#let the zombies go on a road trip

[darkwood-sleddog]

urg. zombie injured her paw? leg? in some way (limping). letting her rest and reevaluating from there...

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 1: Welcome To A New Kind Of Tension]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “American Idiot” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“What do you think, should we kill ourselves now or later?” Rio is spinning his Beretta M9 around on his index finger. This is not advisable. He doesn’t care.

Your hands are gripping the skeletal latticework of the transmission tower, steel hot enough to burn you; no electricity hums in the power lines suspended above your heads. Your eyes are on the horizon, golden June sunlight over fields no one has planted. Weeds are growing up through the earth, feral and defiantly useless, reclaiming their land just like the deer are, and the rabbits and the opossums and the turtles and the squirrels and the doves. The reign of humanity is over. Now you’re prey animals too. “Let’s wait.”

“For what?”

“Maybe someone will save us.”

“Ain’t nobody coming, Chips!” Rio says. “We’re a hundred feet off the ground in the middle of nowhere, motherfucking Catawissa, Pennsylvania, and we haven’t run into anyone since that Amish family back in Lightstreet, and I wouldn’t count on them driving by in their horse and buggy to pick us up.”

“We’re about sixty feet off the ground.”

“Okay, Bob the Builder, why don’t you whip up a helicopter or something to get us out of here?” Rio’s M9 has one bullet left in it, yours has three, nowhere near enough. At the bottom of the tower is a swarm of fifty-four zombies; you’ve counted them twice. There are no cute euphemisms: walkers, biters, the infected. They were once people and now they’re not. They wear the vestiges of their former lives, like how those who believe in reincarnation see meaning in birthmarks: here you were stabbed, there you were kissed by your true love. They lurch and snarl and hiss in their professional attire, college t-shirts, Vans and Jordans, septum piercings, wedding rings. They decompose in a miasma of metallic blood and spoiled meat. Parker had been the last one to the transmission tower, and they grabbed him by the legs. Now they’re chewing the gristle off his bones: disconnected ligaments that swing like strands of cobwebs, scarlet threads of muscle. “Oh shit,” Rio says, looking down. “We’ve got a smart one.”

Most zombies don’t have the fine motor skills to climb, swim, or open doors, but every once in a while—just like out of every 5,000 or 10,000 or however many ordinary humans you’ll pull the lever on the genetic slot machine and get a Picasso or a kid who can score a 1600 on the SATs—you run into an overachiever. This zombie, a teenage boy with red hair and a blue plaid shirt, is slowly scaling the tower. He’s already ten feet off the ground.

Rio aims his M9, semiautomatic, packs a punch but won’t break your arm with the recoil. “Fuck off, Ed Sheeran!” He fires and misses; the bullet grazes the boy’s shoulder. He groans dramatically and asks you in defeat: “Will you take care of that, please?”

You pull your pistol out of your holster and lean away from the tower to get a better angle, holding onto the scaffolding with one hand. You feel Rio’s large fingers close around your wrist, ready to yank you back if you slip. You click off the safety with your thumb, peer through the front sight, aim and wait until you’re sure. It’s a headshot: shards of skull ricochet off steel beams, half-rotten brains spray out in a mist. The carcass plummets to the earth.

“All this horror, all this catastrophe.” Rio’s eyes, dark like a mineshaft, drift mischievously back to you. “We could…distract each other.”

He’s not serious; this is a game you play. “No thanks.”

“You don’t want to die a virgin.”

“I do if you’re the only other person up here.”

“You deny a condemned man his final wish?”

“We’re not dying,” you insist. “What about Sophie?”

“Sophie would understand given the circumstances. She would want me to be happy.”

“What if we have sex and then immediately thereafter get rescued? You’d be a cheater. You’d be consumed by guilt. You’d never be able to take me back to your parents’ doomsday prepper cult commune in bumblefuck Oregon to wait out the apocalypse in peace.”

“You’re going to appreciate those doomsday preppers when you’re eating Chef Boyardee out of a can instead of shuffling around as a reanimated corpse.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” you muse. “So you agree we’re going to get off this tower somehow.”

Rio sighs and whistles a morose tune: what a shame. “You should have gone out with that Marine at Corpus Christi.”

You frown, repentant, wistful. There’s nothing on the horizon except fields and trees and black storm clouds of crows taking flight. “I was afraid of making a mistake.”

“And now look at you. About to die as pure as Pope Francis.”

“How did this happen?! We’re not idiots, we’re goddamn professionals!” You re-holster your M9. You’re still wearing your uniforms from when you went AWOL, stealing away from Saratoga Springs like rats from a sinking ship.

