#i shooed it out of the way and it static crawled its way up the window to ambush the patient's head so. that was fun

[pbflutist]

mid-glasses sale when i saw movement in the corner of my eye and when i turned to look i found a mostly deflated helium balloon skirting along the floor. absolutely no fucking precedent for that

[enccrypted]

The world fades out around him as he tunes into his remaining drone's eye. The Ring has yet to finish crawling to its first close, and so the still trek-able radius Storm Point remains massive. Far too much for one drone to surveil alone — but JiJi, despite their superior positioning, have long been picked off earlier in the game, to his dismay. Were it a week or even several days earlier, he wouldn't have thought twice of it. Suspected a grudge, perhaps, or Witt feeling too cheeky with a Longbow for his own good.

Recent events, however, have left Crypto on edge and his guard up.

Someone doesn't want him watching.

And though the list is too long to narrow down, there's one person he can justifiably rule out. Crypto can almost smell the burn of gunpowder as he flies above the battlegrounds, in hot pursuit of that new (yet familiar) face that Hack's eye is trained on.

He hadn't thought it possible, but the wake of guts and destruction that Revenant leaves in his wake has been more gruesome than usual. Relishing his new abilities, perhaps. Forced upon him as they might have been, there is still little more that Revenant loves than new ways to kill. Showing off might be one of those things — and the bot surely knows that he has an audience.

It's sickening, the display that Revenant is putting on for him. And yet, Crypto can't tear his eyes away. Octane's rambling falls into the background, turning to static in the back of his head as he watches Revenant leap, gouge, and gore his path to the next ring.

He's not sure if it's the whir of Hack's machinery or if it's his trembling as they zip along behind Revenant, hovering far above the wreckage. Far out of sight, he thinks.... But when Revenant turns his gaze upward, searing gaze meeting theirs, Crypto snaps back instantly to the shores of Storm Point, to the roaring winds along the coast and the babbling of his teammate beside him. His hands are clammy with sweat, clutching at his remote so tightly that he's surprised it didn't crack in two in his grip. He sends a signal for Hack to fall back, fast, as he fights the prickling of his legs and rises to his feet. Before he's even stood up, Octane is instantly on him, chattering away without a care in the world.

Crypto suppresses the slight grimace that threatens to boil up at the quick mention of the simulacrum. He shrugs his jacket up onto his shoulders, instead. A motion far less telling, though even the slight jostle of his collar against the skin of his neck leaves the imprints in flesh and cybernetics aching. Too fresh... too familiar.

He shakes his head to chase away the recent vision of gunfire and blood and monstrously twisting metal joints. Blinks hard, hoping to shoo away the glaring shine of yellow optics out from under his eyelids, too, though luck isn't quite on his side there. So he turns them to take in the sandy terrains and whipping of baring branches under violent winds. They stop briefly to rake across the skin of Octane's neck — slightly burnt from Storm Point's just as violent sunrays, but otherwise bare (this time). The crack of thunder sends a minute shudder down his spine. He hopes Silva was too enamoured by the storm clouds to catch it.

"I guess neither of you know genius when you see it. You're a lot like him." Crypto snaps the ends of his console together, latching it shut with deft fingers. A light scowl starts to curl his lips, but that he pushes down as well.

"An idiot. Keep your nose in your own damn business, Silva. Before you get yourself wrapped up in things you shouldn't."

The frown returns as he squints down at the ground. He's accustomed to Octane's fiddling and fidgeting during downtimes between combat, but whatever he's gotten up to this time whilst Crypto was scouting has left dirt and debris flung everywhere, so much so that stray particles have crawled their way down inside Crypto's socks.

Deep canals in the ground, marked by prosthetic feet-shaped imprints in the sand nearby, confirm his suspicions. He stamps his heel against the ground to clear off his boots, huffing as he chases away the vivid thought of a large, masked hare thumping its gargantuan feet around and burrowing Octane-sized holes into the ground.

"Let's get moving to the next ring. Aish... I hate sand."

He can't shake that electric shudder, or the prying urge to tune back into his drone, to have his eye on Revenant constantly.

The feeling that something, something more than the encroaching storm, is fast coming.

| | @enccrypted

Octane squints against the blustering wind, eyes glimmering green in the eerie strobe of furious lightning forking through the clouds above. His goggles are busted, lenses shattered from the previous skirmish, but it’s a small thing in exchange for victory over the team whose deathboxes now lay scattered over Storm Point’s once peaceful beach. The gale kicks up, flings sand into his eyes, and he startles away.

“Ow, ow— you done yet, dude? We gotta go.”

Crypto’s scanning for enemies, and he’s taking his sweet time as the ring draws closer in. The storm brewing out over the water doesn’t look so pleasant either, though Octane has to admit the funnel clouds spouting tornadoes look like a fun time. He tries to keep still, bouncing on the tips of his prosthetics; ever since the hacker went batshit and drowned him in the World’s Edge sulfur pools— though much time has passed since the incident— Octane can never be sure when the typically quiet, reserved man might snap. These other killers, Caustic, Revenant, they’re predictable, easy to read, easier to manipulate. Crypto? He lives up to his secretive moniker. Which, most of the time, just makes him boring. But sometimes Octane still wakes up at night gasping for air, the touch of choking water still lingering on his skin.

Right now though, Crypto’s just annoying. Octane can’t help himself. He sighs dramatically and takes to picking through the nearest deathbox.

“By the way, did I hear Revenant call you a nerd yesterday?”

[minaa-munch]

@furrymakerkid asked:  writing request for you sweet mun. Minato was too smart to know no feeling was good. How did he cope with it? He didn't have Jiraiya Kushina or his team in the beginning.

Here’s a short answer: He didn’t.

Warning: Kinda dark and maybe NSFW if you squint. Possible triggers may include blood, gore and morbidity [it’s war, ne? Although I’ve restrained my descriptions...er, tried to. I hope you can read it, @furrymakerkid]

Disclaimer: This is my interpretation. Yours may be different and that’s okay - to each their own.

Image credit: Rurouni Kenshin

The trees whispered in soft, breathy murmurs as a gentle wind meandered past their many, leaf laden branches. All was calm, almost eerily silent sans the constant patter of boots against the bare crumble of rock; hushed whispers that were broken by the faint whistle of weapons and the occasional intake of breath. The usually relentless, rough soil was wet, almost muddy; yet there had been no downpour in weeks.

The land of Tsuchi no Kuni wept, while the heavens above bled. The glowing embryo of the sun surrendered to a cocoon of fluffy cumulus, lofty rays bleeding shades of red and orange across the darkening skies as a massacre quietly unfolded below; a beautiful painting, if only in the nature of its innate, organized chaos.

It would be nightfall soon.

“...”

It didn’t matter who raided which settlement first. What mattered was the fact that both sides had to keep an even body count. The dictum regarding warfare they were taught in the academy hardly covered such tactics; a few measly lectures so that bright eyed academy students wouldn’t take the trade less seriously.

It was all fun and games until someone lost a limb on their first field mission. Minato, in that regards, had been rather lucky. Where most cadets would rely on a team to ensure the success of a raid, all he needed was a handful of kunai.

He had always been ridiculously fast - even by regular standards.

The metal loop settled comfortably against his palm as tan digits curled around the hilt, seamlessly pushing it through with one, smooth movement before wrenching the weapon sideways, slicing the unexpected chest like one would tear open a package. Bloodied entrails followed the blade’s wake; peeking out of the soft folds of uneven, torn skin as the still pumping organ convulsed uselessly against twisting branches.

It was a quick execution; a means he had devised after their last field run. The metal loop of his kunai swung easily around his index finger as the waste was swiped off with a sharp flick of the wrist. Blue hues barely caught the woman’s expression as she dropped to her knees; he was already moving, the chakra signatures from his earlier sensory scan twinkling like quaint little targets.

They would be quick kills, for Minato hardly had the time for mercy. A kunai through the eye for anyone stupid enough to look his way, the splattered remains of a skull of a nin ambitious enough to try and sneak up on him, whereas most of the others barely got a chance to blink before deft digits pierced their forms with relative ease. Pure chakra would bounce off his skin like a controlled gale, as his natural wind affinity reduced muscle to fleshy ribbons.

It wasn’t needlessly cruel, per se; it simply happened to be the most effective in ensuring a kill. Besides, he had stopped feeling the warmth of skewered innards ages ago.

“Kami willing may you choke on your own blood”

The words drifted into the faint breeze that swept past their drenched fields; the scent of copper and compost intermingled into a sickly fragrance which sunk into his skin, down to his very bones.

Kami willing? As if Kami existed for people like them.

And then he heard it; a constant low hum that swelled to a certain crescendo, painting his subconscious in a murmur of static. Minato blinked curiously at his quivering fingers before casting a furtive glance around the field of littered innards and crimson. Hardly a soul in sight and yet...trailing off, blue hues returned to the tremble that had somehow seeped into his wrist. He couldn’t feel the slash decorating his palm, but he could definitely see the discoloration associated with poisoned weapons. Ugly strokes of yellows and blues bloomed all over his hand like pale, deathly flowers and he nearly dropped his weapon.

Fuck.

-------------------

“Er...it wasn’t your first kill, was it?” The question was asked nonchalantly enough, as practiced hands wound a roll of gauze around his discoloured counterpart. Minato shot him a flat, unimpressed look which was met with a barely concealed smirk as he tied both ends with a vicious tug.

“I mean...you never get injured.” He continued, as Minato retracted his hand, giving it an experimental poke. “Lucky for you, you got back in time otherwise you’d lose your good arm.”

He was making fun of him, wasn’t he? “Yeah. Lucky.” the blond replied, tone as dry as the man’s wit before he curled his bandaged digits, “What about the hallucinogenic side effects?”

Would it have even mattered if it had been his first kill? The nin had been alive one moment and then he just…hadn’t. Was he supposed to feel something special about that? Besides, he had attacked Minato first.

Regardless. It had been so long ago, he hardly remembered the face associated with the deed. Since his deployment at Kusa, he had killed so many more with seldom a thought that he couldn’t be bothered to remember what they looked like. His last count had been, what, thirty three consecutive solo kills in thirty minutes? That was more than one life a minute.

Mere statistics. It didn’t matter.  

“Noise huh? It's the first I'm hearing of it.” Cue the methodical tap of wood against an unshaven chin, “Say, ever considered signing up for the psych evaluation thing they proposed back at HQ? I mean...there's nothing physically wrong with you. Maybe it's in your head." He placed his brush down on the makeshift table before letting out a snort, much to Minato’s chagrin.

“If what they’ve been harping about at HQ was true, we’d all be classified as nuts anyways.” The medic laughed, his grey hair reflecting warm honey in the dim lighting of the medical tent. Bemused, he took off his glasses to wipe a tear, before shooing him away with gloved digits. “Get going, Namikaze. We need you on the patrolling grounds. The war will be over soon, ne?”

