#his empty eyes as he unloads a gun into a fragile body | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dmcfsstory · 4 years ago

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Also available on Ao3: [link]

Full Proofreaded by Hotspot-the-626th(@ deviantart)

Proofreaded a bit by @graphic-mistake and @wikimb

Partner Artist: @wikimb

Word count: 5877

Trigger Warning: Violence/Gore description - Depression cases

Prologue: [Link]

A few weeks later...

November 2nd - 04:05 PM

Nero was walking alone in the middle of a small city on the mainland; despite the weather being brisk, he was wearing his jacket. It was new, but it was like his old one, which had blue leather, zipped with the hood up. He walked slowly but not in a straight line, hands pocketed, and pissed off. His eyes were sunken in, and his beard the length similar to his uncle's.

On his back, he carried his brand new sword Nico made using the remains of his previous one:

"Devil Queen"

Category: Human-made

Type: Slash and Magic Catalyst

User(s): Nero

Description: The ultimate version of Nero's old Red Queen. Its revving function is now fuelled by Nero's demon magic.

The new sword was quite similar to the previous one, but with a few upgrades; it has a chainsaw on one side and a typical blade on the other side. The engine grew a bit in size with larger exhausts. At the end of the handle, a keychain was made of a feather from the man's spectral wings.

From the shadows came a few Riots, Baphomets and Hell Cainas. They slowly circled around him, sensing the rageful aura that surrounded him.

A few Baphomets started the fight by casting ice spikes under Nero's feet. He easily avoided them by jumping backward; while he did so, he grabbed his sword.

At his last jump, two Riots jumped over him. He had no trouble at all grabbing them by the neck with his Devil Bringers. When the Hell Cainas started to approach, he threw the two lizards at the Baphomets that barely could get out of the way in time and ended up being smashed against the ground.

A Hell Caina swung their scythe towards Nero's chest. He swiftly parried the attack. Others of its kind got closer and started to sword fight Nero, but he could parry and defend every single swing. At the same time, he shot at the jumping Riots with his recently upgraded gun, which now also had a key charm made with another feather of his spectral wings.

Carnage Rose

Category: Human-made

Type: Fire gun and Magic Catalyst

User(s): Nero

Description: With the upgrade, the gun shoots faster. It's easier to channel Nero's magic through it, making him able to use the special spectral projectiles he would only be able to use while in his Devil Trigger state.

When all of them were trembling on their feet, he carved the sword into the ground, and when he turned the switch on the handle, the chainsaw activated, bursting blue flames from his magic.

He swung his sword against the Hell Cainas and Riots; the teeth of the chainsaw ripped the demon flesh to ribbons as if they were made out of paper. Meanwhile, the Baphomets were starting their ice incantations to stop Nero from killing their comrades.

But it was put to a stop by an enormous bolt of purple electricity, not dead but stunned.

Nero turned around to look behind him. It was Kyrie, with a proud yet nervous glint in her eyes, holding her magical staff with a silver rose at the top.

"That was sick!" he said, pumping more adrenaline into her system.

She wasn't the same opera singer she was in the Order. She changed a lot since the incident, both mentally and physically. Her hair was a medium bob cut with a strip of white parted to the side and is held in place with a feather from Nero's Spectral wing. A small scar on the left side of her forehead was more visible; she got it during the orphanage attack back in Fortuna. She was wearing a long all-black leather jacket, jeans, leather gloves, and combat boots with a few purple details that threw out the outfit.

The oddest part of this new version of Kyrie was her eyes. Her right eye was the usual warm brown that Nero knew. In contrast, her left eye had sectoral heterochromia, with one half of the iris brown and the other half a light blue.

"The spellcasters are yours," Nero pointed to the Baphomets.

Kyrie nodded confidently and ran up to them. They were starting to get up when they noticed her and began to flee. She aimed the rose end of her staff at them. Blades from under the rose opened and started to spin at high speed to channel her magic energy.

A large bean of electricity came out from the wide-open silver rose, obliterating all that was in its path beside one.

When the bean ended, the staff closed up to cool down. Kyrie kneeled tiredly from the amount of magic used. The sole surviving Baphomet saw an opportunity to strike back. It cast its spell and then threw a sharp ice spear at Kyrie.

Before the ice could impale her tired body, a red energy barrier appeared in front of her, blocking the deadly attack. The border absorbed the impact and then shot back the same amount of force at the demon, killing it instantly.

Nero, who had his arm stretched in Kyrie's direction, controlled the barrier; his eyes were shining green and his facial hair much darker.

Nero nearly yelled at Kyrie for rushing ahead but controlled his nerves and just yelled, "Oe oe, don't use your magic like that! You can't unload everything at the very beginning.." His eyes then returned to blue, and his facial hair silver.

"Sorry, I got too excited," she said, embarrassed.

He tisked. "If you keep acting like a kid in a candy store, I can't leave you alone. Yet" he said with a teasing tone.

"Ah! No, no, no!" she exclaimed. "I will be kicking demon asses in no time! You will see!"

Nero gave an honest smile to her. He moved closer to her and gave her a chaste kiss on her forehead. "I know you will, darling."

Making her cheeks flush more.

Minutes later…

Kyrie was at the city's small police station receiving payment for the successful demon hunting and killing. At the same time, Nero waited outside, leaning back on the front part of the van.

He had a numb look in his eyes and a blank expression, hood up and his hand in his pockets. His mind drifted.

Without warning, he started to cough up blood. Fresh red blood hit the pavement, intense pain began to flood his system. He kneeled to the ground, unable to endure the pain.

"No… not again…" he whispered painfully.

Kyrie stepped outside of the police station with the money in hand, excited to show Nero her progress. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm was ripped away when she saw Nero hunched on the ground.

“NERO!" she screamed as she sprinted towards him, also calling Nico's attention from inside the van.

"NO!" he shouted between bloody coughs."Don't touch me!"

Nico jumped out of the van very quickly. "OH SHIT! Don't tell me he…!" she stopped when she saw all the blood dripping not just out of his mouth, but also from his nose and eyes.

"Come on, man! Get inside!" she said as she put her arm around him to pull him up and help it into the van. Kyrie walked over to Nero's other side to help, but Nico made a signal for her to not touch him, which made her apprehensive.

While helping Nero into the van, Nico started to recall past events that were all too familiar to this situation:

Back to August 20th - 06:00 PM

Kyrie was being taken to a modern hospital on the continent. Her wounds were so severe that she had entered a coma. She was only breathing with the help of special equipment. Her head was partially wrapped in bandages around the gash that a demon had inflicted. The room was not expensive-looking, but it wasn't cheap either. There was a comfortable chair for the patient's visitors to rest on by the bed's right side.

The place was dead silent. The beeps of the Holter Monitor was the only sound filling it.

The lights of the room were dim.

Nico slowly entered the room, looking for Nero. She only saw the empty chair on the other side of the room, behind the bed, from her perspective. "Nero? Nero, where are you?"

After she entered, Lady and Trish walked in behind her. "He's not here?" Trish asked.

"He should be. He barely leaves her side unless to use the restroom", Nico said very worriedly.

Lady and Trish got closer to the bed to take a better look at Kyrie. They both were shocked to see her in that state.

Trish, unbelieving the situation of the human girl, said in a depressed tone, "no… why do humans have to be so fragile like this? This is unfair…"

"I know, right?" Nico nearly whispered.

Nico stepped closer to the bed, circling Trish and Lady to be on the other side. Before reaching it, she heard a splash coming from under her shoes. She looked down and saw a small puddle of blood, passing under the bed from the direction of the chair. She hurried over to see what was on the opposite side of the bed.

"HOLY SHIT! NERO!" she yelled in panic.

Nero had fallen out of his chair, unconscious. He had blood coming from his eyes and nose. There was still a little amount of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Trish and Lady went to see what was going on; they both were shocked when they saw the same sight. Nico quickly kneeled and went to check his pulse on his neck.

Relieved, she told the others, "Thank God, he's alive."

The moment Trish got closer to Nero to assess what had happened, only she could see some flickering blue and red energy strings. It was acting like static around him. Trish stepped back, looking inexplicably scared and confused. Nico immediately noticed how apprehensive she got.

"What's up?" She was confused as well.

"Nothing… I hope…" Trish replied nervously.

She extended her hand towards Nero's head. The moment she touched him, she could see a yellow light string coming out of her hand, trying to connect to the ones that surrounded Nero's body. The moment it touched his, she felt like her entire body was being electrocuted.

She let out a painful scream and fell to the floor.

Not being able to see what truly happened, Lady shouted, worried, "Oh my God! What happened? Are you okay?"

While Trish got back on her feet, she explained, "As I suspected… he's desyncing…"

"He's what now?!" Nico asked, confused.

"Nico, you know the Demonologist, Victor?"

She took a few seconds to respond, confused by the question. "Ah, yes. Why?"

Still feeling a bit of the pain from the shock, she said, "He can explain better how Synchronization works. You need to take Nero there as fast as you can. But to sum up what is happening. He got problems with his demon magic."

Back to the present days…

Nero was lying down on the van's couch. He had a bit of a fever, but the bleeding stopped. Kyrie was just observing him, sitting in one of the chairs. She could see the light strings flashing around him.

"Can't you see them?" Kyrie asked Nico about the light strings.

"I told you, no. Neither Lady could. It's a demonic magic thing," Nico replied as she was driving at high speed out of the highway.

"Don't touch him. You won't like to get hurt." Nico reinforced.

"I won't, don't worry," Kyrie said, a bit annoyed.

There was dead silence inside the van. Only the engine and the suspension rocking with every bump as the vehicle raced down the road.

Kyrie looked at her hands, thoughtfully. So much had changed since the attack on the orphanage, it didn't look like it had just passed a bit more than two months. She clenched her fists confidently, and a bit of purple magical energy lightened up.

"OH FUCK!" Nico yelled.

Kyrie ran to the front of the van to see what was going on. Once out, she was more surprised than Nico; it was demons very similar to those that attacked the orphanage, but none of them had armor aside from some chest protection. This time they were being accompanied by new flying fellas that looked like a vulture version of them. The only difference was the black steam mane that, in their case, was their tail, and they were hornless.

They were all being able to run together with the van.

"I got this!" Kyrie shouted.

Before she gets to the door, some of the doggy demons threw their bodies against the van, trying to make it lose stability.

Kyrie trembled on her feet but didn't fall.

"Just keep going, Nico! Nero needs to get to the doctor," she shouted to her partner.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU PIECES OF SHIT! There's a sick person here!" Nico shouted while pushing harder on the accelerator.

Kyrie got her staff and opened the van's door. There was a demon already waiting for her. The monster jumped in her direction in an attempt to bite her.

Using her elbow, she heavily hit the head of the demon, throwing them back into the asphalt.

Incredibly confident, she did a high jump off the van, and quickly, she adjusted her staff under her feet. As the sclera from her left eye turned black and the pupil shined in white, the blades started to run at high speed, magically. Very similar to Nero's but made out of purple light, enormous spectral wings came out of the silver rose among many lightning bolts.

She started to ride her staff as if it was a flying skateboard.

She could now understand the demons yelling. "Dragon! Dragon! Give us the Dragon!"

"Even if I knew what you're talking about! I wouldn't give it to you!" She bravely yelled as she closed the van's door.

The flying ones tried to hit her by diving from the sky. She avoided them by quickly swinging on her flying staff before increasing her speed. So much so she went ahead of the van.

Surprised by Kyrie's speed, Nico gave a quick look at the speedometer. It showed that she was moving at one hundred twenty kilometers per hour; Kyrie was a little faster than that.

"Holy shit, girl," she whispered with a smile.

"What's going on?!" Nero shouted from the sofa, still a bit dizzy.

"Your girl is kicking demon ass, man!." Nico yelled excitedly.

Nero moved fast so he could get to the front seat to see outside.

Four demons were getting closer to Kyrie and were preparing for a combined attack. Sensing the incoming attack, she got ready for it. At the moment she heard the roaring and seeing the creatures jump, she acted quickly. She willed the staff's wings to fuse, and they then assumed the shape of a scythe blade.

Precisely, she spun her body at high speed, and with the strength of her legs, she swung the blade in their direction. Thanks to inertia, they could not dodge, and the edge cuts through their bodies very smoothly.

Once she finished her swing, she returned back to the initial position. Looking back, she began grinning in happiness and surprise; her plan worked perfectly.

Nico felt it necessary to pass over the demons' bodies with the van's wheels and did so with a smile. In doing so, the van jumped high enough to take both Nico and Nero out of the seat for a brief moment.

"How this shit still fucking works?!" Nero shouted worrisomely.

