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avengerofiron · 5 years ago

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the people who built me || danny & tony

summary: tony has a choice to make when he encounters iron fist during an enforcer patrol. he chooses family. (solo incoming when lola gets time about The Consequences TM - sorry tony)

when: a few days before the siege

word count: 10,094 (we thought we were brief. we were not.)

trigger warnings: torture mention, abuse mention, death mentions

featuring: danny rand

TONY: Everyone made mistakes. It was a fundamental part of life — a fundamental part of science — to do something once, find out where you went wrong, and improve on it for the next situation that came your way. That innovation was what Tony lived for, what he breathed every single day in Stark Industries or as he acted as Iron Man. It was innovation that other people boasted about, too, until the point where mistakes became too much for them to simply brush off, when mistakes were too large to sweep under the rug, that’s when things got dicey.

Tony Stark had a habit of making things dicey.

The Sentinels weren’t his doing, though. For once, he wasn’t the guy in the room to create the targeting system, or the artificial intelligence, or even the giant, maniacal robots designed for one purpose and one purpose alone. These robots were created by men before Tony was even born, years before most kids would remember their first appearance on the scene just after the events went down in Cuba.

Their design needed a little work. Tony could say that with certainty. Their morality needed a complete overhaul, and if Tony could see that, if he could spot it a mile off with no hesitation, he didn’t see how they were going to spin it to make the public agree — but they did. They did, even if Ross stepped into every meeting with a face that looked like he’d been chewing on a wasp because his ass had been well and truly handed to him by the World Security Council. . Security. Sometimes it came at the cost of what really mattered in life. Sometimes, in the process of making a better world, you destroyed the old one that was perfect in its own unique way. Sometimes, people needed a little bad to make the good worth it.

Tony was still learning that. Of course, it was a little hard to learn with Ross breathing down his neck, the warning lingering on the horizon of every decision he made or didn’t make in the field.

He couldn’t afford to mess up. He couldn’t afford to make a dicey mistake, couldn’t afford to pull a Tony Stark.

Inevitably, that was exactly what would happen.

The Sentinels tracking system picked up an anomaly that wasn’t significant enough to investigate, but enough to suggest that something not entirely above board was going down in Hell’s Kitchen. Someone had latent powers they were aware not to use was one of the suggestions thrown around the meeting room. Others said it could be a fault with the system. Either way it needed checking out, and enforcement agents had been put on clean up duty while the robots handled the real, perceptible threats that they didn’t need to negotiate with. . Not just enforcement agents — Tony, specifically. Iron Man, glorified janitor, delegated to the bottom of the pile for the past month because he dared not to disclose some minorly crucial facts to his employers.

Bastards.

“You’ve reached the point of the fluctuation, boss,” FRIDAY informed him through the helmet’s sound system. “So far I’m picking up a single heat signature other than your own.”

“Tell me it isn’t burning up,” Tony replied. “I’ve had enough of fire people for one lifetime.”

“I wasn’t with you during that one, boss. Must’ve been the other computer.”

“Must’ve been.”

“The temperature signal appears human. They’re moving slowly — no adrenaline spike as of yet. I would suggest landing before things get nasty.”

“When have you ever known my missions to get nasty?” Tony asked. FRIDAY remained conspicuously silent, but her presence was noted. Tony could almost imagine her rolling her eyes. “Alright, darling. Let’s get this show on the road.” . He landed on the pavement in the alleyway, hand up and palm glowing. “Hi there,” he announced, voice robotic but not nearly as warped as he would like it to be. (Doing things you fundamentally disagreed with was easier when you were wearing a mask, he had found — Iron Man had always been more of his true self than Tony Stark, billionaire playboy.) “I’m Iron Man, you’re in breach of the Sokovia Accords, and we’re going to need to have a little chat. If you don’t mind, come easily and this’ll all be—”

The figure turned. The way he moved was as familiar as someone stepping around Tony’s kitchen counter, or pulling Tali over on the couch onto his knee, or messing around with Colleen in the gym, clearly holding back while Tony was watching because Tony didn’t know, couldn’t know, the truth.

The truth that was staring him in the face now.

He was wearing a mask, of course. Even Danny wasn’t trusting enough to know that running around with his own face in New York City in the current climate would result in anything but trouble. Tony still knew him, though. He knew him when he was a kid, chasing after him at galas. He knew him as a man, talking about a plane falling from the sky and snow surrounding him. He knew him as a cousin, broaching a subject, a word, Tony had always dodged, backing off the second Tony didn’t bite.

(Sometimes he wondered what would’ve happened if he did. If he gave Danny the truth in that moment, if he opened himself up, if he admitted something to both of them that he’d been carrying since he was fifteen years old. Sometimes he wondered, but not tonight. He was a little preoccupied.)

The man in the mask, the man on the Sentinels’ system, the man on FRIDAY’s tracker, the man he was sent to arrest …

It was Danny Rand.

DANNY: Over the last few years, Danny had had a few very close calls in his life of vigilantism. He’d been stabbed (multiple times now), shot (though only by Harold), kidnapped (also multiple times, which was worrying), maimed… The list went on and on. He had plenty of personal experiences to tell him just how dangerous this life was, plenty of scars and near-death moments to inform him just what he was risking every time he pulled that bandanna over his face.

He’d only recently come to consider the law to be one of those potential consequences.

Danny had never been arrested before. He’d certainly come close a few times in his early days back in the city, when his heart beat too quickly in his chest and he swung his fists at anyone who looked at him too closely, but he’d never seen the backseat of a patrol car. Thanks to Harold’s meddling, he’d even found himself on a federal watchlist for a moment or so, but Jeri took care of it before it could lead anywhere substantial. The closest Danny had come to prison was his forced stay in Birch, an experience he desperately wanted to avoid repeating.

If he were smart, he supposed, he might have scaled back the vigilantism to prevent an arrest. It was what Ward had advised him to do, on more than one occasion. Money can do a lot of things, Danny, he’d warned, but this isn’t one of them. If they catch you, they will send you to the Raft. Not some nice prison for tax evaders, the fucking Raft. And he was right. Danny knew he was right, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hang up his worn hoodie and yellow bandana. Every time he tried, Ward’s voice was drowned out by a thousand others.

Protect my city. Matt, who hadn’t died for him but almost did, who’d trusted him to save a city he hadn’t even managed to stay in.

Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande, who had been cruel and ruthless and right. . You should never have borne the Fist. Davos, angry and bitter and hitting the nail on the head every time. Danny had power, and he didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t earned it. Not really, not in the ways that counted. If he did nothing with it, if he failed New York the way he’d failed K’un Lun, what was the point of him? What did any of the sacrifices made to get him where he was mean?

So he didn’t stop. He kept fighting, kept roaming the streets with his Fist glowing as if there weren’t robots out to drag him in and enforcers less understanding than Colleen looking for a high profile collar. Because he needed to make amends. (Because he didn’t know how to stop.)

Tonight had been quiet. He hadn’t seen any sentinels, hadn’t run into any enforcers. He’d barely even seen any crime, only taking out one mugger by well into the morning hours. He probably should have been glad for it, but his skin itched and his chest was tight and he wanted to hit something. When he heard a quiet tang of something unmistakably metallic landing behind him, he was almost relieved. Finally, finally, a chance to let out some of that pent up rage on something he didn’t have to feel guilty for breaking.

But then he turned around, and the world tilted on its axis.

Everyone knew who wore the Iron Man suit, but even if he hadn’t there was no mistaking Tony’s voice beneath the modulated tones. Danny had been following Tony Stark around since he was a little kid, been clinging to his pant legs since he could walk. The fifteen-year gap in their relationship amounted to surprisingly little when he crashed on Tony’s couch as often as he did as an adult. Tony was there in good moments and bad, there on Christmas and in hospital rooms, at family dinners and in the moments when he couldn’t scrape himself off the floor. Tony had been there for all of that, and now, he was here for this.

And Danny froze. . Tony was frozen too, and though Danny couldn’t see his face, he had a feeling the wide-eyed expression beneath Iron Man’s mask was a pretty close match to the one he wore on his own face right now. Uncertainly, Danny shifted. Half of him wanted to walk towards Tony while the other half screamed at him to move away. He didn’t know which half was right. Maybe neither of them was.

“Hi,” he said experimentally, as if checking to see if his voice still worked. “I don’t… Uh, I can’t go to jail.” He bit his lip, barely stopped himself from adding, ’Please, Tony,’ because if Tony didn’t know who he was now, there would be no hiding it after something like that.

TONY: At least Batman roamed the rooftops of Gotham with a voice modulator. At least Daredevil pulled off that dark, mysterious, brooding, silent vigilante type. At least for the few weeks Tony himself managed to keep an alter ego on the down low, he wore a mask that covered the entirety of his face, his whole squishy human body, and his multitude of self worth issues all in one handy package. Danny was out here in a hoodie that wouldn’t have been out of place in Rhodey’s grungy backpack in MIT and a bandana that was riding up on his entirely too familiar nose, his voice breaking through in a weak attempt at a different pitch that Tony could see through in an instant, because he wasn’t a moron.

He was a genius, a fact that he often lamented over, and a genius who loved Danny Rand, at that.

Christ, it was looking at his own heart staring back at him, wide eyed and about to bolt, feet two seconds away from running down the alleyway and never looking back. Tony could catch him, of course. The suit could catch a rocket, if it wanted — but the question was whether he wanted to. The question was whether he wanted to see for himself, up close and personal, what Danny learned in the years he was gone, what knowledge he shared with Colleen that made the woman utterly terrifying. The question was whether Tony was willing to put someone else he loved in cuffs while the man he’d asked to marry him remained on the run, being fed intelligence from Stark systems, being told that if it came down to it, Tony would make the hard choice because it was the right one. . Making the right choice always seemed so difficult. Tony told himself that he needed compasses, like Steve or Sharon or Jarvis, Yinsen or Rhodes or Rumiko (not all of them were good compasses, but that was beside the fact), in order to make them. He told himself that he didn’t know the difference between wrong and right, because when he looked back at his extensive list of personal defects and lifelong tendency towards making mistakes, he figured that was proof of some void in his chest that other people had filled, something his parents failed to cultivate or he burned away with liquor.

But he knew, now. He knew it as much as he knew when Steve looked at him he’d burn down the world to put things right. He knew when he looked at Danny, he could never put cuffs around his wrist. he could never let anyone touch a hair on the kid’s goddamn head, and he wasn’t a kid anymore, Tony knew that, but he was. He always would be.

Tony lost him once before. He wasn’t losing him again, not by choice, not like this.

Of course, of all the words Tony could have chosen to put that sentiment into the universe, he went with something completely …

Well, completely Tony.

“Yeah,” he said, helmet retracting quickly. “No shit you can’t go to jail.”

“Boss,” FRIDAY interjected, “perhaps we should shut off the Panel communication servers-”

Tony clicked one of the panels on the suit’s arm, and FRIDAY faded into nothingness — along with Ross’ feed to this conversation. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tony demanded, taking a step forward. “Do you just think you can go around the city in … in not even spandex. You’re in less than spandex. You look like you raided a Goodwill and then they kicked you out because you were making the babies cry. I … I do everything I can to try and stop you from getting into shit, Da— Iron Fist, and you and all the, uh … the other ones, you all keep doing this!”

DANNY: Surprisingly, this wasn’t actually a situation Danny had been in before. When he first returned from K’un Lun, he had seen no reason to lie to people about where he had been and what had been done to him. He told the Meachums everything, didn’t understand why they didn’t believe him immediately because it was real. He knew it was real, had the scars and the nightmares to prove it. He told Colleen who, while more receptive, still spent the first few hours of their acquaintanceship looking at him like a bomb about to go off. He told the doctors at Birch, positive that they would understand what he was saying and let him go, so sure that it would reinforce his sanity. He told anyone who would listen about the Fist, and everyone looked at him like something inside of him was broken. Like it was some wild story invented by a child’s mind in order to avoid accepting the truth.

Danny had never wanted Tony to look at him like that. He’d looked up to Ward as a kid, sure, but back then, Tony had been his hero. He’d wanted, so badly, to do everything Tony Stark did. He remembered saying as much to his mother one night as she was putting him to bed, remembered barely stopping for air as he launched into an elaborate retelling of what he’d done at the Starks’ that day, adding animated hand gestures to the conversation as he went on and on about Tony’s games that only he really knew all the rules to and the way he was never angry when Danny and Sharon made up their own rules on top of them, the way the three of them laughed and played and no one flipped the gameboard over when they were losing the way Ward always did and no one cried like Joy used to. The Meachums were family, but that had always been more because of Harold than the children. The Carters and the Starks were family because of Tony and Sharon. Because of Danny.

And now, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be the reason they stopped being family, too. . He didn’t think Tony would arrest him. Not if he knew it was him, not if he recognized the eyes staring back at him. On a logical level, Danny knew that Tony never put him in cuffs, never take him to the Raft. But old paranoia told him he was assuming too much, old anxiety clawed at his gut and demanded to be free. Ward had put him in a mental institution, had paid people to hurt him while he was there. Harold had traded him to the Hand, had pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. Joy had hired someone to kidnap him, knowing he might not survive the experience. Davos had cut into him, bled him out over a clay pot, shattered every fucking bone in his leg twice for good measure. Danny loved his family, he really did. But he had a lot of bad experiences with trust, a lot of scars he could have avoided if, for a moment, he had loved less.

Tony Stark was not Ward Meachum. Danny knew that. Tony never would have hired guards to chase him down the street with guns in hand because he was afraid of losing money, wouldn’t have hurt him over and over and over again to save his own reputation. Tony wasn’t Joy or Davos, either, and he certainly wasn’t Harold. Tony was a good man who loved Danny, who had always treated him like a person instead of a billionaire, who had let him be a kid when no one else seemed interested in doing so. The Carters and the Starks and the Rands, they were a different kind of family than he’d had with Harold and Joy and Ward. They were less cutthroat, less money-hungry. Sharon and Tony had never wanted anything from him except for him to be himself. Danny knew that. . But that old paranoia still hovered for a moment as he and Tony stared at each other, both still as they assessed the situation. Danny stood lightly on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt if he needed to, as if it would make a difference. He couldn’t outrun Tony when he was wearing the suit, and even the intimate knowledge he’d gained over the last few years of vigilantism wouldn’t help him much against Iron Man. He was pretty sure Tony had some kind of x-ray vision in that thing, so hiding in a dumpster would only end up embarrassing him.

Danny didn’t realize he’d been holding a breath until Tony spoke and he let it out, a quiet exhale as a wave of relief hit him so hard it threatened to knock him off his feet. Tony didn’t sound like Iron Man, enforcer of the Accords right now. He sounded like Tony Stark, exasperated older cousin getting ready to gear up for a pretty intense lecture. . Tony did something with his arm that Danny thought might mean the higher-ups couldn’t eavesdrop anymore, and Danny’s shoulders relaxed just a little. He still carried some tension in his shoulders as Tony launched into his lecture, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t getting arrested for the moment. It allowed him to relax enough to look mildly offended, if nothing else. “Hey,” he said, “Je --- uh, my friend said spandex is lame. And this is comfortable! I need to be comfortable.” Not that the outfit was the point, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it? He had to defend his style choices. “Look, you’re mad. I know you’re mad. Can I just --- I can explain. Okay? It’s just, uh, it’s a really long story, and I ---” He broke off for a moment, searching for words momentarily before continuing, “I punched a dragon! And now I’ve got --- I’ve got control over my chi, and I --- A building fell on Daredevil! And he told me, he said, ’Protect my city,’” his voice got momentarily deeper in a poor imitation of Matt, “and I couldn’t say no, because he was gone! And then --- And then my brother did a sacred ritual on me and I broke my leg and went to China, which you knew that part because of course you would have noticed that I was in China, right? And now I’m back! And, um, yeah. That’s it.”

It was an utterly nonsensical explanation, a series of stories strung together that, from the outside, seemed completely unrelated. Danny had never been the best at setting the record straight, especially not under pressure. Tony knew that, of course.

TONY: He wasn’t his father. Tony had never been his father, and recently, he’d stopped feeling inferior about that fact and started feeling grateful. He rarely gave over to anger. His rage, when it was prompted, came relatively smoothly. It built in him, gathered in his chest, curled around in his mind until he found the way most appropriate to put it to good use. There were rare occasions when Tony lost his cool, at least in that regard.

This was one of those rare occasions.

He was pissed. He was pissed off, and he was angry, and he was every word that he could think of to describe the rising heat on the back of his neck, the way his hands balled into fists. Any other man in a metal suit would use the mask to its fullest potential at this moment and hide his weakness. Tony had never been good at covering the emotions on his sleeve, not when it came to enemies, not when it came to strangers, or the press. Definitely not when it came to family.

He was angry, but he was terrified, too. His throat felt tight as he spoke, his voice raising but not nearly strong enough to have any kind of weight behind it.

“You know I’m mad?” Tony repeated, raising an eyebrow. “You know I’m mad? Are you fucking joking me?” Danny stopped talking, and Tony held up a hand. “Listen, this is the moment where you zip it, alright? This is the point where you stop talking, because I have a lot of things to say to you, and you just—”

Danny kept. On. Talking.

(Jesus, that ran in the family.) . The words that were coming out of Danny’s mouth were quick and panicked, and suddenly Tony was having flashbacks to when Danny was nine years old. Sharon assisted in the breaking of one of Tony’s vases, entirely accidentally, and Danny had a hundred and one excuses for Tony, not one of which included any form of a lie. At that stage, the kid had been utterly incapable of keeping a single detail from Tony. Secrets weren’t something that existed between the three of them.

Except they had. Except every time Sharon and Danny walked into his house in Malibu, Tony had to clean up weeks of evidence of his real life, the life he led on a daily basis. He had to hide the people he spent time with, the things he wasted time on, the things that kids didn’t want to see and he would die before he admitted to, because they, for God knows what reason, looked up to him. Cared for him. Loved him.

Danny was talking fast, and he’d never lied to Tony before except for when he had, but when he said dragon Tony couldn’t find even a piece of his heart that doubted the validity of what he was saying. “A building fell on Daredevil because he chases that,” Tony interjected, before Danny could go any further. “I don’t know the guy as anything other than a dot on my threat analysis, but come on. He goes out in a mask and he tries to make a difference, and that’s honourable and heroic and all of those things, but it’s also fucking stupid.” . What Iron Fist was doing was stupid. FRIDAY was in his ear reminding Tony that he was stupid, that there was a timer on this conversation and Ross would realise before long that Tony had tapped out, and that only spelled trouble when Tony was already on the shitlist …

“This life,” Tony said, taking another step forward, gesturing at Danny’s gear, “this life only ends one way. It ends with you in the ground. It ends with someone taking joy in putting you there. And that’s … I do this because I killed people. I killed innocent people for decades. I killed people, and I need to make up for that but Christ, you …”

Tony sucked in a breath, and all pretence went out the window.

“You had ten years.” He was yelling. No, yelling would be easier — he was trying to scream, but the words were barely coming out. “You were ten years old and you were dead. You were dead and that damn near killed all of us, you know that? You ever wonder why Sharon’s mom worries more than is even close to normal about her coming home in a box? You ever wonder why I … I was in a cave and I was seeing so much shit, and they were going to kill me and I saw you. I saw you and you weren’t even dead. You weren’t. You were alive the whole damn time.”

Tony stepped back, then, heart beat pounding loud in his ears. “You can’t do that to us again.” He said it the same way Pepper had, pushing herself out of bed, shooting him a glare on the way down to the couch. He said it like there was no other solution, like Danny would stop or he wouldn’t, and Tony would be able to walk away — but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even be able to stop himself if Danny asked him to. “If it wasn’t me,” he continued, “if it wasn’t me here, tonight, things would be different. You know that, right?”

DANNY: There were days when Tony reminded him so much of Ward that Danny ached with it, moments when his cousin got a look on his face and it felt like Danny was looking at his brother instead. This moment, with Tony clearly and understandably angry and Danny standing in front of him with some dangerous stunt only faintly in the rearview mirror, was one of them. Danny couldn’t help but think back to the thousand and one times he’d had this conversation before. In Ward’s office, when he and Danny were slowly making their way back towards being brothers. On his couch, bloodied and beaten, with Ward quietly trying to pretend not to be terrified. On the runway of a private airport, Ward threatening to lay down in front of a plane to keep Danny from going off on his own.