Coloured hues met dark counterparts, bleeding ink and whispering false nothings.

“Ne?”

-------------------

Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and the persistent whine in his head refused to shut up. Many an evening would witness the blond shifting his reading scroll to the side, just to press rough finger pads against his closed, burning lids.

He couldn’t recall the last time he had slept. Granted, Minato wasn’t one to sleep much to begin with; he was young, ridiculously curious and had the collective energy of twelve hyperactive gerbils. Still, he had always managed to clock in a few hours before, but this...

It was so damn loud. Minato couldn’t even concentrate for more than a few minutes before the constant low hum poked at his subconscious like a poisoned senbon. It tore at his mental-scape and sensory peripheral akin to flames consuming dry bark. Gone was his natural, healthy tan that had stayed resolute despite their meagre military rations, only to be replaced by a yellowish pallor, along with dark smudges underneath his weary hues.

A part of him was tempted to write to Jiraiya; the man always had answers to all the questions. They were in contact, of course, despite the state of the war and whatnot. Courier runs were few, but very dependable - but could he really divert the Jōnin’s attention from the frontlines where he was undoubtedly needed?

No, he couldn’t be that childish. Their local medic had dismissed his concerns too, so clearly it wasn’t that big a deal.

Right?

His seniors had different answers. Some blamed the weather, some considered the possibility that an enemy had contaminated their food supply [“I’ve been feeling kinda itchy myself.”] While some had nothing to offer at all. No answers. They figured he was finally losing his mind, after killing so many - in fact, most were still wary of him since even the older Chunin in their unit showed a little hesitance when it came to those child scouts who were no older than academy students.

But Minato? He operated on autopilot. For someone so young and without a hint of malice on his features, he was surprisingly cold hearted. Most of the new Chunin cadets steered well away from him, either in awe or fear whereas his older, more experienced counterparts often regarded him with complacent silence.

Not exactly friends, but comrades. They could probably share a few drinks together. Not converse though. Perish the thought.

The constant, low drone was driving him mad.

Arizuwa Yana; an experienced Chunin from the reserve strike unit apparently had a few theories. Said theories were dry at best, with little speculation as to the nuance of phantom sensations, though with plenty of promises of actual sensations.

Somehow, one thing had led to another and they had ended up intertwined together in one of the darker corners of the many, many tents in their unit. He was a few years younger than her, but apparently that wasn’t a problem.

Age didn't matter, gender didn't matter - nothing did.

The problem was that despite the hands ghosting his clothed sides, he still couldn’t feel anything; it was like his insides were frozen with nothing sans the constant thrum of sound for company. A frown settled between his brows at the thought as slender, yet calloused fingers tangled themselves within his hair, tugging with an odd sort of insistence.

It did nothing to quell the static he alone could still hear, could practically sense crawling under his skin like wild, feverish ants.

Static. It seemed that was the only thing he could feel these days.

And this…this wasn’t helping. Blue hues flickered to dark, older counterparts before tan digits removed themselves from the soft swell of her pretty face. “I’m sorry, senpai.” Is all he managed to say, not really sorry at all before the same fingers found her forehead, jutsu a mere whisper against her flushed skin.

Yana senpai was out cold in the span of a heartbeat. Dull orbs stared at her peaceful features for a few precious seconds before he rolled over, gaze fixed on the sloping ceiling and a forearm resting against his forehead.

Maa...what a waste.

-------------------

Jiraiya sensei,

How are things at the front lines? Yuuhei taicho told us that Amegakure had officially joined the fray and you would be deployed there soon. Gambatte, sensei.

Ano…sensei, I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I’ve stopped feeling things. It started out as a weird sort of numbness, as if I was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes. I don’t even feel the sting of a cut anymore.

I’m scared. Is this a good thing? Oh by the way, you won’t believe what I found about that fuuin combination you told me about that one time. If it’s truly what you say it is, the Nindaime might have been on to something. See, if you swap the earth and wind constructs then the combination gets altered. I tried something with one of my fuuin tags today and the results were kinda wonky but in a good way. Let me know when you get this and I’ll send you all the workings I did.

Minato

He purposefully left out the bit where a part of him wanted to hide behind the elder, shaggy white mane and all, and stay in the comfort of his towering shadow. He had wanted to, though - desperately, too. But his writing brush had paused, a lone drop of ink blotting the parchment and upsetting his neat signature.

That had decided it then, hadn’t it? Gloved digits had rolled the parchment in a neat scroll, bound it with a convenient little fuuin and handed it in for the next courier run.

His paranoia was silly. Kusa was one of their priority outposts; full of experienced comrades and they were armed to the teeth. They were as safe as they would ever be. Besides, he had a near perfect kill streak - no one in their right wits would target him; Konoha’s number one rookie genius.

He felt so horribly alone though.

You’re not a child anymore, Minato.

-------------------

Three weeks. No reply. The constant fighting was taking its toll on all sides; with dwindling numbers and increased recklessness. Their tiny little outpost presently served as the main rendezvous point between the frontlines fighting Iwa and the reserve forces that had set up camp a few miles away. The war would enter its final phase soon and everyone was too bone tired to complain.

Minato wanted to send another message, but if Jiraiya hadn’t had the time to respond to his previous letter…

Sigh. Clothed shoulders sagged a little while the side of his face met loosely curled digits, expression forlorn. Next to him, Inuzuka Saito quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. They were both stuck with watch duty, in case the platoon that had been sent out to assist their frontlines against Iwa a few days ago came stumbling back.

Initially, Minato had been a part of it too, but Yuuhei taicho had ordered otherwise. He and a few others would be used to sneak from behind and attack Iwa’s unguarded backs. His experimental jutsu was perfect for the purpose, and he had a near flawless strike record so far.

And in the off chance he failed? It would be...understandable. The wars saw their fair share of victims and the Memorial was an honour for any loyal, Konoha nin.

The very thought made him taste bile. Tan digits curled into a trembling fist at his knee, as frigid blue hues glared a hole through the encroaching shadows of dusk that surrounded their camp. Kusa was known for its rich forests; gigantic fauna and rivers that made it the perfect terrain to hide and lie in wait. Nightfall usually witnessed the shadows that clung to its natural, beautiful scenery slip from their places and creep inwards, bathing all matter; living and non-living, in its eerie, peaceful silence.

Yet he had not experienced any blissful silence in so long; the static was a constant thrum in his mental-scape, one he had learned to accept. The Namikaze would be damned if he lost what constituted as his sanity to a useless murmur of sound; he had not survived through the countless murders to plead death by insanity, had not endured the constant stench of rot and copper which hung around his frame like the scent of mustard oil that he used to maintain his weapons.

Had not sliced through flesh despite the whimpers begging for mercy--

Cue a shuddering sigh as eyes squeezed shut and he felt the urge to rip out his own hairs. Trembling digits inched upwards, intending to do just that before Saito’s voice broke the spell.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Namikaze Minato was going insane. Maybe he had always been insane and by Kami, he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. Blue hues snapped open, staring listlessly at the dark and he swallowed thickly against his now dry throat. His frame tipped forwards; forearms resting against his knees as long, blond bangs hid his terrifyingly monotonous expression.

They would learn to loathe him, to fear him and he would slaughter them like the pointless sacks of meat that they we--

“Mail call!” A second interruption, though this time something actually managed to hit him in the back of his head. Fumbling hands barely caught it before it could hit the ground as the designated courier nin giggled, “Sorry, Namikaze.” Boots crunched against the leaf littered floor before he moved inside the camp, similar calls echoing in his wake. Minato blinked owlishly at the nin’s retreating figure, before shifting his gaze to the messy paper wrapping and miniature scroll that hung listlessly from one of the many corners.

It wasn’t from Jiraiya sensei.

Minato no baka,

Heard you were stuck in Kusa. That sucks ne? You’re surrounded by giant weeds and laughing shrooms. I’ve sent you some of those weird sticky quail egg things you like to cheer you up.

Guess who’ll be deployed soon. Me, that’s who! Maybe we’ll even be at the same outpost. You can show me all the nice napping spots ne? We got news the other day that the war wouldn’t last long. It’s been years already. I hope you’re still…you know, you. I miss you. Why did you stop writing?

Take care of yourself. Better not die or I’ll drag you back from the clutches of the shinigami just to kill you myself.

Kushina

Weird sticky quail egg things? Wait, was she talking about the sticky sweet beans he had accidentally spilled on her once?

“What are you grinning at?”

“Hm? Nothing, nothing.” And yet, there was something. He couldn’t help the silly little smile that tugged at his lips while his current patrol mate shot him a weird look. He was about to open his mouth to ask a second time, but then he saw the half open wrapping resting in the crook of Minato’s arm and made a quick swipe for it.

“Is that natto? Kami it’s been so long! Can I have some?”

“Sure.” Minato wasn’t even paying attention to the greedy fingers that had grabbed the miniature treats as soon as the words left his lips. Blue hues were still trained on the inky scrawl that denoted the kunoichi’s kanji. Kushina had always been an unpredictable little oddball. He didn’t even remember the last time he had written to her, but she clearly did. It made him feel strangely warm.

---And now he wanted to rip his own heart out and squeeze the treacherous, woeful thing until it would beat no more. Trembling digits rolled the scroll before a sweaty palm was pressed harshly against his aching forehead, the fingerless, leather glove providing little comfort to the uncomfortable warmth that stung his tightly closed lids.  

Kami...what was wrong with him?

As if Kami existed for people like them.  

Endnote: This took me far longer than I thought I would. Apologies! Ano, extra trippyness can be accorded to Koko, ne? She mentioned insanity, and since you had already tempted my inner crazy...

[starman-john-tracy]

Radiation Poisoning | Chapter Five

by @starman-john-tracy and @asteria-star

In which John Tracy gets exposed to uranium and nearly dies, The Hood is evil, and Star generally freaks out a lot.  

[Chapter One]  [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] [Chapter Six]

Star startles at John’s attempt at her name and the frantic hand that breaks away from hers to paw at her arm, before she’s catching John as he tips himself on his side. He’s vomiting, painful jolts that make her grimace in sympathy. He’d gotten himself up, but she’s holding his arm to keep him from falling entirely off the bed, the spaceman’s usually cool skin hot and sweaty against her hand. One of his hands flails vaguely, as if hoping she’ll catch it.

“Alright, John, it’s okay,” She gets up so that she’s kneeling on the bed beside him, still wearing nothing but his too-big shirt advertising a vacation location she’s never been, the supportive hand around his bicep and the other rubbing steady, comforting circles into his bare back. “You’re alright, I have you. Just let it out… you’re okay.” She can feel his heart hammering under her palm.

