#he looks so dead to the world in the first one

[aquaticmercy]

My Own Soul’s Warning

Summary : You, an immortal being, falls in love with the very mortal Bucky Barnes. You would do anything for him, even if it meant you had to strike a deal with Death herself.

Pairing : Bucky Barnes x reader (she/her) 

Warnings/tags : Violence, death, trauma, mentions of sex (not graphic), cursing. Rio Vidal makes an appearance. Angst with a happy ending. Fluff!!!!

Word count : 6.3k

Note : This fic was inspired by Agatha and Rio, though this has a much happier ending. Reader is the Spirit of Suffering, an immortal entity who shows herself to people in extreme physical and emotional suffering to help ease the pain. The title is inspired by the Killers song of the same name. The fic started in the 1940s and ends after FATWS. Enjoy!

The first time Bucky saw you, it was 1942. He was in the trenches, under the dim moonlight of Germany.

He was supposed to be Sergeant James Barnes, fighting to defend his country. But then? He was only selfishly fighting for his own life. 

The air was thick with the stench of mud, sweat, and blood. The world around him felt like a prison of haze and darkness— machine guns firing in the distance, the rumble of explosions shaking the ground underneath him. 

He knew it only took one mistake, one slip up, and this is how he would die.

He was tired beyond anything he’d ever felt before, his body crumbling after days without sleep. His body ached from wounds he hadn’t couldn’t treat— the infirmary was crowded, too crowded to even see the ‘small’ gushing cut on his forearm that didn’t feel so small right now. 

But he could take the physical pain. It was the gnawing fear that was the hardest to bear, creeping over him, curling around his ribs like a rope, tightening until it hurt to breathe.

Then, through the smoke and shadows, he saw you. 

You were just a figure at first, standing a few yards away. You were cloaked in the same darkness that had swallowed up his world. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed that you didn’t quite belong.

You were almost radiant, the flickering light from the fire catching on something otherworldly in your gaze. Bullets flew past you, going through your being as if you were only made of smoke.

You were watching him, silent and still. Your expression was carefully neutral, a warmth in your eyes that cut through the cold surrounding him.

He blinked, half-believing you were just a figment of his exhaustion.

When he opened his eyes again, you were still there, a steady presence in the middle of the chaos. Bucky felt a strange sense of peace swallow him, like the world had gone silent in the space between his heartbeat and your gaze. 

You didn’t say a word, but you didn’t need to. Just being there, in a place where everything was twisted and brutal and so fucking wrong, you felt like a sliver of peace in this nightmare that was wartime. 

Something deep in his gut told him that he wasn’t meant to understand who, or rather what, you were. And yet, he felt safer at the mere presence of you. Before he could reach out to test if you were real, you were gone— slipping away into the dark like a ghost.

—

The next time he saw you was when he was half-dead, bleeding out in the snow after the fall from the train. The pain was more than unbearable, raw and sharp and insufferable. His nerves burned, radiating from every shattered bone, every freezing inch of his numb skin. 

His vision blurred, the sky above flickering in and out of view as his mind faded in and out of consciousness. He wondered if this was going to be his death, a slow and dramatic fade to black he only ever saw in the movies Steve dragged him to.

Then he saw you again, standing in the snow.

The sight of you jolted him back to consciousness, just enough to cling to the edge of the living world. This time, there was no mistaking the look on your face— a look of concern. 

For a moment, he thought you must be an angel coming to collect him. 

You must be. 

There you were, silently watching him with that same expression of warmth he’d seen in the trenches.

He struggled to sit up to get a better look at you, every little movement sent pain shooting through him. Finally, he slumped back to the snow in defeat, breathing hard. 

“What are you doing here?” His voice was hoarse, nearly swallowed up by the howling wind.

The cold, harsh winter wasn’t a place for someone who looked as fragile as you, he thought.

You carefully took a step closer, as if unwilling to disturb him. There was a slight curve to your lips, something that could have been a smile but wasn’t quite, as you looked down at him. “I’m looking out for someone.”

He swallowed a strange lump in his throat, the sharp tang of fear and curiosity contrasting the cold bite of the freezing air. “Who?” His voice cracked, barely audible.

“You,” you said, your voice as quiet as a prayer.

It was such a simple answer, but it hit him like a wave. In the midst of all the pain, he suddenly felt relief. 

The hurt eased, the cold stung a little less.

He didn’t know if you were a dream, a ghost, or something beyond his understanding. But at that moment, he didn’t care. All that mattered was that you were there, that you had come for him. That he wasn’t alone. 

As his vision started to fade again and the darkness crept back, he realised you didn't leave any footprints in the snow. 

—

Bucky didn’t know why you kept showing up. 

Over the years, he felt your presence like his own shadow, drifting through the Hydra bases, the laboratories, the dark corners of the cell they kept him in between missions. The world around him was cold and sterile, a cage of steel where hope had no place, no right to exist.

Still, he saw you, quiet and watchful, a silhouette in the dim light. 

He would catch glimpses of you while the scientists strapped him to machines, the hum of needles piercing his flesh. You were there, watching over him, as they shocked cold electricity through his veins. Each time, his eyes would land on you, and you’d watch him from the far corner of the room, with that same calm, steady gaze.

Everytime his eyes locked on yours, the pain eased, even if only a little.

It became easier to take the torture.

It became easier to find rest.

Over time, Hydra erased his memories. 

Soon, he forgot his life. He forgot the people who used to love him, who grieved for him when he was lost. 

But he had never forgotten you. 

Maybe it was the first sign that you weren’t quite human.

One night, after a particularly brutal round of reprogramming, he saw you again, this time closer than ever before. 

You stood by his bedside, where he lay in the dark, barely clinging to sanity. He blinked, pain searing in his throat. He tried to reach for you, fingers trembling, and felt nothing.

“Where did you come from?” he whispered, his voice rough and broken, as he felt that comfort once again. 

The comfort he only had with you.

A soft smile touched your lips, something gentle and knowing. You were a light in the darkness of his fractured mind. “Far, far away from here.”

He closed his eyes, trying to etch your face to his memory, certain that if he did, he could take some small fragment of comfort back into the waking nightmare that was his brutal reality.

You knew, by the way his life was going, that you were going to see Bucky more and more.

It was the nature of your job, to look out for people like him.

After the next couple of visits, he started talking to you more and more— whenever he was left alone with his thoughts, whenever the pain or the hollow emptiness crept too close, he would search for you. 

And you’d be there, listening to the murmured secrets he’d never told another soul. 

He told himself you weren’t real, that he was just losing his grip on sanity, conjuring a kind face to stave off the horror. But that didn’t stop him from craving your presence.

—

Years later, he’d managed to break free of Hydra’s grip. He had carved out a life hiding in the far reaches of the world when he saw you again, as if you’d followed him through every corner of hell he’d tried to escape.

Romania was quiet, the kind of place where he could keep to himself. He had a run down studio apartment where the days blurred by and the silence was almost peaceful. 

Yet in that solitude, you appeared again, lingering in the shadow of an alleyway, or standing just beyond his view on quiet, empty streets. He’d catch your gaze through crowds when he was most alone, and he’d feel an overwhelming sense of calm, an unexplainable rush he could only have with you. 

It was on one of those quiet evenings, when he was washing dishes, that he saw you again, watching him from across the room. He stared, wiping his hands absently on the dish towel, still unsure if he was simply dreaming.

He called out in that soft voice of his, almost a whisper.

“Thank you for being here.” It was a simple admission, but it was true.

You tilted your head, that familiar gentleness in your eyes. “Always.” He replied.

The suffering he had recently was different— it wasnt physical as it usually was. It was an isolated sense of longing that broke the deepest parts of his heart, one that he couldn't quite heal himself.

Your warm and steady voice anchored him to the present. For the first time, he didn’t try to tell himself that you were a figment of his imagination. For just a moment, he let himself believe that you were standing there, real and alive, not just an invention of his lonely mind. 

And even as you disappeared, slipping away into the shadows, the feeling of your presence lingered, filling the emptiness around him.

—

The last rays of Wakanda’s sun slipped over the treetops, bathing everything in a warm, honeyed light that somehow reached even into the white-walled lab where Bucky was preparing himself for a long, cold sleep. 

He looked around, his gaze fixing on the distant horizon, the soft sounds of Shuri and the lab assistants moving in the background. 

He could feel his heart pounding. He was terrified, the horror clawing into him, even though he knew that this was the right decision. He knew that it was the safest thing for him to do— to go back in the ice until his trigger words could be removed.

It didn't stop the instinctive dread of being shut away again, though.

And then he saw you, standing behind a desk. He didn’t know how you’d gotten there, or if anyone else could even see you.

But there you were, just as you’d been so many times before, giving him a piece of calm he didn't quite understand.

For a long moment, he said nothing. He only looked at you. 

Somehow, you looked more real in this light, more human than he’d ever seen you before. Still, you had that hint of almost supernatural haze. He took a deep breath, feeling safer by the second, now that you were here.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” he asked, the words coming out like a whispered plea. He didn’t expect you to answer, not really.

His heart beat quicker as he waited, hoping you wouldn’t vanish as quickly this time.

You just smiled, that same soft, knowing smile you’d given him in the darkest hours of his life.

You nodded, “Only if you need me.”

The warmth of your words lingered in his mind as he took one last look at you. He felt the tension in his chest loosen, just enough to let him breathe again. He laid down, a feeling of peace settling over him. 

He closed his eyes, holding the memory of you close, feeling the faint impression of your smile stay with him as he drifted into the dark.

—

The next time he saw you, it was in the middle of another waking nightmare—the battlefield of Wakanda, chaos erupting in every direction as the forces of Thanos closed in. Bucky was fighting on pure instinct, his body moving with an instinct he’d learned in war. He drew on more and more on his Hydra training and sheer luck. 

After Thanos snapped, he saw you again. You were standing behind Steve, amongst the trees.

For the first time, your expression was not calm. You looked terrified. Your eyes, usually so steady, were wide, your face pale as you looked at him with a horror he’d never seen from you before.

Something inside him understood. He knew, even before the feeling swept over him—a strange tingling, a disintegration at the frayed edges of his body—that he was about to be turned to dust.

He tried to reach out, to touch you, to ask if he’d see you on the other side, but before he could say a word, he felt himself fade, slipping into nothingness, his best friend’s name the last thing he uttered.

—

When he returned—when the world pieced itself back together after five long years—he felt the dread of loneliness again. 

You came, though it felt like you carried a deeper sadness in your gaze than before. It was as if you had… missed him.

When Steve left, when Bucky watched his best friend walk away, disappearing into a life they’d both only dreamed of, he felt the emptiness he had left in his wake.

He stood there, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, feeling a hollow emptiness settle inside him, knowing he’d lost something irreplaceable, something that could never be returned when Steve decided to live a life he always wanted.

Then he saw you again, just a few steps next to him. He almost didn’t dare to look, afraid that you’d vanish if he did. When he finally turned, there you were, as calm as you’d always been, watching him with that familiar warmth and understanding.

“You’re not alone,” you murmured, your voice so gentle it felt like a medicine to the sickness of his soul.

He swallowed hard, nodding as he looked down. He tried to keep his composure, though he failed. 

He couldn’t bring himself to ask you who you truly were, if you truly knew the depth of what he’d lost, if you understood the kind of grief that was now carved so deeply inside him.

And you did. Grief was a human suffering, after all.

You stayed there, silent, a quiet witness to his pain as you offered a supernatural solace. 

—

Over the years that followed, you'd show up when the loneliness clawed too deep, when the nightmares took hold or when the silence of his apartment was too much to bear on his own. 

He started talking to you more than ever before.

When the silence weighed heavy on him, he’d glance into the shadows, almost expecting you to appear. And, as if by some unspoken agreement, you’d arrive just in time.

Yet, you never came too close. You stayed at a distance, as if you were made of something too fragile for this world. Bucky never minded, though. He had learned early on that pressing you for answers, for explanations, only ended with your departure. So he stopped asking them. He started accepting your presence as a gift he wasn’t meant to understand.

You were simply…there, steady and unchanging, offering comfort and warmth in a way no one else could. 

He’d tell you things he wouldn’t dare tell anyone else—confessions that clawed up from the darkest corners of his mind, memories from the days he wished he could erase. You would listen, without judgement, without a flicker of fear or revulsion. Your presence only ever brought you peace.

In those quiet, lonely moments, he came to rely on you, to look for you in the shadows. You were a silent companion in his darkest hours. And though he never stopped wondering who you truly were, he let himself believe, if only a little, that he had someone, that you were real enough to him.

—

One night, after a long silence had fallen between you, he confessed something.

“You know,” he said, his voice thick with sorrow and exhaustion, “I don’t… I don’t think you’re real.” He tried to smile, but it was faint. It was hollow. “I think to you’re just… my mind is playing tricks on me. I think I needed someone so badly that I made you up.”

He was laying himself bare. Raw. Vulnerable.

He was almost afraid to look at you, afraid that if he did, you would disappear, proving his confession true. Then, he forced himself to meet your eyes, searching for any sign of reaction.

You didn’t flinch, didn’t deny it. 

You only looked back at him with that same soft understanding.

“You’re just…” he murmured, trailing off. “You’re the most beautiful person I could imagine, someone I must have conjured to… to keep me from losing my mind.” He laughed bitterly, rubbing a hand over his face, not quite meeting your gaze. “Because no one like you would actually be here. Would actually want to be with someone as broken as me.”

He waited, his heart beating harshly. Part of him hoping you’d break the illusion, that you’d tell him he was wrong, that you were real. 

Faint sadness flickered in your eyes. “Suffering has never broken you before,” you said, “It will not break you now.” 

You didn’t confirm his fears, but you didn’t deny them either. 

That quiet, ambiguous acceptance soothed him more than any promise could have.

He let the questions go, even though they lingered in the back of his mind. 

He came to understand that perhaps it didn’t matter if you were real or not. He only needed you.

—

It was the dead of night, and Bucky was trembling.

He had woken up in cold sweat, the remnants of his nightmare gripping him like icy chains. He sat up, pressing his hands to his face, trying to push away the memories that refused to fade, the fractured images of a past that haunted him even in sleep. He swallowed, his voice rough, almost a whisper, as he murmured into the dark.

“Where are you?” he rasped, his voice thick with desperation. “Please, come back.” His heart pounded, his words barely a breath as he called for you, “Come back to me.”

He let his head fall into his hands, feeling so fucking foolish. 

He should've known.

He should’ve known that after all this time, he was still calling for a ghost, for a figment of his imagination, for someone he’d conjured out of pure, pathetic loneliness. 

As his breathing slowed, he felt something shift in the quiet corners of his room. A familiar warmth settled over him, gentle and comforting. He raised his head, and there you were, standing just a few feet away.

For a long moment, he simply stared, disbelief and wonder filling his stare. You looked more solid than he’d ever seen you before, as if reality had woven itself around you.

Light no longer passed through you. Your footsteps made thudding sounds on the ground. You tripped over a couple of the steps, as if learning how to walk with legs for the first time.

You moved closer towards him.

Seeing him so shaken, so desperately calling for you, had drawn you out in a way that felt irreversible. His cry was a pull too strong to resist. 

Gently, you reached out, your fingertips brushing his cheeks, tracing the faint stubble along his jaw, the warmth of his skin grounding you in this physical form. 

It was wrong for an immortal entity as ancient as you to take human form— you felt weaker, and your grasp on the unknown faltered. You knew, when you inevitably had to return to your ethereal form, that you would be exhausted. That it would hurt.

But after nearly a century of watching over James Buchanan Barnes, you had to know what his skin felt like.

His breath hitched at your touch. Slowly, his hands rose, trembling, to cover yours, pressing your palms to his face as if he was afraid you might disappear.

He blinked, eyes wide, searching your face. “You’re… real,” he breathed, his voice barely a whisper, an astonished relief flooding his eyes. “I can feel you.”

You nodded, letting your hands cradle his face, your thumbs softly brushing over his cheekbones. For a while, you stayed like that, letting his mind settle on the reality of you. 

“Who… who are you?” His voice was filled with awe. His gaze locked onto yours, desperate for answers.

You took a steady breath— and it felt off, like you had to learn it. 

You had never needed to breathe before. But now, you needed it as much as you needed him. 

You knew that him knowing what you were wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“I am the Spirit of Suffering,” you said quietly, your voice as soft as the night around you. “I ease the pain of those who suffer, showing myself to those who need me most. For eons, I’ve been drawn to pain, to sorrow. But… I’ve never been drawn to someone like you.”

His brow furrowed, confusion mingling with a sense of awe as he processed your words. He searched your face, as if trying to reconcile the warmth of your touch with the truth.

“You’ve been watching over me?” he murmured, struggling to fully grasp the revelation. 

You nodded, the truth spinning between you like a fragile thread. “Yes,” you admitted, your voice gentle, almost a whisper. “Every time you were in pain, it was my job to be there. The natural forces would not let me stop what happened to you, James, but I could keep you company, share the weight of your sorrow.”

He closed his eyes, his hands still covering yours. His grip on you tightened, trying to anchor himself to this moment. “So all those times I thought I was imagining you…”

“You weren’t,” you said softly, your gaze unwavering. 

He took a shaky breath.

You sat on the bed next to him, feeling the softness of bedsheets for the first time in your eternal existence.

“I’ve never met anyone like you, James.” Your hand drifted down to cover his heart, feeling its steady beat beneath your palm. “In all the lifetimes I’ve witnessed, through all the suffering I’ve felt, I’ve seen people become monsters, lose themselves to pain and suffering. But you… you never let it consume you. No matter how much they took from you, no matter how much you suffered, there’s still kindness in you.” You smiled, a flicker of admiration in your gaze. “You were the first person to show me that suffering doesn’t have to destroy.”

Bucky’s throat tightened. He reached up, his fingers brushing a strand of your hair behind your ear.

His touch was fleeting, as if he still couldn’t believe you were real. He searched your face, seeing the depth of who you truly  were. He saw your boundless compassion, the centuries, maybe millenia, of understanding that lingered in your gaze. 

You had been more than a dream, more than a figment of his imagination.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice filled with a sincere gratitude, “for helping.” 

As you looked at him, you realised just how much he needed you. And perhaps just how much you needed him.

—

Every night that he called for you, you’d be there for him, sacrificing your eternal strength just for a moment.

Just before the dawn’s first light, you’d pull away from Bucky’s life and disappear, dissolving back into the unknown.

You always lingered as long as you could, your human heart aching at the thought of leaving him alone again. But still, you slipped away, returning to your role as the silent companion of suffering, never able to stay beyond a few hours.

But Bucky kept calling for you.

Sometimes he’d wake from a nightmare, his voice rough with sleep and fear, calling you like a prayer, like you were the only thing anchoring him to this world. Sometimes he’d simply whisper into the dark, reaching out with an open hand, searching for your touch.

And each time, you answered. Despite the strain it placed on you, the unnatural weight of becoming flesh and blood for him, you would come back. You took on human form again and again, letting him feel the warmth of your hands. You told yourself that you could bear it, that his comfort was worth any mortal pain that your immortal spirit had to carry.

One night, in a moment of weakness, as you sat together on the edge of his bed, he looked at you with an intensity that made you feel as if your duties had disappeared. 

The silence stretched, and you could see what his eyes carried. The tenderness, the gratitude, the fierce need for you. He lifted a hand, gently brushing his fingers along your cheek. The softness of his touch reverberated through your flesh and blood. You were suddenly made aware that you had a beating heart as it was pounding against your fragile ribcage.

Before you could process the feeling, he leaned in and kissed you.

It was gentle, soft as a whisper, but it set something inside you alight, a sensation you’d never known before. 

You had seen humanity’s love from a distance, had watched the joy and heartbreak it could bring, but this… this was something beyond mere understanding. His lips were warm and real against yours, the taste of him grounding you in this fleeting human form in a way that felt both exhilarating and terrifying.

For a moment, you were frozen, feeling his heartbeat under your fingertips, the rhythm steady, grounding. And then, almost instinctively, you kissed him back. You leaned into him, feeling the depth of his sorrow and his hope in that single, shared breath. 

Every inch of you felt alive, pulled into his gravity, the intensity of this moment overwhelming every human sense you didn't think you’d ever experience.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours. “I’ve waited so long to feel this,” he murmured, his voice barely a whisper. “To feel you like this.”

You felt a swell of emotion like a lightning strike— something so unfamiliar and impossible to ignore. You were a spirit who had known only of pain and how to relieve it, who had wandered the world in search of suffering to ease, yet this—this was something else entirely. This was desire, love—all foreign feelings that made you want to stay, to linger in his arms a little longer.

But dawn was coming, as it always did. Despite the ache in your chest, you knew you had to go. The world was waiting; and others needed you, too. 

With one last touch, your fingers brushing along his cheek, memorising the feeling of his skin.

You slipped away, dissolving back into the unseen, feeling his absence as if it were a physical wound.

—

It became a brutal cycle.

Every morning you would go, and every other night, when he called, you returned. Each time, the kiss lingered in your memory, the softness of his lips, the rush of your pulse, the racing of a heart that should not be yours to feel. It left you longing, yearning, pulling you back to him over and over, until every time you left felt like you were tearing yourself apart.

And though you slipped away at dawn, leaving Bucky alone with the shadows, you knew that a part of you stayed, lingering there beside him, just waiting for night to fall again so you could return to him.

One night, Bucky reached for you. His touch was gentle and filled with a hunger that was new to you. 

Tonight, he had a human desire for you that you had only observed in passing. His fingers entwined with yours, rough and warm, pulling you closer with a care that sent a strange warmth rushing through you. You sensed a gravity between you, one that seemed to draw every part of your physical form into his orbit, a sensation you never could have understood in your ethereal form.

As he guided you towards his bed, his gaze stayed on yours, searching and vulnerable, as though asking for permission. You felt a flicker of understanding in his silence, a human fragility and need that made your heart—this temporary, fragile, human heart—beat a little faster. 

You nodded.

When he leaned in to kiss you, the sensation was breathtaking, as it always was. 

That night, he showed you the depths of human pleasure, the way mortal love could break open walls so high so intensely that the shockwave that came after felt endless. Every caress of his hands, every whisper against your skin, seared into you like a brand.

Bucky gave you something new, grounding you in sensations you didn’t know were possible. In his arms, your physical senses were overwhelmed by the beauty and ache of human desire.

With each touch, each shared breath, he showed you parts of himself he had never shown anyone in a long, long time.

And as he moved with you, every boundary between the known and unknown seemed to dissolve, leaving only the two of you, bound in a shared, silent understanding that felt more ethereal than anything you’ve ever encountered.

When it was over, he held you close, his fingers tracing soft, slow patterns across your skin.

“I love you,” he murmured, his voice filled with wonder— it was the truth. His eyes met yours, laying his heart bare for you to do whatever you pleased with it. To cherish or to break, he really didn’t care, as long as you were the one holding onto it. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but I do.”

In those words, you finally understood humanity’s deepest, truest suffering—the need to love and be loved.

For eons, you had only known suffering, solitude. The burden of easing pain without truly being seen, without knowing love in its purest form. But with Bucky, it was different.

“I love you too, James,” you whispered. It was a confession, as much a promise as it was a revelation. And you meant it. You felt a love that was boundless, stretching far beyond what this temporary human form of yours could contain.

Days passed, and each night, he would pull you close, his touch tender, his words gentle. His love was a constant that anchored you in this fragile, borrowed form. But each morning, as the first light crept over the horizon, you would pull yourself away, fading back into the shadows. 

Every time you left, you saw the ache in his eyes, a silent plea that grew more desperate with each parting.

—

One night, after holding you in silence, you felt Bucky suffered more than he ever did before.

You felt the sorrow, and even you couldn't calm him down from this desperate longing that had fragmented his heart into a million pieces— it was knowledge that you couldn’t truly be his and that he couldn’t truly be yours that had caused this pain. It was knowing that, as long as you were immortal, you couldn’t possibly belong to a mortal man.

“Please stay,” he whispered, his hands shaking as they held you. “Don’t go. I can’t… I can’t keep saying goodbye. I don’t want to only see you in fragments of stolen time.” He squeezed you. His eyes were filled with a raw, desperate longing. “I want you here— with me. Always.”

You reached out, placing a hand on his cheek. You wanted to say yes, to let yourself stay, to finally surrender to this love and the peace it offered. But you knew better than anyone of your nature. You were bound to the suffering of others, woven into the fabric of pain that had defined you for a long, long time.

“I can’t,” you whispered, your voice barely audible, the words breaking as you forced them out. “I want to, more than anything. But I… I’m not meant to stay. There are others who need me.”

A flash of pain crossed his face, and he closed his eyes, trying to swallow the heartache that threatened to bury him. He nodded, though you could see struggle that lingered in the lines on his face.

“Just stay a little longer tonight,” he murmured, his voice tight, a bittersweet smile forming on his lips.

And so you held him a little longer, feeling the fragility of this human connection, the knowing that you would have to let him go. You stayed with him until the stars faded from the sky, until the dawn began to creep over the horizon. And as you finally pulled away, slipping back into the shadows, you felt a piece of yourself break, a piece that would always belong to him, no matter how far you wandered.

—

One day, as Bucky’s heart prepared to stop beating, you stood by him, devastated.

You were there as a phantom, feeling his soul slip through your fingers as he lay on the concrete after a mission gone wrong. He was unconscious, his life hanging by a thread as he fought to come back from the edge. In all the centuries of comforting humanity, you had never felt such fear, such desperation. 

While you watched him, fragile and fading away, you felt something shatter deep within you.

His breath was shallow— his fate uncertain. He would only have minutes to live. 

But you couldn’t lose him. 

So you made a choice that you had once thought impossible. 

With a heavy heart, you turned and sought out the one being who held the power to intervene: Rio Vidal, Death herself.

Death came to you quietly when you summoned her to the darkness neither of you occupied. She moved with an eternal calm, her presence as vast and ancient as the stars. She looked at you, her dark eyes filled with the weight of ages that rivalled your own. Her stare was neither evil nor kind. 

You knew that she'd already understood why you called for her. 

“Don’t take him,” you whispered, your voice breaking. “Not now.” You were pathetic, desperation rising in frantically— a desperation that followed you into your ethereal form, an ache that you hadn’t known could exist in your immortal heart. “For the first time, I’ve found someone… someone I love. I can’t lose him.”

Rio regarded you quietly, her expression unreadable. She had seen countless souls come and go. She had met lovers, warriors, and spirits alike, each bargaining for one more breath, one more chance. But she had also never seen you — Suffering herself— here, pleading for a life. You, who had roamed the earth for centuries without attachment, a solitary being who moved through suffering like water, soothing but never bound. 

To see you now, so deeply connected, intrigued her.

Perhaps, she gave you a chance because she once felt this way, too.

