her lips. It’s says enough. A little more if you squint hard.

“Okay that wasn’t very funny.” you admit.

“No. It wasn’t.” She tilts her head sympathetically, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the edge of the desk, half pushing up against hardwood and paper. “I have plenty to say…but you’re my boss and that would be unprofessional.”

You bite back that twitch to your lips. “A wise choice. Take care of yourself now…and don’t forget about the rest of the reports.”

Primal fear rear its ugly head and scrapes at the bars when you meet Blade’s gaze.

“I have two patients due in the next hour.” you manage to pull out, turning your heel immediately after. Any inch for a quick escape, really. “So don’t come out. You’ll scare them.” you add for good measure, like he’s a child himself, or a feisty dog muzzled and chained up.

( The kind of dogs who bite at anything and everything. The kind who quietly bare their teeth at cruel hands and kind. You aren’t certain of Blade’s stance here and now, if he was pleased with his arrangements — stuck in a room too small for him, with someone who clearly didn't want him here.

Because you don’t. There’s something about you and your face and the way it’s a traitor. It gives away your thoughts, your heart, the things you want to keep tucked away at the back but seep under the doors and stain the carpets. And your displeasure seeing him is on full display.

His corpse comes to mind. Still, dead, cold took the touch with the beginnings of rigour mortis settling when he was hauled over the stretcher and wheeled away. )

He says nothing back, unsurprisingly. He didn’t even bother speaking out as much when Kafka came in and dropped him off with all the unceremonious sneaking and threatening. You think he’ll carry on with his silence, letting whatever this delicate little semblance of distant amiability stay within its stagnant state. An untouched web.

You turn. Keep walking. You really don't want him here, you think miserably. The paradoxical warmth in his body now, when for a moment there was none. His gaze, unsettlingly intense. You don’t want him here at all.

Still, you turn once more. You speak. “Is there anything else you need?” be polite. Be polite.

Blade considers it. He looks at you. You fool yourself into believing the hunger simmering beneath harsh vermilion does not exist.

“No…” he finally relents. His voice is coarse, heavy, the whisper of a growl.

( You leave faster than you should have. )

He follows you home after the day is done ( you wish he didn’t ).

Blade keeps you within his line of sight — just within reach and just close enough to feel that faint prickle of body heat against the back of his neck. It’s an uncomfortable itch. It’s unwelcome. So you turn your head back to his silent figure and test your fingers against your bicep.

“Could you walk in front of me?” you ask.

Blade seems to consider it. “No.” he finally decides with finality edging every word. “You might run.”

“I don’t think you’d let me get very far to begin with.” you mutter under your breath. His footsteps are heavy, kicking aside loose concrete you avoid. Blade still stays an unwanted spectre behind you, treading in a way that is too soft to be human.

“I won’t.” he agrees, sounding sure of himself. Bored even. There is a scuffing sound, cloth against cloth. You’re tense again, anticipatory ( and yet, you don't dare to look back, to look at him ). “It saves inconvenience. That is all.”

You decide you’d like to be an inconvenient annoyance. That should drive him back to wherever he came from.

“I still don't think you should walk behind me though.” You repeat. Your fingers curl. You wish you had a taser. Your last bottle of pepper spray was spent as is on a few other thugs the past couple months. “You look like a creep. And a stalker. You might mug me.”

“I won't.”

“How do I know that?” You keep rambling, hysteria trickling down. It's a leaky tap, that anxious mess in your chest.

Blade blinks. “Kafka told me not to.” ( like it was the most obvious thing. You might be imagining the heavy condescension oozing through ).

That does not make you feel better. Kafka seems as reliable as a tsunami, or a flood, or any natural hazard creeping into its first few stages of utter destruction. It shows on your face, that muted mix of disbelief and horror. Blade's gaze is sharp, not quite the disconnected distance it held before. Kafka was suffocating as is but blade feels like rubble bearing down, down, down. You hate it.

“And it would be pointless, trying.” He continues. “Killing you would change nothing.”

You wordlessly rub at your knuckles, at the pulled skin of your hand. You do not talk to him for the rest of the walk. You should be more polite, you tell yourself. Be more polite. You killed this man, watched him die as his brain slowly collapsed in on itself. The least you could do after those fifteen and a half dumpster fires is extend some basic human decency, right? Be polite.

A scream ringing out gives you another thing to focus on. They're normal to hear, even as it wrenches open your viscera and leaves something sick on your tongue. It continues, growing increasingly hysterical, then stops.

( You almost run for the source, You want to. You do not. )

By the time you slip into the parking lot of the apartment and head for the elevator, you’re half hurrying Blade along. There’s nothing glamorous about the place — a standard five storey tall building just like the other projects lining most lower middle class neighbourhoods. The watchman was found out back, half passed out from his shift and stinking of beedi smoke, leaving the dog that frequented the neighbour's doors to rip into any intruders.

You don't think Blade is wholly impressed as he nudges at him with his foot. The watchman jolts with a huff and a startled snore, then passes out, head lolling to the side a little. The dog does not bark, simply trotting up to accept a few pats on the head. And indignant annoyance flares up. You sharply tug at the hem of his sleeve.

Blade jolts. The vermilion of his stare burns you.

"Leave him alone." you warn, giving his sleeve another tug for good measure. Blade's lips purse, his displeasure a quiet shift on his face for the most part, burying away immediately into the corners and crevices where things were never brought up again. "I hope you like cats." you add. "I have one who visits sometimes. She's a terror and a half…"

He grunts, stepping to the side as you fiddle with your keys, pulling away the string from your key chain and getting your door open. It’s a welcome ritual, feeling the cool breeze from your apartment filter in after a while. The cat is passed out on the balcony floor, cracking open a single yellow eye in greeting when you shuffle forth to take a peek.

“Hello, pretty girl.” you coo, feeling that heavy warmth in your arms and the softness of her fur against your palms. It eases you just enough to face Blade again.

Be polite, you tell yourself because you killed him, because he could snap your neck in two, because you think that the last thing you need is pissing off a pair of seeming psychos. “You won’t mind tea, right?”

Blade leans against the wall, maybe trying to make himself as small as possible within the cloistered rooms. “It’s a waste.” he replies, ignoring everything else; the hum from the streets below, the occasional flicker from the lights, the cat settling on the couch and sleeping an arm’s length away.

“Okay.” you mumble and set down two cups anyway.

You do not like Blade’s silence. His silence means he’d rather think about something and him thinking could involve certain death. There is a disturbed sheen glossing over his gaze. He does not look wholly there, the less he talks. Most conversions your parents had with guests were about the weather, then delving headfirst into some obscure gossip about a family three kilometres away.

Another fleeting glance at Blade has you reason that he’s not one for gossip.

( You let this silence settle in. It’s still a suffocating thing, an unwanted presence and an unwelcome guest. You think of the suited men and the gangs amok in the dirty corners and you think the silence looks like them. )

“So…our first meeting wasn’t…wholly ideal.” You speak up after a while, handing him his tea. Blade looks vaguely surprised when he takes it. “I don’t think ‘ideal’ would be the right word for it…”

“You killed me.”

You swallow. “Yes.” your voice shakes. “I killed you.” Your legs are drawn a little closer to you before you talk and you lower your voice, all that shame and guilt subduing the last bits of that cocktail of fear and tumult and annoyance. “I’m sorry for killing you. Even if you’re still alive…somehow…it wasn’t the best course of action, to be fair — ”

Blade’s lips twitch. He takes a sip of his tea, letting you stew there with your fumbling, your shame. It still goes unspoken. That damning ‘how are you still alive’. You don’t bother asking it. He can’t stay dead — Kafka said so herself. The very notion feels like an existential terror moulded to the shape of a man and you want it to stay far away from it.

“Four days.” he finally utters out, inspecting the last bit of tea staining the bottom of his cup. “I was dead for four days.”

Oh. Oh that stung.

“I’m sorry.” your voice cracks and your eyelids start to prickle. Stupid. Stupid stupid, you curse at yourself, claw at the offending load inside.

Blade snaps his head towards you. There is a twitch in his hands, slow, dog-like in the way strays jolt in alarm. You do not comment on it, awkwardly pressing at the surface of your cup while the tears are quickly wiped away and smudged against your cheeks. There's no use crying over it, you scold yourself. Grow a spine.

“Spare yourself the pity. It is not an uncommon occurrence.” is his uncomfortable dismissal. The words are nonchalant and his forehead crinkles to match the perplexed hitch to his shoulders. He probably wants to say more, speak more, tear you apart. Or he was just too put off by how pathetic you are.

“You’ve been killed before?”

“Yes.”

Horror stirs deep in your gut and a small sliver of morbid fascination shunting beneath the murky waters and glimmering up in those seconds of resurfacing.

( Can he not die? He’s still here after dying from a stroke. Does he regenerate? How does he do that? Do his cells simply have a faster metabolism? That means his neurons can too despite their limited replication in most normal people. Does he — )

The tear tracks are drying. Your face feels stiff.

“I was trying to protect myself.” you even talk like a guilty person ( it does not help. It’s subdued, the way you speak. Beaten down, half hearted. You wonder if you even want to protect yourself at all ). You don’t want to look at him anymore.

“I don’t blame you.” he replies. It’s soft, missable, sympathetic and you know that can’t be the case. Blade blinks slowly, setting his cup aside. “Would you do it again?” he asks solemnly. His hands twitch again, out of its usual bent stiffness. Beneath the dim lighting, the paleness of his skin is a corpse like macabre; greyish, sallow. He seems starved. “Would you kill me?”

Your lips part. Bile and acid burn your throat. You shut it again and shake your head and the desperation, you assume, is enough. No, no never again. You don’t want that nausea. You don’t want any more of the griping aches in your stomach and the incessant pound of your capillaries.

Blade straightens up and gives you a long, thoughtful look. He steps back and returns to his stony silence without a word. The air is restive, poisonous in how it melts away the peace.

You really should pray to that nameless god, to soften that blow. You really should pray because nothing good ever comes out of this. There’s that brush of scale against your foot, the shrinking courage when faced with dour vermilion. It’s wolfish; its jaws bear down. The cat cracks open an eye again, letting out an annoyed mewl.

No, never mind that.

IV. EXUDATION OF BLOOD

You should have prayed. The questionable existence of a god or not, maybe you'd have given yourself that tiny bit of assurance.

Even your ancestors would have done well enough. What would your grandmother say?

( Her old spirit's possibly disowned you, if she hasn’t already. She must have burned your seat in the afterlife and spat on the ashes. Bringing a man into your home, no matter the circumstance would have incited all the wrong reactions. )

You learn quick enough that Blade never sleeps. The third night after spent between lurking within the stuffy storage space and wedged next to old folders, you’d spotted him sitting upon the couch in the middle of the night. “What are you doing—” you croak out after the initial scream. He scrutinised you with clinical indifference, sweeping over your bare legs to your face. You tamp down the urge to pull your shirt down, cheeks burning.

“Thinking.” he says. There is no further elaboration to it. Blade turns to peer outside your window and the dead streets below. There is a faint echo of the strays barking trailing behind the occasional hum of a passing car. Your little town was far sleepier than the cities, where the traffic continues on, long past the morning calls and the reedy music from 24-hour bars.

“You scared me for a moment.” you purse your lips, picking at your hands. Blade blinks. “I mean, you're just standing there.” You try to justify it, fumbling a bit and coming across as far more slow than anything else. Blade tugs at his sleeve and smoothens over the damp spots.

“I'm not trying to kill you.” he reasons.

You dig your thumb down into the thicker skinned parts of your palm. It reeks of iron. He always reeks of iron. “Startled me, then. I thought you were asleep.”

Blade considers it. “I do not need sleep. Not more than what is necessary.”

Uneasiness filters in. Your throat bobs with it, unsure. “Everyone needs sleep.” you stumble out. Blade shifts, tracing along his nape with a purposeful look. His regeneration. Yes, his regeneration. Tissue rest and repair would be unnecessary with that, wouldn't it? Sleep, food perhaps, the little necessities taken for granted — peeling that away and pulling back the blinds to peer down that gaping hole, it's strange.

The grislier parts of his curse seemed to strip away those human needs. It likes to gnaw out any sense of humanity from his bones, in fact, scavenging away the bare ligaments and swallowing it whole.

“So…you’re just going to stay there then...” .

“Yes.”

Blade’s shoulders are set into its perpetual hunch. There’s something unfettered about him, roiling within deeper confines with a sense of wildness and entropy. You take your cautious step back and steel the nerves you have left ( there aren’t many to begin with — you still try ). It’s far from the moodiness he usually holds himself with and the cyclical introspection. “Could you be less…disturbing, then…?” you ask.

Silence. “Disturbing.” he echoes, tasting every breadth of the word on his tongue. You feel metal coming to rest in your mouth and dig into the insides of your cheeks. There’s a flicker from the apartment across and sterilised white shines upon the side of his face. He looks worn down, worse for wear. The darkened spots on his clothes are dyed red round his torso and dried blood crests across the rim of his fingernails. Red. Red on his clothes. Red on the floor. Red on your couch. Red —

“Did you leave this room?” it’s not a question. You’re not asking questions.

“No.”

You don't quite realise it, the scrambling and the frantically locked doors till the cold nip from your room settles against your skin and your shaky hand holds up your phone. It takes a moment for the buzzing numbness to fade to a tumultuous undercurrent and for you to dial down that emergency contact, seconds away from calling —

— a notification.

It's an unlisted contact, and a single message.

Unknown. I wouldn't do that if I were you.

A moment of pause. You don't move, balking at the sight of it.

Unknown. There's a good girl. I hope Bladie isn't giving you any trouble. If he's made a mess, just help him get cleaned up, please.

You. Is this Kafka?

Unknown. Look at you playing detective! That's cute. It is, by the way.

You. How did you get my number..

Unknown. Oh I have my ways. And I wouldn’t call the police. I can’t say I’ll stay quiet and pin the blame on you. It would be easy, hiding a few bodies in your storeroom. I like Bladie, you know. Can’t have him getting arrested and all.

It feels like you’re grasping at ice, with the way it feels cold. Cold, so cold and uncomfortably harsh against your cheeks. You want to tear into something, into your pillow, into yourself. You want to throw your phone across the room and scream till your lungs are hoarse. You want to call the police anyway and shove that into Kafka’s face. You want to cast them out into some forgettable void and be done with this fear and this painful grip in your stomach and…

…you do none of that.

Some small defeated part of you whispers its comfort. You ignore it, cast it aside, call it a fool. You’re gutless, maybe a little brainless and honestly, you half consider going back to your hometown and — no. You will not think about that. Not now. Not ever. You broke that life apart, stepped over the fragments and let your bloodied footsteps lead you here. All that hurt is not worth the quiet defeat.

The door creaks open. You peer back out at Blade. “Sorry…” you mumble. He glances up at you. “I just…i was shocked…there’s blood all over you.” You think about what you should say next. You chose your words carefully. “Did you…”

You don’t get to finish. Blade leans back and shakes his head. “I did not kill anyone.” A wry little tug twitches at his lips. “Not now at least.”

It takes a tentative step, then another for you to exit the room completely. Blade doesn’t look bothered, content in his solitude where sits. You look down at the tiled floor trying to summon forth whatever blind insanity you had. It takes a special sort for this, for this specifically where the cracks fissure into the sides and down down down to the foundations. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” A lie. There’s blood on him for crying out loud.

Still, you do not pry. “Should I…” you stop. It takes some struggle, reaching down deep and wrenching the words out into something stringed and legible. “Do you want to clean up?” you offer softly, motioning to the bathroom. “Just…a shower, I guess. I can get those washed.. Blood’s really hard to get off after all and they’re nice clothes…from my personal experience at least…”

Blade watches you, tilting his head a bit. He does look a little like a dog now, one with a wrinkled muzzle and dark, serious eyes. “Fine.” he relents after some consideration, impassively getting to his feet. He follows you to the bath, delicately sidestepping your frame to enter. You let the water heat before letting it run into the bucket, offering him a pitcher and some soap.

“You’ll have to make do with the towel…I might have some spare blankets around.” you add, because you will not have a naked man walking around your house. There’s so much your ancestors might allow at this point. This would be toeing the line from possibly being dragged into the afterlife.

He spares a grunt in response while bandages come undone. You chew against the inside of your cheek, inhaling stale metal and collecting blotched brown linen from him. He’s hesitant, letting you close, but it takes a quick turn of his wrist for you to pick out the worst of his wounds. These ones do not heal away the rawness and the sick pink of flesh. These ones still bleed.

“Can you manage?” you peep out. Blade stares at his hand, at yours grasping his.

“Yes,” he says after a while. His fingers brush against the inside of your palm as you let him go, and you take that shaky step out of the bath, leaving behind a clean roll of bandages and antiseptic at the door.

V. PUTREFACTION

The woman beside you looks tired, worn away at the eyes and around the edges of her face. “Stay still.” she whispers hurriedly, stuffing her phone back into her purse as she gathers the skirts of her seere.

The boy on the bed does not stay still, tapping his fingers away at his lap as you shoot him a reassuring smile. There’s plenty of nervous energy stuffed away in the cracks and crevices of that tiny body of his, and it barely abates with the ticking second hand from your analog clock. “Are you nervous?” you offer, taking a knee beside him. The boy purses his lips, brown eyes focused wholly onto the floor below.

“No.” he decides to be brave and squares his shoulders up. You appreciate the effort as you press at the inside of his arm.

“That’s nice.” you nod. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes. I know how scary needles can be.”

“I’m not scared.” he insists. He challenges you, looks at you dead in the eye with the most determination he could pluck away at his reserves and gather together. “Last week I chased a ghost away from my room. I turned the lights on and screamed at it.”

You crack a smile. “Is that so? Did it try to come inside?” you entertain the thought, poke away at his imagination till you find the faint blue of a vein. You see how his mother bows her head down, looking a little sick. The boy doesn’t seem to catch on in the way his eyes light up and he draws himself up. You don;t think she wants him to see. Sometimes there are instances where you see parents squirrelling away those bits of childish innocence like uncut diamonds; biting down at grimy hands that try to snatch it away.

You cannot fault her for wanting him to be happy. He was only four.

“Yeah. I was all GRAAAAAHHHH’!” you flinch at his spirited demonstration. He’s pleased with the audience and the invoked emotion as his mother winces and tries to pull at his ear to keep him quiet. It’s too late given his excitement, ducking down to continue his babbling. “And it went ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH’! Then it left and I went to see if amma and appa were alright. They were and I hugged them to make them feel better.”

“That is brave.” you nod. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t stop hugging your amma and appa. I’m sure they love your hugs.”

“After this, can I have the chocolate at the desk?” he asks, batting his lashes. He flashes you a cherubic grin, and you might have caught yourself smiling a little wider. It’s a rare instance of silly happiness after the mounting strain on your shoulders and the urge to rip your eyes out bloody and raw. “The one in the big bowl.” he adds for clarity; because adults, he might be thinking, needed plenty of that.

You look over your shoulder to the door with a thoughtful little hum. “It’s not chocolate. It’s tamarind candy. The sweet kind. But it’s sour too.” You admit. “Do you still want some?”

The boy draws his lips back. “I’d still like some. I like tammy-rind.”

“Well, listen to your amma and stay still, okay?” he does, his small hand reaching out to grasp at her seere’s pallu. She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging at her fingers, then her thumb as the nervousness slowly trickles in and scrunches away at his brow and nose. “Don’t get all stiff. Deep breath in…deep breath out. You can tell me about things you like if it helps…what games do you like playing?”

“I like football.” he offers. “My cousins say I'm a baby so I can't play with them. But I'll grow big and tall one day and I will kick their legs and show them.”

“Don’t start there.” his mother warns. “You’re not kicking anyone.”

The boy makes a face just as you give him his shot, then yelps a moment at the pin prick. His eyes squeeze shut for a second, his grip white knuckled till you finally pull the needle out and pat his cheek. “Done. That’s his DTP vaccine done with. He’ll need to get his booster next year as well so keep a reminder on for that.” His mother nods, handing in the little booklet as you scribble away the recommendations and mark away at the sheet.

The boy grumbles, poking at his arm. “Do I get the tammy-rind now?”

“Of course. The brave kids always get an extra one too.” you appease, walking them out.

“Great.” he’s mollified at least, wiping away any residual tears with a discreet turn away. “And i think you’re brave too. I saw a ghost here. In the door at the back.”

