#its unfortunate that human nature just begs for forgiveness

[tinycrowned]

sorry forgot the disclaimer: this is speculation. and i may not remember everything said and done in the game since i finished it a bit ago and i dont have power due to wrecked snowstorm so i cant go back and play it rn. this is speculation and thoughts!!

i may or may not elaborate on this later but i feel like an important aspect of sindri and atreus’ relationship and atreus’ obliviousness on how bad of a friend he was is because one: he’d never had a friend even his own age before sindri and brok,

two; sindri is a full grown adult, and there’s different levels of power there that sindri should have used to advocate for himself when he felt used or unappreciated. and although he isn’t atreus parent, he’s looked at as family, and every paternal/older familial figure has an opportunity to teach the children how to act properly and when they do something wrong, especially when kratos wasnt around when sindri was helping him search for Tyr. and three:

kratos does not set the best example on how to treat people, even though he is trying to “be better” as he says so often in the game.

faye was never around other people with atreus to properly show her son how to treat and act around other living people, but its still obvious that he gets his surplus of empathy for others FROM faye. but the second he’s around kids his own age, he acts VERY different than he does around sindri. its because he doesnt look at them as, how he says to angrboda, “uncles”. his view of them as family and his view OF family is very different to how he views peer friendships, because he doesnt expect anything from them.

sindri and brok have a similar role to kratos in atreus eyes: providers. they help protect him and his father with their skills and he views that as a thankless job because it’s just nature, like his father protecting him. father never expected thanks for keeping him safe because it’s his role similar to how mimir is another father in atreus’ eyes because of how he teaches him and cares about him, AGAIN, without expecting anything in return. and atreus treats sindri and brok the same way because he views them as family. while brok never seemed to be bothered by this and when he was he said so aloud, sindri was, and his failure to speak up for himself as well as atreus’ terrible socialization skills and social influences caused their relationship to shatter.

tldr: we see how kratos influences atreus and some of the time, it’s not for the better.

[lockandkeyhyena]

(I REALLY HOPE tumblr doesnt cut this off early... its pretty long!) Hello!! Your posts containing that recent story idea of yours has popped on my feed. To be completely honest what I have read so far has left me ... uncomfortable, but I want to be open-minded enough to give it a chance. So I hope you don't mind me using anon to ask some questions about it!

First and foremost, you have expressed what the narrative asks of it's audience, but what is the message? What is the story trying to say? I'm not necessarily against a story that asks it's viewers to sympathize with horrible people (BoJack, for example, is one of my fave shows ever), but I feel like, at least personally, you can't be too vague or open-ended with topics like these. BoJack (again, example) allows you to understand and sympathize with horrible people, but the message is also very clearly "actions have consequences, and you must own up to / live with them". I'm curious what your message is?

In your eyes, what exactly is the line between "Horrible person the audience can sympathize with" and "Horrible person the audience must pity, feel bad for, excuse actions of"? I feel like it is a line that can very easily (and often, unknowingly) be crossed, so I'd like to see your view on it

"redemption" is a word I see frequently on your posts. What is redemption to you? Is it a simple change in heart / behavior, or something more? I'm not against a horrible character like yours being 'redeemed', as in recognizing the true nature of his actions / behavior and striving to be 'better'. However to some people, 'redemption' can easily mean 'deserving of forgiveness' or 'unable to be judged / held responsible for previous actions' (which is why that kind of arc is so frequently controversial lol). All things considered, I personally don't think the latter would be wise to approach considering the characters crimes. But i'm sure you know that already.

This also begs the question - what is forgiveness to you, especially in media? In one of your posts is the line 'where do we draw the line in the sand for what crimes are deemed unforgivable even when faced with eternity, and why?', which made me curious enough to ask this anon in the first place. What is an unforgivable crime to you? How does your story plan to handle themes of forgiveness? Are you planning to write elements of forgiveness between victim / abuser? (mostly asking because, if that is the case, I don't think this could be a story I'd enjoy unfortunately)

How do you plan to have the audience feel sympathy / empathy for your character? Do you plan to go the 'he has a sad backstory' route or do you have something more planned? I also feel like it is important to acknowledge the difference between 'sympathize' and 'empathize' here. To want an audience to feel sympathy for a horrible character is something I can understand, as it calls for simple understanding. But empathy is something that is a lot more intimate imo (as it stems from a feeling of "your pain is my own, I have been in your shoes"). Which I don't think you could really ask of those who have been the victim of those things at least.

I definitely feel like it is important to acknowledge the humanity of horrible people, but I also feel like it is important to acknowledge that some people out there genuinely are just awful -- not every criminal has an unfortunate upbringing or bad life experiences, and not every criminal shares an ounce of care or regret or sympathy, as unfortunate as that may sound. With that said, I think it is perfectly healthy for the average person to maintain distance between themselves and those who cause others significant harm / traumas. At the end of the day, it is an abusers responsibility to see the harm they inflict and own up to their own actions. No innocent person should be expected to 'fix them' or tolerate their behaviors or forgive the hurt they have caused, even after redemption. Not even a simple 'you're hurting others' is owed, really. Nobody wants to put themselves in the shoes of someone who abuses children in that manner, because that is not really something you can do as a mistake, or accidentally, or without realizing, or in the heat of the moment. Sexual abuse in general is a crime done without good reason, which is why it is such a touchy subject -- and when you bring grooming into the mix, it becomes a crime that is now premeditated. But of course I say this from an outside perspective, I wouldn't know what it is like to harm children in that way …

Sorry for the ramble, anyways. All in all I'm willing to give your story a shot and I'm curious to see how you tackle these ideas (and, I will definitely be around to give you advice / my thoughts, for as long as you welcome them).

hey!! thanks so much for your input, it’s really appreciated. this’ll be a long one so strap in folks.

1. good question!! the message i’m trying to go for is something similar to bojack horseman. your behaviour shouldn’t damn you to an eternity of pain and suffering, but you still have to live with your actions and acknowledge that you’ve hurt people- and, most importantly, you can’t move forward without *acknowledging* you’ve done something wrong. basically, ‘anyone can become a better person, but you have to be willing to put the effort in and acknowledge that your past actions won’t go away.’

2. i don’t think there should ever be a character that the audience excuses the actions of, i think that while you can sympathise with and pity a character, you also necessarily have to acknowledge and analyse the bad they did.

3. OH OH THIS IS A GOOD ONE!! i think about this ALOT, especially in regards to forgiveness. i don’t personally think that if you become a better person, your past crimes should be forgiven/forgotten about. i think the most appealing thing about redemption narratively is your character constantly being reminded of their past and choosing to continue being a good person in spite of it.

redemption, to me, means recognising the horrible nature of your past actions and acknowledging that you did bad things, while simultaneously working to better yourself and be an overall good and kind person.

4. continuing on from the last question, i adore thinking about forgiveness in depth, i believe i made a post on it a year ago and still have an ask waiting in my askbox about what i personally define forgiveness as.

basically, no, i don’t plan to write any elements of forgiveness from the victim into the story, and that’s something i want alvin to have to deal with. think end of season one bojack horseman with ‘i don’t forgive you.’ i want him to be faced with that, acknowledge that nothing he can do can fix what happened, and strive to be a better person regardless.

personally, to me, while i would never *forgive* alvin for his crimes, i wouldn’t begrudge him the opportunity to better himself. an interesting contradiction in my worldview is that while i will never personally forgive child abusers, i don’t believe in being ‘beyond redemption’. i believe that if someone is given enough time, no matter how heinous the crime, give them a thousand, million, billion years of time, i believe they can see their wrongs and work towards being better people. i also believe it’s an endless task. there’s never going to be a ‘you are better now’ stopping point, and that’s something that has to be dealt with.

5. ah, simple misunderstanding of words here, i don’t really see a difference between sympathising and empathising and i use them both to mean ‘feel bad for’ or ‘understand someone’s point of view without necessarily agreeing’ while i plan for him to have a sad backstory, that’s not the avenue i plan to garner sympathy from the audience with. that’s the avenue that *he* initially wants you to take pity on him for.

i want people to sympathise with him due to his… normalness for lack of a better word. i want people to see him as a human outside of his terrible actions. i want him to have quirks, favourite movies and dislikes.

anyway, i think your insights are extremely valuable and i agree with all of them! the heinousness of the crime is sort of the point- can someone who knowingly and prolonged-ly(?) committed a vile act, become a better person? the answer i want to come out of this story with is yes, but it’s something that has to be done selflessly and with no expectation of reward.

thank you so much for taking time out of your day to write up these questions for me! any further input would be much appreciated- you’ve been very articulate and helpful with me putting my own thoughts into words.

[mysterycharacterflowers]

Round 4; A bouquet of rue, tansy, monkhood, milkweed and dame's rocket Vs A bouquet of dandelions, buttercups, roses, both black and yellow and sunflowers

First, let's talk about the bouquet of rue, tansy, monkhood, milkweed and dame's rocket

Meaning and why this flower was chosen: Rue, which is used to symbolize regret partly because it’s in the name, represents this character, who bears deep regret for an incident more personally impactful than anything else could be; it wasn’t the character’s fault, but nonetheless it begs forgiveness, and in many ways it’s inseparable from the incident itself. Tansy, which can mean a declaration of war, thus symbolizes this character who is defined by its existence in a context created by violence. It wouldn’t be who it is if not for (essentially) war being waged against it and its family. And after that (if you could even say there is an after for this character), it lives in wholehearted (and correct) conviction that it has a nemesis out there, a true and personal enemy, who will declare their ill intentions to it clearly and politely. So it would have been perfectly feasible and appropriate for its nemesis to literally send it a tansy bouquet. Monkshood, which is a warning of nearby danger and thus represents this character’s knowing fear of its nemesis. Milkweed, which symbolizes freedom and remembrance, fits here because this character kept running its whole life in order to get some semblance of freedom and safety for its family, and because remembrance is something built into the foundation of its story. Dame’s rocket is representative of deceit, and this character is an unreliable narrator who bluntly claims the right to lie outright, as such rights must be exercised lest they wither. Description: This character is a sentient building who cannot substantially communicate except through the fourth wall. It is a traveler, an immigrant, an escape route, a victim, a trauma, a gasp of desperation, and an act of lines crossed. Many things have burned in its hearth fire. It has a nice rooftop garden. It created a multiple-choice backstory for itself—many lies, of course. It’s gone through some major renovations by its resident family. It’s got this pretty mural on its front door. It has given its audience (i.e. the real actual readers) a death threat.

Check its post here

Now let's talk about the bouquet of dandelions, buttercups, roses, both black and yellow and sunflowers

Meaning and why: Yellow is the color often associated with friendship, and his whole thing is that he wants to make friends with everyone. Black flowers usually have slightly more negative meanings, which does fit with his often unsettling behaviors. So despite genuinely wanting to make friends, he has some off putting vibes about him that hold him back. Description: — a guy who only wants to make friends (and help save the world along the way) but is far better at making everyone around him extremely uncomfortable instead. it isn't on purpose, he's actually a real sweetheart, but he's very unfortunate in that he has a really creepy voice and a terrible habit of asking people to smell him. yikes — While his specy is unknown, we do know for sure he has some kind of connection with nature (whether he's a plantfolk, a human who has nature powers, perhaps a mix of both). As mentioned previously, despite his often off putting actions and behaviors, he trully genuinely just wants to make friends with people, but oftens scares them off. By the end of his journey, however, he manages to make a few close friends! He's especially close to an arson loving hivemind, who he has an ambiguous relationship with (are they best friends? romantically involved? both are hinted at but never comfirmed)

Check his post here

[ferinehuntress]

[ T ] HE LEGENDS OF AHRI .

　Ahri was not always the benevolent woman that she is today.  In the last three thousand years, Ahri has been through multiple stages of change and growth, which has led to multiple legends all across Runeterra. She has many different legends all with different titles

The Bloodthirsty Kumiho The Guise of the Fox Woman The Keeper of Souls The Man-Eating Kitsune The Stealer of Hearts The Benevolent Nine-Tail Fox The Inari of Solace

　These legends all depict a certain part of Ahri's life, and unfortunately most see her in a negative aspect due to her monstrous state of actions. It is not uncommon for humans to be more focused on the dark and haunting the the kind benevolence and so Ahri's name is often painted in that of darkness, fear, and doom.

ᴛ ʜ ᴇ 　ᴄ ᴜ ʟ ᴛ 　ᴏ ғ　 ᴠ ᴜ ʟ ᴘ ᴇ s　 ᴀ ɴ ɪ ᴍ ᴀ

　Ahri had enough after nearly two centuries of this abuse. In the single statement, she began to lure people into a forest. It started with a husband and wife who thought they could berate her. Ahri snapped and drew them in with smells and enticement. The forest she lived in was eerie and  yet intriguing and Ahri was a shadow of mystery. Ahri didn't care to understand them or be worshiped; Ahri wanted to play with her food. She watched them wander, using her lure and illusion power to give them the idea they were safe; but then the illusion would die and they would see her golden eyes and the natural state would be prey running and she attacks. She killed the woman first, literally ripping her heart out, and allowed the fear to permeate and infect the man to leave him running. The hunt for her prey excited her, just as if she was hunting a deer or a rabbit.

　This is when Ahri began her hunt. She didn't care who, she would release the lure and drag people into her forest, where she would play with them only to release the beast and make them run in fear and she would give chance. Warnings came to stay away from the forest and never mess with foxes.

　The worst part was that some began to worship this power. People who saw this and groveled at the feet of the heart stealer. Ahri could care less about these worshippers, she didn't understand the concept of worship. Over the years, it began to become a cult in this village. There would be a lottery, where a name was picked if a sacrifice was not captured or someone volunteered. This was a means of keeping the fox at bay, as if it would protect the village (and it did for some time). Many times, it wasn't uncommon for an unwilling sacrifice to be captured, typically visitors that would stop at the village to rest. The village began to resemble Ahri's actions. It also wasn't uncommon for a willing sacrifice to be offered, in hopes of gaining the favor of the she-fox. Again, Ahri didn't care for worship or this kind of desire of favor; Ahri only saw the hunt.

　If Ahri had her full, she didn't always attack those who entered the forest. She would hide in the shadows, golden eyes watching those who might enter the forest. Anyone who harmed a fox, often met the ire of Ahri; cultist or regular villager This is why Masks would be crafted, of white and red, or white and black, in hopes it might keep Ahri at peace believing if she saw a fox, she would be forgiving.

The cult didn't worship Ahri out of love or respect, they saw Ahri as a tool. For this cult was able to gain control and power over the village they lived in. The cult was established within the hierarchy of the village, the leader of the town, the healer, and other important positions. By day, no one knew who was in the cult, and at night they would meet under mask. These masks allowed the cult to stay hidden and their agenda to control the village, its commerce and more.

　However, there was one day one of the villagers wandered into her forest. A young woman, showing not an ounce of fear. But she wasn't there to gain Ahri's favor, she didn't beg for forgiveness; she came with a warm heart. Ahri didn't understand this, and while she struggled with human language the woman didn't insult her. Her voice was soft and gentle. Ahri nearly killed her and yet all she did was touch her face and say 'I'm sorry for what they did to you'. It was the first time Ahri had ever felt a hint of compassion, a hint of warmth. It scared Ahri, and she ran from her. Over weeks, she continued to hunt those sent into her forest, but this woman she didn't. She would occasionally follow her in the village, or follow her when she came into her forest. She would taste her essence, and cling to it. For once, she desperately wanted what no one else truly gave her.

Gwen also gave Ahri her name. The cult called her The Man-eater, The Heart-stealer, or other names. But Gwen called her Ahri. She named her that because to Gwen, Ahri was beautiful, her instinct and nature beautiful to her. Ahri loved the name Gwen gave her, but she didn't want anyone else to know. Gwen was her sweet little secret, someone she wanted to keep close and safe. They happily experience companionship for three years, a slow burn of love and connection. Ahri didn't understand romantic love as humans do, but Ahri knew she felt something for Gwen. A powerful connection that made her heart yearn to stay with Gwen and enjoy her presence.

　One day, the cult offered an unwilling sacrifice, which Ahri hunted willingly, and she ripped her essence from her. it was delicious but painful at the same time, a bitter taste she knew. Its when it hit her exactly who she had fed on. The compassion, she knew that compassion. The hope, love, and care in her heart. Ahri quietly held the body, untying her bound arms and pulling off the hood from the woman's head. When Ahri looked at the body in the light, it was her Gwen who had been her only companion. Ahri grew vengeful and let out a eerie scream of pain and anguish. In anger went straight to the village and caused devastation beyond comparison. It was the first time she took her large fox form, standing at ten feet tall. She started to rip essence from everyone there; cultist and regular villager. It didn't matter to her, she was filled with rage and vengeance.

　Only then did Ahri disappear, not to her forest but from the entire region, carrying the soul of her past friend in sunstone. It was her way of protecting the essence of her companion from suffering, giving her the peace of an afterlife she deserved, and visiting her often. For this woman was her first friend and Ahri wanted to protect her. She couldn't protect her in life, but she could protect her in death. It was her essence that gave Ahri compassion, and so her soul would forever be safe in her sunstone.

ᴛ ʜ ᴇ　 ɢ ᴀ ᴛ ᴇ ᴋ ᴇ ᴇ ᴘ ᴇ ʀ

　Ahri became a wanderer, never staying in one place long and cloaking herself to look like a normal woman with black hair and peach skin. She tried to be as unassuming as possible, wanting no attraction. She heard the stories that were crafted around her legend. The man-eater, the heart stealer, so many titles, yet none knowing the full extent. It haunted her, many sleepless nights of pain. And still, she had to hunt, she had to feed on essence and meat.

　Over the decades, she was around during a massive plague that started to wreak havoc on the population. Men, women, and children all the same; suffering from the illness that tormented their bodies. Ahri could feel the suffering and these people as she wandered into villages. So one night, she had to feed and decided to visit an elderly man. He was feeble and suffering, coughing and feverish. The feeling of her heart tugged at her as she snuck in as a fox at first, and moved in his direction. His hand petted her, sweetly, despite his weakness and she waited til she turned to her normal form.

　She offered him a choice, to help him leave this world in peace, no more pain, no more suffering. He would just, go to sleep, and he would be free. A part of her felt guilty, she was hunting after all, and needed food, and essense, but there was also this hope to do her friend justice. As she showed her compassion, perhaps she could do the same for others. The man was humbled and then said yes. His time was done, he was ready for release. Ahri used her ability to lure him first, putting him at ease around her so he could calm down, and then she found his dreams. For dreams was a realm between planes that spirits could easily enter into. She gave him the peace he desired, a dream to fall asleep to, and then with the most gentle of actions, she pulled his essence from his body and he died in his sleep. She consumed his essence and released his soul to go to the realm of spirits.

　At this moment, Ahri released what she could do, to feed in this time of plague. She would visit house to house, across the realm of Runeterra, giving people the release they desire. Their suffering was put at ease, they could sleep and be free. Many started to call this fox they would see sneaking into houses only to leave with a dead body behind as the GateKeeper. The keeper of death, for when the fox entered, that meant that death had come to find them. Many started to confuse Ahri with Kindred, assuming that she was the reaper of death when she was only offering a way out.

　During these years, Ahri began to learn more about her emotions. Sometimes she felt sadness, rage, and bitterness, othertimes she felt love, compassion, and hope. All these emotions began to become part of her, growing with her. If she found an essence that was filled with darkness, harming people and enjoying it for the simple sake they could, she would rip into them, killing them where they lay: plague or no plague. But those who were good people, who may have had bad times or bad situations, evne with their flaws, were good people, Ahri helped leave this world in peace.

　Some saw her as a benevolent spirit, helping those around Runeterra; others thought of her as a vengeful spirit, haunting after those who were suffering and dying. Those of family often would insult and hate her because she took their loved ones but she knew what she was doing. She would always be a monster, that's what she was; what she did. Yes, she could rip and maim and maul, but she was not evil. She only did so now to people who earned her rather, there were others she would go after that she would guide to the afterlife; using her powers to free them tenderly.

　It was these years, that Ahri learned that she was a monster and she would always be a monster. But she decided what kind of monster she wanted to be.

ᴛ ʜ ᴇ 　ʜ ᴜ ɴ ᴛ ᴇ ʀ 　ᴏ ғ　 ʜ ᴜ ɴ ᴛ ᴇ ʀ s

　After almost 2 millenniums, Ahri finally found a purpose that she revels in. She no longer focuses on the concepts of good or bad, heroes and villains, she is who she is and she can't control how people see her as a monster. For her, she has come to accept her monstrous side, learning how to control it so that it doesn't get out of hand.

　What she does know, is to hunt the hunters. In her years, she had seen the good and the bad of people: humans, vastaya, and all those in between. No one is free from her claws, she will hunt you if she deems it so. She tends to search for people who hunt others out of unnatural needs. If you hunt like a predator, as a natural hunter like a lion would a zebra, she leaves them be. However, those who hunt for trophies and excitement, those who do not care except for their selfish desires, will often hunt. She is a threat to vastaya and humans alike, and she has a major distaste for Vastaya who hunt their kind. 

　Ahri revels in her hunt, she thrives on being a predator. She watches for her prey, she gets close. She'll even tempt them, using herself as bait and prey til she has them in her snare. She enjoys the hunt, she has always enjoyed the feeling of stalking and ambushing her prey. She cannot change her nature, she is a predator. She is the eldritch horror to many stories, with a sinister set of gold eyes that send fear into those she hunts. For there is a delight in watching the hunters become the hunted.