“What would you give?” she asked softly, sheathing back her blade.

The answer rose in you, going again your own soul’s warning. 

“I’d give my immortality,” you replied without a second thought. “One day, you can take my soul, too. Just let me live beside him for as long as he has. Let me trade eternity for a single lifetime with him.”

Rio was silent for a long time, her gaze thoughtful, searching. 

“Do you understand what you’re offering?” she asked, her voice a blend of curiosity and pity. “To become mortal is to surrender everything you have known—the ability to exist beyond pain and beyond time itself. You would feel suffering as they do, you would face the limitations of flesh as they do.”

"I’m sure.” you nodded with nothing but conviction, “I would rather face an end, rather give up everything, than live without him for a single moment."

Rio studied you one last time, her stare as vast as the void between stars. Then, slowly, she inclined her head, a flicker of respect in her eyes. 

"When he is gone, I will come for you, too." Her voice softened just a little. "Cherish this life. It is not easily won."

When she vanished, you felt the world shift around you, felt your soul ground itself in ways it never had before. Your body solidified, your senses sharpened, and you felt, for the first time, the steady permanent rhythm of a heartbeat pulsing within your chest. 

You were no longer the Spirit of Suffering, bound to pain and sorrow. You, now permanently, were flesh and blood– human in every sense. 

And for the first time in forever, you felt real— mortal, permanently.

—

Bucky was recovering, weak but alive.

When you knocked on his door, he opened it, his eyes widening in surprise as he saw you standing there, no longer a fleeting vision that appeared in his room.

You walked all the way here, your barefoot aching from the harshness of the concrete.

You were solid, as real as he was, standing on his doorstep with tears in your eyes.

He had never seen you cry before. He wasn't even sure if you could.

"You're… you’re here," he whispered, reaching out as if to touch you, to be certain that you were truly there. His fingers brushed your cheek, feeling the warmth of your skin, and his hand lingered there, his thumb tracing along your cheekbone as if committing this moment to memory. “You feel different,” he murmured, awe in his voice. 

“I’m here to stay,” you said, voice brimming with love you could barely contain, your own hand lifting to cover his. 

He let out a shaky breath, and his eyes searched yours, filling with a warmth and disbelief so deep that it mirrored your own. He pulled you into his arms, holding you as though afraid you might vanish again.

But you didn’t. 

You were here, bathed in sunlight, and real.

You melted into his embrace, feeling the thrumming of his veins against yours, knowing that, finally, your heart would beat alongside his for as long as time allowed.

-end 

I would love to explore this further! Maybe Bucky helps you find a name, maybe even pulls some strings to give you a fake birth certificate and ID. Maybe he realises that time is fleeting and has a courthouse wedding with you ASAP.

Maybe Bucky introduces you to Sam as his wife, and he realises that he’s seen you before, when Riley got shot out of the sky.

Maybe Bucky introduces you to the Thunderbolts* as his wife, and they all would have seen you before, at some point in their life:

Yelena would have seen you when she stood over Nat’s memorial.

Alexei would have seen you when he got separated from his girls for the first time.

John would’ve seen you when he killed that flag smasher with Cap’s shield, grieving Lemar.

Ava would have seen you when she was a kid, phasing out in and out uncontrollably in extreme pain.

Antonia would’ve seen you when the bomb blew on her face.

Or maybe I could explore more of how it affects you. How you now have human guilt to live with, knowing there’s no one out there anymore easing human suffering. Now, you also have to deal with your own human suffering.

Maybe people keep recognising you, keep pointing you out as if they’ve seen a ghost because you once came to them in a time of need.

Maybe you keep your powers? Maybe I should explore how those powers would manifest in a human body?

Anyway, let me know if you’re interested in any of these ideas and I might write them!

[demonic0angel]

DC x DP prompt: Zeus is a dick, as is most of the Greek pantheon. As such, Cassie Sandsmark is looking for a new patron god. Dani hears this, and introduces her to Danny, the Ghost King and new god like being.

(I haven't finished reading through the Young Justice run, so I actually don't know too much yet. So just beware that this will probably be incorrect.)

Cassie snarled as she straddled the dummy to beat it with her fists. From a distance, the rest of the Young Justice looked at her with various amounts of wariness and worry. Dani leaned close to Kon.

“What’s going on?” She whispered.

Tim was the one who answered, “Cassie’s powers are disappearing. Something with Zeus? I’m a bit more worried about her raging though. She’s going to hurt herself at this rate.”

Dani nodded and shared a look with the other girls, who also gave her a look. Then they all stepped forward, leaving the boys behind to share a sigh of relief.

They approached Cassie carefully, who was panting and winding down from her brutal beat down on the practice dummy.

“Hey, Cassie,” Cissie began. “Wanna talk about it?”

Greta and Dani both helped Cassie up and while Greta patted her back comfortingly, Dani put away the dummy. Cassie scowled, but then her expression changed into something more sad. “My powers are leaving. I just— I just want to know why! I thought that they wouldn’t leave me no matter what…”

Dani perked up. “Wait, you need another patron god?”

Cassie nodded but then she paused, alongside Greta and Cissie. “Wait… do you know someone?”

Dani beamed. She nodded and flew forward to hold Cassie’s hand. “Yes! He’s new to being a god, but I can promise that he’s powerful and he won’t abandon you! I can promise you 100%!”

Cassie looked hopeful for the first time. She looked down, thinking to herself as she muttered, “I only wanted Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl to be proud of me…” She looked up at Dani. “Who is he?”

Dani grinned. “He’s a death god, but he only came to power a few months ago. He rules over the domain of death and everyone who is dead or will be dead. Also space.”

Cassie hesitated. “Death…? I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that.”

Dani clenched her hand gently. “I promise that he won’t make you kill. He’s the god of death, so he only helps ferry the dead souls to the afterlife. He’s more like… Hades, if that makes sense. He was a hero himself in our world.”

Cassie brightened. “I’d like to meet him! Who is he?”

Dani grinned. Her eyes were sparkling from excitement. “He’s my brother.”

[rottenfyre]

⸻ ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ᴛ ʏ ʀ ᴀ ɴ ᴛ ⸻

Pairing: Yandere HOTD x Targaryen Reader Part 2

Summary: After your mother's death, your life wasn't the same anymore. Everything was changing so fast and you were just watching.

Warning: Y/n herself is a warning.

Notes: English is not my first language. Gifs don't belong to me, credit to the owner. Hope you enjoy!

The air felt cool against her damp skin as she stood in front of the window, watching the distant glow of King's Landing beneath the night sky. Her body was still warm from the bath, the steam lingering in the room as it slowly dissipated, leaving behind the soft scent of lavender and rosewater.

She let her fingers trace the edges of the windowpane, feeling the cold, hard glass beneath her fingertips. It was quiet tonight—eerily so. The usual sounds of the city seemed muted, as if the world outside had gone still, holding its breath.

Her handmaid, Elira, stood behind her, gently brushing through her wet hair. The familiar rhythm of the bristles moving through her locks was soothing, almost meditative. Elira had always been there. Since the very beginning. They were the same age, but Elira had always known her place—quiet, loyal, obedient. Always there, always in the background, never faltering.

"It still hurts, you know... losing her." She spoke softly, her voice almost a whisper, more to herself than to Elira. She stared out into the dark horizon, her eyes distant. "Mother was... everything. The only person who truly knew me."

Elira didn't respond—she never did when it came to such things. She just kept brushing her hair, silent, attentive, like the shadow she had always been.

The ache in her chest intensified, a dull, ever-present throb that threatened to consume her. Who’s going to love me now? Her mother had been everything. The one person who had always been kind, always been gentle. And now, she was gone. The gods, if they even existed, had taken her away. Not just her mother, but her newborn brother as well.

Y/n blinked slowly, her eyes burning. Why did they take them? What kind of gods would do this? Why leave me behind with nothing? She couldn’t understand it, couldn’t process the emptiness that had swallowed her whole since that day. The pain was constant, gnawing at her insides like a beast that wouldn’t stop.

She hadn’t left this room since they told her. She hadn’t gone to the funeral. What would be the point? Rhaenyra had been the one to carry their mother’s body. She could have done that too. She could have honored her mother, but what was the point when she wasn’t even here? She was dead. Dead.

Y/n closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself sink into the sensation of the brush moving through her hair. "I loved her. I always did... I was kind to her, wasn't I?" The words felt heavy on her tongue, as if she were asking herself more than Elira. She knew the answer already. She had been kind. She had been gentle.

She sighed softly, her breath fogging the glass in front of her as her thoughts drifted. It was supposed to be a boy. A brother. I would’ve been kind to him too. She had already chosen the Dreamfyre egg for him, already imagined what he would look like with his silver hair and violet eyes.

But now... there was no brother. No mother. Just silence.

Suddenly, a sharp tug at her scalp broke through her thoughts, jolting her back to the present. She flinched slightly, her eyes narrowing as she turned her head just enough to glance at Elira.

"I'm so sorry, princess! Please forgive me!" Elira’s voice trembled, her hands shaking as she quickly let go of the brush, dropping it to the floor. She fell to her knees, her head bowed low, not daring to look up at Y/n. "Please, forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t... please, please, forgive me..."

Y/n stared down at her, unblinking, her mind oddly blank. Elira had always been loyal. She had always done what she was told. And now here she was, groveling on the floor, begging for forgiveness over a simple tug of hair. It was... pathetic.

But she didn’t feel angry. She didn’t feel anything.

"It's alright," she said calmly, her voice soft but devoid of emotion. "You can continue."

Elira hesitated for a moment, her hands still trembling as she slowly picked up the brush again, standing on shaky legs. She resumed her task, this time more careful, her movements slower, more deliberate.

Y/n turned back to the window, her gaze distant once more, her mind drifting in and out of the haze that had settled over her ever since her mother’s death. She could still hear Elira sniffling softly behind her, no doubt still terrified of making another mistake.

It’s fine, she told herself. She’s always been like this. Always afraid. Always apologizing. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

She closed her eyes again, her fingers tracing the cool glass once more, feeling the chill seep into her skin.

“I made a decision,” Viserys looked between his daughters. “I have chosen to name Rhaenyra as my heir.”

The words hit her like a wave of ice-cold water, freezing her smile in place. Wait… what? Her mind stumbled, struggling to make sense of the words. Rhaenyra? She blinked, willing herself to understand, to hear something else, but the reality pressed on her, unyielding.

“That’s… great, Father!” she managed, her voice tight and bright. Her lips twitched, and somehow, she forced them into a smile. She clasped her hands in front of her, feeling them shake, the tremors threatening to give her away. Hold it together, she thought desperately, teeth gritted behind her smile. Don’t let them see. Don’t let them see.

A cacophony of voices began to rise within her, whispering, hissing, each word cutting into her like a thousand small blades. Weak… pathetic… that’s what you are.

Her nails dug into her palms as she continued to hold her smile. No, I’m not weak… he just doesn’t see my worth yet. He doesn’t understand. But he will, he will…

That’s why Father chose her, isn’t it? Because you’re useless. Because you’re nothing.

She swallowed hard, her throat dry, and glanced sideways at Rhaenyra, who was watching her with a mixture of pride and hesitance. Rhaenyra, the golden girl. Rhaenyra, the heir. Rhaenyra… the one Father loves. Her stomach twisted painfully, but she forced herself to keep smiling, her jaw aching from the strain.

Of course he doesn’t love you, they continued. Why would he? You’re not what he wanted. You’re just a mistake, a failure, a useless little girl who couldn’t be more than a shadow.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, each beat like a drum in her ears. She felt hollow, as if she were disappearing from within, crumbling like ash. I’m not useless, I’m not… But they laughed, drowning her, making it impossible to think.

Look at him. Look at how he looks at her. Do you see that warmth in his eyes? He has never looked at you like that. He never will.

Her hands were trembling openly now, and she clasped them tighter, willing herself to stop, to silence the whirlwind inside her. I am more than this, she thought, but the words felt empty, like something fragile that could shatter with a single breath. She lifted her gaze to her father, but his expression was unchanged, his eyes full of pride—for Rhaenyra.

That’s all you are, isn’t it? A disappointment. A shadow, unwanted and unloved.

Her head swam, and she could barely hear anything beyond the mocking laughter echoing in her mind. But she kept smiling, the mask she wore cracking at the edges, her heart sinking with each passing second. You're wrong. You're wrong about me. Father does love me… he has to…

“Are you all right?” Viserys asked, frowning slightly.

The words jolted her back to the room, and she forced herself to nod, ignoring the way her throat tightened. “Yes, Father,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She wanted to scream, to cry, to tear down everything around her, but instead, she turned to leave, her face carefully blank.

As she walked away, the voices clawed at her, unrelenting, ruthless.

Useless. Unwanted. Weak. That’s why he chose her. That’s why he’ll always choose her. Because you will never be enough.

It's finally over. It had been a long day, a day that had dragged on for what seemed like an eternity. Today Rhaenyra had been named heir to the Iron Throne and she had to bow before her.

As she walked, Elira, kept a respectful distance behind her, her soft footsteps barely audible. The quiet murmur of the castle, usually so comforting to Y/n, only seemed to intensify the ache in her chest. She quickened her pace, her heels clicking sharply against the stone floor as the thoughts spiraled deeper. Why her? Why not me?

"Thanks the gods it's Princess Rhaenyra,"

Y/n froze, her entire body stiffening as she heard the words. Her mind raced, and her steps slowed, her breath catching. She looked around the corner, and saw a small group of servants standing near a doorway, talking among themselves. Her gaze narrowed as she caught the full statement.

"Ah, yes, I'm really thankful the King didn’t choose that mad cunt," one of them laughed, a harsh, ugly sound that made her skin crawl.

"What did you say?"

They immediately froze when they heard her, their faces draining of color. She could hear their frantic whispers, the way their voices faltered in fear. One of them, took a hesitant step backward.

The servants' eyes widened, and they all started stammering apologies, their words tangled together in a rush of panic.

"Please, my lady, we meant no harm, we were just—"

"We were just talking, milady. Please forgive us—"

"Please don’t—"

Her eyes locked onto the boy who had spoken the words. He looked terrified now, his face pale, his eyes wide with fear. She took a step forward, the rage bubbling over, her movements fluid and quick as she closed the distance between them. The boy shrank back, but it was too late.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Y/n half-yelled, her voice a venomous hiss. Everything that had been building inside her—the anger, the hurt, the rejection—came flooding out in a violent, unstoppable wave.

The servants froze, some of them taking instinctive steps back, but they couldn’t escape.

Before the boy could even react, Y/n was on him, her hands grabbing his hair. With a sickening crack, she slammed his skull against the stone wall. She didn’t even register the impact at first, her vision turning red as the anger clouded her thoughts. She did it again. And again. And again.

The sound of his skull crashing against the stone echoed in her ears, drowning out everything else. She didn’t hear the cries, the pleading, the desperate sobs. She didn’t hear Elira begging her to stop, her voice barely cutting through the haze of fury.

"Stop! Please! Stop!" Elira cried, her voice high with fear, but Y/n was beyond reason now. She could feel the boy’s head break beneath her hands, could feel the blood running down her fingers. The sound of his sobs, his frantic begging, only drove her further into madness.

And then, after what felt like an eternity, it was over. She stood there, panting, her breath ragged as she stared down at the boy’s lifeless body. His head was a mangled mess, blood seeping out from the cracks in his skull. Her hands were slick with it, the red staining her fingers, her palms.

She blinked, coming back to herself slowly. The haze began to clear. She looked down at the body, her heart still racing, the adrenaline still coursing through her veins. Her chest heaved, and for a moment, she could barely comprehend what had just happened. She didn’t even remember how she’d gotten here, or how many times she’d struck him.

He’s dead.

The thought hit her like a punch to the gut. Her heart sank, but the anger still simmered beneath the surface, still clawing at her insides. She turned to look around at the others—the servants were trembling, staring at her in horror, their faces pale and filled with fear.

Why... Why they are looking at me like this?

Y/n glanced down at her dress, now soaked in blood. It was one of her favorites. She frowned as she looked at the deep red stains, the fabric ruined. What a pity.

With a deep sigh, she straightened up, her anger beginning to ebb, leaving a hollow emptiness behind. Her voice was calm, too calm, as she turned to the servants. “Clean this mess up,” she ordered, her voice flat. “And make sure no one finds out about it.”

She didn’t care how they did it, just as long as it was done. She turned to Elira, her voice still controlled, though her emotions were a mess inside her. “Prepare the bath for me,” she said softly, almost pitiful. “I need to wash.”

As she walked away, Elira hesitated for a moment before following her. The others remained rooted to the spot, too afraid to move. Y/n walked through the hallways, the blood drying on her hands, her mind drifting in a haze of confusion and sadness.

I’m so tired. The thought came suddenly, washing over her like a wave. She let out a breath, shaking her head slightly.

But as she entered her chambers, she start thinking about the scene she left behind. The servants would clean it. They always did. But they would never forget. And neither would she.

With that, she closed the door behind her, her thoughts already shifting again, the sadness creeping back in.

"The realm will never accept a woman as their ruler," Rhaenys muttered, her voice laced with the bitterness that always seemed to cloud her words when the topic of succession arose.

Y/n tilted her head and nodded, the movement slow, almost sympathetic. Oh, how tragic, she thought, her lips curling into a faint smirk. All this whining and hand-wringing. Pathetic.

She softened her features, arranging her face into what she imagined looked like mild concern. "Tragic, isn’t it?" she said, her voice dripping with a smooth, honeyed sarcasm that neither of them seemed to catch.

"When I am queen I will create a new order," Rhaenyra said, her tone defiant, her chin lifted as though challenging the world to disagree.

Yes, yes, Rhaenyra, I’m sure you would be a shining example of wisdom and honor, Y/n thought, fighting back a laugh. Keep dreaming.

"Of course you would, dear sister," Y/n replied smoothly, giving a slight, dismissive nod. "The realm would be lucky to have you."

Rhaenys glanced at her, as if sizing her up, before letting out a low, sardonic chuckle. "Men would sooner burn the kingdom than let a woman sit on the throne," she said, a bitter truth in her words that, for some reason, still failed to resonate with Y/n. Power wasn’t something one was given—it was taken. And anyone too weak to seize it had no right to it in the first place.

She hid her thoughts behind a sip of wine, watching them both with a half-lidded gaze, letting their words drift over her like idle gossip. What a pair they are—one too proud to realize her limitations, the other too bitter to let go of her grievances.

"Oh, yes, a kingdom ablaze," Y/n murmured, feigning a wistful tone. "How poetic. Such a tragic tale, isn’t it?" She held out her glass, staring into the dark red liquid as if pondering something deeply moving, though in truth, she was only admiring the way the light caught the wine.

Rhaenyra sighed heavily. "They underestimate us. They see us as delicate things, fit only to be wives and mothers."

"Do they?" Y/n’s smile widened, an amused glint in her eyes. Oh, the endless suffering. Boo-hoo.

Rhaenys was watching her with an arched brow, clearly picking up on the subtle mockery in her tone. "You don’t seem very troubled by any of this, Y/n," she observed, almost as if accusing her.

Y/n shrugged, a slow, lazy movement that exuded indifference. "Oh, I am devastated, truly," she replied, the sarcasm practically dripping from her words. "What a tragic world we live in, where women like us must endure such indignities. Really, it’s heartbreaking."

Rhaenyra shot her a sharp look. "This isn’t a joke, Y/n."

"Of course not," Y/n replied, her voice smooth as silk, unfazed by her sister’s disapproval. "Nothing about any of this is funny." She took another sip, savoring the wine and the absurdity of it all. I should be the one that wear the crown, not you.

Then, as though the thought had only just occurred to her, she sighed and placed her empty goblet aside. "Ah, but I must take my leave, unfortunately." She glanced over at them, feigning a regretful expression. "I’ve a fitting to attend for my dress, you know, for Father’s wedding. It simply wouldn’t do to be unprepared for such an occasion."

The slight in her tone was subtle, but it was there, veiled in a pleasant smile. The wedding going to happen sooner or later. What a spectacle it would be. Their dear father, so desperate to secure his legacy that he’d wed a mere girl, and all to produce another heir—a boy, if the gods were willing, and if not… well, it hardly mattered to her.

"How dutiful of you," Rhaenys remarked, a hint of mockery in her voice. It was clear she saw through Y/n’s thin veneer of civility.

"Indeed." Y/n inclined her head, lips quirking in a smug smile. "After all, it’s so important to play our parts well, isn’t it?"

She glanced back at them one last time, giving them both a pointed look, her smile widening as she took in their earnest, troubled faces. "Farewell, then. Do enjoy your discussion. Such deep, meaningful words, truly," she said, voice dripping with false admiration as she turned on her heel, sauntering away without a second glance.

Y/n strode toward her father’s chambers, Ser Criston trailing like a shadow at her side. She had a perfectly charming smile painted on her lips until she came up short, blocked by two guards standing in front of the doors. Their hands gripped their spears, glancing at each other nervously before looking back at her.

“Step aside,” she said, voice a silky command.

The guards didn’t budge.

One of them, foolishly brave or utterly clueless, raised a hand. “I’m sorry, my lady, but the King has asked to not be disturbed.”

Her smile faltered, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “You’re saying I can’t see my father?” Her voice was calm, almost amused. She tilted her head, letting her gaze drift over their faces with cold scrutiny. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

The guard stiffened, clearly feeling her gaze like a blade. “We have orders.”

She chuckled, the sound smooth as honey but laced with venom. “And do you have any idea what I could do to you for disobeying me?” She leaned in, voice dropping low. “I could have your tongues ripped out, have you hanging from the city walls by your intestines, all while you beg for mercy.” She smiled, sickly sweet. “Or I could just tell my father you disrespected his daughter.”

The guards flinched, glancing at each other but standing firm.

She clicked her tongue, gaze sharpening. “Perhaps I should have Ser Criston here peel the skin from your faces, inch by inch? How does that sound?”

Criston’s hand drifted to his sword, his eyes darkening in anger at their defiance. Before he could make a move, Otto appeared around the corner, striding toward them with his usual calm authority.

“Ah, my lord Hand,” Y/n said, smile widening as she turned toward Otto. She cast the guards one last look before redirecting her attention.

Otto looked at her and then at the guards, clearly sensing the tension in the air. “Is there a problem here, princess?” His voice was calm, as if he hadn’t just walked into a potential bloodbath.

She tilted her head, letting out a soft, exasperated sigh. “Oh, nothing major, Lord Hand,” she purred. “Just a minor misunderstanding. These men seem to think they have the right to keep me from my father’s chambers. Quite peculiar, don’t you think?” She cast a smug glance at the guards, watching as they shifted uncomfortably.

The guards started to speak up, but Y/n shot them a warning glare, silencing them immediately. “In fact, I’d say it was downright insulting.”

Otto nodded thoughtfully, his expression neutral. “Well, princess, your father is about to attend the small council meeting. I’ve come to fetch him myself.”

She clenched her jaw, an annoyed sigh slipping from her lips as she finally gave a small nod. Fucking cock suckers. But she kept her expression calm, respectful even. Otto had always been fond of her—treated her like one of his own, in a way. No need to break that little bond just yet.

“Very well,” she murmured, stepping back as she allowed Otto to enter. She watched him disappear into the chamber, then turned her gaze back toward the guards, her expression a warning that needed no words. They quickly looked away, pretending to be more interested in the floor.

Moments later, Otto returned with her father. Viserys offered her a faint, apologetic smile, but his focus seemed elsewhere, a bit distracted. Odd. Otto, too, seemed unusually composed, almost as if there was something else on his mind.

As they walked away, Y/n glanced toward the chamber doors, half-distracted, until she caught a flash of red hair in the corner of her vision. A woman’s figure seated on the edge of the bed—her father’s bed.

Her heart skipped a beat, eyes widening. She had to suppress a sudden laugh, biting her nails as her excitement bubbled up. Oh, now that’s just… delicious.

There’s no way… Is that…? Did Otto really…? Oh, you sly, clever old fox. So that’s why Father’s been so preoccupied. And here I thought he was just mourning my poor Mother.

“Are you all right, my lady?” Criston’s voice brought her back to the present. He glanced at her with concern.

She smiled at him, a flash of brightness that was all teeth. “I’m perfectly fine, Ser Criston,” she murmured, her gaze still lingering on that red hair. Alicent. The Hand’s sweet little daughter, warming dear Father’s bed where Mother once lay. Oh, it was almost poetic.

Without another word, she wrapped her arm around Criston’s, a little too tight, leading him away, her smile widening as her mind danced with happiness. The thrill of it all simmered under her skin, making her eyes glint with a mad sort of glee.

Oh, Rhaenyra… if only you knew. Your dear friend is right here, warming our father’s bed. Such a pity you don’t see it yet. Poor, poor little sister.

Criston glanced at her, brow furrowed in confusion. “Is something the matter, my lady?”

“Nothing at all,” she purred, letting out a small laugh. “I’m just… happy, that’s all.”

As the small council convened, Viserys rose to his feet, his expression serious yet strained. She cast a brief glance at Rhaenyra beside her, who watched their father with rapt attention, completely unaware.

Don’t tell me Father’s actually going to—

“I have decided… I am to marry Lady Alicent Hightower.”

The silence that followed was exquisite. Y/n’s smirk widened as she glanced sideways at Rhaenyra, whose face had turned from shock to disbelief. Rhaenyra’s eyes met Y/n’s, wide and wounded, and in that brief exchange, Y/n’s smirk told her everything. Yes, dear sister, I knew. I knew before you did. And now… so do you.

Y/n’s gaze turned cold as she looked across the room at Corlys. He sat motionless for a moment, disbelief and anger barely concealed in his face as he processed what the King had just announced. She barely held back her sneer of disgust.

This pathetic man… offering up his child to this decrepit old fool just to worm his way closer to the throne. What a spineless little weasel. Tried to sell sweet Leana to Father… You’re nothing but a cock-sucking snake, Corlys.

Corlys’ face hardened. Offended, he shot Viserys a withering look before standing abruptly and leaving the room in silence. Y/n’s eyes followed him, the smirk still tugging at her lips. Good riddance, you worm.

Next to her, Rhaenyra had gone pale. She shot a look of absolute betrayal at Alicent, whose face was touched with guilt, as if she’d known this moment was coming yet hadn’t prepared for the sight of her friend’s hurt. Then turning on her heel and storming out.

Poor, naive Rhaenyra… How perfect, to have this all crumble around you while you stood unaware.

But Y/n stayed, savoring the stunned silence that filled the room, and then, without missing a beat, she plastered on her most sincere smile.

“Congratulations, Father!” she chimed, her voice warm as she moved toward Viserys.

Viserys let out a sigh, though a relieved one, as she embraced him, patting her arm gently. “Thank you, my dear,” he replied, clearly grateful for her support.