It’s a struggle to remember what had happened or where he is and that’s terrifying. John just knows he’d closed his eyes, just for a blink, just for a moment, and everything had kind of fizzled out around him. The air tastes of static. Tastes sick. He thinks he’s back, that he’s present now, but he’s not really, not quite because everything is wrong and his cells hurt and someone is smoothing their small, cool fingers blessedly over his overheated skin and whispering reassurances, but it’s hard to tell exactly who or why. He chokes hard again, dry heaving now that there’s nothing left inside him to cough up. He can’t seem to catch his breath between the heaves, his stomach carrying on with its convulsions regardless. John groans, low and long beside her, and grits his teeth.

She hopes John can’t see the red. Star forces herself to look up at Virgil’s hologram, to meet his eye, and mouths the word blood.

If a hologram can pale, Virgil goes practically white.

Eventually, as it calms, John makes a small, high keening noise and presses his hot face into her arm, obviously distressed but slipping rapidly out of consciousness again, the dizziness and disorientation dragging him down. There’s another bit of a struggle as he tries, vaguely, to roll back onto his back, the motion accompanied by a low pained sound. Star notices that the deep purple bruise at his side, half hidden at present under his clutching fingers, is looking much bigger and darker than it was earlier. It’s even a deep reddish colour toward the centre - like a stab wound but with no literal puncture. That’s… not right.

It looks like internal bleeding, Star thinks, blinking dumbly at the bruise. She’s all too familiar with how that feels.

Clang- Star flinches at the considerably-more-aggressive-than-usual sound of a ship docking against the space station, heart rabbity and in her throat as she hears the sounds of people boarding.

All she can really think to do is call out; “watch the spacesuits”, so she doesn’t cause the irradiated death of another Tracy with the mess she’s left behind.

“Star!” Alan all but tumbles into John’s little bedroom, tripping over his feet and nearly spilling the tower of medical gear he’s carrying everywhere in the process. He crashes to his knees beside them, without a care in the world for the mess John has made, and he grapples for his brother's wrist, pressing two small fingers down hard on John’s pulse point and counting the beats aloud, interspersed with yells of: “Scott!” and “Hurry the hell up!” over his shoulder. “Star, hook this up.” A simple vital sign monitor gets shoved into her hands, the little sticky pad electrodes needing to be applied to John’s skin, so they can start to get readouts. “Scott! Where are you!?!”

Star almost drops the thing, but manages to hold on. She peels the backing off each sticky sensor and places them on John’s skin - one on each shoulder, three in formation with the curve of his ribs on his left side, one on the opposite side of his chest. He’s not conscious, far from it, but that doesn’t stop her smoothing over each sensor gently as she attaches the lead, shushing him softly when he writhes in place.

The oldest Tracy brother crashes his way in, the backboard and padding he’s carrying having slowed him down considerably. He’s swearing up a storm that he’s very lucky his Grandmother isn’t around to hear. The little old lady is down with Brains in the Tracy Island medical room, ready to prep whatever Virgil will think John needs. Speaking of Virgil, the little holographic approximation of him has folded his arms across his chest, and is frowning.

“Careful Alan.” He prompts, “Area, Assess, Act.”

“Area clear,” Alan reports, “Except for those biohazard suits of yours, but they can wait ‘till later. Assess…” He slides his fingers from John’s pulse point, shooing Star out of the way as he goes, so that he can hover over his brother and try to get a good measure of his condition. “John can you hear me?” There’s a pause, but Alan doesn’t wait very long. “No?” The spaceman is limp and quiet - he seems to have passed out again.

“Uhh… ok, so we’re looking at acute radiation syndrome, almost definitely. It’s presenting as haematopoietic and,” The kid wipes his knee on a section of cleaner floor, his nose wrinkled, “gastrointestinal.” He bravely resists the urge to gripe about it. Instead, Alan brings up a small hand to carefully palpitate the awful, discoloured patch of John’s swollen side, testing for a reaction from the blotchy skin. “Looks like he’s haemorrhaging. Nosebleed and something internal. His blood cells must be wrecked.” For the first time since he’s crashed into the room, Alan’s voice wobbles, but it’s only for a moment - the kid manages to hold it together fantastically.

“Right, Scott, chuck me a scanner.” The older man does as he’s told, handing over the instrument and making himself useful while Alan works, by testing the unconscious reflexes of John’s white feet, which are poking out over the edge of his bed. “Ok good,” If Alan had sleeves that weren’t spacesuit-tight to his skin, he’d have rolled them up. “Hang in there John, I’m running a scan now.” The little device clicks out an appendage that emits a soft blue glow and casts eerie, alien shadows on John’s skin as Alan runs it over his brother. It makes the dark purple-red of his side look even worse.

If there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that John Tracy would be very proud of his little brother right now. Alan is cool and focused under pressure like he’d be on any rescue. The kid’s really grown up these past few months.

“It's hard to get a grasp on his neurological functions like this but…” He looks up at Star, those big blue baby eyes sharp and serious. “He’s not been seizing, has he?”

Alan pushed her out of the way, and Star ends up sitting in the corner. The room itself isn’t big, so her attempt to get herself out of the way has left her sitting against the wall but the feet within inches of the bed. She’s brought her legs up to her chest, trying to keep her shaking under wraps for how tight she’s squeezing them.

She knows Virgil can see her, and she doesn’t want him to. Scott being in the same room is making her skin crawl. Alan is so little - this is their brother she’s killed. John, John who hates contact but puts up with her hugging and always makes sure she’s safe first and would rather work himself to death than let a call go unanswered. John is going to die, and the universe is going to be without the greatest light she has ever seen.

Alan’s talking to her, Star almost jumps out of her skin when she sees him looking at her with those big, blue eyes.

Has he been seizing?

“No,” she sniffles, silent tears still burning hot tracks down her face. It’s the only thing she can feel, everything else is numb. “But he’s gone downhill quickly. He was awake and coherent less than an hour ago.”

Alan takes in the sight of her curled into the corner with wide eyes. She’s small and pale with eyes full of shell-shock and tears. He’s preoccupied with his brother, the scanner in his hand bleeping urgently, but even he can see there’s something not right with her.

“Star? You ok over there?” The kid’s voice wavers, like his tenuous hold on keeping himself together is fraying, “Oh Christ, you’re not. Virgil?” He’s wrist deep in scanner readouts, and so fielding her to their only other present and conscious brother makes the most sense.

“I’m fine” Star murmurs, hugging their knees closer to her chest. Virgil opens his mouth to say something she doesn’t let him get out before snapping “I said I’m fine.”

He frowns at her, all scrunchy black brows and worry.

“Did you get exposed to the uranium at all?” If he were there in person Virgil would lead her to the side and have this conversation in private. “We’re gonna do all we can for John, ok? I… you’ve been very brave.” And that’s far too a sweet, kind thing for him to say to her right now, drowning in guilt as she is. “We’re not gonna give up on him. I… John’s gonna be alright, yeah?” It’s a completely empty promise, words to be regretted later if things take a turn for the worse, but, now, in the moment, they build a stop gap between that bleak possibility and the present terror. It’s fortunate that Virgil is the kind of man who, when he tells you something, he says it so honestly that it’s hard not to believe him.

“Not without my suit on,” Star tells him, because to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t know what he wants her to say. Was she in the same room as the uranium? Yes. Did she have her hands on canisters of the stuff? Yes. Did her scanner occasionally flick to the dangerous end of orange? Once or twice. But was she ever sitting, barefaced and suffocating, practically on top of the stuff? Absolutely not.

Virgil gives her a smile, warm and relieved.

“I’m glad.” He tells her, “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Scott, have you got the blood bag?” While Virgil’s been trying to talk her down, Alan’s got an IV cannula set up in the back of John’s skinny wrist, prioritising the replacement of his damaged blood cells over anything else. “Thanks.”

Scott’s been remarkably quiet during this whole thing, but he sets the pole and bag up with ease, connecting the tube to allow good, clean plasma-strong blood to flow down toward his brother’s damaged veins. It’ll keep up his platelet count and make sure his fluid levels are high so that his blood pressure won't drop any further. The scans hadn’t shown anything good. John’s got a dangerously high temperature, a fast, uneven heartbeat, and a bad bleed amongst his internal organs.

“Is he going to need surgery?” Virgil is asking, and Scott, perhaps to save Alan from having to answer, rolls his shoulders through a shrug.

“If the bleed doesn’t stop on its own soon, sealing off the damaged blood vessels might be his best chance.” A worry-weary hand pinches at the bridge of his nose, “We’ll be running a high risk of infection though, and radiation poisoning is going to have wrecked what little of an immune system he’s got.”

“We’ve got to prevent infection as much as we possibly can.” Virgil agrees, knowing full well that, under the effects of radiation poisoning, even something as simple as the common cold could kill a patient. “But holding off on surgery because of that isn't gonna do him any good either.” After all, infection can’t kill you if bleeding out already has.

There’s a speckled pattern of small, ruptured blood vessels, Purpura, blooming like tiny stars across John’s pale skin, on his cheeks and collarbones where the radiation has damaged them. It makes a sick kind of parody of the constellations he so loves, still visible though the dirty pane beneath their feet, if only any of them had the time to look.

Having done everything he can for now, Alan’s hands drop to his sides, and he suddenly looks very small next to the outstretched length of their spaceman.

“Scott?” Wide blue eyes turn, searching, to his big brother for answers. Because it’s oldest sibling Rule One that Scott always has the answers. “I… What do we do now? A backboard? Three? We should get him home, right?”

Scott nods, his throat dry.

“It’s gonna be a rough ride. Star, you with us?”

Star, raised on a lifetime of men who want her dead, finds that the last place she wants to be is within arms reach of Scott Tracy. But arguing would just waste John’s time, time he doesn’t have, and she isn’t about to put him in danger again. Alan and Scott are preoccupied loading John up, but Star can feel Virgil and EOS watching her, and it's making her skin crawl. Virgil’s got the look on his face like he wants to talk. Star desperately doesn’t want him to. She takes the comm off her wrist and tucks it under a pile of discarded blankets, just to be safe. She stumbles upright, curling her toes against the cold of the glass floor.

“I’m coming,” Star tells Scott, setting her face into a firm expression that takes her a moment to realise might come across as a glare.

On her way out, following John - not anyone else - to Thunderbird Three, she swipes a book off his bedside table. It had a bookmark in it as well as dog-eared pages, depending on which of the two of them had read it first. John’s not halfway done… Star can’t bear the thought of him not knowing how it ends.

Star flinches around Scott on her way to her seat, giving him as wide a birth as possible, and when she sits down she finds a smear of John’s blood along her trembling thigh. She’s shaking… cold… she hadn’t even noticed. In favour of not looking at it, Star glances over her shoulder. John’s deathly pale, strapped in with the oxygen mask back over his face and an IV feeding blood back into his veins. Star focuses on the little uneven puffs of condensation on the inside of the mask. Breathing, alive.