He’d had the conversation with other people too, of course. Colleen, who waited up until he stumbled home at five in the morning with bruised knuckles and blood on his hands, who asked him quietly how many times he’d lit up the Fist, how many hours of sleep he was running on. Claire, who told him how terrified she was that his obsession with being something he wasn’t would take away everything good about what he was. Jessica, Matt, Luke, Misty… Danny had people who loved him, people who knew what he did and tried desperately to convince him to do it in a way that wouldn’t kill him in the end. And Danny wished he knew how to do it for them. He wished he knew how to be the sort of man who might get a happy ending, the sort of man who could die peacefully of old age someday instead of the sort destined to bleed out in a back alley gasping and wheezing and waiting for help that would never come. He wanted to be that person for them, but he couldn’t. Most days, he still wasn’t confident he knew how to be a person at all. . Tony was talking to him as if he was one. Tony was talking to him like he was a child, perhaps, but he was talking to him as if he was a person all the same, like he was more than a weapon, and Danny had to remind himself that that meant something. He opened his mouth to say more, to dig his grave a little deeper, but Tony told him to be quiet and Danny had always wanted to do pretty much anything Tony told him to do.

It was Tony’s turn to talk now, Tony’s turn to talk about how buildings didn’t typically fall on men who didn’t run into them when they were already shaking, and Danny winced just a little. “A building fell on Daredevil because I ---” He cut himself off, taking a deep, shuddering breath. How much should he reveal here? How much did he tell Tony about the things Iron Fist had been a part of, the things that happened because of him. As far as the police knew, Iron Fist had been nowhere near Midland Circle. Danny Rand’s involvement in the collapse had been swiftly covered up by Ward, who made a hefty donation and requested that his brother’s trauma not be capitalized on to a very receptive commissioner with a very big check. Danny could tell Tony, right in this moment, that it wasn’t Daredevil’s stupidity that dropped a building on his head --- it was Danny’s. He wondered if that would change Tony’s perspective or make him angrier. . “I know how this ends,” he said instead, quiet and apologetic and utterly unafraid. Danny had always known how this would end, had thought he’d seen the end of it more than once, with Bakuto’s blade slipping silently between his ribs or Harold’s gun aimed firmly at his head or Elektra’s face inches from his own or Davos carving him up or Rhyno’s gang watching him shiver and shake and vomit blood onto the warehouse floor and laughing. Danny knew how this story ended, and he’d made his peace with it. If he died tomorrow, he still would have lived far longer than he had expected. He’d accepted death at ten years old with a plane shaking around him, accepted it again a few months later with sweat beading on his brow and boys his age hitting him over and over and over again because there was no mercy in K’un Lun, not even a little. He’d accepted his death at the mouth of a cave, welcomed it when he stepped inside with nothing but his clenched fists and his aching muscles to face a beast he’d only heard of in storybooks. Death was nothing new, nothing scary. Danny had known it for years.

Tony went on then, talked about why he put on a metal suit, and Danny took a shuddering breath, closed his eyes for a moment as the words rushed out before he could stop them. “So have I,” he blurted, sudden and thick and full of grief. “I’m --- I had a job. I had people to protect, and I failed them, and they’re --- I have things to make up for, too. I have scales to balance.” You are nothing. Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande’s words echoed in his ear, and they were true. They were true, no matter how many people claimed they weren’t. . When Danny’s plane went down, he’d never considered how it affected other people. He’d been ten years old, had his father’s body and his mother’s screams burned into the forefront of his mind, and thoughts back to New York had never been to think of how the people he’d left behind were coping with his presumed death. He remembered Joy talking about it shortly after he came back, quiet and mournful. He remembered the way Jeri looked at him with more emotion in her expression than he’d ever seen her wear before or since. He remembered Sharon showing up to his office and threatening to kill him for disrespecting the memory of a person she’d loved. He’d heard all those stories, but he’d never really stopped to ponder them.

Not until now.

Tony’s words rung in his ears, and Danny flinched. “I wasn’t…” He started, trailing off because what could he say? I’m sorry my plane went down? I’m sorry you thought I was dead and it broke you? I’m sorry you had to lose me? Danny had been a ghost for a very long time, a child haunting the people who had loved him, sainted by his death. And he was alive now, he was back, but they were still haunted. The ghost of the boy they’d known still hung in the corners of their minds, still rattled chains in the basements and made the floorboards groan. You couldn’t undo fifteen years of grief. . “I’m not trying to,” he said quietly, and it didn’t feel true even if it was. Danny didn’t want to die. He’d realized it all at once in Rhyno’s hideout, when BB crouched beside him and they’d both understood with abject certainty that the gang would be disposing of a corpse by nightfall. Danny didn’t want to die, but he’d still gone after Davos mere hours after he was rescued from that warehouse. He’d still gone out, alone and unarmed, to fight a man who’d already beaten him once, still landed himself in the hospital with doctors who whispered in voices they thought he couldn’t hear about the probability that amputation would be required to save his life. Danny didn’t want to die, but he didn’t know how to stop chasing death, either. He didn’t know how to walk away. “I know.” He said quietly. If any enforcer but Tony had found him, things would be different. Things would be worse.

Danny ran a hand through his hair, eyes burning. “I can’t stop, Tony. I can’t --- The way I was raised, after that plane went down, they taught me… I wasn’t a person to them. I was --- I’m a weapon, Tony, a, a thing, and I don’t --- It was expected there. That I’d… They expected it.” They expected him to die. Some of the kids took bets on it, in the beginning. ’If he lives more than a month, I’ll do your chores for a week.’ ’You can have half my rations for three days if he makes it a year.’ They hadn’t even tried to hide it, had spoken about it clear and outright well within earshot. Danny had grown used to that, over the years. It was how things were. He wasn’t supposed to live. He wasn’t meant to.

TONY: He’d been pretending his entire life. He’d been wearing masks since he was a child, going to galas with his father’s hand digging into his shoulder, leaving bruises in the shapes of his fingertips that expensive material always managed to hide. He’d been pretending from the first second he put on the metal mask in that cave, pretending that he was capable of becoming something bigger than former warmonger, Tony Stark, the boy turned man who was so naive as to believe that the person who helped raise him was incapable of hurting him, incapable of ordering his death.

Obadiah loved him, Tony had reasoned. Obadiah loved him, and he couldn’t possibly have known about any of the deals under the table, couldn’t possibly be the mastermind Pepper said he was. Obadiah loved him, and that was exactly why he wanted Tony dead, because loving Tony Stark had never been easy, not for anyone.

Rhodey’s career almost ended just by associating with him. Pepper was dropped into a blazing fire. Rumiko’s family all but disowned her, Tiberius’ stocks dropped, Sharon was forced to pick him up off the floor and discharge him from hospital, driving home silent and pretending that there wasn’t this large, unspoken thing sitting in the space between the driver and passenger’s seat. Loving Tony meant Maria cried every damn night. Loving Tony was so damn difficult that it made Howard want to hurt him, and he had. . ‘You’ll understand when you’re a parent.’ He’d uttered that more than once. ‘When you’re looking at someone you watched grow up, someone who has disappointed you, lied to you, failed to become what they should be — when that happens, Anthony, you’ll understand that it isn’t as black and white as you seem to think it is.’

Tony was looking at Danny. He was looking at Danny, and he felt like his heart had jumped out of his chest and was spluttering on the pavement between them, sustained only by the muddy water in the puddles of the alleyway, but he didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want anything to hurt him.

All Tony wanted, in that desperate, aching moment, was to bring Danny to a place where they never needed to have a conversation like this again, a place where they didn’t need to dance around the truth for months and years, because the Starks might have lied, the Carters might have made their name out of mistruths, the Rands may have misdirected, but their kids were honest. The three of them, they’d always loved each other different.

They’d always loved each other right.

(Tony was capable of that, after all — of loving someone in the correct way, of not turning into his father. In other circumstances, he may have been relieved. He had other things on his mind at this point in time.) . “Is that how you want it to end?” Tony would understand that, too. He would understand it more than almost anything else, that desperate need to go out in a blaze of glory to prove himself, to tip the cosmic scales, to cleanse his hands, to make himself worthy of being called hero by kids and parents alike. He’d tasted a human death. He didn’t much care for it. He would understand.

Just like Danny understood him.

I have scales to balance. Tony shifted, feeling like the conversation was on a Dutch tilt, like he’d had a few too many and the world wasn’t that blissful blur anymore but something far more disconcerting.

“Okay,” Tony breathed. It took him three attempts to make the word audible. “Okay, you can’t stop. That’s … we can work with that. We can make that happen, but you— if you want to do this, you have a chance now to do it right. Legitimise yourself. Get the protection of the Panel. Think of the good you could do if you didn’t need to look over your shoulder every five minutes for the cops.” Tony sucked in a breath, taking another step forward. “Register that weapon. I know you. I know what you stand for. Other people might not. They wouldn’t get it. If you …”

(It was Maria at the bottom of the marble staircase, head in her hands, shaking it gently when Tony asked if they were leaving after all. It was Steve, looking up, meeting his eye, putting the pen back in its case and walking away, taking the air in the room with him. It was Natasha on that balcony, or Rhodes in a plane saying hanging out with you is bad for our friendship, or Pepper asking what the hell was wrong with him that he could think, even for a moment, she would be okay with…)

“Please,” Tony said, reaching out a hand. “Come with me. Let me fix this, for you. Let me fix all of it.” We don’t have much time.

DANNY: In the months after he was brought into K’un Lun, after the wounds from the plane crash had healed and he had learned to breathe around the biting cold of air far crisper than even the coldest winters in New York, Danny had developed a habit of running away. It happened often in the beginning, so much so that sometimes he’d find Chodok waiting for him at the edge of the city with a knowing expression on his face, sad and disappointed and utterly unsurprised. He never got far, of course --- there was nowhere to go. There was no way out of K’un Lun, wouldn’t be until the gate opened fifteen years later, but Danny hadn’t wanted to believe that back then. He’d struggled to understand the complexities, had a hard time wrapping his mind around the new rules that seemed so strange compared to what he’d grown up with. How could something be there and then not be there? How could there be a way out one day and nothing the next? How could he exist for the rest of his life in a place that had made it so abundantly clear to him just how little he belonged?

He remembered Chodok, on one of the occasions he found him waiting at the gate for the next grand escape, looking especially exhausted. ’Why do you do this?’ He’d asked, frustrated and at his wits end and sounding more like a father than anyone else in the city had ever bothered and Danny had felt a rush of anger and grief so unexpected it had nearly knocked him off his feet. He’d wanted to scream, wanted to pound his tiny fists against the ground as if he had the strength to bend it to his will, to make it into something familiar and safe and home. His throat had felt tight and Chodok’s hand’s gripping his shoulders had been the only thing keeping him upright. ’I was trying to go home,’ he’d said, quiet and mournful. ’I’ve been trying to go home, I just want to go home and no one will let me. Why won’t you let me?’ . The outburst was embarrassing in hindsight, so childish that Danny felt humiliated at the memory, but the sentiment remained. There were days, even now, when he looked out into the city’s skyline and the thought would cross his mind, strong and certain and utterly nonsensical. I want to go home. Why can’t I go home? It reminded him of sitting in a helicopter with Colleen, of coming back to New York after months away, of looking down at the lights and feeling nothing where he should have felt safety. ’That’s the beauty of it,’ she’d said, ’it can be whatever you need it to be.’ ’What do you need it to be?’ He’d asked, because maybe if he knew her answer he could puzzle out his own. And she’d said home, like that was all there was to it, like one word was a complete sentence, and Danny felt nothing. He’d fought like hell to get back to New York, had nearly died for the city a hundred times over, and he felt nothing.

It took him a long time to understand why. It took him years to realize that it wasn’t buildings or sidewalks that got him out of bed in the middle of the night to run barefoot through the snow, desperate for a way back. It wasn’t his family’s old brownstone or his father’s office that tightened his chest with grief and rage and confusion when Chodok asked him why he insisted on running away time and time again. It was never New York that Danny was trying to get back to. It was Ward. It was Joy, it was Sharon. It was Tony.

Tony, who was looking at him like he’d ripped his heart out of his chest. Tony, who had accepted him back into his life as if he’d never left it, who had never once questioned where he had been or why he was different or why sometimes it seemed to hurt him just to breathe. Tony, who must have known all along that Danny had a nighttime hobby but who had never quite let it come to the surface because knowing meant he’d have to act on it.

Tony, who looked just as frustrated and tired now as Chodok had back then. . It occurred to Danny, quite suddenly, that there had been more than one driving factor in his grief that day with Chodok’s hands on his shoulders. It occurred to him that he’d spoken of home, but that hadn’t been all he’d wanted to say. The words hit him now all at once, quiet thoughts soaked in a child’s anger. Why didn’t you let me stay with you? Why did you give me away to Lei Kung? He doesn’t even like me, but you do. You’re the only person here who’s ever been nice to me, and you gave me away. Chodok must have known, when he’d found a boy in the snow, what would happen to him in K’un Lun. He must have known what he’d go through. He must have known they’d warp Danny into a weapon, must have known they’d beat him and berate him and hurt him, and he’d still done it. Danny thought, back then, that Chodok was the only person who’d never hurt him, but he had. Maybe not directly, but he had.

And now here was Tony, with that same expression on his face, and one key difference Danny recognized with ease --- Tony would never hurt him. Tony loved him the way Chodok couldn’t, the way Lei Kung and Harold couldn’t, the way maybe even Wendell couldn’t. Without consequence. Without condition. Danny had gone against him in a way that would have been punishable by death in K’un Lun, in a way that would have made Tony well within his rights to put him in cuffs and take him to the Raft, and Tony didn’t. He wouldn’t. There weren’t many people who loved Danny like that, and he thought Tony might have been first. He thought Tony might have been the first person to look at him, before K’un Lun and the plane crash and everything else, and decide he was worth loving.

He hoped letting him down wouldn’t change that. . “No,” Danny said, too quickly for it to be true. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and swallowing before amending. “I don’t know.” He knew how it was supposed to end for him. He knew he’d been meant to die on that mountainside, when the Hand’s soldiers invaded the path he was supposed to guard. The Iron Fist was always supposed to die an honorable death in battle, and there was no K’un Lun left to die for but there were still battles to be fought. If he lost his life in one, maybe it would make up for the battle he’d missed. Maybe the only way you could find redemption was through death.

Tony went on then, offered options, and Danny felt like he was suffocating just a little. Register that weapon. Could he do that? It left a sour taste in his mouth, twisted a knot in his stomach that he didn’t understand. “Tony…” The name fell from his lips in a whisper, and it sounded like an apology, even to him. How could he explain it? How could he talk about K’un Lun, about the lasting damage done to him there? He’d belonged to someone once. He’d been a thing, and they had owned him. He existed for them, bled for them, would die for them, and they’d treated him with as much respect as they treated their swords. You kept a weapon sharp, you kept it clean. You gave it a sheath to rest in, you recognized its power when it was in your hands. You showed a weapon respect, you understood the danger it represented.

You didn’t love it. . You didn’t call a weapon by its preferred nickname. You didn’t ask it how it felt about the solution you used to clean it with. You didn’t value its opinion, you didn’t tuck it into bed at night, you didn’t hold it close when it woke up screaming, didn’t wipe away its tears when it cried. When a weapon had an owner, it couldn’t be loved. And Danny wanted, with the same childlike desperation that inspired his outburst in Chodok’s arms more than a decade ago, to be loved.

If he signed the Accords, it wouldn’t make people love him less. He knew that. On a logical level, he knew that. But the heart was not a logical organ, and his was beating so quickly in his chest that some paranoid part of him feared his ribs might break. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “Tony, I just can’t.”

TONY: He wasn’t talking half as much as he was ten minutes ago. Danny wasn’t arguing, wasn’t trying to plead his case. He wasn’t putting the pen back in the case like Steve, or reaching a hand out to him like Sam had on the grass that day. He wasn’t looking at Tony how Obadiah used to, like he was exhausted and frustrated and disappointed all in one, like he couldn’t understand how Tony could be so intelligent and still unable to grasp what he conceived to be simple facts of the universe, and he sure as hell wasn’t looking at Tony like Howard used to.

He was looking at Tony a little how Maria used to, though — a little like Tony was breaking his heart. Tony decided not to think too much into that.

Maybe this would be easier if Danny was arguing. Maybe it would be easier for Tony to say he was convinced to let Danny go, or that he was persuaded to break the code that he’d signed up to enforce, if his cousin was standing in front of him in a goddamn bandana making a case for his vigilante activities that Tony had been resolutely ignoring for the past six months (years, really. Not just months. Years, since he came back).

Tony could’ve been dead in Afghanistan. He could’ve been dead and he wouldn’t even have the chance to stand in front of Danny and make a decision that should be difficult.

It wasn’t difficult.

“Stop,” Tony said, raking his fingers through his hair. What he’d give to be a few shots down right now — and with that thought, memories came flooding back of Sharon, barely out of high school, coming to sign him out of the hospital because he didn’t want Obie to see him, because of the shame that came with it. Memories came flooding back of Pepper, and of Rhodes falling, and of Steve in Siberia, and … . He turned from Danny. A tactical misstep, undoubtedly, but Tony wasn’t thinking tactically. He knew Danny wasn’t going anywhere. He knew that, because he knew Danny.

He also knew something else. He ran his hands down over his face, eyes burning, and turned back to meet his cousin’s eye.

“Just because you love someone,” he started, swallowing thickly around the lump in his throat. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you’re good for them, right? Just because … I mean, I’m not good.” The suit whirred as his hand went to his chest. “This thing, it’s never— I’ve never worked right. I’ve always been hard, you know, difficult to …”

Tony sucked in a breath. FRIDAY was in his ear, despite the mute order. (He really needed to work on obedient artificial intelligence — but like his friends, Tony always preferred having bots around him that were willing to call him out. A moral compass of his own creation.) They didn’t have much longer.

They didn’t have any longer. A holograph appeared from the arm of Tony’s suit, detailing several targets (colleagues) a few metres from the alleyway.

He looked up once more. “I want to be good for someone. I need that.”

A long sigh, and the helmet formed over his head. “No wonder I’m in permanent heart failure,” he muttered. “Come on, idiot. My co-workers are coming, and if they get a shot in on us, I’ll die of embarrassment before I get to kill you.”

DANNY: When Danny was ten years old, his childhood ended in a heartbeat. He was a boy one moment, sitting on a plane and listening to music that was probably a little too old for him, staring out the window at mountaintops that looked so small. Then the world started to shake and the plane started to groan and all at once, life as he knew it was over. His mother was sucked into open air, his stomach bottomed out, his father’s voice grew more and more desperate until he couldn’t hear it at all. Danny hadn’t died in that crash, but the boy he’d been when he stepped on that plane? He was gone the moment the debris hit the snow.

There were no children in K’un Lun. It was Davos who told him that, Davos who sat beside him when he was terrified and desperate and trying to understand what was going on, why he was being beaten and pushed and hurt even when he hadn’t done anything wrong. We’re kids, he’d said, almost pleading as he gripped bruised ribs and tried not to cry. Why are they hurting us? We’re just kids. And Davos, if anything, had been confused. He hadn’t understood that, in other parts of the world, things were different. He hadn’t been familiar with cultures that saw children as precious things to protect. There are no children in K’un Lun, Danny, he’d said, in what Danny figured now was a tone as close to gentle as he’d known how to make it. We’re weapons. And so he had been. For fifteen years, he had been a weapon instead of a child, a thing instead of a person. . But he didn’t feel like that now. Standing in this alley, with Tony across from him, Danny felt like he was nine years old again. He felt like a child, being scolded by a parent. He felt like he had when he’d knocked his mother’s wine glass off the table and shattered it against the floor, when his father sat him down and lectured him on caution. It’s so easy to break things, Danny, he’d said, it’s so easy to do damage. It’s hard not to. It’s hard to be good. We have to try anyways.

Danny’d broken something much worse than a wine glass now. He’d broken a law, broken more than one law, actually. He’d broken Tony’s trust, too. (And he’d broken more than that. A quick flash of a memory popped into his mind --- the Reaper, blood on his lips, grinning up at Danny. This is my favorite part. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Danny’s throat felt tight.)

He’d opened his mouth again, to explain or to argue or to beg forgiveness, but he snapped it shut quickly when Tony told him to stop. Obedience was an easy habit to fall back on after K’un Lun, especially when he was on edge. Tony wasn’t Lei Kung or Priya, wasn’t Yu-Ti or Master Khan. He wouldn’t beat Danny into submission if he didn’t comply without question. But Danny’s mind was split between two places, and there was some comfort in doing what you were told when you were at a loss. There was some comfort in silence, too. . Tony turned away from him, and Danny squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath. He was disappointed, he knew. He’d disappointed Tony, and that was the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. “You’re one of the best people I know,” he offered quietly, because it was true. “I’m not…” he trailed off, chest aching. “I’m not what anyone wanted me to be. I don’t know how to be what anyone wants me to be. Not you, or Ward, or Sharon, or Colleen, or…” He trailed off, smiling tightly and giving his head a self-deprecating shake. If he listed all the people he’d let down, he knew, they’d spend all night in this alley.