She released him, turning to Alicent, who was still wide-eyed, not quite sure what to make of the sudden affection Y/n was showing. She shifted uncomfortably as Y/n opened her arms to her.

“Alicent,” Y/n murmured, drawing her in with a tight embrace, voice sweet as honey. She leaned close to her ear, her words just barely audible to anyone but Alicent.

“Oh, Alicent,” she murmured into her ear, “I always knew you were a little whore.” She felt Alicent’s body stiffen, but she continued, undeterred. “You shouldn’t be so pleased with yourself—you’ve married my rotting father, after all.” She let out a mocking laugh, barely a whisper. “I can only imagine… his ‘crown jewels’ are as decrepit as the rest of him. But lucky you, you’re the perfect breeding mare, aren’t you? A nice, wet hole to keep his cock warm,” she added, voice dripping with contempt, “Every night you’ll lay with him, his decaying hands on you, his disgusting, rotting body. I’ll bet even his—” she sneered, “—cock is rotting.”

Alicent’s face flushed, her breath catching as she stood, stunned and trembling in Y/n’s arms. Y/n only smiled, tilting her head to kiss her on the cheek.

“I’m so happy for you, Mother,” she cooed, her voice dripping with sweetness.

Alicent, visibly shaken, managed a faltering smile, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Thank you… daughter.”

Part 1

@ʀᴏᴛᴛᴇɴꜰʏʀᴇ 2024. ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴄᴏᴘʏ, ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴏʀ ᴜꜱᴇ ᴀɴʏ ᴏꜰ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴏʀ ᴀɴʏ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴡᴇʙꜱɪᴛᴇꜱ

[vm-haunts]

...

The spirit is always there with the child, but most of the time they're... resting. Aware, but only barely, of the world passing by them, and later of the child that tried to speak with them.

They're getting better though. At first the only clear thing they can process is the child's voice when he speaks to them. Then they found enough strength to stay with the child, before their little shrine is lost.

By the time the child found a new home again, the spirit is aware enough to hum at him, sometimes, beyond just answering his voice.

The spirit still doesn't have a voice, but they can be heard now.

...

The spirit is flying.

Technically they always had been, but this is different. The spirit is flying because the child is flying, and that feels- familiar.

Flying across the skyline, a city sprawling beneath them, the need to protect burning in their heart... The spirit doesn't have memories, but this familiarity might be the closest they get to having one.

Unexplainably, it filled them with equal parts nostalgia and dread.

But, but. The child is happy. Well fed and warm, in a better place than he had been in- forever. So eager to learn and to help, as he had always been, now happy to finally have the means to do it.

So the spirit is happy too, for the child.

It doesn't stop their humming worry.

...

There is a watch on the table, and the spirit is watching the boy carefully take it apart.

The names are unfamiliar as the boy reads about the innards of a watch, but the spirit feels like he had seen those intricate movemens, held those delicate gears, heard that quiet ticking whirr.

The vibration of a million different movements in motion, the crown turning the gears to set the hands, the escapement of time ticking and whirring until the end of Infinity.

The spirit blinks, and touched his ears. The watch is back in it's box, so he is back besides the boy's beating heart.

The boy sighed, and rubbed his eyes. The watch need a lot more work to fix than he thought. Need a lot more time then he had.

But he will fix it, even if it ends up late.

...

There is a wail building up, had been for a long while now. And this, this would be the final bar to push him past the threshold.

A crack in a dam, in a pressurized tank. In a boy's bones, in a ghost's core.

There is another ghost here, one that doesn't belong. They tried to take the boy from him help. They couldn't.

The spirit- is cradling the boy in their core. Is moving a half dead dying body. Is trying to free, to save, to shield. Is looking at-

A pressure meter digital timer, countdown to an explosion. Always an explosion.

Too late, too helpless, too weak, too useless. Repeat

The other ghost is screaming something, at the body, at the spirit, at the boy.

The spirit swallows down his wail, and hums at the boy instead.

Jason hums back, before the shockwave can reach them.

...

The spirit had no voice, no memory, no shape, no name.

But, it knows that once upon a time, it did. Knows that there is a Before, somewhere, even if it can't remember that. Knows that things must have happened, in that Before, because of what felt familiar.

He has a name, now. Not his name, but he has a name to remember, to trace with his voice, with his fingers.

Jason Todd.

The ghost of a dead boy settled under the hooded angel, and waits for the other boy to wake up.

Little Prayers

A shrine is where gods and spirits resides, a little kid read from a book.

Thinking of that, the kid made a shrine in his corner of the apartment.

It consist of one candle and two prized books, made scared by a few candy wrappers and the prayers of a little child.

A few days later, a tiny wisp of something moved in.

...

The spirit is... weak.

Weak to the point of almost fading, when it found this tiny empty shrine and moved in.

It wasn't always this weak, maybe. Once upon a time, it might even have been strong. With a solid body, a real name.

Now it has none of that, just a wisp that held no memory nor shape.

The spirit confessed to the child, in a voice that isn't made from sound, that it isn't a god, nor can it offer protection in return. That it is sorry for taking the offering but couldn't brought anything in return.

The child doesn't know the difference though, between a god and a spirit, between then and now. Nor does he particularly cares. His little shrine worked and that's the important bit. The child told the spirit exactly that, and got a flicker in the candle light as a nod.

So the spirit stayed, in the little shrine of one candle and two books. Listening to the prayers of a child, spoken more to a friend than a god.

Maybe it can offer something back after all, the spirit thought. A presence, a friend. That'll be... not good or enough, but nice, maybe.

...

Jason is- not lucky, no.

Lucky would mean his mom is healthy, or never had gotten sick; lucky would mean his dad not getting caught, or not needing to work anything illegal at all. That would be real luck, and Jason don't have that kind of luck.

But Jason isn't absolutely unlucky either, he reasoned. His parents aren't good people by the standards of most, but they do love him, when they're able to.

That's better luck than a lot of kids in the Alley.

Jason tells that to the little god- spirit, he isn't sure he knows or cares of the difference. The wisp living in his shrine wavers, and the shadows whispers again that they're sorry they can't help him.

Jason is fine with that. The spirit staying with him in the little shrine is enough luck, maybe.

...

Then, one day, Jason's luck ran out.

Well, not really. There's a lot that can happen to a kid left alone in the Alley, and Jason had avoided the worst of those things so far. It's the same kind of not-quite-luck that he seems to had, and Jason is greatful for it. Sometimes.

Strangely, the spirit follows him still, even without the tiny shrine to hold them. So Jason shares his day and what food he could find, like he always did. He'll eat the offering too, after, like he always did. No sense wasting perfectly fine food.

The spirit flickers sometimes, speaks with him in a way that isn't really speaking, and Jason is... not content, but greatful, maybe, to be not entirely alone.

[revelboo]

OOOO! Yes yes yes! Please more of the Lost Light crew! I love them all so much!

And more Shockwave (any gen) PLS PLS PLS he is my absolute favorite!!!

Your writing is amazing! All of it! I love every update! Every story is such a treat and the way you write is delicious!

Thank you!

Invisible Monsters Pt 5

Lost Light Megatron x Reader

• “What’s going on?” You mumble as he reaches up to curl his servos around the warmth of you where you’d apparently draped yourself against his neck while he recharged. Hates moving you, but his data pad is lit up. Carefully cradling you to him so he can sit up and reach for his data pad as it dings again. “Megatron?” The worry in your sleepy voice makes him slow down, tracing the curve of your cheek with a servo. Wanting nothing more than to just lay back down with you, because he’s rested better feeling the beat of your heart against him than he has in forever. How long has it been since his recharge wasn’t haunted by nightmares? Somehow, having you there, feeling you, banishes them.

• “Everything’s well.” His words are reassuring, but there’s the faintest hint of a growl in his voice that contradicts him and you’re wide awake now. Whatever that alert was, it’s bad. That feeling strengthening as the former warlord shutters his optics for a moment as if gathering himself. Or praying for strength. Rodimus maybe? “I’ll be back,” he adds, lowering you onto his berth as he stands, hesitating to drape a blanket around you before leaving.

• Stiffening when the finds Ultra Magnus waiting outside his quarters, he falls into step beside the other mech, heading for the bridge. “How many?” And how had no one realized what idiocy Brainstorm was up to? Preceptor is supposed to be watching him, reining him in.

• “Aside from the one currently in your possession?” The look Magnus shoots him clearly giving away his opinion on leaving a human in his care. And it’s not that he doesn’t understand the other mech’s concern, but it still bothers him that Magnus assumes you’re in danger with him. That he’d hurt you. “Three more have been found so far, but Brainstorm isn’t exactly being forthcoming. If that device has been randomly pulling humans here since the first one appeared, there’s no telling how many there are. It doesn’t help that we keep finding new areas of the ship or rooms that were walled off.”

• Primus, what a mess. “The others?” He asks servos lifting unconsciously to touch his throat where your warmth was before he realizes what he’s doing and drops his hand. “Who has them?”

• “Rodimus has one that he tried to pawn off on me. Drift has another that seems to be having some sort of lingering issue with being transported. And Whirl.” Venting tiredly at him as Megatron’s steps falter, Magnus holds up a hand. “I know, but considering their immediate instinct when faced with him was to punch him? I’m not too concerned. I’m more worried that Brainstorm said there’s likely more not on the ship.”

• Running his servos over his face, he swallows a growl, because this mess just gets better. Because how to tell you that they’d figured out what had happened to you, but that you’d been one of the lucky ones? That you might not have been is an uneasy feeling twisting through his spark. He’d never have known what he was missing, never have felt the touch of those trusting, little hands on his much bigger ones. Hands that before had only been used to hurt. “Dead, then?” He hazards as they enter the bridge and he spots Rodimus and Drift both cornering Brainstorm, the scientist appearing bored with them.

• “Or on another ship or world we passed too near. From what Brainstorm and Preceptor have volunteered, humans were only shifted to places where Cybertronians were.”

Previous

[chwefan]

made4me | vernon

ex-babydaddy!vernon x fem. reader | 7.6k words

i do NOT condone having a baby with a man you're not married to. i do not condone having unprotected sex. please do not be like them omg. this is also a reworked fic of mine so don't worry i am NOT stealing from anyone other than myself.

contains: vernon is the father of your child, you two broke up, unprotected sex, pining, yearning, mentions of a failed realtionship

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

you don’t know how you ended up in front of vernon’s place. even if you were the one behind the wheel, the one shifting the gears, and the one rolling through red stop signs and impatiently tapping your wheel at the lights, you don’t know how you ended up there. 

you looked out your driver side window to the house across the street. a long time ago, back when the wooden mailbox had your painted hand print on the side, you used to call this your home. now the place almost seemed unfamiliar. the car parked in the driveway was not yours and the mailbox was metal now. atleast you were in your right mind enough to not park directly in front. but you also knew this was just as bad. a car rolling to an ominous stop in a residential area like this would flag the attention of the over zealous neighborhood watch. looking across the street at a house in the dead of night would not work in your favor.

you knew you could’ve gone home. you could’ve let out a deep sigh to clear your head and recenter yourself. then once you realized how crazy you looked you could’ve put your car back in drive and come back in the morning when you were supposed to. you could’ve picked up your daughter the next day and pretended like none of this happened. but you knew yourself better than that, and you knew that reeling from your failed date you came to the old place that used to bring you comfort. 

you turned towards your phone, hoping that something would distract you. but when you opened your phone you saw your lockscreen—your happy little daughter trying to hold a pumpkin the size of her body as you and vernon helped. instead of taking your mind away from the situation you were pulled deeper into it. you remembered how happy you were that day, the vivid memories of talking pictures and experiencing a pumpkin patch with your daughter for the first time. like you were a happy little family again you sat next to vernon with your daughter between the two of you, stealing the occasional glances before pretending like you two were only hanging out for the sake of your daughter.

vernon even found it in himself to have a heart to heart with you. while your daughter went off to play with the other kids he initiated the conversation, talking about how introspective he’s been lately. you watched him with wide eyes as he talked about how you two were too young to have a child, and at an awkward stage in life starting your careers to have a baby in the mix. you nodded your head as he nervously shuffled and looked down at the crackling leaves underneath his feet. you saw his shoulders visibly loosen when you repeated the same sentiment, that you wouldn’t trade your daughter for the world but you often wondered what your lives would be like if you had her later in life. the question hung in the air, you could see vernon contemplate asking you what would’ve happened if you met him later in life. 

you didn’t want to answer his question. the pang in your heart and the urge to reach for his hand made you leave his side all together, running to your daughter on the playground to get away from him.

you still didn’t have the answer as you sat in the drivers seat of your car. all you knew was that you still could vividly see your daughter holding vernons finger tightly in one hand and holding a small pumpkin in the other. 

you knew that your date didn’t stand a chance once he got you started on your little family, and that he didn’t try to hide the knowing look on his face when he saw that your ex was still very much involved in your life. selling the idea that you two were simply co-parenting was alot harder to sell when the three of you occupied your homescreen and lockscreen. he noticed your wandering mind, it was obvious in the way he cleared his throat after you stared at the picture for a little too long. 

trying to comprehend your relationship with vernon was difficult. when you were with him you thought about all the shortcomings in your relationship—the lack of communication, hiding your feelings, keeping things bottled up until they exploded. neither of you were able to save your relationship before it was too late, and it could be argued that you two were better apart. but when you weren’t with him, the only thing you could think about was trying to make it work. you saw pieces of vernon in the man you were seeing, you imagined he was with you in that restaurant. maybe it was the familiarity, maybe you shouldn’t have made the mistake of seeing vernon before going on your date. because the only thing you could think about was him, if he was going on dates in secret and if he was thinking of you too. you thought about your daughter, how much you wished you were with her instead of pretending the fancy food on your plate was good.

you knew the moment you started thinking about your family that the date was already over. when you walked yourself to your car you added another endeavor to your long list of failures, all you could think about as you sat in your car was how you gave up a day you had with your daughter for this. you deleted your message history with the man, staring at your most recent text conversations. vernon sat at the very top, his unread message appearing in the form of a tiny blue dot next to his picture-less icon. determined to keep it casual, even if he was the first thing you would see when you closed out of that app as well. 

you clicked on the message thread, revealing a series of pictures of your daughter and little updates through the night.

vernon: she likes strawberries alot.

vernon: playing zelda and animal crossing on the big tv.

vernon: she’s better than me at zelda now.

vernon: she told me mommy is going on a date?

vernon: i hope it goes well.

vernon: she ate all of her food. gonna lay her down for bed soon

you don’t know why you felt guilty reading the last message. vernon didn’t have the right to know, and you knew that. you had simply told your daughter in passing that you were going on a date night with your friends, knowing that she would repeat whatever you told her to her father. you typed your reply over and over again, trying to figure out what approach to take. 

lol i was going out with some of my friends from wo\

that’s none of your busin\

the date went we\

are you awake?

your mind came up with a million things to say, but none of them felt right. it felt like all of them were attempts at sounding casual. you threw your phone into the passenger seat beside you, and you rolled your neck to try and relieve some of the tension. you let out a sigh and turned your keys in the ignition, letting your car come to life around you.

you pulled out from the parking lot and headed down the road trying to go home. you were positive you were trying to get home, you just took the wrong turn. 

then the wrong light.

then the wrong street.

your mind confused on where to go from the restaurant, you were sure of it. when you had the chance to go back the way you let the thought come and go, and you continued heading down the same road. you took another turn, you even waited at the red light with an unexplainable energy as you tapped the steering wheel. the tension in your neck was gone as you accepted where you were heading.

you knew you didn’t have the right to act confused when you finally turned down vernon’s road.

you let your head rest against the steering wheel when you parked across the street. each time the thought of leaving your car invaded your thoughts, you gently shook your head, feeling the worn leather of the steering wheel cover against the creases in your forehead.

“don’t do it.” you said to yourself.

you looked back at the house again, looking at the window to your daughter’s room. you knew that on the other side of the house you couldn’t see, was the window to the room you used to sleep in. you started thinking about vernon in that big bed by himself, drowning in the california king that was too large even for the two of you. you started thinking about if he thought of you before going to bed everyday, if he thought about you tonight and where you were going in your pretty dress. 

“don’t do it.” you repeated.

saying it a second time was unnecessary. you said it purely for effect, trying to seem like your better senses were trying to put up a fight. but you didn’t even finish your sentence by the time you were taking your keys from the ignition. 

you had already taken your first step out of the car when you repeated the phrase again. you cleared the road quickly, hearing your heels click on the paved road with each step. by the time you made it to the sidewalk you had accepted your fate. you were still weary, slowly making your way across the lawn to the stoop. 

when you made it to the small set of stairs you looked to the door in front of you. the last chance you had to go back in your car before you undid all of your hard work. you knew you were being recorded by the ring camera beside the door. you could simply lie if vernon ever brought it up. you could just say you considered coming to get your daughter before realizing how late it was. vernon most likely wouldn’t believe you, and you would most likely lie some more trying to tell a convincing story. but your gaze went from the ring camera to the potted plant that stood tall beside you. you looked even lower to the painted rocks that circled the bottom. you let the ring camera catch you crouch down to your heels. the same hand that drove you here picked out the discolored rock that felt hollow. 

you held the rock in your hand, feeling the three engraved letters side by side. you held it away from your shadow, letting the moon illuminate the letters. you laughed to yourself for a moment before bringing your other hand to it, feeling for the split in the middle. it was too easy to slide the fake rock open, and to grab the key to the front door out of it.

you stepped through the door, turning the knob so it closed quietly behind you. you took off your heels at the door, hanging your jacket on the coat rack. you felt like an intruder, walking through the house on the balls of your feet trying to be as stealthy as possible. you lurched past your daughters toys in the living room down the hallway to vernon’s room.

“don’t do it.” you said one more time putting your hand on the doorknob.

you pushed open the door to vernon’s room slowly. you cursed at the creaky hinges, only letting it fully open when you saw that vernon’s bed was empty. you looked around the dark room, eyebrows furrowed and confused. when you didn’t see the light from the bathroom you pulled away from the door. you turned around, looking at the pink door of your daughter’s room. you ran your hand over the paint, remembering the day you spent painting it together. she was insistent on putting BOYS NOT ALLOWED on the front until she realized that included her father. it was the same day you painted the rocks outside. memories flooding your mind made you gently push the door open, looking for that home you so desperately wanted, the home that didn’t change even though you left years ago.

when you silently opened the door, you saw your daughter take up a majority of the bed. her stretched limbs forced vernon’s body to balance on the edge. his arm was slung over the side, and he was so close to falling that his hand touched the ground. vernon was on his stomach and your daughter was on her back, both of their snores filled the room. even when the sounds were disturbing the stillness in the air you felt at peace. you felt that sense of belonging, and you felt the pang of missing something so dearly it nearly took your breath away. your own flesh and blood laid next to shared history that was so massive it had it’s own gravitational orbit. 

another revolution and your heart started speeding up. you could stay here for the rest of the night, leaned against the doorframe gushing over the sight in front of you. but vernon was pulling you towards him without even knowing it. you started feeling 

all of your steps towards vernon were careful, walking on the flat part of your foot to not cause the floorboards to creak. the good memories replaced the bad ones as you looked at how blissful they were asleep. you had your eyes trained on your sleeping daughter, making sure she didn’t open her eyes while you crouched close to vernon’s body.

another revolution. his eyelashes casted the tiniest shadow on his face, and he looked so serene in front of you. everything was so familiar, even the things you thought you would’ve forgotten came back to you. he pulled you in even closer. you reached your hand in the space between your chest and vernon’s shoulder with no hesitation. 

you were frozen when you felt your hand rest on his body. looking at vernon and his cheek pressed into the mattress and his mussed black hair. you hadn’t seen him like this in god knows how long. after you called things off, vernon put his stoic resolve back up. he put on a mask for you, a facade of furrowed eyebrows and emotionless stares. you had been deprived of vernon’s softness for so long you almost forgot it existed. now you crouched next to your ex beside the flower lamp on your daughters dresser resisting the urge to run a finger over his soft parted lips or his smooth skin. you almost didn’t want to wake vernon up, afraid that you would once again have the gentleness taken away from you. 

you didn’t know you could miss the view of someone you claimed to hate so much. 

something inside of you wanted vernon to know you saw him like this, unsullied in middle of the night just like when you were together. maybe he would even talk to you in that raspy voice he’d always get in the morning. maybe if you woke him up fast enough you would be able to experience the vernon you loved before his mind fully realized to make him robotic towards you again. so you applied force behind your hand, touching his shoulder completely before you let your hand fully cover the area.

you shook vernon gently at first. his body was limp underneath your hand, moving whichever way you applied force. you looked past vernon to your daughter, who had at some point moved to sleep like you. you drew in a breath, applying more pressure behind your hand trying to rouse him. 

finally he did something, letting out a sigh before shrugging your hand his shoulders.

“go back to sleep baby,” vernon swallowed and turned his head, facing away from you. “we can play zelda in the morning, i promise.” he mumbled.

even if his voice was barely audible, you still clenched your teeth in worry. your daughter was by no means a light sleeper, but all it could take is mentioning one of her favorite things to have her head shoot up in the middle of her sleep. vernon ignored you trying to wake him up again, and you had to lean in close to the back of his head.

“vernon,” you shook him a little harder “it’s me.” you whispered.

as if you yelled straight into his ear, vernon shot up from the bed. you were spooked, almost letting out a sound when he turned to you with wide eyes.

“what are you doing here?” he sounded lost as he looked around your daughters dark room. his eyes were wide as he tried taking in his surroundings. “is something wrong?” he asked.

“no i just.” you looked over vernon’s shoulder to look at your daughter. she was still snoring, but had turned to face her father. if she woke up now she would never go back to sleep. “i need to talk to you.” you whispered.

vernon blinked hard before looking at the flower-shaped clock hanging on the wall behind you. he squinted his eyes trying to make sure he was reading the time right. he rubbed them just to make sure he was really reading it right.

“at two in the morning?” he asked, voice still raspy.

in that moment you realized it was a mistake coming. nothing good as ever happened between you and vernon after midnight. but you also realized it was too late to go back, and a small voice in your brain already convinced you that you weren’t sleeping in your own bed tonight. so you nodded your head again as vernon carefully moved off the bed to not wake your daughter. 

vernon motioned for you to walk towards his room but he still led the way. he didn’t care to walk on his tiptoes or avoid the creaky parts of the floor as he rubbed his face. 

you looked back to your daughter once more before closing the door behind you. she moved to the center of the bed, taking up the little amount of space vernon was occupying. you slowly pulled the door closed until you heard it click behind you. when you turned back into the hallway you saw vernon past the opening in his door, looking at you through the space. he was no longer tired and he didn’t have his eyes squinted in confusion anymore. he held eye contact with you from his room, still as he watched your every movement. the living room was the neutral area between the two of you, the common meeting space. you didn’t know the last time you had seen vernon in his bedroom, or when you were extended the silent invitation to come in. 

the implications made your bare feet timid in the hallway, lingering behind each creak on the floorboards. you looked briefly down the hallway to the front door. the last bit of pride you had was on the other side. you knew vernon, if you left now he’d never mention this again. you coming to his house in the middle of the night would just be another story of something more you two ignored to avoid feelings. he walked towards you, and you took another step. his gravitational pull made you clear the hallway and the threshold of his room.

as if you had never been in the room before, you waited by the doorframe as vernon closed the door shut beside you. he gave you a second to collect your thoughts, leaning against the closed door as he looked down at you. you tried matching his calm, leaning against the wall until the light switch poked your back. when vernon crossed his arms you breathed in deeply.

“what are you doing here?” he asked quietly.

you didn’t have an answer. all you could do was cross your arms against your chest and avoid his gaze.

“i don’t know.” you answered just as quiet.

you could hear vernon let out a dry laugh from beside you. even in the darkness of his room you could make out the framed photo of you two that sat at his work desk. he followed your gaze and cleared his throat when he saw what you were looking at.

“did you enjoy your date?” vernon asked.

“that’s none of your business.” you quipped.

vernon pushed off of the door, and your eyes followed his back as he walked towards his bed.

“i’ll take that as a no.” he said quietly.

when he turned around to face you, you shrugged your shoulders.

“i’m seeing him again.” you lied.

the smug look on vernon’s face didn’t fade away as he crossed his arms to match you. you saw him lean against your former side the bed, head tilted as he caught onto your lie.

“oh i’m sure.” he said.

you felt the familiar rage blossom in your chest. suddenly you felt regret, reaching beside you for the doorknob.

“this was a mistake.” you seethe.

vernon is quick to move in front of you. you can’t even turn the doorknob completely before he clears the space, coming so close to you that you can smell him. he gets even closer and you’re forced to look up at him.

vernon moves his hand to clasp over yours on the doorknob. the warmth coaxes you to let go of the, and he brings his other hand to hold yours. you can already feel the heat across your cheeks, and you can see the blush dust across vernon’s face the longer he looks down at you.

you don’t know why he humors you even though you’re no longer together. you don’t know why you feel so shy like it’s the first time you two have ever been intimate. you don’t know why he takes his time teasing you, to let the tension build to the ceiling. you came to him in the middle of the night in a tight short dress after a failed date. he could’ve taken you in the hallway or bent over the couch in the living room. god knows you deserved it. but he was flirting with you, bringing his hand to brush underneath your chin to keep your head tilted up at him.

“you look so pretty tonight.” he said.

even though the words rolled off his tongue awkwardly from not being in this situation for so long, your mouth still goes dry. your hands reach across to grab onto the bottom of his white shirt. he smiles down at you and you hold the fabric a little tighter.

“you really don’t know why you’re here?” vernon asked again.

you silently shook your head, hoping he’d show you why. he looked at your lips before going back to your eyes. your hands went to his waist, desperate to hold onto something solid as he pressed his leg between yours. 

the movement made your dress ride up. you spread your legs even wider. the thought of him taking you right here flooded your mind. as if you didn’t know the person you used to claim as the love of your life you thought he was going to only give you relief in the form of his clothed thigh. as if he didn’t buy you this dress you thought he’d be careless with it, telling you to leave it on as you rutted your hips desperately on his leg. torturing you would’ve been better. removing emotions from this situation would’ve been better, if this just became a desperate fuck then you could just chalk it all up to being horny after a failed date. 

but vernon started caressing your face before he moved his hands gently behind you to pull down the zipper of your dress. he still remembered that he had to hold the fabric straight to get the zipper to work, and he pulled it down in one smooth motion. 

you got up from the wall to aid him, and you didn’t protest when the dress became loose on your skin. you only continued to look up at vernon, feeling your eyes become glassy as the fabric pooled to your feet.