Scott’s not stopped frowning since the second he got the call from Eos. He’s stooped over his brother, obscuring him mostly from Star’s view. He doesn’t seem to have the time to grill her about what happened, and that’s probably for the best. He’s busy checking over the huge trocar needle in his brother’s wrist, cleaning the hastily-applied port with sterile wipes to prevent the kind of potentially-deadly infection Virgil had warned them about.

Virgil’s reassuring hologram had been left behind on Five, while the dark haired Tracy helps his Grandmother and Brains prep for their landing. It’s a shame, in a way, as he’s the only one who’d have noticed that Star seems to be in shock. Alan’s thoroughly occupied by flying and Scott is busy checking over oxygen leads and blood pressure scans and tucking the blanket over his brother in just that little bit more firmly around the sides. 

John probably needs drugs too, the good stuff and some coagulants to clot the blood and prevent further bleeding, but Scott’s not even sure which cocktail would be best, and he doesn’t really want to give his brother anything without Virgil’s say so, as he definitely remembers something about morphine causing breathing problems in patients and the last thing John needs is any more of those.

“Scott? Star?” Alan twists his head round to look over his shoulder at his big brother, cutting into his deliberation about drugs. “We’re angling down through the atmosphere, burn’s gonna start any minute now. You guys and Johnny good? I’m gonna have to make it a hard one.”

“I’ve got him.” Scott tells his brother, “We’ll be ready; you focus on flying, ok Sprout?”

Something in Star’s chest twists at Scott’s words, because he’s right. He’s got John, not her, and John looks far better off than when he’d been left in her care. Star swivels right way around in her seat, watching Alan’s quick fingers dance across Thunderbird Three’s controls. He really is a compact version of John, the likeness jumps out when they’re working, the focus and care and the way their eyes light up at the sight of space, even in the most dire situations.

Thunderbird Three’s walls start shaking around them, the vibrations jolting up their spines as they brace themselves for re-entry. Scott comforts himself with the thought that at least John, while unconscious, won’t feel the burn as they break through Earth’s atmosphere. The ship’s juddering getting worse and worse all around him and it’s like Alan’s ‘bird is trying her best to violently shake them apart at the seams. Scott grits his teeth, his neck straining as he feels Three’s every bloody jolt and jerk and rattle as she throws them out of the stratosphere and breaches the ozone, flames licking around her nosecone as they plummet. 

Star closes her eyes and holds on, white knuckled. 

They break out of the ozone with a hard punch that throws them deep into the troposphere, the feeling not dissimilar to being thrown though a brick wall. Gravity takes over, dragging them down and Scott gets a heady surge of relief as he feels, somewhat mutedly, the fierce rumble of Alan firing the retro thrusters under them. Big brother winds his fingers with John’s and gives them a reassuring squeeze. Just in case he can feel this. The shaking begins to abate around them, the burn spent, but they’re still shooting towards Earth, spiralling down and Scott would think Alan has lost all control over Thunderbird Three except he can feel how precisely his little brother’s ‘bird is descending.

[experimentalmadness]

Cin Vhetin Ch. 5: Into the Depths Part 3

Hey y’all! To those still reading, you are awesome. Hope you’re liking it. You get to FINALLY peak underneath that OC’s helmet this chapter and learn a little more about them. This is the slowest of slow enemies to lovers burn so there is still just...so much to cover. 

Chapter Summary: Last in the Depths trio of chapters as Din and the Rebel get out of the caves and maybe? Have a little? Bonding time? 

Pairing: Din x OC/Reader (however you prefer to read it) No warnings but we do have some good forward momentum in the enemies to friends to lovers deliciousness. 

Masterlist: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

Ao3 Link

***

Heavy, static-filled breaths permeated the cramped air as Din and the Rebel made their way through the tunnel. It wasn’t as wide as the manufactured passageways, and sharp rocks protruded from the walls and ceiling, making the passage that much more harrowing. 

The kid was having an easy time weaving in and out of the small outlet, easily avoiding the rocks. It toddled into the occasional puddle, splashing about in the water before hopping out and trundling onwards. 

The Rebel’s modulator continued reverberating thick, strained breath as they ducked and crawled through the rapidly narrowing tunnel. 

“Were you injured?” Din asked.

“I’m fine,” the Rebel barked, awkwardly shuffling forward while trying not to put any weight on their slung arm. “Just...not overly thrilled about cramped spaces.”

It could be a bluff, Din thought. Why would a merc sent to kill him admit to being further injured after all? This truce only lasted for as long as they both proved useful to one another. Still, as Din watched the Rebel scrabbling through the rocky tunnel their discomfort seemed genuine. They reached a fork in the passage and without missing a beat the Rebel tilted her head to the right. “This way.”

“How can you be so sure?” but the kid was already following along after them. 

“Just a feeling.”

It wasn’t like he had a better idea of which way might lead them out, and crawling through this blasted tunnel left him with little energy to argue. Sure enough, after a few minutes of scraping by they emerged from the crevice into a wider cavern. The Rebel stretched out, “That’s better.” 

They were standing by an underground lake. Strange crystalline structures wove up out of the ground connecting to other crystals growing down from the roof of the cave. All around them was the steady drip of water. It was almost peaceful. 

“Hey, get out of there!” Din shooed the kid out of one of the bigger puddles. “You don’t know what’s in there.”

“Cute kid,” The Rebel remarked. “Worth all the trouble its caused?”

“So far.” Din did not like the way the merc was looking at the child. In all the chaos it had been easy to forget they were still only allies of convenience. The minute they set foot above ground he had to be ready to shoot to kill. This one was crafty. They’d have some kind of plan in mind. 

“Loyalty.” They said the word with extreme derision. The modulator’s cheery disposition somehow made the disgust more evident. 

“I don’t expect a merc to understand that.”

“Nah, I don’t. Loyalty gets ya killed and I like living, thanks,” The Rebel gave a little mock bow, walking backwards while balancing over a natural rock bridge as they made their way across one of the crystal water pools. 

Din swallowed his own venom towards the merc. Time enough to settle things, even if he was itching for that fight now. The water rumbled around them, nearly throwing both him and the Rebel off balance into the pool. Din took a step in front of the child as a vicious water serpent emerged, scaled mouth hissing into the darkness, spiked prongs emerging near its throat. 

The Rebel whirled about, firing off two blaster shots at the thing in quick succession to little effect. The creature gave a nearly silent, high-pitch screech before opening it’s fanged jaws wide and going into a dive directly for them. Din snatched the kid up and bolted to the right while the Rebel went left.

“Hey slimey, down here!” the Rebel made a show of waving their arms about. The creature took the bait instantly and slithered after them. Din fired off his cable, wrapping it around the serpent’s neck. 

In a contest of pure strength Din was bound to lose. Din pulled with all his might. The serpent flared its gills, wriggled, and opened its mouth in a furious hiss as the air was choked from it. “Gotcha, beasty,” The Rebel said, firing another blast down the creatures throat where the shot bypassed the armored scaled entirely.

The serpent let out one long gurgle before going limp. Din released his grip, snapping the cord back into his vambrace. Smoke curled up from the mouth of the beast as it slipped back underwater. “I really hate caves, have I said that yet?” The Rebel shuddered, holstering their blaster. 

“Quick thinking,” Din pointed out, wiping water from his beskar and setting a struggling kid back down on the crystal bridge path where he ran off after the Rebel. 

“You, too.”

“Who trained you?”

“Life,” The Rebel’s modulator gave a static laugh. “Not all of us get to be fancy Mandalorian warriors.” 

“You fight smart for a merc. I can only say that about a handful I’ve met. Most are just brute force,” Din replied. 

“Is that a compliment?” The Rebel turned about on their heel, hand outstretched at their side as if they were holding the train of an invisible dress and curtsying properly. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Mando. I’ll still kill you once I see daylight.”

“So...if we emerge and it’s night?”

“Shut up and walk.”

***

Din was starting to lose track of time. It had to have been at least half a day if not more that they were down here. Exhaustion was going to start creeping in soon. He glanced over at the Rebel, still gamely walking on, climbing over the occasional ledge. They didn’t seem to show any sign of fatigue. So neither would he. 

At every turn the merc seemed to know their heading. 

“How do you do that?” he finally broke down and asked as they pointed down a left facing passage. 

“Do what?”

“Decide which tunnel to take? They all look the same to me. And don’t say it’s ‘just a feeling.’” 

“Fine. Air smells fresher down this path. Keep walking in the direction you can feel or smell fresh air and before you know it you’ll be out of any tunnel.”

But the air felt more or less the same to him as they walked into another passage. The crystalline spires had faded away back to granite, and the damp went along with them. Suddenly the Rebel gave a little hop-skip, jumping and pointing with her good hand. “Hah! Do you see that?!” 

Din followed her line of sight towards a distant bright point. “Light.”

“Too damn right! That’s our way out. Charge up your blaster, Mando. I wanna get this over with.”

The Rebel couldn’t see the wry look that passed over Din’s face. They were scraped, bruised, covered in cave-muck, and had one arm in a crude sling, but still they were confident this would be an easy fight. Even after he had beaten them in their last encounter. They took off down the path at double speed. 

It was then the ground rolled under the feet, stopping them dead. 

“Earthquake?” Din hazarded.

The Rebel shook her head. “Maybe. We caused a lot of damage in that factory, some of it was built into the walls of these caves.”

Another roll, this one nearly knocking Din right into the Rebel. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Not needing to be told twice, Din matched the Rebel’s pace. The kid wouldn’t be able to keep up with them at this rate and he looked down to scoop the child up. Only it wasn’t there. Din whirled about, swiveling his headlight to find where it could be. The light fell on the kid as it was trundling over to a small pocket of multi-colored crystals etched into a rockwall. The colors must have caught its attention. 

The cave rumbled and shook, a couple of rocks rolled down from the walls. The shaking grew more violent, throwing Din’s balance off. He saw one of the columns crumbling near the kid even as he ran towards him, arms outstretched.

“Hey kid, look out!”

The Rebel had been further ahead of him and went tearing straight into the child, skidding to the side and forcibly pushing it out of harm’s way as the column collapsed in a shower of rubble. It gave Din enough time to snatch the startled child up in his arms. He pressed himself into a mostly solid wall, throwing his arms up over both himself and the child as the cavern continued to roar and shake, jarring more rocks and boulders loose. 

After a few moments the shaking ceased and Din was able to uncurl himself, brushing off bits of gravel. “That was close,” he said, checking the child over for any injuries. “Don’t wander off like that, ok womp rat?” The kid gave a small babble of understanding, its ears were pointed down in chastisement. 

“I think I owe you some thanks,” Din straightened and turned about, “if you hadn’t been—”

But the Rebel wasn’t standing behind him. There only a pile of rocks and stone, and where his light fell he could see one gloved arm, halfway out of the ruin. Instinct made him dash forward to help, but he slowed as he approached. 