You freeze up a bit. “Did you now?” you’re feeling your voice crack a bit at the end of that question. Even the mother glances over, unsettled. You shake your head and the reassurance returns. It’s nothing, nothing at all, you try to say.

“Yes. He looked super scary. But he just looked at me and told me to go back to amma.” the boy sighs.

“I’m sure that was just one of the boys who helps the doctor.” his mother reasons, her words taking a sterner edge. She’s bustling him out, putting away at his back as she straightens her pleats and fixes her pallu. “It’s not nice saying things like that now. You’d better apologise to that man if you said that to him.”

“I didn’t say anything.” the boy insists as you pause by the door and see them off after handing him his hard earned candy, ( “thank you, doctor. Say thank you to the doctor auntie.” the mother urges. The boy echoes it drolly then slips back into his stubborn insistence, pulling at her arm ). Their voices fade into the faint music playing at the lounge and the chatter in the waiting room. Aleena turns to call for the next person, peering down at the files.

A hush filters through. One of the men stands over the row of seated people. They draw some of their children closer, muted shock and fear splayed across and you feel flayed open. “Tell the clients to leave.” you mumble. She nods and sends the word out. Some of them seemed to catch on quick and pack away their folders and gather their companions. A line of men and women mill out, leaving that sole frame standing, arms crossed in wait.

You keep your eyes down as you motion to the doors. Aleena hides away as she usually does ( you’d torn into her when she’d gotten too mouthy, too brave the last time ).

“Is something wrong? I’m sure I paid off the fee two weeks ago.” you test out.

The suited man doesn’t reply yet, sinking into the backdrop of static and the panicked thudding in your ribs. You vaguely remember Blade hiding away within the archives and hope he doesn’t wander back out again. He takes his time, dragging out the seconds as he idles past your framed degree and a few photos from your childhood home.

“A few weeks ago there was an…altercation in your clinic, correct?” he states more than he asks it, rubbing at his chin.

Oh shit.

“Yes…” you nod when you sense his wait. Your nerves wither away and you lose your sense of touch.

“Some of the men on my side died here. I was sent in to get to the bottom of it all.” His narrowed gaze settles on you. “It’s funny. We know there’s a third party involved but his body went missing from the morgue before he could be ID’d. Any footage of him? Wiped clean, and aeons forbid the police trying anything when it comes to getting witnesses to speak a consistent story.” His footsteps are an echo in the back of your mind, too loud, too distracting. Blade, dear lord, his presence here is a mistake. “Now, I'm here to ask if you had a hand in it, doctor.”

“No.” you choke out. “I don’t.”

“Were you working with that man who killed them?”

“No — ”

“Did you see him?”

You're too slow to respond and it takes him grabbing a fistful of your hair to rattle it out faster. “No I did not!” you insist, squeezing your eyes shut. You recall what you tell the boy, and the empty words about bravery. You feel like a liar steeped in bitter hypocrisy. It makes you want to rip your insides out and claw at your viscera.

Nails dig into the softer parts of your cheeks as your face is slammed into the wall. It draws out a choked, gasping wheeze from your ribs and white hot pain screaming at your skull, your muscles. The small, scared animal in you is crying, crying, crying away into bleak emptiness. It tries to run, eyes blown out and mouth hung open. It tries to make you run before you’re gutted clean through. “Are you lying?” the man asks quietly.

“No. No I didn’t.” You stutter it out, pressing your fingertips into the chipped paint. “I was hiding…I-I was hiding till t-they took the bodies.” The pressure against your head builds, builds till you yelp and struggle, terrified of him digging down hard enough to cut away at your airflow and snap your neck in two. For a moment, you wonder if he’ll do just that when he finally, thankfully, lets you go…

( Your eyes flit up, desperate, moving things and you look at him, actually look at him and the cold death in his gaze. You never assumed someone could look like that — empty and scooped clean of any humanity lingering at the edges. He’s hollow, and angry*.*

You made your mistake. )

…You’re slammed back in. The scream in muffled into your wrist. “You saw nothing?” he repeats, guttural in how he addresses and enunciates every word. It’s like reasoning with a man eater. You nod, nod because it’s all you had. “Nothing at all? No faces?” another nod and the man slips back and lets you crumple to the floor with that warning.

“You better not be lying.” he tells you, slipping to the speedy notes of your local tongue. “There will be hell to pay for that.”

You’re lucky, you think, for getting off that easily. The buzz in your mind builds and smothers you against your spot and you shift a bit when Aleena presses a hand to your shoulder. Blade is right behind her and she’s flattening her lips.

“You’re a nuisance.” you tell him, annoyance and anger and all that frustration meandering and stubbornly oozing through the cracks. Blade fixes you with a glare, drawing his mouth back to a half sneer.

“Who did this?” he asks, voice dipping to trembling danger, entropy brewing underneath all that. “Who did this to you?”

“None of your business.” you snip in turn, wobbling to your feet. Your coat is blotched red around the collar and the shoulders. You didn’t realise you were bleeding till your fingertips came away sticky and wet ( you feel like you’re careening off of the edge of a cliff, in a car you have no control of ). “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” you add, croaking through your words and the buzz and the annoyance. “So just leave. Leave, tell her I can't babysit you if this…this is what I have to deal with.”

Blade narrows his eyes. “I cannot.” he states and leaves no room for argument as his hand grabs you at the scruff and half tugs you alongside him. You’re not spared any more dignity around him, and he treats you like a wet cat nipping and scratching at his arm. “You.” he adds, turning to your receptionist. “She needs to be tended to.”

Aleena mumbles something under her breath but seeks out the first aid kit. She swats Blade’s hands away once she approaches you again. You appreciate it. You don’t want him touching you and the crawling chilliness of his body invites an ugly sort of desperation that blocks away your throat and nudges at all the parts of you you’re less than proud of.

Blade does not leave. He never does, on that bitter note, looming over the two of you by the wall, that beast twisting in his eyes like a snake.

He unsettles you with the way he stalks the emptiness of your apartment rooms, pressing his body to the wall with shaky breaths. You watch him from the crack of your door and wonder if this is what unravelling sanity looks like. If it is the face of a man ripping open his chest and screaming through the guts until that beating heart is carved clean from the cavity.

Blade is more animal than human in how he walks. The room smells strange too. You do not know what it is, in its pungent notes and the unpleasantness of it all. It’s not rot, you’ve smelled rot before, and tasted that stench of decay lain thickly on your tongue.

This is more rancid, like regurgitated food and butter. You spot a single leaf on the floor, fan shaped and dipped in sunlit gold. Then more at his feet.

His form flickers by, rustling past your door. He’s at the balcony, then he’s not. You pad out and scan the dark streets, spotting his hunched frame nestled within the alleyways tucked at the side. There is a glimpse of purple from Kafka’s hair as she presses her lips to his cheek, whispering something to his ear.

Blade seems to melt and you watch on, half transfixed from the scandal, cheeks warming when Kafka leans to the side and waves, a playful grin curling on her face. She whispers something again and has Blade turn too, and you think you’re almost drawn in, dizzyingly close to the edge of your balcony rails till reason snaps you back and you return to your apartment.

( “Bladie…” Kafka coos at him, her gloved fingers pressing up against the seam of his lips. Blade tries to hide away the dry hunger in his stomach and his mouth. “Do you like this one?” she asks.

He thinks about it. The release of death. The warmth of your hands. The tears. He thinks of the man sawed apart on the concrete, down to tendons and bones and muscle and flesh. He thinks of the scattered limbs and the bruise and your blood.

Her hands press to his cheeks. “Listen to me. Push the mara down…we don’t want to keep upsetting her now do we?” she asks, teasing in how her teeth flash. Kafka feels like a dream lost in the haze of it all. He leans into her touch and lets the flowering roots in his chest rupture and decay.

“No.” Blade admits, surreality dragging him under. He does not spare her a reply to that question. Kafka already knows. )

VI. DISCOLOURATION AND DESICCATION

“Tell me who did it.”

“No.”

Blade looks annoyed, scraping and haunting the walls of your apartment as he follows you through the kitchenette like a ghost. The brewing…whatever it was…from the past couple of days seemed to have cowed after that visit from Kafka, nothing more now than a placid beast ( as placid as a rabid mutt could be ). You clench fist into your knife’s handle a little harder than you should have.

She could have taken him back, her little lover boy guard dog and his strange balcony crawling ass —

Blade hovers close, so close. There’s an absence of heat beside you. He’s always cold, colder than a man, warmer than a corpse. That in-between he seemed to linger in. His limbo. “He hurt you. He will do it again. Tell me who it was.”

“Absolutely not.” You state, voice flattened against bemusement. “You'll just kill him.”

He stills, his eye letting out something of a neurotic twitch. He might just strangle you now, carve you open with that sword, eat your insides…maybe. “He suspects something. He must die.” He says it slowly, irritation budding through the dryness of his countenance. Your nose wrinkles at this.

“That's nice and all but you stink of death enough, and ‘enough’ is still far too much.” You angle your knife, pressing into the tender outer layers of the onion till you slice through it. The blade shudders against the impact and your hand strains into it. You bite back a curse.

( You're thinking about too many things.

You're thinking about Aleena turning in her resignation letter, and her apologies. A marriage, she'd said. And how could she turn down her parents’ demands after everything? They care. Despite the pain, you knew that too. It's that painful kind of love where you'd hurt and hurt and keep hurting them when the choices seemed so sparse. Better a bloodied knife, they'd try to say. Better a few cuts than being torn apart.

She only just found out, she admits. There was an uncomfortable shift in her body. She looked ready to crumple into herself and shatter into a million pieces. She's meant to meet him during the agelu. It's been arranged for.

How did you? you'd asked. You were afraid to ask. You shouldn't have asked. That meant looking ugly things in the eye through to the nauseating technicalities. Aleena swallows. She looks more distressed than she should. You let her weep a little and nurse those gaping cuts. Your bruises don’t smart anymore. You’d forgotten they were there.

She shows you a newspaper. And you stare on with an empty kind of apathy as you spot her details within the bridal adverts, down to her college degree and the colour of her eyes. )

( You were reminded that there's a kind of love fuelled by bitter hate. You were reminded of the sight of her shrinking back and fading into the walls of your clinic, like a collapsing black hole. It's how daughters and duties were here, a little better than the north but broken in a way where broken things couldn't be fixed.

You've seen it in a mirror once, hollow and void and dead in your eyes, and your mehendi stained hands tearing apart the the jasmine in your hair. )

Blade tilts his head and angles the knife just a bit before you could cleave a finger straight off. “I’m being reasonable. He won’t hurt you if you let me.” he tries to reason, playing clumsy diplomacy. But Blade still pauses between his words with that perplexed unsureness. He didn’t know what to tell you when you were sobbing on that couch. He doesn’t know what to say now, when your insides were burning away your peace.

You brush him away and viscerally visualise grinding him to a bloodied pulp with your grandmother’s mortar. The violence in your head helps a little.

Blade keeps watching you, turning his head away from the spattering chillies and the sour notes of tamarind staining your hands. The onions are still a bother. You think it can't quite get worse at this point, with stubborn tunicated bulbs and a dull blade. The over-stimulation you're half subjected to feels like claws on a chalkboard, gratingly demanding every bit of your attention.

“Give it to me.” It's not a request. He takes the knife before you could really mutter out sneering ‘no’. He slices through the onion, passes you a pointed look and keeps slicing ( why does he make it seem so easy? Why??? ).

“Give it back.” you try.

“No.”

“Please…?”

He nudges at your shoulder, towards the stove. Your shoulders sag and a frustrated lump gathers at your throat. At least he’s helping, you reason. You shouldn’t be so angry over this. A normal person wouldn’t want to throw a fuss over a stolen chore and a stubborn wraith. You light the stove and gather what you’d prepared. Blade was done with onions. It’s only been a minute.

…You decide to not question that.

( Please don’t kill me, you add in your mind for good measure. )

There’s something therapeutic in indulging with this familiarity. Your old home smells like this, like comfort and nostalgia in the idyllic sorts of memories. They’re the ones you lock away in a box, nestling that key deep inside your ribs. Even so, that horrible weight swells up like a tumour. It could burst any minute. It’s wearing you down and frying the ends of your nerves.

“Aleena is leaving.” you blurt out. Blade blinks. “My receptionist.”

“She told me.” Blade nods.

“She’s getting married.” you continue.

Blade considers this. “She is…young, yes?”

You nod. “Twenty four.” you swallow. Your throat is parched. “Some families do marry their children off at this age. Not all of them, of course…and not every arrangement is all that bad…I've seen some good ones.” He keeps listening, you know it in the way his head tilts ever so slightly to you. Your senses are clumped together, messy, messy, messy. “It’s none of my business.” you add feverishly. “I shouldn’t be getting upset.”

“...why aren’t you?” the question is sudden. You feel your confusion knock away reason. Blade tries again. “Married. Why aren’t you married?”

“That’s a very impolite thing to ask.” you reply quickly.

“I see.” he struggles, pondering over his next few words. “I will not push further.” You purse your lips, the conversation delicately fraying and fading out. You let the silence stagnate, hovering by the stove with your vessel-full of coconut milk.

Something inside you tugs.

“I was supposed to be.” you mumble. “He was a nice guy, was working for a stable job and had plans to buy a house close to the beach. The kid you’d see in movies, you know?” you laugh a little. “And maybe I was a little swept up. But then we talked and we both realised that…we had dreams of our own. Things we weren’t willing to let go of, a relationship he was serious about.”

The chicken goes next, as the gravy settles into a shade of brown-red. Blade is staring, something in his face set in an odd way. He looks off putting. Hungry, like those night spent pacing through your living room.

“We parted ways. There weren't any dramatic rejections…he seemed just as pleased with it, to be fair. I hear he’s settled nicely with his boyfriend…good for him.”

“So you came…here…” Blade works it out.

“Quite. Those choices weren’t wholly supported by my family. They kept trying to find someone and I kept pushing it away…I was scared I guess, and people got angrier and insistent and I started feeling less…human.” you take a deep breath in. “So I left one day. They never contacted me. My father only started again after my grandmother died. And I opened this clinic up…”

The room is blurred out. All you see are splotches of colour and a blemished, dark blue whee Blade stands, rimmed by the sunset.

You wipe the tears away.

“It’s all I have now.” you whisper, a painful crackle coating the peaks. “All of it. And it’s a nice place…I used my grandfather’s photo frames in the reception…my mother’s carpet too. It was a souvenir from the north. And…and some of the toys were my own. It took some digging and cleaning and repairing but they’re just as good as any other…” It’s flaking at the surface. You aren’t a strong person. It’s always been so easy to crumble with the weight ( like a paper doll ). “So please…please just leave before you make it worse.”

Blade regards you. He always is, watching, watching, watching, like there’s nothing else that could tug him away, take up his mind when he’s not snapping necks till they shatter.

“I cannot.” His brows are set, pulling together just a little.

“You can.” You insist, feeling stupid, childish. Its pointless trying to convince him otherwise anyway, Not without feeling hacked down and near helpless beneath his looming shadow. “You can leave. You and Kafka can, it's not that hard.”

“We have work to do and it must be done.” driven finality settles deep. He feels so far away, repeating words like a robot. It's hard to think of Blade as human in times like these, where he's either too robotic or too animalistic. It feels scripted, all wrong, all twisted up and chewed apart. “You wouldn't understand it. Leave it be.”

“I won't, if it's my business you're intruding on.” You set the coconut milk down, the steel vessel striking polished granite with a sharp ring. Your teeth grit together ( you hate feeling angry. You hate the cloudiness that comes with it ). “What if I run then?”

Blade's glare is cutting. “You will not run.” He asserts, scruffing you so easily, tugging you just a little closer. You fight back the urge to swat at him. At least you could think a little. At least you still had a tiny hand digging it's claws into your self control. “I'll drag you back. I will keep dragging you back till you cease this foolishness.”

( How were you being foolish? All you have are fragmented snapshots, the lingering sense of dread, the knowledge of something sinister brewing beneath the surface. You have a man in your house, a murderer. You have a man in your house you swore you killed. You have a man in this house who doesn't die.

How were you being foolish? You want to scream at him till your vocal chords fray and your arytenoids collapse. But Blade has probably never felt fear. You can't imagine his sympathy.

And you still killed him though. You stop. The guilt is back, and the anxious Turn of it, and the seething edge of your rage burning, burning, burning. )

“Did Kafka tell you to do that too?” poison burns holes into your words. You and Blade are sinking deeper and deeper beneath it, boring holes through your skin.

( You need to stop. You need to stop talking. )

“She wouldn't be as kind.” He asserts simply, rolling his eyes at the mention.

Defeat comes for you from the corners. You huff. “Let go of me.” your arm is shoved back, elbowing his ribs. Blade doesn't flinch, but his grip loosens and he dips his head down in acknowledgement. “Are you ever going to leave me alone?”

“When we collect what we need, yes.”

“...get it over with quickly then.” You mutter, stalking away from him. “Tell me when the chicken is cooked. Leave me alone till then.”

Blade takes a moment. “Alright.”

“Bladie, you're upset.”

Is he? Blade doesn't quite see it. But there is an ache where his heart should be. It's been there since you'd locked yourself away and he’s left to stare at the curry bubbling at the edges. Kafka laughs from the other end of the line, light, airy; she's probably wiping blood away from her swords.

“You are. Has the doctor been softening you up?” She's playful, prodding, poking, stringing along her words. “Cute. Is she why you’re calling?”

“She’s asking questions.” he steadies his phone. It’s so easy, how it slips between his fingers. It’s not the firm immovability of his sword hilt and it’s slippery, almost unusable with his twitching. Blade hears Kafka hum against his ear, kneading away at the issue before her voice picks up again.

“You know you can’t give too much away, right? We need to follow the script and if she meddles too much…”

“I know.” Blade cuts in, apathy sinking deeper. The script, yes, the script. There’s that flash of familiar awareness. The script is something to be followed, right down to the bare details. If pinstripes needed to be worn, then pinstripes must be worn and if Blade must cut a hand off, that hand must go. But even he knows of the variables being difficult, breaching at destiny’s thin skin.

“And she’ll only get hurt, Bladie.” Kafka coos it out gently, placating the tenseness building in his shoulders. “It’s unfortunate how scared little things tend to bite more. Listen to me, try appeasing her a little, yeah? I’m sure a treat or two should keep her from stepping too out of line.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“You want to leave so soon?”

Blade does not. He can feel the roots tugging at his feet, fixing him down here, leeching, leeching, leeching. The fluttering ache in his stomach has grown worse. Blade fears never slipping away and that won’t do. Wolves aren’t to be leashed. That fractured memory, the writhing ocean in those eyes…there is no place for him here.

( Destiny, destiny, destiny. The unattainable, the inescapable…Kafka whispers something else. He wants to break his wrists. )

And still, Kafka knows. He can practically see the cheshire curl to her lips. “Cute.” she repeats, drawling the word out. “I’m almost done. Just a bit of the usual…we’ll have the stellaron collected in no time and we can head out. Till then, lie low and be a doll for me before I come to collect you, okay?” he can hear the faint echo of her footsteps echoing past empty hallways. She might spare a visit soon, he realises. “And again. Try not to upset the doctor too much, yeah?”

Blade dips his head down, mollified. “Alright.”

The phone cuts away. You’re still in your room, cut away from most of his conversation. The chicken looks cooked so he turns the stove off and gropes about absently till he feels a plastic handle. Then he knocks on your door.

It takes you a moment to open it for him. “Is it done?” you ask. Blade stares down at your wide, tired eyes. “Yes.” he replies, dizzy and blotted out in the centre all at once. He can’t quite stop it, the rapid undergrowth, the rustling call of mara, that need to seize you by the face and tear into the softness of your cheeks, to bite, to taste blood, to break your bones and devour you. To feel the dig of your nails against his arms, something sharper, you scooping out his chest, his ribs and his heart till it’s beat ceases and he curls into your warmth —

“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly, unwavering. Its swelling. “Do you want me gone?”

You swallow, halfway out of your room. Blade wants to grab you, taste —

“I do.” you mumble.

Appease her. Kafka’s echo fades out once more in the back of his head. Blade presses the knife to your hand, holding its edge just over his stomach, pressing till he feels its prickle numb out. It’s where the fluttering was, unfettered when he tore his intestines out upon your couch and let the blood seep into the fabric ( you hadn’t liked that, so he stopped ).