“you still don’t know?” he asked quietly. 

vernon brought his fingers to run over the trim of your bra, letting out a sigh when you tilted your head back in approval. you didn’t have to answer vernon for him to know your response. he didn’t even have it in him to laugh. something was serious as he bent down to graze his lips on the ball of your shoulder. 

when vernon moved to your neck you brought your hands to his shoulder. you kept him there, letting your legs bend slightly to rest some of your weight on his leg. he was strong underneath you, the flexing muscle in his thigh made you want to grind against him. before you could move your hips, vernon worked his kisses up to your ear then completely pulled away.

“let’s go to the bed.” he said.

you complied immediately, making your way to your old side of the bed as vernon walked around to his. 

both of your stood next to the bed, staring at the other. you waited for his instruction, but vernon stared at you waiting for your next move. the authority made you swallow your nerves, and you reached behind you to undo the clasp on your bra. vernon watched you fully clothed on the other side, completely still as you moved to your underwear. vernon watched you push your underwear past your knees and lower, until you could step out of them. 

as you brought your arms to cross against your chest, vernon let you watch as he pulled his shirt over his head. you looked at his toned stomach, how he ran his hand down his body before getting to the waistband of his sweats. you moved from foot to foot, trying to not make it obvious how much of a mess you were already becoming. getting undressed slowly made it feel like the first time again, both of you trying to remember what your bodies looked like now. you no longer felt like the young adult you were when you first met him as vernon pulled down his sweats to reveal his white briefs. as he reached for the waistband he motioned to the bed, silently telling you to get on first.

you pressed your hands into the foam and crawled to vernon’s side. you sat back on your legs, perched and ready to listen. vernon grabbed your hand that was balled up at your sides, kissing your palm after spreading out your fingers. you wanted to press your hand into his toned stomach and travel down until you could squeeze him over the fabric of his underwear, but you let vernon kiss every single one of your knuckles as he kept burning eye contact with you. when he let your hand fall back to the bed he reached into the top drawer of the night stand. when your mind caught on you shifted on your knees.

“i’m not seeing anyone.” you said quickly.

“what about your date?” vernon asked.

you shook your head, hoping that vernon wouldn’t make you say it out loud. the smug smile that blossomed across his face was enough of a response. he moves towards the bed and you make space for him, scooting over until you’re in the middle of the bed.

“so no condom?” he asked.

vernon eyed you carefully as he put the foil packet back down on the bedside table. the option was staring at you both. he watched you shrug your shoulders and look away, focusing on fluffing his pillows. he sat back on his haunches the same time you went to lay on your side. 

vernon watched you in silence as you started getting comfortable. too much time has passed since he’s seen you like this, naked and getting ready for him. seeing the line of your body settle on his sheets makes vernon want to tell you how much he changed. how he’s not the same twenty-year old who broke your heart by hiding his feelings. he wants to tell you that he’s a responsible adult now, and that his therapist tells him every session he’s making real progress. 

when you settle onto the mattress you turn to face him. vernon notices how you fail to hold eye contact with him longer than a second before turning away. your hand that was rubbing up and down your body goes to fraying thread on the sheets, and your eyes dart away to focus on the wall behind vernon.

“hurry before i change my mind.” you were anything but convincing. your words had no bite as you patiently waited for vernon to fall into his place beside you. “you should be thanking me. god knows when’s the last time you had sex.” you said.

even if you tried to seem threatening, vernon saw your body seize in anticipation when he shifted on the bed. he took his time, going to his back first to fully take off his underwear. he enjoyed seeing you trying to take quick peaks over your shoulder to look at his bare body and hearing your nails scratch the sheets to try and collect yourself. 

vernon put his hand on the side of your knee when he shifted his body again. he ran his hands up slowly, his touch light as a feather to try and make goosebumps erupt across your skin. he scooted his body closer to yours, his arm that was between his body and the mattress fell into place underneath your neck. 

the two of you went into your old routine, muscle memory of your past together in bed guided your movements. you both told yourselves your bodies were acting on their own accord. that was the excuse echoing around in both of your heads as you scooted your body back to meet vernon’s and why he pressed a soft kiss to your shoulder blade. you gasped from the feeling, and suddenly the familiarity between you two filled the room. the closeness of your bodies was nearly blinding, you put your hand over vernon’s that had found it’s place on your ass. 

vernon foolishly thought that this position would protect him, that not being able to see your face would help him have emotionless sex with you. but feeling your fingers seamlessly intertwine with his made his heart pound against your back. each time he tried to slightly pull back you only followed him, chasing after the warmth of him against you. 

he thought fast to distract you from his heart thudding in its cage before you could point it out. he reluctantly separated his hand from yours to lift your leg, making it come over his. the change made you lean forward to put your hand on the mattress to stabilize yourself. vernon leaned forward, and bringing his arm that was under your neck to hold your chest to bring you close.

“the last time i had sex?” when your leg was locked over vernon’s he made quick work of you. ignoring everything else he used his free hand to reach between your legs. before he could even make contact, you preened your ass backwards, making a sound of embarrassment at how wet you were. “it was when i came over to put our daughter’s dollhouse together, remember?” he whispered.

vernon let the memories flood over you as both of your bodies shivered. it was months ago, you needed help putting together the dollhouse you got your baby for christmas. you were ever much of the handyman, and vernon wanted an excuse to come over to your new place. so while she was at daycare vernon was invited over, and just like now one thing led to another until you were on top of him. 

he remembers trying to kiss your knees that were bruised from being pressed to the ground and you told him to go away. he also remembers after the fact you used the excuse that you were lonely due to the holiday season. but now it was summer and you were moaning for him like you always used to. when vernon pressed his lips to the side of your face you didn’t tell him to go away, you only turned your head to give him better access.

“you said you hated me then.” vernon said.

vernon pushed two fingers into your heat and a satisfied smile spread across his face when your lips parted. he sees you nod your head, trying to form a coherent sentence.

“i do.” you respond.

you can barely get through your sentence without your voice pitching upwards. vernon feels you attempt to push your hips back to meet hie fingers. 

“you still hate me?” vernon slips in a third finger to try and change your mind. “after all this time?” he asks.

“i do.” you say, shaking your head.

vernon takes your mixed signals as a sign he’s doing something right. maybe by the third time you come to him like this he will get you to say no, maybe even have you initiate the kissing first. he uses it as motivation to keep pumping his fingers into your heat, and bringing you closer by the hand that’s on your chest. 

when you try wedging your hand between your bodies to find vernon’s dick, he moves out of the way. he shakes his head in the crook of your neck. he imagines the look of frustration on your face, the one that’s seared into the back of his eyelids as he lifts your leg further. you fall forward once again from the new angle and vernon lets you. 

“fuck me please, vernon.” you whine into the sheets. 

you use the rest of your strength to push your body back to its side and you moved vernon’s hand down to your chest. he can feel your heart jumping in its cage as you continue whining for him. his chest swells when he feels your desperate hand reach down again to grab his dick. he lets you and looks down to guide his dick to your hand. 

when you hold him it’s his turn to whine. he forgot what it was like to be touched by you that he has half a mind to ask you to just jerk him off. he wants to see if you’ll. get that same desperate look in your eye as your hand speeds up. maybe he’ll turn you around, just so he can see your eyes blow out with lust as he finishes all over your fist. but just like always does he keeps his thoughts to himself and lets you decide what you want. when you pull his fingers out of your hole he leans forward, letting his hard dick press against your ass.

both of you are so desperate your movements become rushed. vernon ruts his dick into your ass from the haste, and you clench your hand around his tip. you have to take a second to regain your composure before you pump his dick again. he thinks you’re doing it just to hear him sigh contently and feel him impatiently rut into your hand. you continue to do it, letting the slick sounds of his precum between your hands fill the room until his sighs turn to quiet whines. 

“turn around.” vernon kisses your shoulder, pressing his lips into your skin to muffle his words “look at me.” he begs.

you ignore him, even though you both know you can hear him. you both know that the spooning position you’re in currently is too intimate for people who claim to hate eachother. you both know that eye contact is dangerous, that it would only bring back feelings you both put so much energy into denying. so vernon lets you ignore him and plays off his pleads by lightly biting your skin. you moan from the pain that lights your body like a fire, and vernon puts his hand over yours to guide his dick the rest of the way.

“ready?” vernon asks.

vernon says it just as quiet as his previous plead. when you nod and whimper out a yes he feels his heart drop. he knows it was an act of self preservation, but he wished to see your face. he had to settle for his imagination and your sounds when he pushed his tip past your entrance, pushing every inch inside you you until his hips kissed yours. you sucked him in and kept his dick in place, fitting around him like a glove. there was no better feeling in the world, nothing tasted better than the salt from your skin that stayed on vernon’s lips. he put his hand on your ass to spread you out enough to draw his hips back. he heard you fist the sheets and he felt you grab his hand on your chest to steady yourself. he slid back in just as slow, cursing each time your walls seized around him. 

it had been too long. vernon was actively abandoning all of his instincts feeling you around him. he felt himself caring less and less about not wearing a condom the closer he got.

“i’m gonna cum if you keep clenching around me like that” he grunted into your shoulder.

vernon moved his hand on your ass to press his hand deep into your lower stomach, causing you to push your hips further back. he swore he could feel himself inside of your stomach, and the sound that ripped from your throat made him believe you felt it too. the new angle let vernon push his hips further into you. you could no longer hold your head upright as you let it fall into the pillows to muffle your sounds. even now you held back, trying to keep some shred of your dignity.

vernon lifted his head to try and look down at you. he could see your eyes closed from the pleasure, and the thin layer of sweat that glistened across your face. the tiny beads and your supple skin caught in the moonlight. 

vernon bent down to kiss your cheek, trying to entice you to turn your head again. for the second time, he could tell you were ignoring him. he forgot what you were trying to protect yourself from as he felt your walls seize around him again. it was getting sporadic, and your breaths were turning into quick huffs. when your hand tightened over his vernon used his leg to raise yours even more. his hand on your stomach found your clit quickly, rubbing circles that complimented his thrusting. you finally turned your head from the mattress, you even turned a little further to look vernon in the eyes.

“i’m so close, sol.” you whispered.

vernon saw you close your eyes and catch your bottom lip between your teeth, another telltale sign of you trying to focus. you dragged his hand that gripped your chest to your neck. you looked down at you trying so desperately to take the tenderness from this moment. if vernon squeezed his hand around your neck like you wanted, it would be easy for you both to claim this was simply just a horny mistake, a borderline hate-fuck. he made that mistake the first time, hand around your neck as he told you how much he hated you. he looked into your eyes when he said it, trying to revel in the way your eyes flashed in pain between the moments of bliss. he didn’t mean it then but he definitely didn’t mean it now—like he said before he has changed. 

so instead of pressing his fingers into the veins on the side of your neck he traveled up to your chin, turning your head so you were forced to look at him. you were shocked, eyes so wide and your face so close to his vernon could see himself in the reflection of your pupils. he placed a kiss right on your lips, not pulling back until he felt your lips move against his. he sees himself in your eyes again, and he sees his spit glistening on your lips. he feels himself inside of you, and he feels your warmth cover his entire being.

“i think i was made for you.” 

vernon meant to say it quietly just for himself as a silent realization, but the way you nod makes him believe it to be true. vernon feels you get your strength back as you push your hips backwards to meet his hard and deep thrusts.

“you still are.” you moaned.

he tells himself that you are just talking to fill the void of silence. vernon also tells himself that you can’t bring yourself to ignore him for the third time this night when you’re looking him right in eyes. regardless, vernon can also feel himself getting closer as you clench repeatedly around his twitching dick.

“oh my god.” you moan.

vernon pulls your body closer when he feels you shudder against him. you start driving your hips back without rhythm, trying anything you can to keep the stimulation going. vernon still looks down at you as you cum, and he smiles at the irony of you trying so hard to keep eye contact. you give into closing your eyes when he slips a finger into your mouth, and he can feel the vibration of your moans around his digit. 

when you start getting weaker, and settling into vernon’s hold he pulls his hand from your clit to pull out. when you open your eyes again they’re glassy. they’re no longer half lidded as you grab vernon’s wrist, stopping him from pulling out.

both of you look down at your hand. you look almost as shocked as vernon, like something came over you to stop him from pulling out. vernon takes it in stride, pushing back into you with a force that has you moaning around his finger. you turns your head even further to face him. he kisses the apple of your cheek and then your lips, smiling against your pout.

“you want another baby?” vernon moved down from your cheek to your jaw. “you really wouldn’t be able to get rid of me then.” he whispered once he made it to your ear.

before you could say anything back, vernon latched onto the skin right below your ear, sucking and pressing his teeth in the area below your jaw. the stimulation made your lower half sink further down onto the mattress, until you were relying fully on vernon’s strength to keep your body up. memories flood back to vernon, but the way he still remembers how you sound and respond to everything makes him think he never forgot in the first place. both of your bodies move simultaneously, when he pulls away from your neck you tilt your head to give him access to the other side. you preen your neck towards him, whimpering quietly when he lingers above the spot.

“oh my god.” you start shaking and vernon feels your nails dig into his skin. “too much.” you whimper.

vernon turns your head back around to press let his face rest against yours. you still suck around his fingers, and he can feel you turn your head to kiss whatever parts of his face you can reach. you still clamp around him, your cum adds to the lewd sounds that fill the room.

“can i cum inside?” vernon asks.

vernon closes his eyes and focuses on everything about you. he hold back until he feels your head nod against his.

“please.” you bring your hand behind you to run through his hair. “i miss you so much” you whimper around his fingers.

“i miss you more.” vernon whispers.

he doesn’t hold back anymore as he empties into you. he turns to the crook of your neck, sucking harshly at your skin to relieve even more of the tension. when his hips still you take the lead, plating your hand onto the mattress to give your hips more stability. vernon grips your ass, kneading the flesh desperately to try and ground himself. he pulls away from your skin to whimper into your ear. 

you two can no longer speak, only communicating through the hushed sounds of euphoria. vernon brings both of his hands to wrap around you, bringing your body as close to his as possible. you can no longer push your hips back from the new angle and that’s exactly what vernon wants. he forces you both to stay still, to feel all of it—the way his dick pulses inside of you as he cums deep inside of you. even when vernon gives you all he has, you both stay in that position. you both settle deeper into the bed, catching your breath as your skin doesn’t break contact. 

neither of you want to be the first to speak or to force the other one to come back to reality. so you two remain silent as vernon pulls out. you don’t say a word when vernon turns your body around to face him, or when he pulls the covers over your sweaty bodies. he returns the favor by saying nothing when your nestle into his chest and you guide his arm to wrap around your body. 

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[yanmuffins]

First warning, I'm stoned as 🦆 while writing this.

Okay, I can't stop thinking about your response to the DC vs Vampires were you added that Dick would look at a Vampire Reader and go, "Premade! Yes!"

Cause I'm just thinking of Reader being seen as not just a fledgling but an abandoned, newborn vampire. In Vampire Dick's mind, her sire a should have fought to take her. But also, let it be miscommunication and differences between two completely different universes vampire cultures. In the Vampire King's would, most fledglings have to stick to their sires and constantly take in the sires blood to form a permanent, unbreakable link. Which is why Dick was only personally making thralls from his friends and family he felt confident he could control. Other vampires were made by other vampires. Yes, you could just turn someone and leave them high and dry. But it leads to weaker vampires, usually.

So Vampire King Dick, who initially wanted to conquer a different world, sees his dead baby sister he wasn't able to save. She's already a vampire. But she's starving! And her sire left her to be weak and sickly.

Just deciding, "I trust my armies to lay waste to this world. I'm just going to grab this one," yoinks Reader, "and leave. Bye. Don't give my servants too much indigestion."

This also leads to trying to feed the Reader his own blood, to take over the weak bond of the sire. Even weirder if it gets compared to how a child has to nurse from their mother. So, in a way, he's trying to take the role of dad.

And it reignites his craving for a family. So he scrapes together a bunch of remains and has Raven revive his siblings. All kept in different cells and him turning them and telling them about finding Reader, all grown up in a different universe. This does lead to Dick complaining like a dad, though.

"Timmy keeps refusing to latch. I swear, that boy! He used to be so polite and well mannered, then Bruce ruined him. And yeah, I stomped in his skull. He can of course be mad about that. But to refuse to drink my blood because he doesn't want to bond to me even more than he already has is ridiculous! I have half a mind to mitten and muzzle him and seal him in a casket for a few weeks! It'd be a good way to put him in time out. No, I don't think it's excessive!"

"Jay Bird keeps gnawing at himself in stress, but I don't know if he's ready yet for his first teething toy. He still believes that humans are equal to vampires. I don't think he'd actually drink from any toy I got him. I don't want him to feel guilty over biting apart a a regular person, but I worry specifically giving him a pedo or a trafficker would lead him to rip them apart without even drinking from them or chewing them to get rid of stress! Hmm. Babies usually have frozen peaches, during teething. Do you think I could freeze some blood so he can chew it like ice? Or maybe make gummies to stress chew on?"

"Cass is actually drinking really well. Though, she does still attempt to rip out my veins. Isn't it so cute? I little fearsome fledgling! I had to use a pair of manacle on her ankles to try to secure her better. I didn't want to do so to her wrists cause that'd be like muzzling her, and she hasn't been that bad yet."

"Steph is concerning with how often she manages to find wood she can turn into a stake. She also manages to find rats all the time. She calls them Capri Suns for vampires. I think I'll need to get her checked for rabies. Or the bubonic plague."

"Duke's powers make it nearly impossible to let him off his Meta suppression collar and cuffs... Yes, I had to put three suppression devices on him. I'm so proud. He's so strong! But the ability is far too dangerous to be around any vampire. Let alone if he hurts himself!"

"Reader took a bit, but she latches so well! She's cute that she falls asleep almost immediately after biting me. I'm a little concerned that it's because she didn't have enough blood before. Especially since she is even drinking enough to be full for a regular vampire, let alone a fledgling. And she doesn't seem to have much energy either. Maybe a feeding tube will help?"

context &. context.

warning: spoilers for dc vs vampires.

this was a rollecoaster. i love this. don't even know what to add. it's been a while since i read dc vs vampires, so i don't remember the vampiric mechanics very well. but...

"in the Vampire King's world, most fledglings have to stick to their sires and constantly take in the sires blood to form a permanent, unbreakable link."

... this actually exists in v*tm mechanics and it's called a blood bond! if someone feeds on a vampire's blood three times within a certain period of time that forms a supernatural link that creates an intense feeling of love towards the vampire they are blood-bonded to. it can affect anyone, from mortal to vampire. but since vampire! reader and vampire king dick are from different universes, i'm not sure it would work either way.

you know what's funny? as awful as reader's sire is, it's not even their fault reader is starving in this scenario (and given that other ask, they might even be smuggling blood bags into the manor for her), it's because batfam is keeping her captive. and considering the circumstances, breaking into the wayne manor to kidnap the daughter of the most important man in the city is not the smartest of moves, but dick lowkey does have a point.

but feeding reader his blood, with no certainty that a blood bond would occur given their differences, is just a straight up bad move. reader would absolutely get stronger and escape. vampire king dick is even at risk of being diablerized by vampire! reader. but he can pamper and coo over her as much as he wants while she's still weak and regaining strenght.

i think taking the fatherly role dick assumes with his siblings and then just turning it into something twisted with vampire king dick is such an interesting idea, though. it could make an amazing fic but i've got my hands full at the moment. not expanding on that on this post because it'd be too long, but toreador! reader who has traversed vampire society, is acquainted with the social machinations of her clan and actually knows how to use her disciplines would be baffled by vampire king dick, and he would be baffled by her in return. he can't believe his little sister would grow into someone like that.

also

vampire king dick with his siblings:

[jasvtsc]

dean winchester x grim reaper!reader.

for some people, death often meant one thing.

the end.

then again, others saw it as a complete contradiction.

the beginning.

but for dean winchester? it was the only time that he could see his love.

sure, dean died multiple times, in many different ways, at the hands of various people and supernatural creatures. he got used to it at some point.

death? tsk, he’d be back in a few hours. or even less.

however, he didn’t tell anyone, Sam or Cas, who he was seeing during his stay in between the mortal world and whatever else was waiting for him. every time his heart stopped, as soon as he’d open his eyes, a familiar face hovered over him with a small, kind smile.

every single time it was the same grim reaper keeping him company. not even collecting him as it was supposed to happen — you’d just stay with him and keep him company until he got brought back to life. ‘cause everyone knew the deal with the winchester brothers.

they just couldn’t stay dead for long.

so, your job was pretty much nonexistent with them. you were sent just for the sake of it, so some stuck-up higher-ups in the underworld wouldn’t get pissed off with your insubordination. not that you cared, you were doing this shit for long enough to simply grow bored. but with dean? yeah, it wasn’t so bad anymore.

you walked through a small alley, your hands in the pockets of a long, black coat you were wearing. your steps echoed within the walls, sometimes accompanied by a small splash from the puddle you stepped in. finally, you stopped and everything had gone silent.

tilting your head to the side, you smiled at the man as he slowly opened his eyes.

“hey, handsome,” you said, waving your fingers when he finally looked up at you. with a groan, he slowly stretched his back, getting up on his feet.

“yeah, good to see you, too. although, i probably shouldn’t say that,” he muttered, holding his side as he looked around. it was empty.

as it usually was in the waiting room — since that’s what you liked to call it.

it was simply you and him, and the scenery he saw last before dying.

“what was it this time?” you asked, wiping some rain droplets from his cheek. he had a slight stubble, something new compared to the last time you’d seen him. dean chuckled and shook his head, sighing loudly.

“demons, obviously. nasty fuckers,” he scoffed, looking to the side, probably in the direction where his killer had gone. but he quickly cleared his throat and averted his eyes on you. “doesn’t matter. i just know you were happily rubbing your lil’ skeleton hands, knowing you’re about to collect my soul,” he snarled, but his hands found their way around your waist, and he pulled you closer towards his body.

“we’ll see. depends on how fast they bring you back,” you shrugged, running your fingers up and down his strong arms.

“y’know i’d much rather stay with you,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against yours.

“and you know that it’s impossible,” you whispered back with a small sigh.

still, you weren’t sure how exactly you found yourself that attached to dean. you weren’t even human. you were simply a being meant to collect souls. there was no such thing as feelings. but then again, dean winchester was well-known for his disruptions of both — the mortal and the supernatural world.

it just… happened.

he was slipping through your fingers every, single time which was exciting for you. you were impatiently waiting for the next time you’d see him again, playing cat and mouse — whether he’d go back or not. but it wasn’t just about the thrill. it was about the fact that you really cared for a human soul. every time he went back you felt empty.

even more so than usual.

and for dean, seeing your face made the idea of dying pleasant. with you, he felt at peace — no worries or struggles. he felt… calm. and your smile? it was the first thing he fell for.

before, his imagination of a grim reaper was a skeleton dressed in a black cloak and holding a scythe. but then, he saw you. and everything he believed up to that moment was long gone. you weren’t scary or intimidating. quite the opposite, you made him want to stay with you forever.

but he knew it was impossible. you were simply a passerby. if he was alive, he couldn’t see you. if he was dead, he could be with you just for some time before he’d be sent to whatever shithole they wanted to put him in. it couldn’t have worked. but still, it didn’t stop him from thinking about you and simply hoping to die as many times as he possibly could.

just to get a glimpse of his nonexistent love.

a/n: is it clear now that i like to make myself suffer lmao i’m on some angsty shit lately 💀

༄♡ tags: @internetitgirl17 @beausling @deanswidow @deansbite @aileenunfiltered @fitxgrld @figthoughts @angelicp0etry @hrtsoldierboy @titsout4nicholas

[actuallybridgetjones]

so long (worst!wolverine x reader)

warnings: +18 minors do not interact, smut, fluff, female!reader, worst!wolverine, change of events, after d&w.

a/n: hi! since d&w got on disney+ i just had to rewatch it and had this idea. please note that this is my first fic ever and that english isn’t my first language. also, i can’t write wade accurately so here is my messy attempt. sorry in advance for any mistake (or if this seems to messy) and feedback is much appreciated. love, carol ♡

you and logan had a life together, both teacher at charle's institute. your relationship with him blossomed through late sleepless nights in the kitchen, when you listened to the older man, appreciating the little he shared with you everyday.

it was evident that you two grew close as each day passed. after lingering touches and stares, stollen kisses in empty classrooms, you eventually got together and boy, were you happy.

you had it all, you knew each other like the palm of your hand. you were logan's harbor and he was your safe haven. you saw how he would get when the nightmares were too much, feeling the urge to drink his worries away. you saw his flaws and his sins and still you stood by.

that's what made logan wonder at first. it made him wonder how a girl sweet and kind like you wasn't terrified by the thought of him. he would often even wonder what kind of good thing he did to have you only listening to him in the first place.

so, when that tragic night came, logan got reminded of how he didn't deserve any good, how everything of his always had a way to be taken, ruined. he was coming home from the bar, a solo mission went wrong, he decided to stop to drink it away before collapsing in your arms. he knew you would be home, you were always home.

until you weren't.

he got to the mansion to find it filled with dead bodies, jean, scott, storm, hank... everyone, it was a blood bath. logan's first thought was you. running into your shared bedroom, he searched, spent days looking through the damn corpses but there were no traces of you, nothing for him to mourn over.

logan turned to alcohol and self hatred, his healing abilities now appearing as a curse, as if nothing was hard enough to numb him from the pain of it all.

the day wade (or whatever was his name) came in saying that he would take him out of there, logan didn’t even flinch. if he didn’t have you, there was nothing holding him back to his timeline.

here he was now, storming in to help deadpool, the guy who gave him a second chance, stoping cassandra with the time reaper. his mind was filled with memory of the journey he had gone through, but not only.

through his head flew images of you. your smile, your eyes, your small almost unnoticeable freckles, the way your nose scrunched when you laughed and the way your cheeks always seemed to turn a warm pink shade around him. images of you underneath and on top of him, holding him or sleeping tightly in his embrace. memories of slow mornings tangled on each other and late nights spent panting.

after all was safe and sound, after wade’s world was no longer endangered, logan gave himself a second chance too. he let himself be friends with wade, agreeing to live with him until he figured something out. he always did.

wade, cheery as ever, took logan to his building, wanting him to meet blind al, the so infamous roommate. after climbing up the stairs logan feels a perfume he hadn’t felt in years. he turned to see you shuffling through your keys, trying to enter the apartment. you didn’t even have to turn his way.

it was you.

logan stood frozen, trying to figure out if this was another one of life’s tricks to him.

“peanunt, that’s y/n, she’s a sweet girl, but you’re literally drooling you nasty dog” wade says, and that’s when you turn to the two men, hearing your name coming from the mouth of your chatty neighbor.

the sight in front of you made your heart stop. was it your logan? could it be? or was it just another nightmare about the love of your life, just for you to wake to an empty cold bed?

your brows furrow as you look at him. he was older, thinner even despite his still very defined muscles. you were sure this was your logan from the way he looked at you, his hazel eyes seeming worn over but with the same love inside of them.