Kyrie now had to take care of the avians. They kept attacking her by diving, but luckily she could avoid them all. Still, sometimes she had to rebalance her body, almost losing balance and making Nero's hair lighter than it already was.

She rose in the air and flew over the van's roof. The flying demons, thus, started to aim their claws at her.

She deactivated the staff's winged mode, landed on the roof, and got ready to hit them full force.

Between their dives and her dodges, she swung the staff to land the heaviest part of it on the demons' bodies or even their heads, heavily damaging them and making them fall on the road.

When she threw away the last one, she started to cheer happily since she had yet to receive a single wound.

"That's it, girl!" Nico cheered.

Nero couldn't help it; he gave a wide, proud smile.

"Hey! I can see the city!" Kyrie screamed.

"Finally, bro… let's discover what is going on with 'ya," Nico said low to Nero.

Nero just took a slow and deep breath, very worried about what's to come.

Pitch Black City - 07:43 PM

The van slowly entered the large megalopolis. Kyrie and Nero were mesmerized by the enormous skyscrapers and the vast number of people walking in the streets, not to mention high car traffic. Kyrie got a bit intimidated with all of that; it was her first time in a big city and the first time out of Fortuna for real.

They arrived at the gate of an enormous and fancy building, perhaps it had more than twenty floors. Once Nico talked with the concierge, a few minutes later, the gates opened. Nico parked the van at a space for visits.

"Follow me now!" Nico told them as she left the van.

The building entrance was so fancy and beautiful that it screamed "rich and high class" to them. At the elevator, Nico typed the floor level on the panel: number forty-two.

Kyrie got apprehensive as the elevator doors closed. She had to hold Nero's hand to feel more secure around all the top-notch modern technology.

"Are you sure he's trustworthy?" Nero asked, sounding relatively low and a little intimidating.

"Yeah, yeah, man. Hold your fire. He IS trust-worthy." Nico replied quite calmly.

The elevator arrived pretty quickly to the destination. At the entrance hall, there were only two doors. Nico went to knock on the entry labeled as "forty-two A."

A man's voice came from inside, "password?"

"Don't start me with this bullshit, old man!" Nico yelled in a mocking tone.

The door opened, and then a man, around fifty years old, showed. He had very thick glasses, a skin color like Nico's with some freckles and dark brown hair. He wasn't so tall, around 1.60 meters(5′24″ft) high, but his curved back made him look smaller, and he had to use a cane to help him walk.

"Yep! That's my niece!" The man said happily.

"Uncle Vic!" Nico yelled happily.

They both greeted each other with two kisses on the cheeks.

The man looked at Kyrie and Nero up and down before raising his hand to greet them. "You must be Kyrie and Nero. I'm Victor Dryblood"

Kyrie did a customary handshake with Victor; however, he slowly did one while staring very suspiciously when it came to Nero.

"Nice to meet you!" Kyrie said politely with a smile.

"It's my pleasure. Come inside. I just made tea." He invited them.

The apartment made Kyrie's jaw drop and made Nero astonished. With an open-concept kitchen, the living room was nearly the size of the apartment they had on Fortuna and looked like it came out of an interior design magazine. There were no walls on the outer part of the building; instead, they had large reinforced windows that allowed a panoramic view of the city. The furniture was mostly black and white and very modern looking while the floor was of expensive dark wood.

"Is he… really your uncle?" Nero asked Nico, suspiciously, though still mesmerized by the place.

"Aye, the only part from my father that doesn't suck…" Nico replied with a disgusted tone.

Nero stared at Victor, trying to see something similar to Agnus aside from the hair and skin color, but it was a bit difficult.

"Agnus is my half-brother, to be exact," Victor explained to them while he got some tea mugs.

Now it made more sense why the lack of resemblance.

As he served the tea, Victor conferred with them, "So, what brings you here? Nico only told me you're having problems with demonic magic."

They were silent, feeling a bit uncomfortable to talk about their situation.

Noticing that, Victor pressured them a bit, "Okay, will Nico have to tell me or what?"

Nero took a deep breath before speaking in an attempt to gain some confidence. "What is… Sync? For a demon, of course…"

That question already helped Victor have an idea of what was going on. He gave a very suspicious look at Nero's face, and he stared deep at the man's tired eyes that weren't even the same shiny blue as they used to be.

"Take your hood off," Victor requested, not taking his eyes out of Nero's.

He didn't want to, but Nero did so cautiously. The white light from the kitchen's LEDs made Nero's face much clearer. His tired face turned to be much more awful, and his eyes were red as if he had cried for hours. His hair was downright messy, like he had not brushed in days. Some wounds, looking like scratches, were noticeable on his scalp. He felt uncomfortable with all of that exposure to a person he just met.

But what mattered most to Victor were his eyes.

"Look at me," he imposed.

Nero didn’t move his head, just his eyes to look at the man.

Nero's sclera didn't have a precise shape. It was something between his demon sclera and a human one; the iris color was also in the same state. Analyzing a bit more of Nero's body language, Victor could see he was breathing heavily. Not only this, but his muscles were exhausted, and under his large coat probably had a very unhealthy body.

"Who told you about Sync?" he questioned.

"Trish did," Nero replied quickly while he brought his hood back up... "She also told me you would know what to do about my… 'desync problem.'"

Victor gazed at Nero's form a bit more before speaking, "I knew it… You're desyncing… but... at this age?"

"What? This is a child thing?" Kyrie asked.

"No… it's a baby thing," Victor said in a worrisome tone in the end.

Nero let out a sarcastic laughing, with a bit of worrying in the end. "Great," he said ironically. "What happens with me now then?"

"If you don't Sync with your parents…" he made a dramatic pause… "you will die," Victor said rather seriously, taking off Nero's ironic smile at the same moment.

They stayed in dead silence for a few seconds, trying to process the information.

"But…" Nico interviewed, "Vergil is with Dante, and they are still in Hell…"

"They… what?!" Victor accidentally lost his composure.

"They got themselves trapped, I guess, in Hell to destroy the remaining Qliphoth roots," Nero said in a low yet angry voice.

"Wait! What they have to do with you?" Victor questioned, quite apprehensive.

Nero let out an annoyed sigh, "According to Dante… Vergil is my father…"

Victor's skin turned pale the moment he heard that, and he started to sweat cold. He let his teacup fall off and splatter tea and the cup pieces all over the floor. He got nervous and began to look away as if he had a terrible realization.

"Oh, shoot! Uncle! You're okay?" Nico spoke, worried.

It was when, looking at the broken teacup in the ground, Kyrie noticed Victor's prosthetic left leg, that would explain the need for a cane, perhaps?

"NO WAY!" Victor slammed the desk in rage. "T-T-THAT…! BIG ASS MORRON! If I only knew…"

"Who you're talking about?" Nico was quite confused.

"Da-Dante! That idiot! He n-n-never told me Vergil had a child!" Victor continued to yell angrily.

Drifting his mind away for a moment, Nero thought, "The stutter is a family thing?"

Since Nero didn't seem to want to talk, Kyrie went ahead and asked Victor, "Do you know Dante?"

"Yes, he and Vergil are my oldest clients." He replied, slowly regaining his sanity.

"Why did you get so mad? He hasn't told you about Nero?" Kyrie asked, rather confusedly.

Looking at Kyrie now, he replied, "Dante only told me he left the Yamato with Nero. I don't know why he hasn't told me everything… But… all the Qliphoth mess could've been avoided, I wouldn't have to tell Vergil about the Yamato either."

"YOU WHAT?!" Nero snapped back to the conversation. "You sent him?! Do you have any idea what he did to me?!"

He walked furiously towards Victor at the other side of the table, his fits clenched, ready to do something insane.

"HE RIPPED MY ARM OFF, DUDE!" he shouted, his teeth turning sharper and his eyes slowly turning a bright yellow.

"Stay away from him!" Kyrie yelled at him, putting her staff between them.

"What's wrong with you?! Let's hear his side of the story first!" she scolded though her face showed visible confusion and concern. Nico was staring at him as well, terrified.

Nero growled as he irrationally wanted to punch Victor in the face. He noticed Victor got ready to grab some sort of small weapon by his waist under the coat, but he couldn't tell what it was. Fortunately, he decided to listen to Kyrie and walked away from him.

Looking back at Victor, Kyrie asked softly, "Please, explain more... How can you tell that if Nero helped Vergil, it would avoid the Qliphoth event? We know nothing about how hybrids work, to be honest."

Before speaking, Victor took a deep breath. "I noticed…" he whispered. "Have you heard about the Magic Spectrum?"

Kyrie shook her head.

"Ahem! So, there's a thing called 'Magic Spectrum.' Imagine a ruler that begins at minus one, the middle is zero, and the other end is plus one. 'Zero' is called 'Void,' also known as everything alive on Earth; Humans, cats, bugs, fishes, etcetera. When you start walking to the minus one edge, you have the demons. Closer to the edge, the stronger the demon.”

"What about the plus one edge?" Kyrie interrupted him.

"Those would be the angels," Nico answered.

"Angels are real?" Nero questioned, surprised but not leaving his angry face.

Victor then responded, "They were once, but no Angel has been seen since the demons expunged them from Earth more than two thousand years ago… They are considered extinct."

Still, without taking his eyes off Nero, he continued, "So! We, 'The Voids', are called like that not just because we aren't magical, but we are as the name says: 'We are empty.' Our bodies are ready to receive magic. Hybrids like you are still a Void, but a "filled void." You're the best of both worlds. You stay within the spectrum from zero to whatever it is close to minus one. That's why you have to build up your magic, also known as 'Devil Triggering,' to use your full demon potential. Let's say that you can…' walk on the spectrum.'"

Nero raised his eyebrows since some things were starting to make sense.

"But now…" Victor continued. "There's the minor spectrum or 'personal spectrum' like some of my area like to call it. Imagine that all magic is like a radio, sending and receiving signals. Each being has its own signal frequency, like magic DNA. A newborn's magic doesn't know how to keep their frequency stabilized and needs their parent's aid to do so… Or siblings from the same parents. It also works between them, but with half efficiency. The Synchronization process is when a parent and their offspring connect their 'radios,' syncing their frequencies."

Nero quickly interrupted him, "Okay… so… I would have to… 'Sync' with Vergil for this shit stop happening with me?"

"Yes, it's the only existing method in your case, and if I had known about you, I would have told Vergil, and you would have been able to save him too. Syncing with Vergil would heal him magically-wise and also put yours in place."

Nico then questioned, "What happened to Vergil?"

"The consequences of his own actions." Victor started to explain with a bit of sadness in tone behind. "Vergil tried to beat Mundus, the Demon King back then but ended up being slaved. Somehow he managed to break free from Mundus' corruption, but that had cost a lot of him."

And so, Victor told them about the last time he'd spoken with Vergil:

Back to 30 May - 04:20 AM

Victor was manipulating a golden orb inside a glass box in his laboratory when his phone started to ring out loud, nearly scaring his soul out of his body. With a bit of difficulty, since he was in a wheelchair at this point, he answered after a few rings but could only hear someone deep breathing on the other side.

"Hello?" he said with suspicion.

"Ooooh…. good… it's the same… number… *cough cough*" said a man with a feeble and ill voice.

"Who is it?" Victor called out.

"It's me… Ve...Vergil… I need some information from you… quick…"

It was Vergil at a phone cabinet somewhere around Fortuna. He was wearing a filthy cloak, and his skin was starting to crack like arid soil. He suddenly coughed so hard he threw out blood all over the phone.

"VE-VER-VERGIL?!" Victor shouted. "A-A-ARE YOU ALIVE?! H-Have you sur-survived Mundus' corruption?!”

"...Aah… So… Dante told -cough cough- told you…" he kinda seemed to be surprised.

"H-How?! or… Who?!" Victor asked, terrified.

Vergil held his voice and breath before speaking out loud, letting out grief from deep down his throat, "...She killed him -cough- he didn't deserve that…! -cough cough- I couldn't protect him!... It was just like that day… -cough cough cough- all over again!"

Vergil held his voice and breath, before speaking out loud, letting out grief from deep down his throat, "...She killed him -cough- he didn't deserve that…! -cough cough- I couldn't protect him!... It was just like that day… -cough cough cough- all over again!"

“Who?! The one who helped you?!” Victor asked quickly since Vergil appeared to be in a rush.

"...It doesn't matter… for you… Do you know where Yamato is…?!" Vergil started to sound angry.

"Yes… Dante found it and let over the pro-protection of a young man in Fortuna. H-H-He keeps the Yamato safe in his demonic arm…But a-anyway! where are you?! You ne-need help!"