“I’ll tell you exactly how this happened. You let that loser Parker come with us even though I knew it was a bad idea—”

“I couldn’t just leave him there! He started crying!”

“And he had one job, which was to check the oil in the Humvee, and clearly he failed because…” Rio glances at his watch. “Approximately four hours ago, the engine started smoking and the whole thing died on us, so we had to get out and walk, like we’re pioneers or some shit, and then that hoard down there came out of nowhere, and the only place left to go was up. Freaking Parker. I could murder that guy.” An awkward pause. “I mean, the zombies beat me to it. But still.”

“He had two jobs. He was also carrying the extra ammo.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rio isn’t messing around with his M9 anymore. He’s contemplating it as the sun hovers just past noon, hot and shadowless. “How many bullets do you have left?”

“Two.”

“Good. Don’t use them.”

You look at him, this man you’ve known for over four years, this man you’ve traveled the world with. You’ve already gone so much farther than Oregon together. How is it possible that what was once a six hour flight is now a month-long journey that might kill you? “It’s not over yet, Rio.”

“Remember what you promised me.”

His hushed voice in the moonlit indigo of the Humvee the night you left Saratoga Springs: Don’t let me die alone. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it to Oregon.” Then you grin, sweltering summer air breathing over you, humid, heavy, the screeching of insects in the trees. “But if it comes to that, I’d be happy to shoot you first.”

Rio smiles as the zombies below growl and claw at the steel framework of the transmission tower. Flesh peels off their fingers until you can see the gore-stained white of their bones. “Don’t miss.”

“I rarely do.”

“Do you have any more packs of Cheddar Whales in your pockets or—?” He cuts off as he spots something in the distance. His eyes go wide, his jaw drops open. “What…what is that?!”

It’s an SUV, massive, dark blue, rumbling across the field in a dust storm of displaced earth. It’s headed straight towards you. There is someone standing up through the sunroof, short dark hair that whips wildly in the wind, binoculars. You can hear the engine revving and, faintly, Kanye West’s Gold Digger. As the SUV nears the tower, Sunroof Kid ducks inside and closes the hatch.

Rio explodes into hysterical, rapturous laughter. “Oh my God, we’re saved! We’re not going to die up here! Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you. I’m never going to jack off on Sundays again.”

The SUV, still accelerating, plows through the mob of zombies. Severed limbs go flying; bones crunch and snap. There’s a woman driving, you can see now through the slightly tinted windows. She puts the monstrous vehicle and reverse and does another pass. Zombies paw futilely at the sides of the SUV, a Chevy Tahoe, as it turns out. They smack their open, soggy palms on the windows; they gnaw and lick at the bumpers and the wheel wells. The Tahoe circles to regain speed, the engine growling, a bear, a dragon, and barrels into the remaining ambulatory zombies. The hoard is now largely incapacitated. Rio is cheering and clapping his hands.

The Tahoe’s doors open, and your rescuers appear. There are two men wielding baseball bats: one with long dark curly hair, the other tall and blonde, and there’s something wrong with his face, the left side, though you are too far away to see clearly. They move rapidly through the battlefield of felled, moaning bodies, swinging their bats and crushing skulls. There’s another blonde guy, shorter, softer, pink with sunburn, wearing plastic sunglasses and a teal polo with a popped collar. He’s spinning a golf club in his right hand. He is followed out of the Tahoe by one last blonde, spindly and swift, stalking the perimeter with a compound bow, a quiver of arrows secured to his belt. Rio is singing along to Gold Digger, drumming his fists on the steel beams.

“Now, I ain’t sayin’ you a gold digger, you got needs

You don’t want a dude to smoke, but he can’t buy weed

You go out to eat, he can’t pay, y’all can’t leave

There’s dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves…”

The driver wriggles out of the Tahoe with some difficulty; she is seven or eight months pregnant. “Stay in the car,” Madame Driver tells someone inside as she slams the door shut. She’s holding a hammer and sets about euthanizing the zombies still squirming on the ground and gnashing their cracked teeth at her.

Golf Club says: “Jace, bro, that’s so embarrassing. You’re gonna let her do that?”

Curly—or, rather, Jace—shrugs. “Exercise is good for the baby.”

All three blondes respond at once in a chorus of appalled disapproval. Interestingly, your rescuers have British accents. From within the Tahoe, someone turns off the CD player. This is wise; noise tends to attract more zombies. Madame Driver, unaffected, puts her hammer through the eye socket of a former Arby’s employee.