“lo-logan?”

“y/n?”

your breath hitched on your throat as tears fall down your face. you run to logan, wrapping your arms tightly around him. if this was a dream, you wanted to hug him for one last time, to atleast try to feel his embrace, his touch.

logan hugged you back, bringing your smaller body to his chest as he crouched to whisper, crying too. “is this really you? y/n, oh god”

you pull your head back to look into his eyes, meeting his hazel orbs.

it was your logan.

“i-i can’t believe…” your voice comes out shaky, small even as you look at the man. dirty, rugged and with stains of blood everywhere, but he was your man.

“oh darling… god darling girl” his voice is small too, contrasting with his own appearance. you wrap your arms securely around his neck once again, crying in pure bliss as his large arms came to wrap around your waist.

“i missed you so much” you say between sobs against his neck. “how-how did you get here?” he asks, finally finding all of his worries dissipating in your embrace.

“on the night of the attack… a portal opened and I came here, I had no idea how to go back, how to go back to you lo-” you say almost out of breath, feeling his hand now softly combing through your hair.

logan pulls back to look at you in the eyes, his fingers brushing softly against your cheek as he whispered “beautiful” and brings his lips to yours.

there’s no point in denying the hurry of the kiss, the desperation and the longing cursing through your veins. of course there’s always someone to wreck the party.

“peanut? honey? am i missing something or are we starting to make out with greasy strangers in the hallways now?” deadpool’s voice interrupts.

logan grunts and turns back to him, giving him a glare. “she was, is, the one i told you about” the wolverine says surprinsingly soft.

you smile and add shyly “he’s the one i told you about”, logan looks at you tenderly, a reminder of the love still in him. the love that he had burried deep down after that night.

“honey? you had no will to tell me that THE MAN YOU WERE FUCKING NASTY BACK IN YOUR TIMELINE WAS THE WOLVERINE?” wade adds excitedly.

you and logan both roll your eyes, you blush and turn to your neighbor. “i don’t know if he was going up to meet blind al, but i’m going to keep him for the night”

“don’t make too much noise”

before you pull your long lost lover inside with you into your apartment he turns back. “hey, wade… thank you”.

after that he was on you, door closed as he pinned you against it, arms wrapping around you, your own traveling down the hoodie he was wearing. your lips meet in a searing kiss, his tongue not taking much time in entering your mouth, joining your own in a slow and long known dance.

this was home.

“my bedroom his down the hall” you say between kisses and logan pulls you to wrap your legs around his torso, bringing you to your own bedroom. once you’re there he lays you against the bed gently, taking off his hoodie and moving to remove the tank top you were wearing, nothing underneath.

“what a fucking sight” he whispers, the rough tone contrasting with the love his gaze held, his eyes turning a deep shade of forest greeen now. reaching down, he kisses your neck, bitting and nibbling on the tender skin under his mouth.

"i- i need you logan" you say gravely, voice filled with need and passion. you remove your jeans and panties, laying bare under him now. "what a sight, princess" he hums against your hear, letting out a soft groan as he feels your desperate hands fumbling with his pants.

not longer after that, logan was moving inside you, his movements desperate as your manicured nails dig into the flesh of his back. his hands travel sloppily down your body, massaging the soft skin.

"i love you logan, i love you" you manage to say between moans, head thrown back in pleasure as you feel your high approaching. his hips grew more erratic, your words making his need grow "you'll be the death of me darlin' " he says between pants.

you feel the familiar stretch of his large cock on you, the familiar pleasure his calloused hands bring you. but you also see the depth of his eyes. the love and longing they carry. he shifts, now kneeling as his hands grasp at your hips, tight enough to bruise.

from the new angle it all feels too much and you can't even begin to process it until it's happening. "oh logan..." you almost scream in pure bliss, your whole body convulsing as your eyes roll to the back of your head, your juices spilling all over him.

the sight is too much for logan as he cums inside of you, the feel of his warm seed filling you up, making you squirm. he collapses on top of you, his hands anchoring his body as he looks you in the eye, still inside of you. "i love you so much princess"

you can only smile, new tears threatening to roll down your cheeks as you looked at the man that was, is, everything to you. in that moment you know it'll be alright, and he knows, feels it too.

as long as you've got each other, it'll be alright.

[aleskie-hischier]

Summary: In the aftermath of your choice to leave Nico behind in Paris, your world shrinks to the cold, suffocating walls of an estate where the past comes to haunt you. Isolated and broken, you resign yourself to a fate sealed in blood. Nico, on the other hand, steels himself to ensure that his promise to bring you out of the shadows rings true. Together, you make a choice: to stay in the dark or to fight for a future outside of it, however harrowing it may be.

Word Count: 10k Warnings: angst to fluff!! swearing, bad parenting, there's an action sequence here so like...fighting? reader is NOT having a grand old time until nico arrives

READ PART ONE HERE

Nico wakes up on the rooftop in Paris, his body sore and head pounding, a faint sting on his arm where you’d injected him with the anesthetic. He reaches into his pocket for his phone—it’s almost dead, teetering on the edge of shutting down. Still, there’s enough battery left to see a stream of messages from his colleagues, congratulating him on completing his final mission and wishing him a happy retirement.

Your words echo in his mind.

Be happy, okay? For me?

You’d said it with a smile, but he remembers the fear in your eyes, the way it lingered beneath the surface. Why did you do it? Why did you take the fall?

He knows the answer, of course, and the weight of that knowledge gnaws at him, knowing you’d chosen this path because of him.

He lets his head fall back against the rough stone wall, closing his eyes, forcing his mind to drift to the happier moments with you—those days wandering Paris together, where the world felt small and full of possibility, where he could almost convince himself that you could both leave the underworld behind together and start a new life somewhere quiet, somewhere peaceful.

His thoughts slip further back, to the first night he saw you at that gala in Germany, all those years ago. He smiles faintly, remembering how you had captured his attention so thoroughly he nearly forgot his own purpose there. Amidst the polished crowd, under the glow of chandeliers, you stood out with a quiet allure that blurred everyone else to shadows, like a flame he couldn’t look away from.

He reminded himself back then he was above distractions, especially on a night with a mission so crucial. As an agent, he’d learned to see through beauty and charm, to focus on his objective. But you—you felt different. Genuine but guarded, elegant but dangerous.

From across the room, he’d watched you, unable to look away, studying your every move with the precision he usually reserved for a target. Yet this time, it felt different—as though he were the one being lured, the one about to be ensnared by a trap he hadn’t seen coming.

And looking back at it now, he realizes he never stood a chance.

Nico reminded himself of why he was there—to extract sensitive information from a French diplomat. But then your arm brushed against his, and he caught his first glimpse of your face. You were stunning, a vision that made him falter. He watched as you slipped through the crowd and headed to the balcony doors. His carefully honed focus wavered, pulse quickening as he watched you pass, something inside him urging him to follow.

He’d built a career on staying disciplined, never letting a pretty face or a fleeting distraction pull him off course. But this was different. There was no logic, no reason to abandon his position, but the pull was undeniable. The thought of letting you disappear, of not stepping out onto that balcony, felt like a missed chance he’d regret forever.

So, against his better judgment, Nico left his mission on hold and followed you into the night, needing to know who you were—and why he couldn’t look away.

He thinks back to that night, to the flirtation and the way you’d smiled at him, playful but guarded. He knows now it was all part of your act, but he doesn’t care. In his memory, it feels real. He remembers the moment he was about to ask if you wanted to slip away from the gala, explore the city with him—something he didn’t get to ask until Paris.

Just as the words were on his lips, your father had entered, stealing you away. Nico remembers the frustration, the urge to punch the man right then for interrupting, unaware then of how deeply he’d come to loathe the man you called ‘Father.’

If he’d known back then how your life was probably like under his care—the fear in your eyes last night was more than telling—he might have swung that punch. He should have, he thinks now, even if it blew his cover and ruined any chance with you. The man deserved it.

Then he remembers the moment he realized who you truly were and what you were after. You’d let him kiss your gloved hand, your lips curled in that mysterious smile of yours. It had all seemed so innocent until his lips met the fabric, and he felt the burn of the poison seeping in. If he hadn’t already had an antidote with him, he’d have been dead within minutes.

In some darkly ironic way, he admires the elegance of it all, the lethal grace with which you’d nearly killed him. There was a certain style to it, a quiet artistry.

For the next five years, he laid low, staying far from anything that could alert anyone to his movements. But he kept tabs on you—your assignments, whispers of your work. It was almost an obsession, though he’d never admit it. Every time he caught a mention of you, even something as small as a rumor, he couldn’t help but listen. Morbid, maybe. But it was you. And he could never turn away from that.

And then he saw you again. Paris. It felt like fate, almost laughably so, meeting in the city of love. Seeing you there stirred something in him, a silent thrill he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years. He felt a pull, a longing to rewrite that first encounter—minus the poison, maybe. This time, you spent days together, sharing quiet glances, stories, and stolen moments that spoke volumes. It wasn’t a surprise that he wanted it to last forever.

But he wasn’t naive. He knew you’d come to Paris for a reason, and he knew exactly who you were after. So he brought you to his favorite haunts and little cafes, tucked treasures into your hands—a tiny Eiffel Tower charm, photos of you on either your phone or on his old film camera. Maybe it was foolish, but he wanted to leave something of himself with you, something you’d carry after it was all over.

Still, there was a small, stubborn hope in him, one that maybe—just maybe—you might walk away from it all for him. That tiny hope was enough to keep him from doing anything drastic, from confronting you. And the worst part? He genuinely thinks you would have left with him, if things had been different.

He doesn’t know what your fate would be exactly when you got back to your ‘Father.’ But he has an idea. And he doesn’t like it, doesn’t want to live in a reality where he got so close to what he wanted, but was unable to grasp it within his hands. 

Now, though…well, he doesn’t know exactly what would await you on your return to your ‘Father,’ doesn’t exactly know what consequences you’d face for treason of this scale. But he has an idea. And he doesn’t like even the mere thought of it. He clenches his jaw, hating the helplessness, the idea of coming so close to the life he wanted, only to have it ripped away, just out of reach.

He steadies himself, pressing a hand to the cool wall for balance as he rises. His legs are still shaky from the anesthetic, but his mind is clear. A grim resolve takes hold, a fire ignited by the fear of losing you entirely.

He moves quickly, descending the staircase, each step sharpening his focus. He doesn’t have a real plan yet—just an unshakable decision. He’d saved countless lives in his career, operated in situations where failure meant the end, but this was different. This was you.

He isn’t naive about what he’s walking into. Your ‘Father’ wouldn’t make it easy, and the odds were stacked against him. But he’d spent years keeping an eye on you, learning everything he could. He knows your father’s tactics, knows his inner circle and, with any luck, knows enough to get close.

As he reaches the entrance to the hotel, the weight of his decision settles in. There’s no guarantee he can pull this off, no assurance he’ll be able to save you. But he’ll die trying if he has to. 

You don’t run from ‘Father’s’ guards when they meet you at the airport. You expected it, the cold efficiency of their movements, the lack of any question about what you’ve done. They take your suitcase and purse, and, just as you anticipated, they blindfold you when they shove you into the car. It’s almost as if ‘Father’ is giving you one last small mercy—a blindfold instead of a bag.

The car ride is silent, the hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of the tires against the road the only sounds. You feel the weight of what you’ve done pressing down on you with every mile. The tension in your chest is unbearable, but you don’t fight it. You don’t fight them. You know what’s coming, and you’ve accepted it.

When the car finally stops, they take off your blindfold, revealing a sprawling estate, one of the many hidden manors 'Father' uses for those who’ve betrayed him. And betrayal is an understatement. You didn’t just defy him, you obliterated his empire, his carefully built legacy.

The guards don’t speak as they usher you out of the car, up the stone steps, and into the house. They take you to a room on the highest floor, secluded from everything and everyone, as though they’re already preparing for the isolation that awaits you.

You don’t complain. You don’t fight. You know what you did. You know what you deserve. The silence in the room is suffocating, but it’s a kind of peace. A peace you’ve earned, a peace you’ve sealed with your own actions. They leave you there alone after ensuring you’re unarmed, that you have nothing to aid in any attempts to escape. You’re not sure how much time passes—three days, maybe four or five, you’d lost count long ago. Meals are brought to you in intervals, but other than that, you’re left with nothing but your thoughts. So, you fill them with the happiness of remembering Paris. Remembering Nico.

Then, on the third day—or maybe the fourth—there’s a knock at the door. It opens to reveal Joy, his eyes filled with sorrow. He was always the softest of your siblings, the one whose heart was too gentle for the life you led.

“Did father send you?” you ask, sitting up on the bed, your voice hoarse from the silence.

He nods, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “He’s being nice by sending me, Shadow. He could have sent Punch, of all people,” he says softly, his voice shaky. “If you just tell us what happened in Paris—just tell us why, tell us anything—maybe we can still fix it. You’re his favorite, the best of us. I’m sure there’s a reason for what you did.”

You don’t answer immediately. You watch him for a moment, the anxiety swirling in his gaze. His hope, his desperation to save you, makes the silence between you feel heavier.

“I blew up the warehouses,” you say simply, your voice betraying no emotion, just a blunt truth.

“What? You—You—” Joy stammers, his face a mask of disbelief. He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “Shadow, stop playing around. This isn’t a joke. This is serious.”

“I’m not playing around,” you reply, your lips curling into a small, bitter smile. “I pushed the button. I destroyed everything.”

His eyes widen, a flash of hurt and fear crossing his face. “Shadow—” he gasps. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Father’s going to have you killed for this!”

“I know,” you tell him, your voice almost detached as you stare out the window, at the trees swaying gently beyond the fenced view. The peacefulness of the scene contrasts so sharply with the chaos inside you. “I knew the risk. And I did it anyway. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

Joy’s shoulders sag, and he drops to the edge of the bed beside you, his head falling onto your shoulder as he fights back the tears that are threatening to spill. “Why?” he whispers, his voice cracking. “Why would you do this? Why—why would you betray him like that?”

You’re quiet for a moment, feeling the weight of his tears against your skin. And then, you finally confess, your voice barely above a whisper. “I went there to kill Agent Heart. Nico Hischier.”

At the mention of his name, you smile faintly, the memories of your time in Paris with him rushing back. The moments of tenderness, of laughter, of something more than the life you were raised in.

“And then I realized I liked him more than I thought,” you admit, your smile softening as the memories flood you, each one more painful than the last. “I couldn’t kill him. Not after everything.”

Joy pulls back slightly, his tear-streaked face full of confusion. “You...you were supposed to destroy everything for us. For Father.”

“I did,” you say, a sad, resigned chuckle escaping your lips. “I destroyed everything...but for me. And for him. Not for father.”

Joy lets out a shaky breath, and for a long moment, he just sits there in silence, his head resting gently on your shoulder. The two of you stare out the window, watching the wind weave through the trees beyond the barred glass. It's a rare, quiet peace, almost enough to make you forget the reality of your situation. Almost.

Finally, he breaks the silence. "We don’t get to feel, Shadow,” he murmurs, his tone laced with resignation, the words weighed down by the acceptance of what’s to come, “You did the one thing we’re never supposed to do.” 

"I know," you reply softly, your voice steady despite the turmoil churning inside you.

He turns his gaze to you, eyes searching, then asks, “Was he worth it?”

A gentle smile touches your lips. "He’s worth everything."

For the first time, Joy manages a small smile of his own. It’s tentative, edged with worry and glistening with unshed tears, but there’s something else there—a fragile happiness, a glimmer of pride in your defiance, however brief it may be.

He rises slowly, moving to the door, shoulders trembling as he tries to hold back his sobs. His fingers brush the doorknob, pausing there, as though wanting to say something more but unable to find the words.

“Goodbye, Shadow,” he says finally, his voice thick with emotion and a note of finality you’ve never heard from him before.

“Goodbye, Joy,” you reply, watching him walk away, knowing this would be the last time you’d ever see him.

"Nico, this is madness," Timo hisses, eyes narrowing in disbelief. "You’re trying to save a mass murderer."

Nico watches his friend, feeling the bite of each word, but determined to keep his resolve. He’d turned to Timo because there was no one better—the agency’s top intelligence officer, the brain behind nearly all of Nico’s successful missions. If anyone could help him navigate the storm he’d thrown himself into, it was Timo. But from the way Timo was looking at him, it was clear he thought Nico had finally lost it.

“Well, it sounds bad when you put it like that,” Nico deflects, his voice steady but humorless.

“Because it is!” Timo snaps, his voice rising. “She’s one of their organization’s best operatives. She’s the Director’s most trusted weapon, Nico. And you’re actually risking your life—for her?”

The mention of your ‘Father,’ or rather, the Director, stirs something jagged in Nico��s chest. The name feels like a blow, a reminder of the darkness and manipulation woven around you like a cage. It’s in that moment he realizes how much of your life has been spent hidden away under fabricated pretenses, never living a life of your own. He wonders what you’d be like without those shadows—the girl you might have been, if you hadn’t been his 'Shadow.'

“She’s ended hundreds of lives,” Timo continues, each word sharp and unrelenting. "And those are just the ones we know about. She’s—”

“She’s going to die if I don’t try to save her,” Nico cuts in, his voice a low, deadly calm. There’s a finality in his tone that leaves no room for argument. “She’s as much a prisoner as she is a weapon. If anyone deserves a chance to walk away, it’s her. Please, Timo. Help me. One last time.”

The defiance in Nico’s voice seems to throw Timo off-balance. For a moment, his friend’s face shifts from frustration to a mixture of exhaustion and reluctant understanding. He rubs the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, weary sigh, the silence between them heavy with the weight of all they’ve seen and done.

"You’re out of your fucking mind," Timo mutters, glancing up, his gaze searching Nico’s face for a flicker of doubt. But Nico’s expression remains firm, his resolve unbreakable.

"Maybe," Nico replies, his voice softer now. “But I owe her that much.”

Timo studies him a beat longer, then nods slowly, resignation settling in his eyes. “Alright, Nico,” he says quietly. "One last time."

Nico exhales slowly, as if releasing the weight of a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. "You’re the best, Timo. Have I ever told you that?" He tries to lighten the mood, offering a half-hearted smile, but it’s weak—too feeble against the suffocating gravity of the situation.

Timo scoffs, his eyes rolling in a gesture of disbelief. "Tell me that again if we actually succeed. For all we know, she could be dead by now." His words are cold, matter-of-fact, and the harshness hits Nico harder than he wants to admit.

The smile falters from Nico’s face, his thoughts spiraling as he tries to come up with a plan—any plan—that might get him to you in time. There’s no certainty, no guarantee that he’ll be able to stop the clock that’s ticking against you, but Timo’s help, slim as it is, gives him the faintest flicker of hope.

"Then we make sure she isn’t," Nico mutters under his breath, more to himself than to Timo. His words come out like a vow, the resolve in his chest hardening like steel. It doesn’t matter what the odds are. He’s going to save you, no matter the cost.

Timo shakes his head, the urgency in his voice rising again. "We have to be realistic, Nico. There’s a very slim chance of succeeding. The Director...he's a goddamn monster. He built his empire on orphans—children trained to be killers. She was his favorite, his most loyal. Hell, he trained her himself. Not even his eldest got that kind of treatment. You can’t even begin to fathom what he’ll do when he finds out she betrayed him." Timo’s gaze drops for a moment, his words softening, as if the weight of what he’s about to say is more than even he can bear. "You could be walking straight into your death. Do you understand that?"

Nico hesitates, the enormity of Timo’s words sinking in. He thinks of his family—his mother, his father, his siblings. None of them had any idea what he actually did. He’d spent years keeping it that way, hiding the truth because normalcy was a shield, it was a part of the job. 

To them, he was a diplomat, just a pretty face at international function, a son who sent postcards from cities all over the world, someone who led a quiet, steady life. But now that safety is slipping away, and the consequences of his decisions are looming large. If things go wrong, all they’ll remember is the smile he wore, the boy they thought they knew.

But then, like a whisper in the dark, his thoughts shift to you.

He can still see it—the way you’d looked at him in Paris. That brief glimmer of something hopeful in your eyes, a quiet moment before you’d taken the bomb from him and detonated your ‘Father’s’ empire. The way you’d trusted him to keep your betrayal a secret—and to let you go, without asking for anything in return. You hadn’t begged, hadn’t even looked back, and that made him want to fight for you even more. It had been your choice, your sacrifice, but now he was going to make sure it wasn’t in vain.

“She’s good, Timo,” Nico’s voice is steady, but the edge of desperation is unmistakable in the way his eyes narrow, the intensity of his gaze holding something deeper than resolve. It’s not just determination—it’s something much more raw. “She’s good. And she can be so much more if she can get out of this alive. I owe it to her to try.”

Timo exhales sharply, his face a mixture of reluctant admiration and palpable worry. His eyes flicker to the wall, then back to Nico. "I don’t get it, Nico. You’ve been in this business long enough to know people don’t change. Not easily, at least. Certainly not in her world. She’s one of them, Nico. She knew what she was doing, knew what would happen. People like her—those who betray their own—they don’t get out. They don’t walk away alive."

Nico’s jaw tightens, the tension in his body evident as he steps closer to Timo. His voice drops to a low, quiet certainty that cuts through the air like a blade. “I know what she is. But she’s not just one of them. I’ve seen who she is when no one’s watching, when there’s no role to play. She doesn’t deserve this life. Never did.”

Timo shakes his head slowly, disbelief in his eyes, but there’s a slight flicker of something like understanding. It’s not much, but it’s enough. A resigned sigh escapes him, and he rubs the back of his neck, considering the gravity of what Nico’s asking. “Alright. Fine. I’ll get the intel. But after that, you’re on your own. And if this goes south—if it all falls apart—well, I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

Nico’s lips curl up into a small smile, but the seriousness in his eyes never fades. He knows the risks. He knows what he’s walking into. But he can’t stop now. "So do I, Timo. So do I."

The days blur together during your isolation. The cold stone walls seem to echo every passing minute, but you’ve lost track of time. You don’t even know if it's been two days or a week since Joy visited. 

And then, Hyacinth comes to see you.

A small smile tugs at the corners of your lips when you see him, your baby brother—far too young to be caught in this world, yet he’s already molded by it, even if he doesn’t yet realize the full weight of what it means. His sharp tongue and stubborn attitude are familiar, his quick wit often aimed at getting under your skin, but you know he’s all bark and no bite. Besides, you knew he had a soft spot for you—he always has. He likes you more than any of your other siblings, even if he’ll never admit it.

When you open your arms to him, he doesn’t hesitate, stepping into your embrace like it’s the only place he can find some peace. The hug lingers longer than it usually does—longer than it should, maybe—but you let it. You hold him tight, trying to etch the warmth of his presence into your mind, knowing the days ahead would make it impossible to hold onto this memory. And in this moment, as your arms wrap around him, you wish you could shield him from the darkness that’s closing in on both of you.

Eventually, the hug breaks, and you sit back on the bed, patting the spot beside you. But he doesn’t take it, opting instead to kneel on the floor and rest his head on your lap—just like when he was younger. Back then, when the weight of his training became too much, when the suffocating pressure of their expectations threatened to crush him, he’d seek comfort from you in the rare moments when he could drop his guard. You could never protect him from everything, but you gave him those moments of peace, moments when he could just be Hyacinth.

His voice breaks the silence, quiet and hesitant. “Father didn’t send me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

You arch an eyebrow. “So you came on your own?” You can’t stop the small trace of concern that seeps into your tone. “You could get in trouble, Hyacinth.”

He doesn’t seem to care about the risk. His eyes flicker briefly, and for a moment, you see a flash of fear, but it’s gone just as quickly. “Normally, I would,” he admits, “but your situation has him… occupied.” He sounds almost relieved as he says it, like he’s found an escape from the endless tension that normally surrounds their father.

You hum in response, running your fingers through his hair, offering him what little comfort you can. The silence between you is a kind of solace in itself. Words don’t always fit in these moments, but this is enough.

Then Hyacinth speaks again, his voice softer, the weight of what he’s carrying heavy in his words. “Joy told him what you did,” he murmurs into your lap. You feel the tension in his body, the subtle shake in his voice. “But he still doesn’t know why you did it—why you destroyed everything. Joy said you didn’t tell him anything.”

You don’t say anything for a long moment, but you can feel his breath grow unsteady, like he’s trying to find the right words, struggling to understand why you made the choice you did. Why you’d destroyed everything that ‘Father’ had worked for, that you had helped him build.

Hyacinth sighs deeply, his chest rising and falling with the effort. “He was mad. Furious, really. I know he was, because he didn’t say anything. He just stood there. Didn’t scream, didn’t throw things, didn’t beat anyone up. Just…stood there. Brooding.”

You nod, your thoughts racing. You’re grateful for Joy’s silence—though you don’t understand why he covered for you. The way he’s acted is unexpected, and you can't quite figure out his motivations. What does he owe you? Why would he protect you after everything you've done? Maybe he’s just trying to keep himself safe, or maybe there’s something more to it. Maybe he was just trying to be a good brother for once.

“What about the others?” you ask, breaking the silence, your voice raw from all the unspoken words hanging between you.

“Punch and Lightning want you dead,” he says, his voice flat, almost detached. But you feel a tear from him fall onto your thigh, though you don’t mention it. “They’ve been pushing for it. It’s strange, though. Father hasn’t made a decision yet. I thought for sure he’d kill you the moment you landed.”

You can’t help the hollow chuckle that escapes you. “Perks of being the favorite, I guess.”

“Oh, so you admit it now?” Hyacinth pouts, his face still resting in your lap, his voice thick with emotion you can’t quite decipher.

“I’m gonna die anyway,” you shrug, trying to sound casual, though the words taste like ash in your mouth. “Might as well own up to things.”

A long silence stretches between you. Hyacinth doesn’t respond immediately, his fingers clutching the fabric of your clothes like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he lets go. Finally, his voice breaks through, quieter, softer than you’ve ever heard it.

“Don’t say that,” he whispers, his words thick with emotion. “I kind of need you here,” he murmurs, his voice trembling. “Punch is mean, Joy cries a lot, and Lightning doesn’t talk to anyone—fighting for your death is the most I’ve heard him speak, ever.” His breath hitches as his shoulders shake, his voice cracking further. “You talk to me. Even when I’m being mean to you.”

A lump rises in your throat, choking you with a mixture of guilt and love. “You’re just a kid, Hyacinth.”

“I’m nineteen,” he protests, though it’s barely more than a bitter sigh. “I’m not a kid.”

“Just a baby,” you murmur, your voice barely a whisper.

You gently lift his head from your lap, your hands trembling slightly as you meet his eyes, offering him a small, sad smile. You press a soft kiss to his forehead, hoping it might offer him some comfort, even if just for this moment. You want him to remember you this way—soft, human, real—before everything collapses into darkness.