Something was happening inside the suit, and Danny wasn’t a smart man but he could guess what. Tony had been here too long, and enforcers didn’t work alone. Someone else was going to come soon. Someone who wouldn’t want to talk things over, someone who didn’t love him enough to forgive his transgressions.

For a moment, the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Danny was pretty sure Tony wouldn’t arrest him, but he didn’t quite relax until Tony told him to come on. His shoulders slumped and he nodded his head slightly. He moved to follow Tony before hesitating, pausing with one foot still lifted in a half-step. “You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you?” For helping him. For loving him.

TONY: Being a good man always came with too many terms and conditions for it to be something Tony genuinely strived for. Being a good man meant making choices that cost people their livelihoods. It meant dropping bombs in foreign countries and focusing purely on the statistics of such a move instead of the human impact. It meant saying no when you wanted to say yes, saying yes when you wanted to say no. It meant hurting the people you cared about and spending your entire life following those you didn’t, because they’d offer you a leg up the career ladder, or get you that coveted contract.

“No,” Tony said, holding his hand up. “We’re not doing that, okay? We’re not. I … I’m not the guy people put weight on, alright?” Tony was the fixer. He always had been for those he cared about, for those he didn’t, for his family and friends and strangers all in one. He was the guy people went to when they needed out of a bad situation, but the second people started loving him, the second they shifted into thinking of him as more than just a means to an end, the second they started looking at him like he knew Danny was behind that bandana, things changed. That was when people could really hurt you, when they could get inside you and twist you inside out, when they could let you down.

He’d already dragged Steve down with him, a truly good man, a man who deserved so much better than anything Tony could give. He wasn’t going to do the same thing to Danny, not without a warning. Not without a comprehensive list outlining all the reasons why Tony Stark wasn’t someone to consider a hero. . “You don’t need to know who you are,” Tony replied. “You don’t. You … I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, but you’re young, Danny. You’re so fucking young. You’re … I was still selling weapons when I was your age. I still believed Obie wasn’t trying to put a hit out on my head. I was still calling Ru every time I got drunk, and you, you didn’t even get your childhood. You didn’t get to be a teenager. You’re young. Your mistakes, they still count, but they’re not … you’re not irredeemable. You’re not.”

No one was. Not even Tony, not even when he found that hard to accept.

You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you? Tony hesitated, just for a moment, then shrugged a shoulder. “I’m already in a shit load of trouble, Danny,” he said. “Helping you isn’t going to be the thing that drags me down.” As it had always been, Iron Man’s greatest foe was himself.

And then the Enforcers arrived, providing a rather convenient outlet for the anger that particular thought prompted. “Keep tight,” Tony called over, “but the second you see a gap, you get out.” With that, and trusting that for once Danny would listen to a word he said, Tony sent a blast towards one of the Enforcers, knocking them back before their weapon could fire.

This was going to be so much paperwork.

#char: danny rand #discord

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carryonmywaywardwriters · 6 years ago

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Love How You Hate Me - Sam x Reader

A/N: It’s late, but I wanted to get this up before I crash. Hope you all enjoy <3

PSA: I am NOT a minor friendly blog. If you are below 18, please come back when you’re older. I don’t want to lose my blog because you were too eager to grow up. If I discover you, I WILL block.

Series Masterlist

Upcoming Warnings: Show level violence. Mentions of childhood trauma/sexual abuse sprinkled in (not super detailed. I do have my limits). Smut. A lot of detailed smut. Kidnapping. Near death experiences. Etc. Individual chapters will have different warnings as needed. Read at your own risk.

Word Count: Roughly 3,500

“Singing Radiohead at the top of our lungs. With the boombox blaring as we're falling in love. Got a bottle of whatever, but it's getting us drunk. Singing here's to never growing up.” You bellowed along to the song heartily as you stirred the yellow concoction in the pan. Dancing a little in the purple short and lavender tank pajamas you'd donned the night before.

Dean hadn't mentioned the conversation you two had the week before. Instead, leaving it to settle on your shoulders. He knew just how to apply the pressure without doing much work. Forcing you to consider every angle. As if you'd ever truly leave the bunker.

His unease left you in a predicament, however. If you retaliated, the older Winchester would believe that you were miserable. So rather than raining hell on the younger brother, you simply backed away. Remaining almost, but not quite, civil.

Sam seemed almost disappointed in the lack of response. But, he didn't challenge it amazingly enough. It was nearly peaceful inside the cement walls for the first time in...well, ever.

The night before, Dean had announced there was a ghoul active a few states over. Naturally, he had to go. And along with him? His brother. Or, so you assumed.

Peace and quiet deserved a celebration. Homemade juice paired with farm fresh eggs fit the mood. There was no need to scramble madly to feed the larger than life men. You could let down your guard for a little while. Make yourself a nice breakfast.

“Song suits you,” Sam's voice made you jump as he walked over to the coffee machine, bed hair game strong. You watched enviously as he brushed his long locks back into place with just his work worn fingers. That isn't natural.

“What are you doing here?” You stared at him as if he was a ghost. His lips tugged up slowly. No doubt enjoying your obvious horror.

“Dean left. Not me.” He shrugged, simply. His body seemed to grow larger as he straightened to his full height. Silently daring you to challenge it. “Said he had it, and that was that.”

“Great.” You rubbed your forehead. The tightness climbing at the base of your skull indicated a tension headache moving in. All of the possible repercussions of Sam staying behind danced through your mind. It never ended well. The bickering and hostility grew to unbearable levels without the older brother as a middle man. Not that you'd tell Dean that. Not after the conversation you'd had with him. There was only one way to rectify the situation. “Here.”

Without missing a beat, you plated and slid the perfect omelet you'd slaved over, over to the monster himself. He didn't move an inch. Squinting at the dish as he inspected it. Your eyes rolled before he could even speak.

“What kind of poison is it?” He quirked his brow while poking at the plate. The lack of retaliation from the fish incident left him even more distrustful than usual.

“Every kind of rat poison known to man. I paired it with a touch of hydrochloric acid for a bit of extra bite.” An exaggerated kiss to your fingers emphasized your inner chef. When that only earned a side eye, you sighed. “I was making it for me, but then you had to go and show your ugly mug.”

While Dean taunted his brother for his 'pretty looks, you went to the opposite end of the spectrum. You figured that he needed his ego knocked down a bit. Even if it was the furthest thing from true. The Winchesters had genes that would make the Greek Gods jealous. Rivaling even Zeus when it came to sexual escapades. It was ridiculous.

He took it warily; making a point to sniff the eggs when he thought you weren't paying attention. Another small poke to the yellow fluff ensued. Finding nothing obviously wrong, Sam finally lifted the fork.

“I get sick? Expect something worse than the fish.” He warned before taking a small, experimental bite. You watched as he chewed slowly. Trying to discern if there was anything questionable mixed in.

“Oh, please.” You turned back to the ingredients you'd left out and started making another one for you. “Some of us aren't quite that devious.”

Well, all of the time. You'd definitely put a laxative in his food once or twice after one of his worse 'pranks'. And, might have set up a booby trap or two for him to walk into. Based on the way his eyes flashed your way, he definitely was thinking of those moments.

No one said a word after that. You flipped the new concoction while trying to ignore the hazel gaze that watched every move you made. It made you wonder what was dancing through that too smart head of his. Maybe a new method of torture?

You left him in the kitchen, choosing to go to the library to finish your breakfast. Escaping his presence as soon you could. Not caring in the slightest if it miffed him.

Once you were done, you scanned the thickly lined bookshelves. It was useless. Instead of the unlimited lore you had access to, you pulled out a favorite of yours.

A gentle, relaxed sigh left you as your body dropped into the cushioned chair that rested in the bit of a nook. However, the reading didn't go as smoothly as you'd hoped it would. Instead you stared at the words until they all seemed to blend into a giant muddle.

After what felt like hours, you gave up. Your cell was yanked off of the floor, where you'd set it. The number could have been dialed in your sleep. Sure enough, after three rings, you got the voice you wanted.

“Ghost busters.” Dean answered, making you shake your head lightly with a small smile. It had become his new catchphrase. The man was nothing if he wasn't able to geek out.

“You didn't tell me you were going on your own.” You went straight to business. After all, you were still more than a little unnerved from the younger man's stare. “A little warning would have been nice. I almost had a heart attack when a rouge big foot walked into the kitchen.”

“I just needed some time to myself, Y/N.” Guilt dripped from Dean's voice as he talked. “Look,” A weary sigh left him, “if you need me to come back, I will...but, if you don't? You'll just have to deal, okay?”

“Hey,” You sat up straighter. His tone worried you. Dean didn't like to show any kind of weakness. Ever. “You're okay, right?”

“Yeah,” He answered, but it fell flat. “Like I said. Just needed a little space. I haven't had any real alone time in a few months.” While you'd had plenty. As annoying as Sam Winchester could be? Human socialization was necessary. You could deal.

“I get that...” You trailed off, looking towards the shelves. “Just...be careful.” You knew he was a competent hunter, and then some. He'd saved the world. But, you always felt better when he had Sam by his side.

“Hey, you, too. Try to not let him get you too worked up. I don't know why-”

“I don't either, Dean.” You sighed, and rubbed your forehead. It was a discussion you didn't need. He needed reassurance. “I'll be good, okay? If it gets too crazy, I'll bail until you get back. Promise. Just...go let off some steam, and then come back to us in one piece.”

“Will do, sweetheart.” You heard the smile in his voice. He loved it when you mothered him. Took some of the weight off his shoulders. “See you soon. Don't kill my brother. It's a pain in the ass to get him back.”

“You better. And no promises.” His hearty laugh made you feel slightly better. It made him sound more alive, at least.

You hung up with him. Nothing else needed to be said. Not at that particular moment. If you could put off the unpleasant discussion of room and board longer? You would.

You tapped your fingers restlessly against the table you were seated at. Processing the situation you'd found yourself in. Wondering just how long you could go before the temporary peace fell apart.

Dwelling on it got you nowhere. Instead, a huff left you as you lifted your book. Determined to turn away from the real world for a bit. Miraculously enough, it worked. You lost yourself in the story.

“You're reading Dracula?” The incredulous sound of Sam Winchester yanked you out of the plot sometime later.

He stood there, head tilted as he took in the sight. His laptop in hand. No doubt preparing to search for a hunt of his own.

“It's a classic. Don't know why you're so surprised.” You didn't bother looking at Sam. Hoping he'd simply go away. As if you were ever that lucky.

Truth was, you had a shelf in the library to yourself. Classics and newer novels alike lined it. He had just never paid attention to what you'd brought into his home.

“Never known you to be a fan of classic literature-”

“You don't know a thing about me,” The book didn't lower as you spoke matter-of-factly. Trying to focus on the world in front of you. “You didn't bother trying to get to know me. Ever.”

You'd made a point to take note of things he liked back in the beginning. Attempted to discover things he enjoyed doing. A wasted effort, in the end. However, you still remembered enough.

Sam, though? He'd just ignored everything he couldn't use to harass you. As if all those other pieces of you didn't exist. At one point, you'd been bitter about it. That time had long since past. Leaving you with only a practical attitude towards it all.

“That's not-”

“Name one thing I like.” That time, you did finally set the novel down. Brow raised as you waited. Not really expecting him to come up with anything. You knew better.

“Bram Stoker.” Was the best he could manage with a small frown tugging at his pink lips.

“Doesn't count.” If you rolled your eyes any harder, they were sure to get stuck. “You literally just learned that, Sam. I've been here how long?” That seemed to sink in. For once, he looked almost uncertain in his dealings with you. His weight shifted uncomfortably “Look, Dean's gone. So, let's just make this easy for once. Speak frankly. I'm a bit tired of whatever game we've been playing. I have no idea what I did to become the one person you can't stand. And honestly? I don't care to know by this point. I'll stay out of your way, and you can just enjoy your time off.”

“Y/N-”

“Don't go feeling bad, now.” You got to your feet, holding your book. Glaring up at him for the almost kind tone he'd manged. You didn't want him to show you pity, or remorse. “It's a little late for that...” A deep, steadying breath left you. Calming yourself back down, you straightened your spine. “If you have a problem with me being here, I'll have Bane pick me up. Stay with them-”

“I-I'm not getting the blame because you're looking for an excuse to bail on Dean,” You'd never seen eyes that changed colors so fast. And yet, his did as they flashed. Darkening in that barely contained anger of his; nostrils flared.

You'd done it again. Pressed those buttons that no one else seemed to hit. Only you couldn't understand why.

“Bail on Dean?” You couldn't hold back the snort. The idea so foreign that you could do nothing more than dismiss it. “The only one I'm willing to bail on is you, Sam.” You grabbed your dirty dishes and cell phone before leaving without another word.

As you walked away, Sam couldn't tear his eyes away from your back. Unable to do more than think about your words as he took over your seat.

You weren't wrong. As much as he hated to admit it to himself. When it came to you? If it wasn't something he could use to piss you off, he was clueless.

He turned his head away as you disappeared, glancing over at the shelf you'd claimed. Staring at the books, but not processing any of it. Much like he'd done with you.

Even when you tried making peace over the coffee incident, he'd pushed you away. Right from that first day, he'd been the one bent on confrontation. Not you. Once you'd stooped to his level, it had become comfortable. The one person he could be a boar to without remorse. Well, almost. Some days, he nearly felt guilty.

He didn't quite place what it was about you that made him act like such an ass. It couldn't be boiled down to one particular thing. It was just you in your entirety. But, when it came to the things he disliked? There was a list.

He despised the way you seemed to lead his brother on. More than once, he'd caught you sneaking into Dean's room at night and then leaving in the morning. And yet, you never even hinted at anything more being a possibility between you two. Pretended it never happened.

Dean might not have realized it, but he deserved far better than being used as a sex object after everything he'd been through. His brother deserved the good life. A wife. Maybe some kids. Hell, even a dog.

The longer you kept him on the hook, the longer it would take for him to find what he really needed. Sam tried to not interfere in that area in Dean's life, but that didn't mean he approved of the way you went about it all. Not in the slightest.

The scariest thing about you? You didn't ever hunt. He didn't even think you could. You knew the book work. And while that had its pros, he hadn't seen you put it to use. Not once. Training to stay in shape? That was a joke.

Your lack of skill was a threat. It was dangerous- mentally and physically- for both his brother and your mutual friends to be attached to someone who couldn't defend themselves. If you didn't break his heart by walking away, you'd do it with your inevitable death.

And in their lives, it was inevitable for anyone who couldn't fight. That's just the way things worked when someone was involved with a Winchester. If anyone understood that, it was the younger brother.

Sam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose lightly. There was more. But, those two? Those were the main ones that would destroy Dean. That would end up taking down Sam with it.

You were entirely right. He didn't know you outside of the outline he'd mentally created. Of the list of negatives. Though, he'd never tell you that. Maybe I owe it to Dean to try a little harder, Sam thought to himself. With a sigh, he gave in; adding as an afterthought, and I guess I owe it to her, too.

“Go out and meet some people, Y/N.” Alice chimed over the phone. Sounding all too bright for someone in her condition.

“I have met people, Alice.” You sighed, kicking your feet towards the head of your bed while your head hung off the front. Something you'd never quite grown out of. “Too many.”

“Fine. Let me elaborate.” She huffed into your ear, making your lips twitch. Suddenly understanding Dean's amusement when you pulled out that tone. “I'll try to be as blunt as possible here. Be warned.”

“I'm listening.” You answered, knowing it was going to be something completely off field. Sure enough, she didn't disappoint.

“Go have hot, sweaty sex with an orgasm giving god that you have no intention of ever seeing again.”

Sam and Dean would have had a heart attack if they heard their precious, little Alice speaking in such a matter. But, you? You'd heard it all. It didn't even earn a blink in surprise. She'd have been wholeheartedly disappointed in the lack of response.

“I'm almost positive that you just want to live vicariously through me.” You chuckled. Although, if you were being honest with yourself, the idea was tempting.

“Damn straight.” She hissed. Latching onto the plan with claws out. “I haven't been able to have sex in forever! Do you realize how miserable it is? To be forced to be celibate when your hormones are amped up? This is worse than period horny, Y/N. This is horny in a way you can't even begin to imagine until you go through it. High risk pregnancies are the worst!”

“Obviously I can't imagine.” You rolled your eyes at her theatrics. “You're aware that I can't miraculously absorb your ridiculously horny state, right? Me meeting a hot stranger and going to pound town isn't going to ease your misery. At all.”

“I told you. I'll live vicariously through you. Besides, you need a good time. Get you out of the funk you've been in lately.” She was as observant as Dean when it came to you. And you didn't care for it. Not in the slightest.

“Says the one who can't leave her couch.” You retaliated. Sounding more like a bratty child than ever before.

“And I'm still enjoying living more than you. When is the last time you did anything just because you could. Something that was just for you, and you alone? You're constantly waiting on the Winchesters, or on us.” She sighed heavily. As if it had been weighing on her heavily. “I know you thought you'd enjoy the role of 'stay at home mom'. And I know you wanted something less intense. But, you and I both also know that you miss your wild child days.” Part of you couldn't help but to wonder if pregnancy gave her some kind of sixth sense. “A happy medium isn't bad. It wasn't for us, but you? You're different. You're going to go insane if you don't kill off some of this funk.”

“I'm going to let you go for the night, Alice,” You pulled yourself up, cradling the phone with your shoulder. Knowing there was truth to her words. The twitchiness was creeping back on.

“Remember. Hot. Sweaty. Stranger.” She emphasized, knowing exactly what was running through your mind. You ended the call. Only to sit and mull over her words.

You'd hated life under the system as a kid. Bouncing from house to house. Promises of adoption that never came through. You'd run away from it by the time you were sixteen.

To survive, you hustled men at bars. Picked pockets. You lived on the road, in a car you'd hot wired. You'd teased and taunted men to get free drinks and food. Whatever it took to survive.

Once you started hunting, you used the adrenaline rush as a drug. It consumed you. You drank too much, and had no trouble manipulating people to get what you wanted. You let off extra steam with a string of one night stands. Over time, it only grew worse.

Meeting Bane a few months in hadn't helped you slow down. If anything, he'd aided in the trouble. Needing that same level of high from his own demons.

The homes created a second person inside of their victims. It'd been a side of you you'd kept locked away in a failed attempt to encourage people into letting you into their lives. Telling you to let loose. Do whatever, whoever, you wanted when you wanted.

It was surprisingly Alice, your equal in the hell raising department, that helped you lose a little steam years after you'd left your final home. You still didn't understand how it'd come from someone you'd met while dancing on a bar, chugging vodka from the bottle.

By the time you'd met Dean, the couple been more than ready to retire from the life. You? You wanted to remain involved, but you didn't want to die guns blazing. Somehow, you'd ended up playing 'housewife' more than anything.

And in that moment? It wasn't settling right. Stomach twisting, Alice's words danced through your mind again. Your inner minx, who had remained dormant for so long, was starting to become restless. All the signs had been there.

To hell with it... She's right. Your lips pulled up, and a bit of weight that you weren't even aware you'd been carrying left your shoulders. Time for a little, well earned, trouble...

Part Three

Tag: @burningmusicmachine

#supernatural #spn #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfiction #supernatural reader insert #spn reader insert #sam #Sam Winchester #sam x you #sam x reader #sam x y/n #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester x you #sam winchester x y/n #sam reader insert #sam winchester reader insert #sam fanfiction #sam winchester fanfiction

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bleachintothemultiverse · 5 years ago

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THE BIG BLEACH HC MEME centering around politics, repost & fill out! For anyone who wanted to explore those aspects more, considering it played a big role in the story. Some things may be unknown to your Muse, just think in WHAT IF then & well, have fun and take your time!

BASICS

Name: Aizen sosuke / / / Age: 300+ / / / Gender: male Race: Shinigami / Quincy / Hollow / Fullbringer / Visored / Human / Other Currently lives: Soul Society / Hueco Mundo / Silbern / Living World / Hell Exact Location: Muken Group(s): Espada, gotei 13.

QUESTIONS

- Would your muse consider themselves more: GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL ? - Would your muse consider their group more: GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see them: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see their race: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ? - How does your muse think others see their group: GOOD / EVIL / NEUTRAL ?

- Is your muse considered a threat: YES / NO ? From whom?: Soul society mostly. - Is your muse powerful: YES / NO ? Could they be considered OP: YES / NO //he can bring down a city with his spiritual pressure alone. probably.// - Did your muse any crimes: YES / NO ? Trying to become a god. War crimes, Human experimentation, trying to over throw the soul society. Murder. Kidnapping. (for the most part). - Does your muse think they are doing mostly the right thing: YES / NO ? - Would society think the same: YES / NO / MIXED OPINIONS ?