Jace flings back: “She likes helping! It would be sexist to tell her she’s not allowed to!”

The Scarred Man looks up at you and Rio and salutes, two fingers glanced off his forehead. You begin climbing down the scalding rungs of the transmission tower to meet them.

“Oh fuck, Aemond, you gotta deal with this,” Golf Club says. He is holding a yowling zombie at arm’s length by the straps of its overalls. It’s tiny, maybe a kindergartener. “You know I can’t kill the little kid ones.”

The Scarred Man, Aemond, turns to him. He’s wearing a maroon Harvard University t-shirt. “You have to learn how to do things yourself. I might not always be around.”

Golf Club scoffs. “As if I’d outlive you.”

“Go on. You can do it,” Aemond says. Behind him, more people are emerging from the Chevy Tahoe: Binoculars Buddy, a slight girl with shifting, watchful eyes, a blonde woman in a billowing sundress and with a burlap messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

Golf Club is still struggling. “Aw, Aemond, man, he’s got light-up sneakers!”

Jace strides over irritably. “Aegon, you’re so fucking useless…” He kicks the miniature zombie to the dirt, raises his bloodied baseball bat, and brings it down on a skull that disintegrates like an overripe Halloween pumpkin. “You’re welcome.”

“Get bit, you poodle.”

Rio hits the ground first, his boots thumping against untamed earth. Aemond sets his baseball bat aside and reaches out to offer assistance as you dangle from a white-hot steel beam. “No,” Rio tells him roughly. “Back up.”

Aemond shows his palms and complies, retreating several paces. Rio helps you down. Now you can see Aemond’s face perfectly. There’s a relatively fresh wound running down the left half of his face, the violent red of burgeoning scar tissue, clear stitches; his eye has been sutured shut. But that’s not why you’re staring at him. His other eye is a focused, hypnotic blue, his short blonde hair disheveled. He keeps touching his chin, a nervous tick. Immediately, there’s something you like about him. He gives you the impression of someone who has gotten very good at hiding how afraid he is. Aemond looks away from your gaze, thinking you’re horrified by his injury. Then, reluctantly, he comes back. There’s forbidden temptation the lines of his ravaged face, a curiosity, a hesitation.

“Thank you for saving us,” you say to your rescuers, tearing your attention from Aemond. It’s not easy. “That was really, really cool of you, and we know you didn’t have to do it. So thanks.”

“Yeah,” Rio adds. “Sorry your Tahoe is covered in guts now.”

Aemond turns to confer silently with his companions, then asks you: “Where are you headed?”

“Odessa, Oregon.”

He nods. “We’re going to California.”

“NorCal,” Jace says, holding his baseball bat across his shoulders. “Bay Area.”

“Are you two together?” Aegon asks.

“Yeah,” Rio says, misunderstanding the question.

“Not like that,” you clarify. “He has a wife and baby, that’s what’s in Oregon.”

“So you’re single,” Aegon says, grinning toothily. His fellow travelers—family? friends? classmates? a combination thereof?—grumble and roll their eyes.

“Um, I mean, yeah, technically…?”

“Aemond’s also single,” Madame Driver informs you, relishing the chaos.

“He’s single but deformed and traumatized,” Aegon says. “I am mentally uninjured.”

You chuckle awkwardly. Your eyes, by their own volition, flick back to Aemond. He peers down at the ground then up at you again, smiling, a little sheepish, a little wicked.

Aegon groans, swinging his golf club around. “Man, come on.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Aemond replies.

“No, it’s just right there, all over your fucked up face.”

Madame Driver feigns a sympathetic frown at Aegon. “How sad. Guess you won’t have anyone to give your syphilis to.”

“I don’t have syphilis,” Aegon tells you. Then, to the others: “I can’t be the only single guy! It’s pathetic!”

“I’m single,” Archery Team says brightly.

“You’re like twelve. You don’t count.”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Are you Army?” Aemond asks you and Rio.

“Navy,” Rio replies. “We were stationed at Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.”

Aemond is fascinated. “You’re deserters?”

“What are you gonna do about it, Brit Boy?” Rio says. Aemond blinks at him. Aegon cackles, drawing huge circles in the air with his golf club.

“Everyone’s deserting,” you explain diplomatically.

“They were going to evacuate the base and send everyone left into New York City,” Rio says. “Fuck that, we’d heard things, we weren’t about to go on some suicide mission. We weren’t even in a combat unit for Christ’s sake, we’re Seabees.”