This was a lucky break! If the Rebel was pinned under the rocks they weren’t going to prove a problem anymore. The gloved hand twitched and flexed under the rubble, a barely audible moan coming from underneath. 

He hesitated, reaching out to shift some of the rocks only to pull back. His Creed did not say anything about aiding a known enemy. He already had enough trouble. And this was no helpless babe in a crib. “Let’s go,” he said to the kid. 

The child gave a loud, affronted cry and slapped his tiny claws on one of the rocks. “C’mon,” he urged again. 

The child hit the rocks giving another indignant cry. “Look, I know this is hard to understand, but it’s better this way. Let’s go,” be bent down to take the kid’s hand. 

It wrenched himself out of his grip and slapped the rock again with a little ‘bap’ of insistence. Its eyes scrunched up, insistently, ears wiggling. Din sighed heavily. “Guess you do technically owe them a life-debt.” Was he imagining things or did the kid actually give a nod at that?

He had to stop making choices that would get him killed. With a groan of annoyance he grabbed one of the rocks, throwing it off the pile of rubble. The kid’s ears perked up at the action. He did not need the validation of a child! But he kept shifting the rubble until the merc was unburied. 

The Rebel gave a gurgling cough. Their helmet was smashed, the respirator broken and leaking air. He reached down to pull it off when he found himself with a blaster aimed at his head. “Don’t...try...it…”

“That thing is going to suffocate you, idiot. You’re not a Mandalorian, take it off.”

It was hard for the Rebel to get words out around the broken respirator. The modulator was busted as well, it gave them a distorted, multi-toned sound. “Why...help?”

“Don’t ask,” Din grunted, hauling the Rebel up over one shoulder and hoisting them out of the rocks. They were surprisingly light. Din carried them into the wider part of the cavern, away from the walls. He couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be another tremor, but the point of light was so far distant there was no way he could carry them all the way there. He dumped them onto the ground where they gave an audible grunt of pain. 

The wheezing from the respirator was intolerable. “Stay here, I’m going to find something to get a camp built.” Not that there was anywhere the Rebel could go. Din watched in surprise as the kid voluntarily sat next to the merc. They looked over at it through the cracked lens of their pilot’s helmet, but kept their blaster trained on him. 

It didn’t take him long to pull over a few rocks suitable for benches. He made a ring of gravel and stones before setting down a firerod he had in his pack. It wasn’t much and they had no food or blankets to speak of, but at least they could have a little warmth and light while he figured out their next steps. 

The Rebel was in the same position he had left them. As the fire grew a little more substantial they painfully inched their way closer. “Still think you can take me in a fight?” Din couldn’t help but taunt. The Rebel said nothing. 

“Look, you’re gonna need a medic when we get out of here and I...owe you for saving the kid’s life.”

At the mention of the child it put it’s claws around the merc’s arm, blinking serenely up at them. “What’s...it...doing?” 

Oh, he should have known. The Rebel tried to pull back, but was too weak to move. The wheezing in their respirator picked up on their panic. With no more modulator to hide their emotions there wasn’t any static to drown out their small grunts of panic and distress. That kid had too good of heart. The little one’s eyes closed, forehead crinkling up as it concentrated on whatever magic it possessed before it fell backwards with a thump, completely passed out. As usual. Sighing, Din went over to collect the kid, wrapping him in his cloak and tucking him against his arms. He’d sleep for at least a couple of hours now. 

“What?” The Rebel repeated, sitting up, a hand over their chest, feeling down what Din could only imagine had been a broken rib cage a moment ago. “What the—” their broken arm was moving again too and they threw the sling away from them as if it was on fire. They continued to check over their other limbs as if they had all been replaced with prosthetics. Din was almost amused by their shocked antics before remembering the kid had just leveled the playing field for their inevitable fight. 

“What the…” with a low snarl the Rebel tore the broken helmet and respirator off their face. “What the hell did that thing do to me?!”

He had been expecting a number of things, but not the face that greeted him once that helmet had been removed. The Rebel’s skin was albino, completely devoid of all color, almost translucently moonbeam white against the fire. Her eyes were equally light, nearly the same pale white as her skin save for a few flecks of metallic gray. Short, mussed silver hair fell in front of her face, stopping just under her eyes. Her mouth was curled in an accusatory rage revealing sharp rows of teeth. And without the modulator Din could hear the husky, emotive edge to her voice. 

“It does that,” Din looked down at his charge, bouncing it a little as it slept. “I couldn’t explain how even if I wanted to. But I think it was trying to repay you for saving its life.”

She was breathing hard, fury burning in her unnaturally colorless eyes. She tried to stand but slipped backed down on shaking legs. “Yeah, it can heal, but it can’t restore all your strength. Rest up. Our truce still holds until we reach the surface.” He didn’t need to tell her he almost left her buried under the cave. 

She sat back, propping herself up on one of the rocks, blaster still in hand. “Guess I really have to kill you now,” she said, still breathing hard. “Can’t have you going around telling people what I look like...bad for business.” When she smiled her teeth bared themselves. She must have filed a few of them down to points. He had likened her to a vornksr before, he just hadn’t realized how right he had been. 

“You’re Arkaninan.” He hadn’t encountered many of the elusive people. Most of them weren’t in the guild or in the merc business. Scientists. Usually holed up in labs. 

“No,” the answer was torn from her throat with horrid derision. “I am not.”

“Oh,” Din shifted uncomfortably. He could have sworn— “My mistake.”

The merc blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, arms folding over her knees. She kicked out at the busted pilot’s helmet. “Took me months to find that. Now what am I gonna use?”

“You weren’t a soldier for the Rebellion?” Alright, he was officially confused. 

The Rebel turned those colorless eyes on him. “You think I look like the ‘sacrifice your life for the Cause’ type? Pff.”

Not Arkanian, not a rebel after all. The woman was as much of a ghost as her appearance. “Then who are you?”

“Is this an interrogation?” The merc raised a silver eyebrow. “Should have left me injured if you wanted some leverage, Mando.”

“It’s a conversation,” Din specified. “Not much else to do while this guy sleeps and you can’t walk.”

“Well stop.” 

No wonder she used a vocal modulator. Her voice gave away absolutely everything. Volatile, brusque, and full of quick emotion. The helmet, too. She radiated disquiet and anxiety from her huddled posture, to her fast flickering eyes and the snapping growl buried low in her voice. Din shrugged. He didn’t need to talk if she wasn’t game. 

The silence was only occasionally interrupted by the tremors in the caverns. Each time one rolled in the merc braced to run, only to uncoil when the tremor rolled past. Din had set up camp in the most central space in the wide tunnel he could think of. Wouldn’t do much good if the entire cave itself collapse, however. He looked down at the sleeping kid. If it didn’t wake up in the next hour he’d have no choice but to take his chances.

In that hour he watched as the Rebel made a concentrated effort to get herself back on her feet. She rose on shaking legs, holding herself against one of the larger rocks. Her knees knocked together at one point and she almost toppled. With a curse she righted herself again and began to hobble around the small camp, stretching her formerly broken arm at the same time. Din had never seen the kid heal more than a few bad gashes and cuts. Judging from how the Rebel was moving, he wondered if she still had a sprain or broken bone or two in one of her legs she was determined to trick him into thinking was also healed. 

“How long have you been a merc?” he decided to try for questions again, his curiosity getting the better of him. She looked young. Not so young as to hint at inexperience—her skills certainly put that debate to rest—but she only had a few faint scars to suggest a full vet in the business. At least what he could see. 

“Still trying?” she scoffed, bringing her left arm around her chest, swinging it out and trying a few experimental draws of her blaster. That was good. Now Din knew she was ambidextrous. Maybe that’s where some of the bravado about their fight had come from. One arm down wouldn’t have necessarily stopped her at all. She exhaled sharply as she came down from the stretch. 

“Fifteen,” she finally said. “Assisted with a crew then, went my own way around twenty.”

“So, how old—”

“Rude.”

He laughed, but fifteen was young for the trade. He’d seen a few younger hunters and merc in his time...most didn’t make it. The kid stirred in his arms and he looked down to see it blink up at him briefly, before rolling over and fitting itself near the crook of his arm and settling down again, fingers curled around the bit of shirt it could find between the plates of his beskar. 

“Time to go, Mando,” the Rebel said, standing over him. 

They had stalled long enough. Din rose to his feet, kicking gravel and dust over the fire to douse it. Shifting the kid in his arms and slinging his amban rifle over one shoulder he fell into step alongside the merc. She was still limping as they walked, and with no helmet on he could see her trying to hide a grimace. 

She wasn’t going to give him much choice, but Din had to admit...he wasn’t going to enjoy what was about to come next. It would have been easier leaving her behind in the rubble. 

“Hey,” his voice was soft through his own modulator. “What’s your name?”

“You gonna tell me yours?” In the silence that followed she smirked, “Didn’t think so.”

The light had been further away than either of them thought. By the time they approached a small opening in the cave the merc was covered in sweat and her limp had gotten worse. Her eyes never lost that determined, focused glare, however. And whatever pain she was in didn’t stop her from slamming her body full force into the rock-covered opening to widen the exit. 

Rubble shifted and spilled outward as they crawled through the opening. Din blinked fast against the light of day. They were on the other side of the canyon now, and the sun was in much the same position it had been when he had been first sucked down through the underground. A day must have passed. 

He pulled out his blaster, leveling it at the woman who was holding her own out at him. With his other hand he held the kid as far back against his armor as he could. The merc curled her fingers around the blaster, her triggerfinger wrapping and unwrapping. Those colorless eyes flashed with merciless certainty. 

He had her. She could fire first if she wanted, it wouldn’t matter. That blaster she was carrying wasn’t strong enough to tear through his beskar. But he’d cut her down in a second. 

Maybe she had noticed the unfavorable odds as well, because to Din’s immense surprise she lowered her blaster. “Get going, Mando,” she said. “Consider this your headstart before I change my mind.”

There was more honor to this merc than met the eye. Din slowly lowered his blaster until he was certain this wasn’t a trap. “This isn’t a mercy,” she was very clear to say. “But I owe that kid a debt for what it did. I pay upfront. Next time, no such luck.”

“Noted,” Din holstered the blaster. “Enjoy your deathwish.”

She fired so fast Din had no time to react. The first shot spun off to his left, just singing the very edge of his cape, the second landed right at the tip of his boots, and the last edged so close to the side of his helmet he could almost feel the flash-fire of the shot. His blaster was back out in seconds while she laughed, twirling her weapon and re-holstering it. “Zethu Desh,” she said, turning her back on him and walking away. 

“What?” Din’s voice had a hard bite of steel to it as he absorbed the outrage of the merc’s sudden fire. Was this her idea of a joke?