“You should go now,” you say, your voice thick with the weight of finality. The air feels denser, the space between you somehow more oppressive. “Before someone realizes where you are.”

Hyacinth doesn’t argue, but the hesitation in his movements speaks volumes. He stands, his shoulders slumping as he walks toward the door, his footsteps heavier than you remember them. When he reaches the doorknob, he pauses, his back to you, and for a brief moment, you think he might not leave. He turns, looking back at you over his shoulder, his face drawn and haunted.

“Shadow?” His voice is small, fragile. “Why did you do it?”

You hold his gaze for a beat, your chest tightening as the words hover in the air between you. There’s so much you want to say, so much left unspoken. But all that remains is the truth you can’t hide, not from him, not now.

“I...met someone I really liked,” you say quietly, your voice breaking on the last word. It’s not enough, but it’s the only truth you can give him right now.

Hyacinth’s brows furrow, confusion clouding his face as he tries to make sense of it. But then, almost reluctantly, he nods, accepting the answer without question. He doesn’t push for more, doesn’t demand anything from you that you can’t give.

As he opens the door, about to step out, you call out to him one last time. His name feels heavy on your tongue, like it’s the last thing you’ll ever say to him.

“Hyacinth?” His eyes snap back to you, wide and shining with unspoken words, his face torn between confusion and a desperation he won’t show. “Be good. As good as you can be.”

The words feel like a final plea, a parting wish you can’t take back. You see the raw, quiet grief in his eyes as tears begin to pool there, but he blinks them away quickly, as if trying to hold onto something—anything—before it all slips away. His face flushes, an emotional storm threatening to break, but he says nothing, doesn’t allow the tears to fall.

With a half-smile, teetering on the edge of a laugh, he lifts his middle finger at you, his way of deflecting the moment, of pretending it’s still okay. Despite everything, despite the ache in your chest, you can’t help but chuckle.

The sound is too fragile, too soft, too final.

“Goodbye, Shadow,” he says, his voice barely audible, thick with the weight of everything he wants to say but can’t. His lips tremble, as if he might say more, but he doesn’t. He shuts the door quietly behind him, the soft click of it reverberating in the stillness, sealing the space between you.

“Nico, you’re gonna want to see this,” Timo says over the phone, his voice urgent.

Nico barely hears the rest of Timo’s words as he rushes to his car and hits the gas. He’s already in motion, speeding through Switzerland with a single thought in his head: finding you. His mind runs wild with possibilities. What if she’s already gone? What if they’ve moved her? He can’t bear the thought of you being tortured or worse, and the nagging doubt claws at him.

But he pushes it aside. If even you didn’t think you’d make it out of this alive, then he had to. Someone had to keep the belief alive.

He’s sure he’s broken every speeding law in Switzerland as he rushes to Timo’s apartment, his heart pounding, thoughts racing. The moment he arrives, he practically kicks the door down, desperation making him reckless.

“What’s going on?” Nico demands, striding into the room, his voice sharp with urgency.

Timo doesn’t look up immediately, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “I tracked down every known estate the organization’s used in the last ten years, and any recent whispers about ‘Shadow.’” His eyes finally meet Nico’s, flickering with the weight of what he’s found. “I couldn’t find anything recent about her specifically, but I did find this.”

Timo turns his laptop around, and Nico leans forward, his breath catching as he sees the screen. It’s a map, showing the coordinates of a mansion in the mountains—unassuming at first glance, but its isolated location tells him everything he needs to know. It’s exactly the kind of place someone like your ‘Father’ would use to hide someone away.

“It was bought a couple of years ago,” Timo says, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Officially as an investment property—it has records of regular maintenance and weekly cleanings. It’s been untouched for years, dormant…until now.”

Nico swallows hard, scanning the details. But then something catches his eye, and his pulse quickens. “Wait,” he says, pointing to another set of coordinates a few miles from the mansion. “These markers aren’t for her, are they?”

Timo’s face hardens, and he glances at the screen. “No,” he replies, pulling up a set of data—two names. “Codenames: Joy and Hyacinth. Two other operatives in the organization. They were sighted here within the last 48 hours, though they never stayed longer than an hour.”

Nico’s breath catches. “Her siblings.”

He feels a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He’d always known that your family was complicated—dark, but tight-knit—but seeing them tied to this place, at nearly the same time, complicates everything. Just what were they doing there?

Timo keeps talking, though Nico’s mind starts to race, his instincts pushing him toward action. “These aren’t just random sightings, Nico. Something’s happening there. It’s more than just an investment property; they were there for a reason. And considering what you’re after…” Timo’s voice trails off, the implications weighing heavy in the silence.

Nico clenches his fists, fighting the urge to move now, to storm in regardless of the risk. This could be his only chance to find you.

“Luckily for you,” Timo says, gesturing to the markers that signify Joy and Hyacinth’s recent locations, “They’ve already left.”

Nico nods, relief mingling with the rising tension in his chest.

Timo’s voice drops, serious and clear. “But you understand what this means, don’t you? If you go in, you could end up dealing with the most dangerous operatives, guards, killers. None of them will hesitate to stop you. You’ll have to be prepared for anything.”

Nico’s jaw sets, his resolve steeling. Prepared for anything has always been his life’s code. But now, it’s more than just preparation. It’s personal. It always has been. This isn’t only about saving you anymore. It’s about putting an end to the nightmare your ‘Father’s’ unleashed on you—and finishing what began that night when he kissed your hand and felt his world change.

“I’ll be ready,” Nico says, his voice cold with determination. His mind is already working through the steps. It doesn’t matter who stands in his way. Not this time. Not when it comes to you.

It’s day twelve—or maybe thirteen, or even fifteen—of your isolation. Time has a way of unraveling itself in this place, each hour turns into a blur of endless gray that stretches on, indistinguishable from the next. You can no longer keep track of when you last saw someone, when you last heard a human voice. The isolation has gnawed at you, eroded your sense of self. The quiet is oppressive, thick with memories you wish you could forget.

You think back to the orphanage, those empty eyes of the children who grew up beside you—silent witnesses to the way you learned to survive, to harden yourself against the cruelty of the world. The hunger, gnawing at your insides as you lay in the cold, too hungry to sleep, too exhausted to think. You remember the hunger, the endless feeling of it, made worse by the harsh words of the caretakers who told you that "bad kids don’t deserve good food." They didn’t care if you cried. They didn’t care if you starved. 

The bruises still ache, even now, long after they've faded into your skin, replaced by the scars of training that you could never erase. The pain of a childhood that was never yours to keep. You try to push these memories away, but they come rushing back, uninvited, relentless in their demand to be remembered. Each one is a dark pulse that seems to beat inside you, too close, too real.

Your father’s training had been a blur of pain and broken limits. Days spent learning to resist poison, to fight without fear, to survive at any cost, even when it meant breaking yourself. His lessons were built on control, on making you the perfect shadow, the one who could kill without hesitation, without remorse. You remember those days more clearly than anything else—the constant pressure to be better, to be perfect. You remember the exhaustion, the cold, the unrelenting beatings that never seemed to stop, pushing you further and further away from everything human.

It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, or how many scars have healed. In moments like this, when the silence is so thick you can almost taste it, those old wounds reopen, each one a reminder of the girl you used to be. The girl who was never allowed to dream of anything else. The girl who was made to break, made to destroy everything she touched.

You close your eyes, trying to escape, but it’s impossible. The faces of those you’ve killed come to you in flashes, each one frozen in time—their eyes wide in shock, their bodies falling at your feet. You try to shut them out, but they linger, haunting you, replaying like a nightmare you can’t escape. You wonder if it’s too late for redemption, if the weight of their deaths will crush you under its unbearable pressure.

But then you remember Nico—his face, his touch, his laugh, the warmth of his hand reaching for yours in the dark. Those memories are fragile but they’re your only lifeline. You don’t know if he’s out there, if he even survived, but somehow, the thought of him gives you strength. For now, it’s enough to hold on to, a small anchor in a sea of shadows. 

You tell yourself, over and over, that maybe, just maybe, he’s still out there, that he’s still fighting for you. But you know the truth. You’re beyond saving.

And yet, the thought of him lingers, just out of reach. The one person who might have made you feel like you were worth something, even if only for a fleeting moment.

You squeeze your eyes shut tighter, but it doesn’t stop the tears from slipping down your cheeks. It’s all slipping away—the hope, the strength, the possibility of something better. You’re trapped, alone with the ghosts of your past, waiting for the inevitable.

The drive to the mountains was almost disarmingly peaceful. Nico had been braced for roadblocks, checkpoints, armed guards at every bend in the winding roads. Instead, the path was quiet, flanked only by rows of tall pine trees and the occasional rose bush peeking out from the underbrush. The deeper he went, the stranger it felt—like he’d wandered into a different world, a place pretending to be ordinary to hide something darker within.

By the time he reached the estate, he was on edge. The sprawling mansion rose up in front of him, a towering fortress nestled into the mountainside. Not a single soul was in sight, not even at the gates. Every window was dark, every corner silent. Even the entrance was wide open and unguarded. The rays of sun illuminating the estate in a pearly white splendor, seemed to mock him.

As he walked up the stone steps to the main door, unease pooled in his stomach, twisting tighter with each step. His senses screamed at him, warning him that it shouldn’t be this easy, that someone would leap out at any moment. But he reached the door unchallenged, his hand brushing the handle as he took a steadying breath.

Pushing the doors open, the sick feeling in his gut hit him in full force. There, standing just inside the grand foyer, was the last person he wanted to see.

Your ‘Father.’

"Ah," The man said smoothly, his voice rich and calm, a predator at ease in his own den. "You actually did come."

Nico clenched his fists, every muscle tensing. He forced himself to stay still, even as every instinct screamed to lash out, to wipe that smug smile off the man’s face. "Where is she?" he demanded, his voice low but firm.

His smile widened slightly, as if amused by Nico’s urgency. "You have no idea what you’ve walked into, do you?” he replied, almost with pity. He stepped closer, hands clasped casually behind his back, eyes narrowing as he studied Nico with cold calculation. “I thought you were smarter than this. Perhaps the Swiss government has been too lax as of late.”

Nico’s jaw tightened. "If you’ve done anything to her—"

“Anything to her?” he interrupted, chuckling darkly. “You misunderstand, Mr. Hischier.” The man smirks. “It’s only you and I here, so let me be frank. She’s here because of you. You, with your ideals and reckless hope, leading her to believe she could be anything more than what she was raised to be. The weapon I made her into.” 

His voice was unnervingly calm, but there was a venom in his words that made Nico’s skin crawl. “Do you honestly think she could leave without me knowing? That she could destroy my empire without me realizing the reasons behind it? That her siblings could lie for her without my knowledge?”

Nico’s eyes narrowed, but his fists clenched at his sides. He took a step forward, trying to quell the rising storm inside him. “What are you saying?”

The Director’s gaze flicked over him with unnerving amusement. “I have eyes and ears everywhere.” His voice was almost too smooth now, as if savoring the moment. “The minute she stepped foot into Paris, I knew.” He took a step toward Nico, his eyes never leaving him. “The minute she made contact with you, I knew.” Another step, his cold smile widening. “I knew about your little dates and rendezvous. I knew when she tried to slip poison into your wine. I knew the moment she pressed that button.”

The words hit Nico like a blow to the chest. His heart raced. "You knew all this time?”

Your ‘Father’s’ smile deepened, something almost predatory in it. “You’ve been playing her game all this time, Hischier. But she’s been playing mine. I know exactly why she hesitated to kill you.” He scoffs. “Turns out my best child was my weakest. But you were the one who kept her from finishing her mission. It didn’t have anything to do with her skills. Which is the only reason she’s not dead yet.”

Nico’s pulse hammered in his ears, disbelief warring with rage. “What are you planning?”

“Oh, nothing much," he replied, his voice silky with mock indifference. “Just…bringing her back to her original settings. Make her remember what happens when she disobeys. And for that to happen…I’m afraid I’ll need your head.”

Before Nico could react, a hand shot out, flicking open a sleek black knife with a practiced motion. His movements were blindingly fast, and before Nico could even fully process what was happening, the blade slashed through the air toward him with deadly precision.

Nico’s reflexes kicked in, his instincts honed from years of training and combat. He twisted to the side just in time, feeling the cool rush of air as the blade narrowly missed his chest. Your ‘Father’s’ speed was startling, faster than most of the men Nico had fought in his career, but Nico stayed calm. He had to.

He darted back, avoiding another strike aimed at his side. “You think you can just walk away with her, don’t you?” the older man taunts, his movements getting quicker. 

Nico hissed through gritted teeth, his hands shifting into a defensive stance. He couldn't let his emotions cloud his judgment—he had to stay focused.

His opponent was relentless, his strikes coming faster, more furious with each passing moment. His body moved with the precision of a machine, the knife flashing in the dim light of the hallway, but Nico was no slouch. He danced around the attacks, his heart pounding as the adrenaline surged.

But the longer the fight went on, the clearer it became—your ‘Father’ wasn’t just fighting to defend his territory. He was trying to force Nico into a corner, push him into making a mistake. And Nico couldn’t afford to make one.

Another blade slash came at him, and Nico dove low, dodging under the attack, but a boot came down, aimed directly for his ribs. Nico barely managed to block it with his arm, the impact jarring his bones, but he gritted his teeth through the pain.

“You really think you can take her from me?” He sneered, his breath coming in sharp bursts, a twisted glee dancing in his eyes. “You’re already too late.”

Nico’s mind raced. There had to be a way to end this, to survive. If he didn’t get out of here alive, everything—everything he had fought for—would be lost. His thoughts flicked to you, to the last glimpse he had of you in Paris, and something inside him hardened.

No. He wouldn’t back down. Not this time. Not when it was this close.

The Director fought with the precision of a man who’d spent a lifetime learning how to eliminate any threat that came near him, who spent every waking hour trying to fortify his possessions. His movements were swift, calculated—each strike designed to cut deep, to leave Nico vulnerable, to make sure he couldn’t fight back. His knife was a blur, a flashing extension of his will to destroy.

But Nico was different. He wasn’t fighting to just survive. He was fighting for you, for the fragile hope he held onto despite all the evidence to the contrary. He was fighting for something he couldn’t let go of. He had everything to lose. And that made him stronger.

As your ‘Father’ lunged again, the blade aimed directly at his throat, Nico’s body reacted before his mind could fully catch up. He sidestepped, his foot sliding on the slick floor as he drove his elbow into the other man’s ribs with a satisfying crack. The man grunted, but didn’t flinch—he only shifted, twisting his body to try and regain his stance.

Nico pressed his advantage, knowing he couldn’t afford to wait for him to recover. His mind raced, working through each move as if it were a series of chess pieces falling into place.

‘Father’ swung the knife again, but this time Nico caught his wrist, twisting it just enough to send the blade skittering across the floor. In that split second, he drove his knee into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The man staggered back, eyes flashing with anger, but Nico was already on him, not giving him a chance to reset.

“You don’t own her.” Nico spat, his voice low, dangerous.

He sneered, lunging forward again, but this time Nico was ready. With a fluid motion, he caught his arm, locking it behind his back with a sharp twist. The man growled, trying to break free, but Nico tightened his grip, pushing him toward the stone wall.

“You should have let her go,” Nico muttered, his breath steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him. “She wasn’t yours to break.”

With one final, brutal motion, Nico slammed his face into the cold stone wall, knocking him unconscious. The man crumpled to the floor, the knife slipping from his hand with a dull thud. Nico took a deep breath, letting the silence settle around him as he stood over the fallen man. His heart was still pounding in his chest, the fight lingering in his muscles like fire, but he knew it was over—for now.

He didn’t have time to waste. He had to find you. Your ‘Father’ might have been down, but this fight wasn’t finished. Not yet. He would get to you. And you would get your revenge. No matter what.

When the door creaks open, you don’t immediately react. Another visit from one of your siblings, you assume—another cold, emotionless meeting. Joy and Hyacinth had already come, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in your chest. Maybe it's Punch next, here to deliver the final blow, as blunt and sharp as ever. At least with him, there's no pretending, no false hope. Just the end.

You sigh, slowly lifting your head to prepare for the inevitable. But what you see stops you cold, freezes you in place like a shock of ice.

Nico.

Your mind scrambles to make sense of the image before you, but everything about him is different from how you remember. His hair is a mess, his knuckles bruised and raw, and his usually crisp shirts and jackets are gone, replaced by something torn, wrinkled, and soaked with sweat and speckles of blood and dirt. The scent of him is raw, like he’s been through hell. His brows are furrowed, his gaze filled with an almost unbearable mix of worry and fear, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. It’s a familiar feeling, seeing him again, even if he’s different from how you remembered. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

You blink, trying to piece together what’s real and what isn’t. Your heart hammers painfully in your chest, and a wild, humorless laugh escapes you.

“Oh God…maybe I am going insane,” you mutter, running a shaky hand through your hair. Your breath catches in your throat as you try to shake off the vision, try to make it stop. “I’m even seeing him now…”

You turn away from him, pressing your face against the cold, hard wall, hoping the reality of this will fade. Hoping he’ll disappear with the rest of your fading dreams. But then you feel it—the bed dips beside you, a presence you know, a warmth you can’t deny. The mattress groans under his weight, and your chest tightens as you try to convince yourself that it’s just your mind playing cruel tricks.

“Y/N,” he whispers, his voice thick with an emotion you’ve never heard from him before—fear, tenderness, desperation. It’s raw, and it makes your stomach twist. “God, what did they do to you?”

You scoff, not knowing if you’re trying to convince him, or yourself. You can barely glance at him, let alone believe he’s here. You squeeze your eyes shut, your heart aching in disbelief. “I’m fine,” you say, but your voice sounds hollow, like it’s coming from someone else. “I’m fine,” you repeat, as if saying it will make it true. But it doesn’t. It’s a lie.

You close your eyes, wishing for this to end. Wishing for him to go away, because if he’s here, then maybe this is real. And if it’s real, then you don’t know how to handle it. Your mind can’t bear the weight of hope anymore. It’s too much, too dangerous.

“Go away,” you whisper, your voice breaking. “You aren’t real.”

But then, his hand—a warm, familiar touch—rests on your thigh. It’s gentle but grounding, the simple contact igniting something inside of you. You flinch at first, too afraid to believe, but his presence doesn’t waver.

“I’m real, Schatz,” he murmurs softly, his thumb brushing over the fabric of your pants in the same way he always used to, tender and comforting. “I’m right here.”

His words land like a blow to your chest, the weight of them forcing your breath to hitch. The touch, the warmth, the sound of his voice—it’s too much. It feels like a dream, too beautiful to be true, too terrifying to accept. But it’s not a dream. It’s him.

You turn to face him, your eyes filling with tears before you can stop them. “I’m dreaming,” you whisper, your voice barely audible, cracking with the emotion you’ve tried so hard to suppress. “You can’t be…you can’t be here…”

The words die on your lips as he leans forward, his face so close that you can feel the heat of his breath, the warmth of his presence enveloping you. “Y/N, look at me,” he says, his tone raw, filled with an urgency that pierces through the numbness you’ve become so familiar with. “Please?”

For a moment, you hesitate. Everything inside you screams to pull away, to protect yourself from the danger of believing in something that feels too good to be true. But your heart, still beating with something fragile and alive, pushes you to defy that instinct. Slowly, trembling, you turn your face to him.

You study him in disbelief. His face is streaked with blood, his clothes are torn, his eyes bloodshot from exhaustion and worry. He’s not the Nico you remember—clean-cut and confident—but there’s something more real about him now, something raw and vulnerable that makes your heart ache in ways you didn’t know you could still feel.

Hesitantly, you reach up, your fingers brushing against the rough stubble on his jaw. A tear slips down your cheek, and he closes his eyes, leaning into your touch like it’s the only thing holding him together. His face is still, as if absorbing the simple act of contact, and it breaks something inside you, a crack that lets in all the feelings you’ve tried to block out for so long.

“I’m real,” he whispers, his voice barely audible, as if saying it too loudly might shatter everything. “I’m not going anywhere.”

You don’t pull away. Your hand lingers on his face, feeling the warmth of him grounding you in a way you’ve never known. The cold distance that’s consumed you for so long begins to melt away, replaced by something far scarier—hope. The fear, the ache, the longing for this moment that you’d never dared to believe in—they all come crashing in at once. The walls you’ve built around yourself start to crumble, and you realize, for the first time in what feels like forever, that maybe you’re allowed to feel something other than pain.

"Why?" you ask, your voice barely more than a whisper, cracking from days of silence. "Why are you here? Why did you come?”

His arms instinctively pull you closer, his hand resting on the back of your neck like a lifeline. “I couldn’t leave you all alone,” he says, his voice fragile, almost afraid that saying too much might ruin this fragile moment between you. His breath shudders as he speaks, like he’s been holding onto this for too long. “I couldn’t.”

You pull back slightly, a small laugh escaping your lips, but it’s hollow, pained. “You should have,” you murmur, sitting up a little, needing to create some space, even if just for a moment. You lean your head on his shoulder, feeling the strength of him there, his arm tightening around you. “You were supposed to move on, Nico. Retire, live your life. You…”

His voice softens, a teasing edge slipping through, even though the emotion lingers in his eyes. “I what?” he asks, a quiet chuckle escaping his lips, though it’s full of something far deeper. “What would I have done?”

You don’t answer right away. Instead, you close your eyes, letting the sound of his heartbeat fill the silence between you. A strange tightness fills your chest as you let the words come, ones you’d never thought you’d say. “I don’t know,” you whisper, your voice full of an aching sincerity. “Gone to the beach, gotten married. Been happy, I guess.” The words are bitter, but they’re honest—because you know he deserves that. A life away from this. A life that wasn’t about shadows and blood and survival.

He smiles softly, but there’s something wistful about it, a flicker of sadness hiding behind the tenderness. He presses a gentle kiss to your forehead, his lips lingering for just a second longer than necessary, grounding you in a way words could never. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was in Paris,” he says, his voice full of a warmth so deep it almost feels like a confession. Each word lands on you like a lifeline, pulling you closer to him, to something you thought you could never have.

You close your eyes, letting the memory of those days flood your senses—those stolen moments of peace where you let yourself believe in a life beyond the chaos. A life where you were just you, and Nico was more than just a fleeting thought, a dream that could never come true. “I thought those memories would be the last I’d have of you,” you whisper, your fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt, desperate to keep him here, to stop the world from swallowing him up again. As if he might disappear if you blinked.

He gently lifts your chin, his fingers warm against your skin, and looks into your eyes with a steady gaze, one that holds all the promises he’s never been able to say. His eyes are soft, but full of a fire that makes your chest tighten. "I’m here, Y/N," he says, and the way he says your name—Y/N—like it’s the only thing that matters in this world, makes your heart shudder. "I’m not going anywhere."

You swallow, trying to steady the emotions swirling inside you, but they’re too much, too big. You have to ask, even if part of you is scared to hear the answer. “Do you still want me to run away with you?” The words barely escape your lips, a quiet whisper, as if saying them too loudly will make the fragile moment crumble. You don’t know if you can bear the weight of his answer if he says no.

Nico’s smile softens, and his eyes hold a tenderness that makes your breath hitch. “I’ve actually come to pick you up,” he says, as casually as if he’s picking you up for a dinner date, the absurdity of it making something light and hopeful rise within you. “I even have a car and everything.”

You laugh, a breathless sound, not out of humor but because for a moment, it feels so normal. It feels like the world outside these walls doesn’t exist. But then the gravity of the situation pulls you back, and the weight of what leaving would mean settles on your shoulders like an anchor.

You drop your gaze, and your voice drops to a whisper. “They’ll be coming for us, y’know?” The words taste like defeat as you speak them, but they’re the truth. “My siblings…father…they’ll never stop hunting us down.”

Nico’s hand tightens around yours, his touch grounding and unshakable. His voice is calm but steely, a quiet confidence behind every word. “Well, lucky for us, we’re even,” he says, the ghost of a smirk playing on his lips. “I have enemies of my own too. Let them try to hunt us down. We’ll keep each other safe.”

His words send a jolt through you, a spark of something you haven’t felt in so long—hope. The possibility of us. The thought that maybe, just maybe, this is how it’s supposed to be. You and him, against the world. Together. And for the first time in what feels like forever, you let yourself believe it. You let yourself imagine the impossible, because in this moment, with him here, anything feels possible.

The weight of his words settles into your heart, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a promise.

The fear is still there, but with his words, something new sparks to life—hope, fragile and unfamiliar. You’ve lived so long with no future to speak of, yet now, with Nico beside you, it almost seems possible. 

You meet his eyes, and something like a spark ignites between you. The bond between you is stronger than anything you’ve ever known. You squeeze his hand, feeling the steadiness of his strength, the unshakable confidence that you never knew you needed, but now, you can’t imagine living without.

“So,” you say, your lips curving into a smile, “Where do we go first?”

“How about Switzerland?” Nico’s playful gleam in his eyes matches the warmth you feel inside. “I make a pretty good tour guide, don’t you think?”

“Switzerland it is,” you reply, your voice thick with a quiet thrill. It’s not just a place—it’s a new beginning. You’re not just escaping, you’re stepping into something new, something alive, something yours. The word “home” hovers on the edge of your lips, the idea of it—of belonging—feeling both foreign and entirely right.

He stands and extends his arm to help you up, a gesture so simple, yet it sends a rush of warmth through you. Your legs feel weak from days of stillness, but as you wrap your hand around his arm, it’s like the weight of the world is suddenly lighter. You lean into him, and together, you make your way down the hallway, the air between you charged with anticipation, with the promise of everything that’s ahead.

As you step through the estate’s entryway, the remnants of a struggle greet you—shattered vases, dark bloodstains on the marble floor, and a knife, glinting just out of reach. The familiar insignia of your father’s authority catches your eye, and your heart stutters. You release Nico’s arm, bending down to pick it up, the blade heavy in your hands.

“Was he here?” you murmur, your voice thick with the weight of everything you’ve just left behind.

Nico’s expression hardens, his jaw tightening with a mix of anger and resolve. “He escaped,” he says, his voice steady. “But he won’t get far. Probably.”

You turn the blade over in your hands, the past catching up to you for a moment, its weight threatening to pull you back into the darkness. But as you feel the cool metal in your palm, something shifts inside you—this time, you let it slip from your fingers. It clatters to the floor, leaving the past behind.

Together, you walk out of the shadows, out of the dark estate and into the light, where the sun feels warmer than it ever has before, spreading across your skin like a gentle promise. The sky stretches wide above you, endless and inviting, and for the first time, you realize that you’re breathing freely—every inhale lighter, filling your lungs with the sweetness of something that feels almost like freedom.