“You’re what?” Aemond asks, puzzled.

“We do construction. That’s why we were still at the base. If they’re putting us on the front lines, the situation is desperate. I’m not going in the meatgrinder. I’m not gonna be like those Hitler Youth kids sent to Russia.”

Aegon is squinting behind his sunglasses, truly lost. “Huh?”

“We should go west together,” Aemond suggests. He’s attempting to sound casual.

“I thought we didn’t want to travel with strangers, Aemond,” Jace says pointedly, mocking him. “I thought they couldn’t be trusted, Aemond. I thought they might slit our throats and steal our Tahoe in the dead of night, Aemond.”

“We’re useful!” Rio bargains. “We can shoot things!”

Aegon is very confused. “I thought you did construction.”

“Everyone has to go through basic training,” Aemond tells him impatiently, watching you.

“She got the Marksmanship Medal,” Rio says, grinning, proud.

“A lot of people get that,” you demur immediately.

“We can give you guys weapons training,” Rio continues. “You seem…like you probably don’t know about guns. Like you read a lot of books.” He gestures to Aegon. “Except that one.”

Aegon snickers, unoffended, still swinging his golf club around. “I don’t read books. I read maps.”

“Okay, lets do it,” Aemond says. “We’ll stick together across the Midwest and split up before we get to the Pacific. That puts us at ten people, and there’s safety in numbers.”

“Why do you get to make all the decisions?!” Jace demands. “Who signed that fucking contract? I didn’t consent to those terms.”

“Because that’s what Criston told us the last time the phones worked,” Aegon replies smugly. “He said Aemond’s in charge. So he is. If you want to find your way to California on your own, you’re welcome to try.”

“Who’s Criston?” you ask.

“Our fake dad,” Aegon says.

“Oh, your stepdad?”

“No, our mom is still married to our dad, he just sucks.”

“He does suck,” Archery Team confirms.

Rio tells you: “Hey, Chips, you’re standing in a torso.”

“Am I?” You look down. Your boots are buried to the ankles in the rotting gore of a bare midsection with only one limp arm still attached. You step out of it and shake off the bits of decomposing organs. “Gnarly. Thanks.” You spot Parker’s backpack containing the extra ammunition, pick it up out of the dirt, and throw it over your shoulders.

“Chips?” Aemond says. “Like…chocolate chips?”

“No, like woodchips. I’m a carpenter. I mean, I was a carpenter, I guess. That’s what I did in the Navy. Some people call the carpenters Chips.”

“I was an electrician,” Rio says. “So clearly, now that all the power is down, that turned out to be a fantastic career path.” Then he formally introduces himself. “Hi everyone, I’m Rio.”

Aegon perks up. “Oh, like the Rio Grande.”

Rio pretends to be scandalized. “Wow, racist.”

“So racist,” you agree.

Aegon’s chubby pink face fills with horror. “No, wait, I didn’t…um…”

Rio laughs and taps the nametag on his chest, black letters stitched over green camouflage: Osorio.

“His first name’s Bryan,” you say. “But no one calls him that.”

“My mom calls me Bryan. Sophie calls me Bryan.”

Aemond points at his companions, one after the other. “That’s my brother Aegon and my sister Helaena. Jace and Luke are our cousins. Then Baela and Rhaena are their girlfriends. Well, Baela…she’s kind of a fiancée. But there’s no official ring yet.”

Jace says: “Unfortunately, all the jewelry stores were looted on account of the apocalypse.”

“And I’m Daeron,” Archery Team says buoyantly, waving. Then he shields his eyes as he notices something at the edge of the field. “Oh, guys…?”

There are zombies approaching with clumsy, staggering strides, only a few now, but more will follow. That’s the thing; they are in seemingly endless supply. It’s easy to get too comfortable with them, to think of them as slow and mindless, even comical, even pitiful. But they can surprise you. And it only takes one bite to become just like them.

“Time to return to the Tahoe,” Baela announces, waddling towards the driver’s seat. Rhaena climbs in the passenger’s side. The rest of you pile into the back. The SUV has nine seats; Aegon crouches on the floor without being asked to. He’s unfolding a map he pulled from the pocket of his salmon-colored shorts and laying it flat across Rio’s knees so everyone can see. Baela turns the key in the ignition and the Tahoe rumbles to life. You spot a few red gas cans under the seats. If you can’t find more when that runs out—siphoning it out of other vehicles, stumbling across a gas station that is miraculously not drained dry—you’ll be walking, biking, or skateboarding to the West Coast. Or embracing the Amish lifestyle with a horse and buggy.