“My name,” She raised a hand behind her, giving him a mock salute high in the air. “It’s Zethu Desh. See ya around, Mando. Next time I won’t miss.”

[spaceybot]

A Glitch from the Void

The Operator somehow falls ill, leaving Ordis to take care of them.  Only he isn’t all that well either. 

Ever since they had uncovered all of his fragments, he’s been hearing ghosts. The Operator has their own ghosts to deal with. 

Contains very minor spoilers from cinematic quests and references to  cephalon fragments.

“Please, Operator, you must rest now. For me.”

They weren’t going to argue with him on that, and how could they when he pleads like that? Another wave of pain crashes against the inside of their skull, coursing through the hollows of their eyes. They groan, draping an arm across their dull eyes in an attempt to block out the bone piercing light.

Transference did nothing to ease the pain. They had thought that being in their more familiar body albeit a borrowed one, they would cease to feel the symptoms of their sickness. But even the warframe could not block out the throbbing headache or the overwhelming urge to simply collapse.

Heeding Ordis’ advice, the Operator steps out into their physical form before crawling into the makeshift bed the two had prepared in their personal quarters.

The wyrm sentinel that Ordis had tethered to his control perks up at the sudden act, chirping its concern, hovering just a bit higher. He helplessly watches as they attempt to get comfortable. Ordis did not even know that the Operator could even fall ill. Surely the Zariman incident could have altered their immune system, as it had altered nearly everything else about the child. But all it had done was leave it weakened and ruined, or so it seemed. And spending all of those years in a dream did nothing for their health either.

And yet it feels wrong. Ordis had witnessed their miraculous recovery, their renewed ability to walk, to run even, around the ship on their own two feet after the incident on the Kuva Fortress. It had terrified the living daylights out of him. If only such a miracle could salvage his poor Operator’s health now. Why didn’t it?

Ordis floats around the Operator’s bed, which consisted only of an Ostron carpet laid on the floor in front of the observation window, a pillow, and one of the larger, thicker syndanas they had gotten a while back. Ordis should have been proactive. He should have bothered the Operator to build a real bed for such occasions. They must be terribly uncomfortable. The way they attempt to create a cocoon out of the substitute syandana blanket pains him.

“Ordis?”

“Yes, star child?”

“Could you get the other syandana for me?” They ask, their voice a mere whisper. “It’s freezing.”

Impossible. They were clearly overheating, burning even. However, he did not miss the way their shoulders oscillated as they spoke, overcome by shivers.

“Of course.” He replies. His proxy is already flying away to dutifully fulfil his Operator’s request.

As soon as he opens the door, it comes padding in, scampering to find its owner.

“Oh, NO. Absolutely not, you－filthy, disgusting－little kubrow. Shoo! Let them be.” Can’t it see that its master is sick? The wyrm comes to the Kubrow’s eye level, pushing against its horned nose. Ordis wilts a little. That adorably ugly, and endearing nose, and those glistening beady eyes. It has both of them wrapped around its giant paws. “Oh. Oh. Operator, it’s giving me those eyes again. What should I do?”

Though they give no verbal response, they seem to come to life at the sound of their giant kubrow padding around the room. They call to it, attempting some kind of pathetic whistle. It comes out as mostly spit and air. It only takes the kubrow a few bounding leaps to make its way over to its master. It almost brings Ordis to a state of...melancholy? Anger? Watching that loyal, murderous dog heed every beck and call. He does not know why.

The Operator makes a muffled noise, interrupting his thoughts. A laugh. The rustle of the syandana’s cloth softly fills the room as the giant beast nudges at its owner, laying pitifully on the ground and wrapped in a large syandana. Eventually, it settles down, curling around the Operator. The Operator easily snuggles into it, desperate for warmth. They are still. Quiet. The room falls into a listless silence.  They seem to have forgotten their request for a second syandana blanket, with the heat radiating from their companion sufficing. Ordis watches as one of their arms poke out of the cocoon to circle around the great beast.

The sweat of their palm coats the animal’s thick, heavy  fur, imparting an unpleasant scent. Both will need to be washed down, Ordis thinks to himself. He must sanitize the ship soon, to prevent further instances of this sickness.

“Ordis will return when your Tenno friends have delivered your medication.”

It wasn’t medication really. The other Tenno did not seem to know where to even find conventional remedies. Instead they turned to the Ostrons, in search of common remedies, elixirs, brews, anything. The Operator’s illness struck them as strange, just as it had perplexed Ordis himself. Their warframes had always provided a barrier between bacteria and viruses from reaching the physical host. Even that odd pink cyst they had gotten one time did no real harm to neither the frame nor the Operator. Perhaps the Operator had been spending too much time outside of transference.

“Hey, Ordis?” They mumble, only half awake now. Ordis waits, just as he’s always done.

“Thank you. For everything.”  They say. There is pity, love, entangling the data stream that courses through his mind as he processes their words. The cephalon’s voice is present throughout the whole orbiter, the volume of it reduced in an effort to keep them comfortable. The void itself could not contain the gentleness, the warmth in his voice.

“Do not thank me. I am your Cephalon--”

         －your loving dog－                                       －your doctor－                                                              －your wet nurse－

A quick burst of static. There are echoes in his mind, shimmering fragments revealing themselves from the pit that he had thrown them into long ago. Stop. Stop now. A sudden surge of energy courses through his being. It takes him an immense amount of will power to suppress the phantom thoughts, and even more to keep himself from speaking them aloud.

Ever since his Operator had begun unearthing more and more of the memories he had strewn about, he started suffering from these horrid glitches. Everyday the Operator found more. Everyday he began to crack more. Neither of them could bring themselves to speak of it.

Ordis recovers within nanoseconds.

“I am your Cephalon.” He repeats, firmer. “I gladly serve you, Operator. Now go to bed.”

The Operator scoffs with feigned indignation. Just that playful act alone must have taken much of their energy because they fall silent quickly after, their expression returning to one of discomfort and pain. Ordis knows whenever a new ache befalls them when their eyebrows knit together, or when they pull their kubrow in a little closer. He is helpless, only able to watch the poor thing suffer until medicine arrives.

“Sleep well.” He murmurs, so quietly that it could be any other sound. He dims the lights until it is only starlight that filters into the room. The Operator has already succumbed to its effect.

                                                              ---

There is no respite, even in dreams. It brings back memories.

They have felt this before, long ago. They’re sure of it. Even before the Zariman accident, they can feel the faint memory brushing against their mind. Their mother pressing a kiss to their cheek, brushing away sticky strands of hair. Their father’s palm against their glistening forehead, feeling the heat as it radiates from them. They have only ever gotten sick once. But even then it was different.

They are floating in a vast expanse of nothingness, limbs suspended in weightlessness. Are they...outside of the ship? No. It’s impossible.

The headache chips away at their skull as if something is trying to break free of its confines. There is too much inside of their mind. It hurts. Their body pulsates and aches and burns, so full of sickness on the outside. And yet inside, they are hollow, empty...infinite. They are the space that surrounds the Lishet and the void that swallows the planets and the stars.

The Operator brings a hand up to brush the corner of the lips. Something wet had dribbled down their chin. When they draw it back to examine, all they see is a black liquid coating their hand. It feels too real.

They blink hard, in an attempt to wake up from the dream. Someone is holding them back, keeping them trapped within this purgatory.

And then they realize where they are. It’s the only place they could be.

They need to leave, to wake up. Now. They open their eyes only to see a phantom staring back. It’s them. A mirror image.  Dark, peering eyes tearing through the depths of their twin soul. The Void grins at them, black seeping from their mouth.

“Remember me, kiddo?”

                                                             ---

It took three hours for the others to arrive with the medicine, and not a moment too soon.

Ordis, or rather his wrym thrall, slips into the room with its tail wrapped around a vial. He brightens the room ever so slightly, descending until he is by his Operator’s side. They breath in heaving and hoarse breaths. The weakness penetrates their bones. Ordis falters. The sight of－that ugly child, their face burned, starved-sick like a stray－ forces something to the forefront of his mind. He forgets his original purpose, floating numbly. They look just like that child he had seen in his past life. Weak. Helpless. 

Get yourself together, Ordis. He wills himself to obey.

And then his Operator awakens, startled by a dream. A nightmare, so it seems. They look around, until their wide eyes finally focus on him. And that’s all that it takes.

The lights of the Orbiter shut off. 

The wyrm gently lands onto the floor, next to the slumbering kubrow, all of its power siphoning away with a dying whir. The small vial gives off a soft clink as it makes contact with the ground. Ordis’ connection with the sentinel severs itself. There is only silence.

“O-Ordis!” The Operator shouts, rousing the kubrow from its slumber.

And then the ship’s interior lights flicker. A new, but familiar voice answers.

“Operator.” He says, testing the word with a curious lilt.

Their blood runs cold and still. Not out of fear, but disbelief. Was it an illusion?

It is Ordis’ voice, only it is distinctly organic and far deeper, almost as if the source of it was merely inches away from them. The Operator knows at once who he is. After all, they had found everything that he had tried to hide. All of those fragments that Ordis tried to render nonexistent. They had glued the pieces together until the truth rose from the fracture lines. He was the voice from those transmissions.

Ordan Karris  

Karris cannot breathe. Yet he does not need to. He sees through the ship’s eyes, sees the Operator. It nearly brings laughter out of his synthetic throat. Both of them, the former pit dogs of the Orokin, the immortals. How broken they both are. But it matters little now. Now, they fight for each other. They protect each other. The Tenno and the Beast of Bones. 

Before the child knows it, the lights rise one more, bathing the room in brightness and clarity. The wyrm picks itself up off the ground, gingerly laying the dropped vial onto their lap. The Operator, despite the delirium of their disease cannot bring themselves to be afraid of someone so familiar. Their fingers curl around the vial’s neck.

Another quick burst of static. Has he gone? They swallow the heaviness and sickness caught in their mouth, the need to keep Ordis stable overriding their weakness and the images of The Man in the Wall.

“Ordis.” The Operator pauses, coughing to clear the phlegm from their sore throat. “Ordan. We have a lot to discuss. I-I’m so sorry, I should have talked to you sooner－”

But the response is a synthesis of two voices, melding into one. They can hear it. Ordis’ warmth reigning predominant, returning to its fullest potential as it rings through the ship. And a whisper of the beast. Beneath it all the faintest hint of Karris remains:

“No. Discussion can wait until you are well. I urge you to rest. Please.” He murmurs. “For me.”     

The Operator hesitates for a brief moment. They open their mouth to speak but no words come out. Ordis, or Ordan, dims the lights once more, as if it were his attempt to pacify them back to sleep. Their attempt.

Is he Ordis or Ordan? Neither or both? He doesn’t quite know. He doesn’t care. The Operator has awoken from the dream that Margulis had induced long ago. And now he has awoken from his. He’s never felt so sure, so aware. The bizarre state of consciousness that he’s in borders on painful. Yet it feels right.