- Does your muse think they are treated unfairly: YES / NO ? - Does your muse feel understood from others: YES / NO / NEUTRAL? - Is it important for them what others think of them as a person: YES / NO ? - Would they welcome death: YES / NO ? (He is terrified of dying) - Will they ever find peace: YES / NO ? Currently in Muken? He is at peace.

01.0. Do they fully stand behind the group they are part of? YES / NO. Why is that? Explain: He created the Espada army. They follow him out of loyalty and for power. He fully stands behind what he created. In terms of his captain days- Not really . He never really stood behind the whole gotei 13 and there military pressure.

02.0. Do they like as things are in Soul Society? YES / NO. 02.1. Is there anything they would change? Explain here: He would change a lot of things. He heavily hates the current corrupt structure of it and how everyone is just so willingly accepting to go along with it. he believes- he could of change it by becoming a god and getting rid of the soul king and replacing it as himself. But during his time in Muken- his opinions kinda shifted. He is not longer as hateful towards the soul society. He still hates the things they do and agree on. But he understands why the soul king is so important and wouldn’t want that to change, that would lead the world to be boring and to predictable.

03.0. Would they ever actively try to bring change (in general)? YES / NO. he caused literal chaos. Started a war with the soul society. Created his own army. Tried and successfully become a god to a point 03.1. Is your muse more: passive / active ? Introverted / Extroverted ? 03.2. Does your muse care more about: others / themselves ? 03.3. Do they trouble their mind over a lot of problems, others? YES / NO. 03.4. Do they mostly involve: the world / everyone / themselves / comrades / friends / family / elderly / kids / teenagers / home / workplace / strangers / souls / humans / quincy / shinigami / nobles / fullbringer / visored / hollows / espada / arrancar / (former) boss(es) / pets / animals / zanpakuto spirit / enemies / partner / lovers / soul king / god / other…(add more) 03.5. Name (up to) three which are the most on their mind (optional, adding names): Themselves. Leaving Muken. wondering what is going to do once his 20 thousand year sentence is up.

04.0. Do they think frequently about politics? YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Why is that? Explain: During his captain days. He was heavily involved in politics. Not to mention- he killed all of central 46. So he was controlling mostly everything behind the scenes for a awhile.

05.0. How do they feel in their current location, more: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ? 05.1. Why is that?: He doesn’t hate Muken- he hates being restrain and his powers being reduce. But he doesn’t hate being there. He knows its a punishment and why he is there. The only thing he regrets over time is talking during his trial and not shutting up when told.

06.0. Does your muse have any goal: YES / NO ? BIG / SMALL ? He used to have a big goal, but after his defeat. He stopped having a big of a goal- for now he is just waiting out his sentence 06.1. Does it involve anything world-changing: YES / NO ? 06.2. If goal or not, any future plans? Share here: If he gets out of Muken- He probably would go to the world of the living or back to Hueco mondo. As he knows even after 20 thousand years- The soul society won’t ever accept him back in their society.

07.0. Does your muse know about the original sin of soul society*: YES / NO ? (He heard of it) * curious? Read about it here. 07.1. If they knew, would it change their views on Soul Society: YES / NO ? //Honestly- I don’t think, it would? as his feelings towards the soul society never really changes no matter what he learns. So in all truth- i don’t think it would? // 07.2. More: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ?

08.0. Who is the worst person in their eyes?: Urahara, shinji (to a point), Ichigo. 08.1. What should happen to them? Execution (quick / slow death) / Imprisonment / Stripped of their powers / Torture / Repay for their sins / Pay a Fine / Social Work / lose their loved ones / Exile / other… (add more). //None of these? I don’t believe Aizen wanted any of them truly dead, during his time in Muken. He just hates them??// 08.2. Explanation: Ichigo caused his defeat. Urahara made it worst for him by sealing him and causing to actually feel overwhelming emotions- that he couldn’t escape from. Shinji was the first person to ever be a threat towards him as Shinji could detect most of Aizen’s kido. Not to mention, Shinji was one of the few people to ever wipe a smirk off of Aizen’s face.

09.0. Thoughts on the Quincy Massacre if they knew: POSITIVE / NEGATIVE / NEUTRAL ? 09.1. Would they be alright with such thing happening again: YES / NO ? 09.2. Would they try to prevent it: YES / NO / DEPENDS ? 09.3. Explanation: He doesn’t really have a full opinion on the quincy genocide. He only knows it was needed to keep balance in the world. So if it was needed again- he would support it. He wouldn’t want the world and everything to collapse. Then it would be boring and to predictable .

10.0. Would they ever switch sides: YES / NO ? //Kinda tricky- He wasn’t really on the side of the soul society. He was on his own. But he helped during the thousand year blood war arc, before returning back to Muken. So he is really on no one side. He is on his own side. // 10.1. If yes, What could bring them to do so?: War, unstableness in one side. Self interest. 10.2. Would they create a new one: YES / NO ? or join a current one? If so, which: he created the Espada. But when he gets out of Muken? Probably not. He would most likely be used to be living alone.

11.0. Does your muse follow a certain moral code*?: YES / NO / GRAY AREA ? * (ethics) A written, formal, and consistent set of rules prescribing righteous behavior, accepted by a person or by a group of people. 11.1. What does it involve?: He wants people to follow him- not out of fear but out of Loyalty. He wants full loyalty with any of his lesser subordinates. He will only force people to follow him if it will achieve his goal. Other then that- he doesn’t really force some one to follow him. if people want to follow him- great, if they don’t great. He will still do what he wants either way. 1.2. What does it NOT involve?: Forcing people to follow him out of fear. anything that messes with his plans. etc. YOUR MUSE’S VIEWS / OPINIONS ON THESE GROUPS ?

Central 46: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: He considers them a corrupt organization. Something that be easily destroyed. Which he did destroyed at one point and took over to control behind the scenes. not to mention they sentence him to 20 thousand years. (thought that was mostly his fault- he wouldn’t shut up)

Four Great Noble Clans: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: no opinion really on the clans.

Royal Guards / Gotei 13: positive / negative / neutral . ━ because: he used to have respect for the Gotei 13 and looked up to them on the early days in the academy and even when he joined his last division (Division 5) he held some respect for them. He always found the Royal guards to be interesting. He never heard about them till he learned that the Division 12 captain was transferred to become a royal guard in squad zero. Which sparked his interest in the soul king even further.

Fullbringer: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: Never met any.

Visored: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: He created them. He seen them nothing but test subjects for the early Houygoku. Any feelings he had towards them was lost once he hollowified them, his lack of Empathy, didn’t let him feel for his so called friends.

Espada: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: He also created them. It is his army after all. He is grateful that they tried to help him in his goal to over throw the soul society. But- he really only sees them as tools that could be tossed away at a drop of a hat.

Quincy: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: He doesn’t hate them or does he like them. He disagree with what they wanted to do to the soul society and the other realms. Realizing how much unstableness that would cause and would cause the world to be to perfect. Something that would be boring to his goal.

YOUR MUSE’S VIEWS / OPINIONS ON THESE (IMPORTANT) PEOPLE ?

Aizen: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: .....its his self- Aizen is the most arrogance self indulging person there is.

Yhwach: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: Aizen really dissagree with what he was trying to purpose and do to the world, knowing a world with out death- people can’t grow from it and evolve.

Mayuri: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: He helped created the chairs that bind him in Muken. it was because of Mayuri, that allows Aizen to exist in Muken. He heavily finds Mayuri to be creepy and is some what grateful that the central 46 doesn’t allow Mayuri to do experiments on him. Even during his captain days- he never really Liked Mayuri and always found him to be odd.

Kurosaki: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: Ichigo is some one who- defeated him and help caused his downfall. He sees Ichigo as a worthy rival to him and was a essential part of his plan to over throw the soul society.

Soul King: positive / negative / neutral. ━ because: // I already wrote a full HC- but to sum it up// Aizen opinion on the soul king is Neutral. He realizes during his time in Muken that the soul king is something that is needed or the universe and humanity won’t continue to evolve or change. With out the fear of death? The world would be boring to him. Something that Aizen doesn’t want to happen. So in the beginning, he wanted to get rid of the soul king- but realize over time that the soul king is needed in the universe to keep balance and allow evolution to happen. EXTRA(optional): add more characters which hold some meaning to your muse. Urahara: Some one that Aizen really doesn’t understand. One of the many people that confuses Aizen to no end and one of the only people to make Aizen feel fully conflicted emotions that caused him to be over whelmed. Not to mention, he also has to thank urahara for the creation of his Houygoku. with out it- He couldn’t achieve his goal like he did and become a god. Shinji: His Ex-Taichou. Some one that Aizen used to heavily dislike. Some one that Aizen did hold some what of a respect for- till He learned that Shinji only hired him as a fukutaichou to keep a eye on him. Aizen considered him as a early threat during his early experimentation days. considering Shinji could detect his Kido- seemly no matter how powerful it was and already had a suspicious of him in the beginning. He always had mix feelings towards his ex captain, and even during their fight in the fake Karakura town arc. Aizen held some mix feelings of not caring and low fear as Shinji manage to catch Aizen off guard and wipe the smirk off of his face. But during his time in Muken- his feelings towards shinji kinda nulled. He no longer disliked his ex captain- nor did he like him. He became more indifference towards him. //To sum it up- I might write a whole head canon about Aizen’s true feelings on Shinji and how it changes from the pendulum arc to current day.// Hiyori: During his Fukutaichou days and even in the 12th division. He used to see Hiyori as some one of interest, Not romantically- but more of like some one he found amusing and didn’t mind hanging out with in his free time. He used to find great amusement every time she used to boss shinji around, or take out a group of men who would try to understatement her. Though- Hiyori was the only one who ever left a bruse on him during those days. He never fully intended to turn Hiyori into a visored, she just happen to show up at the wrong time and he had no choice but to turn her into a visored. His lack of empathy allowed it to happen, and from that point forward, he shut out any feeling or respect for her and only saw her as a test subject. Hinamori: Aizen never had any romantic feelings to his ex-Fukutaichou. He saw her nothing but a pawn. He did care for her some what- But as his plans started to advance, he only saw her as a tool that he needed to get rid of. He was grateful for her loyalty during his captain days and actually in directly teaching him how dangerous love can be- but other then that. He has no feelings towards his Ex-fukutaichou. He doesn’t hate her- nor does he care about her.

CONGRATS, you managed till to the end, now tag your fellow bleach partners!

TAGGED BY: @hirako5hinji //Thanks for the tag Anna uwu.// TAGGING: I already tagged people xD so feel free to steal uwu.

#Apex predator (Aizen sosuke)#headcanons #//Thanks for the tag Anna! <3//#hikaro5hinji

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buckychristwrites · 7 years ago

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Just A Touch | Part 1 | b.b.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: Your powers? Controlling any feeling a human can have, from emotions to pain, with a simple brush of your fingertips. Your mission? The traumatized soldier with sad stricken eyes and scream filled nightmares.

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: None

A/N: So this is very loosely inspired by the book Carve The Mark by Veronica Roth. Let me know what you think! :)

Masterlist

“How did you find me?”

What started out as an uneventful and normal day took a turn with just an unexpected knock on your front door, which you thought nothing of until you threw it open to find The Tony Stark on the other side, smiling radiantly at you, the Avengers quin-jet in the background behind him. This might have seemed less weird if you weren’t living in a small town in Ohio, a far distance from New York and not a place you could see Tony casually spending time in. And when you also considered the fact that prior to this moment, you had never been within 100 feet of Tony Stark, let alone have met him, your first instinct was to slam the door in his face. You had no intention of reopening the door as you started to walk away, but you stopped dead when you heard him yell your real name from the other side of the door. A name you had been running from for the last almost ten years. The name that made you reluctantly open the door and let the man inside.

It took 20 minutes of him telling you that he needed you to come with him without ever alluding to why he needed you in particular to get you to agree to go with him to New York City. But that didn’t matter. As you sat in the reclining chair of the Avengers quin-jet, your mind was blank and your whole body was numb. You knew exactly why you were there.

Which brings you to this moment, an hour later in Avengers Tower, sitting in the conference room where you and Mr. Stark were joined by Captain America himself. While Steve was leaning back in the chair in front of you, Tony was sitting on the conference table itself, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Next to him was an open folder, a file filled with every single fact about you, the old you, from the moment you were born and ending abruptly about a decade ago, and resting on top was a picture of you. The crinkles and faded colors showed that the picture had aged worse than you, as you looked exactly the same.

“After HYDRA fell, we raided their files to find victims of experimentation,” Tony said, sitting up straight and crossing his arms. “All of them seemed to be dead, which wasn’t much of a surprise. But then we got an alert from facial recognition.” He looked right at you, his head tilted to the side slightly. “And that’s when we found you.” Your head fell back against the wall, and you stared up at the ceiling. You had done everything in your absolute power to make sure no one found you. Even the good guys. You didn’t want anything to do with this life anymore.

“So what do you want from me?” You asked, failing to hide the hostility in your voice. Tony threw his hands up, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world.

“We want you to join the team,” He said. Eyebrows furrowing together, you eyed him suspiciously.

“Why?” You asked. Steve and Tony exchanged a look, and Steve opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted.

“We know what you’ve done,” Tony said simply, picking through your file before pulling out a short stack of papers. Your body went cold as he skimmed through them, flipping the pages dramatically. “A human torture machine? Making people feel excruciating pain at will with just a simple touch.” He glanced up at you over the paper, and you looked away from him. It was suddenly very warm in the room, and you wondered how you were going to get home. Tony put the papers down on the table, the movement bringing you back to reality. “Sensing and controlling emotions. Is that all you can do?” You cocked your head to the side.

“Is this a trick question?” You asked. “Because I feel like you have everything listed right there. No, I can’t do anything else. I can sense and control the things that humans feel. Emotions, pain. Sensing emotions I can do from a distance but to actually change them, I have to be touching them.” They nodded.

“How did HYDRA do this to you?” Steve asked. It was the first time he had really talked during this meeting, and you had actually wondered for a bit why he was there. You shrugged.

“Years of experimenting on me,” You said, nonchalantly. “I think the emotions part was an accident, because they were more concerned with the pain thing. At first I could only make a little pain, like getting your finger pricked or something. But after a few months of more shots and experiments and procedures…” You stopped, swallowing hard. Everything was coming back to you now. You closed your eyes for a second before continuing. “I can now make it feel like your being struck by a thousand lightning bolts, whenever I want.”

The two men exchanged looks again before looking back at you. Tony hopped off the table.

“We’d be lucky to have you, but we won’t force you,” He said in a rushed voice as he walked slowly towards the door. “Fossil here will answer any questions you have and, if you decide to join, will fill you in on your first… mission.” The pause before his last word made you uncomfortable. What exactly was it they wanted you to do?

Steve sighed, sitting forward in his seat. His eyes were warm and kind, making you want to trust him. But it was hard when you were practically kidnapped and brought here by the team that they now want you to be apart of.

“So I have a mission,” You stated. “Is that a normal thing? Assigning missions to people before they’re even part of the team?” Steve chuckled.

“Not at all,” He said. “But it’s really not what you think it is. And it only becomes your mission if you decide to join the team.” You purse your lips as you take this in. A thousand questions ran through your mind, and you weren’t really sure where to start.

“What happens if I say no?” You asked.

“Then we take you home and you live your life.”

You took another half minute before you spoke again.

“And what happens if I say yes?”

Steve laughed again. You hated how obvious it was that you were considering this.

“We’d move you into the tower,” He began to explain. “You’d become apart of everything. The missions. The briefings. Everything. You’d get a suit if you want one. Tony can add really anything you want to enhance your powers.” He shrugged.

You looked up at the ceiling, thinking of the final notice bills that were back at your apartment. The dead end job you slaved through every day, making just barely enough to get by. Your life had been spent hiding, always looking over your shoulder and running when anything went slightly wrong. It would be nice to feel safe for once.

“So, let’s say I am saying yes,” You stated, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Steve raised an eyebrow. “What’s my mission, Captain?” He laughed again, a little harder this time, grabbing your file while shaking his head.

“Right, the mission,” He said as he flipped through the pages, stopping at one and pulling it out. “It’s going to sound simple, but it’s going to be a lot harder than it looks.” A flood of discomfort filled his face as he held up what turned out to be a photograph, revealing a picture of you and a familiar face from your past, standing side by side in the HYDRA compound.

“I need you to tell me everything you remember of your history with the Winter Soldier.”

_________________________________________

Knock.

Just knock.

You had been repeating this mantra to yourself for what must have been 10 minutes at this point, and it got you nowhere. Every time you rose your hand, you would hold it up for a while and then drop it down again. Why was this so hard?

It had now been about 5 hours since you had agreed to join the team. Tony had already sent out a team to move your belongings from your run down apartment to the Tower. You had since been introduced to all of the other members of the team.

All except one.

You had been exploring the whole Tower to avoid this. You now knew where everyone’s rooms were (including your own), which hallways lead to where, all of the escape routes and how many windows were in the entire upper penthouse. But you knew it was time to finally bulk up and face him once you caught yourself counting the number of doorknobs. Now that was just excessive.

Just as you thought you had worked up the nerve, the door flung open, and out came James Buchanan Barnes, in black jeans and a hoodie, long hair flowing down to his shoulders. He jumped back when he saw you, his face filled with fear and anger as he took a fighting stance. You raised your hands and took a step back.

“I am so sorry,” You gasped. Part of you was very afraid, but the other part was very embarrassed that you had been found standing outside of his door.

“Who the fuck are you?” He demanded. His demeanor didn’t let up, which made you slightly more afraid.

Your voice was almost a whisper when you told him your name. “I’m a new member of the team, fresh meat,” You said, trying to lighten things. He lowered his hands slowly. It was obvious that he was debating whether to believe you or not, and you hoped it would come out in your favor. You knew what he was capable of. But from the look on his face, he didn’t appear to know that. He looked you up and down, before finally sighing.

“Bucky,” He said, raising his hand out to shake yours. You grasped his hand firmly while in a daze. Of all of the changes that had been thrown at you in the last six hours, this was the one effecting you the most. You never thought you would see him again.

“It’s nice to uh, meet you,” You said awkwardly as you dropped your hand back down to your side. He nodded, appearing to agree.

“So um, what brings you to the team?” He asked. You pressed your lips in a fine line. This is the part where things get a bit hard.

“That’s actually the reason I’m here,” You said slowly without making eye contact. “They brought me on because they have a mission for me.” He eyed you suspiciously, turning his head slightly.

“What’s the mission?” He asked, his voice lowering. You closed your eyes. Part of you wished he had just killed you a moment ago.

“That’s an interesting question, and they haven’t given me all of the details yet,” You began, anxiously playing with your fingers. You paused, finally looking at him in time to see his eyebrows raise at you impatiently. There was no escaping it, he was going to hate it no matter what. You sighed. “But it appears that the mission is you.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barns x reader #bucky barns imagine #bucky imagine #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky fic #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel fic #avengers #avengers imagine #avengers fic #bb fic #just a touch #bb

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ofmilesmorales · 6 years ago

Text

a box full of sharp objects

WHO: Miles Morales WHAT: After a routine mission with Jessica Drew to take down a Hydra base goes terribly wrong, Miles is left to suffer the consequences. WHERE: Underground Hydra bunker, precise location unknown. TRIGGER WARNINGS: kidnapping, torture, experimentation, mutilation, violence

It was hard to tell time in the windowless room but if he had to guess, Miles would have said he kept up the quips for close to three days. It was probably a generous estimation, probably far too optimistic to be true, but it wasn’t as if there was anyone around to disprove it. So, by his count, he spent the better part of three days doing what Jess would have done. He made bad jokes, muttered puns that only he laughed at, masked his fear with stupid, silly bullshit that he told himself made things a little easier.

It didn’t, of course. Not really. Strapped to a table, alone, and shit scared, it was hard to imagine anything being easy. Easy was something he’d left in the rear-view mirror the second Hydra nabbed him, something that was more a distant memory than anything else at this point. Easy was far, far away from where Miles was now, and he was pretty sure everyone else knew it, too.

But, in spite of that, he kept up the jokes for the better part of three days. He made small talk with the agent drawing vial after vial of blood, pretended not to feel woozy the fifth time they stuck the needle into his arm. Later, of course, he’d long for the moments when all they were doing was drawing blood. In comparison to the other things, the things they called litmus tests, having blood drawn was easy. It was a pinch and an ache, the kind of thing he could call a bloody nightmare with a shiteating grin while still feeling relatively safe. (At least, as safe as one could feel when strapped to a table in some Nazi’s basement.)

Naturally, the feeling of relative safety didn’t last. After the blood samples came the tissue samples, and those were more than a pinch and an ache. “There are more humane ways to do this,” said the doctor taking the sample. There was no follow up, no apology, and Miles knew she’d said it only to be sure that he knew he was suffering more than he needed to.