“We were planning to swing by Fort Indiantown Gap,” you tell Aemond. He twists around in his seat to look at you, that absorbed crystalline blue gaze. “That’s where we were headed before our Humvee broke down. It’s a National Guard Training Center. It’s probably cleaned out like everywhere else, but if it’s not…we might be able to find some guns and ammo there.”

“Where is it?”

“An hour south of here, just outside of Harrisburg.”

Baela is watching Aemond in the rearview mirror. He gives her a nod. “How do I get there?” Baela asks you.

“South on Route 42. Did you see the signs on your way in…?”

“Yup. Got it.” Baela steers the Tahoe across the field, kicking up a vortex of parched soil. She intentionally runs down four zombies before swerving left onto a two-lane road. Then she turns up the volume on the CD player: War Pigs by Black Sabbath. “It’s a mixtape,” she informs you.

Aegon points to southcentral Pennsylvania on a map of the United States of America, highway arteries and local route veins. “We’re here,” he says, sliding around on the floor of the Tahoe as Baela drives. His index finger traces the path; it’s a precarious balance between avoiding the most heavily populated areas and still having access to the necessary trappings of civilization: supplies to scavenge, roads to follow, buildings to take shelter in. “We’ll stop by Fort Indiantown Gap and then head northwest, thread the needle between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, stay south of Detroit and Chicago, cut across Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, that top part of Utah, then go our separate ways in Nevada. Oh my God, it’s just like the Oregon Trail! Do you guys remember that game?! Fording rivers, getting dysentery, hunting bison to extinction?” He starts humming the theme song.

Jace smirks, chomping on a Twizzler. “Hope you don’t die of a snakebite or something. That’d be awful.”

Aegon ignores him and refolds the map. “Rio! Fuck, marry, kill. The last three first ladies before Biden.”

Rhaena says, exasperated: “Aegon, you have to stop asking people that. It’s inappropriate.”

“Oh, easy,” Rio replies. “I’m fucking Laura Bush.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Aegon gives him a high five.

“And then I have to marry Michelle.”

“You gotta.”

“Which means Melania gets the grape Flavor Aid.”

“It’s the only logical answer.”

“I’d fuck Melania,” Jace says.

“Of course you would, you sick, sick man,” Aegon mutters, rolling down a window and sticking his head out like a golden retriever, his sunglasses still on, his blonde hair flapping in the wind. There’s a tattoo in black ink on his forearm, you notice for the first time: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fort Indiantown Gap is a ghost town like a gold seam emptied, an oil well run dry, a collapsed coal mine. There’s no central armory but instead a series of arms rooms, one for each unit. Every single scrap of lethal metal is gone: no pistols, no rifles, no grenade launchers or machine guns, no ammo, not even pocketknives, although you do find clean PT uniforms for you and Rio to change into, t-shirts and running shorts and sneakers. Clothes are surprisingly difficult to acquire now. Most stores have either been looted or overrun by zombies, and Amazon is tragically no longer delivering. You can break into houses that seem abandoned, but then you have to hope the people who lived there just so happened to be your size and also aren’t waiting inside to eat you. It’s not usually a wise gamble.

You study Aemond and his companions as you move through the base clearing buildings, you and Rio with loaded M9s in your holsters and clutching borrowed baseball bats; gunshots are best avoided if possible so as not to attract unwanted attention. Aemond and Jace take point, almost always; Aegon hovers on Aemond’s blind left side, wagging his golf club around, occasionally slapping Aemond’s shoulder to remind him he’s there. Daeron prowls at the back and on the periphery. Baela pretends she isn’t struggling to keep up. Luke and Rhaena are the lookouts. Helaena fills her burlap messenger bag with small treasures you don’t even notice her accumulating: bottles of Advil, batteries, lighters, pens, tweezers, Band-Aids, Uno cards. You encounter only three zombies, easily decommissioned. Fort Indiantown Gap must have been evacuated weeks ago. You wonder what pointless battles her soldiers died in. Everyone knows the dead have won.

What the abandoned base lacks in weaponry it makes up for in food. You find a chow hall with an untouched kitchen, a wealth of shelf-stable delicacies: chili, saltine crackers, applesauce, fruit cocktail with bright red gems of cherries, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, green beans, carrots, peas, beets, tuna fish, chicken noodle soup. You feast—a Thanksgiving, a Last Supper—then settle into the barracks next door as the sun begins to set. There are plenty of bunkbeds and a closet full of pillows and sheets. Someone always has to be up to keep watch; Daeron and Jace immediately go to sleep so they can get some rest before they are shaken awake sometime around 2 or 3 a.m. Baela says she’s going to lie down for a minute and almost immediately begins snoring. Helaena makes silent amendments in her notebook; she keeps an inventory of everything the group has, needs, or wants.