He stops, gripping you just above the beat of your pulse. It speeds up, vivacious, so alive ( Blade is used to his steady thrum, slow, so slow unlike that of a human ). “You can kill me then.” he tells you. “If it pleases you.”

There’s a shift. The handle slips away and you snatch your hand back, face twisting to what he recognises as distress. Then you look angry, slamming the door back shut. “Don’t talk to me.” You scream through, muffled by hardwood.

Blade feels empty. He collects the knife and turns back into the kitchen, temptations spilling out when he lingers a little too long and thinks of sweet oblivion.

He muzzles himself as most dogs should be. His teeth are blunted, his claws filed.

He doesn't want to scare you.

VII. CONSUMPTION

Aleena hasn't spoken much since she'd told you about 'the arrangement' ( you make it sound like some cold business deal. A travesty. Maybe you were being far too pessimistic with this whole ordeal, putting in too many chunks of those ugly memories into that basket. You could be wrong. You could be wrong about it all ). It's an all too familiar disconnect, a silent misery that you'd watch every day after. She's letting it fill out her whittled spaces, and it worries you. Worries you in the way your heart twists and your insides turn.

( Won't you be coming, he'd asked again over a messy phone call. There's a lot of things to catch up on. We'll lay off the insisting, we'll let you choose the groom this time. That would be far better, right?

And your father's words meter out to warbled static, spilling through your ears and onto the floor. )

Maybe you should put something out in penance. Let those ghosts keep to themselves and continue their silent vigils. You're not superstitious, and rituals like these feel more a far away dream since you'd moved away.

"Aleena…"

"Yes?"

"How about we go get some cha during our break?" you offer a kind smile, tired, a little neurotic but you think it will ache a lot more if you say nothing at all. That wound up and coiled-away thing in her, pulling at the set to her jaw and the firm stoicism she displays — it slowly lapses. She looks down at her feet, back up at you and blinks a long, slow blink.

"That sounds nice." she croaks out, pushing aside a stack of papers. You check the analog clock above the two of you. A lunch break was due in another fifteen minutes and there a few checkups and medical records to fill in for school diaries. You could finish soon enough."Is it at the local place? I like the one with the cardamom."

"Sure you can."

Aleena seems to think a thousand thoughts all at once. "Thank you." she whispers when you step back, trained down to the keyboard. She's not typing, tracing the plastic frame itself . You leave her be, let her stew a while before gently gathering her up and leading her to the closest stall.

( Blade was cornered in the stores. You tell him not to stir up any trouble.

"Where?" he asks.

"None of your concern. I'd like some time alone with her, please." He reaches out, curling his hands into the sleeve of your coat. His eyes look like smelted iron. You tell yourself not to flinch, to skitter away because you will not be a rabbit. For once you will not be a rabbit. "I'm going." you repeat with more purpose. "You can't tell me otherwise."

Blade lets you go. )

It's crowded as is, and you try not to let yourself be pushed out by the squeezing throng. Not until you and Aleena leave with your tea and a packet of glucose biscuits to sit by a roadside ledge beneath the tree cover.

She takes a few bites before she starts talking again.

"Sorry about the suddenness of it all."

"The marriage?"

"Yes." She picks away at some of the crumbs.

"It's okay." You pat her hand in assurance. "I was wondering if you were doing alright

Aleena seems to ponder over it. "A little. I know him. We went to the same school…so it's not all bad." She drains the last of her tea, throwing the Styrofoam cup into a dustbin. "I'm just…angry I suppose."

"At your parents?" You guess.

"Yeah." She swallows. "They've been pestering me since my second year in college. I had to keep telling them that I wanted more stability…a job. Something. I can't just keep relying on my spouse for money and all that, you know…my parents said I could do that after. That I was being selfish for putting it off."

You purse your lips. "It's good to be stable." You agree. "Sometimes it's easy to point fingers and blame it on unnecessary worry and paranoia…but from my experience, marriages like these are a gamble. You can't be too sure, even with people you think you know." You must be rambling. Embarrassment floods into your cheeks. You have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"Right! And I told them that and…" She shakes her head. "They don't get it, I guess. I mean…I don't mind settling down, really, but they keep pushing me and rushing into it and then they just put up that advert without saying anything and..." Her wide eyed hysteria is palpable. You might want to hug her, steal her away. Familiar pains tend to do that, stinging at your soft insides.

"Am I not a good daughter?" The fragility spotting it aches, unfurling, spreading forth. You shut your eyes.

"I'm sure you are." You tell her honestly. And she is. You know she is.

Aleena's face stretches, pained. "It feels the exact opposite. I might be making it all more difficult…I should be grateful, shouldn't I? They care about me, I know that and…this…" The words are turned over, thought upon. Her hands twitch, gesturing at the air with wild frustration. Aleena is shrinking by the second, cracking at the corners. "What do I do?"

Your throat dries.

"I don't know. I ran away from mine and now my family refuses to talk to me." You tell her. "There's a lot of different ways this could go. Parents react in different ways…all I can say is…you need to trust your instincts."

"I don't want to lose them." She admits shamefully, wiping away a tear. "I'm a coward."

You purse your lips. "I think we all are." You sigh. Your tea has cooled against your fingertips. “But…but I'd say it's better than being miserable the rest of our lives. It's selfish, I agree…” you feel defeat trickle down — defeat, hopelessness, a cocktail of too-many-things-at-once.. “it could work out too. It could work out and it will be alright after that. But there's a lot more before it all as well…I'm sorry. I'm not very good with advice.”

Aleena shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. "It's better than people telling me that I'm being a nuisance."

"You said you knew him too." You add.

She scoffs. "He might have changed. The most I remember is him pulling at my hair and calling me ugly."

"Oh. Hopefully for the better, then."

Aleena rubs at her knuckles, humming softly as a trill of birdsong echoes above the two of you. "Thanks for taking me in." She says, and it's spoken so softly you almost miss it. "I learned a lot working under you.and you were good to me. Better than some other bosses I had…hopefully I should still be able to work after…" She breaks away.

A gooey sort of warmth trembles inside. It's the sort that cracks you open. "You're welcome."

She kicks out her feet, letting her footwear flap shutter against the balls of her feet, then stands back up. "We'll head back then? I don't think I'd want to leave you with unfinished work on my last day…"

"That would be terrible." you agree, cracking a grin.

Aleena veers the subject away to the common pleasantries. She talks about the weather, the new park in the better parts of the city and the flowers there. She talks about the old lady who invites her to feed the pigeons. You listen as you do, till you slip back into the clinic and start the afternoon shift again. Clockwork, familiar clockwork. Still, you ache. It's selfish.

"Blade." you call out when you step back into the stores. You're greeted with silence. You're greeted with emptiness.

"Doctor? we have another checkup!" You straighten up, smooth away the frazzle, the jumbled nerves and the frayed ends. There is a time and place for panic. Not now. Not when you have work to do. So you work. You work till the minutes and hours bleed in and the sun spills past the concrete rises. You work till the night falls and you realise the silence in the storeroom seems to have grown past the occasional rattle from the shutters and the wind.

You heave in a breath. Aleena has left, pulling you into a final hug. You find yourself looking for him.

( Where is he? )

It's Kafka who drops by after closing. The anxiety nips at you, your face, your hands, everywhere, between Blade still not making a reappearance and now…this.

You hadn't met her face to face in a while and you've almost forgotten the weight she carries. She'd turned you around before you could walks away any further, her gloved hands snaking round your waist and her lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "Sorry for the visit, doc." she speaks out, like you're old friends. "Had some work to look into."

You hunch your shoulders, cowed of any initial annoyance. Something in you draws back, scared around her. It's the cat-like preening, the way Kafka smiles so emptily at you. "Right." you mumble.

"Bladie's been treating you well? I told him to be on his best behaviour."

"He's…he's alright. If you're here to pick him up…well he's been missing since this afternoon. I…i swear I didn't — "

Kafka shakes her head. "Oh no, I sent him on a little errand." she assures you, sitting down in the waiting room. She pulls you down next to her. "I've noticed he's been doing his best around you too…granted I'm sure some of his habits are a little…of putting." That smile is back, razor edged.

"It's fine." You try to say.

"Mhm. If you say so." Kafka crosses a leg over the other. "I've been souvenir shopping between work and all. I might pack up a larger haul after this final matter is dealt with. So many things to do…" She trails off, drumming his fingers against her chin as if deep in thought. "Have any places you recommend visiting? I've heard the silks here are to die for."

You hadn't known that either. "That's…nice." You lower your head, that far away beeping growing louder and louder against the chills clawing up your spine. You breath in, feeling the point of her nails press up against your cheek and turn you around to face her.

"Oh dear. I don't think you're very happy to see me." she coos. "Bladie hasn't been very good to you, has he?"

You open your mouth.

"You don't have to say anything." she cuts in with what seems to be kindness. You were almost fooled by it, set adrift, running straight into that tangle of webbing. Kafka feels predatory the way Blade does, and in ways that doesn't feel like him either, spinning you around and around in circles for those simple little amusements.

"He scares me." you blurt.

"Is that so?" Pity weighs in her sentence, cloying it together like resinous amber and sundew. She looks delighted.

"He does." you nod, feeling helplessness undo your seams. Kafka leans in close, close enough for the warmth from her breath to spill over your jaw. You want to push her off — you should, given who she is. But she clings so close, drinking it all in with strange euphoria. She's still holding your face, and Kafka was far stronger than she presents herself to be.

"You poor lamb. I hope he didn't bite you too hard." She smiles, caught in a trance as you sink further into magenta and pink and the smell of her perfume. "Then again, Bladie's always rough with the things he likes. I'm almost tempted to take you with us."

You shutter, blank out, flail about internally before all reasoning bears down with the impact of a comet. "I don't want to go with you though." You squeak, the words sinking in so quick and it shocks you.

Kafka considers you, tilting her head with assured grace. "Are you sure?" She asks again, thumb pressing up against the apple of your cheek. "It complicates things quite a bit for you. I'd say you'd be more miserable staying here than giving in, no? For one…" She's enjoying herself, her lazy gaze scanning the clinic again. "…you'll be loosing all of this."

You seize up. "…What — "

"This." Kafka repeats. "All of this. It'll be gone soon enough. Bladie and I have dipped into businesses that most should keep out of…I'll spare you the details, really…though you might just have more popping up in that little head of yours." She taps a nail against your temple.

"What are you talking about." You croak out, falling into a gaping bit. The vestiges of horror start taking root in your lungs. Kafka bites her bottom lip, playing coy.

"Oh dear, I've said too much. May as well let you in on it then." She croons. "The IPC don't have much of a hold here, do they? No wonder…granted it made going through this operation far easier." Kafka lets you go. You lean back, back away from her, sputtering. "To keep it simple, we were here to collect something. A very important something…and out of all the possibilities we had…your little route happened to give us the least amount of grief to deal with."

You grip at the armrests hard. "I don't…I don't understand…" You choke every syllable out with a tongue that feels like lead. "I don't understand." you repeat, the mania arching your higher notes. Your clinic, this clinic, the only thing standing between giving up and going back and…Your clinic ( You remember the money, the scraping together and the loans upon loans and that less naive part of you still folded into the walls and corners ).

Kafka shrugs. "I don't expect you to. You've been a tucked away and coddled into this peace your planet has blanketed you with. There's plenty more in this universe you can't quite comprehend; and there are plenty of big bad things out there that Bladie and I could hardly hold a candle to…" She grins. It's a vicious, predatory thing. Your fear is a feast to her, one lazy bite after the other.

"I don't want this. You're lying — "

"In another five minutes…" Kafka begins. "Bladie will come back , dragging a little friend of ours along with him. He'll have sustained a hit to his head, half healed. The hem of his coat will be ripped off." Her gaze darts to the clock. "Tick tock. I'll be busy after that so you'll need to be quick with what you have to say."

You're stunned to silence. Blade. An associate. It's a nightmare in the making. strangling every bit of air from your lungs. Kafka seems terrifyingly sure, watching the way you move, scramble, feeling disjointed and not all there or all quite present in your body.

"I don't want this." You tear up.

She kisses your cheek. "I know, sweetie." Kafka gives your shoulder a condescending squeeze. You may as well be stabbed in the stomach too, revulsion burning your throat, jerking you away from her. It makes you want to grow claws, to make her hurt somewhere, anywhere. "It's too bad, really. Maybe if you were a little braver, a little more gutsy, we might have struck you from that list." She laughs. "Honestly, I find it adorable. You're like a scared little stray…"

A sickening thunk suddenly echoes out back, soft against the tile, and moving trough whimpered struggles. Kafka's eyes narrow. "That seems to be our cue." she comments lightly. You look at the clock. Five minutes.

Your voice is stolen away, a failed note against the hand crushing your windpipe. You feel dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, almost stumbling over the chair. Kafka is drunk off of it, shoulder brushing against yours. It's just her, those footsteps, the smell of her perfume. "So…" she whispers. "What's it like?" Her touch sears at your wrist, edging higher. "Being scared?"

Blade steps between the two of you. His hand coming to grasp at your arm, smearing a brown, bloodied stain against the expanse and dwarfing your wrist ( he can break it so easily ). He stinks of iron and rot and you don't dare to face that monstrous view of him, just like that first day, feeling his pulse recede and the massacre he left behind under the fading colour of his eyes.

( And still, you feel guilty. Because Kafka is right. You are a coward. )

"Kafka." Blade utters, a warning stained against his stressed inflections. "Leave her be."

Kafka's lips pull at the corners, serene, seemingly innocent. She doesn't even try to hide the deception. "Jealous much?" she snickers, letting you go. Blade feels agitated, the beginnings of a riptide streaking beneath a still surface. He yanks at you, fingertips pressing at your cheek, the spot between your ear and the column of your neck. It's the most he's touched you.

( Has she hurt you, he wants to demand. Has she? )

"Don't touch her."

Kafka holds her hands up in surrender. "Okay." she relents, content and entertained with the way things seem to be. From the corner of your eye, you see a mass…something close to human, move. A scream is lodged in your pharynx. Your nails dig into Blade's hand, a hoarse, wheezing sound heaving from the depths of your lungs. The mass stretches, tries to move away. You see red plaster the white tiles beneath it.

Blade's gait shifts to awareness, sharp eyed, watching the man try to escape.

"You didn't break his legs?" Kafka asks.

"I did. This one is stubborn." Blade snarls. He looks dog like, wolf like, fangs borne between a drooling muzzle. Your eyes sting as you try to tug away, away from him as Kafka stands and saunters over to the body, that elusive little smile still present.

"Well, we have plenty to ask of him. He still has a few details to give away now, doesn't he?" She hums a little tune, yanking the man by the hair till his broken whimpers turn to miserable screaming. "Come on Bladie, I need help. And you…" She fixes that stare on the man. "Listen to me. You can't speak anymore, or scream, or cry. Not till I tell you to."

The man's cries fade out into open mouthed gasps, his face a bruised and bloodied mess of tears and snort. Blade was not kind in handling him, not with his torn tendons and the unearthly jut his legs were angled at. Your skin crawls at the sight. You reach for your bag, your phone, shaking past the initial terror to give a final call for help.

Blade looks at you. It's enough to completely shatter it, unwinding, undoing, pressing down harder against the fragile cracks in your walls and letting that mess slip away past the desperate grasp of your arms and down away on the floor.

You shut your eyes and tell yourself you saw nothing.

VIII. SKELETONIZATION

You don't hear much of the man, save for Kafka's questions muffled behind the walls. The whats, whens, wheres and hows that you can't keep track off without giving too much of yourself up ( you're afraid you do, a thousand different things will split. You tell yourself there's nothing there ). You focus in the clock instead, watching minutes after minutes pass beneath the incessant sound of it ticking, ticking, ticking.

Minutes after minutes after minutes.

There's a final exchange of words. You hear a tumble, a body hitting the ground. Kafka walks out, hardly bothered in the slightest and pristine save for that dampness of her gloves. She shoots you a charming smile, taking in how you'd tucked into yourself. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes. Scared, lamb?"

You're scared of a lot of things now, of the woman in front of you and the man outback and the man whose words they stole and the impending aftermath predicted. You're trapped in your own burning house, doors jammed shut and the window too high to take a jump. You'll suffocate in here, choke till your lungs collapse and your organs scream and fragment.

Kafka cups your cheek. "Hm, a pity. Scripts have to be followed though…sorry about that doc." She draws away and you let out a wet little sob. "Don't be too sad about it." She coos, patting your cheek. "On the bright side, I'll be leaving soon. Stay close to Bladie, okay? Can't have you running off and throwing a fuss now."

Dear lord no. Not Blade. Not Blade after all this. It feels like a joke and a half, an empty attempt at drawing out any laughter from an unenthused crowd of blank eyed faces. You stay seated, wide eyed and insistent. "No." you choke for good measure. Kafka's expression glows.

"No?" she echoes, a hand resting against either side of the armrest. You try to make yourself small, edging away from her farther and farther till her knee slots between your legs and you nearly cry out and kick her off. "Come on now." She coaxes, hand tugging at your waist, sitting you up proper. "Don't be too difficult. Bladie's not half bad."

You shake your head, blanking out through her crooning as your struggle intensifies. "Stop it." you repeat, shaking your head, seized and maniacal till your nails dig in. Kafka doesn't flinch. She's still smiling. "Don't you dare tell me I'm being —" You sob. it's messy, so messy and that pain in your chest only grows, spreading across like blooming rot. " — that I'm being difficult." You spit. "After all this, I'm allowed to. You're both insane, you fucks, I — "

Kafka presses a thumb over your lips. You bite, hard.

"Listen to me." She keeps talking. She won't stop. "Stop crying."

You stop crying. Your mind is empty white and fuzzy static stretching out like elastic. You feel her laughter against you. "Good girl." She praises. "Now, go on along with Bladie, okay? He'll do a good job looking after you."

You claw at the walls, trying to protest as your body lifts, padding out back, trapped within the long winding of corridors that didn't quite look like that once. "Kafka." you hear Blade echo again, his hands resting heavy on your shoulders. It sounds exasperated? Why? You're fine. You think you're fine. You see a magenta blur flutter around you and words spatter apart and stitch back together into nonsense and noise.

Blade takes you by the arm. You're half leaning against him, the soft, shaky breaths against his ribs and his heartbeat ( it's a slow, faint sound ). He seems to linger in place, letting you be as your nose screws against the smell of blood spotting his clothes. Then, he's leading you along the less crowded roads, shuffling past the harsh blaze of streetlights. Vaguely, you remember where this route takes you and you try to join the pieces — the memories feel so far, far away.

The mass tucked under Blade's arm moves. You look the man straight in the eye and do nothing. Your mind, your ribs are barren spaces.

You smell salt, hear the sea, the waves, the wind. The man in his arms struggles ( you're not here ). You see the panic stretched across, the way he pales to what looks like ash grey ( you're not here ). You watch Blade turn your face away, annoyance sparking in his eyes ( you're not here ). You look on anyway, as his fingers claw at his throat, so easily tearing apart soft flesh and tendon and muscle till his hands are stained warm red ( you're not here ). You're lain bare to those death throes, a wheezing from a broken windpipe, the yellow of subcutaneous fat and the ruptured arteries ( you're not here ).

"You should have looked away."

Blade's voice pulls you out. You finally breathe. Take it all in again as the cotton and the fuzz and the silk web is untangled from your notches. The man falls to the sand, nothing more than dead weight at this point.

( This could be you. )

You take a good, long look at him, at that tear stricken, marred face, that distended jaw and the awful angle to his limbs. The sand is already soaking up beneath him — he was alive once. You didn't know this person, you'd never met him and…

( You let him die. You're a doctor and you let him die. )

Blade's brow furrows when you take a shaky step back, two clear words; 'do not'. You look around you, spot one clear rout of escape amidst that hopeless need to collapse, the world spinning faster and faster and fraying and burning away at the far extremities. You try to run.

He doesn't lie when he says it's easy to catch you again.

You're drawn close, your back practically colliding against his chest before you could make it too far. That rabid, scrambling beast in your snarls and you sink your teeth into his wrist, kicking wildly till your foot connects with his shin. Blade grunts, and you slip away just a little, an inch, one more. But he's bigger, bigger and stronger and it takes a moment for you to fall to the floor, swiping into the buzz and feeling his heaving chest pressed against yours.