　To this day, there are stories of the nine-tail fox, the man-eating kitsune, and the Fox woman. For she is all of these titles.

　She is the monster she wants to be. She decides what she wants to do, and she will not be ashamed of her nature anymore.

[rainybyday]

Danny Vlad is a walking Lazarus Pit

(Please understand that I am not that good with Vlad so bare that bit of information in your minds)

So, we understand that there's a couple of au's that feature Danny as the walking Lazarus Pit but let's do one better. 

Ectoplasm is a neutral state of emotions at its purest. It is neither calm nor is it sadden, it's the base of all emotions and no emotions at the same time. It's when ectoplasm is mixed with an entity, mixed with those spirits of the dead, does it shape and bend to the entity at will. Ectoplasm is easily changeable which can cause some emotions to linger and some emotions to heighten at a degree if a ghost or entity of the ghost realm does not filer or absorb new forms of pure ectoplasm. 

When Vlad and Danny were created, they were both recreated with the use of pure ectoplasm into their bodies. However, it's human nature to panic or become distress when surviving a life-and-death situation. This leads to negative emotions contaminating the ectoplasm inside of them as they real in from the shock of going through death. 

When one comes out of a situation that is that traumatizing then you would want the people or the support of those you trust whole heartly. 

Unfortunately for Vlad, the people he trusts the most are the people that killed him.  

(Danny had Sam and Tucker there with him and the day of his death. So scared and fearful and he felt so wrong, but he had to breath. Had to calm because someone is hugging him and telling him it was okay and telling him they were sorry.)

(A few weeks in, Sam came to him in the middle of the night and cried, no, begged for his forgiveness. Crying that it was her fault and that she knows he is uncomfortable with her and that she understands but by god Danny she can’t live with herself for what she did-)

(And she was right, Danny did feel fear and anger at Sam. Angry enough to think that if he just had ignored her, if he just turned her suggestion away, if he just STOPPED then he would not have to live with the fear of living in a house of hunters.)

(But Danny can’t hate Sam, doesn’t want to hate her with how much he’s been through because if he loses her to then he will break.)

(Their friendship is not the same, it's not perfect, but perhaps that what it needs in order to grow stronger again.)

Vlad loves Maddie. Vlad loves Jack. But how-how-how-how-why-whywhywhywhy-!

The people he loves the most are the ones that hurt him. The ones he cherished above all else are the ones that turned him into a monster. How can he call them for help when he knows exactly what they would do if they found out that he had died!

They won’t believe him. Antieanst they won’t believe him and take him and cut him and strap him and try and try and try to bring him back, but they would only end up hurting him further and... and... and...

Then it twisted, deeper, longer, faster. 

Emotions after emotions poured right into Vlad, Fear of being found. Rage at the world for him being the one in a billion chance. Anguish because he knows he has to flee, that he has to hide. Lost over the future he desperately worked himself to the bone went down the drain. Tired from crawling out of his would be grave. Hysterical at the smell of burn flesh and cooked meat. 

And agony, agony over losing his chance to tell Maddie how he felt. Agony that he couldn’t keep his promise to Jack no longer. Agony because he knows that his recreation will be the discovery, they always wanted but will be the cause of his own freedom and free will. 

Negative emotions after negative emotions poured out to his body and into his ectoplasm. When he ran hid away, the was too scared to come into contact with ectoplasm after that event. In that time, his negative emotions boiled and burned under his skin over time. It infested into his blood, his bones and body and finally to his mind. 

And his ectoplasm, his in pained and ranging ectoplasm latched onto his most strongest emotions and tugged. 

Years later, Vlad had three thoughts running through is after that event. 

He wants Maddie, he needs Maddie because he loved her because he need to be stable. He loves Maddie and was the only thing that brought him joy hope when he sunken to despair fear. His love for Maddie is eternal and he wants needs her to love him just as much back or else he would feel closer to losing his sanity. 

He hates Jack, he misses Jack. He hates him with every fiber of his being because he knows that he loves her as well. He wants him gone so he can’t hurt him. He wants him to feel how he felt as he died but he can’t he can’t he can’t-. He wished he had been the one to die he wished he can feel safe with his friend again.

(His emotions got mixed and was unable to filter out. Because of the months, if not, years of ectoplasm eating away at his negative emotions his blood slowly turned into a toxic green. His ectoplasm was a form of rage-hurt-kill-sadness-betrayal-hurt-rage that would not be pushed out, could not be pushed out. Because of his fear of the thing that killed him, the thing that was keeping him alive, Vlad Masters because a walking Lazarus Pit with no way of knowing how to heal himself again. 

Vlad Masters was stuck in his own mind, unable to control his emotions and desires, unable to fully control his actions and words, unable to unsee the vision of the world burning at the corner of his eye.)

(Sometimes, he ponders at the times he can be sain. Sometimes, he tried to reach out to the small voice in the back of his mind to stop, to heal, to let someone know.)

(But he can’t, he mustn’t.)

(He doesn’t want to die again.)

And one day, in just a single day, Vlad would follow Danny for Gotham (the only person who feels like him, who knows what its like to scream and never be heard). He will pause at the sensation of Death surround the city but keep going. The toxic green film over his eyes telling him to continue. 

One day Vlad would be out at night, maybe at a Gala, maybe to feel the Spirit and Her city, maybe to find something to break. Vlad would be out at the time that the Bats are most active and attract their attention. 

Vlad would fight of course, fight because he needs a fight, wants to break and hurt and rage. He wants to cause chaos and hurt those that still have the sensation of life in them because that's all he can do. 

He will fight until he feels it. 

A person. A bat. A boy. 

Someone just likes him. 

Someone that has the same rage inside of them just like him. 

Someone so similar to Daneil yet not. 

Someone that was just like him, just like them. 

Somone else that sees through toxic green lens. 

(And Jason felt it, deep inside his chest and older than his bones, that this person, this meta or entity that was in front of him was just like him.)

(He wants to scream too.). 

[moemoemammon]

How do you think the Brothers would go about with an MC that acts like a mom/dad? Who do you think would slip up first and call them that?(Although I'm pretty sure we all know it would be Satan 'cuz he is in desperate need of a parental figure-🏃‍♂️)

Parental MC!

(Feat. GN!MC and the Demon Bros)

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Lucifer

Didn’t think much of it at first. You were extra helpful, and he figured your empathy and attentiveness was just another one of your unfortunate human qualities...Until you scolded him for staying up so late, and he felt kinda whipped? Hello who do you think you are????

Can’t even get mad at you because you’re right, and now for the first time he feels like HE has to apologize?? His brothers are 👀👀👀📸

As much as it bothers every fiber of his being to be told off by a human... you're also so affectionate and attentive that it makes his heart swell. But please stop fixing his collar in front of Diavolo he begs you-

You don't let him resist. This man doesn't know the first thing about self care so it looks like you'll have to beat it into him ����

It's the little gestures, like making his coffee some mornings or bringing his breakfast to his room, folding his clothes for him and making sure his favorite suit is pressed to perfection, and- ...now he's embarrassed. Please leave him be...

Mammon

There’s so much to get onto this man for its not even funny- His room is always cluttered, he rarely irons his clothes, doesn’t do his chores, his time management is nonexistent...

So you let into him and now he feels like he’s being torn apart by Lucifer-! What the hell is the big idea..?! Ya know you're taking to THE Great Mammon, right??

And when he tries to buck up and yell back at you? You take his PHONE. MC please it was just a prank bro please he’ll clean the tub he swears pelease...,,,

Maybe it's not so bad though. As much as you get on his nerves, you praise and encourage him so much that he can't stay mad. When he needs anything, he naturally just goes to you.

He's starting to get used to being spoiled by you. It's nice, you know? Having someone who derisively cares about his well-being and stuff... N-Not that he's happy about it or anything!

Levi

This man’s self care habits don’t exist, and that means he’s a victim of your parental instincts. His stuffy room needs a deep clean, he needs to eat proper meals, and he needs some fresh air!

Definitely rebels the strongest. There’s no way he’s listening to some normie-! ...Is what he’s say if you weren’t holding Azuki-tan hostage.

You tell him its for his own good and that you care about him, so he can’t really get mad. And this kinda...doesn’t this feel like a specific genre of manga..? Uwaah...

But seriously, being spoiled like this is way too much! You bring him meals to his room, sometimes you help him tidy up, you make sure he's taking care of himself... y-you're not trying to propose, right? He's not taking it the wrong way, r-right??

You thought he was clingy and needy before?? Just wait till he becomes attached to your hip because of all this love. He will literally do things just to get your attention. Oh nooo his room is dirty, please help him clean again oh noooo you're enabling him-

Satan

This man’s sleep schedule is so sporadic, and his room? Atrocious. You’re gonna fix that.

Not without ample resistance, though. It’s always “after this chapter, I promise”, and “Oh? Have you been watching those parenting videos on Deviltube again?” He's not taking it seriously at all-

Smooth about how he ignores your commands, but he finds himself bending a little... It's nice that you care so much about him, but only in moderation.

Satan likes being spoiled, but he'll become annoyed if he's coddled too much. Be careful not to treat him like a child. He's pretty independent in general and has his stuff together, and prefers to be the one spoiling you.

Calls you mom (derogatory) because it's funny-

Asmo

He’s used to being adored, but this is an entirely new thing! You’re so thoroughly interested in his  wellbeing that he actually feels kind of... Embarrassed? What a weird feeling...

You coddle and adore him, yet you’re stern when he goes overboard. You nag him to study, and you carefully brush through the tangles in his hair, you fix the tears in his favorite outfits, you bought him that candle he was looking for...

His heart is so full, he can’t keep his hands off of you! Marry him, MC! Give him a kiss! Jokes aside, it's making him feel all giddy, even when you scold him for trying to start a party in study hall.

Really though, you're managing to tame one of the wildest brothers, and that's a feat in itself! Try not to let him take advantage of that-

Beel

He noticed how caring you were right away, and BOI did it make him happy. Beel seems naturally drawn to you, because of your gentle nature and the way you somehow get everyone into line.

They’re happier lately because of you, and he loves it. Even Mammon’s scummy behavior has improved! 

But what REALLY gets him are your homecooked meals. They carry that comfort food feel, and he can taste the love in every single bite. It’s so good, it’ll make a grown man cry...

You still scold him when he breaks into the fridge or leaves crumbs everywhere, and he actually feels bad for it 😔 Sorry mom....

Now he usually goes to you for help before he'll go to anyone else. Sometimes he prefers you over Belphie... sometimes. It's not that obvious, but he's definitely become clingy.

Belphie

This brat could use all the gotdamn help in the world, but luckily you seem to have the tolerance of a saint.

His sleeping habits can’t really be helped, but you know he can do better about taking care of himself!

He’s annoying about it and asks you to do it for him. Brush his teeth please. Can you make his bed? Hey, have you seen his pillow? Let him use your lap-

Naturally drawn to you, too, like his bastard soul knows he needs a parental figure to set him straight. Does his best to have you spoil him, but usually falls flat

And when you scold him? He tries to ignore you like he does with Lucifer, but something about your lectures hits different.. Especially when you whip out the “I’m not mad, just disappointed”. He'll linger around and try to do little chores to get your attention, and forgiveness.

[astaroth1357]

Hello I really love your writing. I’m glad that you decided to open requests for a bit. I have a personal headcanon that the boys are a lot nicer to MC then they are to everyone else. Could you do a headcanon of the boys being out with MC and they are talking with MC happily. Then a lesser demon sees them with MC and says that the seven brothers have gone weak and they aren’t scared of them anymore. Thank you again!!! 😖 (Also the way you write Levi is great)

Aww thank you!! Levi's kind of my favorite character (if that hasn't become painfully obvious) so I try to write him well, you know? This one was a little hard for me to write because I just have a hard time imagining Asmo and Beel as something intimidating to the masses, but I tried my best! I hope you like it!

Lesser Demons Think the Brothers have "Gone Soft…"

Lucifer

If anybody had something to lose by acting sweet on a lowly human, it was Lucifer. His entire image was built on the back of power and intimidation, so really who didn't see this coming?

He knew there were whispers… Mostly in the RAD hallways. Students would see him with the MC and gossip amongst themselves… 

"Did you see them together again in the courtyard?"

"How did some random human even score a pact with him??"

"And I used to seriously look up to him, too…"

He'd always silence their chitchat with a well placed glare, but this was a symptom of something more… troubling. A decay of his social image if you will.

Perhaps it speaks to how well and truly enamored he was with the MC that this proud creature didn't just dump them the second he started looking bad, but still… a part of him really couldn't stand for this...

So maybe it was a blessing in disguise when he finally got an excuse to establish his superiority yet again!

He and the MC were walking the halls of RAD after school hours and they had just made an amusing joke at the expense of of his brothers. Unfortunately, Lucifer collided into a lesser demon student while he was laughing…

On most occasions, he would have expected someone of such station to pay him deference then offer an apology - they had just ran into Lucifer after all - but the student just scoffed at him!

Lesser Demon: "Oi! Watch where you're going, Lucifer! Or were you too busy sucking up to that human to notice?"

This… was maybe not the best response to have (if the "Oh shit" look on the MC's face was any indication) but for as annoyed as Lucifer was, he was also somewhat delighted.

Finally, he had the perfect messenger for just how cruel he could still be!

Lucifer: "MC, feel free to go home without me for now and tell my brothers to save my dinner for later…" *starts pulling out his favorite rope with a cold, but pleased, smile on his face* "I have a feeling I'll be home late tonight..."

The MC left him and his unfortunate victim to their fate and Lucifer later came home in the night with his uniform in a bad need of cleaning...

A new body decorated the RAD entrance hall the next morning - swinging from the ceiling and making an awful mess on the floor - but still alive enough give a very important message to the rest of the students:

"Lucifer hasn't changed a bit…"

Mammon

So, not even lesser demons see Mammon as some kind of high-ranking badass… 

Just to be clear, he is, but it’s hard for him to come off that way when he's begging for his next Grimm... Then enter MC into the picture and he somehow lost even MORE cred.

"There goes poor Mammon… Did you hear he got tricked into a pact?"

"Just look at him nipping at the human's heels! How pathetic is that??"

"Well that's Mammon for you… What a shit excuse for a demon."

Like Lucifer, Mammon wasn’t immune to the whispers, but unlike his brother he was able to push them mostly out of his mind. People look down on him? Yeah, what else is new?

To be honest, he didn’t really feel the need to prove anything to a bunch of lesser demon losers… But insulting his MC takes things a step too far.

He and the MC were out at the Devil's Coast, "enjoying" some of the haunted house attractions and generally having a good time…ish. 

Any time they managed to make it out of one, the MC would have to peel Mammon off their back and hold him to assure him they were back to safety (a process he seemed to like enough to repeat the horror that precedes it).

It was during one of these calm down sessions that the two were accosted by a couple of snickering lesser demons, clearly looking for a fight…

Lesser Demon 1: "Hey look! There's the 'Great' Mammon and his little master!"

Lesser Demon 2: "Guess the master fits the demon… Of course someone like Mammon couldn't even score a pact with Solomon and gets stuck with the weakling!"

Lesser Demon 1: "Well how's the babysitting going, Mams? I bet you can't wait for them to kill over, can ya?"

Lesser Demon 2: "Careful! With his luck, they'll probably get eaten by the end of next week! Haha!!"

Now… an important thing to know about Mammon is that you can fling all the mud and stones you'd like at him… but never at his MC. That's just asking for a bruising...

Mammon: *smiling like usual, but his eyes are practically burning with rage...* "Yo, MC… I'm gettin' a little hungry. Can ya go find us a snack over there? I'll meet ya in a bit…"

MC: "Mammon, are you-?"

Mammon: "Don’t worry 'bout me, babe." *takes his glasses off and flashes a fanged grin* "This is'a piece of cake."

And indeed, it wasn't difficult at all. No matter how fast those demons ran, they could never out speed Mammon and he was looking to give more than a warning…

The MC didn't know what he did while they were waiting in line, but they heard the sounds of pleading go silent before Mammon turned back up with a nice bruise on his cheek. Oh, how they fretted and dotted on him…

Meanwhile, the haunted houses just earned themselves a couple new mannequins!… when rigor sets in anyway.

Leviathan 

Levi has a… mixed reputation in the Devildom to start with. People who only know him for his titles usually expect him to be some kind of sea-hardened badass. Those who meet him are… well let's say less than impressed.

This isn't anything new to Levi. It does take a blow to his confidence sometimes but even still most people aren't dumb enough to say something to his face… most people.

Unfortunately, "most people" have been getting bolder after seeing him with MC - because Demon Lord forbid Leviathan actually look happy for a change…

He and the MC were out and about for once. There was a raffle for exclusive merch at Anidaemon and he brought them along to boost his chances. They were grinning and chatting about anime but well…

The human couldn’t hear this, but he could - sensitive demon ears and all that. There were a couple guys who were tailing him… heckling him just loud enough that he was CERTAIN they knew he could hear them...

Lesser Demon 1: "Is that seriously Leviathan hanging out with a human? Isn’t he an Admiral??"

Lesser Demon 2: "Ha! The whole family's turned into simps, are you that surprised?"

Lesser Demon 1: "Wonder what the human's giving them that's got them all brainwashed…"

Lesser Demon 2: "Well... I've got an idea." 😏

If there were ever a reason for bile to fill his throat, it was now. He might be a shut-in, but those guys were the real creeps…

To be honest, Levi isn't one for public confrontation. Even with how gross and disrespectful those demons were being, he would have let it slide if they had just left it at that… but no…

He and the MC were browsing the ani-music racks in the store when those idiots popped up again. They hovered a while until they MC suddenly left his side to go find a store clerk.

When he saw the other demons move their direction, he naturally put himself between them and the would-be harassers. It was a little telling that despite his ticked off expression, the demons just laughed in his face!

Lesser Demon 2: "Hey look, the puppy's come out to protect its owner! How cute!"

Lesser Demon 1: "I can't believe you're that predictable, Levi… Do you really think we'd be scared of you?"

Well. That settled it.

When the MC came back, they found that Levi had moved from the music racks to the merch tables near the bathrooms. They didn't think anything of it… but...

One body was paralyzed by his venom and stuffed head first in a toilet while the other getting strangled by his tail just underneath the tablecloth… Meanwhile, Levi was cheerfully rambling about the raffle like nothing was happening at all.

Maybe they should have been a little more scared of the shut-in...

Satan

This may actually be a case where the rumors have a point… The MC has made Satan "soft."

Well, if "soft" means actually in control of himself, anyway. 

Satan would probably call their effect on him both a blessing and a curse. Though he loved finally having a handle on his inner rage, it flew in the face of a lot of his public image… and people were starting to notice….

"Do you think there's something off about Satan…?"

"I saw the human step on his toes earlier and he didn't even flinch…! The old Satan would have torn them apart!!"

"He's gotten way too nice all of sudden… Wrath shouldn't be nice."

Was it a little frustrating? Certainly. Especially for someone as image conscious as him. But for as calm as he was now, Satan wasn’t any less cruel and he'd be more than happy to remind others of that fact….

His chance came when he and the MC were together having just left the local art gallery. The two were exchanging a healthy dialogue about a curious sculpture they saw on display when a latte suddenly went soaring through the air and ended up all over Satan's sweater… The culprit was plain to see, being the only other demon on the road that night.

Whether the act was intentional or not, the correct course of action would have been to apologize immediately and beg for mercy forgiveness… but all the demon did was laugh in his face…

Maybe he thought that since Satan had mellowed out and his human was right beside him that he'd be lenient… Oh no. Not gonna happen.

Satan's fist slammed into the guy's mouth with the force of a jetliner and knocked him over two benches before his back bent over a lamppost… To say it was a KO move would be an understatement.

He probably could have done a whole lot worse to the guy while he was down, but you know… the MC being there and "self-control" and what not…

The demon survived (barely) and only had to spend a few months in the hospital, if anything he got off light.

Not a soul would gloss over Satan's temper again and really he preferred it that way.

Asmodeus 

Well, to be fair not a lot of people thought that Asmo was tough to start with… but that's also his intention.

"Scary" is the opposite of "cute" and he prefers to be "cute" at all times! 😊

Buuut that doesn’t mean this scorpion is without a stinger. He CAN be quite brutal when he wants to be, you just have to push him that far and trashing his looks is a good way to start.

Asmo was out with the MC getting his hair done for the week at his favorite salon. They weren't the only people there that day, obviously. There were other customers - one being a lesser demon classmate of theirs - though neither he nor the MC thought much of him at the time...

Well… It was supposed to be a prank. Probably something the guy intended to use for social media clout. While the staff was too busy to notice, he snuck by and replaced Asmo's preferred conditioner with pink hair dye…

Asmo. Was. Furious. And honestly, the dude could have gotten away with it if he hadn't been laughing and recording the whole thing!

When Asmo's ire naturally fell onto him, he hardly looked fazed!

Lesser Demon: "Ah, please! You won't do shit to me with the human still around! You don't want to look any uglier to them do ya?"

Asmo: *freezes, but still furiously eyeing every sharp instrument within arm’s reach* "MC? Darling?"

MC: "Got it..."

Perhaps the prankster should have kept his mouth shut, because suddenly the MC needed to take a looong bathroom break…

They didn't come back out until they heard the sounds of screeching and broken glass finally die down and then they stepped back into a warzone… Broken mirrors and items seemingly flung everywhere in a fit of rage! The guy (and his phone) now nowhere to be seen…

The salon comped Asmo for the botched hair job and touch up… and then billed Lucifer for the property damage (which he got an earful about later). On the bright side though, Asmo actually looks pretty great with pink hair! Silver-linings. 🙂

Beelzebub 

… The concept of Beel "going soft" is almost an oxymoron. He IS soft, but his personality was never what made him intimidating to start with.