Outside, Rio and Aegon are engaged in a spirited game of Uno. Luke is sitting cross-legged on the roof of the Tahoe with his binoculars. Rhaena is beside him softly reading a book out loud: The Hunger Games. Aemond is on a wooden bench on the front porch of the barracks, watching the sun sink into the west. When he notices you, he seems pleased. “Hi.”

“Hi. I’m sorry we wasted your gas to come here.”

“No, it was a good idea. It was worth a shot. And now we have a safe place to sleep tonight.” His eye drops lower, his scarred brow crinkles in concern. “What happened to your hands?”

“My hands?” In the haze of the adrenaline, you didn’t even notice. Your palms are blistered, swollen and stinging. “Oh. It was the transmission tower. The steel beams got really hot while we were up there. I’ll be okay.”

“Let me bandage them. You don’t want to get an infection.”

“Really, I’m fine, I shouldn’t inconvenience—”

“Sit down,” Aemond insists. You take a seat on the bench while he goes to the Tahoe to fetch a black nylon bag about the size of a briefcase. Rio casts you a furtive, crafty grin. It’s nothing, you mouth back, more to convince yourself than him. Your pulse is thudding in your ears; your cheeks are warm. You haven’t felt like this since you almost agreed to go on a date with that Marine you met at Corpus Christi, where your battalion had been dispatched to build a series of new airplane hangars. Aemond returns to the bench and begins wiping down your palms with antiseptic. “Sorry if this stings.”

It does, but you’re grateful for the distraction. “It isn’t too bad.”

“You’re not from Oregon.” He’s noticed your accent.

“Kentucky,” you confess.

“You aren’t making a stop at home before traveling west?”

“Why would I want to go back there?”

Aemond looks at you uncertainly; he can’t tell if you’re joking. You like the way his voice goes quiet when it’s just the two of you. You like the way he barely shows his teeth when he talks, like he’s keeping secrets.

After a moment, as the sky begins to turn to orange and pink and lilac, you continue. “People join the Army for a paycheck and a place to sleep, free college, health insurance. People join the Marines to prove they’re the best. People join the Air Force because they want to be in the military but think they’re too smart for grunt work. And people join the Navy to get away from home. I wanted to get far, far, far away.”

Aemond smiles. “Are you far enough yet?” He doesn’t mean by miles. He means the fact that the world will never be the same. Now he’s coating your hands in a thick white ointment, cool and blissful.

“I was afraid of so many things, and now none of them matter.”

“We all have brand new things to be afraid of.” He gets a roll of gauze and begins to wrap your palms, careful to keep your fingers and thumbs unencumbered.

“Aemond?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to your face?”

He shrugs. He’s trying not to be resentful about it; he can’t change it anyway. “We were scavenging supplies from a Home Depot. We had to board up the house and wait until things…got quieter and it was safe to travel out of Boston.” And by got quieter, he means that the initial wave passed, the zombies began to wander out of the cities and disperse, the survivors were hunkered down and not participating in gunfights or Vikings-style pillaging in the streets. “A piece of sheet metal fell on me from the top shelf. Aegon and Jace dragged me home, they thought I was dying.”

“I’m glad you weren’t. Who treated it?”

“I did.”

You can’t disguise your shock. “You…you stitched up your own face?”

He smirks, finishing the bandages on your hands. “I was in medical school before all this.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I was an intern. So definitely not a doctor, but the closest thing to one I had access to. And I had taken some things from the hospital when everything went to hell. So I got a little mirror, and I lidocained myself very generously, and I started suturing.”

You don’t know what to say. His eye?? He stitched his eye shut?? “I mean…you did a great job.”

“I’m aware I look like Frankenstein, but I guess it’s better than not being here at all.”

“No, seriously. You look amazing, Aemond.”

He stares at you, bewildered. You realize how bizarre it must sound. You both start laughing as Aemond packs his supplies back into his medical kit. He touches his fingertips to his chin a few times—restless, meditative—then stands to return inside the barracks. “I’m…going to go check on Helaena.”

“Yeah. Cool. See ya.” You don’t watch him leave. This takes intentional effort.