Vergil started to sound much weaker, "I just need my sword… I need power…-cough cough- I can't die… yet…But... my magic is killing me…"

Without imagining what was about to happen, Victor let out: "Dante can help you with that"

"NO! I RATHER DIE!" Vergil screamed in rage, his voice distorted by his decaying health.

Out of patience with Vergil's pride, Victor screamed at him through the call, "Vergil! For God's sake! Stop with this hate towards your brother! It's not what you're thinking! You are distorting everything!"

Victor is interrupted when he hears some insanely and low laughing from the other side:

"The Qliphoth fruit… it will give me…"

“power…!" Vergil grumbled.

"NO! The fruit can't help you with that! It will only-!" But he's interrupted by the beeps of the sudden finished call.

Desperate with the incoming end of the world, Victor tried to contact Dante at the same moment, but every single attempt he tried he always got the same message: the number was busy or inactive at the moment.

It didn't matter how many times he tried, Dante hasn't paid the phone bills anyway.

Hell - Nowadays - Apparently night time…?

At the remains of the dead Qliphoth roots, sounds of some kind of wind bursts accompanied by electric static can be heard from far away. Many rooting bodies of defeated demons were laying around the large open area of the place.

At the center of it, had a massive portal made with Yamato and Vergil's magic.

Dante was running straight forward to the portal, but every time he got in contact with it, the portal tossed him back.

"Dante!" Vergil called for him. "Dante stop!"

After the last launch, Dante turned to his brother and rather annoyed he asked him, "Are you sure this is the strongest portal you know?"

For much of his annoyance, Vergil wanted to respond in the same tone, but instead, he replied quite calmly, "Yes! I used to do this for Mundus' most powerful minions. But with the power of Yamato, it should be ten times stronger!"

A simple Riot used the open distraction of the brothers and passed through the portal normally.

After witnessing that scene, Dante raised his arms pointing, hands wide open, at the portal with a very annoyed yet surprised face.

"How then?!" he yelled at his brother.

Vergil took a deep breath before speaking. "I don't know! There are only two possible situations: either we are too powerful beings now OR as hybrids, we need some sort of special portal… or both..."

Dante got up from the dirty ground very tired and lowering a bit his voice and nerves he said, "Did you feel what I felt a few days ago, right? Some bad shit is going on in the human world!"

"I know brother, I know…" Vergil responded.

Dante let out a tsk before speaking and stared at the portal closing, "Nero will kill us…"

Vergil stared into the closing portal as well and then at the ground with an empty look.

"None of this would be happening If I could protect Baby…" he whispered.

"Eh?" Who? Nero's mother?" Dante asked, quite lost.

"No.," Vergil said drily.

"Da fuck? To be called "baby", who else would be? A child?" He questioned Vergil, more confused than before.

Getting in the middle of their conversation, loud thunderclaps shouted in the sky.

Vergil got scared at the same moment and suddenly started to run away. "We must find cover! Quick!"

"Why bother? Scared of getting a little wet?" Dante tried to mock his brother, that was a bit far already.

Without previous warning, a small rock in flames passed too close to Dante's shoulder, leaving the shoulder pad with a small fire on it.

"VERGIL! WAIT!" Dante screamed while he tried to catch up with his brother.

They both ran away endlessly, trying to find shelter around the remains of the colossal roots to protect themselves from the fireball rain.

To be continued...

Chapter 2: [HERE]

#forgotten sins story #devil may cry #devil may cry 5 #nerokiri #dmc5 nero #fanfic #dmc5 nico #original character

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bookandcranny · 4 years ago

Text

Little Angels

One]

It is dark inside a wolf’s belly, but up here the air is clear and bright. Atop the tower of Paradiso, above the city of mist and gray. The roof is all caved in and shattered, scattering brilliant prisms through the fragmented skylight and across the floor. A man stands alone in the wreckage, inside the skeletal remains of this holy animal. He sifts through the books that were left behind until he finds one with a red cover and no title, but the letters A-D embossed along its spine. He flips to a certain chapter, and begins to read.

It was in another kind of tower that it happened. The Detective entered into the penthouse apartment of the Deeds family, a couple from the upper crust who were in a state of panic over their missing teenage daughter. From that first frantic phone call with the grief-ridden Gloria Deeds, Sacha knew the shape of this case inside out, backwards, and upside down. It was a classic.

Teenage girl from a wealthy family, sheltered her whole life, the type who could do no wrong in the eyes of her doting, overbearing parents. One night she leaves without warning, to chase some guy or some band or some misplaced sense of adventure. The reasons didn’t matter as much as what they were willing to pay for the reassurance that their precious little angel would be home safe and sound.

There were just a couple of details he hadn’t counted on.

Sacha sat idling on the side of the road, looking down at the photo the Deeds’ had given him. It was a little roughed up at the edges and faded at the crease where he’d folded it. He’d forgotten how fragile these old-fashioned print photographs were. Despite the damage, the face of thirteen year old Renee Deeds still looked up at him with those same gentle brown eyes and private smile.

The girl in the photo, however accurate it was to real life, had her hair pulled back in a crowd of twin braids that crested over thick dark curls. She wore what Sacha presumed to be church clothes-- tidy blouse and long skirt, an heirloom brooch-- and a pair of crutches braced to her forearms. Her ankles were crossed and tucked limply to one side, away from the camera’s focus.

The girl’s disability put a complication in the narrative he’d been concocting. According to the Deedses, Renee could only go so far on foot without intense pain and she disliked using her chair. It remained in the hall closet, untouched since her disappearance. Mr Deeds worked from home most days so rather than send her off to school, she was homeschooled by a well-vetted private tutor under her father’s occasional supervision. She had few friends, being a reserved child, they said. Sacha thought it probably had more to do with the gilded cage she lived in, lined with bubblewrap and goose down lest she ever bruise her precious knees. But it wasn’t his place to say.

Regardless, this left him with a very limited pool of suspects. And suspects they were indeed, since the Deeds were certain Renee had been kidnapped. Such a good girl would never have just wandered off on her own.

If that was indeed the case, the culprit had done a remarkable job of covering their tracks. Renee was last seen by her mother who had put her to bed at 9 'o'clock on the dot. The security system had been armed all night and there were no signs of tampering. Besides which, the only way out of the penthouse that didn’t involve a several story drop to a very unhappy ending was through the front lobby and the cameras in and outside it didn’t detect anyone unusual, coming or going.

The parents’ first move, naturally, was to call the police. The cops questioned the other residents and scanned the security tapes but turned up empty handed and after a few weeks of daily calls the officers on the case all but told Mr and Mrs Deeds that their hands were tied. For once, even money and social standing couldn’t hasten the hand of justice. That was when they had called on private investigator Sacha Ferro to get the job done.

All these facts laid out before him, Sacha found himself no closer to the answer than he had been at the start. The difference between then and now was not information but desperation, the heights of which had brought him here. Orphan’s Hollow.

The last few years had hit this city hard, same as it did all of them. It wasn’t a single sudden thing, but rather a combination of natural disasters, a virulent epidemic, and the consequential economic collapse that left entire districts barren, now inhabited only by clustered communities of the homeless. The handful of city blocks now known as Orphan’s Hollow was one such district, named so because it was, if stories were to be believed, populated entirely by children. Hollowed out department stores and office buildings and, most notably, the abandoned fairgrounds of Fun Town West became a tragic Neverland for runaways and other parentless youth in hiding from the overburdened childcare system.

Recently, there had been an epidemic of another kind in many of the nearby boroughs. Kids were going missing, just like Renee Deeds had, except most families weren’t fortunate enough to be able to hire someone to track them down. From what Sacha could pick up, most of them-- those that were reported-- were girls between the ages of six and sixteen. Other than that, the demographics were all over the map: black, white, rich, poor, healthy, sick. Missing posters spawned and spread like mold across the billboards and telephone poles, while the local government processed statistics with dead eyes and shrugging shoulders.

The unspoken truth seemed to be that if they were anywhere, if they were alive, the missing girls were somewhere in here. But the kids of Orphan’s Hollow were protective of their own and wouldn’t likely allow any cops to sift through their ranks even if they did trust their motives. It became one of those open secrets that everyone knew about but no one wanted to touch.

On top of that, not every orphan was some scrawny Dickens novel side character; there were rumors of gang activity and even some sort of cult that made the teenagers who ended up in this part of town vicious towards outsiders. Orphan’s Row was a name with more than one meaning, they said, because if you took those kids lightly they’d turn yours into orphans as well. None of that mattered to Sacha though. At this point, he had little left to lose.

There was a gun in the glovebox of the Detective’s hatchback, unloaded, and he hoped it would stay that way. The idea of turning any weapon on a kid, no matter their alleged viciousness, turned his stomach. He would bring it with him to be used, in only the most absolutely dire circumstances, as a threat. Leverage. If it came down to it, he could rationalize that.

As he turned down another vacant street into the ghost town, the weather began to turn as well. It had been drizzling steadily since the evening prior, making the humidity all the more unbearable, but now the rain relented and in its place a clotted mist settled low over the city, like ink diffusing in water. Sacha kept his lights low and foot barely pressing on the gas pedal. Though it was irrational he felt uneasy at the idea of making himself any more noticeable than he was already.

When the car jolted it was like being shaken awake from a dream. At first he thought it was another pothole-- the roads were a wreck after so long untended-- but then there was an audible crunch and a lurch as his front-left tire burst. Without bothering to pull over he got out and found the problem right away. Deep in the tire, lodged between the wheel and its socket, was a doll. Or at least, something that was trying to be a doll.

The body was made out of metal; scraps from perhaps an aluminum can worked together with screws and painted to give it the look of a hoop-skirted dress. Its head was a christmas ornament. He recognized the pink painted cherub cheeks and curling synthetic hair. Some broken edge of the makeshift toy had punctured the tire, and of course Sacha didn’t have a spare on hand, even if he could figure out how to rip the damn thing out of the wheel well.

He muttered a curse to himself. He’d have to leave it here and keep going on foot. At least there wasn’t anything in the car worth stealing, and he didn’t exactly have to worry about getting a ticket.

A sudden shriek made Sacha jump, hand going blindly to the holster under his shirt.

“My doll!” the child cried again. “You killed Jessika! My dolly!”

Sacha turned around and saw a young girl, barefoot and wearing what looked like an old halloween costume, standing across the street from him like a specter out of the fog. Appropriate, since she was so keen on howling like a banshee.

“Hey, I’m so sorry about your dolly,” he gentled, crossing to meet her.

The girl seemed to be considering running away from the strange man, as would well be her right, but stood her ground instead as her face grew redder.

“You killed her,” she said again. “She was a person and you killed her.”

Sacha dropped to one knee. “ I’m sorry about your Jessica--”

“Jessika!”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I am sorry, but it was an accident, really. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

She sniffled. “I’m Princess Ladybird,” she said, as though it should have been obvious. She gestured at her costume, a pink sparkly dress studded with plastic gems around the collar. “Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here.”

“My name is Sacha. I’m a private investigator-- a detective,” he corrected, seeing her confused expression. “I’m looking for someone. They’re not in any trouble, I just need to make sure they’re safe. Do you think you could help me, your highness?”

He kept his voice low and comforting. Dealing with kids wasn’t exactly his specialty, but he knew what he was doing well enough.

“No! No!” the girl cried, more agitated than ever. “No grownups allowed! You’ll just hurt them, just like Jessika!”

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” he insisted, growing frustrated. “And I told you didn’t mean to break your doll. I could buy you a new doll? A nicer doll.”

She shook her head adamantly. “The store dolls aren’t alive. I only play with alive dolls.”

Play along, Sacha. “Okay, where can I get you a new ‘alive’ doll?”

“You can’t make an alive doll, you’re too old,” she huffed.

Sacha was not going to let himself be offended by a six year old. He wasn’t. “If your dolls are so precious, maybe you shouldn’t leave them in the street!”

“Maybe you should look where you’re going!” With that, she stomped on his foot and ran away. Sacha barely felt it through his shoes, but that was a small consolation. In a blink the princess was gone again.

He sighed. It was no less than he expected, but it still didn’t feel good. With the world they’d been living in, it wasn’t any surprise that the kids here were a bit strange. At least this one had seemed healthy enough, certainly energetic. That meant there was probably someone making sure she was kept fed.

He reminded himself that there was nothing he could do for these kids. Better to focus on what he was here for.

Two]

Sacha walked along the sidewalk without any real sense of where he was going. He occasionally saw clusters of children playing games or jumping in puddles in the street, but most were inside keeping out of the weather. When he looked up he sometimes saw tiny faces peering down at him from high windows or crouched on fire escapes. The ones on the ground didn’t spare him a look except in fleeting disgust. There was a girl reading fortunes for her friends from a dented pack of playing cards who went abruptly silent when he passed by, and Sacha came to realize that they were deliberately ignoring him, hoping to shun him into leaving the way he came.