“I will.” They reply. “But after this, no more hiding, no more avoidance. We’ll come clean together. I promise.”

The Operator downs the bottle’s contents in one long, drawn out sip. It is too dark for either one to notice the thick, black residue left on the vial’s opening, just where their lips had been.

[asrisartarena]

Schneepleganger: Part 2

It snarls at Marvin’s words, eyes darting around the room, and it sees the hidden shock underlying their anger, their fury. It looks like Schneeplestein, it knows, and the eye certainly helps, twitching and dripping with tears from the sniveling doctor it ripped the eye from now curled up in a ball in the other room.

There is silence before all hell breaks loose, and Marvin’s eyes glow bright and dangerous with each spell blast he fires, and Anti’s knives are sharp with each blow he puts forth, and Jackie’s fists cut air with the force of their power, so that it is a whirlwind of fighting as the creature dodges.

Then, the snake schools its expression to one of fear; it makes itself miss the blows just barely, as if it is not used to moving so fast. It raises its hands to block the fists and knives and magic like a terrified child, almost whimpering. The eye dripping with tears becomes so much more apparent, and the clincher is when it speaks in German.

“Bitte tu mir nicht weh!” It shouts desperately, mimicking Schneep’s native tongue with ease, and for a moment they freeze, because the thing looks so eerily familiar to Schneep. Marvin’s magic stutters, afraid that perhaps by separating the two, the spell had turned Schneep into the monster, that they have been fighting the wrong person. “Bitte tu mir nicht weh,“ It whispers in a tone that sounds of desperation, however faked, and even Anti stops, the air calming for a moment.

And Schneep, who has been watching the fight through the eye that was stolen from him, Schneep, who does not trust Chase’s hold because such hallucinations have been forced on him before, only to be turned to hellish nightmares of which no escape is found. Schneep, who cannot fathom hope of a rescue, knows what the poltergeist does in its lies, and he cries out, “NO!“ as if it were a battle cry. He shouts against the liar and screams at them to listen and know truth and Marvin’s gaze turns back sharp to the copy, who grins something feral in reply and pounces with a roar that sends Schneep shuddering into a curled up ball.

And the thing, the monster, it smiles but finds itself furiously foiled, and it goes after the source with vengeance, dashing off of walls and crashing into the blockade between rooms that is Jameson, Shawn, and Angus with claws sharp and teeth bared. Schneep hears its roars, its screeches and snarls as it pushes against the bodies holding it back, the bodies it is slowly getting through, and Schneep curls up impossibly tighter and shakes and sobs because there is no point, there is no point in running anymore because he believes it to be over.

Robbie watches Schneep break down and feels the fear radiate off of the man in waves, sees a part of his family fall apart because of the thing pretending to be that family member that is trying to get through the door, and Robbie feels protectiveness and anger well up inside him until he jumps forward with a roar to rival the thing he is jumping towards, the thing that Robbie pushes back away from the three men at the door. Robbie has the thing on the floor and in an instant Robbie bites into the thing’s shoulder and tears at the flesh, though it is less than flesh and more like tar, dripping black and green and red. The doppelgänger roars again, in pain and anger and it grasps Robbie in its claws and lifts him up and throws him back like a ragdoll, back into the office wall where the zombie slides to the floor, bruised and a little dazed but otherwise unharmed.

Chase has to laugh a little then, at the madness and the excitement, and he ruffles Robbie’s hair as the zombie crawls back over to where Schneep is still hiding. Chase praises Robbie and Robbie giggles a bit and grins and in that moment, as Schneep peeks from behind his knees, the doctor’s heart flutters with something that feels like hope, like the question of perhaps being repeated louder and louder until it is answered.

And it is answered in Anti’s own brand of battle cry, furious at the monster that dared harm his sibling. It is answered in the glances Marvin and Jackie share in the spare moments of the fight. It is answered in Shawn’s fretting over Jameson’s well being, Angus’s hand gripping a hunting knife in preparation of another attack on the doorway. Through his stolen eye Schneep sees his family so determined to stop this being that had tormented him, had stolen his breath and cracked at his sanity and tore at his heart and Schneep will not let the hope grow any further lest it be crushed, but that he dares to hope at all is something beautiful, in the ugliness that covers the carnage just one room over.

The little moments tantamount to large wounds, a graze in the thing’s side, a cut to its chest, a punch to the face, until it is bleeding and tired and weak. It staggers forward, but Marvin raises his wand with a blast that warms the room to the point that Anti is sweating, and the thing burns as a hole where its chest was is made. It falls to its knees, crawling with clawed hands to where its counterpart is. It tries to send something, and for a moment it tries to reach its hand up to claw at its stolen eye as one last pain to inflict on the doctor, before twin knives pin its hands to the floor. It roars, writhing and screeching like a wounded animal and the septics watch with disgust save for Schneep, who covers his ears and clenches his eyes shut in fear.

After a moment, the blood loss and pain seem to catch up to it, and it starts to wheeze, starts to shudder and settle as it almost seems to give up. It lays its face on the floor, as if to rest for a moment, before it shoots back up, positioning itself in a kneel so the world can see the blood spilling out, black and red and green.

Its eyes turn to Anti, vile and angry and dying.

“I was supposed to be you,” It rasps, coughing up what blood it has. “This is your fault. If you’d just done your job, I wouldn’t even exist.” It laughs then, glitchy and static and familiar in a way that makes Anti’s heart clench in surprise, even when the laughter dissolves back into coughing and wheezing. “You want so badly to protect your family from the person you’re supposed to be, but you can’t even do that. Look at him.” Schneep is shuddering in a corner, clutching the eye that matches this thing’s own dark gaze, oblivious to Robbie and Chase’s attempts to talk him out of his own panic. Shawn, JJ, and Angus are still on guard, but Shawn is fretting over a cut on Jaime’s cheek at the moment, and Angus chances a glance at Schneep’s shuddering figure, wincing at the sight. “Pathetic, weak. You know they all are. You could kill them all so easily, and there’s a part of you that wants to. That’s me, and when I go, I’ll just come back stronger until you crack. And won’t that be fun?” Its face splits into a sharp smile and Anti growls, low and cold, as if the noise could dispel the doubts following him, the truths being spoken.

It struggles under Marvin’s power, under Jackie’s strength, under Anti’s demonic presence, but it gives Anti one last grin.

“S̭͚̈́̃̿̇ͅě͈ͪͧ̌̉̒͌e̝͓͍̬͍̳͈ͫ̿͒ͪͪ͘ ̱̰̬͓̜͍̪ͯỳ̨̻̣̜̫̖̫̤o͍͈̣̤̺̼u̞̠͇̖̝̍ͨ ̹̙͍͇̣̭̗ͬ̉s̮͙̬̠̻̟̺̈̈ͮ̑ͫo̗ͤͣ̐̈ͯͤ̽o̘͍̱̲ͥͮͯn̻̖̞͉̂̓ͮͅ~ͩ��̻̗̬͚̤̣͕.̃̄͗̾̒̅͌̀ͅ”

And then it is gone, with Schneep’s eye on the floor as its only remnant.

(Submitted by @kitkat1003)

The dust settles. The magic fades, the electricity fizzles out, the knives are sheathed, and everything is still. Marvin and Jackie both look at Anti with concerned expressions as they see just how shaken he is from what the copy hissed at him just moments ago. He feels them staring, and he shakes his head and clears his throat. “What’re you guys staring at?” Anti asks, brushing off their unspoken worry. “We got more important things to focus on right now.”

Neither Marvin nor Jackie say anything, but they nod in sync. It’ll have to wait for another time. A noise from the doorway catches their attention, and the three of them turn and see Jameson break away from Shawn, who just finished patching up the cut on the dapper man’s cheek, head towards the messiest part of the room and immediately start cleaning, picking up papers and gathering them in his arms. The others know Jameson cleans to relieve stress and anxiety, and considering the ordeal they all just went through, it’s understandable that Jameson feels very anxious. When Marvin goes to help, Jameson turns towards the magician and shoos him away, which confuses Marvin until he sees Jameson point at the open door that leads to Schneep’s office, and then he understands. With a nod, he turns and enters the office, where he sees Robbie and Chase coaxing Schneep out of his hiding spot under his desk.

“C’mon, Schneep, it’s okay,” Chase soothes, holding out his hand for Schneep to take, which the doctor does. “That thing’s gone now, so it’s safe.”

“I– I-I have to…” Schneep stammers, fear still thick in his voice, trying to process everything, “I need to… to see for myself. I…”

“I got’cha, dude, don’t worry,” Chase responds reassuringly, slowly easing the doctor out from under his desk and onto his feet. He’s still shaking, but much less than before. Robbie stands up as well, but he lets out a sharp whine halfway up and his face scrunches up in pain as he wraps a skinny arm around his abdomen.

The sound breaks Marvin from observing, and he goes and pats Schneep’s shoulder before making a beeline towards the zombie. “Robbie? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Marvin asks, his voice heavy with concern. Schneep and Chase both look at Robbie with worried looks as well.

“H-Hurt. Sore,” Robbie whines, gingerly standing up to his full height while still having his arm loosely around his torso. Marvin bites his lip, remembering the scuffle the zombie got into with that thing and how it clocked him in the gut when it grabbed him and threw him across the room and into the office wall. Marvin also knows that Robbie has the highest pain tolerance out of all of them, so the fact that Robbie is even feeling sore enough to whimper from the pain means that the creature landed quite the blow on him, and Marvin’s motherly-like worry grows. Robbie sees the worry, and the younger ego flashes him a soft smile. “I okay, though. Sore, but okay.” Before Marvin can protest, Robbie starts shuffling to the clinic, slower than normal due to his injuries, to help the others with cleaning everything up. The zombie wraps his free arm around Schneep’s and gives it a squeeze before doing so, and the three of them watch the zombie head into the other room.

“I should… I should check him… later…” Schneep mumbles, the eye still in his head glazed over with shock. Chase has to muster every ounce of willpower he has to not throw up and/or pass out on the spot due to the gaping hole in Schneep’s head where his other eye should be, dried and fresh blood trickling around the edges.

“You can do that later,” Marvin states, unsettled by Schneep’s wound but keeping a straight face about it. “Let’s go see the others, okay?”

“You wanna do that, bro?” Chase asks the doctor, his voice patient as ever. Schneep can only nod, and Chase guides him into the other room with Marvin right behind them. When they enter, the doctor scans the room with a slow gaze, taking everything in. 

He watches the others clean up the mess in his clinic with tedious care. He watches Anti, Jackie, and Angus lift the desks and cabinets back up where they belong, he watches Shawn help Jameson take some of the load of clutter from his arms, and then his gaze falls on Robbie, who he watches sit down and pick up his other eye with one hand while the other holds a mason jar full of water, and gently drop the organ into the clear liquid, screwing the lid on tight. “It okay,” Robbie says to the eyeball, softly patting the lid of the jar with a small smile like he’s talking to a baby animal. “Home in Sheep head soon.”