Seconds pass anonymously: no time you need to be anywhere, nothing late, nothing early, no television premiers, no football games, no State Of The Unions, no time zones to do mental math over. You aren’t even sure what day it is. The earth has erased your invisible prisons. Now all that remain are the real ones: weather, terrain, disease, predators.

There is the creaking of weight on the porch steps. You warn him: “I’m not interested in your commentary.”

Rio winks as he says: “Maybe you won’t die a virgin after all.”

[neoiightss]

Teddy Bear - Lee Haechan

Based on my favorite Dream song, hope you like it =) 

warnings: friends to lovers, tooth-rooting fluff, confession, y/n’s a bit insecure.

The end of the semester in a University. You believed it was a universal experience for any college student, a mix of reliving and exhaustion that fuels your body. Everywhere you went you could find excited students planning their summer trips to a beach or their hometown, and zombie-like students who just wanted to sleep for a week, usually you were the latter one, but this summer your roommate invited you to a short beach trip with her boyfriend and his best friend. 

Karina and Jeno quickly became the it couple in college due to their popularity and looks, but still, Karina never made you feel left out, always inviting you to parties and hangouts in Jeno’s frat, and just like that you end up meeting Haechan, Jeno’s best friend. 

You two instantly hit it off, he was talkative and kind; it was easy for you to come out of your shell and feel comfortable around him, you two had so much in common, from favorite artists to favorite food, and he became a friend of yours quickly. 

The problem was that Haechan was handsome, breath-taking handsome. His honey-like skin adorned with freckles hypnotized you, his dark fluffy hair, piercing eyes, full lips, and playful personality; it was a deadly combo for your heart. Still, next to him, you felt like just an intruder, someone he would conveniently befriend, you weren't popular or pretty like the girls you saw him flirting with at parties, how could you even compete? 

You didn’t want to ruin the friendship you were building, so you tried your best to push aside those feelings, but it was hard for you when he was constantly flirting with you as a joke, or how touchy he was. Still, you kept it to yourself, not letting your crush ruin the friend group. 

And just like that you found yourself in that situation, packing your things for the little get-away they planned to Haechan’s family house at the beach, it was only for the weekend so you didn’t need to bring a lot, still, you were excited to have some fun before flying to your boring hometown. 

It was later on the day when the boys arrived, helping you and Karina with the bags, not wasting more time to hit the road, your heart was beating fast with excitement, seeing everyone so talkative, singing, and making plans for the next day, it felt like you were in a coming of age movie, it was the highlight of your year. 

-Y/n, I’m so happy you could come, I won’t third-wheel plus I’ll have you to keep me company!

The boy said excitedly, gaining a small chuckle from you and a side eye from Jeno. 

-I’m happy too, it’s been so long since I last went to the beach, it’ll be fun 

You smiled at him, feeling his arms around you in a side hug. 

-I feel like we’ll be the ones third-wheeling you two lovebirds.

Karina laughed, receiving a playful punch from you. 

-Don’t say nonsense…- you mumbled, noticing how Haechan got quiet, it only made you more embarrassed- play some 1D! It’s my time to DJ.

You shouted from your seat, taking the aux from Haechan and choosing one of the band’s upbeat songs, shifting the mood as he started to loudly sing and perform with you. 

It was late at night when you got to the house, everyone tired from the trip, quickly going to their rooms. Karina and Jeno got to the master bedroom after many threats from Haechan if they did something in his parents’ bed and the two of you went to the remaining rooms next to each other. 

You lazily did your skincare, getting into a comfortable pajama, and laying in bed as you heard the waves, a small fraction of moonlight coming from the window. It was the perfect setup for a good night of sleep, then why couldn't you? It was around 1 am when you got up from bed, frustrated about the lack of sleep, everyone had plans for early in the morning and you didn’t want to ruin them because of your stupid insomnia, all of that made you want to cry. 

As you got up, you walked slowly towards the kitchen, trying to not make any noise, you opened the fridge in hopes of finding some milk, maybe a warm cup would help, as you looked you heard a familiar voice calling you, making you squirm as you turned around, finding Haechan sleepily looking at you. 

-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…

You whispered with a pout, closing the fridge. The boy blinked slowly as he adjusted his eyesight, wearing a big white t-shirt and sweatpants, he looked so cute you just wanted to mess a bit more with his hair. 

-Are you having trouble sleeping? - he asked as you nodded - What are you looking for? 

-Some milk, but there’s none. -you smiled apologetically, Haechan opened his arms to welcome you, giving you a warmer hug than any drink, his sweet scent and soft skin made you relax your entire body. 