When he tried to approach a pair of tweens doing some sort of craft project in a sheltered doorway, they quickly picked up their things and scampered away, leaving only a trail of paint droplets behind them. They didn’t look too terribly hard-off; their clothes were sometimes dirty but they were all in one piece and their eyes were bright and lively. It was sort of amazing, Sacha thought, how they’d really managed to build something of a community here, away from adults. Part of him almost envied them.

“Excuse me,” he tried again with a girl who was a bit older than the last. Her age didn’t make her look any more mature really, only sharper, as if she were growing but growing into the wrong shape. “I’m looking for--”

“Everyone knows what you’re looking for,” the young woman said. “You’re loud enough about it.”

This one wasn’t exactly friendly but at least she hadn’t run away yet. Sacha went to pull out a photo.

“Put that away, man,” she hissed. “You’re not going to find any girls who look like that here, and the wrong fledgling might just eat you alive for having it.”

“For having a photograph?” He didn’t bother to ask what a “fledgling” was supposed to be. Some sort of weird slang he was too dated to recognize, he guessed.

“For keeping another girl’s face! All you need is a face and a real-name and you can make that person do and say whatever you want.”

“Is this some kind of game you kids play? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s not a game,” she said gravely. “You don’t understand anything. Walking into this world when you don’t know the rules is as good digging your own grave.”

“Help me catch up, then. Level with me,” Sacha pressed. “I can make it worth your while.”

He didn’t have much money on hand, but he had medicine credits set aside for emergencies and that should be worth its bytes in gold in a place like this. Or if not, she could pawn it and buy some earrings or animal crackers or whatever kids liked.

“Save it, I don’t have an account. Legally, most of the kids here don’t even exist. You’ll have to trade for what you want the old fashioned way, outsider.”

Exasperated, Sacha rooted around in his pockets and came up with a protein bar and a keychain that doubled as a bottle opener. The girl didn’t look impressed.

“Okay look, hand over the picture and the rest of it and I’ll tell you where you need to go, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Outsiders don’t survive long here.”

Sacha wasn’t convinced this wasn’t all some intimidation game, but he folded up the photo of Renee and handed it to her anyway. If he really needed the visuals he had pictures on his phone. He’d turned it off shortly after setting out, when the calls and texts from his sister started pouring in, but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave it behind in the car. He could just picture Maria pacing around the house scowling at his number as another message failed to go through.

I’ll make it up to you, he promised her silently.

“There’s a spot two blocks that way,” She pointed. “Left, left, right, down some steps, and you’ll see a sign for The Love Nest. It’s hard to miss.”

Something about the name said through her lips made him want to recoil. The girl scoffed at his unease.

“Relax, it’s just the name left from the old owners. It belongs to the brood now. It’s a good place, a sacred place.” She sighed, looking up and around as if projecting to an imaginary audience. “Not that someone like you would get any of that, I guess. A lot of fledglings hang around there. If your girl can be found, you’ll find her there. If not, she’s already gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” he demanded.

“I mean gone.” she held up the photograph, still folded. “Gone like this.”

She tore the square neatly in two and let the halves flutter to the ground.

“I’m not even supposed to tell you this much, so if you missed your window don’t even think about hanging around here trying to dig out more information. You’re pushing your luck as it is.”

What an angry kid, Sacha thought to himself as he departed. He wasn’t too different when he was that age, but outright threatening someone who was only trying to do good seemed a bit extreme, especially when that someone had a good head of height on you as well. Was it the conditions they lived in that made them so temperamental here? Or just adolescent angst? Hopefully he wouldn’t be staying long enough to find out.

And just how was he planning to leave, even if he was successful, he wondered. He’d have to drive them out on three tires. Ruining his car would be well worth it though if it meant ending this.

Angry girl’s directions turned out to be sound and soon enough Sacha found himself at the door of a closed down club that proudly announced itself as “The Love Nest” in faded pink letters above the door. The windows were boarded up but there were still some old posters for the upcoming live entertainment pinned to the plywood. It appeared the place had been at least marginally more legitimate than Sacha had guessed by the name, while it had been in operation.

Pushing through the double doors the Detective found himself in a gloomy ballroom, styled vaguely like a vintage cabaret club or perhaps someone’s romanticized idea of a 1920s speakeasy. There were a few tables-- standing only by virtue of the bolts that held them to the hardwood-- a bar, and a large circular stage in the middle of it all. Sacha toed aside what he’d thought was a trash bag only to hear a grumbled complaint and find another of the hollow’s orphans crawling out of a sleeping bag on the floor.

“What are you doing here?” the kid asked, with such pointed accusation you’d think he’d personally wronged them. They were wearing an oversized “Fun Town” t-shirt and flannel bottoms with a paw print pattern.

Roused by the noise, some other children began emerging from their own napping spots to investigate.

“Are you a cop?” one asked.

“No, I’m more of a detective,” he replied.

“Sounds like a cop to me. And you look like a cop.”

Sacha frowned. “How so?”

“You’re old,” the kid said. “And you have blood on you.”

He looked down at his hands, his clothes. He saw brown khakis, dusty black loafers, pale patterned button-up shirt. No tie; he’d spilled coffee on it on the drive, hands already shaky from the ill-advised extra caffeine. To his embarrassment, he noticed a faint dampness where the weather and his own nerves had painted sweat across his collar, but no blood.

“It’s okay,” said the first child, yawning. “Snowy sees blood on everyone.”

“I don’t see it, I smell it,” challenged Snowy. She took a deep breath through her nose. “And you stink of it. Dirty blood, blood that wasn’t ready to be shed. Have you ever killed anybody, Mr Detective?”

Sacha fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Have you been talking to a girl in a princess dress?”

“You mean Princess Ladybird?”

“Never mind,” he said quickly, as if simply mentioning that ridiculous name might conjure up her horrible wailing. “I’m looking for someone. Two someones actually.”

He considered taking out his phone but, remembering how Angry Girl had reacted to the photo, decided to try a different approach.

“I was told I might find them here. One is named Renee Deeds and the other is Ana Ferro-Silver, eighteen and fifteen years old. Anything you can tell me about either of them would be a huge help. I’m sort of hoping one will lead me to the other.” He forced a smile.

Kid in the pajamas frowned. “There’s no one with names like that here. You woke us up over something as dumb as that?”

“I don’t think it’s dumb to want to find two girls who might be in a lot of trouble,” he said tersely. “And why were you asleep anyway? It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Growing makes us tired,” Pajamas shot back. They rolled their shoulders. “And sore.”

“And hungry!” added a third child. “Did you bring us any food?”

“Why would I have any food?”

“I heard the gargoyles say you gave Singing Finch a candy bar.”

“It was a protein bar,” he said before he could think to deny it. “What kind of name is ‘Singing Finch’ anyway?”

“It would’ve been Evening Finch, but she tattled so now she’s Singing Finch,” they explained patiently. “She tattled on us and then she tattled on you to the gargoyles and the kestrels. She can’t help it though. She’s a songbird, it’s what they do.”

“So you don’t have any candy?” the other cut in. Sacha put out his empty hands so she could verify and she bit him.

Pajamas laughed as he pulled away with a curse and a cry. “You are dumb. There aren’t any girls in trouble here. You’re the only one in trouble, but that’s because you’re an outsider and a cop, so you probably deserve it.”

Sacha felt a muscle in his jaw tense. He was beginning to think this had all been a huge waste of time. These kids operated on their own kind of logic, their own language, one which was foreign to him.

“Please,” he said. “Please. I know a lot of you are without families, but these girls still have people who care for them, who are looking for them. I have to bring them home.”

The children looked at him, and then a few of them looked at each other, huddling together in hushed conference. The one called Snowy, who was sitting on top of the bar, glared at him, tilting her head as if she were trying to read something written on the side of his head in very small print. He caught himself raising a hand to touch his neck and let it drop self-consciously back to his side.

“If you keep going like this, you might die,” she told him innocently. “Did you know that?”

The presence of the gun against his stomach, empty though it was, made his skin tingle. “I considered the possibility,” he said, and it was the honest truth.

“When you die, will you go to paradise?”

“You’re too young to be thinking this much about blood and death.”

“I’ve seen death.” Her voice was without intonation, no defensiveness or accusation anywhere in her tone. She couldn’t have been any older than ten. “My mom died in front of me. She had a fever, but I stayed cold. That’s why they call me Snowy.” She paused, shrugged one shoulder. “Also because I can eat a whole mouse in one bite, like a snowy owl.”

“Oh,” Sacha said lamely. “I’m- I’m so sorry.”

She gave another shrug. “S’okay, I’m with the brood now and they take care of me just as good as mom would. I’m just saying, you don’t really seem like a guy who’s ready to die for anyone.”

Amongst all the riddles and nonsense, this at least was something he could understand.

“I promise you, I am.”

Pajamas tugged at his sleeve. “Hey, hey Detective, have you ever been to Fun Town?”

He blinked, reeling from the non sequitur. “Excuse me?”

They pointed at the garish logo on their shirt. “‘Fun Town: It’s the funnest place on earth!’ Maybe your friends are there.”

“You’re not going to tell me I should just turn back now? That I’m dumb and the kids I’m looking for are gone forever?” he couldn’t help but snark.

“Don’t listen to Finch, she’s a liar. Nobody’s gone. Different, but not gone.”

Fun Town was an amusement park franchise with a handful of locations all over North America. Had been, that is. They’d had to shut down all their locations more than ten years ago, due in part to the outbreak at the time as well as some unsettling information about the eccentric late founder that came out after his death. Something about swaying elections and pouring company funds into an illicit genetic engineering project. Another day, another megalomaniac billionaire exposé. It had been big news at the time but now it was just another piece of pop culture trivia.

The Fun Town West fairgrounds were now little more than a fancy animatronics graveyard. The rides-- what of them hadn’t been torn down and picked clean by opportunistic scavengers-- were sparkling rusted monuments. Any sense of childhood wonder that remained had long since been siphoned off and sold. The kids didn’t seem to mind though, for how they’d congregated around the place. Maybe Pajamas had a point. It was a big, bright landmark, impossible to miss, and as good a place to search as any.

Three]

The Detective left Snowy and Pajamas and the other strange flock of The Love Nest behind, feeling a grim sense of determination The puckered bite mark on his hand throbbed; the little creep had managed to break skin!

As he navigated his way to the outskirts of the district, Sacha mulled over the interactions he’d had so far. Reluctantly he pulled out his phone to take some notes, ignoring the voicemail notifications cluttering the screen.

The kids call themselves “brood”-- some sort of gang name? The younger ones and/or newcomers to their group seem to be called fledglings. Everyone has a nickname; real names and pictures of faces have some sort of negative significance. And what of the “songbirds”, “kestrels”, etc? Songbirds: spread information. Kestrels: Unknown.

He huffed. None of this was bringing him anywhere closer to the truth about the missing girls. None of it was helping him find Ana.

By the time he power-walked to the long neglected fairgrounds, the hazy sky was becoming downright dour. The clouds had turned the color of smoke. Combine that with the stench of burnt plastic wafting from some of the attractions, it made for an unpleasant effect. He felt that a storm was brewing, and hoped that whatever came he’d be able to find shelter before the sky opened up around him.

He’d been here only twice while it was still in operation; once just him and his parents and once with Maria. By the second visit he’d already lost his sense of wonderment when it came to a day at the fair. The weather was hot and the crowds were annoying and all the games were rigged. Yet there was still a part of him that felt deeply sad to see what Fun Town had become. This was the sort of place that should’ve been beautiful forever, even as the children grew up and out of their love for it.

As he wove through the rows of darkened kiosks, the fairgrounds suddenly erupted into light. Sacha startled and shielded his eyes. The tired bulbs cracked and fizzled and when he looked up again the desiccated corpse of Fun Town had been revived in a great pulse of electricity. Against the backdrop of perpetual gloom the friendly colors were all the more headache-inducing, and somewhere a tinny recording of calliope music began to play. It all made Sacha’s skin crawl.

Against his every instinct, he let the music lead him to a shack next to the arcade with a mounted loudspeaker, the door marked with a firm “employees only”. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. Inside, another brood girl in coveralls was fiddling with a fuse box and leaning her hip against a desk with an old CCTV. The security system was so antiquated that it didn’t look like it should turn on at all, yet there upon the pixelated screen Sacha could still make out the shape of himself entering the park on a loop.