His hold closes round your throat. "No — " You burst out,. "No, no don't — "

Blade doesn't move as much against your kicks, face drawn to stony apathy while you try to pry his fingers away, vision blurring against tears and snot. His thumb presses down against your thyroid, breaths unevenly paced to an animalistic rhythm. He doesn't seem all there with how he seems so steeped in madness and…

…fuck it, you're terrified.

Your hand gropes to the side, closing round the uneven surface of a stone. You drive it into the side of Blade's skull, a faint crack ringing out. He falters, wide eyed as one hand presses against the wound and comes away wet. You take a gasping breath in, pushing yourself up but Blade drives you down hard, down to your back till it hits something soft, and still and dead —

( No no no nono no no no NO NO. )

The vermilion of his gaze burns you ( just like all those nights ago ).

It's already started to heal, collapsed parts of his skull scraping and pushing itself back out, repairing damaged bone and muscle. And Blade looks half drunk, sunken into rapture and starvation, his hand sliding up from your throat to press at your cheeks. You freeze, ceasing your assault to his chest and stomach.

He curls over your form, shrugging and swatting away your hands to pin you down proper. There is a wet squelch against your arm pressing against that open wound. "Stop…" You whine, trying to tug him back. "Blade. Blade stop — "

He presses his lips to yours. You slam your fist into his sternum, tasting his blood in his mouth. His teeth come next, biting against your bottom lip, taking, taking, taking. It feels infecting, like a disease, like something that shouldn't be there and you squirm. Blade's fingers tangle into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You feel your back press against the corpse's shoulder, practically crushing you against it.

He's not gentle. Blade can't be gentle with the violence that comes with him. It's too deeply embedded into the crevices of his bone and marrow and in his veins and blood. It's the oxygen he breathes in, the lead that poisons his alveoli and files away at the pliable parts of his abdomen.

His tongue peeks through, pushing past your lips to take a taste. There's that heady taste in you, disgusting, curling in your guts and just about threatening to batter out. You kick him again.

His eyes flash, dyed more red than orange. He comes away with spit and blood smeared across his lips. You heave, staring up at him, then break down, sobbing openly. Blade keeps you still, bending down to kiss you another time, just at the corner of your lips.

"Enough." You beg him, sounding small. You feel defeated, the load wearing down the bones of your shoulder till you're crushed and collapse. "Please."

Blade blinks. He sits up and sits you up with him, nestled between his legs. You look behind you, the man's larynx having come turn free from your struggle, hanging out a hairs breath and cushioned by fat and crushed muscle fibres. You croak, tipping your weight over and emptying your stomach out onto the beach; till all you are retching out is acid and bile. He pulls your hair back, halting your mess from getting caught in it.

"Done?" he asks, drawing you back close to him, his gaze lidded. You shut your eyes.

"I want to go back home." you whisper.

"Alright." Blade promises you, putting you back down on the sand. "Don't move." You don't think you can. Your limbs weight down more and more with the passing minute. Blade drags the body out into the ocean, for a moment, disappearing beneath the surface. He returns, of course. He can't drown, or die ( He's not human, never will be ). "Come." he tells you.

You allow it, him gathering you in his arms. You don't make a fuss, or shout. "Keys." he reminds you. You hand them to him, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your tears prickle beneath your eyelids.

He takes you back home.

You don't know how he'd avoided the security guard's questioning, or the neighbours, But Blade sets you down on the little stool, pulling the bucket beneath the tap to let the hot water run. You draw your legs to your chest, thoughts collapsing into each other, fracturing and splintering as your trembling grows worse. All you can think of is gargling till the taste of blood is gone and the memory of that kiss is gone.

Blade fixes his attention on you. "You need to bathe." He says, taking a knee. You're exhausted, too exhausted to protest, trembling when he pulls away at your jacket and your pants, letting it pile up by the door.

"I can do it myself." You mumble. You question the necessity of it. He won't listen, after all.

He unhooks your bra and tugs down your underwear. "You're tired." He states. "Your attempts will not be as effective."

"Does that matter?"

Blade hums. "Kafka mentioned the need for hygiene. You could fall sick. Besides, you are a doctor." Not anymore, you nearly snap. He moves on to himself next, unbuttoning his jacket. "Detergent?" he asks when you squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to see any more. The sound of his belt buckle is next and his trousers being pulled down.

"Cabinet under the kitchen sink." you mutter. Blade steps out and you lean up against the bucket, watching the water steadily fill till it reaches your fingertips. You hear the beeping from the washing machine and Blade's returning footsteps. He settles behind you

"Turn around."

You turn. You do not look down.

He spends a moment regarding you, then empties a pitcher-full of water over your head. It's warm enough and you let your eyes slip shut as he works on scrubbing away the blood and sweat from your hair. That rotten thing curls in your belly, ringing round like a centipede crawling.

Blade's thumb wipes away the smudge on your cheek with sandalwood soap and he tips his chin up. "Don't fall asleep yet."

"Okay." you passively reply, opening your eyes. he hums and continues to wash you, treating your body with clinical indifference. You don't know what's worse, the hunger or the distance. The act of being viewed as anything but human leaves a sour taste in your mouth. "What about you?" You ask, filling the empty space. You don't want to think about tonight. You don't want to think at all.

Blade hums. "You can help." He shrugs right after. "We will be done sooner at least."

"Okay." You echo, reaching for the soap. You come to realise that he does need the help. Pulling the bandages off of him was a hard enough task. They were messily strewn on, almost cutting away his blood flow and he sweeps it aside. His wrists and his forearms are next. You don't undo the one on his thigh, furiously washing the dried fluids off of him.

What are you doing?

A part of you laughs at the obscene humour. A few hours ago, you'd have dropped dead at the very idea of doing this, if the hopelessness wasn't torn away from you the reins and left you on the backseat of a crashing car.

"You can…turn around."

Blade grunts and turns. you spurt too much shampoo into your hands. Some of it spills over. "You're scared." He says.

"I am."

He bends down a bit. It's easier to reach his head this way. "You should be. You should have killed me." He states, severity weighing his words.

Your shoulders slump, fatigued. "Please. Just stop." Your voice dips into a whisper. "Just stop. I want to rest, alright?" Blade falls silent, knitting his brow together. He nods wordlessly as you rake your fingers through his hair, undoing some of the knot building up against the shampoo suds.

( Blade thinks you're still too gentle with him, in how you trace one of his scars. But he feels the shudder, the roiling beat under your skin, the fear. He sees how easy it is to bring the tears out again and turn that mind of yours off.

He turns a little, pressing his fingertips to the softness of your thigh, just in case you try to run again. )

When you're both done, he has you swaddled in your blankets and deposited on your bed, clothes in tow. It's horrible, this tenderness. You don't think he's used to it either, in how he shuffles and cautiously pads at your arm like you're a fragile little thing, like he wasn't the one who took the mallet to it in the first place.

"Will you hurt me?" You ask, dead eyed.

Blade's lips part ( sometimes he does, when the mara blooms forth florets in his chest and stomach and he wants to break something that breathes beneath his hands ). "Will you run?" he asks.

"If I do, will you hurt me?"

"Yes." he replies bluntly, his hand resting on your calves. You know what that means. You squeeze your eyes shut and nod, laying down on the bed and curling up into yourself.

"You're a monster." you tell him with a shaky, illegible slur. All this for a preordained destiny, for convenience, because you're a coward. All this and you'll be left with nothing tomorrow. You think of your clinic and what you'd salvaged before opening it. It's foundations and the grey walls of the empty rooms it once had. Your heart poured into it all. "Both you and her."

Blade lowers his head. "We know."

IX. DISJOINTING

You did not sleep at all, last night. Blade still stalks the hallways at the unearthly hours you wake at ( five thirty on the dot ). A man is dead, a man you barely know, whose body now below the ocean's surface. Maybe the sharks ate him. And your clinic…you curse it all, and you curse that compulsion that has you reaching for your phone.

It doesn't take long to find it after browsing the local news network. A few live footage of the collapsed interior and the busted furniture. Years of work torn apart ( At least Aleena quit. At least she doesn't have to see this ).

"Do you know why they did this?" you ask, your voice scratchy when Blade comes to linger by your door frame. He'd washed his clothes last night, having pulled his trousers back on with a loose fitted tank top. Kafka must have dropped by.

Blade looks away.

"You know." You spit out, fury bubbling up, clouding your eyes, painting it all red. "You know, don't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you do, you little — "

"The man." Blade cuts in. "The man who hurt you."

You grip the sheets. "What did you do?" you whisper, numbness taking foot and taking away more and more reasoning.

"I killed him." he passes you a sharp look. "Letting him live would have put both of us at risk."

You let out a mirthless laugh. "So it's your fault then. You…you come in and just assume I would be fine with you just…" You laugh. You laugh and laugh and laugh till your ribs hurt and your sides ache because it was so unnecessary, all of this. He must be sick in the head, him and Kafka, to twist apart your livelihood and step all over it. Monsters, the lot of them. Monsters.

"Oh god you're a fucking riot. Now what should I do? I have no job…should I go back? Maybe you could get a kick out of me being sold off again, right?" You flash him a bright little smile, mania at it's finest, and anger. So, so much anger it boils your body alive.

He narrows his eyes. "You will not be leaving. They'll come after you next."

You giggle. "Of course they would." You whisper. "Of-fucking course they would. Then I'll just die. Let my father douse my ashes, if there's even a body to cremate because that just seems the best way to go." You lay back down, tugging at your hair with frustration. The mattress dips as he lays next to you, lips drawn against your nape.

It's possessive, demanding of every little thing and every little part you had to offer.

"I won't be leaving." You snarl, feeling all that spite gather. "I can't because of you. remember?"

"I know."

You press your cheek against your pillow. You're tired again. You want to sleep. "You may as well just kill me at this point." You state flatly. "There isn't much use keeping me alive. I've served my purpose right? What was it, some glorified shield?"

His grip on you constricts. You're pulled closer to his chest. "You will not die." He tells you, his nose pressing up against your neck. Blade inhales, tangling his fingers into your hair. "And I won't kill you."

You bare your teeth at him. Then you stop, and press your face to the pillow again. "Enough." you tell him, feeling angry and tired and empty and more. You try to push Blade off of you, the small of your back brushing against him. Blade lets out a hiss, nails digging into your forearm and you freeze.

He's pressed up, half hard against you.

You throw yourself away from him.

Your eye sockets burn as you flinch and struggle. "Stop." He rasps his order, pressing you stomach down against the mattress as you curl over the edge, letting out a panicked whimper, a migraine searing through your forehead. It turns into an ugly sob, into cries that bleed into the sheets, tracking saliva down as you're dragged back.

His weight bears down hard on your back, his mane curtaining your line of sight. You try to elbow him off and he wrestles your hands down, pinning them behind you. He's panting, letting out a stray growl every now and then. The edge of his nails dig a little deeper into your wrists, just as the other hand fixes itself firmly against your thigh.

You shake. You don't try to hide the glassy eyed look. You only shake.

Blade's annoyances seem to mount, his forehead pressing against your temple. ( Appease her, Kafka's voice whispers to his ear. Blade feels too much of you beneath his palm, and it stokes a selfish hunger that comes down violently ).

He trails his hand upwards. You lay slack, surrendering to it with a tense form. It tugs your nightwear down, spreads your legs a little more. You cry a little, then give up on it, his fingers exploring the softness of your thighs and slipping to the inside. He lets your hands go and you come to grasp at the pillows, nipping down at your bottom lip.

"Blade…?" You whisper, unsure.

He traces the seam of your cunt, dipping a finger inside to toy at your clit and you squeak, grabbing his arm. "H-hold on that's — "

Blade turns you over, draping your legs on either side of his hips. You look at him, pupils shrunken down at the sight of him surveying you, his lips pressing over the curve of your knee, then further down. You squirm beneath him, movements stilled by a firm hand on your belly. Blade bites hard, tearing into the skin of your thigh, breaking capillaries and drawing blood.

He pulls away to witness the bruising and the wet wail you shudder out, soothing you with his tongue brushing over the wound like a dog. You slam your foot against his shoulder. Blade simply grabs it and hoists it above his shoulder.

"Let me…" he mumbles, groaning up against your skin, spacing your thighs apart some more. You're squirming, and he roughly pulls you closer. "Stay still."

You can't, you want to say. You can't when he's touching you like that and —

He stills. "You haven't done this before, have you?" he guesses. You want to sink, sink down into a place that was far away from here. Blade's eyes are unnaturally bright, burning like coals against the dim lighting.

"Shut up and get this over with." You rasp. There's nothing here, nothing between the two of you. Maybe a few sick feelings from his side. You want it to be done with and let the maggots eat away at your body after ( if that makes it easier for him in the end ). Blade huffs, vague amusement flitting past his expression. His cheek is smushed against your thigh.

"Your first…" he mumbles, a vague story playing out in his eyes. Your legs are pushed back, and he sits himself down before you, teeth grazing through soft flesh till he latches his mouth to your cunt and presses the expanse of his tongue over your bundle of nerves. You mewl into it, jolting under his touch as his hands come to massage circles at your hips.

You stay steadfastly quiet after that, as the assault continues and he licks a strip up your slit while gauging every little shift and twitch on your face. You could have fooled anyone else with the forced apathy, fooled Blade with you looking at anything but him. He suckles at your clit, rolling it over the tip of his tongue and you twitch, bucking your hips into the grind.

Blade demands. He demands and keeps demanding, eating you out half starved and at a pace you couldn't keep up with; feeling that appendage slip into you at some point of it all. You moan ( this doesn't feel goo. It shouldn't. How fucking pathetic are you?! ) trembling at all the new feelings blurring out your mind.

You tell yourself to take it. Take it and let him leave you be after that taste of satisfaction. Blade nuzzles into your cunt, smearing your building slick against your outer lips till smelted orange meets the fatigue in yours.

"You're being stubborn." he comments, pulling away for a moment. You grit your teeth, open your mouth to snap back. Blade dips down then, a finger slipping into you, massaging your insides and pacing himself with more gentleness than you'd expected. Gasping and grasping at the sheets, your narrowed gaze fixates on his, fuming, fuming.

You push his face away when he leans in close and he persists, teeth latching over your neck, licking a delicate strip up the column of it. His chest seems to vibrate — it's not a purr. It rattles at you, it's unnatural.

"Make it quick then!" you sob. "Please."

His finger curls inside you and you curl your toes into the sheets, keening into his hair. You hate this. You hate this. There is a warmth in your insides that stirs and seeps through the cracks. Blade seems to notice and takes it in with a hunger that terrifies you. He presses his pads against that sweet spot, a thumb returning to your clit. You whine, shake your head.

"Good?" he asks. It feels like a taunt.

"Shut up." you grimace, rocking your hips in pace with him. It's little jolts of that buttery feeling that has your mind sink further and farther away. Blade kisses your neck, grinding up against your ass through it all. It's awful. It's all wrong, this facade of gentleness.

You mumble, grinding at his hand as another finger is added and he stretches you out a little, testing your limits with rapture. That heat grows, grows, grows bit by bit, tuned to the way his finger curls into that spot. A moan spills out, then another and you spa a hand over your mouthy, shaking your head. You want it to stop. You want this to stop now and —

Blade's digits nudge against your cervix and he bears down on your clit hard.

It snaps, that warmth. You tighten round his gingers, clenching, sucking him in deeper and his lips part as he watches you fall apart with a jumble of words and begging. You fall back into the sheets as he pulls his hand away, laving at your mess while he undoes the buttons of your shirt. It spares a peak of the sweet of your breasts, the soft expanse of your stomach. He's seen it before. There's nothing new to it.

He bites again, not as deep this time as he pulls his pants down. You spare a glance, snapping out of the afterglow when you catch sight of him. "That won't fit." You whisper.

Blade shudders, his cock resting at your stomach. It's hot, an angry res that makes you feel uneasy. You half expect pain when he slides down to breach you entrance, you expect tears and you expect it with hunched shoulders. Blade is slow instead, thoughtful, almost. He keeps his progress slow, watching you wince against the stretch before he thrusts in deeper, finally nudging his tip to your cervix and staying there a moment.

Somewhere between all that, his hand finds yours, pressing down at your palm in awkward assurance.

You can't take it.

"What are you doing?!" you demand, whining against how full you felt. It's strange, so strange and you think you see the mad ramblings from friends and gossip over how good sex felt sometimes. But this is Blade. Blade, with his violence and his slashed wrists and the way he stank of death.

Blade pushes some of his weight on you. "It's your first time." he replies.

Your first time. A rare consideration. An emotion that bud out too late for your tastes. "Why should you care then?!" You snap, grabbing his tank top. "For fucks sake, stop treating me like I'm your lover! I'm not! You're not doing this to me because you have feelings do you?!"

The question was wholly rhetorical. It's a harsh accusation, mounted by everything else he'd done wrong. Blade falls silent, eyes wide. You leer up at him, then chortle with disbelief. "Oh god, you are." You choke out, feeling violated in a way. Feeling more violated than you were already. Blade keeps staring at you as you cover your face, cackling. "Oh god, oh god this is just unbelievable! You like me? Me?!"

You feel venom drip into your words. You feel that ache, the urge to tear his eyes out then and there. Boys will be boys. The words keep echoing through and it makes you physically ill to think of it.

"You're pathetic. You're absolutely fucking pathetic!" you cut through, grabbing his hair and pulling at it. Blade grunts, annoyed. You don't care, ripping at his face, his neck, his shoulders. "Fuck! Fuck you! After all this bullshit, fuck you!" Blade hisses, trying to shift a bit, move some more but you kick out at his thigh.

"Do not." he grits out, his voice low and angry. "Your anger is an inconsequential thing. I've seen far worse."

"You think I want your guilt, you ass?!" you demand. "You think I want you begging and grovelling for forgiveness?!" Blade thrusts. You dig down, fight against it and the sweet burn it brings. You feel that storm brew in your chest and you spit at him, jarring Blade enough with wide eyed shock ( it's a satisfying thing to see ) to slam your weight into him and roll the two of you over, your hands grabbing at his throat.

He nudges deeper into you and you cry out, feeling his tip coax into your g-spot. Still, you hold on.

Blade still watches, gauging the sudden shift, waiting to see you move. When you take a moment to gain your bearings, he grasps at your hips, guiding you down his cock and you almost falter, feeling his free hand tweak your nipples. sputtering a little, you persist, your thumbs coming to press against his Adam's apple.

Blade lets out a gasp, snapping his hips up again, drawing himself out then back into you. You feel him grind against those sensitive spaces he'd gauged out earlier and a few flustered cries sputter out before your grip tightens round your neck.

He sets his speed, increasing that pace to a faster rhythm, grasping at what parts he could, letting you take from him for a moment. You double over, teeth tearing into his cheek. "I despise you." You tell him. "I hate you for taking everything away from me. I hate you for ruining my life." You pour it all in, all the vitriol and the fury. Blade's eyes shut.

"I know." he grunts, feeling you clench down on his cock.

"I wish you'd stayed dead." You add, feeling it all pile up into a raw mass that eats you alive. "Do you hear me?"

"I know." He repeats.

"I hate you." You sob out, your tears splattering against his jaw. Your thumb presses down harder. Blade moans, his tempo increasing and catching you in it's midst, hitting your sweet spot over and over till it tumbles through to make a mess between the two of you, the baggage and the tucked away harshness. "You're pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic."

It feels so fuzzy, the heat, the faint warmth from Blade, blocking out his airflow. His movements grow frantic, almost, his grip on you bruising your hips till finally, you find you release again, legs weakening below you. Still, you hold fast, dragging yourself over the expanse of his body as he keeps up with thrusting faster and faster to a brink of near over-stimulation, all of it animalistic grunts and grows and teeth nudging at your chest.

You press down hard enough and Blade finally cums, his release coming in spurts inside of you. The cartilages in his larynx give out and you feel tissue collapse into itself ( just like that man on the beach with his throat torn out, poetic in a gruesome sense ). You watch him struggle to breath and you push down harder, hysteria bursting as you bare your teeth and drive him closer to another death.

Blade goes still below you. He's cold as a corpse.

You sway a bit, lifting yourself off of his cock, falling into a haze of cotton wool and sick satisfaction, tipping into the space next to him. He's dead. He's dead.

You shut your eyes, and you feel nothing.

You have better to do now, the unsaid and the undone. The empty buzz of pleasure slowly recedes and you grasp your phone between your hands, tapping at the message app. You let out a soft cry, shoulders shaking. There was a life once that felt far too distant. Where you'd been tugged away and folded into silk and gold till you were shackled down and told to stay quiet. 