You glance at Nico, who’s watching you with a soft, steady smile that makes the uncertainty seem smaller, as if this new path is yours to shape together. His hand is warm in yours, grounding you as you step forward, leaving behind the dark walls and shattered remains of a life that no longer belongs to you.

The future awaits. It’s yours now—an uncharted horizon that stretches as far as you’re willing to go. And for the first time, you can almost taste it, this fragile, breathtaking possibility of a world beyond fear and duty. You feel it in the quiet between your heartbeats, in the way Nico’s thumb brushes gently against your skin, grounding you in a reality that’s no longer filled with shadows but with a promise. A new beginning. 

A maybe even a fresh start to a love story that, despite everything, seems like it’s only just begun.

READ PART ONE HERE

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

hey you’re really good at explaining viddy games. what’s the full story behind Amanda the adventurer bc it looks really cool but I doubt I’ll ever be able to play

Well first off if this is just based on "can't play game" and not on triggers/disabilities, I would recommend watching CoryxKenshin's playthrough of the first game, and there's plenty of playthroughs of the second, I just haven't picked a fav yet.

But otherwise, here you go:

I'm telling this in two sections: The Story As Told, which details lore as you learn it, and the Summarized, which just spells out everything as simple as possible.

Story As Told

The game starts in the year 2023 with you as the character of Riley Park– gender is left ambiguous, but in the second game Amanda uses they/them to refer to you, so we're probably enby. Our Aunt Kate, a librarian, has recently died, and left us a note that says we not only get her house, but she has something very important in the attic for us to check out, though she's hesitant about actually giving it to us. She tells us to watch some VHS tapes in the attic, but warns us that there's no going back once you do.

In the attic, we play VHS tapes of Amanda the Adventurer, a TV series from the early 2000s starring Amanda and Wooly, an energetic little girl and her more cautious sheep sidekick. However, there are two very suspicious things that immediately pop out: one, viewers can actually interact with the tapes, and our answers to Amanda's questions change how she reacts. Two, Amanda is saying some very eerie things that don't seem good for a kids' show, such as "It's good to be brave [and use knives without supervision] when you're alone!" and "I'm not sure where [my parents] are now."

The third suspicious thing is that after watching the first tape, the attic around you changes; suddenly, a toy oven appears on the table behind you, and when you mimic what Amanda did in the first tape to make an apple pie, you find a second tape. This sort of puzzle-solving is the main gameplay; the tapes change the world around you, and you mess with that world in order to get the next tapes.

Exploring the attic, you can find a newspaper clipping saying that the creator of Amanda the Adventurer was a man named Sam Colton, who had his daughter, Rebecca, star in a live-action pilot version. We also see a note from a girl named Joanne, saying that two years prior, her brother Jordan got addicted to watching Amanda, and then he disappeared without a trace. Now that her parents are dead, she has taken over investigating, and that she believes Kate's paranormal investigations could help.

In playing the tapes, Amanda gets more and more irritable and dark, often making jokes about death or disassociating when she's not snapping at you or Wooly. Wooly is desperately playing damage control, trying to guide Amanda to more child-friendly activities. At one point, Amanda tries to mail cookies to Kate, and Wooly tries to stop her; upon replaying the tape, Amanda is aware that something bad has happened to Kate, and Wooly tries to rewrite the tape so that she's sending him a gift instead. Both of them are also terrified of the Butcher, a stick figure with googly eyes who runs a butcher shop in their town. When you have to go there, Amanda pleads for you to not send her there, and asks, "Why can't I stop it?"

The first ending comes when you play a tape titled "Everything Rots." Amanda explores several things that are rotting, and asks you if everything rots; this is the famous line you might've seen around. No matter what you answer, the tape ends, and a giant Monster emerges from the attic trapdoor, before attacking and killing you. This Monster has the same afro-buns as Amanda, so we'll call it the Amanda-Monster. However, information you got in this ending will help you in future playthroughs. As well as this, doing "secret" activities (such as following Wooly's hints and making a peach pie instead of an apple one) will net you Secret Tapes, which you need to collect to get the true ending.

Here is the information gathered through the regular tapes:

As mentioned, Amanda knows Kate and considered her a friend. When she's aware of something bad happening to Kate, she's upset. Both times, Wooly does not want to talk about Kate or send her anything.

Amanda does NOT like Wooly. At first she treats him with neutral disdain, just kinda ignoring him, but in several tapes she actively encourages hurting him.

Amanda has a fascination with death. In the "Everything Rots" tape, she says, "Sometimes I can feel myself rotting... but it seems far away."

In certain points, if you reference words such as "butcher," "Hameln", "Sam", or "Rebecca", Amanda will have a stunned reaction and Wooly will look uncomfortable, before the tape glitches. Using "Sam" in one instance gets you a secret tape.

In one tape, Amanda encounters a "lonely kitten." She asks Riley if you'll help the kitten. If you say "Yes," she looks surprised and the tape ends. If you say "No," she'll start begging and pleading for you to as the world glitches around her. The tape will end and you will be killed by the monster.

In order to get the tapes, you sometimes have to do upsetting things, such as cutting off a doll's head (causing it to scream), or breaking a toy robot that begs you to stop. At one point, you have to kill a rat in the attic and place it in the toy oven.

And the secret tapes:

Amanda was originally a live-action program starring Rebecca Colton. It was acquired by a company named Hameln to make it into an animated show, but they started having Rebecca say suspicious things into the mic which made her dad uncomfortable. (Such things were seemingly innocuous phrases such as "bye yell," which when said quickly sound like the name of demons like Bael). Sam Colton then disappeared mysteriously, leaving Rebecca in the care of Hameln.

Children other than Joanne's brother have disappeared while watching Amanda; we see a little girl glued to the TV as Amanda plays, and her mother leaves the room for a minute, before returning to find her completely missing.

When you have enough tapes, you get a second version of "Oh No! Accidents!" in which Wooly is supposed to be injured, but isn't. Amanda insists he's still injured, but in the head, and that they need to make him better. She then drugs him and takes him to a dingy hospital set, where she says she's going to use several tools to do surgery on him. Whether you help Wooly of Amanda, she attacks and seemingly kills the sheep. You have to solve a final puzzle, in order to get a tape entitled "We Can Share." In the tape, Amanda is alone, with Wooly edited out of the intro and suspiciously lamb-based products in her lunchbox.

She will then ask Riley if she can share a secret with them. She will ask this three times, giving opportunity for Riley to refuse. Here are the three endings this tape will give you:

If you say "No" at any point, Amanda will get upset, and say "I thought you were different." The tape ends, and when you turn around, the attic is completely empty except for a note that says "Leave."

If you say "Yes" every time, Amanda will then say, in a voice ungarbled by TV static (implying she's in the room with you), "I'm out there. Somewhere." The TV will glitch and start screaming, and you have to throw a brick at it to break it.

If you say "Yes" every time AND have all five secret tapes, the same thing will happen, but a Masked Figure will appear behind you. This is the True Ending as confirmed by the second game.

There is also a final, optional ending: If you pause "What's a Family" during the weather reports and play with the weather toy, the attic trapdoor will start glowing. When you enter, you awaken as a piece of meat in the butcher shop, and the game ends. This is known as the Butcher Ending, and implies that those who disappear into Amanda's world are killed by the Butcher and subsequently eaten, likely by the Amanda-Monster that's been attacking you.

This is the end of game one. The second game picks up immediately afterwords; the Masked Figure speaks in a feminine voice, telling you she was a friend of Kate's and that she'll help you. She drives you to the library, asking you to gather the tapes inside while she keeps watch outside. Once inside, you can indeed find several new tapes while the Figure occasionally contacts you, saying that a monster seems to be following her outside; at one point, she also tells you that Kate's house has burnt down after you both left. Your goal in this game is to get into Kate's office, which is locked.

For the first few tapes, Amanda is alone without Wooly; however, a mysterious Possum will show up and try to mess with her. When it does, she is genuinely surprised to see it, not knowing who it is. Amanda is more open with Riley, often trying to say that she can't go anywhere, that she feels trapped, and that Hameln and the Butcher scare her. In fact, ANY reference to the Butcher will make her terrified and angry, and at one point can softlock you in the game. If you let her have a nightmare in the "Goodnight" tape, you see her nightmare of being watched while the Butcher looms over her; if you give her a nightlight, she calls Riley by name.

In the tape "Let's Practice Patience," suddenly Wooly appears, as if late to the program. Amanda will get angry and attack him, before the tape glitches back to the beginning. As she tries to intro the segment, Amanda snaps and says she doesn't want Wooly there; it will once again glitch to the beginning and they will continue the tape. All following viewings of the tape will have this third intro, as if Wooly was always there. It should be noted that the Hameln logo only appears in the tapes that Wooly does, and that Wooly also does not know who the Possum is.

In a following tape, Amanda will try to hunt for treasure. If you lead her to the wrong place, she will dig up what seems to be Sam Colton's clothes, look distraught, and then rebury it at Wooly's prompting. If you play it normally, Amanda will get angry that she hasn't found any real treasure, and tell Riley to give her something that will make her happy. The Amanda-Monster will then appear from behind the TV, and no matter what you give it, it will kill you, leading to the first ending.

However, once you "start over" the game, the first tape is different, with Amanda asking you to do something different than you did last time. When you do, a train set appears behind you, and having it go to the places Amanda wants to go will get you a new tape. Taking it to a different exit will also get you a secret tape.

An important tape is the one titled "When You're Feeling Bad." Amanda is having a bad day and lying on the couch, snapping at Wooly. Wooly tries to tell her a story about a knight saving a princess from a dragon; if you help Wooly tell the story normally, she will get angry and the Amanda-Monster will kill you. If you follow the story told by Amanda's drawings in the background, a mysterious narrator will tell a more tragic tale, of a princess being turned into a dragon which her beloved knight then slays, which upsets Wooly but makes Amanda happy. She will then tell the Amanda-Monster not to kill you and send it away.

Upon finishing this and replaying the "Hunt for Treasure" tape, you now have the option to give the Amanda-Monster a Wooly toy when Amanda demands treasure. It hears a roar from elsewhere in the building and runs off, breaking open Kate's office door. You can enter and find several puzzle pieces you'll need, as well as a locked desk and a broken tape titled "We Can Fix It!" First playing that tape will show nothing but horrifying glitches, but repairing it makes it only mildly glitchy as Amanda tries to fix Wooly's box of junk. After the Possum attacks Wooly in this tape, he says he's tired of this game and will try to sit down, as if waiting for the tape to end.

It should also be noted that in this tape (iirc), you can see the Butcher figure, telling you to "count backwards from ten," and that you may feel a pinch. If this seems confusing, it's what doctors usually say while putting you under anesthesia before a surgery.

The Bad Ending comes when you reach the final tape without having all of the other tapes, and you have to complete it in order to get the True Ending later. You'll watch a tape titled "Do You Feel Safe?", where Amanda expresses distrust in Wooly and a slight trust in Riley, before hearing the Masked Figure over the radio and saying she doesn't trust new friends, ending the tape. The Masked Figure will enter and tell you that she's gathering a few things, and tell you to finish up. Completing a final puzzle will get you three keys to unlock Kate's desk, which has a tape recorder (which you can't play until the True Ending) and a button that opens a door to a secret bunker, with a ladder leading into the ground.

The Masked Figure will arrive and tell you it's time to destroy the tapes. She will smash one with a hammer, causing light to emerge from it. However, the Amanda-Monster will then attack her, and Riley flees into the bunker at her urging. You'll close the door and descend the ladder as the Figure screams and dies, ending the game.

The True Ending comes with the secret tapes, which give you the following information:

There is a tape of several adults investigating the paranormal activities around the Amanda tapes, as they're noticing several references to demons of multiple religions. They conclude that Hameln is connected to a cult that hasn't been practiced publicly since the middle ages; however, as the adults start disappearing, they get more antsy about what's going on with the company and if they can actually contact "Rebecca" through the tapes. Kate believes she is talking to Rebecca through Amanda, but she's volatile. It should be noted that this tape seems to take place "fifteen years" after the show first aired, placing it in mid-2016, several years before our game takes place.

One tape shows Hameln trying to coerce Sam into telling Rebecca to trust them. They are holding him hostage and refusing to let him see his daughter unless he complies, claiming that his contract allows them to do this. He refuses, saying he did not agree to lie to his daughter.

Someone secretly filming in a hospital shows an adult woman strapped to a hospital bed being monitored by doctors who talk about "incidents." They spot the person filming and chase them; it should also be noted that this tape is labelled in the files as "Rebecca's Room."

Getting all of these will unlock the True Ending, which starts the same as the Bad Ending, with the "Do You Feel Safe?" tape. However, as the Masked Figure talks to you, this time the Possum will arrive, and seemingly recognize the voice. It jumps at the screen, shouting, "JO- JOA-" before playing dead. (It often plays dead at the end of tapes, but whether it's playing or not in this one is unclear.) Amanda and Wooly will throw its body into a dumpster and leave; if you refused to help them, they will be angry at you, and if you did, they will simply ignore you.

The Masked Figure comes in and tells you to collect everything as she gathers items. However, this time, you will be able to play the cassette tape in Kate's desk, and hear audio of her death; she is in a car, having a breakdown and telling you not to investigate the tapes, that everyone who's done so is dead, and "Joanne is dead; she trusted me." You hear the car crash, then, which is what killed Kate.

The Masked Figure enters, stunned, and reveals herself to be Joanne. She says that someone approached her and told her that if she destroyed the tapes, she could free her brother. She went to Kate, who wouldn't let her destroy the tapes, and the Amanda-Monster attacked, likely trying to protect the tapes. She pushed Kate out and told her to run, and while she survived but ended up scarred, Kate died in the following car accident. Joanne suspects that whoever told her to destroy the tapes may not have had the best intentions, and tells you to take one specific tape and run into the bunker, and finally destroy Hameln. As you do, the lights go out and Joanne is attacked. However, you see a different monster than the one that normally attacks; instead of Amanda-Monster, this one looks eerily like Wooly. Joanne's death sounds will be much more brutal and painful as you escape and end the game.

This is where we're left off until Amanda 3 inevitably drops.

Lore Summarized

In the early 2000s, Sam Colton started a local live-action television show starring his adopted daughter, Rebecca, Amanda the Adventurer. It became a local hit, and he partnered with the library and head librarian Kate to use it to promote literacy and exploration. The show was acquired by a company named Hameln, who wanted to turn it into an animated program. However, they started making Rebecca record suspicious lines that sounded a lot like demon names, and Rebecca expressed discomfort at "a man in the headphones" telling her to do bad things. When Sam started showing hesitancy at letting Rebecca do things, Hameln kidnapped and held him hostage, telling the rest of the world that he'd abandoned them and his daughter. It's most likely that they eventually killed Sam and buried his body.

Now with full control of Rebecca, Hameln had her continue their strange experiments until she too disappeared from the public eye. What is most likely is that they had her put under a medically-induced coma that transferred her consciousness into the animated world, literally turning her into Amanda; somehow, this also enabled a demon to enter the physical world with a connection to her.

Rebecca remains stagnant in the animated world, continually luring children to join her in this world, where the Butcher kills them and uses them as a meat source. Amanda doesn't seem to want to do this, and is disgusted and horrified by the Butcher, but she also doesn't seem to have a choice. The Butcher may also be connected to the doctor who put Rebecca into this procedure.

While Wooly is still ambiguous, the leading theory rn is that Wooly was a Hameln employee who was placed inside the world as a way to keep Amanda from questioning them or divulging from the path, and Wooly does not realize how long he's been in there or that Hameln has also abandoned him and made a demon out of him as well. Amanda, however, starts to pick up on this in the first game, which is why she is so violent towards him and eventually kills him.

Kate and her paranormal investigation friends began investigating the tapes after she noticed Demonology in it, but they slowly disappeared one-by-one. Kate became convinced that she could contact Rebecca through the recorded tapes of the show, which Amanda seems to confirm as she references Kate as her friend, but which Wooly didn't like.

In about 2021, a boy named Jordan Cook disappeared while watching the show. His sister, Joanne, became obsessed with finding him, and someone told her that destroying the tapes would free her brother. Kate refused to let her, and the Amanda-Demon attacked, resulting in Kate's death as she tried to escape in a car crash, and Joanne's scarring.

Following Kate's death, her house was given to her nibling Riley Park, who began playing the tapes and piecing together what happened as they also communicated with Amanda. Amanda attempted to kill and eat Wooly to prevent him from returning, but the next game shows this was not a permanent solution. Amanda does communicate to Riley that she is out there somewhere before the TV freaks out and Riley has to break it.

Joanne then meets with Riley and brings them to the library, hoping to get into Kate's office. Joanne is stalked by a monster, likely the Wooly-Demon, while Riley plays more tapes. Amanda shows even more disdain for Wooly, as mentioned, and Wooly keeps trying to steer her onto the scripted path. In these tapes, a Possum will appear and try to stop whatever they're doing; both of them are surprised and confused by its appearance.

If you destroy the tapes, the Amanda-Demon arrives and kills Joanne. But in the True Ending, the Possum hears Joanne's voice over the radio and recognizes it, implying that the Possum is Jordan. When Riley hears the audio of Kate's death, Joanne will break and tell them to run with a tape. They enter Kate's secret bunker, before seeing the Wooly-Demon kill Joanne. Riley escapes into the unknown, until Amanda 3 drops at least.

[azsazz]

Dead by Dawn (Part 18)

Azriel x Cassian x Reader

Summary: Zombie!AU: It’s been a while since the end of the world.

Warnings: Blood, gore, injury, graphic depictions of violence, poly!relationship, slow burn, undead, death

Word Count: 4328

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17)

_________________________________________

Day 195 Part 4

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

When you’ve successfully managed to empty the contents of your stomach, the first thing you notice is that your ears are ringing.

Everything slowly begins to creep back into focus. The warm hand on your back, running a soothing pattern up and down your spine. The soft voice murmuring at your side. The vomit pooling on the floor before you. And of course, the thing that’s causing your ears to ring in the first place: the screaming.

You don’t remember falling to your knees, but you’re here, and you sit back on your haunches slowly because your stomach is still roiling. You try to focus on the massacre happening around you.

Nesta’s screaming in the doorway. She looks like she’s actually going to kill you, which is probably why Eris is holding her back with an arm wrapped firmly around her waist. She has a crazed look on her face, silver eyes alight with a fear so deep that it reads like the rage of a thousand wars.

“She’s been bit!” Nesta screeches, clawing at Eris in a desperate attempt to reach for anyone she can get her hands on. His soft, consoling words in her ear are doing nothing to break past the white-hot rage burning across her features. “What did he do to her?”

“He didn’t do a damn thing but fall for your sister,” Cassian bites back, voice louder than necessary. You all know what happens when you love something in a world like this. It always gets ripped away, which is why you haven’t allowed yourself to think anything more about the two men you’ve been occupying your time with. “We don’t have time to waste, they need us out there searching for them.”

Azriel’s murmuring into the walkie-talkie, trying to discern where the hell Rhysand and Feyre might be, but after a few broken responses from your friends, they stop responding.

He turns to the rest of you with a solemn look. “Their walkie died.”

Fuck. This is worse than bad.

“We need to move,” Cassian says, tone pitched with a worry he’s failing to mask. He needs Rhysand alive like he needs Azriel alive, because without either of them, he wouldn’t want to be living in this godsforsaken planer either. “Where are our weapons? We’ll find them and bring them back.”

“That’s my sister. I’m going,” Nesta growls, and your heart pinches at the sight of the turmoil in Eris’ amber eyes because you feel the exact same as him.

“Then I’m going, too,” he murmurs, caressing Nesta’s cheek. She’s stopped fighting now, and you think you catch him brushing a tear from her face. You’re not sure how she hasn’t entirely broken down yet, knowing that both of her sisters have been bitten.

The pair share an embrace so tender you have to look away.

When they return their attention to your party, Nesta’s voice is firm, any traces of her anguish long forgotten, except in the way that her fingers are white knuckled around Eris’. “One of you stays here.”

“What? Why?” Cassian asks in disbelief.

“So we know this isn’t an ambush,” Eris provides, already double-checking the weapons attached to his hips. It’s a move so similar to Azriel that it stuns you until her words hit home.

“An ambush?” You blurt your confusion. Rage boils the blood in your veins. You refuse to lose another friend out there, not after how horrible the last time any of you split up is turning out to be. “This isn’t a fucking ambush, it’s your fucking sister!”

Your anger doesn’t land. Nesta’s glare punctures a hole in your chest and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe. “Exactly. It’s my sister. I will go and see to her. Your presence isn’t needed. You’ve already done enough.”

You want to crumple beneath the weight of her words. They hang thickly in the air, the only sound filling the suddenly eerie dining room is the soft crackling from the walkie-talkie. Rhysand and Feyre are waiting for reinforcements, there’s no time to wither into the ground and cry until the house is flooded.

“Every second we waste here is another second Feyre suffers,” Azriel spits, his hand clenching yours. Cassian’s body is warm at your front from where he’s stepped slightly in front of you at Nesta’s implied threat. “We need to go.”

But Nesta is even more hard-headed than her sister. “She stays.”

You don’t like the look on Azriel’s face when he turns to you. You’re already shaking your head when he tries to speak, but you’re quick to cut him off, your hysterics taking over your words.

“No,” your voice breaks, tears spilling down your cheeks. “No, Azriel. Please, I need to be there.” This might very well be the last time you see Feyre, and you need to be there for her.

“We need you to stay,” Azriel pleads. His hand is firm where your shoulder meets your neck and his hazel eyes are stern, but it isn’t difficult to read how terrified he is. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so scared, not even when you’d first found each other and Cassian was on the brink of bleeding out. Maybe you hadn’t known him all that well at that point, but now, you know that his heart is much larger than you ever gave him credit for.

“No,” you protest, shaking your head, but you can tell that there’s no room for arguing this. He’s already running through ideas of how to save your friends in his head. “They’re my friends, too!”

“We need you safe.” We need you to survive.

You shake your head, fingers fisting into his shirt. Azriel ducks down and captures you in a kiss so desperate, filled with so much love and pleading and finality that you can’t raise your head when he pulls away from you and Cassian takes his place.

“Please…” It’s all you can do to beg, falling into Cassian’s strong arms, but at this point you know it’s futile. They’ll be going without you, and you’re to stay here so that Nesta and Eris know they won’t try anything. It’s smart, protecting themselves, but it doesn’t make you like them.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian whispers, cradling you in his arms and pressing light kisses to your hair while Eris doles out weapons to Azriel. Nesta watches with a menacing look on her face and arms crossed over her chest like she’d rather let the two men you’re falling for on a recon mission in the woods without any protection.

In this world, being bitten means you have hours. If Feyre isn’t already showing signs of the infection taking hold, she will be soon. Realization strikes you down like a fucking semi-truck, tightening your throat and prickling your eyes. Your best friend, the one that you’ve stuck with for the better part of the last year has been bitten, and you’re all arguing about playing savior.

Fuck. As much as you want to be out there finding your friend, one of you needs to stay. Because Azriel and Cassian want you safe, because Nesta and Eris are scared out of their minds, because if something goes wrong, there is nothing worth fighting for anymore, but if everything goes right, this place could be your haven.

You saw the way Cassian’s eyes lit at the mention of the underground bunkers, at the sight of the healthy greens on your plates. He’s been dreaming of a place like this, a place to take root and utilize the seeds he’d so carefully traveled with all this time. This place could be his playground, and you want nothing more than for him to have something positive to latch onto in a world of the undead.

And Azriel. Somewhere hiding behind the walls he’s so carefully constructed, he cares. He cares about finding someplace safe for everyone he loves to set up camp for a prolonged period. He’s tired of running, tired of searching for something that he’s given up hope on a long time ago. Everyone he cares about now is here, or almost here, and he doesn’t need the weight on his shoulders of searching for safety.

“Go,” you choke, clutching Cassian’s forearms so tightly your nails dig into his skin. His eyes flicker between yours, searching for any sliver of indignation. If you truly don’t want him to go, he won’t. There’s no predicting what will happen out there, and you’re just as important to him as the rest of his friends. “Go,” you urge again, softly. “Find them and bring them back.”

“Yes ma’am,” he agrees, before smashing his mouth against yours. It’s desperate, a promise of so much more, and then he’s pulling away and taking the knife Azriel’s handing him, and then they’re all out the door and you’re standing in the doorway of a silent home, with only the distant coughs coming from a bitten girl upstairs to keep you company while the men you’ve fallen completely in love with leave to save her bitten sister.

“We’re coming back to you,” he calls over his shoulder, determined.

It's all you can do to keep yourself together until they’re out of your line of sight.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Minutes pass. Then hours, and there’s no sign of your companions.

You try not to worry, but it’s inevitable. Cleaning up the abandoned dinner does nothing to ease your nerves. Snooping through cabinets and the pantry and the rest of the main floor does nothing to stop the haunting scenarios of everything that could go wrong from playing in your head. You eye the staircase leading upstairs, but knowing what’s up there, who’s up there, you refrain.

For now.

There is no peace in knowing that their group of four is searching for your lost friends. None of you hardly know Nesta and Eris, and as good as Azriel is at tracking, they have no clue where the hell Rhysand and Feyre are. They must be closer than you think, because they were in range of the walkie-talkies, but that could span for miles, and the sun is shining brightly through the large, front windows of the house. They have hours before night falls completely.

It's Lucien who finds you in the front room. You’ve barely moved from one of the large chairs you pulled in front of the window because you can’t find it in yourself to leave.

He takes the free one across the room, and it looks like he’s sat there many times, pondering Elain’s health.

He hasn’t been taking very good care of himself, either, from what you can tell. It looks like he hasn’t been far from her bedside in ages, his auburn hair is a tangled mess, and you know you’re no longer filling out your clothes the way you used to, but with the food you now know they have around here, you know he hasn’t been eating well.

“You’re the one that helped Cassian, right?” He asks, and your head snaps in his direction. How could he have known that? Cassian’s hardly limping these days at all, but it’s the desperation in Lucien’s eyes that keeps you from shifting further into your seat. He blushes at your surprise, a sheepish look overtaking his handsome features. “I noticed the wound on his leg. I was hoping that you would be the one to have fixed it.”

“Why would you hope that I was the one to fix it?” You all but whisper. Your heart is jackhammering in your chest, but Lucien doesn’t look like he’s going to attack. The only crazed thing about him is the circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, and the despair weighing his shoulders down.

“Because I want you to take a look at Elain.”

His words make the earth shift.

“She’s bitten,” you breathe. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Please,” he begs, “I just—I can’t give up on her yet.”

The utter rawness in his tone, the way he’s looking at you like you’re the one who could save the woman he loves…it’s too much to say no. You know that if it were Azriel or Cassian, or when Feyre arrives, you’d be doing anything that you can to help.