The girl turned around, flipping a frizzy head of hair over her shoulder. Although, it turned out she wasn’t so much a girl as a young woman, pushing against the line between teenage and adulthood. His gut reaction was relief. This might be the closest thing to a rational adult he would find around here. Hopefully she’d be of more help than the others.

Come to think of it, he realized, he’d never considered what happened to the Orphan’s Hollow kids once they grew up. Surely there must be some adults here, somewhere. But then, everyone who’d met him so far had treated him as a foreign invader. Were all adults so unwelcome, as he’d assumed, or was there something about him in particular?

The most rational assumption was that the homeless kids simply became homeless adults. No need for any additional fanfare. They would graduate from the Hollows and go on to squat in other parts of the city. There was certainly no shortage of slums these days, he thought glumly.

Did any ex-runaways ever try to go home, those that still had them? Did that Renee ever think about home?

“What ho, outsider!” the teen greeted. Sacha felt himself relax despite himself, so glad to be met with at least one friendly face.

“‘What ho’?” he parroted lamely.

“It’s theatre-speak for ��wassup’. As in, what the hell are you doing in brood territory?”

She moved quickly. He didn’t notice the knife until it was tucked under his chin, pointed at his throat.

Sacha’s back hit the wall and he put up his hands in surrender. “Hold on, I’m not looking for a fight.”

“Oh yeah?” she giggled. She wrenched up the front of his shirt. “What’s this then? A prop? If I shoot it, will a little flag come out that says ‘bang’?”

She un-holstered the pistol and pointed it at his forehead.

“That’s not a toy,” he said slowly. “Just a little insurance. Like your knife there, I’m sure. I don’t think either of us wants anybody to get hurt.”

“This?” She tossed it in the air and caught it. “Nah, this is part of the act. Tonight, I’m a knife thrower. I’ve never been a knife thrower before. I hope it goes well.”

Sacha tried to speak, but the girl pressed the cold flat of the blade to his lips.

“The older girls put on shows for the fledglings. Sometimes here in Fun Town, sometimes over in the Nest, or up on the rooftops when the weather is nice. I’d invite you, but I don’t think you’d be welcome.” She adjusted her grip again so that the knife was touching the tip of his nose. “All day there’ve been whispers about some kind of detective guy putting his nose in our business.”

“I don’t care about you brood kids do here.”

“Liar.”

“I swear, I don’t. I’m just trying to find someone. I’m not even a real detective anymore,” he confessed. “I wouldn’t tell anyone what you’re doing here. Even if I did, no one would believe me. I’m nobody.”

The knife thrower gave a big, hearty laugh, and Sacha’s throat tightened with fear. He didn’t consider himself a violent person, but over his career he’d come to blows with enough unruly targets and bitter clients alike that he knew when someone was posturing, and when someone was really out for blood. Normally there was a clear indicator of one kind or another; a tightening of the jaw, a certain nervous tick, a look in their eyes.

But this girl he couldn’t get a read on at all. He hoped that meant she was still on the fence about the subject.

Struggling to keep his voice level he said, “You don’t have to do this. Something like this will haunt you your whole life, you know, and you’ve got so much life left. You’re still just a kid--”

She reared her hand back and struck at his head with the butt of the pistol. Sacha dodged. It slammed into the fuse box she’d been working on instead and the lights went out. Taking advantage of the darkness, he shoved past her and in a stroke of blind fortune found the door. There was a sound then, like the rush of wind in his ears. Then a sharp flash of pain as a flying knife split the cartilage of one ear.

He stumbled and hit the pavement. When Sacha turned around, hand clutched to his head, he saw the young woman’s silhouette bracketed by two iridescent black wings. Again that sound, ferocious wingbeats stirring the air. All he saw were two but it sounded like hundreds, a massive flock taking off in perfect synchronicity.

“It’s really frustrating when people don’t take me seriously,” said the winged creature as she approached him. Maybe it was an effect of the many colored lights, but her skin appeared to have a glossy sheen to it, like an oil painting in motion. “But you look like you’re starting to get it now.”

“What the hell are you?” Sacha asked with a mix of horror and feverish reverence.

“What do you think I am?”

The thought came to him unbidden. It was an insane thought, one he didn’t even truly believe in, yet this was an insane situation. “The angel of death.”

That gave her pause. “You’re not right, but you’re not really wrong either I guess. Truth be told, I’m heaven on earth. Maybe I’ll cut you some slack if you worship me”

A wing brushed over his skin, however faintly, and it felt warm and real as the blood cooling on his skin. Not ethereal or dreamlike as he might’ve expected but so real, and all the more hideous for it. He shuddered and said nothing.

The false angel, this predatory animal, took a step back. She spun the pistol around one long finger until it slipped and fell to the ground. She looked at it for a moment, as if surprised.

“Huh. It was lighter than I expected,” she said. Then she kicked it aside. “You win this one I guess. I’ll let you go.”

He stared at her, mouth agape, sure it was some trick.

“What? You don’t believe me. I put it in fate’s hand, and for some reason it looks like fate wants to keep you alive a little longer. It’s not how I saw this going, but I can roll with some improv.” She put up her hands. “Don’t bother groveling. I won’t kill you even if you beg. I know guys like you love punishment. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Here… in Fun Town? Or, are you asking why I’m alive?”

She laughed. She so loved laughing. “Morbid! You’re morbid, man. I mean, why are you here among the brood? At… what do the outsiders call it? The Orphan Hole?” she snickered. “You kind of stick out like a sore thumb.”

“I’m trying to find someone,” Sacha repeated quietly. He’d said the line so many times he felt it was starting to lose its meaning. “And to make up for something I did.”

“Well you should’ve said so in the first place! If you’re looking to atone you need to meet with the broodmother. If you hurry, you might still be able to catch her. Tonight’s going to be kind of a crazy night once it kicks off, but if you plead your case I’m sure she’ll hear you out.

“I have to keep setting up here. You go on ahead.” She pointed out in the direction he’d come from. “It’s a straight shot to Paradiso. You can tell her the angel of death sent you.”

She spared him one last smirk and then shot up into the air like an arrow loosed from a taut bowstring.

Or a bullet from a gun, even. Sacha considered the discarded pistol for a moment. It seemed so useless now, just a hunk of metal and plastic, just a prop. He walked away without it, pain pulsing dully from his ear. His journey was nearly over.

Time dragged on as he walked, but not enough for him to find the space to contend with what he’d seen. That girl, that creature. She was no angel, that much he was certain of. Angels didn’t attack strangers with a knife, he didn’t think.

What he wasn’t certain of was… just about everything else. Was he meant to understand that all these girls, these brood, were some kind of bird-beasts taking human shape? Was everyone he’d met an imposter masquerading in the form of a child? Or did they start out as ordinary children and then transform somehow?

He half hated himself for even entertaining such wild ideas, but he had little other choice. “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” wasn’t that so? In any case, speculation did him little good at this point. He could only hope that this paradise and “broodmother” the girl had spoken of could give him some answers.

Four]

Just when Sacha was beginning to wonder if the knife throwing angel imposter was fully fucking with him, he found his destination: The Paradiso Hotel, although the damaged neon sign now read only PRDIO.

The building was tall and narrow, so wedged between its neighbors that it looked like any moment it might be crushed. The brickwork was crumbling as it was. Creeping plant life climbed the sides and snuck in through broken windows. The ominous, weathered shape of gargoyles watched from above, jutting strangely out of high corners. This place must have been in dire straits long before it had been taken over by the brood. At the same time, looking at it Sacha got the impression that it had been something glorious in its heyday.

There was something almost inviting about the faint glow that came from the topmost windows, filtering pink light through heavy red curtains, and yet Sacha was terrified. His hands trembled on the railing as he climbed the winding stairway.

The higher he went, the more his surroundings began to change. The carpet beneath his feet grew soft, damp, dipping slightly with his weight, and when he looked down he found it thick with patchy moss. Mushrooms sprouted from the junction where the floor met the wall. Sacha tore his foot from a tangle of roots he’d caught himself in and wondered, when was the last time he’d seen so much wild living plantlife in person?

Finally he reached the top of the tower and opened the door not onto identical hallways and bland hotel decor, but onto a sprawling private library.

The detective could hardly see the walls for the shelves, lined top to bottom with books upon books upon books. There was a desk against the far wall piled high with precarious stacks of paper. They overflowed and spilled onto the loamy floor, whispering under his every step.

Beyond a towering skylight, storm clouds billowed, but that wasn’t of any concern to the flock of brood congregated in their wake. The scene looked like something rendered from stained glass, at least a dozen girls with wings of all colors stretched out and fluttering idly behind them as they sat around some sort of shrub or young sapling that was, quite impossibly, growing out of the floor. Its tender boughs bore tiny fruit, several perfectly round red orbs plump and shiny with juice.

The room smelled like a greenhouse, like heat and green growth, flowers and fruit. Intrigue drew Sacha nearer and he detected an undercurrent of something metallic as well. He rounded the desk and his stomach plummeted. The tree was not growing out of the floor. It was growing out of a human corpse nested in a bed of soil.

The Detective choked on a gasp and the brood children looked up. Their hands and knees were dark from their work. A flash of gore passed before Sacha’s eyes and he flinched, expecting to be struck down where he stood. When no killing blow came, morbid desire took hold of him and he took a second look. The tree was still there, and the body, but the body was not as he’d thought. It looked dry, mummified, more root than rot. Still staring, one of the brood girls plucked a berry and crushed it between her teeth. The smell intensified, iron and something sweet, heady as any wine.

One of the girl-beasts stood, and she seemed older than the rest somehow, not just in body but in her eyes, gray as the growing storm and so clear that Sacha feared if he looked too long he would fall through them. Her face was smooth and free of wrinkles or worry, but the long hair that fell about her shoulders was white as bone. She wore something like a shawl that hung lazily off her shoulders and down past her knees. Unlike the others, she had no wings.

“So you’re the one all my girls have been making such a fuss about,” she said, and her voice was a choir, her words an indictment.

Sacha felt a strange spike of anger at this creature that looked like a woman and talked like a mystic and was neither. “And you’re the broodmother, whatever that means! Your girls make you out to some kind of god. But you’re not a god, and you’re not their mother. I don’t know what you are and I don’t care. I just want to know why you’re doing this.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re- you’re taking them!” he stammered furiously. The pieces were coming together, albeit in a hectic jumble. “All the missing girls! You abduct them, or call them to you, or something! It changes them!” He flung his hand out towards the body. “You’re a killer! You're some kind of crazy death cultist and you turn these kids into killers!”

The broodmother quirked her head to the side, not quite smiling. “You talk with a lot of confidence for a man with only half the story.”

“Then explain it to me,” he demanded. “Make it make sense. Because I’ve been running around this madhouse all day and so far, nothing does.”

She hummed to herself, considering. “If you’re so eager for a tale, let’s start with yours.”

One of the other little brood leapt up and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Is it time for a story, Nightingale?”

“Yes, I think so. Do you know which book to get?”

“D for Detective!” she cheered.

“Very good.”

The girl scampered off and returned with a big book bound in red. Nightingale took it and ran her thumb over the pages, flipping it open with a calm certainty that boiled Sacha’s blood.

“Let’s see… Detective Sacha Ferro. You were born in this very city, had a fairly normal childhood until,” She traced the tip of her finger along the page and Sacha noticed for the first time how it curled, a ghastly hook-like talon. “Oh, that’s right. There was an accident. Your parents… Tragic. Just terrible.”

Astonishingly, she sounded as though she meant it.

“You were in high school at the time. But your sister, Maria, she was still just a kid. You always struggled to relate to her as a brother, with her being so much younger than you, but after that day you had to become like a parent too. You really stepped up, it looks like. That didn’t change the fact that you were still a kid yourself. You made mistakes, and the two of you grew apart.”

Shame curdled in Sacha’s gut. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The most he was capable of was curling his hands into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

“Get out of my head.”

“I’m not in it. Frankly, I’m not that interested in your editorializing. This is the truth. Now, where was I?

“You’d always dreamed of being a police detective, like the ones on TV,” she continued. “But became disillusioned with the idea once you grew older. So you became a private eye, but that too got old. You were tired of acquiring blackmail material for shady characters and helping angry wives catch their cheating husbands and so on. Meanwhile little Maria had grown up and moved on and the neighborhood you’d lived in all your life was going more and more downhill by the year. You wanted out.

“Then you got a call from a Mrs Gloria Deeds.” Her eyes widened dramatically. “She wanted you to track down her poor missing daughter. The Deedses were wealthy, desperate, and just perfect. You requested an advance payment, a big one, big enough for a down payment on a new life and the gas to get you there. They didn’t even blink as they pulled out the checkbook. It was all so easy.