( There are many things you want to tell them. Many angry things, many quiet, introspective things. Many with a little more love lining your words, a little more longing. They still wait for you, even after shutting their doors. You know this too. )

So, you start to type.

Dear Appa…

Blade wakes when the sunlight filters in, and his arm winds round you in the silence, listening to the rustle down below and the coming commotion. Then, he rises, buttoning his pants up proper and drawing the blanket over your head. "Stay here." he tells you.

You listen to the angry voices and the encroaching footsteps from the staircase outside. Blade summons his sword, stalking out of the room, dog-like, wolf-like, his violence returned to him after briefly being cowed by your venom. 

The doorbell rings and you draw into yourself.

You are not here. You tell yourself. You close your eyes and think of the garden in front of your childhood home.

[deadtiredghost]

Tmnt facts that are canon cause i said so:

All Leo's are sci-fi fans of varying degrees of old sci-fi series/movies

But MM!Leo thinks the old movies are old and thus has no major franchise to obsess over, he is just big into any of the more modern movies of the genre: I'm thinking Interstellar, Blade Runner, idk many more. And then he started watching Final Space and eventually got into Futurama.

But he still would think the other Leo's are old and a bit lame for enjoying old anime so much.

All the Donnie's and Leo's are the musical fans, but that doesn't mean that Raph and Mikey can't enjoy a musical too! Especially 2003!Raph who grew up watching shit like high school musical and teen beach movie with Leo and Donnie.

The 2003 boys all teamed up to sit on Mikey and tape Mikey's mouth shut cause he would dramatically and badly sing the songs otherwise.

2018 crew are hard into Hamilton of course while 2012 have a knock off version of it that flopped but Mikey loves.

2003 have a musical version of Lost Boys and Faries that could possibly be comparable with some rap songs and some emotional ballads.

Bayverse and MM have batman while 2018 have a weird mixture of some irl media and some really obvious knock offs. 2012 has Wingnut and Silber sentry as comics to replace Marvel and DC in their universe and we all know how 2003 is on superheroes.

All the Mikey's are naturally talented at drawing apart from 2012 who's skills apparently just got transferred to literally every single one of his siblings.

2012!Mikey's writing looks like chickenscratch and his drawings are chaotic in an abstract art kinda way, while 12!Leo can draw anime, 12!Karai is decent at drawing anything reallt, 12!Donnie preffers skatching items and backgrounds rather than people and 12!Raph is the one who does art the most in the fam.

The 1987 turtles are stuck in 1987 and have been since 1987. They like crossovers for the change of pace but 87!Raph and 87!Donnie very much dislike how other turtles have treated them in the past so take any and ever chance to fuck with their alternates in retaliation, feigning innocence well enough that they keep getting away with blatantly insulting their iterations to their face.

Leo is the tea drinker in the family across iterations but most of the iterations don't drink coffee - rottmnt gets into coffee wars (sans Leo and Splinter) but other than that 2007!Donnie and Bayverse!Raph are the only rabid coffee drinkers.

most of the Donnies drink energy drinks if they want a caffeine boost - the nonbinaries and their Monster especially.

The MM kids aren't allowed coffee because Splinter read a watched of child-raising YouTube videos and banned it. Of course that doesn't stop them from sneaking out. MM!Donnie is trying to convince him to allow coffee while MM!Raph just sneaks in his energy drinks.

2003!Casey was convinced the turtles were adults for at LEAST the first month into their friendship.

The ampunt Mikey wears stickers is directly proportional to the amount of leeway Splinter gives him - with the used-to-be-human Splinters being more strict on not personalising his weapon while the used-to-be-rat Splinters such as MM gives the go ahead.

The outlines of this rule are 03!Splinter and 18!Splinter of course who have entirely different ways of handling their adhd child.

And then there is bayverse!Splinter who said fuck the stickers, yes of course my 15-year-old children can have tattoos.

(And yes I firmly believe they were 15 in the first movie, and I attribute their tattoos to Splinter not really seeing the harm in it, or caring much as long as it won't hurt them.)

18!Leo is biologically the eldest but no one knows this apart from Draxum who will never tell at this point. Splinter aged them based on size.

On the other hand, 03!Leo is the biological youngest but only Donnie knows this (science shit to find it out) and will never tell anyone because he found out that 03!Mikey hatched first and that information can never be allowed to get to the turtle in question.

2012 Casey is transfem but doesn't know it yet and 2018 Casey is what 12!Casey will look like at 20.

All Donnie's watch anime and all Mikey's watch horror movies - despite how much they may or may not scream at the horror movies.

07!Mikey sells art online and 07!Leo becomes a language tutor in their 20's. Ironic as 12!Raph attempts to sell art online but becomes too emotionally attached to his work and 12!Donnie attempts to tutor for a time but is a terrible teacher.

Leo is a basketball or baseball fan, Raph likes wrestling and basketball, Donnie will partake in basketball or volleyball and Mikey prefers dancing but is open to playing anything... just not watching.

Splinter always watched the tennis, becuase his grandmother did. Leo likes to put it on but doesn't like playing it.

Mikey will forever be confused why the others enjoy watching sport. This stemms from when he was 12 and trying to watch his cartoons and Splinter would always take control of the TV during the Olympics. Mikey is still very salty and has an agenda against the Olympics and any other big sports match on their communal TV.

All the Leo's before 2012 just didnt use the Internet or any electronics as a kid and thus struggles with electronics massively.

Conversely 2012 and 2018 Leo were both on tumblr as kids and read fanfic about Space Heros and Jupiter Jim respectively.

And in addition: Donnie was on the Internet far too much as a kid.

(12!Donnie will never tell but 12!Mikey befriending Chris Bradford on Facebook hit a bit too close to home.)

After Don, Raph is the best at mechanics, other than 18!Raph who is kinda shit at them.

Splinter taught all of the turtles first aid but Raph and Mikey are patched up the most by the other two, which leads to the other two being more confident and skilled at first aid.

Leo's first aid experience is very much similar to an army medic, using improvisation based on his prior knowledge without any of the proper hospital procedure while Donnie's is much more based on his research into medicine and thus much more clinical.

The outliers are the 18!kids cause Donnie finds biological shit kinda disgusting unless he HAS to do it.

And then there is the 87!turtles who don't really get hurt for longer than an episode's run time. Despite this every single one of them are able to accurately and skillfully carry out any medical procedure should the need arise becuase cartoon logic and convenience. It is a skill they have and its usually 87!Donnie ordering them about while 87!Raph plays nurse.

Mikey and Raph spray paint together sometimes in all iterations other than 87.

87!Mikey and 87!Leo have never kmowingly committed a crime.

Mikey looks up to Leo most out of his siblings, and Leo would look up to Mikey in turn if he could get over the jealousy towards his youngest brother.

There is not a single itteration where Leo doesn't sometimes kinda wish he could be more like Mikey - he has never voiced these feelings and hates that he feels this jealousy.

If you wake Leo up from sleeping he will be alert, a bit grumpy about it, but will never turn you away. He rarely gets a full good night's sleep anyways, ans becuase of this he is prime target to bother when he is awake... up until they turn 14 where Leo gets into the habit of pretending to be asleep so Mikey doesn't bother him and starts meditating until he falls asleep.

The prior headcannon excludes rottmnt and mutant mayhem.

Mikey starts bothering Donnie more and joins him in the lab late at night a lot.

If you dare to disturb Raph's beauty sleep you will get a pillow to the face and a shouting to at the least.

Everyone of the turtles loves Kung Fu Panda or whatever similar movie exists in their world. They won't admit it but its because Poe reminds them of Mikey.

Raph maintains that he doesn't like physical contact much to get out of hugging the sweaty humans in his life. He is actually fairly chill with hugs he just hates the feeling of sweat on his scales so much, and learnt that the hard way when Casey brought him in for a hug after a fight and he shoved him off and blustered a bit. But any of his siblings hugging him is fine, he only ever shoves them off out of annoyance.

Donnie is the least huggy turtle, but he will sometimes lean his full body weight on April - which is fine in most iterations but some cannot handle the weight, I'm looking at Bayverse.

If Mikey were a human he would be a borderline nudist when home and everyone who lived with him would complain about it.

Like [insert hair covering here] and a fluffy dressing gown from when he was 9 wrapped around the waist if you're lucky.

[thegnomelord]

Bro he absolutely was omg. And I work at my old highschool as a janitor now so like, everyday I risk passing him in the halls and I s2g if I see him after having that dream I'll actually just lose it

Oooo we love spiting father's here, favorite activity. I'm actually at my father's house rn and he hates that I got my septum pierced because he still sees me as a girl and thinks that because, where I live, almost every white girl had the septum piercing that I'm being too like...similar to others?? But I've wanted to get the piercing since I was little so eh

Also, had an ifrit thought. Would be be technically resistant to fire? Like, he wouldn't be able to be burned by normal fire since he's a fire mage? (Also loved that joke about the fridge and the asshole)

- 🪒

Lol and in all probability he probably knows you have a crush on him :Dd

Okay 1; my dyslexia acted up and i read splitting instead of spiting and was confused for a solid 5 minutes. And 2; fuck him, good on you for doing what you want :D. I genuinely hate it when ppl attribute your wants to just fads. My parents see tattoos just for criminals and act like I plan to murder someone when I talk about getting tattoos lol

As for Ifrit; It's complicated. Elemental mages have varying degrees of resistance to their element depending on their abilities, but no full immunity. So with Ifrit, the mage marks act as armor so no mater the heat they would be fine, for the rest of his body, fire would need to be very very hot and concentrated to injure him.

The biggest danger to mages are the side effects not caused by magic. So for lets say fire magic, the fire may be magical in nature, but the smoke created by burning things with the magic fire isn't and can hurt him as it would you or me. Hell, Ifrit has gone through 3 sets of lungs in a little over a decade just because of how deadly smoke inhalation is. It's also why he wears the gas mask.

[cursedfortune]

It's easy to just go, "Haha, her spell of regeneration is so capable" but I like to think about the nuances of it. The amount of years it took to become desensitized to cuts, bruises, being stabbed, shot with various projectiles. And even with that, she isn't immune to pain - she has just grown to have a very high pain tolerance. To the point she can become maddened/manic by either feeling almost nothing or when she is still experiencing pain in combat. There's no winning.

Being set on fire still hurts her. Between the trauma of what she endured from a young age to the fact fire is effective, it has been something she cannot truly become desensitized to. Just endure. Fire, like acid and certain venoms/poisons, constantly push back on her spell. So it's just a matter of her spell winning out over time or her taking care of the passive damage.

I don't write this as 'Mortem can't feel pain for the most part' but more-so, 'Mortem can feel pain, she's just hardened to a lot of it'. Softer touches and gentle things she notices instantly because that's not the norm. You may as well be touching raw nerves. She is used to a harsh touch but not fingers ghosting over her forearm. The effect it has on the nerves differs from what she's used to.

When Mortem forged her spell of regeneration, it was her in her youth. She accounted for a lot of aspects to it, but certain nuances and consequences still made it through. Her spell gave her a high metabolism which should make her warm, but constant cell regeneration contributes to her feeling colder to the touch.

Mortem may have built a terrifyingly useful spell, but it has a single weakness that can be exploited and undo everything. That being said, despite this spell, it is really because of her willpower to endure and overcome that has made her into such a formidable force.

When she realized her physical limitations, she took to integrating aspects of the beasts that dwelled within her forest to empower herself. Her abilities are primarily to serve her purpose and not be offensive, but she has pushed herself to be able to weaponize herself because the world needed the witch to fight. Because some souls had to be put to rest despite not wanting to. If it's something needed for her purpose, Mortem can adapt to learn it. Sometimes it's a permanent change to herself, like tattooing an open gate to all energy/magic on her chest. Other times it's temporary abilities she borrows by forging a spell and then relinquishing it once her spell is cast and done with.

The entire subject of Mortem being desensitized with many kinds of pain and her being sensitive to lighter touches is also especially important. It ties into her core ability of energy manipulation - which involves the soul. Souls and bodies are interwoven, what affects one will affect the other so varying degrees. It has been an ugly journey. At times, it was her soul that willed her to become desensitized to pain. At other times, it was her body being in such agony that maddened her into numbness until desensitization was forced upon her. A lot of this was done at the hands of witch hunters or her enemies in war - a portion of it, however, she did to herself in order to experiment and learn her own limitations.

Witches will always be products of the world state and in return, the world state will be a product of witches. She will become whatever is needed to carry out her specific purpose, no matter the morality or how seemingly impossible it is. It may sound like there's a lot Mortem can do, but that's not at all accurate. There's a lot she has the potential to do, but that doesn't mean she can do it unless there's no alternatives. She can't do elemental magic beyond calling a storm, but if she needs it - she'll either have to get help or forge a spell.

There's a running joke that Mortem loves heights and wishes she could fly, but her purpose has no reason for such an ability. So she just SIGHS over it. If there's no reason, it serves no purpose to her directive. Everything Mortem has done to herself has been carved into her, it's tattooed across every inch of skin that's not visible with her usual dresses. Everything she has done to herself is linked. Stacked. It makes it difficult to topple her over but if one ever learned the way to, the entire thing known as Mortem would come crumbling down and shatter.

While her strengths are very useful that doesn't change the fact the consequences for her abilities exists. If you learn what to do and manage to succeed defeating her, you can absolutely one shot Mortem out of the realm of the living. It was audacious she made these rules for herself but it was necessary. She isn't immortal. She doesn't want to be immortal. Her spell if good, it keeps her alive to serve her purpose. But she is part of the wheel, the cycle, the natural balance. Being fallible is that. You can imprison her, hurt her, put her out of commission temporarily or permanently - all of this matters in how she designed herself. She is a reflection of the world's needs and later the needs of the cosmos. Which is all the more reason her nickname is the Bride of the Universe (which she doesn't approve of still lmao).

[bracketsoffear]

Roy Mustang (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) "He's the Flame Alchemist - a military mage with a unique, unprecedentedly destructive ability to create fire on the scale of "destroying a few city blocks with a finger snap". Fire powers alone obviously do not make a Desolation Avatar, but this is absolutely not all he's got.

The Desolation's themes of pain, loss and destruction of potential are perhaps most evident in his relationship with his lifelong companion, Riza Hawkeye. He idealistically (to protect the people and to better the country in the future) enlisted in the military, and she was inspired to do the same. Flame alchemy was her father's treasured dangerous research that he tattooed onto her back, and that is how Roy learned it after her father's death - she metaphorically entrusted her back to him.

Then came the Ishvalan genocide - and he proved instrumental in it, implied to have the largest death toll even among other state alchemists with destructive powers, and earned the moniker "Hero of Ishval" - he's the poster child of Desolation in-universe. And genocide by an element, especially fire, is arguably the most Desolation thing to exist ever. Jude Perry's "blackened earth, the destructive agonizing heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life" is a line that could be lifted verbatim from a Roy-centric episode. And in a more individual fighting context, Roy also exemplifies Desolation's targeting nature - while he can spam fire, he also can and will target the most painful and important parts, torture and humiliate.

Coming back to Riza, who became a sniper and saw what Roy was capable of with the knowledge she trusted him with: after the war she begged him to burn off the tattoo on her back, so that there would at least be no more Flame Alchemists. Being forced to consider how you influenced your closest person and then having to hurt them unimaginably is a very Desolation moment. Finally, in their relationship after the war and during the series I can't not see the similarities between Roy and Agnes Montague, tensely attempting to do Things Normal People Do and usually romance-coded gestures but knowing he they could never be who they thought they could.

If I could, I would nominate the two of them as a single Avatar. But alas."

Dhwan!Master (Doctor Who) "Every incarnation of the Master is an angry, sadistic bastard to varying degrees, but Dhawan’s portrayal in particular makes clear that he is destroying things and killing people to hurt the Doctor first, and to further his ends second - save for when destruction is an end in and of itself. The previous incarnations of the Master all have ambitions of conquest, which requires something actually surviving to rule over in the end. Dhawan's Master, however, is deeply affected by a) the events leading up to his previous self's death, and b) numerous horrifying revelations about the nature of the Time Lords and of the Doctor. When the audience first meets him, he is already DEEP in a self-destructive spiral and only gets more unstable with each subsequent appearance, turning his rage outward all the while. He razes his home planet, draws out the reveals of his schemes to twist the knife for the Doctor, and eventually even tries to steal her very identity and being in order to tarnish her name and destroy every good thing she ever did. He hates himself and both loves and hates the Doctor on a deep, fundamental level, for things he wouldn't be able to change even if he were capable of letting go in the first place, so he leans ever harder upon his hatred for everything else in order to keep going."

[kurtmustdie]

lmao i fucking forgot to share this

not only do i have unorganized miguel heacanons but i have unorganized HOBIE ones too

i have unorganized random headcanons for all the characters i brainrot over these two are no different!!

identity headcanons first hehe:

hes trans. he probably diyed his hrt and also has top surgery somehow hes magic. (i also think he'd have tattoos over his scars, either super cool bat/devil wings or an intricate spider design on their whole abdomen cant decide ill draw it later 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉)

he, however, doesnt really have any specific sexuality or gender labels they feel like they fit into. theyre attacted to all genders of varying degrees but doesnt really put a label on it. he just exists.

also doesnt mind what pronouns you use for her. any/all. basically.

also also would encourage people to use the weirdest and coolest neopronouns they can think of for zem like REALLY go out there WHATEVER YOU CAN THINK OF.

ADHD haver?? MAYBE???

to the rest acaksdlfj;akdjf:

theyre very crafty and dabble in basically every form of art. music, graffiti, painting, sculpting (mainly with trash or scraps or random discarded items he finds, more on that later on), sewing, whatever. if he can learn to do it she will.

he is super touchy and likes being close to people, but also understand boundaries.

very emotionally intelligent, i feel like this is canon anyway but ill just put it out there, ze can basically sense if someone is upset.

LOVES ABSOLUTELY LIVES FOR talking to new people, will go out of their way to introduce himself to basically everyone, especially new spider-people she meets.

he is a bit of a joker, ofc, but he wont try and push boundaries that he clearly sees or hears from the person theyre talking to. hi people who hc him as being an unself aware dickhead shut up you are very wrong did you even watch the movie.

this one is probably my favorite but he will pick up random things he sees around him and keep them for art projects. cool rock on the sidewalk? its a rock, hes gonna take it. funny lookin bug? might pick it up for a little to look at it and put it back in a safer spot. bottle cap? "mine now". like i said before he likes using litter to make art.

he will stop mid-mission if he sees something cool that he can take home like "oh [riff] cool leaf" and put it in his pocket.

i was referencing this post btw i love this headcanon, absolutely genius, i will steal it ty /lhj

this stealing of random objects from all around the multiverse has caused many lectures for miguel (they arent listening)

they have some kind of control over what texture/color they turn into if xey really think about it but most of the time he just kind of.. lets it do its thing. (sort of like a RainWing?)

shockingly good at vague yet oddly specific threats that are unrealistic but if you really think about it it's like "oh yeah he could totally do that..." but she wouldn't. yknow what im saying right???

while he does live in the 70s where technology was uh... not as popular nor as advanced as they are now, he's aware of modern tech through Gwen, Miles, Pav, DEFINITELY through Margo and Miguel, but she doesn't really use it often. doesnt really see the point.

along with that he also is aware of modern music as well, he has mixed feelings (gwen is probably the biggest influence though she is such a Pinkshift/Paramore/My Chem girlie it hurts to think about)

100% collects record of artists, especially smaller artists, that they like.

if you get them going about music he will talk for HOURS. HOURS until you tell him to shut up, even though fae totally wont listen and will keep going anyway. (just like me teehee projecting is fun <3 )

while hobie does use his guitar as a weapon for some reason he is quite protective of it. they wont try and stop you from touching it or playing it, but he will watch you like a hawk. half out of "oo look another person is interested in guitar" and the other half of "👁️👁️ dont break it i can only do that /j" (a lot of musicians are like that, i would know, im one of them. ha)

loves stray animals. cats, dogs, birds, anything. he will stop to pet them if they let him.

he also will talk to cats like any other person. especially spider cat. spider cat could make a cat noise and he'd act like he understood it. "yeah totally man, i get it. meow."

he can sing like... averagely? he has a good sense of pitch and timing, as most musicians do, but she isnt professionally trained or really does it too often

they will scream though

also really likes messing with makeup and bodypaint. he will spend hours on it if he can.