Behind all his kindness, Beel packs more firepower than at least 4 for his siblings combined and most people remember that fact. Hell, the guy looks like he could lift a semi and he probably would if he ever tried. 

However, that doesn’t save him from being underestimated completely... Especially when an upstart or two thinks he's too nice to actually start a fight...

He and the MC were coming back from the grocery store with the usual armfuls of sacks when the MC accidentally walked into a lesser demon on the street. Since their arms were full, several items spilled out from the bags and onto the ground…

The MC was quick to apologize to the demon and try to get down to clean the mess, but the asshole just kept walking… and Beel really didn't like that.

Beel: "Hey! Aren't you going to say, 'Sorry?'"

The lesser demon hardly looked over his shoulder to respond.

Lesser Demon: "Why should I? That's your human. Take care of them yourself."

Well it didn't take long for some of Beel's bags to hit the floor so he could lift the demon up by the back of the neck properly. When he turned the guy to face him, he made sure to bring his face reeaal close so he could hear him growl...

Beel: "Apologize. Or I'll eat you."

And like that, the asshole's mood went from "Do it yourself," to "Yessir Mr. Beelzebub, sir!" right quick!

The MC didn't have to carry a single bag another step and Beel got to keep his free hand so he could link it with theirs!... all while Beel kept mushing their new pack-mule forward like a sled dog back to the House. Thanks, Beel! 😊

Belphegor 

Kind of similar to Asmo, Belphie prefers to come off as unassuming on most days. But don't let his, "I'm a harmless sleepy boy" shtick fool you. He will cut a bitch if he's so motivated...

Thankfully for the world, he's generally not motivated. But that can be changed under the right circumstances...

Belphie and the MC were on yet another date to the botanical gardens. It's a peaceful place, though the MC can never go alone because of the frankly concerning amount of flesh-eating plants… Pretty, but also deadly, you know?

The two of them were walking to another rest spot when Belphie heard whispering from a demon behind them, seemingly on his phone…

Lesser Demon: “Yeah, I can see them right now…”

Lesser Demon: “I know right? It's so lame that these guys are in charge of us… They can't even say no to a dumb human!”

Lesser Demon: “What do you mean keep my voice down? Dude, it's fine! This is Belphegor we're talking about, the hell is he going to do if he hears me?”

… Huh.

The answer to the man's question was a simple one. Flash into his demon form for just a moment and whip out his tail... It only took a quick swipe to make him trip and fall right into the foliage. The man-eating… carnivorous… hungry… foliage….

Belphie was back to normal by the time the jerk let out his first scream and the MC almost stopped to see what had happened.

MC: "What the-oh my God!! Should we help-??”

Belphie: *puts his hands on their shoulders to keep them moving, not even glancing back* “Someone else will take care of it. Let's see the roses.”

Even when the desperate cries for help became distant, it took all Belphie had to stifle a smile…

Sometimes, you've got to love irony. 🤷‍♀️😏

[cabensonsgirly]

18+

Content: Heavy religion, caning, sin, blood, pain, probably blasphemous

"This is what you get, sinner. Your wife, try as she did, was unable to guide you back to the path of righteousness. Of holiness. Back to God's embrace." She watches as your clothes are pulled from your body until you are in just your undergarments, "She thought a semi-firm hand would be enough. A carpet beater perhaps. But unfortunately it was not enough. No, for a sinner like you, a firmer hand is required."

She goes over to her cupboard and unlocks it, running her fingers across each cane until she comes to the one with barbs on it, "I will make you crave forgiveness, sinner. Make you beg for mercy and scream out that you promise to leave such sinful acts behind you." She plucks it from where it's held, turning to look at you, a faint smirk tugging on her lips at the look of fear in your eyes, "I know exactly how to handle sinners like you, Yn. A purifying beating will do it. This cane will correct you of your sinful ways. Your wife will bear witness to your breaking- your correction. She'll watch your back and ass split with each righteous swing of this cane."

"Sister Jude-" You're cut off by your own pained scream as she strikes your ass with her cane, feeling the sharp spikes of the barbs cut your soft flesh, "Sinners do not speak to me, girl. No, sinners beg. They beg for mercy. For forgiveness. That is what you will do. I don't care how long it takes. How much you bleed. It will be done." She strikes you again, "Look at the statuette before you, sinner. It's our Holy Mother, our Lady, Holy Mary. She wept for her son as he died, in absolute agony-" she strikes you lower, on a less fleshy part of your ass, the barbs cutting deep and hurting immensely yet you're powerless to move away, restrained too tightly to her desk. "For humanity," she continues, "to save humanity from its sinful ways."

Each swing she rains down righteousness, a cleansing power upon your tainted body and soul, "What do you think she would have to say about your sinful ways? For being so proud and firm in your sinful convictions?" Jude swings it against you again, your blood contrasting nicely against the deep bruising that is starting to form, "Would she pray for your soul? Pray for a soul that is so filthy and tainted? Corrupted by the devil himself?"

Her breath catches at her next swing, the sight of you being purified almost too much for the Holy woman to take; she clutches her rosary, willing herself to remain strong in the face of sin, "Would our Holy Mother give you a second glance, sinner? Spare you even another cursory look?" She brings the cane down again, splitting another set of gashes on your already wounded ass, "I do not. No. Someone as Holy and pure as her would spare you no glance. No thought for a sinner like you."

Your throat hurts form your cries, tears staining your red face, "Sister Jude- Let- Let me pray for forgiveness-" She smiles at that, nevertheless, she brings the cane down once more, "Repeat the verse your wife told you to."

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin-" You cry out as she hits you again, your ass becoming numb to the relentless nature of her purification, "-as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God-" You scream again before sobbing, barely managing to make it through the rest of the verse, "-as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.-"

Sister Jude hums at that, "Yes, we are supposed to be instruments for His righteousness, sinner. Not instruments of sin for the devil. I, myself, and your wife, are instruments of righteousness, of holiness for Him. Just like this cane is by extension." She brings her cane down once more before you continue, "-For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12-14)" You heave in a breath before hissing as she runs her hands over your stinging, bruised, and bleeding ass, the cold a welcome contrast to the burn, "I- I will pray for forgiveness everynight and morning, Sister Jude. I won't stop- I won't stop until my knees are bruised and there are marks in the-" a cough, "in the wood from where I have knelt."

Sister Jude gives your ass a firm squeeze, making you whimper in pain, "I don't believe that you have fully understood the gravity of your actions, sinner... But it is a start. We will wait for these to heal before raining more down on your vessel of sin." She lets go, wiping her hands clean of your blood, of your sin, "We will get you cleaned up. You will return in a week. Until then, I expect you to pray everyday. The same verse. You need to remember what it is like to be pure."

[brownandblackpearls]

📜 🖋 𝒞ourting with 𝒟r. 𝒟evorak (Julian x BlackReader) Pt.2

PART 2 SUMMARY:

You are a reputable, young beauty of means in Vesuvia, enjoying the winter courting season. An odd letter from an odd doctor finds its way to your door. You are on the first segment of your first date, attending a medical convention in Vesuvia.

─── Julian x black female reader

─── imagery + fiction

─── explicit smut

─── regency/historical/fantasy, courtship rituals, wealthy! MC, love letters, drama, handsome redheads

☾ previous. ☾ next

.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:・゜゜・．✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *

.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:・゜゜・．✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *

Sitting across from Julian in this grand carriage is a fascinating journey all on its own.

The doctor is an eccentric one, telling you tales of wild cases, interesting cure possibilities, and lesser known homeopathic solutions to common Vesuvian ailments.

His sheer passion is more than enough to hold your interest, and hearing his innermost thoughts on his work is enough to spread the contagion of enthusiasm for this medical convention you were arriving upon. You were admittedly squeamish when it came to gore, but you did find an interest in the workings of the body, and more than that, you found an interest in him.

Unfortunately...you weren’t the biggest fan of leeches. When you let him know honestly, he couldn’t hide his disappointment.

“I apologize,” Julian says to you honestly, looking sheepish. “I should’ve realized.”

You shake your head, smiling.

“It’s quite alright. Your line of work is very different from what I know. I simply manage my estate and related businesses, but you...? You help the people of this city. If you say leeches are a helpful medicine for people in need, then I’ll believe you and do my best to rid my trepidation. At least, for this evening.”

Julian stares at you for a long moment before suddenly reaching across the space between you for your delicately-gloved hand and kissing it soundly, intimately. His eyes focus on you through dark lashes before he lowers his gaze as well as your hand.

He clears his throat, sitting back stiffly.

“I…that was forward of me. I must beg your forgiveness.”

“Yes,” you agree in jest. You found nothing wrong with the act, regarding it as more endearing than anything. Clearly, the doctor liked the fact that you were happy to try and see the value in the world he clearly loved so much. “You’re forgiven.”

Julian seems to deflate at your words instead of soothe, wrangling his fingers together anxiously. He forces a laugh and nods, looking out the window. Had he missed your humorous tone...?

You don’t like him looking dissatisfied. You like him looking away from you with that wary expression even less.

With a slow, confident reach across the space, you use your own hands to gently cup his anxious one. Raising it between you both, you pinch the fingertip of his thick, leather glove before slowly lifting it off to unveil his hand of its leather casing. It is easy to pull his large hand towards you and observe the white, open palm.

His hand is large, long, and elegant for a doctor’s, yet clearly worn in certain places from fervent use. He must help so many, with these hands. Your mind drifts to other possibilities that those long fingers may be capable of, but you settle yourself quickly.

No need to rush. Not in courtship.

Instead, you use the subtle imaginings to move your lips, pouting and pressing them long and gentle against the palm of his hand. You linger there, flicking your gaze up and watching him freeze through the gaps of his fingers, before pulling away with a sweet release. Your eyes flick down to the lipstick-stained kiss mark left on his hand.

Your mark. 

Smiling with satisfaction, you gently tug his glove back on and pat his hand before releasing him.

“That was also forward of me,” you say casually enough. “Am I forgiven…?”

Julian fumbles, a hot blush crawling up his cheeks. 

“Y-yes,” he barely breathes, leaning towards the window once more. You settle with the thought that it is for some air, likely...instead of apprehension.

You feel your own face heat from the thrill of the forbidden, enjoying the slight cover that your dark, warm skin gives you. It would take more exertion than thrill or embarrassment to reveal you. The act of kissing his hand had been deviant, but delicious, and you thoroughly enjoyed teasing the doctor. He probably had expected no mischief from a respectable, established woman such as yourself. He may have even thought he had to hold himself in a certain manner to gain your favor.

Little did he know, he already had it. You wanted him, and you wanted him to understand you better, as well as lower his guard around you. You were certainly high in the Vesuvian aristocracy circles, but you were human just as anyone else, and you could make the same mistakes...the same missteps...as anyone else.

Your idea seemed to work well enough. Mr. Devorak no longer seemed to be upset, or appeared as if he felt alone in his forwardness.

Now, he seemed bewildered, if not highly intrigued.

You were pleased to think that later on, when you were no longer together, that Dr. Devorak would still have your mark on him after the day was done. A pretty reminder.

But no more of that. The day was just beginning.

“Ah, there it is!” He exclaimed, beckoning you to the window. “That’s the hall the gala will be held in!”

.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:・゜゜・．✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *

Though you were never one to feel overdressed at any occasion, you could certainly feel the eyes draw onto you as Dr. Devorak escorted you towards the large building.

Leaving the warm space of the carriage allowed you a reason to stay close with him in the crowds. His offered arm is strong and warm, but you keep your admiration to yourself for the moment. You take it as if its second nature, letting him lead you both towards the great hall in an easy step.

Your eyes span the people crowding near the entrance way, and you realize there are several other young beauties here with courting partners as well. Perhaps this event was more popular for Vesuvians than you once believed? You were curious to find out about the draws of this event that you had been unaware of prior.

The doctor flags down one of the door staff, smiling. The doorman spots him and grins back, calling out his name.

“Dr. Devorak! Welcome, welcome. You’re on the list of course, so you can come right in. Here’s your pin.”

Your date smiles, allowing the man to pin a medical emblem on his lapel. You realize it is likely a determiner for others in the event to understand who he is, and know that he is also a medical professional participating, not just a socialite.

“My lady,” the doorman greets, bowing to you kindly before stepping back. You don’t miss the sly wink he shoots to the doctor, who funnily pretends as if he did.

You greet the man back pleasantly before allowing Julian to lead you both into the event, past the crowds.

“Oh!” You gasp aloud, seeing the dioramas inside.

There were huge displays of freeze-dried human musculature, stuck in stasis while posing as if they were alive. Some were running, others jumping, and some standing. You mistakenly thought before that such sights might be grotesque, but the preparers did such a good job in making all the displays neat, clean, and scentless, you couldn’t help but feel only fascination.

Other tables were covered in medical tools, some from ancient Vesuvian history, and others from the current times. You could spy syringes, hacksaws, casts, all kinds of tools and oddities. Another table held medicines, their respective bottled forms, only for the bottles and pills to be under-laid by the real ingredients that went in them. One bowl of tablets showed huge ferns beneath them, and you wondered to yourself how pharmacists and herbalists could ever mash up such large plants to fit into such tiny capsules.

You didn’t realize you’d forgotten to interact with your date since entering the hall until Dr. Devorak pulled up beside you, smiling as you gawked at everything.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

You startle a little, turning to him with wide eyes. A smile comes to your face.

“Yes! Very!”

You point out the bottles to him, revealing the question that had run through your mind.

The doctor seemed highly pleased to hear of your interest, and even moreso to engage in it.

“Well, you see,” he began, “though some professionals settle for the old mortar and pestle, there are new devices made just in the last year to assist with the refining process! In my offices, we’ve also experimented with rollers, stones, pressers, as well as the normal affects.”

“Like what?” You wonder, leaning in.

“Oh…” He pauses, unsure of himself now. “I, erh...I wouldn’t want to bore you. Are you in need of refreshments? I can—“

“You’re very kind,” you insist, trying to redirect back to your question. He’s gotten you interested and now you want to know! “What affects did you mean? From before?”

He pauses, analyzing you for a moment before breaking into a somewhat fond grin.

“Well...things like heat or chill can help separate what we need from the ingredients used. Though I had to study all arenas of medicine and practice in my youth, I focus more on diagnosis, prescription, and research these days. I used to do surgery and medicinal preparations but with the recent expanding we’ve undergone, I’ve been sidetracked with indulging in more hypotheticals and innovation than tried-and-true practice. So, I’m very excited to see what my colleagues have come up with!”

You smile, watching him speak and taking in his words. He seems so bright, so glad and inspired.

“I am happy to hear your expansions allow you the pursuits you desire. It must have been difficult.”

The doctor laughs then, and it is a warm, rich thing.

“I am only lucky. I’ve come a long way, from dingy old ships to grand palaces. Compared to all that, starting my practice and training younger medical professionals was easy.”

You could’ve kept walking beside him, conversing easily...but suddenly, a group of older doctors crowd you both, eyeballing your date.

“Devorak!” One crows. “We’ve been looking for you! Grimmes delivered the best speech on those new splints you both collaborated on, I wanted to congratulate you.”

“Why, thank you!” Julian says happily, shaking hands. “Grimmes did more of the work, she’s a natural.”

He seems to be in his element, amongst all the chatting doctors. Another one steps forward, completely bypassing you and fixated on Julian. You felt like a fly on the wall, drinking up all the curious interactions. This conversation was a world away from politics, estate dealings, and nobility gossip.

“Did you see Asif’s chiropractor module? It was quite horrific.”

“Really...?” Julian wonders. “I thought he sorted out the vertebrae counts for the model?”

“So did we! However the model looked rather poor. Shoulders up to here!” The doctor explains, displaying what he saw by shifting his shoulders as far up as his body could manage. 

“Goodness…” Julian worried. “Was his gait irregular?”

“Irregular? Why, it looked like he’d been hung up on a coat rack Devorak, starched to high hell, and left to waddle out the practitioner’s office. There’ll be hell to pay, that one.”

Julian shakes his head, sighing. 

“I can refer the poor man to the southern branch if I see him. The one on Marigold? God knows the trainees could use the practice. Perhaps we can fix it.”

The doctors nodded their assent and boasted of Julian’s generosity, before finally glancing at you. They all seemed somewhat shocked out of their reverie, glancing between the two of you with increasing disbelief.

“Hello,” you greet, ringing off your name politely. 

The doctors bow politely, before looking to Julian. An older one shoots him a wide grin.

“Don’t you worry about any referencing, Devorak. We’ll let him know, ourselves. You just focus on your engagement with the lovely young woman you’ve caught here.”

“Right,” another one agrees quickly. “Been holding out on us, haven’t you? Who are we to interrupt a courting? Enjoy! Ladies, gentlemen, to the tinctures tables!”

The others agree, bumbling off in their crowd to find more of the convention to see. 

You watch them go before turning to Julian.

“How many practices do you possess?” You inquire. You are genuinely curious, but there is an underlying meaning to your question.

As much as you adore the doctor, these courting dates are very necessary to glean information from potential partners. Julian clearly held standing amongst the other doctors, and was regarded with much respect. You didn’t doubt his ambition or success. But...since he held no large property or titles, so you needed to see how he could help benefit your estate and those that lived and worked in your home. You also needed to ensure that he held few vices or flaws that would conflict with your own…it was a superficial process that could not be completed in one engagement, and you didn’t particularly enjoy seizing people up like items on displays, but…it was better to do it now while you could rather than risk hearts, coin purses, and marriages down the line.

Besides, you expected the same from Julian, to interrogate you on your end in his own way. You weren’t the only one with assets to think of, and liabilities to consider! And only a fool would assume a wealthy beauty is all they needed in a match.

You felt Devorak could be silly in his own odd little way...but he didn’t strike you as a fool.

‘Hmm. Marriage.’

You watch the doctor, your heart thrumming a little faster at the thought.

‘One thing at a time,’ you remind yourself. ‘I don’t know if I’m even ready for the convention with anyone, him included. Slow and steady wins the race.’

Dr. Devorak stands a little taller, pushing his shoulders back and preparing a bolder facade than you believed he actually felt. He seemed to understand what time this was, what the question really meant, and was eager to please with honesty and transparency.

He wanted to prove himself to you, you realize.

“I am but a humble man,” he begins. “I own one practice, with several branches throughout Vesuvia. It has grown to the point where I now simply stop by each one weekly, and oversee the operations. I have three locations in the city’s center, and five in the outer regions. Those locations range from general practices to apothecaries.”

You nod, highly impressed.

“Eight branches is hardly humble, Julian. It sounds very admirable.”

The doctor blushes, pulling at his collar and pretending nonchalance.

“Eh…well...”

“You must be quite good at what you do.”

“Well...It was not without considerable help, I cannot lie. In the beginning, I had a generous investor that believed in my vision and potential. That investor was the central Countess, and without her I doubt I could’ve gathered together the startup costs. But...I take pride in taking the best care of Vesuvians that I can. And so word spread, and now they come to us for all sorts of ailments and needs. We’ve fairly profitable year after year since. I..I could make more, raise prices, yes, but...I always wanted affordability to be important. Everyone in Vesuvia deserves access to quality healthcare.”

“That’s amazing,” you say. “Not many businessmen in Vesuvia are transparent about their journeys, and not many can honestly say they value ethics.”

You briefly review his words to yourself.

He was hinting near the end that though he had his personal reasons for not breaking his profits ceiling in a way that would truly impress a run-of-the-mill blue-blood, that neither he nor his businesses would be a liability to your estate.

There was another implication in his words that you couldn’t help but notice.

“You know Nadia…?” You ask suddenly.

“Yes! Do you…?” He inquires back, curious.

“Ah...yes,” you respond kindly, tightening your lips on why. You didn’t want to appear rude mentioning your other current courting potentials. Ritually, that was only to be used in situations of dire need for leverage. It was one thing to review each others ways of living and financials, whereas it was quite another to throw into the face of hopefuls…all the other hopefuls…unless asked, of course.

Julian seemed to catch on. He did not seem upset, though.

“Hm,” he wonders quietly. “...I am not surprised that you are getting house calls from all walks of Vesuvia.”

You pause, unsure of what to say. Had you offended him?

“I…”

The doctor is kind, and fills in the empty silence with warmth.

“I am just glad that you answered my letter, that I get to have you for myself today. I am happy that you like the gala and…I only anticipate enjoying the rest of our time together.”

You beam at him, tugging his arm closer to your body.

“I feel the same, Julian.”

He pulls you tighter as well, circling you both around the event to watch more displays and pass by speakers who were taking charge in different corners of the venue. You overhear some very interesting ideas and concepts, and Julian leans over every so now and then to comment on them in your ear.

Soon enough, Julian offers to take you for a break near the venue’s indoor patisserie. You agree joyfully, all too eager to spy the cute little confectionery cakes and pastries as the both of you walk up near the outdoor seating.

Julian hunts down a seat for you both amidst all the other couples, some wedded, some courting, and some just having a casual meetup.

He pulls out your seat gingerly for you, and you sit graciously. He takes his own seat as a waiter arrives, bringing you both a drink and dessert menu. Together, you and Julian order coffees and a cake to share before sitting back, watching one another.

‘Wait,” you think.