“You took the Deedses money and you ran away. Forget the kid, chances were she’d turn up on her own in a week or two after getting whatever rebellious phase out of her system. That’s not what happened though, is it? More and more girls started disappearing. Renee wasn’t the first though, or was she? Could she have been the catalyst for all this? You’d never know for certain. The wondering ate you up inside, but not enough to make you turn back.

“You got yourself a new apartment and a regular nine-to-five job. You quit smoking. You adopted a dog. You started letting people in. You even called up Maria begging to be a part of her life again and shockingly, she agreed! You started spending weekends with her and her wife Kara and their sweet little girl Ana. Your mother’s name, wasn’t it? Well, anyway.

“Everything was all going so terribly well until just a few days ago. Nearly five years on the dot since you took the Deeds case and Maria calls you in tears, tells you that Ana has gone missing. You drop the phone, your blood running cold. She’s fifteen. Just a year or two and she’d be out of the target demographic. Neither you or your sister has set foot in this city in years. What are the odds she got taken? But you can’t let it go until you know for sure.

“Feeling frantic, you pull up the stuff from the Deeds case for the first time in what feels like an eternity. You do some digging. Renee Deeds was never found, nor were any of the others who vanished after her. The cops are still as apathetic and incompetent as you left them. They’re blaming it all on an epidemic of gang activity stemming from somewhere the locals have started calling ‘Orphan’s Hollow’. It didn’t used to be called that though, did it? Do you remember? How gutted you were when you found out? No way you could tell Maria where you were going. Back home, back to where it all started.”

“Stop.” Sacha found his voice at last, though to what end?

Nightingale looked up at him, feigning shock. “But don’t you want to know how it ends? Whatever does happen to the guilt-ridden detective trying to right a wrong? Hoping against hope that if he can fulfill the promise he broke that all of this will be set to rights, and little Ana will return home with him safe and sound.”

“Please, please, stop.” He covered his ears and felt the cut throb against his fingers.

“You’re not really in any position to be making demands, Detective. You came to me. You followed my song. It doesn’t usually work on grown-ups, you know, but you were always sort of a special case I think. I’m glad I kept an eye on you. This has turned out more interesting than I thought.”

She crossed the room to stand before him, cupping his hands with her own. “You never really stopped being that kid, did you Sacha? You run and run and just keep him right there, locked away in your chest. Look at me Sacha. Look at me. You need to be a grown-up now. I don’t have her, Sacha. I don’t have Ana.”

Slowly Sacha’s hands dropped to his sides, his eyes wide and wet. “What?”

“That’s right,” the broodmother said cheerily. “Ana isn’t here. In fact, she’s at home with her moms right now. Maria’s been trying to call you for days now. You were too ashamed to pick up, couldn’t tell her how this was all your fault. It’s not actually, by the way. You were a self-serving bastard, but not enough to bring down that kind of karmic wrath.

“Although I’d’ve been happy to have her, Ana already has two loving mothers, and an uncle that… has his moments.” She patted him on the shoulder. “The children who follow my song aren’t like that. They come willingly, and they change because change is what they need. I won’t pretend it’s not a messy process. Sometimes blood needs to be spilled to create a paradise. But ‘be not afraid’, Detective. I would never let my little angels get hurt.”

“I still don’t understand,” he all but wept. “What about Renee Deeds?”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Nightingale groaned. “‘What are you? What are you? Where’s the girl? Pow! Blam! I’m a big scary action hero and I’m here to save you or kill you trying!’”

She shook her head. “You’re not the hero of this story, Detective. The girl you knew as Renee doesn’t exist anymore, but she’s alive, not because of your intervention, or lack thereof. Not even in spite of it. What am I? What is she? And what are we when we’re together? A thing that lives without your permission. You need to understand for it to be true.”

She looked at him then with all the sympathy of a mother comforting a crying child. She handed off the storybook to one of her young attendants, and as she turned around she swept aside the cover of her shawl to reveal her bare back. Her skin was twisted with badly healed scars, the flesh raised in the shape of two jagged cuts curving around the shape of her scapula.

“Here’s another story for you. Once upon a time,” she said. “A ship of men was cast from its course and lost at sea. Just when it seemed all hope was lost, they found themselves on the shores of a mysterious island full of the tallest, greenest trees they’d ever seen. The people there had wings like a bird, and they were so beautiful and kind that the men decided they must be angels, and this was paradise.

“The angels let them stay there a while and lick their wounds, but warned them that they couldn't remain forever. At first they accepted this, but as the time to leave for home grew nearer they became obsessed with the wonders of the island and couldn’t bear to go without taking a piece with them.

“So enamoured by the beauty of the angels, yet fearing their heavenly wrath, they lured away the smallest one and imprisoned her in the lower decks of the ship. When she realized what had happened, she tried to escape, so they broke her wings until just moving them caused her horrible pain. She did get free in the end, but only once the ship returned to port and by then she was far, far from home and knew not how to find her way back.

“She knew she wasn’t safe among the wingless people, so she hid herself away until nightfall, singing her song by the light of the moon in hopes that one day someone would return her call. When someone finally did, it wasn’t at all who she expected. It was a young human girl, a daughter of man, who recognized her song of pain and loneliness because these were things she knew well herself. When the angel and the girl finally found each other, the angel bid her to cut her useless wings and drink her blood, and together they escaped on new wings.”

As she spoke, the storm outside grew stronger until the wind rattled the very walls, knocking books loose from their shelves. The brood, with their many colored wings and many sweet voices, began to sing in wordless harmony, a hymn from such unfathomable depths and dizzying heights that Sacha’s legs nearly gave out beneath him.

“Don’t be sad, my mourning dove. This is a happy story. The Nightingale fell in love with the Swiftlet, the song and the storm, and they carried each other to a place where they could make a new paradise, a garden of their own.”

That was when the ceiling began to cave in. Sacha fell to his knees and covered his head with his hands, blinded by what he was sure was a bolt of lightning. When he looks back on it later, he won’t be so sure.

Again came that sound, the torrent of wind and a hundred wings beating within it. Sacha forced himself to raise his head, squinting against the light, and there he saw dancing in the open air above the wreckage-- for dancing was the only way he could think to describe it-- a girl he once knew. Though they were less than strangers, especially now, he recognized her kind dark eyes, her secretive smile.

Her hair was loose, a halo of electrified black curls, and her wings a dusky brown with the sharp, precise plumage of a swift. Her legs still didn’t move so freely as the rest of her, but she wasn’t bothered. She didn’t need them.

Nightingale ran and leapt and took her in her arms with a lover’s embrace. Off a ways behind them, their brood took flight as well, swooping and shrieking their delight as if they were a single entity, metamorphosing into something new, something so nearly divine.

Sacha did weep then. His vision blurred with the shape of his grief, then his longing, a child and a man and a hair’s width away from paradise. Eventually the storm subsided, but he didn’t see the angel and her love again after that. He thought perhaps that was for the better.

The sky cleared. The sun came out. Elsewhere, young girls planted gardens and played games and put on shows. The world went on, however changed.

This is where past and present collide. In the aftermath of a mystery, a man named Sacha Ferro picks up a book from in amidst the rubble and holds it up to the light. He flips to D for Detective and begins to read, anxious to find out what happens next.

Epilogue]

“Everyone settle down. Places! Starling, for the last time, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ doesn’t call for a knife thrower.”

“And why not?” She wiggles the blade in her direction. “This show’s so boring. Everyone already knows how it goes. Let me spice it up a bit.”

Finch rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Just, don’t jump ahead of your cue this time. And stop making up extra lines. You almost blew it last time.”

Starling sticks her tongue out but she has a skip in her step when she returns backstage. On the other side of the curtain, the audience is starting to take their seats. There aren’t enough chairs-- and most of the “chairs” are actually old boxes and things to begin with-- so some of them have to stand. An older brood allows Pajamas to climb up onto her shoulders, reminding her to be mindful of her wings, which are still fairly fresh and tender where they join with her back.

“Greetings, Princess,” says the fortune teller Resplendent, dressed in her good theatre clothes, as she sits down beside her. “Who’s this?”

Princess Ladybird holds up the dented ornament head. “This is Jessika. The doctors managed to save her but she needs an emergency body transplant, stat! I’m going to find her a new one after the show.”

She nods. “Greetings, Lady Jessika. I hope you have a speedy recovery.”

Ladybird holds the doll head up to her ear and hums as if in response to something.

“Can I hear too?”

She obliges, and Resplendent listens. There’s a quiet buzzing from inside the hollow tin skull and it echoes hauntingly in the emptiness.

She whispers, “There’s a bug inside of Jessika’s brain keeping her alive. That’s why she can still talk without a body. If Jessika dies, the bug will get out. Ick!”

The other girl chuckles. “Your name is a kind of bug, you know.”

“No! It’s a bird! Lady-bird!”

She bites back another laugh and points towards the stage. “Shh, the show’s starting.”

Sure enough, the songbird choir starts up, bidding the chattering spectators to quiet down and listen up. A girl comes out on stage wearing a corner of the curtain as a makeshift hood. She says,

“It is dark inside a wolf’s belly.”

#dark fantasy #horror #angels #short fiction #novella #dystopia #long fic #mystery #My writing #writeblr #original fiction

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legitlaur · 5 years ago

Text

Deception 3 // Mysterio

pairing: Quentin Beck/Mysterio x Reader

word count: 1.9k

warnings: none

Summary: Quentin helps you when you have a panic attack and stands up for Fury for you. When you confess feelings for him he debates whether or not to tell you the truth

<<<<Previous Next>>>>

____________________

Agent Hill looked up from her tablet for only a split second, “Finally, we gotta move.”

“Where are we going now?” You and Quentin asked in unison.

“Prague.” Fury barked behind you.

You turned around, “The Fire Elemental is going to Prague? What about the kid? I, um.” You turned to Quentin, “I’m feeling a little, a little light-headed.”

He grabbed you and sat you down next to him on the closest chair, “I think she's sick,” he told Fury, “I better take to Prague. It’ll be less chaotic, but I promise we will get there in no time.”

“Unacceptable, agent y/l/n is fine. She and you will travel with everyone else.”

Quentin stood up, leaving you nothing to lean on. He stood eye level with your boss, “y/n is a human being, not just an agent. Her health is a top priority and will come before the mission.”

“I’ve left you a car. You have 24 hours to get to Prague.”

“Thank you, sir,” you muttered.

Quentin rushed to you, “Let's get you back to the hotel room. Once I get you situated, I’ve got some errands I’ve got to run.”

You didn’t remember much, everything was a blur. Quentin put you in a car, buckled your seatbelt and held your hand. The next thing you knew you were in a different hotel than the one you slept the previous night.

“I’ll be back soon, get some sleep.” He tucked you into bed and kissed your forehead.

_____

You couldn’t sleep very well. The stress of everything kept making you think and stress more. If your mind calmed down enough to sleep the nightmares came back. Always the same nightmare.

“I love you y/n.” your ex would always say.

You would always reply with, “I love you too.”

He would pull a gun on you, the barrel touching your forehead. “I’m doing this because I love you. You need to get out of this place, this world its. This world is full of evil.”

You grip the knife in your hand, “You’re the evil.” when his back is turned you drive the knife into him. Breaking flesh you pushed the knife in further when you let go. You stood over his body, watching it thud onto the glass floor.

Shattering your world.

“Quentin?” you called into the empty darkness of your hotel room.

There was no response. Your heart began racing, tears came crashing down.

He left me?

He, he lied to me?

It was all a trick!

Your throat was closing, unable to breathe you tried gasping for air. This was the end. You would die of suffocation, all the lies and illusions you’d been fed were blocking your airway. Life was being sucked right out of you. There was nothing, you were ready. Finally.

The light the bright, you squinted from the pain. Something warm was holding you, your fragile body was pressed up against something warm and sturdy.

It wasn’t until his hands were running through your hair that you could hear someone speaking.

“Sssh. You’re safe y/n, I’ll protect you.” His silky voice kept repeating.

You didn’t speak, instead, you grabbed his shirt. Pulling him closer, he wrapped his arms around you even tighter, “I won’t let you go.”

You stayed there until fell asleep in his arms. When you woke up you were in the car again.

“Good morning,” the silky voice welcomed you back to life.

You rubbed your eyes and sat up, “How far until Prague?”

He took your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours, “We’ll be there soon.”

You kept looking at your shoes, “I’m really sorry you have to deal with me. I can’t be left alone for like what? An hour?”

“Don’t do that.” His voice sounded angry.

“Do what?”