At that point, he still felt brave. At that point, he could still let his head loll over to the side to look at her with a stupid grin and the closest thing to a shrug he could muster while strapped to a table. “You should really include that in your Nobel speech,” he told her, raising a brow. “Those Peace Prize people would love that. You’d be a hit.”

(He tried to keep himself from making a pun when she reared back and backhanded him across the face, but the words, “Not that kind of hit,” stumbled out anyways and earned him a second backhand. Stubbornly, Miles told himself Jess would have said it was worth it. Logically, he knew Jess would insist that none of this was worth it. Miles was pretty content to ignore logic for the moment.)

Things only seemed to get worse from there. Miles hadn’t seen the woman responsible for bringing him here, the crazy one who’d yelled at Jess that everyone called Madame Hydra because apparently evil scientists didn’t do creative nicknames, but he had a feeling she was always close by. There was a mirror on one wall, the kind that was obviously a one-way glass, and sometimes, the scientists poking and prodding him would glance to it. Like children seeking approval from their parents, or dogs wagging their tails in hopes of a treat. It made Miles feel a little sick to know that there was someone out there watching all this. It made him even sicker to think that it was probably the same woman who’d made Jess look so scared at the Hydra base.

He heard the door open, and he lifted his head as far off the table as he could. Admittedly, that wasn’t very far at all. They had him strapped down pretty securely, even with the energized cuffs they’d stuck on him in the base. Apparently, Hydra wasn’t big on risk-taking when it came to superpowers. Miles might have found that flattering if he weren’t so scared.

“Can I get a sandwich?” His voice was a lot weaker now than it had been in the beginning, but he figured that was okay. “I could really go for a sandwich. I mean, I’d like some chalupas more, but something tells me you guys don’t have a great cook.”

“They said you were still talking,” the man commented, setting a leather case down on the table beside Miles’s head and unfolding it. The scent of rust and copper hit him in a nauseating wave, and he glanced over to see metal instruments with flecks of dried blood dulling the surface.

“That doesn’t look sanitary,” he commented, and god, he was proud that he didn’t sound as scared as he felt. The truth was, Miles was terrified. He’d been in some bad situations before, been beaten down by Kingpin and nearly strangled by his own uncle, but this? This was something else. This was something he’d never thought to prepare for. Miles always figured that this life would kill him. His introduction to heroism had been watching Peter die, and he was too smart to imagine a happier ending for himself than that. He’d accepted that this life was going to kill him, but he’d thought it would be fast. He’d thought he’d go out like Peter in a blaze of glory, fighting a battle to save the whole multiverse from collapse. Instead, it was looking more and more like he’d die here. Strapped to a table in a damp basement with pieces cut off of him, bleeding out as a science experiment. It wasn’t the end he’d imagined. It wasn’t the end he’d hoped for.

“I’ll give you this, you’re stubborn,” the man continued as if Miles hadn’t spoken at all, running his fingers along his tools until he seemed to find one he liked. It looked like some kind of plier set, and Miles shifted instinctively, putting an inch more of distance between them as if it would matter at all. “Most people stop looking for conversation after a day or so. Children usually take less time than that.”

“I’m not a ---” Miles started, but he was interrupted when the man grabbed his jaw and wrenched him forward. He held his mouth open with his hand, and Miles understood very suddenly what the pliers were for. He thrashed and yanked, trying to get his head away, but he was far from his best. He’d been here for hours or days or months or years. He wasn’t sure how long exactly, but he knew it was a while. He knew he was tired. He knew he didn’t stand a chance against the metal pliers making their way to the back of his mouth, knew he was helpless when they tightened against one of his teeth.

Of course, knowing all that didn’t make it any easier when the man yanked, and Miles let out a mangled yell at the taste of blood in his mouth.

The man hummed, pulling the pliers out with a tooth between them, inspecting it for a moment before putting it into a petri dish on the table. “Teeth aren’t the most useful source of DNA, but we do like to be thorough,” he said, sounding like a teacher in a lecture hall droning out facts to a room full of tired students.

Miles gasped out a few breaths, turning his head to the side to let the blood leak out the side of his mouth rather than down his throat. The pain was still washing over him steadily, still settling in to join the rest of the damage his stay with Hydra had left him with. “I feel…” He started, eyes clenched tightly shut, “I feel like you’re n-not a qualified d...dentist.” The words were mangled, forced out through his aching mouth, but he couldn’t stop them. He didn’t want to stop them. Peter had been rebellious to the very end, and Miles wanted to do the same. If he was going to die here, he wanted it to be with both middle fingers up --- even if that was only a metaphor at this point.

The scientist tsked thoughtfully, and Miles felt him lean in close to inspect his expression. Turning his head to face the man, he spat blood into his face, feeling satisfied at the disgusted noise it pulled from him.

Of course, the satisfaction didn’t last. The man was back in his toolkit, back to running his fingers across metal until he found something he liked. This time, it was a scalpel and Miles drew in a trembling breath. “Did you know the palpimanus gibbulus has a cuticle tens of micrometers thick? It acts as something of an armor, protects it from harm. It’s widely considered one of the toughest species of spider.” Miles watched the scalpel glint in the dull light of the bare bulb hanging above.

He was a smart guy. He knew what was coming next. A scalpel mixed with a creepy speech mixed with a hefty dose of anger? There were only so many ways that could end. That didn’t make it hurt less when the blade dug into his stomach, slicing open his uniform and his skin all at once. The scientist looked down thoughtfully. “I guess you didn’t get your powers from a palpimanus gibbulus.”

“Was that ---” Miles let out a shaky breath, eyes clamped shut as a wave of pain and nausea washed over him. “Was that a… a joke? Not… Not bad for your first time. Maybe you should quit this life and take some im---improv classes.”

The only reply he got was another cut, another bite of the scalpel digging in, and his mouth hurt a little too much to keep up a one-sided conversation. He was grateful when the scalpel went back in the toolkit, though he knew any reprieve he found would only be temporary.

Next, the scientist produced a cattle prod from somewhere outside of the scope of Miles’s vision, testing the button a few time to let the sparks fly where Miles could see them. “I hear you produce bioelectric shocks,” the scientist said, though Miles knew he wasn’t really talking to him. He was talking to hear his own voice, or to let the people behind that mirror know what was going on, or to keep a mental note of what he was doing. Talking to Miles would mean that he thought of Miles as a person, and it was clear that that wasn't the case. People didn’t treat other people this way. If Miles had to go out, he wanted to go out believing that people didn’t treat other people this way. “I’m curious if this ability makes you less susceptible to electricity.”

Miles swallowed as the cattle prod came closer. “Take off the cuffs,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual as if he were making small talk. “I can show you something that’ll really shock you if you take off these cuffs.” The scientist smirked, raising a brow before pressing the end of the cattle prod against Miles’s stomach and pressing down on the button.

Electricity, Miles learned, hurt like hell. It was almost enough to make him feel bad for all the people he’d venom blasted over the years, almost enough to make him regret it. But all the people he’d shocked had been people like this. All the people he’d hurt had been people who’d earned it. Miles didn’t like hurting people. It was an unfortunate side effect of heroism, something that had to be done in order to fix things. Some people needed to be hurt to keep them from hurting other people and it sucked, but it was the job.

Miles didn’t like hurting people, but he wanted to hurt this man now. He hadn’t felt rage like this since Aaron’s death, hadn’t felt fury this deep since he’d begged the people he’d worked with them to let him make it right. I have to make him pay. You have to let me make him pay! He hated that feeling, but he clung to it now. It was better than the electricity surging through him, better than the aching in his jaw, better than the sting of the cuts on his torso. That feeling, at least, was one he could control.

Things went on for a while after that. The man asked rhetorical questions that he answered with his experiments. Did the super strength that allowed him to swing without tiring out make the bones in his fingers stronger to compensate? The scientist bent back three of his fingers until they snapped before deciding on no. Did Miles have retractable claws, the way some spiders did? The man yanked out a fingernail from each hand before settling on no again. Every terrible question came with a more terrible form of answer and, by the time the man folded his toolkit back in on itself, Miles was exhausted.

The man looked down at him, and Miles knew he was expecting another joke. And he tried. He really did. He tried to be like Peter, like Jess, like Daisy or Natasha or Jessica. Any one of them would have hit the guy with a quip right then, even tired and beat to hell. Any one of them would have kept going, but Miles couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He closed his eyes until he heard footsteps retreating, kept them clamped tightly shut as the door opened and shut.

By his count, he’d made it the better part of three days before the quips stopped.

He tried to tell himself that was an accomplishment.

#(𝖙𝖍��𝖞'𝖗𝖊 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖔𝖓 𝖒𝖊. || self para)#self: sharp objects #tw: kidnapping #tw: torture #tw: experimentation #tw: mutilation #tw: violence

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kewltie · 7 years ago

Text

wingsfic bakudeku, where 20 years ago midoriya izuku went missing along with numerous other quirkless kids and that incident had haunted bakugou ever since. years later bakugou found him alive and with a pair of wings on his back.

so as part of an agency wide collab, bakugou (a rising top hero that is making a name for himself and quickly climbing the ranks) participate in a raid on one of the most dangerous underground human trafficking groups. they managed to rescue a lot of people that was taken and about to declared it a success when one of the heroes notice there’s a hidden room where they found a cage built so large that it could fit several people in it, and in there bakugou discovered a young man with green curls and greener eyes that had haunted his dream since he was a child.

years ago when bakugou and deku were still children and after they found out that deku is quirkless and bakugou started to push him away. deku went missing one day and never came back. though it has never been bakugou’s fault that incident alone made him feel a tremendous amount of guilt over it and his guilt over izuku’s disappearance fuel his drive to become a hero even more bc if he become a hero he’ll never have to feel what it’s like to lose someone again, that sense of helplesness as a child where he couldn’t do anything while the adult argues and fight over what to do about izuku’s disappearance and ended up not being able to do ANYTHING AT ALL, and maybe just maybe he can find izuku again. in some part of the way he’s also carrying izuku’s dream on his shoulder bc if izuku cant become one than he’ll become one for the both of them.

bakugou never once forgot izuku and though he had seemingly moved on from it like the entire world had forgotten about the 20 or so missing quirkless kids that had inflamed the public and then it died down bc well quirkless kids. inko never gave up and chased after every lead to find her boy and with it she disappeared too, hunting for every clues of izuku. so now bakugou is older, wiser, and harden and he’s finally coming face to face with the boy that had been the fuel of his many endeavors.

“deku?” bakugou says, and izuku’s eyes immediately lights up in recognition.

“kacchan!” he answers, wings fluttering excitedly in the back.

so izuku NEVER had wings in the first place yet 20 years later he’s older now and he got wings?? he’s immediately sent to a medical facility once they free him from the cage and kept bakugou away bc HE SPENT YEARS SEARCHING FOR IZUKU LIKE HE’S GOING TO LET IZUKU GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT HIM NOW. where they examined him and what they discovered that the wings are natural and that his body is riddled with scars but otherwise he seems healthy and mentally sound???

they had to interrogate izuku bc how the fuck did he get these wings and what had happened to him all these years but izuku’s mouth is shut and he refuse to talk to anyone except bakugou bc basically during izuku’s captivity through all the terrible experimention and torture izuku’s escape into his head and like to imagine what would kacchan do bc surely kacchan can survive this and will make it out of here. that mantra became izuku’s fuels to survive through everything so yea the obsession ended become two way street despite the distance and years separating them. it definitely isn’t love (yet) but just mutual obsession sparked by guilt and self hatred (bakugou) or survival instinct and hope (deku).

so after not getting anything from izuku’s they have no idea what to do with him bc he’s legally an adult but his mom is still missing when she went off to search for him and there’s no close relatives so WHAT DO THEY DO??? turn out bakugou have an answer for them and he’s willing to put in a lot of fight to take izuku into his home and under his guardianship.

bakugou spent the majority of izuku’s lost years training and fighting and learning to be best hero he can be so he’s not really equipped to take care of a person let alone someone who went through such a harsh ordeal like izuku. but he got FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, and FAMILY at his back who push their way into bakugou’s life bc bakugou’s singular focus to be number one and to find izuku’s again may have taken over his life but he still managed to have a lot of people care for him in the end which he is still very much confused about lolol. anyway, here are these two people who may be the center of each other focus for years but don’t actually know how to be around each other bc again YEARS APART and bakugou is a pro hero so he’s busy with his own career and now he has to deal with izuku and those wings on his back.

first he found out though the wings are pretty large but they’re seemingly useless bc deku can’t use to them to fly???? so it’s a mere decoration or something??? but deku’s emotions are linked to his wings so when he’s happy they flutter and when he’s sad they drooped or his feathers start to shed (which bakugou’s quickly found out when he got home super late one night from a loooong ass patrol and he forgot to warn izuku’s about it and izuku’s panic AND HIS WINGS START TO SHED AND NOW BAKUGOU LIVING ROOM IS FILL WITH STRAY FEATHERS). also his wings seem to be taken with bakugou bc whenever they sit on the couch together (cuddles REALLY LET’S BE CLEAR HERE) izuku’s wings like to curl around bakugou and bakugou pretends to hate it but quietly he enjoy it. HE ESPECIALLY ENJOY WINGS GROOMING DEKU like picking out the stray feathers to stop the shedding and straightens out the feathers etc. all of these built up the closeness toward each other slowly and surely till it is pretty normal to find bakugou’s raking his fingers through izuku’s wings absently or when he’s stress.

for bakugou personally his decades long obsession with finding izuku again isn’t just cure bc izuku is here now but the guilt still linger and he always feel like he could do better for izuku. izuku though his ordeal is done with but the nightmares still continue for him bc you don’t instantly get over years of torture so while he seems to easily bond with bakugou, he closed off on other people which is ironic bc bakugou is the one usually closed off but bc it isn’t healthy for the two of them stuck only with each other as their therapist suggest (they both get theraphy ordained by bakugou’s agency and izuku’s doctor) so by pushing izuku to be open up more to others that end up forcing bakugou to open up himself consequently. so as much as this story revolve around the recovery of izuku but also it’s a way for bakugou to heal himself from his own personal trauma of having to lose izuku.

i can see their romance built SO SLOWWWWWWWWWW LIKE EPIC slow bc they’re still recovering ppl so romance take second place to it but ALL THE DOMESTICITY AND INTIMACY THAT BRIDGED THEIR RELATIONSHIP TOWARD SOMETHING MORE EVENTUALLY. like how deku doesn’t sleep in the guest room or a bed but nest on the floor of katsuki’s room, using bakugou’s pillows, blankets, and mostly his clothes to layer his nest bc being around bakugou make him feel comfortable and safe so he wants to be enclose with everything that is bakugou. and sometimes when izuku’s nightmares get really bed and bakugou is woken up by it and he’ll get izuku on to his bed and they’re sleep with deku on his stomach bc wings and the wings splayed over katsuki’s body almost like a protective barrier. and how bakugou had never live with anyone before so while he already know how to cook and clean and take care of himself he is learning how to share his space with someone and that raising his voice doesn’t solve everything, how to consider other feelings, to navigate the minefield of interpersonal relationships, and to learn and care for himself as well as izuku (in the past his main focus is on his job so he doesn’t really take time to on himself) bc if he neglect himself he can’t care for izuku. they’re slowly learning how to be with each other and the love that is quietly nurture b/t them.

during that time, izuku despite losing more than half of his life in captivity had never once given up his dream of being a hero and that when he’s home alone he keep track of bakugou’s movement through social media & the news and everytime bakugou get in to a fight he worry and frets a lot and wish he could be a part of it and help. i think it super important to give izuku back his agency again and that izuku chose to become hero despite everything and bakugou doesn’t hesitate or pause about that idea bc he knows how strong izuku is so if he want to be a hero than bakugou will move the world to make it happen.

i imagine a lot of things happen in this story like inko and izuku’s reunion that will eventually happen, bakugou fighting TOOTH AND NAIL W/ THE GOVERNING HERO AUTHORITY TO GET IZUKU’S HIS PRO HERO LICENSE DESPITE HIM NEVER GOING TO A HERO SCHOOL, the dismantling of the group that kidnapped and experimented on izuku (basically plot), to izuku training with bakugou to learn how to fight and defend himself, izuku using his wings and learning to fly for the first time, bakugou realizing how much his friends and family care for him and put up with his shit, and ofc izuku and bakugou’s slow building romance finally bear fruit.

so this is the story how despite all the odds and horrendous trauma on him, izuku still become a hero anyway, quirk or no quirk. also wings bc let’s not forget that!!!

#bakudeku #not!fic #i have a lot of feelings about wings #fic: wings of icarus

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starcats1219 · 3 years ago

Text

Surface Changes

Chapter 3

Masterpost - ao3 - previous chapter - next chapter

warnings: talk of torture and human experimentation

Not everyone was happy with Logan's volunteering.

"Are you out of your mind?" Roman hissed as he sat in a chair in Logan's room, the other man walking around and preparing his duffle bag of essential items.

"What was I supposed to do, Roman? No one else was volunteering." Logan shot back, stuffing a change of clothes into the bag, "Besides, tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing if you weren't injured."

The other man was silent, and Logan nodded.

"See? I'm right and you know it. Why do you have such an issue with this anyways? We do dangerous missions all the time."

Roman stood up, limping over to Logan, who had turned back to his desk, looking over items to pack. He put his hands on the other's shoulders and turned him so they were face to face.

"I just-" He stopped, taking a breath, "I just don't want you to get hurt. You'll be out there, all by yourself, no one to help you, and I- Logan, I don't know what I'd do with myself if you got hurt, and I wasn't there. We're partners, it feels weird to see you going into the field without me."

Logan laughed slightly, "And how do you think I felt when you joined in with that banshee mission and landed yourself a broken leg?" He sobered slightly, "But seriously, Roman. You know I know what I'm doing. I'll be safe, and I'll be back here completely intact before you know it. I promise."

Roman quickly wrapped his partner in a hug, holding him tight for several moments, Logan bugging back just as hard. Once they let go, Roman smiled slightly.

"I'm holding you to that promise, nerdy wolverine."

Logan threw his head back in laughter, before helping Roman limp back to his designated spot in his chair.

Patton sat across from the boy, Virgil, if he remembers correctly. Mr. Sanders had asked him to try and talk to the spider-like man, hoping he could gain some information that could help Logan as he went to investigate the facility. Virgil had already given them a location, but they were hoping for more. A motive, who else was there, what exactly happened to Virgil and the others, anything they could find. Not only that, but Patton hoped he could help the obviously traumatized man who had spent who knows how long trapped and tortured.

"So, Virgil," Patton asked as gently as he could, waiting for the nervous man to glance in his direction before continuing, "where did you grow up? What was your family like?"

He shrugged, then tensed, as if he was scared that by not answering the question properly he would be punished. Patton felt his heart break for the man in front of him. Right before Patton was about to assure him he didn't need to answer and move on to the next question, Virgil opened his mouth to speak.

"Can't remember. It's all just her."

It was quiet but audible. Patton could feel rage bubbling up inside him, the fact that Virgil couldn't remember his own family because he had been trapped for so long. He suppressed it though, not wanting to express his rage with Virgil in the room and freak him out more. Instead, he'd wait until he was alone, and no one could hear him scream and cry for the lost childhood of this man and the others like him.

He tried a different approach, keeping his voice as steady and calm as possible. "Why did she do this to you, Virgil? To the others?"

The man blinked a couple of times, eyes focusing on nothing as he began to talk in a monotone voice.

"She would talk about it sometimes. Someone did it to her when she was a kid, a curse of some kind, merged her DNA with a dragon, and gave her a reptile eye, scales, wings and a tail. She went mad trying to find a way to reverse the effects and turn herself back into what she was before. So she started kidnapping people, around the age she had been and started doing experiments. She merged our DNA with other animals, ones that had a feature that was similar to hers. That part always worked. Then, she'd do more experiments, trying to reverse what she had done, seeing if she could fix herself. It never did anything, made it worse in some cases, but she never stopped."

Patton sat there, tears building in his eyes, listening to how Virgil went into detail about the experiments he and the others were put through, the pain and the cells and the workers that did nothing to stop it. Just as he was about to intervene, to tell Virgil he could stop, the man said one more thing.

"There were others. My cell was originally this other guy's, Toby. He had been merged with a rhino, horn and everything. One day he went off for his time with the witch, and never came back. I got his cell after that, you could see where he had carved into the wall with the horn, trying to leave some sort of mark on the world. There are only three of us left, now. I left them though. I escaped and left them behind and now they probably think that I'm-" Virgil began to breathe quickly, muttering about abandoning family and death. Patton kneeled down beside where he had begun to rock back and forth and did his best to calm him down.