You realize very suddenly that the doctor is being too gracious in not asking on your situation in return, and so you decide to open the floor up to him so there is no risk of offending. Perhaps he is nervous because of your status...? Perhaps those things matter so little to him, that he is willing to break courtship convention to avoid asking after them...? Perhaps he is simply forgetful...?

“Is there anything you’d like to know about my estate or my courting season, Julian?”

He pauses, thinking to himself for a stretch.

“Well…I must admit, I know little about you besides what I saw from the theater and what I’ve heard from the grapevine. I’m not fond of gossip and would rather hear it from you, but...I knew so few in your circle...I know nothing, really. Besides your distaste for leeches of course, and your penchant for…” he coughs, adjusting, “….for...adventure.”

You giggle, covering your mouth before leaning in.

“You find me adventurous? Some would say I am just an aristocrat, perfectly happy to hole up in my estate with no influence on the outside world. Not like you. You do so much good.”

He shakes his head, frowning.

“Don’t discount yourself for me. I…I do know of your philanthropy around Vesuvia. Generous donations for the citizens, for the disenfranchised. That is good in its own way. And class is no barrier to who possesses the heart of an adventurer and who doesn’t. You proved it today.”

“How?”

Julian laughs.

“Like you know few honest businessmen, I know few women of your stature who would eagerly come here for a first engagement. Especially after my confidant revealed that I had sent an inquiry letter in a poor manner, to a poorly-picked event. You came—and even better—you enjoyed yourself.”

You gift him a wink.

“I think I may enjoy myself wherever I go, with you at my side, Doctor.”

There goes his flush again, as clear as a bounty of roses! You love the way it matches his hair. He hides his face behind a gloved hand, sinking into his seat as you laugh generously.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he insists, “with your teasing.”

You fake a pout, looking at him innocently.

“I am no tease, sir.”

“Right,” he says simply, smiling. “And I am no doctor.”

You laugh once again, batting at him lightly with a gloved hand before sitting straighter.

“Enough about that,” you say, “I should inform you of my situation, just as you informed me of yours. I would be very rude not to.”

Julian stiffens, sitting straighter as well.

“You don’t have to—“

“Oh but I do,” you insist. “You are too kind and too subtle to ask on such things as blatantly as my aristocrat self can, but the courting traditions demand it. You shall peruse my purse and pursuants as I have yours. There will be no barriers here.”

You clear your throat, and Julian waits patiently.

“I possess the estate of ———, as you already know. I am —— years old, with a long lineage. Most of my family has moved away outside of Vesuvia to our ancestral nation of origins, but I am a Vesuvian-born and Vesuvian at heart, so I chose to stay and take over the household. Like any baron or baroness, I oversee properties, farms, accounts, and merchandise. My estate largely relies on profits from renters on our land, but I began a perfumery and garden a few years ago. Using the florals from the garden, the business has become a success and sells in local tailor shops. So we bring profit in on that end as well, my endeavor alone, since the family that left have their own means in the ancestral country.”

Julian nods, interested.

“A perfumery...?”

“Yes,” you answer, happy. “I really enjoy it. With scents, I can create candles as well. I would love to show you sometime, if you’d like.”

Julian perks up more from the sound of that, than your financials.

“There will be a next time…?” He wonders aloud.

“If you will have me.”

Julian beams then, wider than you’ve seen all day. He nods and sips at his coffee happily, taking the olive branch and leaving so much unsaid. There was no need to.

You both seemed to be on the same page.

“Scents are interesting,” he says suddenly. “It is considered flimsy medicine, but I’ve often thought of aromatherapy. I wonder if it could help patients with mood difficulties…?”

Your eyes widen at the thought. 

“It’s certainly worth a try. I can spare some scents for your practice when you visit me.”

Julian seems awed, amazed at the opportunity and you giving it.

“Are you real...?” He asks suddenly. “Am I dreaming?”

“No,” you laugh. “I am quite real. Do you need a pinch to prove it?”

Julian makes a very odd face at that, straightening up and moving swiftly past the question, diving into how delicious the cake is.

You watch, noticing. You could only wonder what it was that set him off.

“I will not pinch you…” You explain, hoping to ease him.

“Ah!” He shakes his head, trying to wave off your worry. “It’s not that. You’re fine. You can, uh…I want it- wait, no, that’s…never mind! You’re real, that much is certain.”

You watch him flail before shrugging internally and refocusing on the cake. You mentally file the ‘pinching’ reaction away for later thought.

“Is it good?” You ask.

Julian nods eagerly, forking off a piece and raising it to you. You see he is angling the fork for you to grasp yourself, but you decide to forego that idea.

What’s life without a little pleasure?

Sure that no one is watching either of you, you lean forward and eat the cake off of his offered fork, skillfully sucking the remnants off entirely. You look demurely away from him, but you know you’ve hit your mark when you hear him squawk. You chew, assessing, before glancing over to him feeling pleased.

“This is very, very good,” you agree. 

Julian looks a little pained, watching you with wanton desire and intrigue.

You gently take the fork from his fingers and cut him a piece, offering it up to him kindly.

“Say ‘ah‘, for me,” you request pleasantly enough, yet you know that your gaze you’re pinning him with is a little less collected than your tone.

Slowly understanding, the doctor leans forward and takes the offering with his own mouth, too flushed to look at you directly. You’re thrilled to see him clear the fork in the same manner before he pulls back, focusing less on the cake he just ate and more on how you’re making him feel.

“Does it taste better, now?” You wonder aloud.

“Yes,” he nearly whispers. “Much better.”

You smile demurely, supporting your face on a relaxed hand.

“That, dear doctor,” you say, “is a tease.”

“I…I’ll remember that,” he says quietly, shifting under your gaze.

You’re sure that he will.

“You don’t have to,” you insist. “I can always help you, if you forget.” The promise sounds very sweet from your lips.

“Uh…Ah!” Julian pretends suddenly, checking his watch with faux vigor. “Wouldyoulookatthat, the theater! We’d best be on our way, we have box seats, you know.”

You giggle and he mirrors your humored grin, laughing himself.

“Of course, Julian.”

He assists you up before grabbing his cane and coat. Together with your funny doctor date, you are led out of the venue and into the afternoon of the day.

.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:・゜゜・．✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *

AN: Do not copy, repost, translate, or edit any of my work. If you see someone do so, please let me know.

☾ previous. ☾ next

☾ check my blog for more imagines.

[aces-to-apples]

Your Reputation Precedes You

A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion

i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post

-

To be frank, I'm not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the 'name' wasn't a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of "calling out racism." I think we both know that what you're actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples' genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you've used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you've mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than "talking about your feelings with friends uwu." Let's just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn't adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you've used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.

Let's toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you've written here.

What you've written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.

The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it... frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that's really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical "Asian" accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were "based," then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone's business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.

Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term "Death of the Author" holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.

As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that "cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt" is a ridiculous statement. The way you've comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it's about power, it's about control, it's about fandom being the only space where you have some.

So I'm writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don't deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don't participate in fandom the way you think they should.

Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not "think critically" as in "to criticize" them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.

Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.

As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you'll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they're toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.

Congrats, Ri, you've gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.

No love, bad night.

P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.

[ayoitsnic]

Crowley x Reader x Lucifer

Part 1

*Based loosely around 12x15 but Ramsey kills Gwen and gets away

Word Count: 2.6k

Trigger Warnings: Injured animal? Idk? If you think something should be added to the TW list drop a comment or DM me

Summary: Humans aren’t supposed to see hellhounds, so what happens when y/n finds an injured hellhound and brings it home to care for? 

*Disclaimer* Lucifer will be introduced in the 2nd part which should be up by Saturday 4/3/2021

It was almost midnight when y/n got off of work. She was exhausted after her shift at Regional West Medical Center in Nebraska. As she trudged through the parking lot to her old, beat up 2002 Suzuki she couldn’t help but feel eyes on her, like something was watching her from out in the darkness. Fumbling with her keys she turned to unlock the driver’s side car door (The remote to unlock the door was broken. The car could only be opened with the actual key.), only to freeze in place when she felt the hot breath and heard the heavy breathing of some sort of animal behind her. “Dear god, please let it be my overactive imagination.” she prayed silently, knowing it was no use. Whatever stood behind her was very much real.

Very slowly she turned to face whatever it was that was sniffing her, her keys moving between her middle and ring finger in case she needed to defend herself. Instead of being met with what she thought for sure would be a small bear or a rabid coyote, she was met with a very large dog. A very large dog that looked like it had been through absolute hell. Its fur was matted and caked with dried mud and dirt, and it was covered with cuts and what she naturally assumed was its own blood. It was hard to tell through the thick, matted fur but it also looked very underweight. “Oh you poor baby….” Y/n’s heart melted upon seeing the creature.

Obviously the dog had been out on its own for a very long time. Y/N took pity on it. It seemed so sad, and it didn’t appear rabid or vicious. It looked like it just wanted help. Reluctantly she reached down to check for a collar. There was a collar but it was in a foreign language. One she’d never seen before. Unlocking the back of the car she coaxed the dog in with some leftover food she had from her lunch break. She knew the poor thing must be starving. Being hurt it took a little help getting in. Little did she know how dangerous that dog really was or that there was a man out right now searching for it.

The K-9, which y/n decided to call (Dog’s name) had fallen asleep on the car ride home, snoring softly over the radio that was playing some Green Day song. Pulling into the driveway, (Y/N) stopped the car and turned off the radio. Almost on queue (dog’s name) looked up to see where they were. A light was on outside, illuminating a large porch (Which could probably use a new paint job, if we’re being honest) with 2 rocking chairs, a small table and a plethora of healthy, brightly colored plants. She picked up the injured dog and carried it inside, planning on taking it to the vet in the morning to see if it was microchipped.

She was going to let the dog sleep in the basement for the night, unsure if it would destroy the house or not. She remembered her aunt’s German Shepherd who took pleasure in tearing up sofas, and eating her plants. The dog also really needed a bath and she didn’t want it on the furniture until it got one. Unfortunately around 3:30 am, y/n felt a dip in the bed and then something making itself comfy by her feet. Looking over, she found the dog curled up in bed with her. Way too tired to deal with it now, and knowing she had to wash the sheets anyway she just fell back asleep let the dog stay with her so long as it stayed at the foot of the bed.

~

The next morning, Y/N got up early to go to the pet store and get stuff for the dog. She called up the local vet, making an appointment, she washed the sheets, and most importantly she began trying to wash (Dog’s name). At first the dog resisted, wanting absolutely nothing to do with the water. Y/N knew exactly how to deal with this though. Placing a glob of peanut butter on the side of the tub to keep the dog preoccupied, (Dog’s name) happily entered the bathtub. A trick y/n had learned from that aunt with the poorly behaved German Shepherd. By the time y/n was done with the dog she’d had to drain and refill the tub 3 times before she gave up and kept it drained, just using the shower head. She couldn’t believe how much blood and dirt had come off this dog.

Around 2pm the doorbell rang and this dog who was once so sweet, albeit a bit skittish turned into an absolute beast. Running to the door, loud deep barks and growls left it. The dog seemed ready to tear the stranger on the other side of the door to shreds. It was almost like it had turned into a completely different dog. “(Dog’s name)!!!” Y/n shouted as she raced down the stairs after it, hoping to get to the door before the dog did. “NO!!!” She yelled. Even hurt and underweight, (Dog’s name) was really big. If it wanted to break that door, it probably could. Without thinking, Y/n quickly grabbed the dog by the collar to stop it. “I said no!” She told her firmly with a pointed finger. The dog whined, tail between its legs as it hurried back up the stairs to the bedroom to do that thing dogs do when they roll around on the rug to dry themselves.

The front door had a glass window looking out so y/n could see the stranger. He was short, and wore a nice suit. He seemed only slightly concerned about the interaction. The man didn’t even flinch as the massive hound lunged itself at him. It seemed like this was a normal day for him. Actually, he seemed more unnerved after she called the dog off. Opening the door, y/n apologized profusely for the dog “I am so sorry about the dog! I-” Before she could continue, the man squinted at her, clearly confused about something. “What are you?” He questioned in an English accent.

“Hellhounds? Really?” She questioned with a quirked eyebrow and a small grin, crossing her arms and constantly turning to keep facing the man. It was obvious she didn’t believe him.

Obviously his question confused y/n as she gave him a look of confusion back “What do you mean ’what are you?’” She stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her “I'm human”

“Yes, really.” The man continued, as serious as a heart attack “You especially shouldn’t be able to control that bitch. I’ve only ever known one person to be able to control Ramsey and you and not that person.”

“Oh really? And who might that person be then?” Y/n asked, beginning to think this was some elaborate prank being played on her by a friend or coworker.

Remembering what the demon said about her being able to control the hound, y/n gave it a shot. Raising a hand she firmly commanded “Ramsey stay.” Not only did the dog stop dead in her tracks, she laid down and waited for further orders. Now most people would be a little freaked out by this; finding a hellhound that they didn't know was a hellhound, and now being visited by a demon sent to collect said hound. Y/n however wasn’t afraid. Actually she kind of got a Déjà vu feeling at this.

“No you can’t be. Humans can’t see hellhounds, much less control them.” Normally Crowley would just collect the demonic hound and leave, with humans being none the wiser that the rogue canine was even there, but not only did this woman know the hellhound was there, she was taking pretty good care of it. Even stranger, the dog was letting her care for it. There was something different about this woman, something special. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet. Crowley circled y/n, inspecting her. He was trying to find any indication of her not being human.

“Lucifer.” Crowley responded

At that, y/n was done. “Look pal, I don’t know what kind of kool-aid you’re drinking but I’m not buying it. Now’s the part where I tell you to get off my property.” she turned to go back inside, closing and locking the door behind her. As she turned to head upstairs though, Crowley was standing right behind her, his eyes red. She let out a screech, jumping as far back as she could (Which wasn’t far as the door was right behind her). Again, the dog that the demon in front of her called ‘Ramsey’ came running to her defense.

~

“The name’s Crowley. King of hell.” He introduced himself “May I ask who you are?”

“Y/n y/l/n.” she responded before telling him “Queen of this house.” This was crazy. Y/n was standing in her entryway conversing with a demon king. “Could I offer you tea ‘your highness’? Maybe Coffee?" she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she addressed Crowley as 'your highness' She wasn’t gonna hand over the dog so easily, and something told her the demon wouldn’t be leaving without Ramsey.

“.....Who are you?” Y/n asked the man

Y/n and Crowley sat in her kitchen, sipping tea and chatting. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” The demon who sat across from y/n questioned “Most people would run, or beg for mercy if a demon showed up at their doorstep. Not invite them in for a drink.”

~

If it weren’t for the fact that y/n could sick Cujo on him at any moment, Crowley wouldn’t be being so patient with her. He wouldn’t be trying to convince her to send the dog to her death. “I’m sorry but I can’t let you take that dog back.” Y/n told Crowley. For some reason she felt bonded to that dog, with the overwhelming need to protect her.

“I’m afraid I must insist. She’s dangerous and unpredictable. It’s for the best that she be put down. She’s killed a lot of people who weren’t on hell’s hit list while she was topside.” Crowley explained “A pup like that out and about isn't good for business. It makes it look like I’m not in control.”

“Do you want me to beg for mercy?” Y/n asked with a smirk and a small, dry chuckle. “Sorry but you’re not very scary so forgive me if I’m quaking in my shoes.” She would never be seen begging for mercy. Not in a million years.

“I thought you were the king down there.” Y/n questioned “A king answers to no one. You could turn, walk right out that front door, and pretend she vanished. That you weren't able to find her. Or you could go back and tell your people she attacked you and you killed her. Besides, you’re a demon. You don’t really care about the people she’s killed, do you?” Y/n definitely cared and felt bad, she just didn’t believe Crowley did.

“The Winchester’s. They hunt monsters. Vampire’s, werewolves, demonkind, et cetera.” Crowley explained “They’re ruthless, and if they find out that dog is here they will show up and kill her. Painfully. If you hand her over I promise her death will be a painless and merciful one.” Of course he would make the boys sound worse than they were. In reality they’d kill it as quick as possible if they could. He’d say anything to get her to give up Ramsey. 

“Of course I don’t, but some hunters I know care a lot about the people that were killed. If I don’t collect this dog, they’ll come and collect her for me and they’ll be far less inclined to sit and chat over hot beverages.” Crowley explained

“Tell me about these hunters.” Y/n asked, genuinely interested. "I assume you're not referring to people who shoot buck in their free time."

“Let them come.” Y/n spoke after quietly mulling over what was just told to her. Whether she was underestimating these hunters or just didn’t believe what Crowley was telling her he was unsure. “She may be in a weakened state now but she’ll get better. She’ll get stronger and when she does I’ll be the only one who can stop her. If they show up, I’ll be ready and they’ll have to go through me. When they get through me, she’ll be ready for them too.”

“Y/n I know you think-” Y/n cut off the demon king, her patience wearing thin. She had all the leverage she needed in this situation and she knew it “You said I was the only one who could control her. Now I don’t know how or why that is, but that means there’s nothing stopping me from sicking the dog on you. If she really is as vicious and dangerous as you claim she is, I would be afraid of the one person who can send her after you. I’m telling you to walk away. I’m giving you an out. I strongly suggest you take it.”

Thinking about it later though, she was actually kind of sexy. She knew she held the power and the leverage in that situation and she knew how to use it. Not only that but she was bold enough to try and intimidate not just any king, but the King of Hell. And she didn’t need to raise her voice once while doing it. She was clearly a strong, intelligent, woman. He liked that.

~

After he was gone, y/n was in fact a little freaked out. If there was a hell that meant there was a heaven. Would she be going to hell just for harboring this animal? And better question; how do you even properly care for a hellhound? She imagined it would be a lot different from taking care of your average, run of the mill Pitbull.

Crowley stood his ground, calling her bluff. He didn’t believe she would actually do it. “Ramsey!” Y/n called “Ramsey c’mere girl!” she whistled as the Hellhound came barreling from upstairs “Ramsey, hurry up! Go get him! Get the demon!” Y/n told Ramsey in the same sickeningly sweet baby voice most humans use to talk to animals they find cute. Before she could get to him though, Crowley had disappeared into thin air.

After hours spent searching on the internet y/n got her first lead. Okay so it wasn’t really a lead. It was more of an idea. It’s not like she could just log onto wikipedia and pull up a page on 'How to take care of a Hellhound'. She did however find instructions for summoning and trapping a crossroads demon. She didn’t realize there were different types of demons but to her, a crossroads demon was still a demon so good enough right?

Late that night y/n put Ramsey in the car with her and drove to the nearest crossroads. Spray painting a ‘devils trap’ in the road she buried a box in the center. It contained a photo of her, some graveyard dirt, and the bone of a black cat. No, she didn’t go out and kill a cat. She was able to get that from a wiccan shop on the outskirts of town.

After burying the box, she stood and read the incantation she had written on a scrap of paper ��Daemon, esto subjecto voluntati meae!” She waited a moment and when nothing happened she thought she might've gotten a word wrong. That was until she heard a woman speak behind her “What can I do for you tonight?”

Jumping a bit she turned to face the demon. “I just need some information.”

.....To be continued....

[clareisa]

Consequences -「Son Dongju」

♠ - exorcist!Xion X demon!Reader

♠ - genre: exorcist!au, angst, suggestive

♠ - words: 1,8K

♠ - A/N: I know my stories are not the best, but I still hope they are not terrible. I would need more words to do a good story but unfortunately I don’t have the time. Please, forgive me, everyone♥

♠ - 4th October -  ♠ creeptober ♠

♠ - warnings - mentions of religion, disrespect of sacred place, mentions of blood, exorcism, coercion

♠  - English is not my first language, so please, excuse my mistakes

 Dongju was a regular boy from the countryside. Hardworking, generous, kind, peaceful and devoted to his faith in God, the good and bad, and the afterlife. Since he was a little boy, he wanted to work for the church, and not because of money or prestige. He just wanted to help people and lead them to be better. Because he believed everyone is kind in their true nature.  His parents were intensely proud when he got accepted to the theology school as a common farmer child, but they said he has unique qualities and determination to be part of God's servants.

 Soon, he didn't know why, but Dongju started to find interest at the more of a dark spectrum of his faith. It didn't mean he wanted to become a sinner. He just became captured by all the dark myths surrounding him, and the fascination of the other side of the coin.  Exorcism fascinated him the moment he got to know about it, and even though it was hard, sometimes even sad or disgusting to look at what was happening, he didn't give up.

  Soon he became very good at his job of casting out demons off from bodies of innocent people. Until one time...

 The moon was in the first quarter that night when Dongju arrived in a small village on the Han River. He came on the request of the head of the village, who sent a letter asking for help for his supposedly possessed daughter. And it turned out it was the case.

 Dongju was next to her bed for the whole night, trying to get the stubborn evil spirit out of the young girl's body. The demon was talking throught her. First just making fun of him, but as time was passing by, the demon used the girl's body to start touching Dongju in places that weren't appropriate.  As this started, Dongju took her hand in his and started saying out loud prayers, begging higher powers to kick the evil spirit out while intensely looking into the girl's eyes, making sure the demon can hear and see him clearly throught the young girl.

 The screams of agony were echoing throught the house as the method was finally working, and the painful process of the stubborn demon leaving without its permission started.  The girl's hand where Dongju was holding the rosary started burning, causing the smell of scorching human flesh to fill the room. Her eyes went up, the iris not even seen anymore, mouth opened in suffocating scream and the body trembling in an inhuman manner.