FUCK I AM SO HAPPY I DIDNT POST THIS IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE I KEEP REMEMBERING THINGS ACK HERES ONE LAST ONE POST THIS AFTER ASH I SWEAR (edit from two weeks later: i forgor): he definitely isnt a morning person. he loves to sleep in. definitely values rest, like a lot. miguel will call him at like 7 am and hobie will flip him off and say 5 more minutes when they really mean 2 more hours.

do i have any more?? hmmm maybe if i remember but this is what i have so far. mostly just silly lil headcanons that arent entirely plot relevant as most of my headcanons are.

[atlantahammy]

Didn’t think i’d get this done before my days off ended, but hey, I did it! even if it is ass late at night! Whoop! aanyway: Nice lil Ref-sheet I did of Astra, yeah her full name is Astraea, Yes, those are open toe boots, for those interested there is Infor for her under the cut!

I’m also not really gonna list her age since I draw her on the older scale with my own design for her partner... If that makes sense?

———————————– My Commissions | .Carrd

Full Name: Astraea V. Orenda Nicknames: Astra, Nicknames Given by Donnie: Dusk, Starlight, Stars, Princess, Octavia,  Species: Dragon Yokai. Height: 4′10″. Sex: Female (She/her, doesn’t care for gender roles) Sexuality: Unlabeled. Significant Other: Donatello Hamato (FIGHT ME, I AM CRINGE BUT FREEEEE!) Family: Devi, Kadem, Rune. Disabilities: PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Nearly Blind without glasses, Deaf in left ear.  Star Sign: Leo. M.B.T: INFJ-T. Alignment: Chaotic Good. Character Class: Witch (Wizard in D&D terms?) / Mage (Same thing??) Occupation: Enchanter / Potion Crafter / Fortune Teller / Scroll Scriber Weapons: Magic / Quarterstaff (The PoleStar) / Shorts words / Long Swords / Daggers / Darts

Skills:

Art /Song /Dance

Crafting  / Enchanting

Potion Craft / Cooking

Scroll scribing / Alchemy

Divination / Astronomy / Lucid Dreaming

Gardening / Herbalism

Language & Rune Comprehension

First Aid / Magical Medical Knowledge

Note: Being a mage, Astra has had to dabble in a number of things, such as song and dance for rituals that require chants and movement, drawing for a steady hand for drawing magic circles and rune carving and magical studies, not to mention all the reading, so keep that in mind with her long skill list, even if some are also hobbies, being a mage is tiring.

Ability's/Weapons/Items:

Multiple Forms: Dragon / Yokai / Human (Cloaking Necklace)

Size Shift: Dragon form can change size mainly.

Elemental Breath Weapon: Its Plasma, purple plasma. #SpaceDragon

Scaled Armor: Her scales makes it harder for her to be hurt, but also uhh some people would love to use her scales for armor #Yikes

Magical Blood: Dragons blood is pretty potent for spells and potions, so getting cut isn’t always a bad thing, now when other people want to use it... #MajorYikes

Natural Weaponry: Claws & Sharp Teeth

Flight / Wing Manifestation: In Yokai form, she can retract / hide her wings as constellation tattoos on her shoulder blades, when she needs them she can bring them out to use for flight.

Spell Book / Magic: Astra has a spellbook with a number of spells she uses frequently, such as a spell she uses to levitate and manipulate objects too heavy to lift or out of range due to her short height.Healing spells of varying degrees, Shielding spells, shadow blade, and a number of crystal based attacking spells.

Polestar: Her Signature Quarterstaff, a gift from her sister that she treasures like no other, in its first form she can use the crystal to channel her magical energy into that of a scythe, or ningata, second form allows her to hold AOE type spells and summons to a greater degree, but also aid in teleportation spells.

Cloaking Broach: It's the large star pendant on her choker, not really a broach but still.

Bag of Holding: Yep, she has one, carries a lot of stuff in it, like medical supplies, potion supplies, electronics, snacks, potions, etc.

Divination Magic: Her major magical study, She ends up seeing the past, present, future, near future, what could of been, what was avoided, finding what was lost, finding what is hidden, speaking with the dead, etc.

Note: Astra’s Divination is a double edged sword, The bad visions stick with her more then the good, and often making her mental state worse, causing her to be a bit paranoid, as if she talks about them, it could force them to happen or force them to not happen at all, cause seeing the future is a pain in the ass like that with self fulfilling prophecies and the like. 

Weaknesses:

Short: And Hates it!

Weak: No arm or lifting strength at all, hurts herself opening soda bottles, all the strength went to her brain.

Anti-Magic: Girl is pretty much a sitting duck without her magic, no better than a civilian. 

Lack of Energy: Depressions a bitch, she’s always tired.

Walking Target: She’s a mage, so high on the list of likely to be mugged due to how they look rich (even if they just look it and really just a struggling collages kid), an likely carry a lot of highly priced magical goodies, and being a dragon with magical blood and scales that make amazing armor? not to mention who knows what else dragon organs can be used for? Yeaaah. #BigFuckingNope

Inferiority complex / Anxiety: Never thinks she good enough, thinks everyone hates her, thinks she’s always messing up, her achievements never really feel like achievements, struggles with expressing herself, Self Hatred etc.

Trivia:

Left Handed

Perma-Eyebags

Notch in Left ear

Short Summary: Astra is a dragon Yokai, living with her adoptive fathers, and sister she works in Devi’s (one of her fathers) magic shop as a clerk and aiding him in creating potions, magical items, and scrolls for sale, while also using her divination magic on the side for those who need a bit of help. 

When she comes to the hidden city under new york with her father on a business trip, things... get out of hand and turtles happen.

Which is weird because she knows a lot about them from her visions (And her sisters weird streaming obsessions) so, things are waay beyond awkward, specially with the purple one, cause, ya know, nothing like knowing who your partner is before either of you do and all these complicated feelings that come with it. 

Right?

....Fuck.

[balladofthewhitehorse]

Wales

1, 4, 10

Thank you sm for your ask <3

What is the character’s go-to drink order?

Wales usually sticks to coffee or tea most of the time. She doesn’t really care for elaborate orders, and even then tends to mostly make her own tea at home; Wales likes to be efficient and pretty straight-forward, and I think she’s pretty reclusive most of the time. You’d think a millenia old being like Wales would have gotten the grasp of small-talk, but Wales is an introvert by nature and tends towards curtness, and this goes for her orders: Just a black coffee/tea with a splash of milk, thank you! To go! 

Do they have any scars or tattoos?

Wales is riddled with scars. Timeless and ancient, worn like old stone and beaten down again and again, Wales was always viewed as something reverent, a banner to be admired in battle. As a woman, there was this expectation that she wouldn’t be involved in battle - and by large, she wasn’t; Yet, as an immortal and seemingly ancient being, with a cryptic connection to the land, Wales was far too good to kings to be left behind. England also, by large, rarely let her come with him into battles - not so much because she was a woman, but rather because he by large, never wanted to see her get hurt. Wales regards this as somewhat odd, because England was perfectly fine attacking her - or so she assumes (Wales does, vaguely recall, regret or at least sympathy on England’s face). She has a large scar down her belly where he tore into her with an axe, as well as varying degrees of slashes across her chest; Sword-blows that missed her heart and innumerable pock-marks on her face from diseases such as smallpox that never quite faded.

As for tattoos, Wales has got one: The first one is of Y Ddraig Goch, because of course. It’s on her wrist, and she got it in perhaps an anger-induced pitch of utter fury towards England after the two had an argument about where she stood and nearly got an infection from, something that Wales ruefully admits led to one of the kindest memories she has of her youngest brother - of England quietly helping her manage and clean it, to him admitting that it’s quite a cool tattoo actually and that he’d quite like one similar to it. She’s the only one who knows about his tattoo of Y Ddraig Wen.

What objects do they always carry around with them?

The usual. Keys, phone and wallet; Wales is, by nature, practical to a degree - though a closer look suggests a whimsy, a sentimentality that she wishes she was better at suppressing. She always carries around a small pocket-book, filled with varying poems, proses and pontifications that Wales keeps to herself; Sometimes, they are quite nonsensical and at other times, rather profound. It is not something that she cares to let others know about and the pocket-book is rather small, mundane-looking in appearance; Made of good quality brown leather, with simple lined pages and a little elastic band to keep it shut, the exact same brand that Wales has brought over and over and over again. Alongside it, she keeps a varying assortment of pens - and as such has been the casualty of a few ink-stains as a consequence of ink leaking or pens breaking.

[alinakoivisto]

↪ brief introduction to alina koivisto.

BASICS.

full name: alina sohvi kielo leka koivisto. nickname(s): lina. age: twenty-nine. date of birth: 24 april 1995. zodiac sign: taurus. place of birth: hancock, michigan, united states. ethnicity: white. nationality: american, finnish. gender: demigirl ( she/they pronouns ). sexual orientation: homosexual. romantic orientation: homoromantic. religion: agnostic. education: bachelor’s in finnish languages and literature ( university of helsinki ), master's in literature with a focus in russian literature. she's currently studying to earn a degree in library science. occupation: graduate student at providence peak university; works at the university library. language(s) spoken: english, finnish, russian. alina grew up speaking finnish in addition to english and she learned russian while she was in graduate school in finland to study for her courses with books in the appropriate language. accent: alina doesn't have a terribly thick accent but the way she pronounces some things makes it fairly clear she's from the midwest.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.

face claim: florence pugh. hair color: blonde. eye color: green. height: 5'4". weight: 112 lbs. build: slim, athletic. tattoos: a watercolor stylized fox on the side of her left leg ( here ). piercings: alina has her ears pierced in several places— she wears jewelry, most commonly, in her lobe and upper lobe piercings as she can change that jewelry out. She has fixed piercings as well: a helix piercing in her left ear and an industrial piercing in her right - both of which she got while she was attending university. she also has a septum piercing that she's especially fond of. distinguishing characteristics: her stutter, her shyness, the fact that she always seems to have at least three books with her at any given time.

PERSONALITY.

label: the wallflower. positive traits: adaptable, charming, clever, compassionate, empathetic, flirtatious, independent, methodical, passionate, persuasive, resourceful. negative traits: anxious, avoidant, impulsive, non-confrontational, sarcastic, self-deprecating, self-sabotaging, shy, stubborn. goals/desires: to finish her graduate program and officially become a librarian, to fall in love, to be happy, ultimately. fears: autophobia ( fear of being alone ). hobbies: studying, learning anything new in any capacity, baking, cooking, finding the best patches of sun to nap in, gardening ( when she has the time and energy for it ), reading in general, meeting new people ( in spite of her shyness she does find people fascinating and often tries to make friends to help her push through her anxiety ), finding new and varied ways to pester her siblings, sketching, watching the mummy for the millionth time, singing, playing video games when she can sit and focus on them, finding new outlets for her energy. quirks: she very nearly always talks with her hands to some extent when she’s speaking, she gets obscenely excited over animals of just about any sort, she occasionally has to force herself to find a new way to say something mid-sentence to combat her stutter, likes: disney movies, cute girls, ( occasionally ) flirting with said cute girls, spending time with her friends and family, taking naps with her cat, strong coffee, food of any kind, trying new things if her friends will try them with her, watching documentaries, watching foreign TV shows, fantasy novels, queer romance novels, jigsaw puzzles, crafts of any sort ( knitting, especially ). dislikes: people who question her ability when it comes to just about anything, hurting anyone she loves ( she never does so intentionally but the guilt she feels afterwards is honestly next level ), being bad at things on the first try, people who don’t listen, the fact that she stutters.

FAMILY.

father: salomon koivisto. mother: luvianna koivisto. sibling(s): older sister, older sister, younger half-sibling. pet(s): a one year old norwegian forest cat named pushkin— alina calls him alexei or alecki, as he’s named after alexander pushkin, the author. financial status: upper class.

BIOGRAPHY.

(TW: infidelity mention, anxiety mention)

Hancock, Michigan was a small, cold town a stone's throw from the Canadian border and home to a significant population of Finns and Finnish-Americans who'd immigrated there or grown up there or simply cast eyes upon the town and decided it was a perfectly fine place to raise a family. That was the choice Salomon's parents had made when they chose to move from Helsinki, Finland to the United States. As a boy, he had no real recollection of what Helsinki had been like, nor did his younger sister but each of them delighted in the stories their parents told them and the pride the older Koivistos seemed to take in the fact that they'd found a city in the US that reminded them even tangentially of home. Sal and Matty ( as the Koivisto children were eventually called ) both seemed to love their hometown; it was small, yes, but there was plenty of adventure to be had and each of them seemed eager to throw themselves into it at every turn.

The pair remained thick as thieves until the time came for Sal to attend university and he made the decision to return to the country of his birth, live with his grandparents, and study in Helsinki. It was there that he met another international student – Luvianna Aadli, an Estonian woman who captivated Sal from the moment they locked eyes. The two bonded incredibly quickly and it wasn't a surprise to anyone in their lives when the pair announced they were dating. By the time they'd finished university, Luvianna was pregnant and Sal suggested they move back to the US to marry and raise their family. Luvianna was all too happy to accept and their first daughter was born shortly after they settled down in Sal's hometown of Hancock. Their life together was picturesque and continued to be as their family grew and when their youngest daughter Alina was born on a crisp morning in April - Sal and Luvianna were blissfully happy to have each other and their girls.

Alina, unlike her sisters, was a quiet child – full of excitement for life and a genuine joy that seemed to exude from her in the way of most children but painfully shy and, when she learned to speak, plagued by a stutter that seemed to vex her endlessly. With her family she seemed to be able to relax enough that it wasn't as much of an issue but it was evident to all of them that Alina's shyness made it difficult for her to relax in front of other children her age and strangers she had to interact with. It often took her multiple tries to introduce herself and even with speech therapy as she got older, her stutter never quite went away.

When she was seven her parents announced that they would be moving— Alina was anxious to leave Hancock as she’d never known anywhere else but that anxiety was overpowered by a genuine excitement and as they settled into life in Colorado she decided that it really wasn't so bad. Though her stutter continued to plague her when her anxiety was high, she had very little difficulty making friends throughout her childhood and into her teen years. When she wasn’t spending time with her friends Alina could reliably be found in the library or local coffee shops reading— it had been an escape of sorts when she was a child and continued to serve that purpose as she got older, her fascination with imaginary worlds and the written word never truly fading. She considered writing herself for all of a few months before she decided that she might like to study literature and decide whether she ought to go afterwards.

By the time she finished high school she had a solid group of friends and a girlfriend she was deeply in love with but agreed to split from as she had made the decision to attend university in Finland - following, in some small way, in her father’s footsteps on that front. Shortly before she was set to depart for Finland, her parents sat her down with her sisters and (remarkably calmly, as far as Alina was concerned) explained that they had moved to Colorado in the first place because their father had a child there. It was a shock to learn of their father’s affair in such a manner but their mother’s previous knowledge and the careful admission that her parents were really more best friends than romantic partners served to soothe Alina’s confusion surrounding the situation. She agreed to meet her half-sibling before she left and found herself more than comfortable in their presence almost immediately in spite of the fact that she jetted off to Helsinki for school shortly thereafter.

After earning her bachelor’s degree, Alina made the decision to remain in Finland with her grandparents— she wasn’t quite ready to leave her friends and the life she’d made there behind and threw herself into studying once more to earn her master’s degree. Seven years of her life was spent in Finland before Providence Peak eventually called her back when she enrolled in her second graduate program with the intention of studying library science at the university. 

Overall, Alina was delighted to be back home in Providence Peak when she returned in 2020 and even as she studied she ensured she had plenty of time to spend with her family, old friends and getting to know her half-sibling more deeply than regular Christmases spent visiting for a handful of weeks before returning to Finland had allowed. Her time away had made her bolder in some ways but Alina remained the same sweet, slightly too shy woman she’d always been and though her anxiety was a daily struggle she remained eager and happy to greet whatever the next day might bring.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

Can i hear more about #3?

Sorry this took so long, I really chose the worst timing to do this ask game. I probably should have pre-written the responses before posting that but oh well, we'll spread them out a bit. Again, these are just some basic concepts that are all in varying stages of pre-planning, so if I ever post about them again, they could be very different.

3. Against Fate’s Design

So! This one originally began as a joke (as do a lot of my projects) but I unironically really liked it, so I started developing it a bit.

Essentially, it’s a Sprace tattoo parlor/flower shop AU where Race is the tattoo artist and Spot is the florist, just cause I thought it was funny. BUT I started trying to come up with an explanation as to why those are their jobs, cause it’s pretty different from how they’re usually characterized.

And I basically decided that Spot started working at a local flower shop when he was barely fifteen and needed a job. The florist was the only person in town who would hire a really young kid who was a well-known “troubled youth”. And he kinda hated it at first cause he’s big, tough Spot Conlon but he grew to like it and decided to get an associate's degree in business and floriculture, so now he owns his own shop. And it’s not exactly what he thought he’d end up doing with his life, but he has a steady job that he enjoys, so what more could he ask for? (I dunno if the florist who gave him a job is like, Denton or Teddy or Hot Shot or what, but they’re very cool, whoever they are.

Race was a professional dancer for about three or four years before an injury forced him to quit. He had literally no backup plans, but his brother is an artist and was able to help him get a receptionist job with his friend, Charlie, who works at a tattoo parlor. He’s low-key bitter about it but he tries to stay positive cause that’s what he always does, he always looks on the bright side, and even though his dreams were destroyed right as they were starting to come true it’s fine because he has a job that pays the bills and Charlie is even going to train him to start doing tattoos isn’t that just swell?

Yeah, he’s not doing great.

And the story would basically be about them meeting on Race’s first day at the tattoo parlor and getting to know each other a little bit. And then Spot finds out about Race’s ruined dance career and tries to help him through all of that. And Race can’t help but wonder why someone who seems so adventurous and free-spirited is working in a tiny little town as a florist, of all things.

Spot claims he just really loves working with flowers and likes the simplicity of living in a small town where he knows everyone so well that he can guess what his customers need flowers for the second they walk through the door. Which is just complete and utter bs, and Race very easily sees through him. Spot wants more than this, Race can tell. He’s just refusing to go searching for it, for whatever reason, and Race is gonna do something about it.

He’s able to break down Spot’s walls and convinces him to expand his business in ways that let him be more creative and ambitious. Like he starts providing flowers for important events or for weird rich people who don’t know what they want, they just have a vibe, that kinda thing. And maybe he starts breeding new flowers as a cool pet project and over time his sub-species becomes scientifically recognized as an official thing (I don’t know how flowers work I’m so sorry).

In return, Spot helps Race confront his feelings about his dancing career and gets him to give teaching dance a shot. (He’d previously refused to even think about being a teacher because it just hurt so much to be around that world without being a “real” part of it) So Race gets a job at the local dance studio for kids and, surprise surprise, he loves it. He’s still healing from his injury but he’s eventually able to quit at the tattoo parlor and go into teaching full time. And while he’s nowhere near close to his ability level before his injury, he’s still a decent dancer, way better than he would be if he’d left the industry entirely.

And yeah, it’s just a super sweet story with a little bit of hurt/comfort in the middle, but compared to my usual stuff it is pure fluff. I like it a lot because the characterizations for Spot and Race are pretty different from how I usually write them, but I think it still fits. As a kid, Spot was explosive, angry, and violent, but someone gave him a chance and as an adult, he's grown a lot since he was a scared little kid who relied on his reputation to protect him. There are so many directions I could take that character and I'd love to explore him more. Meanwhile, Race is usually depicted as this goofy, happy-go-lucky kinda guy, and in this universe, he was a hairsbreadth away from all of his childhood dreams coming true, only for it all to go away in an instant. So what does he do when the only kind of person he knows how to be is 1) a dancer, and 2) an optimist, and he's no longer able to be either?

Oh, there's just so much potential there and I've been wanting to experiment and develop my character-building skills cause I always have trouble making 3-dimensional characters. A story like this is just so grounded in internal character development, it would be a real challenge for me, and I love that so much.

And with Charlie and Jack too!!! I haven't talked much about them, but this whole AU would just be about me pushing myself to focus on the characters themselves rather than their situations or the world around them, which I tend to do. I dunno, I just really want to be a better writer and I feel like this kind of story would help me improve in the exact ways I need to.

I also just really love the idea of tattoo artist Charlie. I don't want to ramble more than I already have but oh he's just so cool and I love him lots.