"Virgil, I need you to breathe with me, okay? I need you to breathe in for 4 counts, can you do that for me?"

He went through the breathing pattern with the other man until he had begun to calm down. After a few moments of sitting with Virgil, the man seemed to find his voice again and asked if they could be done for the day. Patton assured him that he didn't need to say anything else and that he'd show the worn-out man somewhere he could rest. The two got up, and Patton led him to one of their unused medical care rooms, complete with a well-made bed and some warm broth.

"I knew you'd want to lay down and have some food eventually," the medic said as Virgil stared at him quizzically, "so I asked someone to set this all up for you." The other man looked grateful, before muttering a thanks and settling in. Patton smiled tightly, before leaving, and letting Virgil be.

Logan and Patton sat together across from Mr. Sanders in the man's office. They were there to relay what Patton had learned to Logan, and for the three of them to go over the plan for Logan's mission and to discuss all the safety risks so everyone was prepared. Roman had wanted to join in as the remaining member of their team, but being injured and not a direct part of this particular mission was denied. However, he was waiting outside Mr. Sanders’ office so that when they were done he could say goodbye to Logan.

Inside the office, things were tense. Mr. Sanders was still reluctant to let Logan complete the mission on his own, and, after hearing from Virgil, Patton was thinking the same thing. Yet, Logan was stubborn as ever that he could do this, and that anyone else with him would just make things more dangerous.

Patton told Logan all he had learned, the agent taking notes dutifully. He got basic descriptions of people at the facility, both the Dragon Witch and her workers, but also the other two experimented on, Janus and Remus. The primary goal was to find the two of them and get out safely, apprehending the Dragon Witch and her team would take more than one person.

Finally, the briefing was finished, and the three got up to leave Mr. Sanders’ office. As they left, Roman got up from his position and joined them as they made their way to the entrance of the agency. They stopped right by the elevator, and the small entourage took a moment to look around.

Looked at all the people bustling around the space, sparing the group curious glances every once in a while. At the people filling out paperwork, talking over coffee, or just taking a moment to themselves. At the normalcy of it all.

"Alright everyone," Logan spoke, making his voice sound braver than he felt, "This is it."

Roman ran into his partner with a bone-crushing hug, whispered something in his ear only meant for them. Once the two had finished with their goodbyes, Patton stepped forward, enveloping Logan into a hug as well, a tear filled "Good luck" and a head nod exchanged between the two. Finally, Logan shook hands with Mr. Sanders, the boss hoping that the next time he saw this agent, he was alive and well.

"I have total faith in you, Logan."

"Thank you, sir. I will not disappoint."

Logan stepped into the elevator and turned around to face those closest to him.

"I'll see you all soon."

And the doors shut, leaving Logan alone to his mission.

#Surface Changes #sanders sides #fanfiction #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #ts big bang

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talking-head-productions · 7 years ago

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The entire plot of Steven universe but with human office workers:

MAJOR SPOILAGE!!!!

there's a big conglomerate run by a family of matriarchs

years ago the youngest matriarch was given control of a new, very small branch

one of the security guards, concerned about the company's resource management, basically staged a coup

she recruited the matriarch's secretary and the gayest gay couple (one creates stock predictive algorithms, the other was lower tier security), among others

there was a security civil war, more or less, and the young matriarch was assassinated

the other matriarchs decided to abandon that branch, and the town that existed around it; but first, they broadcast a signal on the 'rebel' frequencies that basically made anyone who heard it go insane (sounds science fiction, but might be possible irl)

meanwhile, the town itself is mostly fine. The remaining 'rebels' build a house and just live there for a while

they also adopt a little feral child orphan

eventually the leader falls in love with a traveling rock star and they have a kid, but she dies in childbirth

the others start teaching the kid how to be a badass, 'cause they're now a group of vigilantes hunting the crazy people

meanwhile, in a secret sub-basement of the office building, a group of super crazies jacked up on all kinds of experimental steroids are being kept alive thanks to automated systems. There's a timer though, and when it finishes a door will open...

one of the remaining matriarchs gets it in her head that they should check on the super crazies

she picks out a random engineer and tells the engineer to travel to the office in the far off town

the engineer gets there and no sooner sets down on the helipad than she sees someone has been there recently. She freaks out and leaves

not long before that, the newly badass kid found a traumatized young woman who was locked up by the matriarch's people, even though she was on their side. This young woman still blames the 'rebels' for her plight

the young woman manages to escape the town and heads off to corporate headquarters

the engineer gets back to headquarters and decides to explore using drones. When she does, she finds the 'rebels' snooping around in the office building

she reports this at about the same time as the traumatized girl returns

they raise such a stink that the matriarch decides to send them back with their best security guard, some fancy new weapons, and a fucking tank

and when they get there... turns out the security guard is from the old days and had a personal beef with the badass kid's mom. She tries to kidnap him, almost kills the lesbians, and the whole thing becomes a massive shitstorm. And then the tank blows up

the traumatized girl was being abused by the security guard, so she chains the guard up and drags her off to a secret torture chamber for a while...

everything kinda goes back to normal for a little bit... except the engineer managed to get away, there are still lingering personality issues with the 'rebels', and no one knows about the imminent threat of the super crazies

then the engineer manages to get to the sub-basement, sets a couple of the crazies loose, and paints a target on her back

and then she gets captured

and then she realizes that if she doesn't cooperate they're all gonna die

so she tells them about the super crazies and they believe her of course

they decide to find a solution to the problem, and the engineer decides that this town isn't so bad, maybe it doesn't deserve to be fucked off the map

so she reaches out to her boss via an old private and secure line she stole from an off-site lab at the edge of town

and basically gets told to let herself die, so she goes 'fuck you' and joins the rebels... only too late realizing she didn't exactly think this all through

and then the traumatized girl and the security guard return, having formed a weird co-dependent, mutually abusive relationship, and they plan on totally fucking up the rebels

which thankfully the rebels are able to separate them and defuse the situation

and then the badass kid and the engineer accidentally their way into making the super crazies not so crazy anymore, though still unfit to live among the normies so they leave 'em in the basement

and then the engineer and the traumatized girl start living together and they make such a cute couple

but then the security guard goes full nutso

she starts using the lower-tier crazies as servants/an army and she tries to fight the rebels

only to get infected with crazy herself and the engineer locks her in a cage after the badass kid and the feral child beat her up

among this, the badass kid finds another traumatized prisoner, this one an old rebel and a weapons expert

she doesn't show her trauma at first, and just seems glad to be back and among friends

then she reveals it was the kid's mom who locked her away for suggesting they kill the matriarchs

and the knife-maker attacks the kid and the kid locks her away again

and then the poor badass kid finds out his mom actually did kill a matriarch, the youngest one, and that's why everybody from headquarters hates him and the rebels so much

and he's really freaked out about all this

and then one of the matriarchs shows up in town and kidnaps his dad

so he and the rebels go to to rescue the dad and find what seems like a whole zoo filled with people and it's freakish but they can't do anything except escape

and they can't even rescue the other prisoners

and then the matriarchs send a sort of repo team, consisting of a midget sociopath who takes everything literally and a pair of former pro wrestlers that have half a brain cell between them

and these three kidnap a bunch more people to take to the zoo

and the badass kid, feeling really confused and guilty, decides to give himself up to pay for his mom's crimes if they'll leave everyone else alone

he gets taken back to headquarters, but about halfway there it turns out one of his civilian friends accidentally stowed away

and when they get to headquarters, this kid is put into a mock trial, total kangaroo court

and he's of course found guilty at first

but then his assigned corporate lawyer starts finding holes in the assassination story that just don't make sense

and then the kid and his friend drive a matriarch's car out the goddamn window of headquarters and manage to survive, landing in a garbage dump

where they're attacked by security drones, and one explodes and basically kills the kid's friend

thankfully it doesn't stick, the kid is able to heal him, but is his friend now technically a zombie? No one knows

but they also meet a bunch of homeless people that the matriarchs have been abusing, and the zombie friend becomes their leader

the badass kid manages to find a secret tunnel and gets back to his home really quickly, freaking everyone out

but they're all just happy he's back

but the engineer and trauma girl are even more freaked out, and they decide to leave town

only the engineer decides that she likes town too much to leave

so the two break up

trauma girl takes all their worldly possessions and leaves

and the engineer gets the dog

and then the badass kid gets to digging into the past and he realizes that maybe the secretary rebel might've been the real assassin

only for her to reveal that the young matriarch and the kid's mom were one and the same

and everybody freaks out

the lesbians almost break up over it

and the secretary has to explain how the matriarch realized her company was super shady but her family wouldn't listen to her

so she adopted an alternate persona and staged a rebellion

but then she felt so much happier in her new persona, she decided to fake her death and take the rebellion all the way

and she was mainly inspired by the lesbians

so the lesbians decide to stay together, and get married

and the kid lets that knife maker out of prison

and the whole town is invited

until two of the matriarchs show up at the after party with a pair of fucking attack helicopters

one of them tries unleashing the super crazies, only they're no longer crazy and they love the kid who saved them, so they attack that matriarch

and the other tries killing the wedding party, but she fails because they're all badasses and also trauma girl shows back up and goes full emo goth angst warrior on her ass

and then both the choppers get wrecked and the matriarchs are about to murder everybody with their bare hands

when the kid rushes out and reveals that he's basically their nephew

and then suddenly their all too happy to stop and help

and so now their mission is to go back to headquarters and convince the fourth matriarch to help

but everybody is nervous because the fourth is fucking schizo or something and she's apparently prone to violent rages, and they even view her as some kind of vengeful god

and when they get to headquarters, the fourth immediately has the kid escorted to her, acts really creepy, and then locks him in a corner office.

#steven universe #spoilers #au #sorta #actually i'm not sure what this is #just read it it's fun

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k0saji · 7 years ago

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To Carry Your Heart With These Bloodstained Hands

Title: To Carry Your Heart With These Bloodstained Hands

Author: Kosaji

Rating: M

Pairing: Gokudera Hayato/ Rokudo Mukuro

Prompt: Cloud Day - Kidnapping

Tags/Warnings: Medical Torture, Body Horror, Child Abuse, Human Experimentation, Blood and Violence, Gore, Canon Divergence

AO3 Link

Summary: The world isn't a kind or safe place. Hayato finds out the hard way when he's kidnapped by the Estraneo.

The streets aren't a safe place for children, Hayato finds out the hard way after two weeks spent cold and hungry.

"Hi there kiddo, you lost?" A man in nice clothes and a bright smile asks him. Hayato backs up suspiciously and shakes his head. "No? Don't be scared, I just have a few questions for you," the man says, stepping forward as Hayato takes another step back.

"Leave me alone," Hayato says, turning to run away. Something gets kicked behind him and he jumps, catching the sight of another man with a rag clutched in his hand before it's wrapped around his nose and mouth.

His fingers claw at the hand as he kicks back, trying to get free. The smell of the chemicals in the cloth make him nauseous and soon his struggles weaken as he falls unconscious and is taken away.

Soft sobs wrack through him as Hayato tries to keep quiet. The other children, many around Hayato's age or older ignore him, already numb to their situation. A squeaky hiccup escapes him and he sees three others flinch at the noise, huddled in groups on the floor.

Hayato tries the breathing exercises one of the older girls showed him when he first woke up here days, weeks ago? He doesn't remember. No one knows what time it is, there's no clock or calendar in the room.

Tears still block his vision and he blinks hard, rubbing his eyes with his gown. They took his clothes from him, leaving him in a hospital gown just like all the other children. Food came three times a day, along with water and nothing else. The only time someone comes to the room is to take a child.

Sometimes they never come back.

Hayato slowly crawls out of the corner he tucked himself into, not looking down at his arms or the white bandages spotted with dried blood. One of the children, a blond boy called Ken moves over, making room for him under the blankets and thin mats they were given to sleep on.

"Still bleeding?" Chikusa asks from the other side of Ken. Hayato shakes his head and pulls the blanket up higher, huddling with the two boys for warmth.

"They cut to the bone, I don't think the drug did what it was supposed to," Hayato whispers, always a whisper. Toni's death is still fresh in their minds, a small body just tossed aside because he fought too much. Ken growls, the sound reverberating through his chest deeper than normal through whatever modifications they made to him this week. "You?"

Ken answers for him, "Poison testing again. He couldn't feel his legs, piyon."

Hayato's stomach twists in commiseration. He knows what its like to be poisoned again and again.

The door opens and everyone freezes in place. One of the researchers, a man with stitches running over his face, looks at the children, some hiding under blankets while other keep their heads down, faces averted, until he finds Hayato and walks over to him.

"Let's go," he grabs Hayato by the arm, not the injured one to his relief, and pulls him out the door. Hayato tries to drag his bare feet against the tile but the researcher gives him a cold look and switches his hold to the other arm, pressing against the bandages in warning. The rest of the walk to the labs is done in silence, Hayato trailing behind sullenly but not actively resisting.

They enter a different lab than the ones he's usually dragged to. A lady in a white coat taps her foot impatiently while standing next to a raised table. Hayato catches sight of dull grey metal behind her before he's hoisted up onto the operating table, his body set upwards in sitting position with his hands and legs are strapped down with thick brown straps going across one side of the table to the other.

"What are you doing?" Hayato demands as the lady picks up the gun from the table. His heart beats furiously in his chest as he struggles against the restraints. He's not dying here, he's NOT.

More people must have come in while he wasn't looking. Hands clamps down his shoulders and yank his head back by the hair, forcing him to watch as the gun is pointed not at him but at one of the researchers.

The gun goes off, the bang much louder than he expects and the man drops, blood pooling around his head. Hayato watches, sick to his stomach as the lady scientist ignores the body and starts a timer. His head pounds in time to his heartbeat as relief and fear keep him tense on the chair, not willing to call attention to himself. He doesn't know what's going on, doesn't realize what's happening till a giddy laugh escapes him.

No. It's not him. It's not HIM!

Hayato squirms, trying to free a hand, a leg, anything, giggling all the while as a foreign presence presses against his head.

"Go away!" Hayato says, voice hitching and ignores the fascinated gleam in the scientists eyes. The weight in his head increases, memories not his own filling his mind and Hayato screams.

"Oh my, he really is a stubborn thing," Hayato's mouth speaks. No, that's wrong, he's not Hayato he's-

"Are you in full control, Eduard?" The lady scientist asks, making a note on her clipboard. The timer in her hands is gone, and Hayato watches from the very back of his head as his body nods, feet moving back and forth as his hands flex.

"Let's start then," the lady scientist says, pulling a recorder out of her pocket. Pressing a button she starts narrating. "Subject A has been previous injected with Drug 4097Z and showed no signs of distress. Trials will now begin on Flame Activation. Volunteer E has control of Subject A and will attempt to use Sun flames." The woman nods to Eduard.

Heat surges through him as Eduard focuses, pulling something out of Hayato's body to dance along his fingers. Fire, his hand is on fire, Hayato thinks faintly, ready any moment for the pain to kick in.

It doesn't burn, in fact the pain lessens. The throbbing of his arm is down to a dull ache while the stiffness in his muscles from being trapped in a small room loosens, leaving him almost light-headed with relief.

"Experiment success, Elda," Eduard says, letting the fire sink into Hayato's skin and disappear. The foreign presence disappears and Hayato is back in control.

His stomach rolls as he watches the man, Eduard, get up from the floor and dust himself off. There isn't a scratch on him, not even a scar from the gun. Eduard smiles at Hayato before walking past him, towards another man with a clipboard and an eyepatch.

"Next experiment, after initial possession Subject A will be encouraged to access Sun flames to determine if Drug 4097Z can indeed speed up Flame Activation."

A scalpel is pressed to his left arm. Hayato screams as the blade sinks into flesh, blood dripping down to hit the ground as his arm is cut along his forearm. It burns, and he can't hear them at first when they tell him to heal himself. A harsh slap shuts him up and he takes deep sobbing breaths as he tries to pull on that warm feeling again.

He tries and tries, but each time he feels like he's got it, that he can grab that warmth and pull it out it escapes. The blood loss makes him dizzy, and his head lolls back against the head rest.

"Experiment failed. Volunteer F will possess and induce Flame expression in Subject A." The lady- no, her name is Elda. Names are important, Hayato reminds himself, Elda's voice holds no inflection, no sympathy. Just disappointment that an experiment failed and curiosity for what results can be gathered like every other time she runs experiments with them.

Heavy eyes watch as another man, this one older, with white hair and crooked nose arrives and takes the gun. One bang later the old man's on the ground and in his head, Hayato too tired to even put up a fight against the intrusion.

Trapped in the back of his head, Hayato feels no pain as he feels the old man wiggle his toes and fingers. Sparks run up his spine instead of the warm feeling as the man focuses inwards like the other one did. The pull is the same but the warmth feels more jagged, almost prickly.

"What the hell?" His mouth asks. Elda's watching with wide eyes as green runs up and down his body before yellow replaces it, healing his cut.

"Subject A has shown Lightning flames alongside Sun flames. Volunteer F has a Lightning primary with a Sun secondary. Further testing is required to see if Drug 4097Z can allow different flame expression or if Subject A simply has a Lightning secondary," Elda records quickly, a smile stretching across her mouth that Hayato knows is not good news.

"Bring in the next volunteer."

It's dark when he wakes up, strapped to the damn table again. Two months pass since they first start using the Possession bullet, Hayato only knows because while Elda keeps any information on date and time away from him the people digging through his brain aren't as careful.

Eduardo, Francesca, Lorenzo, Gabriel, Hayato can barely keep himself separate from their memories as they activate his flames over and over again.

They are starting a new set of experiments, Hayato can tell from Elda's delighted smile. She's always happiest when she thinks up new tortures for them to go through. He doesn't know what else they can do, they already managed to get him to use six out of seven flames.

He recoils at the sight of the gun Elda places on the table as a small figure is guided to the room. The girl can't be older than twelve, with dirty blonde hair that falls limply around her ears.

"Experiment series beta will now begin," Elda says into her ever present recorder. If he ever gets out that, along with the gun, is the first thing he'll destroy. "Subject A has shown to be fully Flame active. This series of experiments will determine if possession of a Flame active individual will allow flame activation in the possessor." She points the gun at the girl. "Remember, do this and maybe your group will get extra rations tonight. Maybe extra time in the shower if you are successful." She pulls the trigger and the girl crumples.

And here we go, Hayato thinks as he immediately feels the girl settling into his body. American, is the first thing he realizes. Her thoughts are all in English. Hayato- no- Wendy, that's her name screams as their memories slip together.

It's the worst thing Hayato/Wendy ever felt. They couldn't tell where one begins and the other ends, whose memories belong to who. There is a profound sense of shame as their worst memories are brought to the surface, exposed to a stranger with no way to stop. Private thoughts, desires, dreams, everything is shared between the two till they get a shock from the scientist.

Right, flames. They think and focus, look for the memories. Red, violent flames erupt from his hands, his because Wendy never even heard of flames before her kidnapping. Hayato grasps that difference, the gap in knowledge and pulls himself from Wendy, retreating into the space in his mind that's become so familiar.

He still hates it, sitting back and watching a stranger use his body, but it is better than the mind meld. He watches as a fist comes to his face, knocking him out and Wendy out of his body. He falls into the darkness gratefully, and wishes he could stay there forever.

It would be better than what's coming.

When he wakes up its to a seven year old boy crying at gunpoint and he realizes he's right.

Its almost one month of experiments as kids are shot in front of him and he's possessed. It's so much harder than when it was with adults; their minds were organized and at least they kept mental shields- the kids never have them. It becomes second nature to retreat into his head, to escape the whirlwind of confusion, fear and panic as his memories and the kids' memories bleed into each other. He learns to shove the memory of flames at them, to give the sick bastards what they want so he gets left alone for a few more hours, no tests, no check ups, no damn guns.

They bring in a boy this time, one with blue hair and a sullen expression. Better than the ones that cry, Hayato thinks as the gun is pointed at Blue's head. The boy raises his head to lock gazes with Hayato, who blinks in surprise as the boy keeps eye contact, no fear or anger on his face.

The bullet hits and Hayato lurches against his bindings.

He's wrong about the anger. This boy is angry, so so angry as he watches through Hayato's eyes as his body is ignored on the floor as their captors wait for Blue to learn how to activate his flames. Blue's attention turns to Hayato and he braces for the next part.

There is silence for a beat and then-

"My name isn't Blue."

Hayato jerks as he's pulled away, out of his safe corner and into a meadow. Sunlight, warm and bright fills the space and blinds him. He shoves his face into his knees, arms covering his eyes as he kneels on something soft and fresh smelling.

Grass? Hayato cracks open one eye slightly, looking down at the green, green grass poking up between his feet. Slowly and carefully he opens his eyes all the way, blinking at all the color surrounding him. He pokes at a patch of wildflowers and the petals feel like satin, soft and smooth and real.