 "Crux sancta sit mihi lux, not draco sit mihi dux..." that was the beginning of the prayer Dongju was repeating.  "Vade retro satana, Nunquam suade mihi vana..." he continued even throught the screams and the girl biting his arm, piercing his skin and little creek of blood were falling down the rosary and then to the floor.  "Sunt mala quae libas, Ipse venena bibas." he finished with the last part saying that what they are offering is not wanted and the entity should drink their own venom.

 As he looked the last time deep in girl's eyes, he fell into a vision.

 He suddenly saw the face of a woman. The woman had white eyes and a smirk playing on her red lips.  Her voice resonated in his mind like an echo, "You think you this ends here?" she chuckled, "We'll meet soon... Son Dongju." and that was the moment the illusion in his mind fell apart, and he came back to reality, kneeling next to the bed holding the burned girl's hand, bleeding himself.

 After that, everything went smooth like usually. Dongju was happy that the family gave him some little money and cooked dinner. Yes, he was starving, and yes, he was in need of money also.  He was one of the best exorcists, but the church distanced themselves from him a long ago when he didn't agree to scam people out of money even when the humans around them wasn't possessed, just ill.

 Since then he was travelling, trying to earn money and then sending them to his parents because their business wasn't going really well and they were both ill.

 He thanked the family, took his things and probably an hour before sunrise, he got on his journey back home. As he was passing a church that was in the same village, he decided to go in, pray for a while, and think about the vision he got.

 As he opened the heavy wooden door, the cold air and smell of myrrh hit his senses. It was familiar and felt safe. Nothing bad could happen in this saint place.  He got on his knees in front of the altar, connected his hands, closed his eyes and started praying, thanking the higher power that he could save the young girl this night.

 "Well, well, well... who we got here, huh? Isn't it the same punk who forced me out of that body and interrupted my fun time?" suddenly a smooth women voice echoed through the church.  Dongju's eyes immediately opened he stood up and quickly looked for the source of the dangerously seductive voice.

 He froze to the ground as he saw an actual demon for the first time in front of him. How did he know? Well, it was more than obvious.  Her eyes purely white, giving no clue of actual living being inside. Her raven black hair was falling to her thighs, and her ashy skin was looking too unhealthy for blood even pulsating underneath. Her sharp nails painted in same black colour as her plump lips.

 Dongju immediately squeezed his rosary, "How did you get here? This is a sacred place!" he shouted at her not exactly sure what he should do since he was never in such a situation before.  "Sacred? Here? Ha! Let me laugh. This place was never even consecrated, my dear. Why you think this place has the most possession cases, huh?" she chuckled and smirked, looking at his handsome being up and down.

 Dongju just gulped but didn't say anything. She rolled her eyes even though he couldn't see, because of the white colour.  "Look, I don't want to hurt you," she started slowly walking 'down the aisle' to him, but he immediately showed the rosary up, trying to protect himself in panic.  "Woah, Woah... slow down, baby boy. I said I don't want to hurt you." she said stopping a couple of meter in front of him.

 "Then what do you want?" he asked.  "I wanna work with you. As simple as that." she smiled.  "W-what?" he was confused now.  "You know... I would possess someone's body, and you will easily get 'rid of me' and get the reward, which we would spread in half. Good plan, right?" she leaned her head to the side as if it was the most normal thing happening.

 Dongju was slowly going crazy. This wasn't real, right?  "No... this... you.." he pointed at the female demon, " you are not real. This is just a dream, or I'm too tired, and it is happening just in my head." he said taking a deep breath, trying to calm down.

 "Oh, it is very much real, baby boy." she walked to him, "Should I show you how much?" she whispered with a smirk.  Dongju at that moment put the rosary at the side of her neck, making the demon scream in pain and walk back two steps.  

 "Ouch! That hurt, you know?!" she held the place when he burned her ashy skin a bit.

 "No, you are not real. I'm just hallucinating. I saw you before when I was helping that girl, it is just my imagination." he was trying to lie to himself again because he was a little scared now.

 "It was me, you idiot!" she sighed in annoyance. "Ok, I'll help you to believe. And because you interrupted my fun in that human's body, you can see it as a punishment," she said with a smirk on her face.  In a matter of one second, she was standing behind Dongju and hilding him under the neck. That was the moment the young exorcist finally accepted that this is real, and a real demon is going to kill him.

 "Oh, no, no, no. I won't kill you," she said.  "Y-you know how to read my mind?" he gulped as her long nails scratched his neck slightly.  "And not just that... don't worry your punishment will be pleasant, I promise," she whispered the last two words.

 The beautiful but freaky demon girl suddenly connected their bodies as close as possible, "Just relax and enjoy..." she smirked as she slowly pushed herself into his body, becoming part of him, possessing him.

 Dongju suddenly just heard her voice in his head. "Mmm, your body is strong and healthy." she giggled, "What a pretty young man we have here?" she chuckled and moved with his hand without him approving.  "Leave me alone!" he shouted in his mind.  He could see and feel everything throught his eyes and body but just couldn't control any of his body parts.

 "Let's have some fun since you ruined my last entertainment." she chuckled in his mind and sat his body down on the bench, the one right in front of an altar.  "Now let's show your Lord how he created you in his image." she giggled.

 Dongju's hands moved under her power and started buttoning down his dress shirt and pulling down his trousers slowly.  "What? NO! Let me go, you insane demon!" he whined in his mind.  "No. I have a weak spot for handsome cute humans, I wanna you to enjoy yourself." she chuckled again.

 She took down finally his underwear and here he was. Completely under demons control, naked in front of an altar.

 "Please, let me go. I..." he didn't even finish the sentence as his hand under your power took his bare member and started stroking up and down in slow teasing motions.  Dongju whined in his mind. It felt so bad, so embarrassing, so degrading, but the actual physical pleasure as his hand was going faster under the demon woman control was undeniable and liked the feeling even though he was disgusted by himself.

 "Your mind can try to stop me, but your body wants it so bad. I'm a very polite demon but no one interrupts my fun without consequences," she smirked when he finally moaned as she made him grip his already hard cock tighter.  "Maybe I'll let you have your fun with me later because I saw how you were looking at me, baby boy." she was having so much fun torturing the young man.

 "But now your consequences are that I'll make you cum right here, on the altar of your lord so he can see you clearly..."

[jenonctcity]

Running From The Dark

Charia Kingdom – Renjun

Smut, Fluff, Angst.

Fantasy!Au, Supernatural!Au

Warnings: Mentions of blood/injury, minor character death, explicit sex, mention of abuse.

Word Count: 12.8k

 (All of this series links up. The timeline of the story runs in the order of the master list from top to bottom, Mark - Jisung. Each members part can be read as a stand-alone, but I would recommended reading all the parts in order so the story adds up.)

Charia Kingdom - A place that has equal amounts of sunshine and rain, hot and cold, rich and poor, and, humans and creatures that couldn’t be identified as that of human status. Ruled by the Lee family with a king whose cutthroat and unforgiving nature is feared by many. The poor not cared for by people who have everything, where disease takes the lives of those unfortunate enough to not have the funds to purchase medicine. A place where humans live among  creatures many would find terrifying. It’s no secret that Vampires, Werewolves, Wizards, etc live amongst them like normal people. Unless you murder someone, you’re considered normal. Everyone lives their own lives, whether it be a happy life, or a sorrowful life…

Being chased from the royal family’s castle at the age of 16 was never something Renjun hoped for when he was growing up. Having lived in the castle since his birth, his mother, the castles witch, raised him alone. After finding out a huge secret and confronting the king, the king has Renjun’s mother killed, leading Renjun to use the dark powers he never knew he had to curse the Prince of the kingdom. After a bounty is put on his head for his crimes, he lives his life on the run, burrowing away in a cabin far out in the depths of the dangerous forest. A place where many lethal creatures live. Now 19, Renjun has lived in solitude for 3 years, and never expected a girl to break into his home in the dead of night. The girl he encounters is on the run herself, but refuses to tell him why. The stubborn, mentally strong, and brave girl persuades him to let her stay with him. Can he live alongside another being when he’s still got dark magic flowing through his veins and a huge secret heavy in his heart?

The strong wind whipped against your face, alongside stray branches and leaves from trees you didn’t notice in your haste. The shadows from the trees created a darkness in the forest that made it hard to navigate your way through, despite the bright moonlight peering through gaps in the trees; you could hardly see. Your hearing was perfect though, and the demanding shouts of men’s voices was what kept you running even though the dangers you faced the deeper you got into the forest. Your lungs burned from the stress you put them through, running nonstop for an hour was no joke and you felt the ache in your legs. But you had no choice, you couldn’t be caught by the men trailing you or you’d be forced into a life you did not wish to pursue. A bead of sweat cascaded down the side of your cheek, falling from your jaw as you dodged a large branch that was at head height, you ducked underneath it, but immediately stumbled from a dip in the ground. You gasped in surprise, one of your knees coming in contact with the ground before you caught yourself. You winced at the loudness of your gasp, hoping the men not far behind you hadn’t heard you. You couldn’t run any longer, the pain becoming too much, but you refused to give up. You hid behind the largest tree you could find, holding your breath despite the urgency of your lungs screaming about how they needed oxygen. The voices got closer, your stomach twisting in anxiety at them finding you.

“(Y/N)! Come out come out wherever you are.” A deep voice sang with a sickly-sweet laugh following it. The light of a lit torch casting more shadows to fall from the trees as they neared you. “Mr Kim will be a very, very disappointed man if he doesn’t get to have his little bitch.” The voice continued to taunt you, your eyes filling with tears, all hope of freedom rinsing out of your body. “He’s not very forgiving you know…He’s going to do very bad thi-”

The echo of a high-pitched howl cut the man off. His voice halting to a stop the second he heard the threatening signal of a nearby creature. Hushed voices talked amongst themselves before the rustling of leaves told you the men had given up before you, retreating from the forest to escape the beast of the night. You heard more rustling, your heart pounding in your chest and your hands getting clammy, a fright you’d never felt before sending freezing chills down your spine despite the heat of the night. The sound got closer, but you had a feeling it wasn’t the men coming back. You looked to your left, being as quiet as you could as you peered around, hoping to look for a gap in the trees so you had an easy exit if you needed one. You couldn’t see anything under the guise of darkness, so you swung your head to the right. Bright green eyes beside your face had your heart almost stopping, your breath getting caught in your lungs as you stood shell shocked. The snow-white fur of the lean wolf almost glowed under the moonlight, it looking soft to the touch. The wolf stared at you, its head flicking up slightly as it sniffed at you. It took a step closer, its face getting closer to yours. You wanted to beg it not to kill you, but you knew nothing about werewolves. Could it understand your language? Did it have a human form? You had no idea. The wolf rubbed its face against yours the same way you saw a cat once rub its face against its owners’ leg. You took in a sharp breath, confused by the wolfs actions, as it turned away and ran into the dark of the night. Letting out the breath you were holding, you couldn’t help but think the wolf had purposely sought you out to help you.

“Thank you!” You whispered shouted into the darkness, hearing a bark respond in the distance. You took off running again, not knowing what you were looking for and heading towards. You slowed to a walk after half an hour, not even knowing if you were walking in circles as you passed a large boulder that looked strangely familiar. Or maybe you were just going insane, maybe you imagined the wolf and in actuality you were stuck in the prison you once called home. You tripped over a tree root, your body slamming into the leaf covered floor being enough to tell you this was reality, and you actually were experiencing one of the most frightening events of your life. You stood up with a groan, your knees and palms stinging from your fall and your throat feeling so dry it hurt to make any noise. You brushed yourself off, lifting your head to look in front of you as you saw a glimmer of hope. A small cabin in a barely-there clearance sat like a dream. It looked like it was as worn out as you felt. The brick being a dull colour from what you could see underneath the moonlight. Stray vines and ivy grew up the walls, leading you to believe the cabin had been there for quite some time. Looking at the chimney you noticed a lack of smoke, hoping that it was an unoccupied lot so that you had somewhere to spend the night.

You weighed up your options. On one hand, you could spend the night in a cabin, sure there was a risk that it actually had someone living in it, but you could just leave if it did. On the other hand, you could spend the night in a dark, dangerous forest, where all sorts of unknown creatures could be lurking behind trees, ready to cook you in a stew at any moment. Your legs were carrying you to the cabin before your brain had even thought to pick one of the options you’d so carefully thought about. You dodged all the brambles and tree roots, determined not to fall over now that you could actually see the floor from where the moonlight was boring down between the trees. You found the front door, the blue paint peeling from the wood from wear and tear. Taking a deep breath, you tried the doorknob, groaning when it wouldn’t turn.

“Damn.” You grumbled, trying to think of a plan b. You walked around the property, seeing a dusty window around the back. You wiped your hand over the dust, smearing it but successfully making it easier to see through. You peeked through the window, not noticing anything out of the ordinary from what you could see of the kitchen. You also noticed no food on any of the surfaces. The kitchen counter and the table void of anything other than pots and a large book. You hoped the place had been abandoned and they’d just left bits and pieces around the cabin. You found a back door that held no paint on it, just a simple wooden door, smirking to yourself when you easily opened it. Whoever was last here had obviously failed to lock the back door, which you were very thankful for. You shut the door behind you quietly, flicking the lock on the door so no one could follow you inside. You looked around, being able to see almost the whole first floor of the cabin from where you stood, it being an open layer set up. There was the kitchen that you’d seen through the window, beside that there was a fireplace with an uncomfortable looking sofa sat in front of it, the material made out of patchwork pieces. You noticed in the fireplace a large cauldron, and next to that, a very large cabinet with plenty of labelled bottles on the shelves. This must have belonged to a witch at some point. You hoped she wasn’t coming back anytime soon, knowing they can be very hostile when they want to be, and the last thing you needed was to be cursed to cough up frogs or something. You saw a set of wooden steps leading up to the next floor, but you were more curious about the glistening bright blue liquid you could see in one of the bottles on the shelf. Your curiosity got the better of you, and you walked past the stairs to take a closer look at the bottle.

“Unicorn blood…” You read the label out loud and grimaced, not knowing that unicorns had luminous blue blood. A creak sounded from behind you, causing you to gasp and turn around quickly. You widened your eyes when you saw a young man holding a wand threateningly at you. He stood on the stairs, wearing what you assumed what his night clothes that consisted of navy pants and nothing else. His torso was bare, and you gulped, feeling like you’d not only intruded on his home, but on his privacy. His dark brown hair was almost shoulder length, it looking shaggy from where he had been asleep when you’d barged into his home. You were slightly glad it was a wizard and not a witch, hoping he would be kinder to you than a woman would be.

“Who are you?” His voice was mellow despite his demanding tone, and it felt like soft silk against your ears.

“No one.” You frowned, not really knowing where you got this sudden bout of courage to be defensive from. His frown hardened and he flicked his wand, sparks shooting out from it and making an empty bottle on the counter beside you explode. You jumped in surprise, taking a step away from the broken glass on the floor next to you.

“Tell me.” He growled, his voice no longer sounding as lovely as it first had.

“My name is (Y/N).” You watched him wit nervous eyes, his own dark orbs not once leaving your figure.

“Who sent you?” He took another step down the staircase, the wood creaking underneath his weight, now only one more step away from being on the ground. You furrowed your eyebrows at his words, curious as to what he meant by that.

“No one sent me, I was-” You cut yourself off, not wanting to tell him what you were running from in case he decided to use it against you. “I needed shelter, there was a wolf out there.” You glanced around the cabin looking for possible exits in a hurry, even though you’d only seen the two doors which were now both locked, meaning a fast exit was out of the question. You neglected to tell him that the wolf had plenty of opportunities to harm you, but didn’t, it seemingly having helped you in comparison. He didn’t say anything for a minute, thoughts swirling around his head at what he should do with you. He’d never had anyone find him in his whole three years of living out in the forest, so he had no idea what to do.

“Get out.” He narrowed his eyes at you, taking another step down the stairs. You shook your head.

“No. I can’t go back out there! Something will kill me.” Your eyebrows knitted together, and purposely put a scared look on your face, hoping he would have mercy on you. He took another step, so he was finally on the ground, an evil smirk gracing his face.

“Maybe something will kill you in here.” His face fell back to a hard scowl. His eyes still hadn’t looked anywhere but at you, and you started to feel nervous under his stare.

“I don’t think so.” You folded your arms over your chest, trying to act as brave as you usually were now that he clearly didn’t care if you were scared or not.

“You think you’re brave, but I can see right through you. You’re just a scared little girl…I wonder what you were running from.” His voice held a taunting tone and his smirk grew as he slowly started to approach you. You tried to take a step back but were restricted by the cabinet behind you. You gulped, watching him with worried eyes.

“I told you, I was running from a wolf.” You could feel your palms start to sweat and you were regretting your decision to hide in the cabin. He lowered his wand, letting out a sigh and letting his smirk drop.

“You can take the couch. But you leave tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Sir.” You bowed to him, shuffling over to the couch and slowly lowering yourself onto it.

“If you try anything, I will personally find that wolf and feed you to it myself. Understood?”

“Understood.” You turned you head to him as he ascended up the stairs once more. You let out a sigh, thanking the gods it was a warm night out, so you weren’t going to freeze to death without any blankets. Not wanting to push your luck with the wizard whose name you didn’t even know, you laid down on the couch, having to tuck your legs up to fit properly. It was surprisingly more comfortable than you thought if would be, so you found it easy to drift off to sleep.

---

It was the uncomfortable ache in your neck that woke you up. You groaned as you stretched out on the cramped sofa, the relief you felt in your muscles causing you to moan out loud. You let out a sigh, rubbing your eyes before finally opening them. You jumped in surprise when you saw the homeowner stood over you, staring down at you. He jumped when he saw your eyes open, his face starting to glow a bright red as you stared up at him.

“Pervert.” You mumbled loud enough for him to hear, sitting up and letting out a yawn.

“I’m not a pervert, I just saw you moving and wondered if you wanted some breakfast. But you were still asleep, and I was trying to figure out how to wake you up.” He frowned, crossing his arms over his still shirtless torso. “You’re a very restless sleeper.” He mumbled before walking away from you, heading towards the kitchen which was only about five steps away. You hummed in acknowledgment and stood up, following him to the kitchen.

“What’s for breakfast?” You asked, your eyes trained on his back as he pulled out some bowls from a cupboard.

“Porridge.” He grunted, getting to work on making the food. You watched over his shoulder, grimacing in disgust at the sight of the sloppy porridge.

“I’ve never had porridge before…” He let out a sigh, turning to face you with a face of no emotion.

“That’s because its poor people food, and you clearly come from money.” He looked you up and down, raising an eyebrow at your high-class dress that was torn slightly from your trip through the forest. It was a deep emerald green, made from the finest of materials and tailored to fit you perfectly. “Are you the daughter of a lord or something?” He didn’t look at you as he questioned you, spooning the sloppy food into a bowl and passing it to you with a spoon. You grimaced, hesitantly taking a mouthful and swallowing it fast, too bothered by the pain in your stomach from hunger to care about the taste.

“I am.” You kept your eyes on him as he sat down at his tiny table and chairs, putting his bowl on the table. He also kept his eyes trained on you, not fully trusting of you.

“So why are you in my home and not in your lavish house being waited on hand and foot by your servants?” Your silence had him raising an eyebrow. You awkwardly looked around the room, letting out a long sigh as you debated whether to tell him or not.

“You don’t need to know.”

“You’re in my home. You tell me or you leave.” You looked at him with sorrow in your eyes. He wasn’t expecting to see such an emotion laying behind your eyes, his heart dropping a little at how sad you suddenly looked. He let out a sigh and shrugged. “Whatever, doesn’t matter.” He stood up and turned his back to you as he placed his bowl into a large metal tub used for washing. He winced at how soft he was being with you and he couldn’t help but mentally question himself for how he was acting with you. You finished eating and followed suit, stood beside him with your eyes locked on his body.

“What’s your name?” You asked out of the blue, ultimately disrupting the silence that had settled between you both.

“Renjun.” You furrowed your eyebrows at his name and scrunched your face up in thought.

“That name sounds familiar to me…” You didn’t notice how his fists clenched up at your words, his body becoming stiff as he waited for you to continue. “Maybe I know someone else with that name.” You shrugged it off and let out a soft laugh. “So…can I stay with you?” You smiled widely at him in hopes a smile would persuade him to let you reside with him for the foreseeable future.

“Sure.” He turned to you and plastered on a big smile to mirror your own.

“Really?” You gasped in surprise and perked up slightly.

“No.” His expression fell completely apart from the small smirk on his lips. Your face fell to a pout forming on your lips.

“Please! I can help you out with…whatever it is you do here, and I won’t be a nuisance I swear. I can clean up and er…I don’t know really…please!” When you saw that he wasn’t going to cave in so easily, you let out a sigh and whined. “I’ll do anything, just don’t send me back out there alone!” His smirk rose and he started to approach you, taking slow steps until he had you backed up against his table.

“Anything?” He looked you up and down, not missing the look of fear that flashed on your face as the intimidating stranger had your closed in. He backed off without a second thought, not sure where his compassion for you was blossoming from but he could see you were frightened at the thought of him touching you in an inappropriate way. It then struck him it was probably a man you were running from. “You can stay.” He mumbled.