You nod, and Lucien’s shoulders drop so hard that you think he might faint. You refrain from telling him that what you’d done to Cassian was done in haste, that you really don’t know all that much about treating wounds or diagnosing zombie bites, only things that you’d picked up from your mother after her long shifts at the hospital when she’d come home exhausted and grumbling about her work.

She had been one of the first to go, hoping to help people get through the infection.

It’s the least you can do.

You follow Lucien up the carpeted staircase. It has an intricate design, crimson leaves and brunt oranges tangled together. It matches the color of the walls, the creamy trim lining the top and bottom. This would have been a mighty fine house to grow up in, you think as you follow him across the hall, past photographs of several young boys, all with the same-colored hair. There are several frames missing from the sunspots on the wallpaper.

You hesitate at the door Lucien slowly opens, suddenly nervous. You hadn’t caught much of a glimpse of the middle Archeron sister, from what you had seen, she hadn’t looked good.

“Come, please,” Lucien says, opening the door wider and gestures you inside.

Azriel and Cassian would be furious with you if they knew you were about to put yourself within inches of someone who’s potentially infected, but they’re the ones who left you here, so you follow Lucien inside.

The room is warm and damp, dusty, like the curtains haven’t been pulled back in ages. It’s dark, but you can still make out the lump in the middle of the large bed, the indent on the sheets from where Lucien must lie beside her, holding her through this pain.

You move closer to the bed, blinking the light from your eyes when Lucien lights a battery-powered lamp on the table beside the bed.

Your breath catches in your throat.

She looks worse in the dark than she had in the dining room downstairs, but maybe it’s because you stand closer now. With the lamplight shadowing her face, her cheeks and eyes look even more sunken, what you imagine were once pink, plump lips are chapped and dry to the bone.

“Has she been eating? Drinking?” You blurt, already concerned for the girl. Normally, you’re weary of strangers, and you don’t know if it’s because she’s Feyre’s sister or she looks like she’s fighting through hell to stay alive from this bite, but the urge to help her in any way that you can is great.

“She eats bites, at most,” Lucien offers sadly. There’s a plate on the bedside table with a can you’re all too familiar eating from. “Soft things she’s able to get down. And I have to drip water in her mouth while she’s sleeping because that’s what she does most.” You can hear the sadness in his voice, the thickness of his throat when he speaks. He stares at Elain with so much devastation in his eyes that it’s difficult to look at.

You focus on the girl in the bed instead. Her breath is a brittle rattle in her chest, but Elain looks at peace. At least, while she’s sleeping.

“How long has she been like this?” You ask, silently asking if you can touch her. Lucien nods wearily, allowing you to get to work. You gently move the damp compress from her head to press the back of your hand to her forehead. She’s warm, cheeks a ruddy red that is the only sign of life against her pale skin.

Elain’s lashes flutter when you touch her, mumbling something uncoherent under her breath, but doesn’t wake.

“Weeks now,” Lucien admits, worried. “I’d say nearly four.”

Four weeks ago. Your stomach curdles, even though it’s empty. She’s been like this for four weeks.

“Where is the bite?”

Lucien doesn’t look like he wants to show it to you. Reluctantly, he carefully removes Elain’s arm from beneath the thick blankets and pulls up the sleeve to the loose-fitting shirt she’s resting in.

When he removes the wrap around the wound, you can’t help but gasp, stepping closer out of a horrific curiosity. Sure, you’ve seen zombie bites before, but you’ve never seen something quite like this.

 The bite is near her elbow. It’s red and raw, and the wounds haven’t seemed to heal all that much in four weeks, but it’s not…decaying either. Her veins are blackened where the infection has leeched into her blood. They crawl halfway up her arm, and almost to her fingertips, where they disappear.

“We tied a tourniquet around her arm when she was first bitten,” Lucien explains, swallowing thickly. His fingers caress her arm, careful to avoid the plague-looking bite. “They say that the infection takes hold within hours, and when the electricity was still running, it was said that the longest surviving bitten person lasted twelve…” He trails off, and you can’t help but notice the soft glint to his eyes, the upturned corners of his mouth as he stares down at the woman he loves. When his gaze finds yours again, there’s a strength to his tone. “Elain hasn’t showed any progressing signs, and it’s been weeks.”

“Just because it’s been weeks doesn’t mean that it won’t happen,” you say, and you hate that you have to. Her case is convincing, but not all infections progress as rapidly or as violently within each person. It’s a case-by-case basis, though most tend not to last more than a few hours. You must admit, Elain is doing well.

Lucien doesn’t say anything in response, and you know he’s choosing not to believe it. You don’t want to believe it either, especially for Feyre’s sake, but you need to be realistic right now, things don’t last forever.

“We should clean the wound,” you continue. You want to help Lucien and Elain, you truly do, so you’ll do what you can. “It’s looking a little…”

“Festered?” Lucien offers with a soft smile.

You can hardly manage one back. “Yeah.”

“There’s a bag of supplies on the bathroom counter,” Lucien nods toward the ensuite. “There’s disinfectant, though I don’t know how well it will work because it’s been expired for months. You can look through the rest, see if there’s anything else that might be of help.”

You nod, removing yourself from their sight. You take another flashlight that Lucien hands you, and when the door closes behind you, you release a harsh breath that you didn’t know you were holding.

Elain doesn’t look like she’s in good shape, but the wound doesn’t seem to be spreading, and if she had a fever, it’s broken since then. You remind yourself to ask Lucien about it when you return to the bedside, but for now you take the time to scour the bag of medical supplies they’ve seemed to haphazardly throw together.

In it you find fresh bandages and the peroxide Lucien mentioned was in there. There’s about a half bottle left, and you don’t like the looks of that, but you can use it sparingly. You find painkillers, though you don’t expect Elain to wake for long enough to swallow them down.

“Has she been coughing a lot?” You ask when you return. Lucien sits on the bed beside Elain, gently stroking her hair. Her injured arm is propped in his lap, and he watches you carefully as you take the empty spot on the sheets, setting your supplies down.

“Not as much as when it began,” he answers.

“And has there been any mucus?”

“Yeah.”

“What color?”

He grimaces, and your muscles tense, awaiting his response. “Black, to begin. Now it’s cleared up. Almost clear.”

That’s a good sign, you think.

The peroxide bubbles softly, cleaning the wound. For the most part, it seems to be fine, and as much as you’d like to poke and prod at it, you don’t want to disturb what seems to be a peaceful sleep for Elain.

Which is perfect, because the door to the house crashes open downstairs and shouting ensues.

You and Lucien startle, both jumping from the bed. He’s already reaching for the knife at his hip, but when a shout drifts up the stairs, he relaxes slightly.

“Lucien?”

He looks at you. “I think they found your friend.”

Your heart rate skyrockets, and it’s all you can do to give him final instruction before you’re bolting from the room. “Dab this on the wound before you wrap it with fresh gauze.”

You’re not all that sure you want to see the condition Feyre is in, but your legs don’t stop moving. You skip the steps down the stairs and go crashing into the dining room where Rhys is gently laying your best friend down on the table.

Everything seems to come to a screeching halt.

Eris is by the front door, locking it shut. He’s looking in your direction frantically, probably wondering why his brother hasn’t called back to him. You barely notice him brushing past you as he makes his way upstairs.

Your eyes are locked on her.

Nesta and Cassian are shouting at one another while Azriel helps hold Feyre to the table. Rhys looks like a mess, tears streaming down his cheeks, and the sight breaks your heart. It gets your feet moving, and you almost slam into him as you make it to Feyre’s side.

The bite is deep and raw, new. You can’t help but compare it to Elain’s, and unfortunately, Feyre’s looks much worse. Elain’s was a clean bite, like as soon as the zombie broke flesh, its jaw had unhinged. Feyre’s looks like the undead bit into her and latched on like a feral beast, almost ripping an entire chunk out of the back of her forearm.

Rhys shouts your name and you jump, turning to him. His cheeks are stained with tears, his voice is a ragged mess from the crying a pleading. “Please, you have to help her,” he says frantically, “You have to save her.”

And fuck, if that isn’t a heavy weight to put on your shoulders.

You spring into action. As soon as Eris reenters the room, you’re screaming for him to get all the supplies that he can find that might help. He follows your direction, sprinting back up the stairs. Next, you shout the same thing to Cassian, telling him to fetch your bag from downstairs.

Feyre’s a moaning mess. She’s sweating profusely, hair matter to her head as she writhes on the table. Her fingers claw into the wood as she moans in pain and your heart breaks for her.

“It’s okay, Fey,” you say, brushing some of the sweat from her head. Fuck, her skin is on fire. Her frantic eyes meet yours and she’s groaning your name, pupils consuming the blue of her eyes. “I’m going to help you.”

Cassian makes it back first and you ask him to dig out the painkillers. “You have to swallow these,” you tell Feyre, who’s quickly fading into unconsciousness. You wonder how long she’s been awake.

Rhys takes over as Cassian pins her injured arm down, trying to coax her into swallowing the painkillers. From across the table, Azriel watches on, but his face shows nothing. He’s watching you, you realize, watching you do what he knows you do best. Nesta stands beside him, ready to assist in any way that she can now that she’s not bickering with Cassian.

“How long ago was she bitten?” You ask Rhys, who’s petting Feyre’s hair gently. He’s murmuring to her softly, something about keeping her eyes on him, but he lifts his gaze to meet yours when he answers.

“A few hours ago. Maybe three.”

How did you not realize how long it’s been since they’ve been gone? The sun has fully set and darkness pours in through the windows. You don’t have the time to wonder if any zombies have followed them back.

“Okay,” you breathe, taking in the state of the wound. It’s bleeding, oozing black blood that’s beginning to creep up her arm in the same way as her sisters. There’s a poorly made tourniquet fastened around her bicep, and that’s the first thing you fix.

Eris arrives with the bottle of peroxide you used upstairs and his arms chock full of supplies. This place is a haven, alright, and you’re more than thankful you might have the supplies you need to help your friend.

You uncap the bottle and douse it onto Feyre’s arm. She moans as the liquid works its magic, trying to clean the wound. You repeat this step until the bubbles that fizzle off the wound are no longer muddy with black.

There’s not much that you can do, you’re afraid. From what you’ve seen, the infection needs to run its course. She’ll be in pain for now, but there’s nothing you can truly do for your friend.

Which is probably why Rhysand begins freaking out when you pull out the gauze to wrap her wound in.

“That’s it?” He shouts, rounding the table. Fury is written on his face like a tattoo. Feyre’s slipped into a less than peaceful unconsciousness, whimpering and twitching. “That’s all you’re going to do for her?”

Cassian leaves his post at Feyre’s arm to stop his friend.

“There’s nothing I can do, Rhys,” you reply just as sadly. You hold your breath, unsure if you should speak what’s really on your mind, but with the way Rhysand is struggling against Cassian, you blurt, “I think the cure is in their blood,” and the room plunges into silence.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

DBD Taglist: @writingsbychlo @kemillyfreitas @5moremin @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @waggel36  @bionic-donut @queserasera @applepie02 @azrielsbabyg @arcadianmoonlight @pradaxstyles @illyrian-dreamerdreamer @reiincarnatiion @fuckthatfeeling @shadowsingersmate24 @poppyalice2001 @fallmyriad @sstrohma @tcris2020 @jeannineee @21stcenturytaegi @ochiolism @secretly-here @harrystylesfan2686 @i-am-infinite @lees-chaotic-brain @eternallyelvish @lilah-asteria @randombibitch @st4r-girl-official @nanisearchinginnerpeace @aemondsb1tch @chxosangxl @marigold-morelli

[abbysimsfun]

Sims In Bloom: Generation 2 Pt. 88 (Bringing Home a Ghost)

After Ghost Night ended at the Salty Paw, Heather, Conrad, and their new friend Felix Psyded left Fisherman's Wharf and returned to their home on Sable Square. Heather entered first, finding Hazel on the sofa watching TV. "Hey, how were the kids tonight?"

"They were great! Ashy said you guys usually read him two bedtime stories but he fell asleep after the first one, and Lava hasn't woken up since I put her to bed. I got to watch Moonlight Massacre after all! How was your night?"

"It was nice! We went looking for a man we didn't find, but we met someone else while we were there..."

Conrad walked inside the front door as Felix floated in behind him. Heather stood, and Hazel looked up from her phone in quiet awe. "Felix Psyded, Esquire. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss."

"Hazel Moody-Nesbitt," she replied. "Heather's cooler younger sister. You're, like, really a ghost!"

"Since 1915." He warmly tipped his bowler hat. "May I say, you're stunning like your sister."

"You may say! But I'm married."

"Of course the lovely Nesbitt women would all be spoken for. Though I hope your husband is friendlier than Sargent Gordon."

Hazel laughed. "My wife is sweet, but Conrad's great! Are you the one guy in the world he doesn't get along with?"

Heather sighed, sliding over to make room for Conrad on the sofa. "They got off on the wrong foot."

"Well, why'd you bring him home? I know you love strays, but I didn't think that meant sims who've been dead for over a century!"

"They've promised me a plate of ambrosia in exchange for my services."

Hazel gaped. "When you guys said you were doing this challenge I just thought it was, like, a team building exercise. I didn't think you were really going to resurrect anybody!"

Heather shrugged. "Well, why shouldn't we? We went through all that to learn how to do it, so we might as well help someone with unfinished business while we're at it."

"So is that it, then? No one dies, they just get to live again with ambrosia?"

"Not everyone's unfinished business is to live again. Some die so old, with bodies so used and broken, living again isn't worth it. Even some of the younger ones. Everyone is different and fascinating in their own way, which is why I took to studying ghosts and their stories in the first place."

"He's going to help us figure out if Conrad met a ghost out on Deadgrass Isle."

Hazel grinned as Conrad stood to shoo one of their chickens back outside. "You're fighting crime by day and paranormal activity by night? Holly was right, Conrad. You're basically a superhero."

He blushed, and Felix turned a dour look in his direction. Ending the tense conversation in the living room, Hazel left to return home.

Heather and Conrad left Felix on the sofa and headed to bed. But before they'd changed into pajamas, she blurted her question with concern. "What's going on with you? I've never seen you snappier with anyone than you were tonight with Felix. Like I brought home two ghosts tonight instead of one."

"He was kind of acting like a dick."

Heather nodded. "And you met him there. That's not like you. Is it George Brindleton again?"

"No, George has been quiet. He and his wife spend a lot of the winter in Sulani every year." He could see Heather found this insufficient and kept talking. "I'm just dealing with a lot. I know I wasn't really myself tonight. There's this one case I can't crack and it's making me a little crazy."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I do, but I can't say much about it."

"I know. Confidential. But I want to give you whatever you need to be able to keep your work life at work, and not take the stress home. Not even for me and the kids, because you're so good to us. That's not the issue. I'm worried about you, and I want you to talk to me. The night we got engaged, you promised you would always tell me how you're feeling."

Joining her on the bed, he held her hand against his chest. "When I've finally solved the case, I'll tell you everything. I promise."

She grinned. "Not every gory detail, I hope."

"Do I ever? I don't want to think about the case tonight. I don't want to think about the ghost in our living room. All I want to focus on the rest of the night is you."

They made love before Heather fell asleep in Conrad's arms, (at least temporarily) satisfied by their conversation. ->

<- Previous Chapter | Gen 2 Start | Gen 1 Summary | Gen 1 Start

NOTE: I debated whether or not to bring Felix Psyded and his lore into this generation because there's a university generation much, much later in this challenge, but Felix was the first ghost that showed up to Ghost Night, sat right next to them and was immediately enamoured with Heather. So my mind spun with a bunch of possibilities for him and I went for it, even though he's mentioned in urban legends for UBrite students and those obviously won't be canon to my timeline anymore.

The In Bloom challenge doesn't have anything related to Felix in the challenge rules, even in the university generation, and Reaper Rewards didn't even require use of the ambrosia Heather made. But I wasn't going to do all that and not fully finish what they started. They're not really the type to lure sims into a cowplant just to test whether ambrosia works, no one in my save needed to die and be brought back, and I have a plan now for Felix! @pixeldistractions mentioned a possible prequel flashback and I'll never say never, but setting up an early-20th Century photo save will take a while if I do it, so no promises. I am invested in him getting a happy ending to his second life, however!

[twilightkitkat]

What if Worst Wolverine was the same Wolverine from Origins? What if he learned that "Deadpool" Wade Wilson was "Weapon X" Wade Wilson?

Inspired by this ask.

---

When Logan first met Wade in the bar, he felt oddly familiar. Like he knew him, but he couldn't quite place where. He felt nostalgia and regret and something else bubbling up to the surface without his consent. It felt foreign, and he brushed it off when he sobered up. But he kept it in the back of his mind.

But he kept being familiar. His voice, the way he fought, his mannerisms... it was all reminiscent of somebody he felt he should know. Someone long gone.

But it couldn't be, right? All of his old teammates were dead. If this world followed a similar timeline, there's no way this could be someone he knew. He must just be grasping at straws. Delusional, as usual.

It all came to a head a few weeks after the dust had settled. Wade and Logan were drinking together in their apartment, and Wade lopsidedly grinned at Logan with flushed cheeks. Logan felt his heart stutter.

"You know, you were just as cool back then," Wade giggled. "You looked good when you were younger, though I think the silver fox look fits you more with the grey streaks."

Logan frowned. "What do you mean when I was younger?"

"C'monnnnn Wolvie," Wade cooed as he leaned his head against his hand. "Back when we were in the Weapon X program together? I mean, we might not have been the best of buddies but it's kind of mean of you to forget about me."

It's like a part of Logan's brain unlocked. Wade fucking Wilson. Of course Logan remembered him, but he was so different that Logan had never made the connection.

Logan had a complicated relationship with Wade. He both respected him and thought he was a nuisance. Wade's skills were undeniable, but so was his motor mouth. Logan groaned in annoyance most of the time, but Wade's quips had managed to pull a snicker out of him on more than a few occasions. He tried to feign annoyance, but despite what people said, Wade was funny. His jokes were one of the only things that brought any life to the dreary and harsh environment.

Back then, Logan had still been tangled up with Victor and didn't let himself get too close to others (for both his own and their sakes). Still, Wade had found him in the corner of a bar a few times when the rest of the team was partying. He'd sat next to him and just... kept him company. He rambled on about inconsequential things, avoiding the more serious topics. He offered a distraction, a reprieve from the constant violence and solemn atmosphere. Logan appreciated it more than he could convey at the time.

And on the rare instances where Logan wanted to talk, Wade listened. Even if it was drunken gibberish, regrets and frustrations and feelings spilling out into the open. More notably, he didn't report him for having second doubts about the missions. Anyone else would've. Logan didn't do friends back then, but he'd consider Wade the closest thing he had to one.

And then Logan had quit. And left behind his teammates, cutting off all chance of further development. And then Logan had returned, but too late. By then, Wade had been turned into that... thing... by Stryker.

Oh god. The thought of it made Logan want to throw up. Wade, always chattering, with his mouth stitched shut. A mindless drone made to obey orders, a complete antithesis to the man who bent the rules and smiled privately at Logan when he rambled about what could be interpreted as treason. A mockery of everything he stood for.

That Wade was... the same as his Wade. Deadpool was Wade Wilson. Wade Wilson now was the same Wade Wilson from back then.

That means in his world, he'd let Wade down. He'd abandoned him and left him to be experimented on. Worse, he'd killed him. Logan killed Wade.

Fuck. The reason he didn't recognize Wade in the bar was because his was long dead. A clone that he himself had killed.

He looked at Wade, blushing and smiling with adoration in his eyes even as he feigned indignation at Logan not remembering. He looked at Wade and imagined him trapped in his own body, personality erased and gone. He imagined him with his mouth sewed shut, never to speak again. With a flat and empty stare instead of the twinkle in his eye.

Wade had saved him from himself. He'd given him a new home and fought for him to keep it. He'd been willing to die for Logan when nobody in his own universe would so much as look at him. Logan owed him an insurmountable debt, one that he couldn't even begin to repay in this lifetime. But he was trying. To make Wade happy, at least. It was his purpose in this world and would continue to be until Wade decided to throw him out or he finally kicked the bucket.

So the realization that he'd failed his own Wade so horribly made him viscerally ill. Even back then, Wade had been the only one to really see him when nobody else did. When even Victor just looked for a distorted reflection of himself and when everyone else wanted a mindless tool, Wade acknowledged Logan.

In a time when Wade didn't owe Logan shit, when he could've gotten in trouble for being complicit if Logan actually went through with what he said, Wade still protected him. And Logan didn't even think to check up on him in return. (Even when he knew Wade checked up on him. The Tylenol and water beside his bunk didn't appear out of nowhere. He didn't even remember climbing into bed before he passed out.)

Logan left him to die. Logan let Wade die. Wade, who was smart and funny and charming and caring and everything Logan was not. Wade, who had all of that stripped from him while Logan got to keep living. Logan, who took that chance and spat on Wade's fucking grave by ruining it all.

Logan wanted to throw up.

[lets-play-our-game]

Old Spidey, New City

I just came to my senses

Peter looked around groggily, taking in his surroundings. He was laying supine on a flat rooftop, several other building towering over him, the sight of huge digital billboards flashing brightly, incomprehensively, around him..

He had hit the ground, - Roof? - hard, and while the city around him was blindingly bright, he was sure it had been daylight he had seen before passing out. Either way, it was a dark sky that shone above him now, with just as many stars as he was use to (which was close to none on a good night)

In fact, he wasn’t even sure the spell had worked, it still looked like his city, but Strange wouldn’t have left him unconscious on a rooftop. They were both assholes, but not that kind. Not “cast a spell but fuck off before the other person realised it didn’t work” kind of asshole. Peter certainly wouldn’t have hurt him if it hadn’t, Strange had been upfront about the chances.

Must have worked then.

I live in another dimension

Fuck! It worked.

At least, the jump did. Time and research would show if this was the right universe. Had to make sure there wasn’t already a Peter Parker in this one, that mutants existed and he wouldn’t be dissected the first chance the government got, that superhero was still a job he could avoid signing up for..

Regardless, he was out of the old one, and his family would be safe.

Just, without him.

Peter stood and released a deep breath.

Fear is nonexistent

There was nothing he could do now, just hope the doctor could carry out the rest of the plan. He’d done his part.

Peter pulled his mask down over his face, whatever emotions he was showing gone from view, grabbed his small pack from where it had landed, and stepped to the edge of the roof.

*thwip*

Suit up and swing through the city

He swung high, avoiding lit windows and people out of their balconies. He was tired. So, bone dead tired and a fight was the last thing he was itching for. He knew a few good spots to crash in his old city, but who knew if they existed here.

As spiderman swung, he slowly became aware of the differences between the two cities. The ads were different for one, and what few brands recognised seemed to have picked different colours. Coke-a-cola had radioactive-orange packaging. He was not looking forward to a neon christmas, if that was a thing here.

Police lights were still red and blue, but the siren was different. That was hardly a surprise.

The biggest difference, and he almost fell out of the sky when he finally noticed it, was all the cars drove on the wrong side of the road.

“What the fuck..” He perched on the side of a building and watched the traffic, letting his camo take hold and blending in with the concrete he gripped to.

He shook himself free after a few minutes and swung on.

He was so fucking tired.

Annihilate, I’m wide awake Be very afraid

He found a rooftop that even in this universe didn’t have stairwell access, internal or external, which was perfect. He threw down his small bag, which contained little more than a change of civilian clothes, a few snack bars and a one or two mementos, onto the dirty concrete.

I’m in my own world give me space

Exhausted, he lay down, the bag as a make-shift pillow, and stared up at the sky, letting the noises of his new city, his new life, surround him.

Tomorrow, he might go looking for a better bed, food, a job maybe, hopefully a shower

Tonight - he just needed to get some fucking sleep.

I’m in my own universe give me space..

[theoddest1]

Regarding Alastor's backstory and how he rose to power in Hell... it just kind of feels out of character to me.

Because he's more like someone who puts in the work for what he wants, because it would feel more rewarding than just asking for it on a silver platter.

Now, I can understand him making the deal if it was around the time he first arrived in Hell and tried to rise up, only to get curb stomped by demons stronger than him and did worse things. And he makes the deal to feel in control again like when he was alive, that I can understand.

But the leak just... completely destroys Alastor's character AND his role in the story.

If I were to write his character, I'd make it where he never really asked for such things because the thought of asking anyone for help was absurd and breaks his already set idea of himself. [outside of the spirits, he asks for help and protection though he sees then more as tools than gods.]

To him, being a Fawn was completely out of the question. No longer will he be under someone else's egregious, yet sloppy, thumb. He pulls the reigns, and so he shall always do so. This also plays a huge part in how I believed he performed his radio host persona when alive.

"Amongst the people, I am the announcer, the charismatic showman, the one who provides the latest news and tales to tell. I have made the stage and set the standards so no man, woman, or child could ever hate or doubt me in a world made against people who look like me. So how, then, would I be touched? I am no ordinary man, I am their star in their night sky, and they don't even see me! Hah! All they see is tale after tale, horrors that they had no rhyme or reason to believe could bleed into their realities. Yet, without a single thought, the one who marks each harrowing inclination that rattles within is the one who made sure each drop of blood stained their perfect white cloth. Oh, how I LIVE for the spectacle, and they live for me."

This is how I viewed him. Meglomaniac, who is assured in his strength, who doesn't think he needs to make deals, or feel threatened when another powerful foe comes to face him regardless if he were dead or alive during this encounter [He is too assured of his self worth to care about what another strong enemy thinks of him]. He is all about being "alive" in the moment and in control. He does what he wants and sees no hope in his well-being, and with that, he manages to at least gain wisdom in being honest with himself. He knows he's a shithead and understands that what he has done was with no remorse or care because he gave up on being a kind soul long....loooong ago. Someone made sure to seal that fate for him. Why should he care what people think when he already has a stubborn viewpoint of himself? It is what it is.

EDIT: I forgot to add that I also made this one of major reasons for why in Hell he is made into a buck/deer. It is a reminder of what he hates most: an animal known stereotyped as docile, a perception he once wore before he turned to a life of crime. This form is a mockery of his ideals and his self-image.

But nah, the show instead has him as a piss baby spouting modern terms like a braindead Twitter user losing an argument over subjective material. He feels far more insecure and irritable, making whatever rule he set up about his smile feel more like cope rather than a well-rounded point. He smiles, yet his irritation and need to prove himself lessens its impact. He laughs, yet will turn around and cuss at someone all cause they think his name for the Hotel is trash rather than making a confident witty comeback. He asserts "dominance" but the way he does this is by using pure force alone and barely any mi d games, making it feel as though he isn't truly as clever or well thought out as he had hoped. Everything we have seen of him in the show destroys what little he had in the promotion of the pilot AND the pilot. He was more witty and charming back when Ed was still his VA on Hunicast. A true waste of a potentially well-made character.