"It isn't real," the same boy from before says, stepping next to Hayato.

"Feels real," Hayato says, still rubbing the petal between his fingers.

Blue laughs, short and harsh. "It's an illusion, I made it," he says proudly, sitting down on a rock that wasn't there before. Or maybe Hayato didn't notice it.

So they are still with the damn Estraneo, Hayato digs his other hand into the ground and pulls out a clump of grass in frustration.

"What's your name?" Blue finally asks probably tired of Hayato destroying his illusion.

"Hayato Gokudera. You?"

"Vincenzo."

And that's how Hayato meets the boy who will become Mukuro Rokudo.

They take Vincenzo away, ripping the illusory world to pieces as Hayato's body is shocked repeatedly to force him out. Hayato shudders through the aftershocks as he's dragged out and tossed back into the common room with the rest of the kids. He lands on his front and stays there, his legs are too unsteady to help him up.

One of the kids, Ariana, he recognizes from the stitches covering her arms, crawls over and starts to drag him along, back into the nest of blankets. His limbs are still numb but he tries to help, and together they crawl across the floor and into the group.

No one asks if he's ok and Hayato prefers it that way. He's been in the heads of most of these children, the only exceptions being those who are tapped for other experiments that can't be interfered with, like Ken. He knows them all better than he knew his own family, to the point where sometimes its hard to tell if something he remembered was actually his own memory or someone else.

He falls asleep, cold and in pain and wakes up warm, with the scent of wildflowers in the air. He's back in Vincenzo's meadow.

He gets up and looks around at the flower covered meadow, and walks. The illusion is good, he can feel the grass bend underneath his bare feet, the flowers tickle at his shins as the sun warms his sickly white skin. Mist flames, a memory that's not his provides, the power to hide and deflect attention. It's useful, so useful even if this is the only thing Vincenzo can do.

There's a tree planted nearby, with Vincenzo sitting under it, arms crossed over one knee as he watches Hayato expectantly.

"Can you do this to anyone?" Hayato asks, taking a seat in front of him. He doesn't go into the shade, wanting to bask in the sunlight longer.

Vincenzo shakes his head with a small, secretive smile. "Only those who are similar to me, or people who I've shared a mind with."

Oh, Hayato plays with the grass. That's too bad. He thought maybe some of the other kids would like to stay in the sun for a little while. Ken would like this, a wide open space to run. Ellen, Marco and Daniella all like flowers too.

Liked. Hayato tugs at the grass harder. Daniella is in a coma, but Marco and Ellen were considered failed experiments and removed.

Removed, killed, tossed out like garbage.

So many have died since Hayato was brought here, Ariana, Matteo, Gus, Chikusa, Ken and Willma are the only ones left from the group. How long has it been, months? A year?

How long is Hayato going to last?

A butterfly flutters past and Hayato watches its journey, feeling old. "Do you think you'll die here?" It's a morbid thought, here in the light and surrounded by beauty.

"I've already died. Three times now." Vincenzo stares across the meadow with an enigmatic smile.

"...are you a ghost?" Hayato asks, wide-eyed with wonder. On one hand, awesome, a real life U.M.A! But on the other hand this kid died. How does that work anyways? He saw him get shot with the bullet. Maybe he's half ghost? Hayato goes to ask when Vincenzo bursts out laughing, clutching his belly and kicking out with his feet. Hayato curls up, his shoulders rising to his ears.

"You could just say no," he mutters, as Vincenzo's laughs slow to giggles.

"Sorry, sorry," Vincenzo says, sitting up again this time facing Hayato. "That was the funniest thought. Am I ghost or am I really here? Am I Vincenzo Estraneo" the name is spat out with fury, "or am I the ghost wandering through the second realm?"

"What?" Hayato says. Second realm? This is getting just a little too weird, even for his taste, maybe he should leave.

"The second realm of existence. I went there the second time I died and reincarnated as a ghost, cursed to starve forever. It was better than the first or third realm. Hell isn't very fun," Vincenzo giggles creepily.

"That sounds like shit," Hayato deadpans, watching Vincenzo warily. The other boy laughs again, loosing the creepy smile and nods.

"Yes! Absolutely horrible. But I gained the ability to create real illusions so there's that."

Personally Hayato didn't think dying is worth any bullshit magical ability but what did he know? He was only eight. Or nine.

How old is he now?

Vincenzo keeps talking about the paths of Samsara, about the other two paths he walked when they killed him again and again. How one life he had all his fingernails pulled out and how he learned to fight with the trident he pulls out of thin air.

"It's my mind, I can make weapons if I want to," Vincenzo says smugly when Hayato yells at him, heart still pounding in fright when the trident was stabbed down in front of him. Vincenzo kindly drops sticks of explosives in Hayato's lap and invites him to a fight.

Hayato loses, turns out fighting someone in their own mind is not easy, down right impossible if that mind is Vincenzo's.

"Let's not do that again," Hayato pants out, sprawled like a starfish on the ground. He kicks weakly at Vincenzo when the other boys smirks down at him, leaning on his trident but still standing.

"That's fine, it's time for you to wake up anyways," Vincenzo's face shutters, the sly happiness gone as the meadow looses its color, turning black and white. "Try not to die anytime soon."

"Wait," Hayato scrambles up, "Can you bring me here again?" He sounds desperate, he knows it but he's beyond shame and the loss of this wonderful mindscape chills him to the bone. Vincenzo looks surprised but nods just as the illusion unravels and Hayato wakes up to someone dragging him out of the room.

It's more experiments again, more people shot and digging their fingers into his head and him digging back just to keep some level of control. After another week, in which Chikusa comes back with bandages over his eyes and Gus coming down with a harsh cough, Hayato gets pulled into the dream.

"So you're still alive." Vincenzo stands underneath a large tree, one that looks vaguely familiar to Hayato. Coming closer he see familiar yet not markings on the bark and realizes it isn't his memory but a girl named Elena.

"She was going to make her dad build her a tree house," Hayato comments, looking up at the tree. With it's short height and thick sprawling branches it looks fun to climb and hang off of.

"And now she's dead so it doesn't matter."

Hayato looks at Vincenzo, a frown on his face. "I was in her head, it doesn't matter if she's dead or not, she loved that tree."

He stays silent and Hayato kicks at the ground for a bit before heaving a sigh and dropping down next to him.

"What are you doing?" Vincenzo recoils, scooting back when Hayato's arm brushes against him.

"Something we do when someone has a bad day. Or a worse day than usual, I guess," Hayato screws his face up. "Sometimes it helps, sometimes people have to be alone. You've been here for a while I'm guessing and that's not helping so why not try this?"

Vincenzo stares at Hayato before slowly moving forward so both of them sit side by side, the only point of contact their arms from above the elbow to below the shoulder. Slowly as time went on the meadow slowly gains a deeper depth of color. The sound of moving water and insects flying fill the air as Vincenzo slowly relaxes against Hayato.

"They killed me again, on purpose." Hayato stays quiet as Vincenzo speaks. "I woke up somewhere in the middle of a battle. There was so much fighting. And people, so many strong people." There's a quiver in his voice as Vincenzo talks about the battles and near constant fighting for the most petty and stupid reasons, by beings so powerful it made the scientists look like slugs in comparison.

"How did you come back?" Hayato asks quietly, watching Vincenzo's voice falter as he describes his lessons and battles with the beings of the world, the way he keeps his back to the tree and eyes focused on the horizon while his hands play with a small knife, twirling it between his fingers. Shamal could do that, Hayato remembers as the knife flips between tiny fingers and stills, the blade caught tight between the thumb and forefinger.

"I don't know, we'll talk later," Vincenzo dismisses him with a wave, sending him back into the waking world.

It's three days before Hayato gets pulled in again, dropping right next to Vincenzo as they float on a raft.

"The lake's new," Hayato says in greeting, peering off to the distance where a shoreline is visible, the meadow right behind it. The raft is just long logs bound on either end together with a flat piece of wood nailed to the surface, like someone had an idea of a raft but never really been on one. Not that Hayato can talk, his knowledge of boats is limited to the books he read back at the castle.

"I felt like a change of pace," Vincenzo says, laying back, arms crossed under his head as a pillow.

He looks better, whatever that's worth, Hayato thinks, looking at the translucent skin, just slightly healthier looking than his own and bags under his eyes which have gone from purple to a lighter blue. He must have gotten a break.

Hayato rubs at his arm, where in the real world a bandage covers the marks from multiple blood draws. They are trying something new again, something to do with flame expression but so far have just collected blood. He hopes it takes a while before they're ready to test on him. Ken couldn't talk after he came back yesterday, opening his mouth just to eat was enough to make him cry.

He looks down to see Vincenzo watching him quietly, eyes focused on where Hayato's holding his arm.

"What happened there?"

"Blood draw," Hayato says shortly. "How did you get back from the battle world?"

Vincenzo laughs and a goosebumps ripple up Hayato's arms. He turns to Hayato with a creepy grin, "I died."

Creep. Hayato glares and shoves him over the edge of the raft. Vincenzo yelps as he goes under, breaking the serene silence with splashes of water and ear blistering curses. Hayato snorts, "Serves you right, jerk."

The water stills as the seconds pass and Vincenzo doesn't surface. Hayato frowns and crawls to the edge of the raft. He peers down at the crystal clear water to the lake bed full of rock and sand but no sign of Vincenzo.

"Vincenzo?" Hayato calls, reaching one hand into the water, flinching back when his hand passes through and comes back cold and wet. The water is real enough at least. "Vincenzo this isn't funny!"

"I think it is."

Hayato looks up as a shadow covers him, a dark blue wave of water rising over the raft. He shouts and grabs at the edges of the raft as it rises, caught up in the undertow of the wave just as water crashes down, shaking the raft. Hayato's breath pushes out of him at the first crash of water, leaving him breathless as pressure squeezes him, plastering him to the floor of the raft when it was done.

"Well?" Vincenzo asks, stepping closer to Hayato, not a drop of water on him "Wasn't that fun?"

"A... asshole," Hayato coughs out, too tired to move. "Quit saying you die, it's not funny."

That shuts Vincenzo up. He frowns down at Hayato before sitting down by his head, legs crossed. "I'm not being funny. Every time they send me somewhere else the only way I get back is dying again."

Hayato turns over to his back so he can see Vincenzo clearly. The other boy stares down at his lap, a blank look on his face. His eyes seem old, older than the ones Hayato's seen in the other kids or any of the adults.

He doesn't like that look.

"That sucks," Hayato says, mustering up the strength to lean up on his elbows. "You said there was an animal path? What was that like? Were you a dog or a cat?"

Vincenzo stares at Hayato uncomprehendingly before launching into a tirade about how boring life as a cow was like, and how he never wants to think about milk or beef again. Hayato laughs and pokes fun at Vincenzo, saying he'll never grow tall if he doesn't drink milk.

It was a good day, Hayato thinks back when he's surrounded by darkness and pain. He clutches that memory close for days as one by one kids continue dying. Ariana lasts the longest, an entire two months after the day Matteo falls asleep and doesn't wake up but even she withers away, quite literally. Some new weapon they devised, Hayato vaguely remembers the adults talking excitedly about a breakthrough.

He tries to remember her smile, the way she kept her hair long and clean despite the limited resources they had and not how small she looked when they put her in the body bag.

It's just him, Ken, Chikusa left from their original set. The groups have become so small that the adults start to consolidate them into one room. To save space, Hayato sneers.

The only good thing is that Hayato finally sees Vincenzo in person again. The real thing is different than the boy Hayato plays with in the meadow. He seems smaller, and doesn't speak even when Hayato walks over and sits next to him near the folded up mats that serve as their beds. Hayato's starting to think that maybe he is going crazy, that maybe that boy in the meadow is just his broken mind trying to find peace when a weight falls against his arm. Vincenzo's arm presses against his bit by bit but it's there and solid, just like in the meadow months ago. Hayato blinks back tears and leans back.

Vincenzo doesn't talk, at all. The only time he does is when he pulls Hayato into his dreams and there they laugh and scream as they run through the grass, illusory sunlight warm on their skins.

Chikusa starts to wear bandages around his head to stop the bleeding.

Hayato learns that Vincenzo really hates getting mud in his hair.

Ken's teeth become permanently sharp. They also grow back quickly, they find out when Ken loses three teeth after biting one of the adults in the arm.

Vincenzo teaches Hayato how to safely navigate his borrowed memories.

The days pass like that, slowly. Pain during the day with relief and pseudo freedom at night. Then they take Vincenzo and he doesn't come back for days.

Hayato's pulled into the dream in the middle of his own torture, the machines surrounding him and the tubes pumping chemicals into him gone, leaving him in the middle of the meadow. Only its not.

Hayato looks around in horror at the barren ground, the grass and flowers razed to ash. Hannah's tree in the distance is blackened and cracked down the middle and the lake is gone completely. He takes a step forward and realizes the ringing in his ears is actually screams, coming from everywhere. Like a damn breaking the scream grows louder, pained and horrified, shaking the ground from the force of it and he falls to the dirt, covering his ears with his hands.

The screams continue, on and on. Hayato staggers to his feet, hands still clamped over his ear and starts walking. The skeletons of plant life fall apart as his feet shuffle forward, one foot in front of the other. Direction doesn't matter, it never does in the meadow. As long as he keeps walking he'll find Vincenzo, that's how it works.

Dirt squishes between his toes, wetness seeping up and mixing with the ashes into a dull brown slurry that makes it hard to walk. His foot slips and he falls face forward into mud, some of it falling into his open mouth. The copper tang of blood fills his mouth and he spits, trying to get the familiar taste out of his mouth. He wipes his hands on his shorts leaving behind streaks of grey ash and red blood.

He pushes himself up and runs, deeper into the bog that springs up around him. Blood takes place of water as ugly black plants sprout, tangling his feet and trying to trip him but he keeps going. There's a shadow in the distance, a small copse of trees with sharp thorny vines surrounding each branch and crawling up the trunks. Hayato stops in front of them and reaches out to a vine only for the thorns to bite deep into his palms.

"Crap," Hayato mutters, cradling his bleeding hands to his chest. He glares at the vines and reaches out again, this time with his hands covered in Storm flames. The vines disintegrate but new ones take their place, more with larger thorns bristling at him.

Hayato stares at them, restraining the urge to kick at them before taking a deep breath. Alright, if destruction didn't work how about this?

Rain flames fill the air, tranquility giving the environment an eerie feeling, like the calm before the flood. Still, the vines loosen their grasp enough for Hayato to slip past.

The screams stop and Hayato fights through the branches, thorns tearing at skin and clothing alike as he reaches the center where Vincenzo sits up to his waist in a pool of blood.

"Vincenzo?" Hayato whispers, dread sitting low in his stomach as he gets closer. Vincenzo doesn't answer him, doesn't look up as Hayato slips into the puddle, keeping his head facing down. "Hey?"

Hayato reaches out to shake his shoulder and jumps when Vincenzo's hand grabs his wrist in a bruising grip, the bones creaking dangerously. Vincenzo tilts his head up and Hayato has to stop himself from rearing back.

In place of his right eye is a gaping, bloody hole, bleeding into the bog.

"They took your eye?" Hayato whispers, horrified. Vincenzo looks through Hayato, dirty and covered in blood when he always makes sure to look clean and bright.

"It's so stupid," Vincenzo says, giggling softly.

"Vincenzo?" Hayato tries to pull away but is held fast, the pit in his stomach growing larger the longer Vincenzo laughs.

"People. People are so stupid, so blind that they can't even see what's in front of them! So possessed by their selfish wants," Vincenzo lets go of Hayato's wrists in favor of his shirt, tugging him closer. "They should die, they should all die! The stupid sheep don't deserve to live!" His remaining eye is wide open, pupil blown wide as his sanity dances on a knife's edge and Hayato is the only person around to help.

He isn't even vaguely qualified for this.

"Where did you go this time?" Hayato asks. Only the paths of reincarnation can get to Vincenzo like this, even more than the experiments, more than being trapped like mice in a cage. Those hands slip from his shirt to his throat and Hayato tenses as one hand lays flat against his jugular while the other curls beneath his jaw, thumb fitting against the front of his throat.

"The realm of humans," Vincenzo croons out, his hands tightening and his thumb digging into his throat. Hayato wheezes and grabs at Vincenzo's hand but can't dislodge it, his grip too strong.

"Vin...cen...zo!" Hayato chokes out, spots forming in front of his eyes. The hand lets go and Vincenzo stares at him, pale and wide eyed as he coughs, looking afraid for the first time since Hayato's known him.

"I didn't mean that, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't mean it," he babbles, pulling Hayato's hands away from his throat to look at the bright red marks rising to the surface. He tries to touch one of the marks but Hayato flinches away and immediately regrets it when Vincenzo pulls back, stricken.

"It's okay," Hayato croaks out as Vincenzo moves away, sinking further into the blood.

"No it's not."

Hayato doesn't know what to say to that, and sits back feeling useless as Vincenzo starts crying. Big, clear tears fall from both eye and eye socket and drop into the blood, the pool rising with each drop. "Stop that!" Hayato orders, reaching out to shake Vincenzo by the shoulders. "No, seriously, stop crying."

His eyesight blurs as he starts crying too, hiccuping as Vincenzo shakes his head and pulls away again, the blood up to his chest now. The cuts on his arms and face burn and the places where the blood has dried are sticky, and Vincenzo's stifled sobs echo loudly in his ear, making Hayato cry harder in time with Vincenzo's sobs.

Vincenzo doesn't like to be touched. Hayato knows because he doesn't like to be touched either, feels fear and mistrust towards every hand that comes near him, trained through trauma to associate touch with pain. The only time he can stand touching someone else is here, in the illusion where no matter what happens he can't get hurt, Vincenzo won't let it happen. Hayato doesn't know if its instinct to reach out, or maybe between the two of them he's the one with more positive experience with human touch (as little as he got before running away) but he throws his arms around Vincenzo, pulling the tow of them out of the puddle.

His arms tighten as Vincenzo struggles fiercely, blood splashing around them as Vincenzo screams again, just like when Hayato first got pulled into the illusion. Thin hands claw at his arms, drawing blood before giving up and wrapping around Hayato's shoulders as Vincenzo buries his head into the spot between his neck and shoulder and cries. Shudders run through him and into Hayato, and he rocks the two of them together on a patch of grass, his own hiccuping sobs joining the lament.

Ever since he came here Vincenzo was the strong one. The one to pull him away from the torture, away from the thoughts of violence and aching tiredness buried underneath. He was the one who could build someplace beautiful, where they could play and laugh and for a brief moment forget about the world outside.

To see him like this, to see what the meadow has become frightens Hayato to the core as their sobs even out until the only thing holding them up is Hayato, Vincenzo curls up in his lap breathing harshly into the wet cloth at his shoulder. The pool of blood recedes, pulling back from them like the tide and disappears into air. The trees stay the same, heavy and thick, a forest of vines covering every square inch like in Sleeping Beauty.

All we need is a castle, Hayato thinks as the oppressive atmosphere lightens, a weight he didn't know he was carrying gone as Vincenzo slips into a dream. How does that even work, dreaming within a dream?

"Urasai," Vincenzo mutters.

He blinks. "What?"

"I said shut up, go to sleep."

"No you didn't," Hayato shakes Vincenzo awake but the other boy growls and vines rise up to drag Hayato flat against the ground, now a soft carpet of grass instead of mud. Vincenzo makes a noise at the back of his throat and sprawls over Hayato, head resting on his chest.

"Sleep now, talk later."

Hayato grumbles but closes his eyes. When he opens them again he's not surprised to find himself staring at a grey ceiling.

It takes another two hours of experiments before he's tossed back into the room and even more time before Vincenzo is brought back. There's an eye patch over his right eye and the remaining one roams over the children before locking onto Hayato.

"That looks painful," Hayato says, moving over to make room in "their" spot. The rest of the room is spread out in front of them, with folded a mats and the boxes holding the blankets bracketing them. Ken and Chikusa also sit together in one of the corners, Ken glowering at anyone as he sits in front of Chikusa, blocking the other boy from sight.

Vincenzo tilts his head towards them and Hayato explains, "Ken just got measured for molds. All his teeth grew back in," he didn't mention the pained way Ken curled into himself just last week when they yanked out the rest of his baby teeth, "I don't know what happened to Chikusa, it was before I got back."

Hayato continues to tell him about the condition of every child in the room with them, conscious of the almost angry energy running through his friend. As each person is accounted for Vincenzo calms down until Hayato reaches the last one, Freida, safely asleep next to Paulo.

Satisfied, Vincenzo leans into Hayato closes his eyes and goes to sleep. Not even a second later Hayato feel his eyes drifting shut, and opens them to the meadow. To his relief it's almost back to normal, a carpet of green grass spreading out underneath a blue sky.