---

You’d been staying with Renjun for just over a week.  You noticed he didn’t talk much, but you didn’t care, you happily chatted to him even when all you got back was a grunt in reply. He also had a knack for making you jump when you least expected it. He didn’t go out of his way to give you a fright, but the spells and potions he made would often go bang and leave you wondering if he was even good at what he did. You still had no answers as to why he was living on his own so deep in the forest, but you didn’t want to pry, he could kick you out at any moment and then you’d be stranded once more. To say you were struggling with adjusting to life outside of your home was an understatement. You were used to living in a lavish mansion with maids and servants waiting on you hand and foot. So, to live in a cramped cabin and sleep on a tiny sofa every night made you want to ball your eyes out and throw a tantrum. But you held it in. The worst part was…well the toilet, which wasn’t even a proper toilet, but in fact, an outhouse. But you didn’t want to even think about that. The next worst part was bathing. When Renjun had led you on a ten-minute walk to a small lake, you had genuinely thought he was having a joke with you. But his dead serious face told you otherwise. He had told you to bathe in the water and had given you a bar of soap. You timidly poked you toe into the water and the cold temperature had made you gasp so loud you gave him a mini heart attack.

“No. I can’t get in there.” You turned to see Renjun already in his underwear, gasping again and turning around quickly.

“Well then you’ll just have to stink won’t you.” He sounded like he didn’t care, wading into the lake and dunking his head underneath before coming up again. “It’s not that bad.” His words had you frowning. You were used to heated baths in a large silver tub, with the best smelling oils and flowers petals used. So this was a nightmare to you. When you saw Renjun wasn’t looking, you stripped down to your underwear, which were actually Renjun’s underwear as you only had the pair you were wearing when you’d ran into the forest and they were currently soaked in a tub with the rest of your laundry.

“Aren’t there fish and stuff in there?” You raised an eyebrow, slowly taking a step into the water. A shiver ran up your spine and you groaned, taking another step until both of your feet were imbedded in the floor of the lake, the mud making you cringe at the horrid feeling. You took a few more steps until you were closer to Renjun with the water coming up to your hips.

“Mermaids too.” Renjun nonchalantly said, washing himself down with his own bar of soap.

“What?!” Your eyes widened and you were about to turn back around when Renjun’s hand caught your wrist. He gave you a tug and your shoulders were soon underneath the water.

“I’m kidding.” He chuckled, letting go of you and pushing his hair back off of his face. The sun beamed down on his glistening wet skin, and you tried your hardest not to stare at how beautiful his body was. “Do I have to wash you myself or are you just going to stare at me?” He smirked and you found your cheeks heating up quickly, you turned away and started to wash yourself with the soap. “Is that what you’re used to? Having your body washed by your servant’s, little rich girl?” You knew he was mocking you, his tone light and airy.

“No. I’m fully capable of washing my own body thank you.” You huffed, your arms causing unnecessary splashes in the water as you tried to show off how you didn’t find him funny. He simply laughed and you both continued to wash yourselves in the cold water. So yeah, you hated bath time.

Apart from that, it wasn’t all that bad.

You walked through the dense trees with Renjun by your side. He was wearing a black pair of trousers with a loose white shirt that showed off the top of his chest. It was midday, so the forest was lit up well by the hot sun beating down through the gaps in the canopy. You wore one of Renjun’s long shirts as a dress, still not having anymore clothes apart from what you wore the day you arrived at his cabin. But Renjun had told you that he’d sent a raven carrying a letter to someone he can trust. He hopes they’ll bring the items he put on the list so that you can finally have some other clothes.

“So the red berries you can use to make a potion that will kill someone?” You looked at Renjun beside you, his head nodding as a reply as his eyes scoured the floor for the item you were talking about. “And the pink berries you can use to make a love potion?” He nodded again and you made a noise of amazement. “Woah, that’s spectacular!” You picked up a flower that had white petals and a blue bud. “What does this do?”

“Nothing, its just a flower.” He scoffed a laugh, pushing back some loose leaves to uncover the red berries he was talking about. You dropped the flower and stared at the berries.

“Why do you want to kill someone though?”

“Don’t ask so many questions.” He deadpanned, putting the berries into his sack.

“Are you going to make someone fall in love with you?” You tilted your head, unable to stop the questions from pouring out of your mouth.

“No. I make potions to sell on the black market. Potions that can kill, harm, or force someone into something are considered illegal and black magic. But it’s the only way I can get money and food. The person I sent a raven to is the same person who does my deals for me.”

“Isn’t he worried he’ll be caught? You get the death sentence for illegal things like that…”

“He’s a vampire, so no.”

“That’s hot.” You smirked at him, his eyed widened and he gave you a look of shock. You burst into laughter and rolled your eyes. “I’m joking, hey can you make a potion that-” Before you could finish, you stopped talking, the loud shouts that echoed through the trees causing a chill of dread to shoot through your system. The voices sounded identical to that of the ones following you when you were running a week prior. “We need to go.” You gripped onto Renjun’s arm, but the voices got louder and suddenly you were facing the one man you never wanted to see again.

“Hello my love, long time no see.” The man stood in front of you smirked, his thin lips pulling up and making him look dangerous. “I wasn’t best pleased to find out my wife had run away.” His piercing blue eyes looked you up and down. You would have run again, but you were frozen on the spot, and he had five other men stood by his side, all holding swords and looking ready to attack.

“I’m not your wife. We never got married.” You spat with hatred at him, giving him a look of disgust. Renjun stood beside you with a look of confusion on his face, his eyebrows furrowed, and fists clenched.

“I see you’ve already found yourself another man. Such a little whore (Y/N).” He sneered at you and gave Renjun a look up and down.

“I’m not with him. Don’t bring him into this.”

“Who are you?” Renjun completely disregarded everything you just said and threw himself into the situation.

“Did she not tell you about the fiancé that she abandoned? Well, to cut a long story short. I woke up one day to find my lover gone. My men soon found her hiding and she ran into the forest. They tracked her but lost her, and here we are now.”

“No. She didn’t.” You and Renjun turned to look at each other and he hit you with a hard glare. You gulped, a nervous fire burning in the pit of your stomach from how Renjun was staring at you.

“Hand her over and you can go free. But if you don’t, we’ll kill you.” Your ex-fiancé’s lips curled into a blood curdling smirk. Renjun gasped and started to stutter.

“T-take her! I-I don’t w-want no trouble!” He held his arms up beside his head in surrender. Your stomach fell through the floor at how he was giving you up so quickly without even hearing your side of the story. You thought that Renjun was going to stick by your side, but then thought that he actually had no reason to. You were simply mooching off of him and this was his opportunity to get rid of you.

“No Renjun! Please don’t do this!” You grabbed his wrist and begged him, your eyes staring into his and welling up with tears. Your heart was beating fast as two men enclosed on you, not giving you much time to escape as they grabbed you by the arms. “Get off of me!” You squealed and tried to tug yourself away from them. “Stop!” You dug your heels into the floor, but it was no use against the strong henchmen. You looked at your capture and saw his sick, sadistic smile on his face as he grabbed you by the jaw.

“I can’t wait to have you underneath me; I hope he didn’t do much damage to your pretty little cunt.” His words had you shaking at inside, tears falling down your cheeks and you didn’t even want to think of the things he would do to you. “You belong to me. Don’t forget that.” He tapped your cheek and turned to Renjun who was stood looking meek by a tree. “You did good boy. Now go home.” You were being dragged unwillingly through the forest, your back to Renjun but you wanted to scream at him for giving you over like that. You felt betrayed and it was like having a hot knife twisted in your chest.

The tight grips on your arms were suddenly gone, and a purple flash blinded you momentarily. You fell to the floor from no longer having any support from the goons who were holding you captive. You squeezed your eyes shut and heard the sounds of deep grunts, followed by thuds hitting the floor and what you could only describe as knives slashing. Strong arms wrapped around your middle and you whimpered, gripping onto the floor like it would stop whoever was attacking you.

“No! Stop!” You struggled in their arms as you sobbed, wishing you were back in Renjun’s cabin where you felt safe.

“Hey stop, it’s me.” Renjun’s soft voice whispered to you as he pulled you up into his arms. He held you to his chest and shushed you gently. “You’re okay, keep your eyes closed.” He started to walk, carrying you in his arms with ease. You couldn’t help but open your eyes to see what had happened. The sight you were met with had your mouth dropped open and fresh tears to fall from your eyes.

“You killed them?!” You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to rid the image of all six men laying on the floor with their throats slit open. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the sight of your ex-fiancé as he laid on the floor, choking on his own blood as he slowly died. “How did you do that?!”

“With dark magic, I told you not to look!” You hid your face into the crook of his neck as he carried you back to his home despite the fact he’d just murdered six people in front of you. You couldn’t stop the tears the trailed down your face as you stewed in your thoughts the whole journey home. You really thought you were going to be forced into the marriage you didn’t want once again. You let out a long sigh as Renjun gently sat you on his bed. He cupped your face and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. “Are you hurt?” He spoke quietly, his eyes scouring over you as he checked for any marks. “Your arms are going to bruise.” He gently stroked your arms, his fingers barely touching you as he sighed. “When the bruises show, I can heal you.” He sat down beside you and hesitated before he took your hands into his own. He didn’t speak, his eyes trained on your face as he waited for you to break the silence.

“I was born into a rich family, and as soon as I turned 18, they signed me up for an arranged marriage. They recently matched me with him,” You paused, gulping back your emotions as you looked up at the ceiling. “he’s abusive. He would hit me, force me to do things I really didn’t want to do…”

“Did he rape you?” Renjun whispered, his stomach fluttering with butterflies as he waited for you to respond.

“No.” You shook your head, sighing and turning to look at Renjun. “He was waiting for our wedding night.”

“Bastard.” His fists clenched and he growled in disgust.

“So I ran away. That night I broke into your home, I was being chased by his men. A white wolf chased them away and I’m sure it saved me on purpose.” You looked into Renjun’s dark eyes, noticing a strange look behind them that you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

“Snowy.”

“Sorry?” You raised an eyebrow in confusion at him.

“Her name is Snowy. Well, it’s not actually her name, but she can’t talk so I just call her Snowy.” He nodded with a small smile on his face as if he was proud of what she did. He gave your hands a squeeze but made no effort to lose contact with you. You had never felt safer in your entire life as what you felt in the middle of the most dangerous forest, in a run-down cabin, with a man you’d only known for just over a week. You felt a sudden rush of affection and thankfulness towards him, knowing if he hadn’t been with you, then you’d be made to marry that monster. You didn’t even want to think of the things he would have done to you as punishment for running away. You leaned your head in, hesitating before pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek with your eyes closing as you made contact. Renjun stiffened momentarily, but then relaxed, a soft smile playing at his lips as his cheeks started to turn pink fast.

“Thank you for saving me.” Silence ensued after you pulled away, and you both sat wordlessly on his bed for five minutes before he spoke up once again.

“My mother was the castles witch, or healer as some would say.” He took a deep breath and stared you in the eye, you felt his grip on your hand tighten as he worked up the courage to finally tell his story to someone after so many years of keeping it to himself. “I never knew my father, she just used to tell me that he was a coward and we were better off without him. Anyway, throughout my life, my mother would help me with the gift that she’d passed down to me, and I was getting really good with using magic. One night I decided I needed some answers about my father, so I snuck into her work room and spent hours searching for a recipe for a truth potion. I found it and I brewed it in secret whilst she slept. The next morning I slipped it into her drink, and by midday she was spilling all sorts of secrets out that I never knew about.” He let out a sigh and you noticed that his eyes started to fill with tears.

“You haven’t got to tell me anymore.” You rubbed your thumb over the back of his hand to try and comfort him. “If its too much you haven’t got to.”

“No, I want to.” He took another deep breath and sniffed back his tears. “I asked her about my father, and she said that the King is my father. I got really mad that she never told me, and I threw things around and I said some really nasty stuff. I felt like something was boiling inside of me that I couldn’t control. So I left, because I didn’t want to hurt her. The next thing I did was find the King. Obviously, he knew who I was and that I was his son. We argued and I kept shouting at him, he told me to stop or I would regret it. I didn’t believe that he’d do anything though because it just sounded like empty threats, and I was so angry. He’d slept with my mother when he was married to the Queen, so he never wanted anyone to find out. Then a month after I was born the Queen gave birth to the Prince, so the King threatened my mother that if anyone ever found out, he’d have her killed.” His eyes started to blink faster as he continued on with his story, his eyes glossier than before. “I didn’t stop shouting at him, so he had his guards restrain me while they went to collect my mother. He had them hold me in front of her whilst he slit her throat.” His face crinkled up as a sob left his lips, the memory paining him and causing a dam to burst inside of him. You gulped, your own eyes filling with tears at the thought of what he’d been through.

“Oh no…” You let go of his hands and instead wrapped your arms around his torso, bringing him close to you and rubbing his back in slow circles. “Renjun…” His frame rocked from the sobs he let out. He sniffed and wiped his eyes with his hands, letting out a long breath and gulping.

“They killed her in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.” He pulled away from your embrace and took your hands back in his own instead, missing the feel of your soft hands within his own. He entwined your fingers with his own and kept his eyes on them as he played with them. “They threw me on the floor in her blood, and I felt so much rage and sadness that I didn’t know what to do. I ran back to my room and I grabbed my wand, I wasn’t even thinking, my legs just carried me. I went to find the King again, but before I could get to him, I came across the Prince in the hall.” He winced as he started to explain what happened next. “I grew up with the Prince, he was my closest friend and the Queen would encourage us to play together despite the fact I was a workers son. She’s a very kind woman, and I believe she knew about her husband’s affair, but she never held it against me or my mother. Obviously, he was worried when he saw me covered in blood, and he kept firing questions at me and trying to stop me from where I was going, he didn’t know I had the intention of killing his father. I was getting overwhelmed, especially with my newly found brother being in front of me. Other people heard the commotion and they came to watch, it was when the King came around the corner that I lost it. I saw red. And Jeno was in my way…” He paused as he thought about how to explain what happened next to you. He squeezed your hand tight as he spoke. “I remember seeing a bright green light emitting from my wand as I raised it at him, then suddenly he was laying in a heap by his fathers’ feet, but he wasn’t human anymore…he was a wolf. I can remember the burning feeling I had in my gut as I fired the curse at him, but I didn’t mean to. I never wanted to harm him, I loved him like a brother, and I was devastated at what I’d done. So I ran, the same way that you had.”

“You had no other choice Renjun, how old were you?”

“Sixteen.” He sighed, resting his head on your shoulder as he shut his eyes. “The feeling I had back then was the same feeling I felt today when those men had their arms around you.” His face hardened and he scowled at the memory.

“You were just a kid; you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” You tried to reassure him, but you knew it probably made no difference to him. “And you had no other choice today, its not like you had a sword and could fight them in combat.”

“I did though, I wanted other people to hurt…I killed all the knights who chased me, I’m a murderer (Y/N), I have too much dark magic inside of me to be anything other than a bad person. It’s my fault that my mother was killed, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

“Renjun, your mother was murdered in front of you, and you were so young I can only assume that you had no control of powers that strong at such a young age. I’m sorry that you had to go through that. But you can’t change what happened.” You lifted his hands up and placed a kiss to the back of one of them.

“I trust you not to hurt me.”

“I would never hurt you…” You both looked into each other’s eyes as he raised his head from your shoulder. You smiled shyly and your breath hitched as his head crept closer to your own. When your lips were a centimetre away from touching a loud howl ripped through the air, followed by a chorus of more howls. You both pulled away and Renjun stood up fast to peek out of the window beside his bed.

“What’s going on?” You asked with a horrible feeling in your gut even though you knew the threat you had run away from was no long lingering over your head.

“I think some wolves have just found the bodies, it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh…” You stood up from Renjun’s bed and noticed that the sun had started to set, making the entire cabin eerily dark. Renjun waved his hand over a candle in the corner of his room and a flickering flame brought a new light to the setting.

“When you first came here you said you recognised my name…why?” He furrowed his eyebrows as he looked at you.

“You’re a wanted man, but I think you already knew that.” He let out a soft laugh before nodding his head. You thought back to when Renjun had come across you in his home and he’d asked you who had sent you, at the time it confused you, but now it made sense. He was scared for his life, and he had a right to be.

“Yes that’s why I’ve been living deep in a forest most people wouldn’t even dare to enter.” He winked at you and made his way downstairs, you quickly stepped to the window and brushed the curtain aside, peering out into the dense trees. You could have sworn you saw some amber eyes staring at you from far away, but they were gone just as fast as they were there.

“Its been a long day.” You mumbled to yourself and shook your head, trying to clear your mind. Your cheeks heated up as you thought back to the kiss you had nearly shared with Renjun. The image of his face getting closer to your own with his really kissable looking lips was making your palms sweat. You were in the midst of thinking about how things would have turned out had your lips actually met with his own, and you were debating whether you had feelings for the boy you’d only known a week when his footsteps made the stairs creak underneath him. He was carrying your blanket and pillow in his hands which caused you to furrow your eyebrows at him. “What are you doing with those?”

“I don’t want you sleeping on the couch anymore, I just thought maybe you’d want to er…” His cheeks slowly turned red as he stumbled over his words. “Share the b-bed with me?” Your eyes widened and you glanced at his bed. It was definitely big enough to hold the both of you, and you were surprised that he felt comfortable enough with you to do that.

“No funny business?” You raised an eyebrow at him and smirked, enjoying the way he squirmed under your stare.

“(Y/N)!”

“I’m joking!”

---

The soft summer breeze was doing nothing to cool you down. The sun had caused your body to perspire and your flowy maroon dress to stick to your skin, and you took off your shoes in hopes to get some air to them. The richly colourful flowers mixed in with lengthy grass was one of the most calming things you’d witness in a long time. With the large mountains in view, a running stream so close you could hear the water trickling against the rocks, and the forest framing the spacious meadow, you didn’t want to move. The grass was soft against your body as you sat amongst it, Renjun’s head laying in your lap with his eyes shut, basking in the heat of the sun that was beating down from the endless, sapphire blue sky. You gazed down at his shining skin, smiling at the way his long eyelashes laid against his cheeks. His hair had gotten longer in the past two months that you’d known him, but he refused to let you cut it no matter how much you badgered him about it. You ran your hands through his hair and twirled the long locks around your fingers, he let out a soft sigh from how good it felt to him and nuzzled his head into your touch.

“You’re adorable Renjunnie.” You whispered, unsure if he was asleep or not, but the way his nose crinkled in disgust at your words told you he was still awake. “Don’t try to deny it.” You giggled, scratching his scalp with your fingernails as his eyes blinked open, squinting up at you as the sun was so bright.

“You were singing as you were washing our clothes this morning, yet I’m the adorable one?” He closed his eyes again but raised an eyebrow at you.

“You heard me?” You gasped with your eyes wide in surprise, a blush of embarrassment rising on your cheeks.

“Yes you weren’t exactly quiet.”

“Did I wake you up?” You picked at a flower beside you and slid it into Renjun’s hair. You smiled at your handy work and hastily picked another flower.

“No, I was already awake.” He mumbled and yawned, unaware that you were decorating his hair with flowers because your touch was so delicate.

“You kept rolling on me last night.” You sniggered, his eyes opening in surprise and catching you in the act of putting a white flower in his hair. You’d been sharing Renjun’s bed with him since the day you’d both admitted to each other why you were both on the run two months ago. You hadn’t had anymore close encounters of kissing like that had that day, but your feelings towards Renjun had grown significantly the more you got to know him. You took a keen interest in Renjun’s potions and spells, often assisting him with the brewing of potions and doing the grand job of holding his instruments. There was a time when Renjun got frustrated to the point of snapping, and you were nearly in the firing line of a ball of navy-blue fire that flew through the air. It had missed you luckily, and instead the wall of the cabin had a gaping, smouldering hole where the ball had hit it. Renjun had never apologised more in his life than that moment that he’d nearly hurt you, but it brought the two of you closer, especially when you reassured him that you trusted him.  “Why were you so restless? Did you have another bad dream?” Since you’d been sharing his bed with him, you’d witnessed a number of his nightmares. It would start with soft whimpers leaving his lips and would escalate to him becoming agitated and twitchy in his sleep. You didn’t know whether to wake him or not, as the one time you did, he’d woken with such a start that he’d pushed you off of the bed. You didn’t want a repeat of that, so you always waited it out until his body went still once more.

“No, it was a good dream.” His smile was sleepy, and he stared up at you like you were the only thing he could see.

“Care to share?” You brushed the flowers from his hair just as he sat up, leaning on his hand to keep his body upright.

“No, I’m keeping it to myself.” He winked and let out a soft laugh before sighing. “What shall we do tomorrow?” You looked away from him, staring into the dense trees as you racked your brain for ideas of what to do.

“I want to go into town.” When he didn’t reply to you, you turned to see a scowl on his face, his lips pulled into a tight line and his body visibly tense. “I just want to see other people again you know…I miss the smells, the sounds, the food…” He still didn’t speak, thoughts rushing through his head as you spoke. “Renjun say something…”

“You’re not going.” His face was still stern, his eyebrows knitted together as he kept his eyes trained on you. You scoffed in disbelief; you couldn’t believe he had the nerve to tell you there you weren’t going to do something that you wanted to do.

“I wasn’t asking you for permission.” You shot back at him, your face now mirroring his own hard look.

“I don’t care, I’m not allowing you to go to town (Y/N).” You could both see where this was heading. Your tongue pushed into your cheek and you pursed your lips at him, raising an eyebrow as a silent challenge. All your life you’d been underneath the thumb of your parents, and now you had all the freedom you could possibly want, you weren’t going to allow a male to control you again.