It’s then that everything hits Schneep all at once, and he laughs breathlessly and his knees buckle under him and Chase and Marvin catch him before he falls to the floor. The others hear and stop what they’re doing to look at Schneep, confused and concerned. Schneep lets out another shaky laugh, and he starts crying. For a split second everyone panics, but it quickly fades when they see Schneep is smiling. Not the thin, forced smiles he use to give to reassure them that everything was fine when it wasn’t, but a genuine, warm, relieved smile. The tears flowing down his cheek from his good eye are happy ones and his smile grows wider the harder he cries and he slumps into Chase’s arms like a puppet cut from its strings. He laughs and cries into Chase’s chest, happy and relieved and elated that it’s finally over. That thing is gone, and he’s finally free from its torment. Chase sinks to the floor with Schneep and he holds the doctor as he cries into his shirt, the others pausing their tasks to sit with the two fathers in a comforting circle. Anti pulls Robbie into his lap and wraps his arms around his little brother, careful of his torso, and Robbie hands the jar to Marvin so he can later use his healing magic to reattach Schneep’s eye as best he can. The magician sets it on the desk for now, and he joins the others on the floor, sitting in between Anti and Jackie. Anti leans over and gives Schneep’s shoulder a firm, reassuring squeeze, and Jackie rubs the doctor’s lower back while Chase rubs soothing circles into Schneep’s upper back.

They all sit there and say words of encouragement and comfort and let Schneep cry and cry until he can’t anymore, until he’s exhausted all the tears in his body and all he’s left with is feeling dead fucking tired. Marvin pulls out his phone to call Dr. Iplier about the whole eyeball situation, and Chase helps Schneep to his feet once more. The dadbro ego leads his fellow father ego to his bedroom while the others finish cleaning up the mess from the earlier chaos.

“You’re gonna be okay, dude,” Chase says, smiling and rubbing Schneep’s arm as they head towards his bedroom. “You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

Schneep smiles softly and leans into Chase. For the first time in months, he has hope that he will.

[rileywrites-parker]

Healing Kisses

Peter Parker x Reader

This is a re-post of this drabble request: hiya!! i absolutely adore your fics, and i was wondering if you could write one where peter constantly worries about his girlfriend (bc worried peter is adorable) and he's just rlly protective over her and loving but he's trying his best to not be too overbearing and she thinks it's the cutest thing ever?? thank you!!!

Summary: Sometimes you make Spider-man a little clumsy. Words: 800.

The giddy feeling in your chest bubbled up through your lungs and into the air, pealing, exuberant laughter filling the air, muffled slightly as you flew past shimmering buildings and rusty fire escapes, light of the stars and street lamps and office buildings reflecting off of the glassy surfaces all around you; wrapped up in Peter’s arms the way your laughter wrapped around his heart.

He’d agreed to take you for a spin around the city in style, but only if you agreed to wear a ski-mask, and only if you waited until after dark. It hadn’t been a difficult decision. You were bouncing on the balls of your feet, heart pounding, laughter already fluttering in the pit of your abdomen, hair tucked neatly underneath the scratchy fabric of your mask when he’d finally come knocking on your window.

So, really, to say that the abrupt end to your fun had been a disappointment was an understatement. Your laughter had distracted him. Your arms around his neck, and the warmth of your body pressed so closely to his had distracted him.

Both of your bodies had slammed into an ill-placed billboard. The sound of it echoing through the night would have been funny had it not knocked the wind out of you so entirely. Luckily, Peter had taken the brunt of the impact, his body jarring against yours as the whole side of him collided with the smiling face on the ad, your bones clanging against his, your mouth smashing against a pointy chin on the second bounce.

“Oh no, shit, shit, I’m sorry,” words spilling from his mouth before your bodies had run out of momentum; your knee knocked into his one more time, “Are you OK?” His voice was high and cracking, worry edging into every syllable. His hand tensed as he worked to lengthen the web he held so that he could lower the two of you to the ground, old sneakers and red boots settling on the roof together.

“I think so,” you said, mentally cataloguing every inch of you before running your hands over the lines of his shoulders, fingers running over a solid chest; you could feel his heart pounding beneath your fingers, “what about you?”

He clicked his tongue at that, shaking a masked head, “Of course I’m fine,” he said as he reached out to pull the mask off of his head, curls spilling out over a sweaty forehead before doing the same for you. You could feel the strands at the top of your head lifting with it, static pulling at the fine pieces.

His eyes narrowed as he focused in on your mouth, sucking air into his mouth again, “Dammit,” he whispered, fingers wiping at the little trail of blood making its way down your chin, “see, man, I’m so sorry. I knew this was a bad idea.”

You tried to shoo his hand away from you, lip throbbing, but probably not as bad as it looked, “Peter, I’m fine. Stop.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“So? I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Then his lips were all over your face, healing kisses smattering your cheeks, nose, and forehead.

“I’m sorry, you’re hurt and it’s my fa- ” You pulled your face away from him, his lips frozen in a pucker, to interrupt him.

“Oh my God, Peter, you’re doing the thing again.” He gave you his best attempt at a dirty look, childishly sticking his tongue out at you, and you had to laugh at him. Had to laugh at how ridiculous this boy was, with his careful fingers and tender heart. He cared about you, there was no doubting that. There was no questioning the burning in your chest and the fluttering of your heart.

In all honesty, the pulse in your lip was keeping time with the one in your chest, but you would never admit that to him.

“Ok, but are you really, really sure that you’re OK?” His brows were furrowed, gentle fingers crawling through your hair like the soft kisses he’d left all over your cheeks, checking for lumps and bumps that weren’t there.

You let your amusement paint your lips with a soft smile.

“Peter,” you huffed, an airy laugh pushing past a bruised lip, “really, really.” He stopped his fussing then, silken tresses falling back into place as his fingers retreated to your face, warm palms embracing ruddy cheeks. Tips of a calloused thumb brushed over the split on your lip; gentleness matching the look in his eyes and contrasting with the little frown weighing at his mouth. You nodded your head at him, eyes pleading with his to let it go.

But then his thumb pushed a little too firmly into your lip as you moved your head and you winced before you could really help yourself and he was groaning, eyebrows furrowing all over again as he released your face and threw his hands into the air.

“See, you’re not OK.”

“Peter.”

[rileywrites-parker]

hiya!! i absolutely adore your fics, and i was wondering if you could write one where peter constantly worries about his girlfriend (bc worried peter is adorable) and he's just rlly protective over her and loving but he's trying his best to not be too overbearing and she thinks it's the cutest thing ever?? thank you!!!

Sorry this took me so long. I hope you like this:

The giddy feeling in your chest bubbled up through yourlungs and into the air, pealing, exuberant laughter filling the air, muffledslightly as you flew past shimmering buildings and rusty fire escapes, light ofthe stars and street lamps and office buildings reflecting off of the glassysurfaces all around you; wrapped up in Peter’s arms the way your laughterwrapped around his heart.

He’d agreed to take you for a spin around the city in style,but only if you agreed to wear aski-mask, and only if you waiteduntil after dark. It hadn’t been a difficult decision. You were bouncing on theballs of your feet, heart pounding, laughter already fluttering in the pit ofyour abdomen, hair tucked neatly underneath the scratchy fabric of your maskwhen he’d finally come knocking on your window.

So, really, to say that the abrupt end to your fun had beena disappointment was an understatement. Your laughter had distracted him. Yourarms around his neck, and the warmth of your body pressed so closely to his haddistracted him.

Both of your bodies had slammed into an ill-placedbillboard. The sound of it echoing through the night would have been funny hadit not knocked the wind out of you so entirely. Luckily, Peter had taken thebrunt of the impact, his body jarring against yours as the whole side of himcollided with the smiling face on the ad, your bones clanging against his, yourmouth smashing against a pointy chin on the second bounce. It could have been the third, you weren’t sure.

“Oh no, shit, shit, I’m sorry,” words spilling from hismouth before your bodies had run out of momentum; your knee knocked into hisone more time, “are you OK?” His voice was high and cracking, worry edging intoevery syllable. His hand tensed as he worked to lengthen the web he held sothat he could lower the two of you to the ground, old sneakers and red boots settlingon the roof together.

“I think so,” you said, mentally cataloguing every inch ofyourself before running your hands over the lines of his shoulders, fingers runningover a solid chest; you could feel his heart pounding beneath them, “whatabout you?”

He clicked his tongue at that, shaking a masked head, “Ofcourse I’m fine,” he said as he reached out to pull the mask off of his head, curlsspilling out over a sweaty forehead before doing the same for you. You couldfeel the strands at the top of your head lifting with it, static pulling at thefine pieces.

His eyes narrowed as he focused in on your lips, suckingair into his mouth again, “Dammit,” he whispered, fingers wiping at the littletrail of blood making its way down your chin, “see, man, I’m so, so sorry. I knewthis was a bad idea.”

You tried to shoo his hand away from you, lip throbbing, butprobably not as bad as it looked, “Peter, I’m fine. Stop.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“So? I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Then his lips were all overyour face, healing kisses smattering your cheeks, nose, and forehead.

“I’m sorry, you’re hurt and it’s my fa- ” You pulled yourface away from him, his lips frozen in a pucker, to interrupt him.

“Oh my God, Peter, you’re doing the thing again.” He gave youhis best attempt at a dirty look, childishly sticking his tongue out at you,and you had to laugh at him. Had to laugh at how ridiculous; but really not-so-ridiculous at all, this boy was, withhis careful fingers and tender heart. He cared about you, there was no doubtingthat. There was no questioning the burning in your chest and the fluttering ofyour heart.

In all honesty, the pulse in your lip was keeping time withthe one in your chest, but you would never admit that to him.

“Ok, but are you really, really sure that you’re OK?” Hisbrows were furrowed, gentle fingers crawling through your hair like the softkisses he’d left all over your cheeks, checking for lumps and bumps that weren’tthere.

You let your amusement paint your lips with a soft smile.

“Peter,” you huffed, an airy laugh pushing past a bruisedlip, “really, really.” He stopped his fussing then, silken tresses falling backinto place as his fingers retreated to your face, warm palms embracing ruddycheeks. Tip of a gloved thumb brushed over the split on your lip;gentleness matching the look in his eyes and contrasting with the little frownweighing at his mouth. You nodded your head at him, eyes pleading with his tolet it go.

But then his thumb pushed a little too firmly into your lipas you moved your head and you winced before you could really help yourself andhe was groaning, eyebrows furrowing all over again as he released your face andthrew his hands into the air.

“See, you’re not OK.”

“Peter,” his name carried on the breath of a sigh through the night air.