He sighed, “Blame yourself. It’s not your fault. Remember I told you how I was a mess when my wife died?”

You nodded.

“I didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, I had panic attacks all the time. Much worse than what happened to you today. I truly think if my world was still around they would’ve locked me up. Things get messy when you have powers and you freak out.” He began laughing, “You can’t blame yourself, he was probably HYDRA before you fell in love with him. There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“You’re really good at the whole pep-talk thing. I really owe you, Quentin. You’ve practically saved my life.”

He squeezed your hand, a feeling becoming so familiar you were scared to not have it. “You don’t owe me anything y/n. I’m doing what Fury should have done long ago.”

You fell back asleep and woke up in Prague. Quentin reminded you that food was a thing, he watched you eat a bowl of fruit. Once you had some energy the two of you heading to meet Fury.

You were completely aware that he would yell at you in front of everyone and tell you to get your act together, his boots stomping into the room gave you a moment to take a deep breath and prepare yourself for the lecture of a lifetime.

Instead of hearing a rough voice, you heard Quentin’s soft and gentle voice, “Fury, may I talk to you privately?”

You grabbed his shoulder, “What are you doing?”

His blue eyes showed the sorrow he felt, “Something someone should have done long ago.”

Fury followed him out of the room.

“What was that about?” Hill mumbled.

You shrugged, “Do you need any help?”

“Make sure all agents are accounted for and send them all to the quinjet. There are lots of things to be unloaded”

You went to work, this was something you could easily do. Not fieldwork, but management. If only Fury understood that you have other skills and you’re more than just a field agent.

You finished gathering everyone to the quinjet, all that was left was to facilitate the group.

“Y/n pack your bags, I’m sending you home. Await further instructions once you land in DC” Fury's voice called out.

You spun around, Quentin was behind him smiling at you. “Wait, what? You’re sending me home? Why?”

Fury turned to Quentin, “Mr. Beck brought up some concerns about your involvement in this mission. He has asked to escort you to the airport. Go.”

Before he changed his mind you rushed Quentin to the car you were in “What did you say to him?” You threw your tablet in the bag and put your hair in a ponytail. “Fury never changes his mind, you must be very persuasive.”

His gentle hands took yours, “Sit down,” he guided you to the passenger seat, “I told him about your condition, and that you are too unstable to be a field agent. When he didn’t agree, I told him I would back out if he didn’t send you home.”

Your throat went dry, “Thank you.”

He squeezed your hands, “You need help. I’m going to get if for you, but first, let’s get you home.”

Quentin held your hand the whole car ride. You were beginning to question whether you were more than friends.

“Quentin?”

He took his eyes off the road, “Yeah?”

Inhaling you asked, “Why are you being so kind to me?”

There was a small smile creeping onto his face, “When I first saw your photo in the file Fury gave me I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

Your eyes were pooling with tears, “Beck.”

He pulled into the airport parking lot, “I kept reading and you were so talented.” Changing the gear into park he turned, his whole body was facing towards you, “You were even more beautiful in person. Then when I saw you crying in the hall, I knew it was something serious. A SHIELD agent doesn’t break down easily.”

The tears finally fell, with a mix of crying you laughed, “You’d be surprised.”

Quentin wiped away your tears, “y/n why are you crying?” he almost chuckled.

You grabbed his hand before it left your cheek, “I just think it’s crazy. Somehow I am falling for a man from a different world, and that’s not even the craziest part.”

“What’s the craziest part?”

You weren’t even sure if what you were about to say is true, but if it wasn’t then you definitely needed to go home. “I think he’s falling for me too.”

“He’s falling,” Quentin’s other hand grabbed your chin, pulling your face closer to him, “Is this okay?”

Your heart was racing, your voice came out as a small whisper, “yes.”

His lips pressed against yours. He was so gentle and soft. It was quick and sweet, a perfect kiss.

“Please don’t hate me but, I need to complete this mission.” You cupped his cheeks in your hands, “I’m eternally grateful to you for standing up to Fury. But I’ve never failed a mission and I don’t want to ruin that streak, also I don’t think I can take care of myself as well as you can take care of me.”

He put his hands over yours, “I don’t hate you, I understand.” He let go and turned to face the steering wheel.

“Quentin?”

“I need to think,” his voice was more rough than usual.

You felt the silence weighing you down, something bad was happening. He must have planned to send you home, kiss you once and send you home with no strings attached.

“If you don’t want anything to do with me, please just tell me the truth. I can handle it, I can’t handle this silence.”

“You want the truth?” He sounded scared.

“That's all I’ve ever wanted.” you were nearly yelling.

He reversed out of the parking lot and sped through the city, “The truth y/n, I’m afraid you’re not going to like.”

You interrupted, “Where are you taking me?”

“One thing I need you to know before is that everything I feel about you, that I want to help you, is all true, 100 percent.”

“Quentin! What are you talking about, and where are you taking me?” You were screaming now.

He pulled up to a warehouse, “To the truth, come with me.”

He opened his car door, ran around and opened yours, “Please,” he reached his hand out towards you.

“I’m not going to get murdered right?” You half-joked.

His smile faded, “No but you’ll want to murder me.” His hand pulled you close to him as he walked into the warehouse.

“My name is Quentin Beck, I was born on this Earth. There is no multiverse, that we know of. I don’t have powers, and Mysterio is a trick.” His let go of your hand and ran up to a table with multiple computers on it.

“Mysterio is a trick?” You repeated to yourself.

He was trying feverishly, “I’ll show you. I wanted to give the world something to believe in. Iron Man is gone, so many people have lost hope. I want to give the world hope again.”

“People believe you? Fury? No, I saw first hand, your powers are real.” You argued.

“It's easy to fool people when they’re already fooling themselves.”

Your lip trembled, “Quentin, you lied to me.”

He ran up to you and grabbed your hands, pulling them up to his chest, “I know, but it won’t work if it's not kept a secret, and now that you know you can help. Then I’ll take care of you and we can be together.”

“Can we?”

a/n: i actually have no clue if I should do a next part, lmk

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bellsybuilds · 6 years ago

Text

[Supernatural] No one will know the violence it took (M, Michael/Adam, 3.8k)

No one will know the violence it took (Can also be read on AO3)

Michael / Adam Milligan (M)

With thanks to Hillywood for actually freeing our boy from the Cage, I don’t mind writing for this fandom once more. So long as I don’t have to address actual canon because have no idea what’s going on.

Part 5 of Somewhere to Begin

(“I'm sorry. I'm sorry you are who you are and you got mixed up in all of this. I'm sorry you decided to forgive me and I fell for it. I'm staying away. What else do you want me to say?”)

Adam bites the inside of his lower lip and blinks his vision clear of that borrowed memory. He shakes off the remembered lash between his shoulders of the cold wind on that dark night, the empty street spilling before them. Michael hovering, angry and shaken, uncharacteristically at a loss.

Sometimes Adam wonders if Castiel really did him a favour downloading all of that to his brain.

(”What else do you want me to say?”)

How does Michael transition from a psychopathic mass murderer to a man who even considers that he’s at fault? Who pleads with Adam to forgive him? How does Adam even inspire the thought in Michael’s head that he doesn’t want to torture Adam and play with the already fraying threads of his mind?

“It starts with you, Adam,” Castiel unhelpfully reminds him just when Adam thinks the angel has finally given up the cause. “The war turns when you get him on our side--”

They’re three boxes through unloading their supply run in late winter, running up and down the stairs from Sam and the trailer back to their food pantry.

Spring is just around the corner. Adam can taste it in the thaw of the morning, that minuscule difference in degrees that settles on his skin like mist instead of frost. It couldn’t come soon enough. Being cooped up underground is driving him stir crazy with the seasons dragging longer in an beleaguered stream of overcast days.

Adam just has to wonder aloud when this might all end and he can eat some real food again. At least if they had some fresh ingredients, he could cook them a real meal. And somehow the angel contorted that question into the Bigger Picture.

Doesn’t Castiel understand rhetoric?

“Well maybe I can’t, okay? And maybe I don’t want to."

Adam whirls, shoving the box of canned vegetables on the central table of their bunker. A pile of jars pickling sun-dried tomatoes and fruit jostle at the corner. Kevin would be disappointed if they toppled; Adam glares at them until he's certain they won't.

"He’s a psycho. He messes with people--he kills them and he enjoys it, speaking from experience.” He throws his hands up in dismissal. “And I don’t want another fucking cent of that guy. I just wanted a normal life helping people, but failing that: a quiet after where I could be with my mom. Since I don’t get that either maybe the least I can ask is people stop trying to shove that fucking maniac down my throat again. And when I say people, I really mean you -- it’s just you, Castiel. I will turn up to your shitty war and keep the kitchens stocked, I’ll oil the gun barrels and do your research, I’ll keep Kevin safe. But stop trying to make Michael and me happen. It’s not gonna happen.”

Castiel stalls at the top of the stairs, arms full of canned beans. His face pulls in contrition, “Adam--”

Adam throws up a hand up signalling the conversation over, mouth terse as he storms off, boots stomping on his ascent of the tiled stair. He’ll feel bad about putting that look on the angel’s face and making Castiel put the rest of their food away by himself, but for now he’s done.

///

One day, the war will end, humans and all other species will have peace, and the archangel Michael will stop invading Adam’s dreams like it’s his regular pit stop. But--dragging his hands down his face in exhaustion, Adam laments--it is not this day.

“Your vessels are no more than marionettes in a storefront: stars and dust collecting memory as you drag yourselves towards death. The oldest of us understand what you really are… we can rearrange your atoms, however we like.”

Michael stands in the open living-slash-dining space of Adam’s motel room with all the grandeur of a self-important, ageless being unaccustomed to sharing the spotlight. Adam doesn’t have the heart or the care to tell him this isn’t the Globe Theatre. Michael’s hand turns on the air, twisting some unseen dial to a design in his mind’s eye. His dark eyes gently thin on his spectator.

“I could unmake you. And make you again. Over and over. Until I was done with you.”

Doesn’t Michael get tired of this?

Slouched against the headboard of his bed and tucked beneath the sheets, Adam draws his knees up with a slow, heavy sigh. “You’ve done that already--down below. Or is ‘the oldest of us’ also the first to forget?”

It’s ten-past-ten, he would really like to get some proper shut-eye. He hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he tried to make reparations with the First Nations tribe they pissed off when Adam’s brothers trespassed on a hunt three weeks ago. So many elders and families to apologise to. Things Dean just did not care about.

Michael’s expression loses its bright, faraway glaze, focusing on his former vessel. His mouth curls in a smile. “It didn’t all hurt, if you remember.”

Where is Michael going with this?

Adam blinks back at him, careful not to flinch. He must present only a portrait of tired exasperation.

“Never said I didn’t,” he concedes, and turns his back, burrowing down into his thin cocoon for the evening. It still rails against his instincts to show even a figment of the angel his back -- his subconscious doesn’t know that Michael isn’t really here and bears no real threat against him.

The creak of floorboards make him tense. He shuts his eyes and bites his tongue when the mattress dips with weight.

Michael is not really here. He can’t hurt him.

“Maybe I’ve been trying the wrong approach,” the angel's timbre softens, warm and low. "Too much stick. Not enough carrot.”

Adam refuses to react to the presence radiating heat at his back through the sheets. His fingers clutch a little tighter to the duvet tugged tight around his shoulders.

Michael is not here.

“Good night, Michael,” he mutters tightly in dismissal.

Warm breath stirs the hair above his ear, and years of conditioning tell Adam to remain as still and quiet as death, to wait--wait, hold his breath and pray, wait--

He’s not real. He’s not real.

“I’m coming for you, little Adam,” Michael promises him in a soundless breath. “I’m going to find you. And I’ll make you so glad I did.”

///

“I’m really glad you’re not seeing that vampire anymore,” Kevin tells him when they’re packing the small barrels of rock salt and mountain ash into the back of Sam’s truck.

Adam narrows a look at his not-quite-maybe-friend, and glances around to see who may be in hearing distance. Thankfully, his brothers have disappeared back into the bunker and Castiel….

Adam has stopped caring about Castiel.

“Kevin. Dude.”

He doesn’t clarify that he was never ‘seeing’ Michael; his dignity isn’t that fragile, and he knows what Kevin means: I’m glad you’ve stopped sneaking away and risking your life to barter with that guy.

Adam doesn’t clarify that since they ran out of sage to ward the places they sleep, Michael has been invading his dreams instead. Well, Adam is the only one who ran out. More was supposed to arrive in the latest stock run but Sam’s supplier didn’t come through. Adam just has to hold out for a few more days. In the meantime, Sam needs it more than him.