“I’m going. Whether you like it or not.” You shrugged at him, watching as his gaze darkened. His fists clenched as he willed the fire burning in his stomach to simmer down.

“No. You are not.” He gripped at some of the grass in an attempt to calm down. “Don’t push me.”

“What makes you think you have the right to tell me what I do and don’t do Renjun. You’re not my father, or my husband. And even if you were, I sure as hell wouldn’t be controlled by you.” You pushed yourself up onto your knees, getting prepared to storm away at any moment.

“(Y/N) do you not understand how much danger you would be in if you went to the town? You even said so yourself that there are people who work for your fiancés family that could come looking for you. You will be walking around with a target on you. What the fuck would I do? I cant go with you because I’m the most wanted man in the entire Kingdom, and I cant just wait here for you to come home, not knowing if someone’s found you, or if a fucking animal has eaten you while you were on your way home. So no. You aren’t going (Y/N). And if you do go, then don’t bother coming back.” He growled with vigour, his eyes staring to glow a disturbing purple colour. Your mouth popped open as you witnessed what you believed to be dark magic taking over the Renjun that you knew. You’d never actually seen first-hand what the dark magic did to his physcial features, only ever seeing the aftermath of his rage running through him. You didn’t know how to calm him down, so you did the one thing you’d been wanting to do since that day he’d saved your life. You cupped his face in your soft hands and pulled his lips to meet your own. You squeezed your eyes shut, so you couldn’t see if what you were doing was helping him to calm down or not. You felt his hands come to rest on your waist, his grip tight to begin with but soon loosening as you moved your lips in perfect time with his. He pulled you from him and you opened your eyes to look at him. He stared into your eyes, his sight flicking down to your lips as he held his hands to your hips. As you looked into his brown eyes, you noticed that sadness behind them and it made your heart sink. He’d already lost the person who meant the most to him in the world, and he no longer had his best friend either. You could see why he was getting upset and angry and immediately regretted how you acted. He visibly gulped

“I’m not going anywhere.” You whispered as you looked to his parted lips.

“Good…” He leaned in once more and slotted his lips between your own. Your eyes shut automatically and you leaned into his touch, stroking your thumbs against his warm cheeks. He very slowly lowered you against the long grass, holding his body over your own as he worked his lips against yours. The feel of his tongue pushing against your own was something you’d never felt before, but it was a welcomed touch, it igniting a fire within you that was new to you. He moved his kisses down your jaw to your neck, sucking softly at your skin and squeezing your hips with his hands.

“I’m in love with you (Y/N)…” He whispered against you, letting out a sigh and resting his forehead in the crook of your neck. He gulped, screwing his eyes shut as he admitted his feelings towards you. “Please love me back.” You could barely hear him as he’d said the words so quietly, his voice cracking from how he got choked up. It broke your heart.

“Renjun…” You laid your hands on his back, rubbing them around in slow circles. You leaned your head against his, holding him to you tightly to comfort him. “I’m in love with you too.” He pulled his head back to look into your eyes, a small smile on his face as he looked down at you.

“I don’t want to lose you; I can’t lose anyone else.” His eyes welled with tears, making them appear glossy and darker than usual.

“You don’t have to, I won’t go.” You lifted your head and placed a tender kiss to his lips.

“Good.” He murmured against your lips, getting lost in your mouth once more. You kissed him for what felt like hours, but in reality, it was only ten minutes, before he descended to kiss at your neck.

“That feels good.” You smiled, your eyes shutting as he sucked a dark bruise into your neck. He smirked, licking a stripe up your skin and letting out a low chuckle. Your legs wrapped around Renjun’s hips, your hands fiddling with the hair at the nape of his neck as he rolled his hips against yours. An involuntary moan spilled from your gaping lips, new feelings of excitement blooming inside of you that you’d never felt before. “Do it again.” You encouraged him, his hips rolling into yours again but with more force. He smiled, giving your lips one last peck before he sat back on his feels, his eyes staring down at your chest as it rose and fell fast from how thrilled you were. His shaky hands reached out as he took the top button of your dress between his fingers. He hesitated, looking you and biting his bottom lip. You nodded your head when you realised that he was wordlessly asking you for permission. He popped open the first button, then worked on opening the next 3 until your bra was on show. He placed both of his hands over your breasts, squeezing them over the plain material and letting out a throaty moan at the sight of what he was doing. You already knew that Renjun was a virgin, and that he’d never even seen a woman naked until he accidentally walked in on you naked one time. But you also knew he’d read books about sex, and that his mother had gotten the castles gardener to give him ‘the talk’ when he was fourteen. You’d also had ‘the talk’ given to you by your mother at the age of sixteen, and you snuck out multiple times to buy adult books that had very graphic explanations of sex in them. But no one needed to know that.

His hands wrapped around your torso and he quickly untied your bra, pulling the loose fabric from your body and setting it down beside you. “Wow…” He mumbled, his mouth popping open in awe at your body. He leaned in, placing gentle kisses to the top of your breasts while he cupped them with his hands. His lips trailed down, and he took one of your nipples between his lips. He looked up at you as he sucked at the sensitive bud, a small gasp falling from your lips at the spark it sent through you. He looked so innocent and content as he swirled his tongue around your nipple, his hips grinding lazily into yours. He moaned against you, his cock quickly hardening in his pants as he moved to the other breast to give it attention. He sat back on his heels once more, palming at his erection and biting his bottom lip. You smirked, sitting up and not hesitating before ridding yourself of your dress completely, only wearing your plain white panties. He followed your lead, pulling his loose white shirt off over his head before shimmying out of his pants. Your lips met in the middle, his hands framing your face as he drove his tongue into your mouth once again. Without thinking, you reached a hand out and squeezed at his hard length through his pants. He pulled back and sucked in a harsh intake of breath, his eyes screwing shut as he sounded pained.

“Is that good or bad?” You immediately withdrew your hand and looked worried, your eyes wide and dripping with simplicity.

“Good, too good.” He grabbed your hand and placed it back where it was before. You giggled softly, rubbing your hand against him as he bucked his hips up towards you. You slipped your hand into his underwear and gulped when you felt his cock against your hand. You didn’t have anything to compare it to, but you were happy with the size of it, but you had a daunting feeling sitting in your gut at whether you were confident in having something of that size inside of you. He pushed his underwear down and set them aside with the rest of his clothes. He watched your face as you stared at his rock-hard appendage, your hand having stilled. “Are you okay?” He took your hand in his and pressed a soft kiss to the back of it. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Renjun I’ve been sleeping in a bed with you for the past two months, you have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to do this with you. It’s happening.” You grasped him in your hand once more, shuffling yourself forward on your knees as you very slowly stroked his cock. He reached his own hand out and slowly stroked your folds, his eyes widening in surprise at how wet you were already. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he found your dripping hole fast and slid a finger inside of you. “Oh…” Your mouth popped open and you found your hips moving instinctively against his hand, rolling them in time to his finger dipping in and out of you. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to your shoulder, his lips trailing up to where he’d made a dark bruise on your neck. You moaned at the slight pain you felt when he nibbled at the sore spot but leaned into his touch anyway. He slowly slid another finger inside of you, stopping his ministrations when you whimpered in pain, your body going stiff and your hips raising.

“Did I hurt you?” You could hear the worry in his voice, it warming your heart that he was being so gentle with you.

“A little, just give me a few seconds to adjust.” He stayed completely still until you gave him the go ahead, his digits slowly moving in and out of you in a steady rhythm. You took in a deep breath and felt your thighs start to quiver from the little pangs of pleasure you felt every time he plunged his fingers inside of you. He pulled his fingers out of you and gave you a gentle nudge as a wordless hint for you to lay down. You laid back into the long grass, the kaleidoscope of colours from the flowers made your colour pop underneath the sun, the light sheen of sweat over your body making you glisten. Renjun was stunned by your beauty. His heart pounding in his chest as he stared down at the woman he’d fallen in love with in such a short time.

“Tell me if I hurt you or if you want to stop.” He spat in his palm and then stroked his cock a few times. He leaned over you, bracing himself up on one hand beside your head as he used his other hand to guide his cock to your entrance. He rubbed the head of his leaking member against your entrance, coating the head with your juices before very tenderly pushing it against the oozing cavern presented to him. You tensed up, wincing as it felt like you were being split in half.

“Stop!” You whimpered and he halted instantly. You felt bad when you saw the worried look on his face, his lips opening and closing as he tried to garner what to say. “Try again…”

“No. I don’t want to hurt you (Y/N)!” He was about to back off, but you grabbed him by the hair to stop him from moving. “Ow!”

“Sorry! Please, try again.” You pouted up at him, your eyes going comedically wide at him. He let out a sigh and nodded his head in obligement. When your hands had let go of his hair he quickly pulled away, much to your dismay. But before you could whine at him, he scooted backwards in the grass, gripping your thighs in his hands and pulling your hips upwards so that you were laying flat on your back again, your legs spread in front of him. He dipped down without a word and licked a stripe from your hole to your clit. A new feeling came over you as his tongue came in contact with the little bundle of nerves you’d only ever read about in the erotic books you’d secretly read. He watched your reaction and parted your folds with his fingers, leaning in and flicking his tongue against the little bud again. “Oh my…” You breathed out, leaning your head back as you felt like sobbing from how good it felt. He pushed his two fingers inside of you again, working them in and out of you as he sucked on your clit. Without you even noticing he added one more finger, moving them faster as he loosened you up. You felt what you could only describe as an explosion slowly building inside of your stomach, your toes curling and thighs starting to shake as the feeling got stronger.

Without saying anything, he suddenly withdrew from you, leaving you on the edge of your orgasm without even realising it. He hovered over you and very slowly started to push his cock into you once more. You still felt a slight string of pain, but it was considerably duller feeling that what it had been on his first attempt. He stopped once he was fully sheathed inside of you, his forehead resting against your own as you both adjusted to the new feeling. “Make love to me.” You whispered, wrapping your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist. His lips met yours in a lingering kiss as he slowly pulled his hips back, pushing inside of you once more. He repeated this until he picked up a leisurely rhythm. He panted and let out soft groans against your lips, your orgasm slowly building back up until you were whimpering for more. You gripped at his back, digging your nails into his perspiring skin as his thrusts started to lose pace. The moment didn’t last as long as you would have hoped, as his body tensed up, he let out a guttural moan as he spilled his hot cum inside of you. He moved his hips slowly for a few moments before he pulled out, the over-stimulation becoming too much for him. He wiped his forehead with his hand and looked down at you.

“I’m sorry, I-I didn’t think it would be that quick…” His cheeks flared up a bright red as he became embarrassed as his short performance. You giggled gently, biting your bottom lip as you watched him.

“You can always use your mouth again…I liked that a lot.” You shyly spoke, your own cheeks flaring up at how lewd your words sounded. A proud smirk rose up on his face as he leaned down, watching as his cum dribbled out of your hole. He used his fingers and pushed it back inside of you, attaching his mouth to your clit and sucking at it profusely as he rammed his fingers in and out of you. It didn’t take long for your first ever orgasm to crash into you like a tree falling on top of you. The air was snatched from your lungs and you saw stars that clouded over your vision. You tried to catch your breath, but you were struggling as your body adjusted to life after your orgasm. Renjun pulled his fingers out of you and watched against as his cum seeped from you, his bottom lip being tugged between his teeth in fascination. He didn’t want to alarm you, so he didn’t tell you about the small amount of blood mixed in with the white of his cum. He grabbed his shirt and hurried to clean you up with it, helping you get dressed and pressing a soft kiss to your cheek. He had to help you stand up, your legs wobbly from the strain they’d been through. You wrapped your arms around him and smiled up at him with a look of pure admiration and love settled on your features.

“What are you thinking?” You grinned up at him, curious as to what was playing on his mind after what the two of you had just done.

“That it was exactly like my dream…what are you thinking?” He’d put his pants back on but opted not to wear his now dirty shirt.

“How happy I am, thank you for taking me in and giving me this life.” You pressed a soft kiss to his jaw, unable to stop the wide smile that spread across your lips.

“I should be the one thanking you, I finally have someone to care about again. I was so lonely…”

“You never have to be lonely again.”

---

The gentle lull of Renjun’s soft voice was causing your eyes to droop. The flickering fire in front of you was creating a warmth over you that made you just want to drift off into the land of sleep. The sun had long gone down, and after a filling meal you and Renjun had cooked together had been consumed, you decided to snuggle up to him on the sofa. It was his idea to read a book aloud as your entertainment for the night. At first, you’d thought of it as a good idea, but the more he droned on, not putting much enthusiasm into making different voices for the different characters like you did, the sleepier you felt. You were surprised in yourself that you didn’t want him to bend your legs behind your ears and give you the fucking of a lifetime like you did most nights since you’d both lost your virginities to each other over a month prior. You’d been surprised when Renjun had brewed a strange tasting concoction that he claimed would prevent you from falling pregnant, and truth be told, you dreaded swallowing the sickly liquid that tasted like dirt. But if it meant you could have as much sex as you liked without the chances of creating unwanted babies, then you’d drink gallons of the stuff. Its not that you didn’t want children with him, but it just wasn’t convenient with your living situation. Your home was too tiny, and you could barely look after yourself at your age after having been spoilt your entire life by your parents. So babies were out of the question until a later date.

“Are you still awake?” Renjun paused his reading to ask you, his head leaning back to try and see your eyes from where you had your head pressed into his chest.

“Hmm.” You made a short noise to show that you were still listening to him, even if you had lost what was happening in the story, he was telling you. You got lost in your thoughts once more as he started again. You thought back to his past, and about how he told you he was the son of the King. A question popped into your mind that you couldn’t help but ask immediately. “If you’re the King’s first son, then aren’t you the heir to the throne?” You cut him off and he went dead silent as he thought about your words. He didn’t often like to talk about his past, and if it got brought up, he would hurry to change the subject, or he’d distract you with kisses and random flowers that he magicked up out of nowhere.

“No. I’m an illegitimate son that was born out of wedlock. I couldn’t ever sit on the throne, and I don’t want to. It’s not the life for me.” He shrugged, closing the book and setting it down on the table beside the sofa.

“Oh.” You didn’t know what to say, so started to look around the cabin awkwardly. You stared out of the window into the dark forest, noticing a pair of amber eyes staring back at you. You remembered back to the time you’d seen them before but had dismissed it as your imagination. You knew it was Snowy’s eyes, as her eyes were a vibrant green, not a threatening amber like the ones staring back into you. You gulped, ripping your eyes away and pulling away form Renjun. “There’s someone…something watching us.” You whispered, a horrible chill rippling through you and settling in the pit of your stomach in a horrible ball of anxiety.

“What?” He frowned, sitting up and reaching for his wand on the table.

“Outside.” You flicked your eyes over to the window subtly, not wanting the creature to know that you were alerting someone of its presence. One thing you’d learned from your time living in the forest was that the habitants of the dangerous woods were very smart. Your stomach dropped further into the floor when the eyes were gone. “It’s gone…” Renjun jumped up and you both went dead silent. You could feel your hands shaking unwillingly as Renjun held a hand out to the fire, turning it from a flickering flame to a dull ember that didn’t give off as much light.

“I’m scared.” You whispered as rustling noises came from outside the wooden walls of the cabin. You gulped, tears filling your eyes as Renjun pulled you to your feet. He wrapped an arm around your protectively, but you knew he was only doing it to comfort you. The rustling circled around the house before coming to a dead stop, the silence eerily haunting you and all you could hear was your own heartbeat thudding inside of your chest. No more noise was heard from outside so Renjun placed his wand on the table once more, going over to the window and drawing the curtain shut.

“It’s gone, probably just a curios wolf. It happens every now and then.” He went back to you and cupped your face in his hands. “Nothing will hurt you as long as I’m still breathing okay?” You opened your mouth to reply, but as you did, the door to the cabin caved in with an ear-splitting noise of the wood splinting and crashing to the floor. You screamed, Renjun pushing you behind him as he made to grab for his wand. In front of you, where the door had once been, was a wolf bigger than any you had seen before. Its fur was as black as a starless night sky. The same amber eyes staring at you as what had been before through the glass of the window. The wolf stared straight at Renjun, not even glancing at you as it bared its teeth. But it made no move to attack either of you. Renjun had his wand raised, staring at the wolf almost as if the two of them were challenging each other. It couldn’t even fit through the doorframe, only its head poking in through the gap where the door once was. You wondered why Renjun hadn’t done anything to get rid of the wolf, not even saying anything as a warning to it. The wolf backed off and disappeared out of sight, leaving you confused and without answers. “Stay here.” Renjun’s voice was stern as he addressed you, his legs moving fast as he rushed through the exit of the cabin.

“Don’t go out there!” You squeaked, not listening to him as you followed him quickly. When your body hit the cool night air you looked at Renjun who was froze on the spot. In front of him was a naked young man, who had hair that matched the wolfs fur, with amber eyes to match. You gulped, not saying anything as you stayed back and watched the two men stare at each other.

“Jeno…” Renjun finally spoke, his voice coming out raspy as his throat had dried up in shock at seeing his brother in front of him.

“Took you long enough to recognise me, considering it was you who did this to me.” The boy growled back, baring his teeth at Renjun like a wolf would. You couldn’t quite believe what was happening in front of you. Renjun had finally been found by his brother and was being confronted about what he did.

“Jeno it was an accident.” Renjun sighed out, running a hand through his hair in frustration.

“I don’t give a fuck if it was an accident! You ruined my life, and then ran off before I could even find out why the fuck you did this to me!!” He sounded mad, his voice coming out like a growl. He stretched his neck out and took in a deep breath like he was trying to control himself.

“I had to run away; your father would have killed me for what I did to you.”

“Good. I want answers, then I’ll decided whether I let you live or whether I rip your throat out.” Your face crinkled up as he said that, tears falling from your eyes as you realised the severity of the situation. Jeno flicked his gaze to you, and then he looked back at Renjun. “You don’t deserve any happiness.” Renjun sighed, dropping his wand to the floor and slowly approaching Jeno.

“Fine.” He took a deep breath and his shoulders tensed as he starting to explain to Jeno. “Your father killed my mother, and I wanted revenge. I was on my way to get my revenge when you got in my way. I told you to move and you didn’t. I couldn’t help the dark magic that came out of me Jeno. I never wanted to do this to you Jeno…you know how close we were, and I am sorry.” Jeno narrowed his eyes as he listened, his eyes widening once when Renjun blamed Jeno’s father for his mother’s death. He screwed his eyes shut and let out a yell in frustration.

“It makes no fucking sense Renjun!!! Why would my father just randomly kill your mother?!”

“Jeno…you don’t know do you?” Renjun’s voice suddenly sounded very soft, almost like he was on the verge of tears.

“Know what?” Jeno gulped as he waited for Renjun to speak. Renjun took a deep breath and spoke clearly.

“I’m your brother…”

(A/N: Hi! I hope you liked this instalment to the Charia Kingdom series, if you liked it, please reblog it and give me some feedback if you want me to continue on with the series. thank you!)

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Dig Your Own Grave | Prologue

Kim Taehyung x OC

Genre: SerialKiller!AU| Horror| Thriller| Dark Romance| Smut| Angst|

Warning/TW: Violence, mention of blood and knives, swearing.

Word Count: 1.7K

Full time grave digger, part time serial killer. Kim Taehyung has spent most of his life trying to cleanse the earth of all the wicked and evil people, and in that process he has become a shut in. Loneliness wasn't something he minded, that is until he met Hana Kang. Just a girl looking for the person that killed her father, Hana never expected the help of a grave digger.

-

“God, please! I beg of you. It was a mistake, I never meant to hurt anyone!”

Taehyung sat in the corner of the room, twirling his hunting knife between his index finger and thigh, a trickle of his blood traveled down the blade. Pain was futile to Tae, he believed that only the weak and spineless needed pain, he said it was a landfill emotion and served him no purpose, so one day he decided that he’d no longer acknowledge it.

“Come on, man!” The man pleaded once again, tears streaming down in a uniform line, making a path of skin in the wake of blood that had started to stain his skin.

The pain in the mans voice was vexing, the closest thing to hurt that Tae felt was discomfort, and nothing made him more uncomfortable than an inept man. He sighed, pushing himself from the corner, the single light fixture swaying in the middle of the room only made Tae more terrifying than he looked in the dark. How could such a beautiful face be so grim.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Tae suggested, kneeling in front of the broken man, “I’ll give five minutes to pray to God, or whoever you choose, ask them to set you free, and if you get out of your restrains, I’ll let you go. How does that sound?”

The man’s eyes grew ten times their normal size, was this the beacon of hope he’d been asking for? Could he actually make it out alive? There was a fire in him and he swore that he’d live to see the next day. However, Tae had other plans. He wasn’t going to go back on his word, if he was anything, it was a man of his word, but he knew his victim wouldn’t be able to get a singular strap off.

“Yes!” It wasn’t just an answer but it was a deceleration of strength. If he’d made it this far in life, he could surely come out of this alive, and live to tell the tale.

Tae grinned a joyless grin. Pleased that he’d finally got him to stop, and maybe just maybe, he’d found someone who would test his own skills and talent. It had been far too long since he had to actually try, and now he may be able to dust off some of his favorite techniques. He gently patted the mans leg, and stood without another glance, setting his watch for exactly five minutes.

“Now?!” His victim questioned, he was expecting at least a ‘go’ but then again, what do you expect with a serial killer?

Tae closed the door behind him, the metal lock latching to the wall. He didn’t bother to hang around, he’d give him the time he promised, but Tae was a full time grave keeper, before he was a part time killer. Tae sheathed the knife in the waistband of his pants, the tip of the blade making a small tear in the material.