Here’s a short scene that’s been bouncing around in my head for a little while:

“Race! What are you doing?” A startled, almost scolding voice drew Spot’s attention from where he was unloading some fresh tulips from his truck. It sounded like a man, probably a bit older than Spot, and it was coming from the side of the parking lot that was behind the tattoo parlor. “You know you’re not supposed to be lifting things.”

“Jack it’s fine,” Race responded, sounding annoyed. “It’s just some rags I took to the laundromat, they’re not even that heavy!”

Even though it was probably incredibly wrong of him, Spot couldn’t help but duck down behind his truck and listen.

“Doesn’t matter how heavy it is, Racer, you know what the doc said. Now give it here, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“No,” Race was starting to sound angry now, he was speaking in a deep tone that Spot had never heard from the man. “Jack, please, I’ve done basically nothing for the past six months, so can you let me do one goddamn thing for myself?”

The other man, presumably Race’s older brother, Jack, went quiet for a moment, but Spot could tell he was just taking the time to choose his next words carefully.

“Race. I know you’re upset about what happened and you’re mad-no, don’t you start, I know you better than that-you’re mad and you have every right to be. But you have to take care of yourself, you hear me? Six months ago you could barely even walk and I know you don’t wanna have to go through all that again. So don’t be pushing yourself more than you should just to prove something you don’t have to.”

The pair were quiet for a few moments, the silence so heavy with tension it felt suffocating. Until, finally, Spot heard a scoff and Race gave in, the defeat in his voice poorly disguised as anger.

"Fine. Take the stupid box."

A set of angry footsteps began moving towards the back door of the tattoo parlor (slow and careful, Spot couldn't help but notice), and the door squeaked loudly as it was yanked open.

"Racer," Jack called helplessly. "I'm doin' this because I love you. And I don't ever want to see you hurtin' like that again. You know that, right?"

Spot couldn't see from where he was crouched beside his truck, but he knew the back door of the tattoo parlor always slammed shut no matter how gentle you were, so Race was still outside. It was a long time before he answered though. When he finally did, his voice was quiet and distraught, and Spot suddenly felt a thousand times more guilty that he had intruded on what was most definitely meant to be a private moment.

"I know, Jackie. Love you too."

Feel free to send an ask for any follow-up questions, I always love talking about my AUs

Title from Come With Me by Chxrlotte

[themadauthorshatter]

To relieve some of the angst I've given to this PG-13 Ninjago UA, HERE'S SOME STUFF I THINK IS FUNNY!!!

Kai and Jay know how to floss, as in the dance move, and it drives Cole, Zane, and Wu crazy.

Zane wins ALL the satring contests, as long as he isn't going against Wu. Then he'll lose.

When Wu gave the ninja the "the best way to defeat an enemy" riddle, it drove Zane crazy. He knew he'd heard it before and knew the answer, but didn't know the answer. He progressively started making more noises, from groaning to full on screaming. When they got answer, Zane stayed out of the bunk rooms for fifteen minutes screaming and shouting into the sky. He didn't swear, he just had a lot to say.

Cole can bench press all of the ninja.

Cole likes picking up and carrying people, mostly, though, Zane. Zane is like a kohala on his back and it's so cute.

Jay once shouted to Zane, "I'm hungry! When are you going to make dinner!?" to see what would happen; he told Wu and the other ninja in advance. Zane made him a grilled cheese sandwich and locked him in the bunk room.

Cole is the first up... because Zane wakes him up. He is Cole's alarm clock.

DO NOT WAKE UP ZANE FOR HIM. HE WILL DO IT HIMSELF. WAKE HIM UP, AND YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Kai learned that lesson the hard way.

The stuff Jay zones out about is actually really interesting, depending on who he talks to; Cole learned that if your were to follow the pavement road in all of ninjago consecutively, you'd wind up walking in a circle, Zane learned that owls' wings, which are shorter than a falcon's, allow for better evasive maneuvers, Wu learned that it takes the blink of an eye for someone can die from electrocution, given the right amount of energy, and Kai learned that the finer flour is, the better it burns.

Zane does yoga, which the other ninja think is weird. Except for Nya. She joins in

Zane can not fly the bounty. Nothing to do with directions, he juat can't sail.

Cole knows a lot of ballet moves and is very agile for a muscular guy

Kai listens to a lot of rap music.

Nya once did the boys' nails, because their nails were hideous, and she unintentionally scared the hell out of Zane, who never had his nails painted before.

Kai accidentally made Jay sleep for a whole day; they were both up pulling an all nighter to fix the bounty and he gave Jay a bunch of energy drinks to keep him up so they could het done. All he did instead was knock Jay out and make himself really hyper and restless.

Zane has a photographic memory. Even if you forgot something you said you'd do, Zane won't forget.

Fangirls still love Zane. He doesn't get the appeal, both pre and post discovering he's dead.

When the ninja get turned into kids, Zane did not become a child. He just had a huge existential crisis and 'OH SHIT' moment because now he was really the oldest of the ninja and, aside from Lloyd, had no prior experience with kids.

You will know if Zane is mad at you.

Cole wins every arm wrestling match, as long as he isn't going against Zane. Nothing to do with strength, Zane's just really cold and cheats by smiling at Cole, which gives him butterflies in him stomach.

Kai is so scared of spiders, it's almost funny.

Jay prefers sour things over sweet, but will eat just about anything.

DO NOT GIVE HIM OVERLY SOFT FOODS LIKE COOKED CARROTS. IT MAKES HIM VOMIT.

Cole is Wu's right hand. He trains and trains with the other ninja.

Zane can fly Shard while riding in his tail. The other ninja don't get him doing it, but whatever.

Kai is still protective of Nya. If she gets hurt in training, he'll be the first to check on her.

Cole makes sure he is the leader. Kai keeps trying to take the position, but Cole puts him back in his place.

Lloyd doesn't like meditating. He has little kid energy, so he, like Jay, has a hard time sitting still. Unlike Jay, caffeine will make it worse.

Jay is part of the reason the ninja are such sound sleepers; he practically saps them of their energy

When Zane adopts the falcon, he, to be a dick, said he adopted a bird. It scared the ninja shitless when a large, carnivorous bird landed on his arm.

They were surprised because Zane doesn't know his birds very well; he called an owl a dove once.

Cole has tattoos, which Kai and Jay think are cool, Nya doesn't mind, Wu frowns upon, and Zane is very confused by; he drew on his arm with a marker and it washed off. Cole's ink has not washed off in the two years he's trained with Wu.

All the ninja are encouraged to meditate, but they've all had varying degrees of success.

Cole has tried teaching Jay and Kai martial arts, and ended up giving them more bruises than the training course.

The ninja tried teaching Zane about practical jokes. Biggest mistake of their lives

[alexthedrummerboy]

atdb’s fanworks masterlist

i’ll be updating this as i go along but this is just a list of my fanworks i’ve made for jatp! (updated: 13th october 2021)

✨ social media au masterpost ✨

social media au where the boys are alive in 2020 and the band is wildly successful

✨ fics ✨

crash into me - 2,388 words - oneshot (complete) - willex

Alex, Luke, Julie, and Reggie go bowling together. One problem: Alex is an awful bowler and accidentally throws his ball into the lane next to his.

But that's not all: At that lane just happens to be Willie, the guy in Alex's math class who he's had a crush on for months.

(aka the reason why Alex will never listen to Reggie's advice ever again)

ao3 | tumblr

darkest before the dawn - 3,882 words - oneshot (complete) - willex

When Alex receives his first cross, he’s 12-years-old. He immediately vows never to take it off. It’s a beautiful piece of jewellery; a small gold cross on a solid gold chain. When his mom slips it around his neck, he feels... protected, somehow. Safe.

A short look into Alex's past, his relationship with his family, and religion

ao3 | tumblr

loml - 377 words - ficlet (complete) - willex

on a very basic level: Alex asks Julie to help him decipher a confusing text he just received from Willie.

tumblr

i need to forget you - 1,525 words - oneshot (complete) - platonic luke, reggie, and alex

Before his parents kicked him out, his sister had been trying to teach him how to play the acoustic guitar. Andrea hadn't been quite the musician that Luke is, but she'd tried her best. Alex remembers being 15 and sitting on the edge of her bed, her guitar in his arms as she told him where to place his fingers. He also remembers complaining endlessly about how much the strings hurt his hands.

Another exploration into Alex’s feelings about his family after his death.

ao3 | tumblr

piss off your parents (date me to scare them) - multichap (complete) - willex

Alex Mercer doesn't want to go home for Christmas; but if he has to, he's certainly gonna raise a little hell. Enter: Willie, the cute guy in his history of English class who would be the perfect fake boyfriend candidate.

So if you wanna piss off your parents, date me to scare them, show them you're all grown up. If long hair and tattoos are what attract you, baby then you're in luck.

1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

i can get by the days just fine (but the nights) - 13,192 words - oneshot (complete) - willex

He looked between Alex and Luke for a moment, trying to make sense of their silent conversation. Suddenly, Luke's strange behaviour the other day made sense.

They were together.

They were together and Willie was a complete idiot.

OR

Coffee Shop AU - Willie and Alex are coworkers with equally as hopeless crushes on one another. But what happens when Willie finds out that Alex's boyfriend, Luke, is cheating on him? (Spoiler alert: Luke isn't Alex's boyfriend - Willie just loves jumping to conclusions)

ao3

pretty boy - 279 words - ficlet - willex

Alex calls Willie ‘pretty boy’. Just the boys being cute and flustered.

tumblr

kiss me with your cleats on - complete - willex

see the cover art here!

It’s a well-known fact, or rather an indisputable law, that the Los Feliz High Phantoms and the Belmont High Tigers do not mix. If Alex were to so much as suggest something involving the Tigers that didn’t involve toilet paper and varying degrees of legality, Luke would no doubt throw a temper tantrum; but Alex’s opinion on the Tigers is quick to change when he meets their new star defender, Willie Covington.

1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 

before we were us - JATP zine piece - 1030 words - oneshot - platonic jatp

“What was your guys’ favourite thing to do with Trev-... Bobby?”

The question is innocent enough, but it still manages to make Alex pause as he sifts through Julie’s extensive nail polish collection.

OR

Julie and Alex reminisce about past friendships and bond about current connections.

ao3

the adventures of carrie wilson and her six (and counting) parents - series

part 1 - it takes a village - oneshot (complete) - gen + willex

When a baby carrier and a duffel bag get mysteriously left at Bobby, Luke, Reggie, and Alex's door, none of them know how to react. Turns out, the baby is Bobby's daughter - an unknown consequence of a one night stand gone wrong. Now, the four of them have to navigate being college students, being in a band, and raising a six-month-old that seemingly fell from the sky.

ao3

part 2 - the stroller - oneshot (complete) - gen + juke

Luke gets a stroller for Carrie and also somehow secures himself a date along the way.

ao3

part 3 - a crush and a crawl - oneshot (complete) - gen + boggie

Reggie gives Bobby 'baby lessons' in order to prepare him for telling his parents about Carrie's existence and Bobby tries (and fails) to recognise his growing feelings for his best friend.

ao3

✨ songs ✨

the story of willex (alex’s perspective)

it was always you (willex song 2: electric boogaloo)

you. (contents may contain Juke)

[artisqueer]

RetroBangBoy AU - The Hangover (ao3)

Notes: 

hang·o·ver /ˈhaNGˌōvər/ noun 1. a thing that has survived from the past. Example: "a hangover from the fifties" 2. a severe headache or other after-effects caused by an excessive intake of alcohol or drugs

Characters: OT7

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Brief mentions of alcohol.

Jungkook wakes up parched, hungry, and with a pounding in his head. He pushes the covers off his face and down his chest. His long fluffy hair standing from the static of the sheets. He stretches out his arms above his head, dragging out a groggy yawn. It feels like he’s just woken up from a century-long nap. He looks up past his hands outstretched in the air. The posters above his bed are the same. He looks down, past his bare feet at the bottom of the bed. His drum set, books, and gadgets are all in their place too.

Huh…what year is it?

A heavy thump on the other side of the wall startles him out of bed. The crash is immediately followed by a low moan. Jungkook dashes out to the hall where Yoongi is already standing at the entrance of the bedroom next door. His eldest roommate chuckles behind a mug of coffee, head tilted 90 degrees to the side. Jungkook peers inside the room to see the source of the ruckus, his round head naturally tilts to the side as well. They both stand in the doorway, observing their housemate, Namjoon.

On the floor, upside down, legs folded over his shoulders.

“Where are we?” he asks as he looks up at them from between his thighs.

Yoongi shuffles back to the kitchen, holding his head in pain. “It looks like we’re not in Jeju anymore…” His voice is raspy and deep.

***

Jungkook’s round eyes bounce back and forth across their house, looking for clues to explain their current predicament. His head is throbbing with pain too. He suddenly remembers his thirst and runs to the kitchen for water.

Once Namjoon has restored himself to a perpendicular position, he joins them in the kitchen too.

“Why does my head hurt? Did we get shit-faced last night?” Jungkook groans into the kitchen counter.

“I can’t remember,” Yoongi grimaces between gulps of coffee.

“Is it a week-day? We have never gone out on a school night… I would never go out on a school night!” Namjoon folds his thick arms across his chest and blinks. “I’m so hungry.”

Jungkook turns away from the sink and his eyes pop at the sight. A whole ass meal, complaining about the lack of a meal...in the kitchen of all places. pls.

“Me too. We better go out for food. There’s nothing to eat here.” Yoongi says with very little energy.

“How can that be? I always stock up on groceries!” Namjoon frantically checks the cabinets and cupboards, finding them all bare.

“What the hell did we do?” The two eldest housemates look at one another, dumbfounded. Jungkook leans into the kitchen wall, aggressively chewing on his thumb. He's nervous, eyes big and wide. He opens his mouth to speak when the phone rings.

Ring ring ring.

Namjoon answers it, rather desperately. “Hello?”

“Good, you’re home.” The voice on the other end breathes out a sigh of relief. “It’s me. Taehyung. Emergency meeting. Your place. Now!”

***

“So, we’re all blacked out from yesterday. We have the worst hangover of our lives. And Bighead and Jin are missing…” Jungkook repeats as he paces back and forth the living room.

Hoseok enters the breakfast nook and sets down an extra-large pan of sunny side eggs and sausage. He steps back before the starved men wipe it clean.

“What’s gotten into you? You’re all so hungry today,” Hoseok scorns them as a smile grows on his lips. He’s thrilled that he finally gets to cook for them. Jin normally does all the cooking.

“You’re not going to eat?” Jimin asks him from behind a mouth full of food.

“I just don’t feel hungry,” Hoseok shrugs. He wipes his hands on his apron. “I brought us enough groceries to last through the week, so eat well.” Oddly, Hoseok has more energy than everyone in the room put together.

Taehyung speaks from the head of the table. “Guys, we’re not all blacked out—which is why I called everyone here..."

They look up at him from their plates, still eating like the food will be taken away if they stop.

"I remember everything.”

Jungkook interrupts. “Wait. Has anyone checked the date?!” He wiggles out of his chair and nearly trips running to the front porch, where the Sunday paper should be.

Having just eaten to the brim, Yoongi yawns and casually turns on the TV set, out of habit. The display does something completely new. Huh, TVs don't have color? Jimin and Hoseok are most mesmerized by this, moving to sit at the foot of the screen as a Coca-Cola commercial plays:

It's more than taste,

Bigger than a name,

As big as your best times,

As good as your best friends,

As real as the way you feel…

Jungkook runs back with the newspaper all spread out into disarray like his long dark hair. “Um…guys?”

There’s a long pause in the room.

“We’re not in the fifties anymore…”

What—

Their wide eyes look from him to the television and back. There’s only one thing that could mean coming from Jungkook…and it’s not good.

“We, uh, must’ve jumped twenty-seven years into the future,” he scratches the back of his round head. “It’s...1985.”

Taehyung clears his throat. “You guys will need to sit down for this. I can explain.”

***

They gather in the living room. Namjoon and Yoongi take up the couch, Jungkook sits on the floor between them, and Hoseok and Jimin share the love seat.

Taehyung’s knack for taking pictures and love for journalism make him a natural storyteller. His fine hands sway in the air as he talks. “You all have varying degrees of memory loss. For some very strange reason, I can remember everything that’s happened to us in the last 48 hours.”

Tae recounts their field trip and the events leading up to the portal inside the Manjjanggul Lava tube. How Jin wanted to hide the portal from the lab, Heaven Inc., but Jungkook wanted to destroy it. How Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, and Yoongi stormed the cave clearing as Jungkook was opening the portal gate. How Namjoon and Jin fought each other as the cave collapsed. And most importantly, how they were all unexpectedly pulled into the warp after Jungkook. All, except Jin and their beloved Bighead.

Their memories start coming back to them, piece by piece. Oddly, it’s as though only Taehyung could trigger their recollections.

“I don’t understand.” Namjoon finds his glasses and puts them on. Suddenly, he looks more like a professor than a biker. Big-tiddied mathematician. “Why is Taehyung the only one who remembers what happened?”

Taehyung thinks for a moment before an unusual blush forms at his cheeks. “Probably ‘cause I appreciate art. So, I remembered.”

“Uhm, ok. And why doesn’t Hoseok have hangover symptoms like the rest of us?” Yoongi crosses his arms, which seemingly grew thicker in the micro-span of the jump.

Hoseok vibrates from his place next to Jimin. His bright smile radiating through the room. “Ooh, I know I know. ‘Cause I’m your hope! Everyone was totally beat, but I could give you my energy. Like sunshine to a dying plant or light at the end of a dark tunnel or a—”

“—mOtH tO a FlAmE,” the rest mock. Apparently, no one forgot Hoseok’s notorious house party pick-up lines. They all laugh.

Could this be? Do some of the jocks have certain abilities now? What about the bikers?

“We have another problem: where is Sweetcheeks, and Seokjin?” Taehyung seems frustrated.

“And another problem: why did we all get warped with Jungkook in the first place?” Jimin pouts. “What about our families, and my—”

“—Cat! Your cat! Cats have nine lives. For three they play, for three they stray and for the last three, they stay. Why...did I just say that? It feels so familiar, so stran—” Yoongi stops talking out loud, resorting to mumbling to himself instead. He quickly grabs the paper from Jungkook and begins searching it for something.

The others continue to talk over each other, flooded with their worries and bits of things they’re starting to remember. The upcoming homecoming game, the unattended house parties, mourning parents, exams, etc.

“Quiet!” Namjoon’s clear and booming voice silences the room.

“I don’t know,” Jungkook fiddles with his tattooed fingers. “I-I don’t know why I dragged you all here with me. That’s what I have to figure out. I will figure it out. I promise. I’m worried too. If Bighead and Jin didn’t get warped here with us, maybe they, they ended up in a different d—” they sit in silence, thinking the worst.

“No no, that can’t be,” Namjoon reassures. “Given everyone’s memory lapse and their expert recklessness, they may have just wandered off.”

“We have to go back,” Jungkook says. “We have to go back to 1958.”

“How? We’re stuck here,” Yoongi deadpans, his nose still in the paper.

“Actually,” Jimin recalls, “on my way over here I stopped by the coffee shop…and um…well my boss didn’t recognize me at all. He didn’t even know my name.” Jimin’s worries grow. It’s unlike Jimin to walk down the street without a single greeting. He is—was—very popular.

“It's starting to make sense...” Jungkook says under his breath.

“What does, Jungkook.” Namjoon’s jaw does the thing.

“People don’t recognize us in this place because,” he pauses, “because we’re not from here. I don’t mean this town, I mean, this dimension.”

Namjoon presses a finger to his lips, thinking.

“We should pick new names and find temporary jobs. To blend in. We can't go back to school, we don't have identification. We need the money anyway,” Yoongi advises, “to support ourselves while Jungkook figures out a way back.” Yoongi seems to have become incredibly wiser after the jump. He peels the paper apart, pen in hand, circling jobs from the employment section. He looks up from the paper again. “How did I know to say that?”

“Whoa, are you like, a genius now?” Jimin sasses, as much to tease him as to distract from the impending doom that is being stuck in the future.

“No.” Yoongi scoffs, withholding a severe blush. “It’s like I’ve read all the books at the library, and lived nine lives since we left 1958. I just, know things.”