Adam may also have failed to disclose this recent development.

It’s just as well. He was getting light-headed from all the blood loss of his face-to-face time with Michael. Not to mention the other reactions the angel inspired from his body the last time they met.

He shoves the memory away, like a dirty sweater kicked to the back of his mental closet.

Adam and Kevin agreed never to speak of it. At least, Adam negotiated for Kevin to hold his tongue in exchange for getting to speak with his mother. Far be it for Adam Milligan to keep a guy from his mom. If Adam had his way, they’d all be home with their moms by now.

Kevin, unfortunately, forgets the exchange was for his silence because his face falls into a soft pout and he keeps talking. “He’s dangerous, you know. He could really hurt you. And you’re my friend. And what if he hurt me?”

Adam sighs under his breath, slamming the tray closed once the barrels are secured. “He’s not gonna hurt you, Kevin. He has to protect you.”

For now, Adam echoes. Who knows about tomorrow? Kevin doesn’t need to lie awake at night from nightmares about the fickle oaths of angels. Kid hears enough about the Order of Dickheads On High from Dean’s daily sermons.

He stills as a thought occurs to him. He considers Kevin with a narrowed eye. “You been having dreams about him?”

Kevin blinks with a small frown of confusion. “No. Why?”

Hmm. “Just checking. They’re known to do that sometimes.”

Kevin peers closer at him, dark eyes frustratingly earnest. “Are you?”

“Nope,” Adam lies and resigns himself as Kevin crowds close, suspicious and worried, their shoulders brushing in their hurry back to the shelter of the bunker. The convoy is locked and loaded for Sam and Dean to go do their hero stuff. Good riddance.

Or, God willing. Adam really has to get the intent straight in his head. Sam and Dean have to survive this. He wants them to fight and come back safe because--

--If they don’t, that’s one less buffer between Adam and this war.

No! Because he just doesn’t want them to die. He doesn’t want anyone else to die.

“I don’t like leaving you with him,” Kevin says.

“You won’t have to. We’re done.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“And you shouldn’t.” Why does Kevin think Adam still needs convincing? “All angels are the same.”

Kevin’s expression turns troubled. He looks so young when his face twists like that, seeking an olive branch of congruity in this crazy world that’s yawned open beneath his feet. “But… Castiel isn’t like that.”

Adam doesn’t like the angel, but he has to concede the distinction. “All angels who haven’t been kicked out or clipped their own wings, are exactly the same.”

///

Castiel finds Adam a few days later in one of the rare circumstances he’s allowed topside without an escort. Well, it’s a nice illusion. The appearance of Castiel affirms that he is never truly alone.

It’s a nice place, this vantage from the bunker aboveground on the lake. The sun has broken through the clouds of Winter grey, beaming over the calm water and basking Adam in a warmth he tries to draw down into his bones. He slumps on an overgrown tree stump by the shore, breathing deep and listening to the breeze coo through the pines and the water lap at the brambles.

Castiel lowers himself, folding his legs by Adam’s stump and Adam watches the angel’s trenchcoat smear with moss. The effort is noted. Castiel doesn’t often sit.

“I’m sorry if I’ve put undue pressure on you,” Castiel says, careful and halting. He glances up, briefly meeting Adam’s eye and unlike every other dysfunctional fuck in their party, at least Castiel’s contrition comes before the crime. The angel licks his lips, searching the vantage of the lake and the tall pines of the shore on the other side. A piercing cry makes them both look up. A falcon soars by, wings spread wide and high above the treetops.

“Not long ago, I would have asserted you had to do this because it was the only way. But oblivion… brings a certain perspective. I’ve been betrayed, beaten and killed more than most. I think you and your family are uniquely qualified to empathise.”

Adam snorts a laugh under his breath. He flicks a wreath of twigs he braided against his thigh. “You giving me permission not to do the thing I already said I wasn’t going to do?”

Castiel sighs. “I’m sorry, Adam. I was wrong. Before, I didn’t know. We’re all desperate to protect what we care about.”

Dean. It goes unsaid, but the fact he and Castiel are now a thing has changed a lot.

“I used to believe the ends justified the means,” Castiel continues, the soft breeze ruffling his fringe as he gazes out to the lake. “I believe it was sung into our being on creation. And I was ready to be the means, to sacrifice anybody and anything for those ends. But the ends are the same for all of us. Death is coming for all of us. Your brothers and I… we’re trying to help what happens after. And there will still be sacrifices to make, but… it also matters how we get there. I tried the other way. I was fooling myself thinking I had any real control over the outcome. But I can control this: so, if I’ve caused you any more harm in asking you to do this--I’m sorry.” Castiel’s voice lowers, apologetic and gentle. “You don’t have to turn him. Maybe we’ll find another way. Maybe we won’t. But that’s not on you alone.”

Adam stares out at the lake and he can’t quite tell when his vision began to burn and blur .

A wet laugh chokes out of him and he swipes his cheek when some of those tears escape. He thought he didn’t need any of those apologies, but maybe that was just because he believed they would never come. He feels like his chest has been wrenched open and something black and poisonous has loosened its hold on him.

Castiel really is the exception.

“My brother does not deserve you,” Adam finally says, voice thick, resolutely glaring at the lake. “He’s way too primitive.”

A hand closes around his elbow and Adam looks down. Castiel smiles in understanding, squeezing his arm. Adam swallows thickly and nods back, remembering a time before he knew about monsters and Winchesters, and he might have thrown his arms around someone for sharing something so sincere, but Minnesota was a long time ago.

Everything is different. Even him.

///

“Fuck me well enough to remember; I won’t need a sex tape.”

The words reach Adam murky and incomprehensible as he rises from the weight of sleep. Strange noises prickle his ears, familiar but estranged in this context of waking alone in his motel bed, a line of drool smearing against his cheek on the pillow. He raises his head to peer blearily at the white paint peeling from the bathroom door, then the dark curtains still drawn over the windows, not a hint of sunlight breaking through.

What time is it? What’s going on?

“Relax, baby. Open up for… that’s it. Breathe with me.”

Wait a fucking minute.

Reality hits him like a shard of ice between his shoulderblades. He whirls in bed, sitting up sharply.

Slumped in the bedside armchair, Michael holds Adam’s most jealously guarded possession above his face as the video plays on that phone: telltale whimpers and grunts fill the room. Adam feels his face flush with panic and embarrassment, all coherent thought flees his mind.

Fuck, fuck--

“What the fuck are you doing?” is all he can screech.

Michael doesn’t even glance his way to acknowledge he’s been caught, he doesn’t blanch or flinch at the knowledge he’s watching a sex tape of the two of them. A tape that somehow involves neither of the two people currently in this room He’s probably watched the birth of galaxies and orgies of entire dynasties; this probably doesn’t even blip on his radar.

Adam’s mind spirals to a terrifying possibility: Michael will want to know where this video came from, how this video even exists. He’ll force Adam to talk, and soon enough he will realise that there’s another future Adam is aware of. If he’s discovered the phone, what else had he discovered in its storage?

Adam’s stomach drops. If Michael grows aware of the reality Castiel is trying to forge, will he nullify it entirely?

(“That’s not on you alone.”)

A grunt of amusement draws Adam from his mental spiral.

“The way you move, Adam,” the angel shakes his head, posture lazy, shoulders dropped low in his chair. Michael raises an eyebrow, swiping at the phone screen and Adam’s ears burn hearing his counterpart cry out. “I’ve watched this five times and I still can’t believe it.”

That smirk turns on him and Adam flushes all over again, this time definitely in embarrassment--and anger at himself.

He should have known. He should have done something--been more careful about what memories Michael could access through the door and down the hatch of his dreams. Maybe if Adam hadn’t watched the video multiple times himself, it wouldn’t have preserved itself in his memory for crystal clear recollection.

Shame winds hot through his gut. He did this to himself.

The sheets twist as he kneels forward on the bed. He thrusts his hand out. “Give that to me.”

The video abruptly falls silent and Michael pulls a face at it. “Why haven’t you watched to the end? Are you that scared of me coming inside you?”

Adam didn’t think it was possible to blush any harder. He falters at the force of the full-body flush of horror, hot and dizzying. He feels sick. He’s sure his face is beet red, his head is ringing and his heart feels like it will ratchet its own chambers apart. He stumbles off the bed all the same, towards the archangel, reaching for his phone.

“Why would I add to my nightmares?”

Michael frowns gently and keeps him at bay with a raised hand, holding the phone away. The simple touch against Adam’s shirt is enough to make him flinch back. And from the way Michael pauses, studying him, it does not go unnoticed.

“Nightmares?” Michael’s frown turns quizzical. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself.”

“That’s not us!”

“I know that’s not us.”

Michael stands, flooding into his space, almost chest-to-chest. Adam stumbles back, feeling the blood that had rushed to his face abruptly drain elsewhere, heart thumping, hands tingling, priming for a fight.

Michael cants his head, a familiar and dangerous little smile curving his mouth. “But it could be, if you tell me where you are. You’ve thought about it.” Michael studies him closely, eyes glittering in the dim of the bedside lamp. “Haven’t you?”

Adam stares back in shock. Michael seriously isn’t going to ask him where he got that video?

This is all very disorienting.

Misinterpreting his stunned silence, Michael presses on. “Remember? With the power I have, I could unmake you… you remember what it feels like when it hurts.” Michael searches his eyes carefully. “Imagine… remember. We can tip it the other way.”

Adam swallows nervously. That knowledge, that muscle memory is the undercurrent of every conversation, every look, every touch that Michael has brushed against him since he stalked across the parking lot of that bar with Adam in his sights.

Their most recent encounter only confirmed it, falling against each other with the delirium of blood loss and a brief inversion of power. Michael’s mouth on his skin, sinking between his thighs.

In the dim of Adam’s dream, Michael’s smile gentles, coy. “If I made you feel good. Rearranging your atoms, I could wreck you from the inside without ever laying a finger on you. Give you so much pleasure, leave you hoarse and slavering, it would break your mind.”

Adam huffs a rueful laugh under his breath and shakes his head.

There it is. Always warping back to control and damage. It doesn’t matter how it happens, so long as Michael gets to enjoy creative and fun ways to unmake him.

Adam’s voice cracks, trembling. “Do you remember... when you weren’t so into breaking people? And... you actually protected me? Down there?”

In the Cage.

That video had disturbed Adam for weeks. At first, he thought it was the obvious revulsion of seeing himself wrapped up in his enemy. He felt sickened and betrayed by his other self, and the unwanted arousal it inspired. But he was most repulsed when he realised beneath it all was a wretched sadness--mourning for what could have been.

Because the way Michael held and sheltered him in that video made him recall when they first landed in the Cage. Their relationship had never been like that, but--

“I looked for you,” Michael reminds him, voice a thick slurry through clenched teeth; one of those involuntary truths. Huh. Adam didn’t even consider if that would still work in dreams. “I took you back and I fought for you, remember?”

“You gave up,” Adam mutters, throat tightening.

Michael has inflicted a lot of hurt on Adam and his family, but this fact aches the most: Michael wasn’t kind before, but the Cage turned him downright cruel.

Adam trembles, fists clenched at his sides. He glowers, unsure what to make of the way Michael studies him, expression softening. “I blame you and your brother. But he’s not the one who won’t leave me the fuck alone now. I fucking hate you. Yeah, you could play me like a puppet; that’s all you’re good for now. But you couldn’t make me feel a genuine thing I enjoyed if it killed you.”

He steps in close enough that he feels the typical heat Michael radiates, the sheer power and energy of his angelic form straining to contain itself in the month’s vessel of choice. One breath too deep would press them together, Adam would feel that heat through the thin layer of his shirt. He doesn’t push his luck, though he very much wants to shove both hands against the angel’s chest and watch him stumble. He wants Michael off-balance, staggering back--

--On his knees, nuzzling his smile into Adam’s palm, rumbling pleasure at Adam’s praise (“you did so well”)--

Adam kicks that memory down the hatch and slams the door shut.

“You’re pathetic, General. I can’t even pity you. Get out,” he growls.

Michael raises an eyebrow. “You’re not fun when you’re sad.”

Adam’s fist flies, but Michael is gone before it connects--and Adam jolts awake mid-swing, tangled in his motel bed sheets.

The sky is paling to a grey sunrise behind his curtains. He is alone.

He thumps the mattress with a snarl and takes a deep breath.

Not fun when you’re sad, Adam’s mouth twists into a bitter scowl of frustration. Asshole.

#midam #michael (supernatural)#adam milligan #supernatural #castiel #kevin tran #dream sequences #somewhere to begin #my niche is officially redemption arcs of psycho and sociopaths

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