“God damn it, these were my favorite pants,” he grumbled, at least now he wouldn’t have to be so damn neat since he was going to throw them out anyways.

He made his way up the steps towards the staff kitchen, the room was almost as scary as the basement. The dingy, once white paint was chipping off the walls, counter tops had to be from when this place first opened, at least thirty years ago, and the clock was permanently stuck on 11:32. His one and only employee always tried to change the time, but Tae shut it down. He was a particular guy, and he liked consistency, even if that meant that the time was consistently wrong.

His stomach gurgled, reminding Tae that he hadn’t eaten all day, an unfortunate side effect of giving all your spare time to the grim reaper. He ran his fingers through his hair, completely forgetting that his hand had been painted with blood from his own finger, reaching for an apple sitting on the pathetic excuse of a table. He was rather impressed that it was still standing, possibly on its last leg. He chuckled at his own pun, removing the knife from his pants, pressing the blade into the rind of the apple. The juice dribbled down, little drops hitting his shoes. He didn’t bother to throw away his trash, just leaving the peel on the table. His employee, Sam, would clean it up when she came in for her shift in a few hours. He sliced the apple with nothing but his knife and the pad of thumb, plopping the pieces of a sweet fruit into his mouth.

He had barely finished half the apple when his watch went off, a glint of excitement twinkled in his eyes. Tae didn’t experience emotions like the normal person, he only allowed himself to feel when he found it wasn’t a distraction. Every once and a while an emotion would bubble up on it’s own and he’d do everything in his power to suppress it. He found that nothing good came from giving to human nature, so he simply didn’t.

The steps gave no sound as he walked back down, eerily like a lion scouting it’s prey. Most people were afraid of what goes bump in the night, but there was nothing scarier than hearing nothing at all. He tapped the steel of his blade against the door, he could hear the man cry out in agony. He knew this wasn’t a cry of physical pain, this was a cry of defeat. He now knew that his time was up, and he’d have to meet his maker. Somewhere deep inside of him, he knew that his demise wouldn’t be peaceful, it would end in way that mimicked the torture he did to others.

Tae stepped in, leaning against the door frame. He gazed at the utter disgrace of a man. How disappointing, he was just like every fuckhead who found themselves in these restraints. Tae made his way over to the shelves that sat behind the chair of death, it was his ‘utility’ shelf.

“You know what I hate the most about this?” He asked, grabbing the tarp that was folded methodically, the dust around it only showed that it was never placed in any other place, in any other position.

“People like you spend your lives torturing and hurting other people. You make yourself feel better by belittling others, you get off on asserting your dominance over people who can’t fight you anyways,” he begins to lay the tarp down, placing rocks on each corner so the corners wouldn’t lift and cause him to trip, he’d only make that mistake once.

“And then when it comes down to really showing what you can do, to show off how strong and macho you are, you choke. You’re not powerful, you never were. I am happy to be the one to tell you this, I want to remind you that you are human and you are not indestructible,” he stops in the middle of the room, directly under the light that had finally stopped its dance.

“And you think this makes you indestructible?” The deplorable man spat, furious.

Tae cocked his head to the right, a smile stretching mischievously across his face. Of course this didn’t make him indestructible, but it made him infamous. He’d leave behind a better world when he was gone, and what would this scumbag leave behind? Just pain and misery.

“Absolutely not, and it gives me nothing but pure joy to think that one day I’ll meet you again in hell, and get to haunt and torture you for eternity,” he reached over to rack of what looked like butchers aprons.

It was time, and Tae was tired of talking. He reached back and made a sloppy farmers loop on the back of the neck with the apron strings, and the same with his back.

“God, I am so sorry for all the pain I’ve caused, mom and dad, I’m sorry for never being the son you wanted, and to my wife, I am so sorry that I wasn’t the husband you needed. I should’ve been a better man, I could’ve been. Please forgive me,” He weeped for all the people he loved.

He didn’t even realize that Tae had made his way behind him, the only thing he could think of was his life, and how much he had to do, how much of life he wanted to live. He was sitting in his pity like a sick animal sits in their own feces. Tae had woven his fingers in the mans hair, gripping roughly and with a sharp yank the mans head fell back, exposing his neck.

“There are plenty of bad people in this world, who do things worse than you, but do you want to know why you?” Tae asked, leaning down, his lips dangerously close to touching the mans ear.

Silence, not so much as a nod or a hiccup from over crying. He had accepted his fate, and he didn’t care to know why him, all he knew was it was him. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable end.

“Because when you asked for forgiveness, you didn’t ask it from the one person you destroyed.”

That was it. The reason, the end all be all of this life. His eyes flew open, as the realization hit him. Could he have saved himself if he wasn’t so selfish? Could he have undone all the bad he’d inflicted if he would have just apologized and meant it? He was about to speak, to beg for her forgiveness, but just as soon as he gasped, the knife broke his skin just like peeling an apple.

[toku-explained]

The 2 in 1 Eagle Pair

Trigger: Computer systems across Sorafune are infected by viruses, courtesy of Powered Dada. Like wow, that's a deep cut. Haruki and Kengo talk more as Akito uses the rescued Medals to create Z Hyper Keys of his other forms. With the virus cutting off computer systems at other TPU branches, GUTS-Select goes on high alert. An attempt to use old equipment allows them to pick up automated HQ broadcasts authorising autonomous operations. The Nursedessei has it's systems compromised. It's all hands on deck switching to manual, but Dada is managing to auto fire the Nurse Cannon and Nanase has to run a counter virus program, even Ignis is helping, as Kengo and Haruki manage to disconnect the Nurse Cannon's power right before a second shot fires. Dada instead takes control of King Joe to target Nursedessei, forcing Trigger Multi-type and Z Alpha Edge to fight it, after it uses all its forms they switch to using Power-type and Beta Smash. As Nanase gets control of the system back Dada avatars start appearing to attack the crew, when one attacks Akito, Yuzare takes over and destroys it, but then Yuna collapses. Dada appears to fight with King Joe, and Multi-type and Gamma Future hold it off until it tries fusing with King Joe, getting destroyed last second by Nurse Cannon. They switch to Sky-type and Delta Rise Claw, destroying King Joe but Haruki promising they'll repair him. Later Kengo thanks Haruki for his help, again stating how he's come to recognise Akito's help even if the man himself denies it. Akito gives permission to keep the Sparklencs, and so with Beliarok opening a dimensional tunnel, Z places King Joe's parts in a Travel Sphere and flies off, Akito agrees to grab ramen with Kengo. Akito returns to the lab to find Yuna, who can just remember Yuzare's action this time, and begs Akito to explain.

Galaxy Rescue Force: Sora is surprised by the appearance of Justice, bringing a message from Delacion to Queen Izana, who is unfortunately back on Kanon at the moment. Justice opts to wait, leaving Sora feeling awkward until Ribut arrives, impressed to hear Justice is associated with the Universal Justice. When Ribut thanks Justice for their help with Leugocyte Justice explains that Delacions wants to cooperate with the Land of Light and Galaxy Rescue Force in opposing Tartarus. They continue waiting, Ribut also feeling awkward, eventually running away to patrol, Justice eventually deciding to return the next day.

Revice: Wakabayashi demotes Kadota after both failing to defend the ViStamp lab and his failure with the Revice system, and requests Daiji persuade Ikki to fight for them. A caddie, Ibata, is fired by his boss, Araki, who has become irritated after his recent performance, Olteca appears to offer Ibata a ViStamp. Ibata summons tge Kamakiri Deadman. Ikkirefuses the contract, but when news of the Deadman attack appears still takes the belt, accidentally discovering Vice can possess his bike if it's stamped. They arrive and fight, until Vice tries to go eating again, Daiji passes Ikki the Eagle ViStamp, which turns them into the W themed Eagle Genome. Revi starts attacking Vice, who accidentally triggers their combined Eagle form to finish the Deadman, Vice then targets Araki until the transformation is cancelled. Ikki's family encourage him to help Fenix. Araki approaches the Deadmans, and the next day, when Ibara approaches to apologise, summons the Megalodon Deadman. When Vice mentions he told Araki unleashing your Akuma feels good Ikki transforms again to fight him until Daiji arrives to inform him of the Deadman, at which point he gives up the gear. Ikki and Daiji arrive at the golf course, where Fenix are already battling Giff Junior's, Ikki rushing in. He refuses tonuse the belt, since Vice will attack people again, but keeps fighting, until Vice swears to not attack humans anymore, making a contract to do as Ikki says, and Ikki now transforms again. Vice becomes envious of Ikki's Sealing Buster and borrows Daiji's Gunderphone. Ibata grabs Araki when he tries to power up his Deadman, wanting to put things right, and they combine into Rex form to finish the Deadman. Araki and Ibata make up,

Zenkaiger: No one has had any luck finding Mitsuko. Gaon offhandedly suggests she's escaped to some other world, and when Zox comes wanting an explanation for what happened in the last fight, Kaito asks for his help. Ijirude has no idea how Mitsuko escaped, Stacey confirming he'd put her in storage, and the Parallel World Gate was disrupted as she escaped thanks to Kudakk attack, so they don't know where she went, Stacey isn't sure this should have taken him away from the battle. Kaito, Zyuran and Magine join tge World Purates in travelling, with 20 or so worlds they can try, while Magine tries to divine where she is, Flint takes them to Kashiwa Mochitopia, where they meet the local version of Su-san, not having Kashiwa Mochi on your head there is comparable to public indecency. They try Retrotopia, where Su-san can't comprehend the Kikainoids. Kouritopia's Su-san has far less trouble with them, but hasn't seen Mitsuko, but Kaito is happy to see the freed worlds are at peace. Stacey and the Kudakks arrive, revealing Kudaiters gave been sent to other worlds for Mitsuko, as Gaon and Vroon, looking on earth, find. Kaito wants to split up to protect worlds, but Zox says they have to prioritise Mitsuko since the Tojitendo will just rampage until they find her. Su-san on Kinokotopia tries to have them stop attacking the mushrooms, as the Zenkaigers fight Flint declares she found Mitsuko, and Ijirude calls all forces there. When there the team shows they have Mitsuko, and fight. As things progress Stacey captures Mitsuko, but Kaito gets her back. Super Zenkaiser and Super Twokaiser destroy tge enemy forces, then they escape on CrocoDaiOh, Stacey essentially let's them go for Yatsude's sake, but is ordered by Ijirude to summon Black ZyuraGaon, which drags them back to Kouritopia, Zenkaijuoh facing the mecha and defeating it. They return home, and only now have Magine remove her disguise as Magine, since the Tojirendo won't go through other worlds if they think Mitsuko is home, just continue focusing on earth.

Yodonna 2: We start right where we left off, Mizuki distraught over the detective's betrayal, which Yodonna is able to understand due to her own betrayal by Yodon. The realisation that she has experienced sadness causes Yodonna to freeze. In Yodon hell, Hörn and Mose are in a meltdown over Yodonna's escape, Mose impulsively sends himself to earth after her. Yanako visits the Kuchinawa leader, whose eating whil watching his men give Shousuke a beating, Yanako wants to kill Mizuki. Mizuki retrieves the phone while bemoaning Yodonna's current state, but resolves not to burden Juru with her problems. She also finds herself feeling sluggish, unknown to her being due to the soul transfer. Mizuki arrives at the warehouse, where Enoshima is waiting with gang members, claiming his becoming corrupt was only natural. The regular lead goon grabs the phone, while Mizuki talks about how much Shousuke believed in him. The phone wiped, Enoshima reveals Shousuke isn't there, and they can't have her going around with what she knows. Yodonna takes control right as the fight begins, she's now experiencing anger on Mizuki's behalf. She starts fighting the goons, the boss watching via camera surprised by her skill and saying as much to Yanako. When shooting starts she uses a guy as a shield, and uses his gun to kill the goons. After admonishing Mizuki to exercise properly, she beats down the lead goon again. Enoshima puts a gun to her head, she steals it and shoots him in the knee. Mizuki changes back, happy thanks to Yodonna's help, she's really struggling to stay standing now, and Yodonna realises why. Mose approaches her, kills Enoshima for interrupting, then isn't sure what to do with Yodonna given the soul transfer. He intends to cut the hose, but then Yodonna will, disappear and there'll still be trouble for him with Hörn, better to let her steal Mizuki's life and then take her back. The revelation of what Yodonna was doing leads Mizuki to hate her too. At this point Yanako arrives and knocks Mizuki out. Mizuki wakes in the Kuchinawa offices, where Mose is waiting alongside Yanako and the leader, Kujirasaki. Mose has told them everything, and they seem content to wait out her death and let him have Yodonna after. Kujirasaki finds the whole situation amusing, and has Shousuke brought out so he can watch his sister die. As the process nears completion, Yodonna becomes visible and Mizuki starts fading. Yodonna explains the emotions she has learnt from Mizuki, and that she's realised she's just done to Mizuki what Yodon did to her. And so she pulls the tube out and destroys it. She's going to use the physical form she has until she fades to save Mizuki and Shousuke. She beats Yanako quickly. Goons drag Shousuke away, Mose in a panic uses Yodonna's whip to power up Kujirasaki. And then just goes back to Yodon Hell. Yodonna fights Kujirasaki, telling Mizuki to get Shousuke. As Yodonna and Kujirasaki are fairly evenly matched, Mizuki manages to disrupt the goons enough to free Shousuke. As Kujirasaki prepares an energy blast, Yodonna, knowing she's dead either way, swears to keep Misaki alive, and turns her whip into a scythe to block the blast. A final struggle fells Kujirasaki, and Shousuke declares him under arrest. Yodonna is glad to have won in time and collapses. Seeing Mizuki is alive she finds she's crying, Mizuki explaining she's feeling joy, right before Yodonna starts vanishing. Mizuki forgives her, and Yodonna fades gladly. Juru and Tametomo are still waiting for Mizuki, who finally gets back after Juru reminds Tame of his brief crush on Yodonna. Yodonna awakens back in Yodon hell, Hörn telling her that is she'd let him finish he was going to explain that if she could understand the 4 basic emotions he'd let her revive. He's already punishing Mose for running off after her. After reminiscing she asks if she can revive, but after her running off he's not going to allow it anymore. Unless she learns one more emotion, Love. She wonders who might teach her that...Tametomo perhaps?

[boomcomplains]

It's typical. A loud noise sends a character back into a hostage situation, a war, or a gunfight. When faced with the majority of reporting on PTSD centers around combat-related PTSD (source), it makes sense that it's the shellshocked veteran we often see in books, TV, film and comics.  However, the civilian population that experiences PTSD is 13 times larger than its military counterpart. Of course, there are more civilians than those in the military, so naturally, that population is bigger. This article is not meant to dismiss those in the military who deal with very real and terrible side-effects from their time serving.

However, it does beg the question, what does a character with PTSD look like when their trauma is outside combat?

I think a very good study of this sort of character is Dr. Nicholas Rush from Stargate: Universe. There are many other characters out there that I could use, but I'm in a SGU mood today, so I hope you'll forgive me.

At the beginning of the show, Dr. Nicholas Rush is a difficult man. Unable to deal with his wife's terminal cancer, he drowns himself in work so he can avoid the pain of losing her. When she dies while he is off-world, this complicated grief drives him to focus on the mission of the ninth chevron because he has to make his absence from her deathbed mean something. After all, if he didn't succeed, he would not have an excuse. Without the excuse, he would confront the nasty truth that he didn't support his wife in her dying days because he couldn't handle the grief.

The ninth chevron leads him to the Destiny, a ship far beyond the reaches humanity could ever dream to go, with a singular but ultimately mysterious mission. His doggedness to stay on the ship, and follow the mission is likely a reaction to his own inability to come to terms with the trauma of losing his wife.

Because of this, he approaches situations from an ultra-logical world that doesn't exactly coincide with the emotional gray side of the human experience. That's why when he felt that Colonel Young was repeatedly putting lives and the mysterious mission of Destiny in danger, he decided to... frame him for murder... and when that didn't work, stage a coup.

I promise, within the confines of the show, those were actually both very rational decisions.

The coup was the last straw for Colonel Young, so he abandons Rush to die on a desert planet that has no stargate and therefore no possibility for escape. So, metaphorically, Young essentially commits the murder that Rush tried to frame him for.

It is there, on a sandy planet without food or water, that the narrative of Nicholas Rush's PTSD starts.

While attempting to escape, Rush alerts an alien race called the Nakai to his presence as tries to fix a crashed alien spaceship. For the Nakai, it's a lucky find because they are hell-bent on boarding Destiny. Why do they want to get on Destiny? I don't know. They're aliens. Sometimes you don't get to know the why when it comes to aliens.

On their ship, Rush is tortured and imprisoned in a water tank (this is important later). So for the PTSD counter, we have both abandonment and abuse to contend with. His feelings about Young essentially murdering him for doing what he thought was right for the ship are compounded with being mentally torn apart by the Nakai.

Flash forward, Rush is accidentally rescued from the Nakai's clutches due to a lot of plot points I'm not going to go into. Frankly, it's very likely most of you haven't seen the series—or have forgotten more about it than you remember—and the last thing I want to do is turn this article into a Stargate: Universe season recap.

So, back on the ship, Rush isn't sleeping, which you find out after he commiserates with fellow torture victim Chloe. It's assumed that it is for the same reasons as Chloe, which are vivid nightmares. For those of you keeping track, that is a classic sign of PTSD. The subsequent not sleeping because you're afraid of having more nightmares is also a very strong indicator.

Unfortunately, insomnia leads to emotional decision-making, usually based on your experiences in that trauma. But let's put a pin in that for just a moment, and we'll fast forward to a later episode entitled "Pain."

In "Pain", the crew accidentally bring a tick onboard that causes vivid hallucinations, some of which are paranoid delusions. For everyone who experiences this, there is little rhyme or reason why the hallucination starts, and they go with it unquestioningly.

Rush, however, is different. His hallucinations are all triggered. When under the influence of the tick, Sergeant Greer (a proponent for Young's leadership) threatens Rush. Because of this, Rush experiences flashbacks to the Nakai ship and sees everyone as a potential Nakai threat. Paranoid ideation is a symptom of PTSD. When I say "paranoid" though, I fear that this may be read dismissively. PTSD, in many ways, is a survival mechanism. It's a set of prefab reactions because you have already experienced something similar. Essentially, it's not paranoid ideation to you, because it's happened before.

It is unclear if Rush himself was affected by the alien organism, but it seems very likely that his reaction was hinged on the perceived/very real threat to his survival. The fact that it has been established that he has not been sleeping for episodes now, and his hallucinations are of past experiences—such as the room flooding with water, or seeing other members of the crew as Nakai —it seems more than likely that Rush's experiences in this episode are PTSD-related and not due to the tick.

This, however, is not our only brush with PTSD. Let's move forward to the next season, where he finds the bridge of Destiny and hides that discovery from the rest of the crew.

One of the cool things about Stargate: Universe in the first season is that they never find the bridge of the ship. They don't even know there is one because Destiny is so massive and broken, they haven't found it yet... or perhaps the Ancients were so culturally different at the time they didn't design the ship with a bridge in mind. Even if they did, there would be a fair chance the crew would have no idea how to use it.

So, Rush—who is established to still not be sleeping after an incursion with the Lucian Alliance—finds the bridge of the Destiny. Until now, he and the Science Team had been interfacing with the ship in what I think is probably a janitor's closet, so this is an incredibly important find because it is vital for the survival of the ship and the crew. Naturally, that means Rush should want to share it, knowing what we know of him from before he was abandoned on the planet and then tortured by the Nakai. Before, it was the greater good. Now, it's survival is first and foremost.

But no. Rush, instead, reasons that Young cannot be trusted with this find, and starts to lead a double life of surreptitiously guiding the ship (to disastrous results) and pretending like he's still doing things from the Control Interface Room/Janitor's closet.

But what led him to do this? After all, keeping this find under wraps leads to dire situations that compromise the survival of the crew, and indeed causes the death of one member. It is not a rational decision.

Except that it is. If there is one thing I want to make very plainly clear in this article, PTSD-sufferers reactions are rational, even if they don't seem that way to an outsider. I think oftentimes we nitpick plots in fiction because characters make decisions that seem illogical to us. Sometimes this is deserved because an author did not sufficiently help us empathize with a character, other times I think it is because we don't understand what it means to have PTSD.

You don't have to be triggered to have PTSD affect your decision-making process. You see, unmanaged, PTSD gets you stuck in survival mode. It's an undertow that drags you down with things that were true but aren't necessarily true now.

So in Rush's sleep-deprived, and exhausted state-of-my-mind, he reverts back to Young being the threat despite all the work they had done to repair the relationship. While some may be frustrated with this backstep, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that about his character. It explains the rationale for doing something irrational, and makes his character so much deeper.

The beauty of Stargate Universe is that it shows PTSD as it is. Even better, no one is excusing Rush's actions because of it, and/or invalidating his experience. It simply is.

PTSD is so misunderstood, it deserves logical, rational representation, and it gets that with logical, rational Dr. Rush. I mean, let's face it, there is logic to what goes on in a PTSD-sufferers brain, but it's logic from a different time period. Dismissing it as irrational is insulting, and I love that Stargate: Universe never does that, and I think it is exactly why Rush is such a deep and meaningful character.

In the end, I think there is a lesson writers can draw from this: don't be afraid to explore this within some of your characters. Understand their viewpoint, and what drives them to make their choices. If you do that, you will never have a boring story.