Vincenzo steps next to him, and says something that sounds like gibberish.

"What?" Hayato asks, tilting his head backwards to look at him in confusion.

A frustrated expression passes over Vincenzo's face and he repeats, "I was saying hello."

Hayato squints up at him, "I'm pretty sure that was not Italian."

"Chinese, I think I was speaking Japanese before, too."

What? "Where did you learn those?" Hayato asks as Vincenzo takes a seat, immediately leaning against him.

"Fifth realm. I went to the realm of humans," Vincenzo finally says, flopping down so his head is cushioned in Hayato's lap.

"But, we are in the realm of humans?" Hayato says.

"Well, it's not like I know how it works. I just went through this man's head, I saw his entire life."

"Was he Japanese?" Hayato asks.

"I just said I watched a man live out his entire life-"

"You said you went through his head, don't exaggerate, hey!"

Hayato yelps as Vincenzo grabs his nose and shoves the other boy off his lap. Water appears from thin air, dousing him as he grabs at Vincenzo, trying to shove his face in the dirt. His hands are grabbed instead and they roll together through the grass and come to a stop with Vincenzo yanking Hayato's arm up behind his back.

"Yield!" Vincenzo says, shoving Hayato's face into the ground. Hayato squirms but a warning squeeze to his arm has him yielding with little grace. Vincenzo lets go and rolls off his back, letting Hayato up. He rubs his face, the dirt on him disappearing as Vincenzo summons a field of daisies and starts weaving them together. Hayato watches as slowly white and purple flowers form a chain.

"It wasn't only that man," Vincenzo says, reaching for a daisy a little away from him. Hayato starts picking at the flowers around him, handing them one by one to Vincenzo as he adds to the chain. "It wasn't long but I was in her head, someone I never knew before. She was Chinese, and had a daughter who's part of some hospital staff, I wasn't too sure on the details."

The chain grows long enough to touch the ground, and Vincenzo takes the ends and twists them together to make a crown. He looks down at it impassively before reaching out and dropping it on Hayato's head.

"Hey!" Hayato touches the crown, careful not to actually dislodge it, even though it's girly.

"It looks good on you," Vincenzo says, already starting on another chain, this time with blue and red wildflowers in the mix. "The woman knew how to make these."

Hayato pauses in his grumbling to take a closer look at his friend. Vincenzo's eyes are fixed on the flower crown as his fingers keep adding flowers like they've done this for years when Hayato knows that Vincenzo has no clue about flowers at all. The pallor of his skin is still pale, better than it was before in the blood bog but still not healthy. Not that Hayato can say any of them where healthy, taking a look down at the veins peeking starkly through his skin.

It can't be possessing people that's bothering him, Hayato thinks. Despite his personal hatred for the bullet, Vincenzo is scarily compatible with it, able to possess people with ease.

One or two people, even complete strangers shouldn't be such a problem, given that his control over his mind was really good.

"How many people did you go through. Was it just two?" Hayato holds his hand out when Vincenzo motions for him to do so and holds back a sigh as a flower bracelet is tied around his wrist.

Vincenzo doesn't say anything and Hayato sighs for real, settling in for a long wait. As long as he waited, Vincenzo will eventually start talking, it is just a matter of patience, Hayato learned the hard way.

"It was more," he eventually says, once a necklace, two bracelets and three rings are added to Hayato's collection of flower jewelry. Hayato makes a small noise at the back of his throat, just enough to let him know he was listening. "So many, TOO many people. I got lost," Vincenzo pauses, staring over the ground at something unseen.

Hayato shifts and punches him lightly on the shoulder, "You're back now, so don't over think it."

Vincenzo looks at him, his eye old and with a strange anger buried inside them. Hayato scowls at him, daring him to start a fight when the mood over Vincenzo breaks and he smirks at Hayato.

"What?"

"Nothing," Vincenzo says, and continues his story. "I wandered through the human realm, shadowing people until I ended up in the body of a dying man. Then I woke back up in my normal body." He strokes a petal for a minute before continuing, "They had my eye out in a jar."

Assholes, Hayato thinks, fighting back a shudder. He's been lucky so far that he hasn't lost any limbs with all the testing they did trying to get him to master Sun and Lightning flames. One of the boys, Hayato doesn't remember his name, had gotten gangrene somehow and they never saw him again.

They all got shots the next day though, something about immunizations.

"That doesn't explain the languages," Hayato says, trying to change the subject.

The chain loops back on itself to make a second row.

"It's like when they shove people in your brain, things get left over."

He shudders, hunching in on himself, the warmth of the false sun far away for a moment. He doesn't has difficulty separating his memories from the rest anymore thanks to Vincenzo but they still slip through sometimes, when he's asleep.

Vincenzo says something, in that language again and Hayato frowns.

"That wasn't Italian."

"I know," Vincenzo rolls his eyes, "I was asking if you wanted to learn?"

A chance to learn a foreign language. Not usually his favorite subject but, Hayato leans forward without a grumble as the triple looped necklace is dropped over his head, he's bored. Horrible to thing about it, they're kept captive and experimented on but in between that all they have to do is wait for the next torture. Hayato has started keeping mental lists for how to make dynamite and how explosives work to keep occupied.

"Yes."

Vincenzo stands up and says something in Japanese, or Chinese? He can't tell. "I said you look very cute," Vincenzo leans back on his heels with a smirk, and runs to the lake as Hayato chases him down, flower crown flying from his head.

And so Hayato learns Japanese and Mandarin, and in turn practices his rusty French and English with Vincenzo.

Maybe its the stress in their waking lives or maybe both of them were bored but they pick up the languages quickly and switch between them with little trouble. Sometimes Hayato ventures into his borrowed memories on his own and learns more about science and math, the latter which Vincenzo didn't care for, or understand. It's close to a year from Hayato's kidnapping when things change forever.

- "Subject A shows signs of extreme stress, will maintain for five minutes." The words are said but barely understood as Hayato shrieks and struggles against his bonds, trying to get away from the pain.

They are trying something new, something different than just getting him to use flames or get people to access them faster. The pain lessens as blue washes over him. Rain flames, stronger than he ever gotten them before numb the pain to a point where he can breathe.

The pain starts up again as the machine hums, stripping away his flames, changing them, converting them into something else, something he doesn't like.

The hum stops and the machine is pulled away from above him. The skin under and just around the electrodes patched to his forehead and down his arms is numb while the rest of him shudders as the pain goes away in a snap. A gloved hand reaches for his arm, and he flinches, struggling against the restraints holding him to the bed. The scientist ignores his struggles and quickly ties off his arm and presses a needle into his vein, blood rising out and into the collection vials.

His other arm is stretched out and he turns to see a syringe, one of the large ones with a thick needle pierce his arm and inject a clear fluid. It burns.

It burns, it burnsburnsburns. Hayato can't scream, can't get the breath for it as his lungs join the rest of his body in burning up, fire eating through him.

It isn't just pain, Hayato knows pain, can deal with pain. This is not pain.

It's burning, a hunger that eats through everything and leaves nothing in it's wake, it's the quiet of the night deep in the mountains right before the storm. It's the way clouds grow and grow, never stopping, the way the rain washes everything in its path away. It's the mist covering and hiding, always ready to lead one astray, to hide, to protect, to mislead. It's the sun shining through, driving through everything to shine bright, blinding, blistering. It's the flash of lightning sending scorching heat through his spine, the jagged pieces ripping through his flesh as it passes through his body. It's the open sky, nothing like the one in Vincenzo's illusions. It's freedom and power and acceptance, everything that Hayato wants. It's suffocating in how vast it is and everything stops and then he feels... nothing.

No.

He feels alone.

The lights flicker and there's movement around him. He opens his eyes to see one of the scientists run out the door, following the crowd of adults storming down the hall. The lab empties leaving only one scientist, a man they call Santino, who scribbles down notes on his notebook as Hayato slowly moves his fingers.

When whatever they were trying to do stopped, the pain did too. That echo of loneliness, the vision of the wide sky still aches his heart but physically he's fine. He wiggles his fingers one by one and then his toes, clenching them both, relishing in the almost painful pressure before relaxing. Each muscle is tensed and flexed as much as he can behind Santino's back when screams echo through the door. Santino frowns and walks to the door, yanking it open.

From his place Hayato can make out a man running away, blood dripping where he clutches his side before Santino steps through the door, pulling out his gun from his holster. He doesn't get a chance to raise it as another man tackles him down and slashes at his throat with a knife.

Hayato stares wide-eyed as the attacker turns the knife to himself, slitting his own throat before collapsing on top of Santino.

'Hayato'

He jumps at the touch of a familiar mind against his own. "Vincenzo?" He whispers, struggling against the bindings.

'It's Mukuro.'

"What?" Hayato asks, squirming to get one hand loose of the straps. All they have today were the basic straps going across his body, easy enough to slip through as long as he didn't care about rope burn.

'My name, my new name. I am Rokudo Mukuro.'

"Why Japanese?" Hayato wonders, one hand free. The feeling of Vincenzo's mind is...strange. Frightening in a way it never is, not to him. "What happened?"

'I'll explain later. We're leaving now.'

"We? Wait, what are you talking about?" Hayato demands from thin air as Vincenzo's mind disconnects, leaving him alone in a room with two corpses and only one of his limbs free.

Asshole.

Worry and dread mix with an inkling of hope as he twists and squirms out of his bindings. All those memories and forced lessons on how to use his flames come in handy as he uses Storm flames with a core of Cloud to cut away the bindings. He staggers to his feet, shivering in the cool air as he steps over the bodies at the door and moves towards the room where they were kept.

He meets Ken and Chikusa on his way there, the two of them moving slowly down the hall to where the adults were heading.

"What's going on?" Hayato whispers, falling into step beside Ken with Chikusa gripping Ken's shirt tightly behind them.

"Don't know," Ken is equally quiet as they slowly approach the door. Hayato and Ken give each other a look. Ken has his nose scrunched up like he smells something bad and Hayato braces himself as they both reach out and open the door.

Blood, so much blood. It drips from the walls and even the ceiling in places where the arterial spray flew high into the air. Dead bodies littered the floor and the walls as the stench of death fills the air. He hears Ken gagging next to him but is more focused on one person still standing.

In the middle of the carnage is Vincenzo, a creepy smile on his face and the head of a trident in hand.

"Ku fu fu, that was rather easy, wasn't it?" He asks and turns to them. Hayato bites back a gasp at the bright red eye that stares at the three of them. Even in the dim light Hayato can tell that the eye has no pupil but a Japanese character in the middle.

"I am Rokudo Mukuro," Vincenzo says in Japanese. "Do you want to come with me?" He switches to Italian as he looks at Ken and Chikusa, who look between him and the bodies with wide eyes filled with awe.

Vincenzo starts laughing, a small giggle that turns into a robust laugh that has the hairs at the back of his neck rising.

"Bath," is what comes out of Hayato's mouth, catching the attention of everyone and cutting off Vincenzo's laugh.

"What?" Ken asks, looking at him like he's crazy.

"You need a bath, we all need a bath before we leave. And clothes," Hayato starts making mental lists. It's a depressingly short one, but the first item is, "Ken, Chikusa, take Vi-"

"Mukuro," Vincenzo interrupts.

"Mukuro to the showers, try to get some clean clothes too."

"Why do we have to listen to you?" Ken says, squaring his shoulder to glare at Hayato, who just glares back, unimpressed.

"Do you want to search the bodies with me then?" Hayato asks with a sneer, nodding when Ken shrinks back, unsure. "Go get a shower and meet up in the kitchens."

Chikusa is already heading out the door, walking unsteadily towards the showers. Ken hesitates but goes after him, leaving Vincenzo alone with Hayato for a moment.

"Searching their bodies?" Vincenzo raises a brow and looks proud.

"They might be carrying something useful," Hayato says, distaste sticking to the back of his throat as he pats down the front and pockets of one man, taking his wallet and access keys. When he looks up Vincenzo is still there and he tries to get some answers.

"What happened here Vin-"

A hand reached to to cover his mouth hard as Vincenzo stares down at him with cold eyes. "Don't use that name, Hayato. That boy died a long time ago, my name is Mukuro now." Vin-Mukuro's hand slip off his face and he heads out the door, leaving Hayato in a room filled with corpses.

Hayato blinks back burning eyes and starts frisking down the bodies, moving from one to the other methodically. By the time he's finished with the room he has a collection of wallets and weapons, all wrapped up in the least bloodstained jacket he could find.

He closes the door behind him as looks down the hallway, at the two bodies lying at the doorway to the lab he was being tested in. His heart beats fast but he makes himself walk down the hall and frisk the two men before carefully entering the lab. He doesn't look at the chair, or the bloodied surgical tools as he walks towards the desk tucked away in a corner.

He grabs the folders there, the piles of notebooks neatly labelled by serial number and wraps them in a clean lab coat. He does the same for the next seven lab spaces, collecting notebooks and anything he finds useful. He liberates chemicals and, with a hesitant use of Mist flames makes two wagons to hold everything. The last room he finds a computer, the only one in the entire labspace and he turns it on.

The page for a password blinks at him and Hayato, remembering one of the scientists had faulty memory looks underneath the keyboard to find a slip of paper with a list of passwords.

On the computer, he barely remembers his tutors showing him how to use one, he finds files and files of documents, most of which he can't understand. What he does know is that it's all dangerous so he turns the monitor screen off and makes sure that the password is memorized before putting it back under the keyboard.

Grabbing his illusory wagons he pulls his loot out of the labs to the kitchens. It's not that hard to find, all he has to do is follow Ken's voice.

The kitchen is large, enough to make food for the many children experimented here as well as the adults staying in the labs. Ken and Chikusa sit at the counter, Ken stuffing his face with food while Chikusa plays with it with a fork. Both are in clean clothes, though it's just a set of plain shorts and a tee.

Mukuro sits across from them, eating his own dinner at a sedate pace. He would be the picture of unconcerned if it isn't for the trident set within easy reach under his chair. They look up when he enters, and Mukuro nudges another plate beside him.

"Microwave dinners," Mukuro explains as Hayato washes his hands, scrubbing hard to get the blood off. He hesitates before ducking his head under the kitchen sink, washing his face and up to his shoulders too. "It seemed easy enough to make."

Hayato dries off and takes a seat, picking up a fork. Maybe he should be more concerned, but it all feels surreal. Here they are eating dinner like normal kids while their tormentors lie dead. They are free, they can go but here they are, eating, washing up, going to bed like good little boys.

Not in that room, of course. Mukuro leads them to a set of private rooms, and they all pile into one, using the keys Hayato liberated. The rooms are small but relatively comfortable, with a bed that had pillows and clean blankets. They bring over a bed from the other room and push them together, climbing on with Ken and Chikusa in the middle, Mukuro and Hayato at either end. There's brief squabbling that is put an end to by Mukuro's threats and they slowly drift to sleep.

Except for Hayato.

The computer still calls to him, a memory pushing at the back of his mind. He shoves his head into the pillow, trying to push it back, to forget but gives himself a headache in the process.

The memory slips in anyways, and Hayato finds himself easing out of bed, careful not to wake Ken or Chikusa and slowly walking out the door.

"Where are you going?" Mukuro whispers.

Hayato jumps, heart almost bursting out of his chest as he whirls to face the other boy who is sitting up in bed.

"I need to see something, that's all," Hayato says, reaching for the doorknob, "go back to bed."

He opens the door a sliver and eels out, shutting it closed softly. So of course when he's half way down the hall he hears the door open again and soft footsteps patter down the hall to him.

"I said, where are you going?" Mukuro's voice is hard, and Hayato bristles, hands clenching into fists as his sides.

"No where," Hayato brushes off the hand that reaches for him, anger flooding his veins, fraying at the tenuous hold on his temper. "You're not my dad, I don't have to answer to you."

The world spins as his hand is caught and he's pushed into the wall, one hand pinned to his stomach with the other slammed into the wall beside his head. He wheezes, blinking in confusion as Mukuro's eyes bore into him with a frantic anger, his face twisted in a look that he doesn't recognize.

"You are mine," he snarls, squeeze his grip on Hayato's hands to the point where they ache. "You don't get to leave, not you!" He shouting in Hayato's face, shaking him slightly so that Hayato's back slams up against the wall.

Hayato struggles, tries to get free as panic clamps down on his lungs the longer Mukuro holds him and refuses to let go. Flames, strong and red as blood spark into being around his hands and the tight binds are gone, and Hayato slumps down to the ground, breathing quickly. Black spots dance in front of his eyes and he feels like he's choking even though he's breathing so much. Why can't he breathe?

A hand is slapped across his face and the pain brings him to the present, his voice breaking into sobs that stutters and shakes as tears fall down his face.

"-sorry, I'm sorry! Just stop crying!" Mukuro sounds panicked, which sets him off again because what will he do now? Will he try to keep Hayato locked up again just like the damn scientists?

"I want Vincenzo," the words are out before he can even process thinking them but it's true. He wants Vincenzo, wants his friend, not this person who looks like him but scares Hayato to the core.

He wants his friend.

"What does that even mean? I am Vincenzo!" Mukuro says, shaking Hayato's shoulders but he shakes his head, turning his face away.

"No you're not!" Hayato says, snot running down his face and chocking him up. "Vincenzo won't hurt me-" those hands flinch back from his shoulders like dropping a hot iron, "and he won't want to trap me either!" Hayato finishes, trying to wipe the snot and tears away with his hands only to spread them more. He feels drained, the tension from day leeched away with his will and he slumps back against the wall, tears falling down his face again. In front of him Mukuro watches with furrowed eyebrows but Hayato meets his gaze fearlessly, too tired to do anything but feel numb.

The number in his right eye changes and they're surrounded by wildflowers, just like in the meadow.

"I would have put you to sleep but you'd complain too much," Mukuro tries for a light tone, settling back on his heels to sit and stare at him. When his expression doesn't change Mukuro grimaces and says, "I saw the final hell, the realm of the divine." Hayato blinks, "I was a god and I could see, see the paths that make up the circle of reincarnation."

His voice grows dark, gleeful, "I was a god and I lived in bliss beyond this world, with no pain or suffering. But that was a lie too," Mukuro grabs Hayato's hands, pulling them away from where they curl against his chest. "This world, all worlds are full of suffering, Hayato. The only way to cleanse it is to wash it away, starting with the filthy mafia." The venom in his last two words chill Hayato, and the red eye seems to glow. Around them the wildflowers disappear as the sky turns red and the tang of blood fills the air. "We will bathe the world in blood, wash away all the filth. Won't that be good Hayato? Won't that be justice?"

"No," Hayato says, feeling sick as he watches the illusion turn the meadow into a sea of blood.

A hurt look flashes over Mukuro's face. "What do you mean, no?" He laughs and squeezes down on Hayato's arms, fingers digging into forming bruises. "You can't mean you like this world, do you?"

Hayato glares at him and shoves Mukuro back, breaking the illusion with a flare of Storm flames. Using the wall to stand up he continues, "No, I think you're crazy! Why would you want to destroy the world? That's the dumbest thing you ever said."

Mukuro gets to his feet, "Dumb?" He asks, "You're being stubborn, why would you want to stay in a world like this?"

Hayato stays silent, eyes swollen from crying. He doesn't have an answer. Why does he care about the world, it never helped him. It let him be experimented on, cut open and injected over and over again. It let those adults test and experiment on all of the kids till the four of them were the only survivors.

Mukuro's eyes search his face and he smirks, because he's right. Hayato doesn't have any reason to protect the world. No reason at all.

But the world didn't deserve what Mukuro would unleash on it, Hayato can feel it in the deepest parts of him.

"Does it matter if I have a reason or not? Wrong is still wrong," Hayato says quietly. He hears Mukuro's sharp intake of breath, and then-

"If that's how you feel then you have no use to me."

Hayato's eyes snap to him. Mukuro stares at him blankly, no warmth, no emotion at all in his eyes. "What?" He croaks out, throat tight.

Mukuro tilts his head, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "If you feel this world is worth something, then you aren't worth my time. You should leave."

Cracks run through whatever is left of his heart, digging into tender flesh as Mukuro turns away and heads back to the room. Hayato waits, staring down the hallway one hand twitching as if to reach out.

Mukuro doesn't turn back, and he strains his ears for the sound of the door clicking shut. The silence afterwards presses down on him, suffocating and heavy as Hayato stands there alone.

Alone again.

Hayato turns away and books it to the computer.

An hour later he slips out of the base, a quarter of the money and several weapons from his corpse-robbing in his pocket as he steps outside for the first time in a year.

The sky is dark, inky but there is light in the distance. A city. Hayato takes one last look back at the abandoned factory that served as the base's cover and walks forwards, towards the light.

#I'm writing #khr #khrrarepairweek2018 #heed the warnings #its a long one guys

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