Namjoon nods in agreement. “It’s the best plan we’ve got. If twenty-seven years have passed since our “disappearance”, then our sudden re-emergence could bring unwanted attention, or worse…”

“Could someone still be looking for us after all years?” Jimin asks Tae. Hoseok instantly understands and wraps him in a comforting embrace.

“We need to sort this out as quietly as possible. Let’s keep low profiles until we figure out a way to get back to 1958. I don’t want us to get tangled in loose ends.” Namjoon sighs somberly. Being the leader of the biker gang has made him a suitable leader for whatever mish-mosh-of-a-gang this is now. “We’re in a different dimension and we don’t entirely know what that means. It could be dangerous, but as long as we stick together we will be okay. My priority is to keep us all safe.”

At this declaration, all eyes sparkle. Especially, Jungkook’s.

“I got us here, Joon. You can trust me to find us a way home,” Jungkook gets up from the floor, making for the door.

“Stop!” Jimin interrupts. “We can’t go out dressed like this.”

They look down at their clothes. They are still in their 50s outfits.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Yoongi puts down the paper and pouts.

Hoseok pounces off the sofa, “YES! New clothes…get up get up! We’re off to the mall!” He tosses his apron aside and leads them out the front door. Namjoon and Yoongi groan, dragging their feet toward the back of the group.

Jungkook smiles ear to ear. Maybe the world is not quite right, but everything he truly wants is right here with him.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Dye and Diversity.”

Hope you guys enjoy the story today 

Yeb stared.

She tilted her head this way and then that, and then continued to stare on the other side.

A soft sigh, “My eyes are up here.”

Yeb looked up to where the human was staring at her ascance his head slightly tilted.

“What?”

“Sorry dumb joke.”

He pulled to a stop, and the strange wheeled chair below him pulled to a halt.

She stared some more, “That is so strange! It looks so fun!”

Her interjection seemed to surprise him, and he glanced down  at the chair, “Um, I suppose I’ve never thought about it. It’s kinda fun sometimes. I don’t use it much.”

Yeb waddled behind the chair and clambered up on two little pegs she saw jutting  out from behind, “Why not?”

“Well usually I can walk, and it is generally frowned upon to use a wheelchair if you don’t need one.” 

Yeb felt a rush of wind as he pushed the chair forward, and they began to roll slowly down the ramp, “Well why not?”

He laughed and shook his head, his earlier sour demeanor lost behind grim amusement. A few of the others came to join them as they rolled downward and off the platform. Yeb lifted her eyes  wide-eyed in shock as she stared at her strange and unusual surroundings, and the massive interior docking bay of the space station…. To think! An entire city built in space! Looking around she could see ships of many sizes and designs, and other unfathomable and strange creatures hurrying this way and that.

A thought came to her, “Why aren’t you using the arm sticks?”

“Arm sticks…. Oh the crutches?”

“Yeah.”

“My arms are sore from using them, and plus the wheelchair seems safer on the station. I'll Be less likely to trip and get hurt.”

“Oh ok!.”

It still surprised her to no end that the human had even managed to survive without a leg. At first she thought he might have been born with that deformity. On her planet, while it was possible to survive with an issue like that it was not very common at all. She could think of only one Tricar she had seen live to adulthood in such a condition. There were always complications, plus, while Tricar were semi-social they tended to live only in mating groups and abandon their pups at a very young age. 

If you couldn’t survive to adulthood in the cold metal mazes  of her planet than that was a personal problem.

She climbed up higher onto the back of the human’s wheeled chair to get a better look. She wobbled dangerously in her excitement, her hands and feet not exactly built for climbing with her stubby fingers and large flat feet.

With wide eyed excitement she looked all around them marveling at the diversity of lifeforms. There were so many of them!

She pointed to one, eyes wide, “What alien is that!”

The human turned his head to look then frowned “What do you mean?”

“That one right there!”

He frowned and looked again then laughed, “Oh well Yeb, that is a very tall human.”

“Oh, she frowned.” It sure didn’t look like any of the other humans she had seen, sure it was the same general shape, but it just looked so different that she couldn’t have been sure. But she supposed now she could see the resemblance. Like a stretched human.

“How about that one!”

The human continued to smile, “That is a human with a lot of fat, Yeb.”

“Oh….  what is that?”

“Er, like blubber but not really.”

That translated better and her ears flipped back over her head in mild understanding, “Oh, I get it, so those humans must be from cold climates, and that’s why they have insulation?”

“Not exactly.”

Her head turned and she pointed to another group, “Are all of those humans too!”

“Yes all of those are humans.”

“So pretty!” She exclaimed, they came in such interesting and new color combinations, ice white to stone ebony. Granted they all looked human, but the diversity in them was so astonishing that it was hard to believe they could all be the same species. As a biologist herself she might have assumed that maybe they were under the same classification, like fish, and how fish all sort of looked the same but that didn’t mean they were in the same biological category.

“Are they all the same subspecies?” she wondered.

“Yes.”

“Really? But they all look so different!” on her planet while they did tend to be diverse in height, their fur was generally always the same color, a grey white.

“There used to be other subspecies of humans a long time ago, but then they slowly started to die out. At the end it was only the Homo Sapiens and the Homo Neanderthalensis. Both of them coexisted for a while and even interbred but then the Neanderthal died out leaving only the Homo Sapiens with some Neanderthal DNA in certain cases,so we are all that's left, and our diverse lifestyles have given us different adaptational traits despite being the same species.”

She stared at him enthralled by this strange revelation about humans.

“For instance, in the middling areas towards the equator, things are a lot warmer and the light of the star hits the Earth directly, so humans kept their original dark skin color as protection against UV rays which can cause DNA mutations leading to cancer. A lot of times humans towards the equator tend to be taller and leaner which helps them to not overheat.”

“Your planet has a climate that diverse?”

“Yes, we can be as cold as your planet, or more than twice as hot.”

She stared wide eyed and shuddered at the thought.

“In fact, where I grew up we had seasonal changes in temperature. In the summer it was about thirty degrees hotter than the comfortable level I keep on the ship, and in the winter it could plunge to temperatures well around your home world.”

“How does anything survive in a climate so varied?”

“With air conditioning and heaters.” he said smiling, “Anyway, humans slowly began to move north, and as they did the rays of the sun couldn’t cut so easily through the atmosphere, as they were angled. That meant less UV light actually making it to earth. Problem is, humans need the sun to create certain vitamins used in the body. Darker skin helped to block the sun's rays when they become too much, but when there is less sun it isn’t so easy, and so humans developed lighter skin tones that were more vulnerable to sun damage but more easily allowed for the creation of those vitamins. In addition humans in higher climates tend to be shorter and stockier to conserve heat.”

“So…. you can tell where a human comes from?”

“You can tell where their ancestors come from.”

“So your family is from a cold climate?”

He smiled, bright white teeth showing the light above, “Yep, my ancestry stretches back to Russia, Norway, and other assorted parts of north eastern europe, but my family has lived far away from those places or the past few thousand years.” He smiled, “And yes, I can trace my lineage that far back. We’ve had pretty good record keeping for the past few thousand years considering we have internet databases stretching back about that far, and massive archives.”

“Wow/” She muttered quietly, “And I don’t even know who my mother was.”

The human raised an eyebrow at her, but by that time she had already transitioned to looking and pointing at something or someone else. She loved looking at the humans, they were so diverse and strange, and there was always something new to see. Sometimes it was their clothes sometimes it was their skin, sometimes it was their hair,

Sunny, the big blue Drev, placed a hand on the human’s shoulder in a quick gesture, “I am going to go look for the parts, I’ll get back to you in a minute ok?”

“Cool, bring me a working leg when you do.”

“She snorted but nodded and walked off,while he and the others continued onward.”

Yeb lifted her head in wide eyed wonder watching as they passed down a dark hallway from the docking bay, and then out, into an absolutely massive room. It was so large they might as well have been outside, a huge curving room in the shape of a doughnut that went around for miles and miles in either direction. Much of the ceiling above the mwas covered in some sort of see through glass structure giving her a view of space outside,and the rest of the expansive station highlighted by thousands of stars and hundreds more blinking lights.

Voices echoed and warbled all around them as hundreds and thousands of people filtered through the station like slow moving ice water. The room was so large that they had even built structures on the inside, which rose up many stories into the air glittering with colorful neon lights. She saw hundreds of aliens slipping in and out of these buildings and passing overhead on catwalks high in the air, talking, chatting and walking together.

It was all so alien and she was so excited.

She almost fell off the back of the chair as her unfit feet and hands slipped off a climbing surface. A hand steadied her from behind, “Don’t get too excited.”

She was pleased to find after that that the humans were very interested in bringing her around and showing her all of the new things. WIth her ability to eat a wide variety of food, she even got to try and taste some of their more strange concoctions, both excited and repulsed by some of them.

They walked past another shop whose brightly glowing lights attracted her like a moth to a flame and she backpedaled. Sounds pulsed and throbbed around inside her head and brightly colored pictures decorated the walls. On the inside, she watched in wide eyed fascination as one human sat patiently arm exposed, as another inked a pattern onto their skin with a whirring machine. The colors they used fluoresed under the strange blue light above.

A hand on her shoulder, “that is probably a human tradition you don’t want to experience.”

“What?”

“Tattoos, injecting ink directly into your dermal layer through use of tiny needles.”

She cringed a bit, “Why?”

“Because you can get cool pictures.”

There was a hum from beside her as one of the other humans walked up, “Maybe not the tattoo, but…” She trailed off and pointed to the other side of the room where humans were sitting in chairs leaning back as other humans painted strange chemicals on their fur. One of them stood up, and when she did, her hair was long and blue.

Yeb stared, “You change your fur color!”

“Yeah all the time.”

Adam rolled up behind them, “I don’t know if that's a good idea, we don’t know what kind of chemicals….”

“Well there is only one way to find out.”

They turned to look at her, “Want to dye some of your fur a cool color?”

She was so excited all she could manage was a squeak. The thought was so strange and exciting. There was only one fur color on her planet, to think that she could just go and change it!

Why hadn’t her people thought of this!

“YES!”

Her enthusiasm seemed to surprise them, but with smiles they were very encouraging and walked in with her as one of the humans came to greet them, “What can we do for you.”

Maverick patted Yeb on the shoulder, “Our alien friend here would like to go a different color.”

The human looked down and started with a frown, “Er…. what…. What are you. You don’t look like any Tesraki I’ve ever seen.”

“That's because she’s not. A new species, just coming into the galactic community. Anyway what do you say?”

The human paused then shrugged, “Long as you sign a waiver saying that we aren't responsible for any allergic reactions or damage to the hair of an unknown species, then sure.”

They glanced at Yeb, and she waved it off, “Let's do it!”

It was probably a horrible idea to have a team of humans not exactly known for their good life choices cheering on a naive Tricar as she chose bright neon green which was supposed to be at its brightest on the top of her hair and fade down slowly to the furn on her back.

The humans were excited all around, and she drew a small crowd as they began the process.

She probably should have been more concerned not sure what the chemicals would do to her, but nothing ventured nothing gained: that was a human expression she had learned just a few minutes ago, and she really liked it.

Warm water ran through her fur, and then a strange sticky paste was applied to it. Shehad to sit around and wait for a little bit as the color set, and then sit around some more as they washed the residual color out. When they were finally finished, she was turned to face the mirror, and her eyes went wide again.

Her grey white fur, against the bright neon green!. She turned back and forth watching the light glitter over the bright color.

“Wow.”

“Wow.”

“Wat have we done.”

“I love it!” She exclaimed, leaping out of her seat to look at herself more readily in the mirror.

She watched as Adam leaned over in his seat and passed his arm over some sort of device.

Se assumed he was paying for it and was quite pleased walking out of the shop with her new fur enjoying the eyes on her as she passed.

It wasn’t long before some of their other companions returned. Sunny turning to look at Adam with a frown, “What did you do.”

He raised his hands, “Oh come on, its harmless, na look at how happy she is. Come on.”

Sunny rolled her eyes..

“Spirits give me strength.”

Yeb capered around the group, rubbing her paws through her newly colored fur. It didn’t feel any different, but she sure FELT different.

She was sure she was going to really enjoy all these strange human things.

Then again.

She had really only experienced the good things.

It would remain to be seen if she was going to be able to handle the darker side of humanity. 

[esotericakit]

Fancy ranting about why you love kit snicket?👀 tbh I never found her character that compelling but I’m extreme open to changes of opinion hhh? pls feel free to ignore this hhgkkgkg

oh my god i’m so sorry i’ve been super busy I only just saw this but ahhh I love this question ((also sorry if some of thisk doesn’t make sense, i just got off a 7 hour bus ride and I am sleep deprived)). also a tw here for some discussions of painful stuff like death, loss, grief, implications of suicidal thoughts (nothing graphic)

okay so that’s valid bc she doesn’t get a lot to work with in tpp BUUUUUT what you do get is very rich. so basically it’s all tied in with vfd and what they’ve done to the sugarbowl gen. every member of the sugarbowl gen has been ripped from their family extremely young and recruited into this organisation, forced into life threatening situations, kept from loved ones for long periods of time (like kit and lemony in atwq) and have sort of convinced themselves, to varying degrees, that it’s important because the organisation is important. with lemony, he’s disillusioned and disappears after heartbreak. with beatrice and bertrand, they decide to pull away and leave. with jacques, he buries himself so deeply into his work with vfd so that he doesn’t have to reckon with what they did to him. and then you have kit.

with kit, I think she isn’t as sold to vfd as jacques and can still be somewhat critical of it, but also recognises that she’s trapped and always will be at their beck and call, and it’s not easy to break out from this illusion of the mighty organisation she’s a part of. she’s a quick thinker, she’s a mechanic, she’s resilient, she’s quick-witted, she’s as good a volunteer as they come, and so they exploit that and use her gifts (like building the queequeg and having her make the poison darts). for the most part, she buys into vfd’s bullshit, but i think it’s a sort of defence mechanism where she knows that resistance is going to be harder than compliance, so she puts her head down and does the work.

and this leads her to do things that she maybe wouldn’t have done of her own free will, like aiding in the murder of olaf’s parents. we don’t know exactly what kit and olaf’s relationship was like, but from what’s given in their interaction in te, i think they were young sweethearts, i think kit did genuinely care for him, and i think that it was vfd that ordered the murder, and not beatrice and bertrand, as many people have implied. so, by giving beatrice and bertrand the darts, she chooses the organisation over her relationship, and it can’t have been an easy choice. this then re-ignites the schism, olaf becomes a firestarter and kit has to watch as her brother is framed by olaf for crimes he didn’t commit.

and then lemony dies, or so she thinks. i’m of the mind that kit never learns that her brother is actually alive, and dies thinking she lost him. and we know that family is one of the most important things to the snickets; “we snickets look out for their own”, and I imagine kit going beside herself trying to find ways to protect lemony from all the attacks, the frame jobs, the rumours, only to have it be too late, and she’s lost her brother forever.

and so she’s left there, mourning lemony, and all she has left of her family is jacques. and she loves jacques but his first priority is vfd, it’ll always be vfd. she has beatrice and bertrand, but they’ll leave to the island soon, and they’ll leave vfd after that, and be largely out of her life for good.

she starts building the queequeg and at last, her vfd work seems to be doing some good. she meets ink, monty’s latest discovery, and at last, it seems that other members of vfd are doing some good. and then she hears about the medusoid mycelium, and the illusion of vfd cracks a little bit more. she desperately tries to stop gregor from creating the mycelium, only for that to fail. another loss.

then, we don’t know the nature of kit and dewey’s relationship so again, going off what we have with the fact that she is pregnant when we meet her and that dewey’s last word is ��kit”, not to mention the way that she explicitly asked about dewey’s wellbeing when she meets the baudelaires on the island, the implication is heavily that she and dewey are romantically involved. and I think she found a lot of solace in dewey. dewey, in his own way, had lost a lot, from his parents to his brother (joining the firestartera), to his own identity, all to vfd, and he understood where she was coming from in terms of being disillusioned but also being trapped.

and then the baudelaire fire happens, and it’s very clear to everyone that olaf was involved (whether he actually was or not is a different debate). so this is now 3 people who kit has loved that olaf has had a hand in their deaths. someone she loved killing other people she loved, and it’s the most painful thing.

we don’t know where kit is for the events of asoue, but regardless, she has to hear how other associates and friends have died or been killed at the hands of olaf, and each one hurts more than the last, because she can’t stop or slow down how many people she’s losing, and I think there’s an element of not being able to help but blame herself for his actions, because if she hadn’t helped kill his parents, maybe he wouldn’t be doing this.

and then jacques dies, and it’s the biggest blow yet. she just lost the last member of her family she had left, and she can’t cope, she stays in bed and decides that, despite dewey, despite her child, she’ll never leave her bed again.

what does make her leave, however, is vfd business; the message from quigley. she knows that she can’t even take the time to mourn her brother, she has to keep moving, and the pressure to carry the whole “good” side of vfd, to continue what her brother started, is on her shoulders, and that’s immense.

and so that’s when we meet her in tpp, and she is a broken person. she has lost so many people, been put through so much, had her entire worldview and foundation turned upside down, and she’s still doing all of this work, putting her life on the line over and over again, for an organisation that has done nothing but take things from her and hurt her, but there’s absolutely nothing else she can do. she’s pregnant and she can’t allow herself to be happy or excited about that because she just doesn’t have it in her. all she knows is that she has to get through this as quickly as she can, losing as few people as she can. her conversation with the baudelaires is interesting too, and is so exemplary of how she’s mourning; she remembers little details about beatrice and bertrand (like the feathers on bea’s shawl) and reminisces about how much the children look like them, and you can tell that it’s extremely painful to go through

she then leaves the baudelaires and risks her life again trying to rescue the quagmires, and it’s unclear whether it was a success or not but regardless, when she finally pulls herself up onto that stupid book raft she insists on making, she’s so so so so tired. she’s in labour, she doesn’t know what’s happened at the hotel denouement, she doesn’t know whether she’ll return to the city and find more destruction or not. i think the only thing stopping her from giving up while on that raft is the thought of her child and dewey, so she holds on.

she washes up on the island and the baudelaires are there, which means they’re alive, so that’s something. but then she hears that dewey’s dead. that the hotel went up in flames. that all that’s waiting for her in the city is more pain and more loss. and that’s the final blow, that’s the moment that she knows that there is nothing can happen that can repair the damage created by what’s been taken from her. she refuses the apple, citing fear that it would harm the baby, but I think the truth is that she couldn’t bear to consider continuing her life after all that’s happened, even if it means sacrificing a life with her child.

and then olaf shows up and he rescues her from the raft and she’s suddenly face to face with the reason for so much of the loss she’s faced. it was him who killed so many of her associates, her friends, her brothers. and she doesn’t forgive him, because she knows she isn’t big enough to do that. we can also hypothesise about whether or not olaf could be the baby’s father (i like to headcanon that she doesn’t know either way but it’s either dewey’s or olaf’s, and the stress of that makes this moment even harder). but she also doesn’t have the energy to be angry at him. she knows these are her last moments, and she knows that olaf was a victim of vfd, just like she was. so she touches his tattoo and chooses instead to recite poetry, because it’s easier than being angry, it’s easier than hating him. he recites poetry back, and then dies. and despite the fact that he’s hurt her so much, she did care for him once, it’s one more person she’s lost, when she didn’t think she had anyone else to lose.

and then she gives birth to her daughter, using the last ounces of strength she has left. it’s a horrendously sad thing, because i think she could have had the capacity to love her daughter, to be a good mother, but the pain won out and she stopped being able to want to help herself, if that makes sense. so she gives her daughter life, the only thing she has left to give her, and then dies.

I think it’s so staggering to think about this person, who could have lived a life full of colour and fire, and see her completely beaten down to what she ended up as in tpp. she’s a prime example of what vfd does, she’s the last one standing of her generation, and the toll that takes on her is immense. i think the juxtaposition of her recklessness and her grief against the fact that she’s pregnant and about to become a mother is even more heartbreaking. she’s such a compelling character and so gorgeously written, even though what we see of her is so brief. she’s a person who so desperately wants autonomy and control over her situation, things she’ll never truly have, so she does reckless things that endanger her life, to get that control back and because she truly stops caring about her well-being.

and it’s a little comforting i guess? i tend to project onto kit a lot because of some of my own life experiences and losses and i understand where she comes from a lot of time time and it’s such a difficult place and my heart just hurts for her a lot

i’m sorry that this was so long, i got carried away lol thanks for the question though!!