-Let’s sleep together, you can cuddle me like a teddy bear, I’ll sing for you too

He whispered, gently patting your hair. You flushed at his words, feeling your heart beating fast, pulling away from him to see if he was joking. 

-There’s no need, I’ll try to sleep again

-Nonsense - he cut you mid-sentence, pulling you to his room - let me take care of you, can’t let you like this. 

Just like that, you were curled up with him under his comforter, feeling the warmth of his skin against yours, the faint smell of his worn-out cologne invading your system as he got closer, embracing you as he played with your hair. You felt his chest vibrate as he hummed a lullaby for you, kissing the top of your hair. 

-Poor baby, I’ll take care of you, my pretty girl… 

He whispered between songs, all of that wasn't helping you at all to sleep. Your heart was beating so fast it felt impossible for him not to listen, your mind rushed with thoughts, and with the lack of sleep making you more sensible you didn't even notice once you started crying, feeling overwhelmed with emotions. It didn't take long for the older to realize, pulling away to look at you with concern, whipping your eyes. 

-What happened Y/n, why are crying? - he rushed, worried with you. 

-That’s too much hyuck, please don’t play with my feelings like that - your voice filled with hurt, too drunk on sleep to think straight about what you were saying - I know our relationship is platonic, but when you treat me like that it makes my heart flutter with hopes and I don’t like it, I don’t want to get delusional. 

It didn't take him too much to understand the situation, his confused face turning into a genuine smile when realizing that you felt the same, hugging you tightly before leaving a gentle peck on your lips, feeling you with confusion. 

-Princess, you have no idea how long I waited to hear that from you. I would never play with your feelings, everything I do is genuine when it comes to you. - he caressed your cheek with care, chuckling with your expression - I like you so much, I’m sorry it took me so long to say anything, I was so scared you would reject me, even when Jeno and Karina talked my ears off, I just couldn’t believe a girl like you would want me. 

You couldn’t hold your smile, hearing those words from him, realizing he felt the same as you, had the same worries as you, all you could do was hold his face and kiss him once more, this time longer and full of love, wanting him to feel all of that you couldn’t express with words. 

-I was so worried that  you would never look me that way, now I feel so silly too - you chuckled, giving him a peck once more - I’m so happy, hyuck 

-Me too, princess. I can’t believe a girl like you would feel that way for me, you’re everything I dreamed of. 

He whispered, holding you close as he gently rubbed your back, slowly putting you to sleep with a smile on your face. 

[wonderjanga]

I love your headcanons!!! Do you think that with Fawcett being a time bubble and magical influence and when new technology is introduced to the city that it changes? Like the engineers study magic as well due to the proximity to the Rock of Eternity? I'd imagine like perpetual motion machines do exist and parts of the plumbing system are fantastical magic animals. Like the old telephone wires are autonomous snake-like entities that Marvel has to untangle sometimes. (They do get tangled up). It's all very surreal and dream logic stuff.

I would love to see what's under the hoods of their cars. Do they run on pixie dust or dragon tears? Are there small sprites keeping it all together?

I’ve actually never really thought about this but here are some ideas! I think they would study magic when getting engineering degrees cause I’m pretty sure they’d just think of it as apart of engineering maybe. Like for example, when building houses they’d make fairy doors in certain places. I also think that instead of Lightbulbs for street lamps they hire fairies every night to make themselves light up. They get payed in pretty stones. Detectives can hire ghosts to help solve crimes. I think their cars run on either, but they’d be higher quality gas so most people would use normal gas. I also think there would be lawyers who work specifically with cases about fae. There’s gonna be lawyers to get that first born back. People might use magical herbs in everyday cooking too. Like someone might get a dried leaf called mystic petals because when ground up, they taste similar to sugar. (The plant makes hair, skin, and eye color more vibrant) One of the teachers at an elementary school is a Lich that has nothing better to do but teach. Or a Centaur works as a PE teacher. I also think that Fawcett could be so affected by magic that the buildings and sidewalks could be sentient. Like a little kid’s about to trip on a crack and the pavement moves the crack out of the way. Or someone who’s vandalizing a building gets hit in the face when the building pushes a brick out. Certain roads seal up their potholes, and maybe Billy is running down an alley being chased or something and the alley walls close up behind him cutting his pursuers off. The flowers grow all year around in a certain part of a city, it could be hot all the time in another, it could snow frequently in another, and trees could start turning orange and letting leaves fall in another because of the presence of spring, summer, fall, and winter fairies who split Fawcett up into small kingdoms. Billy oversees their diplomatic affairs. You find Santa at the grocery store buying cookie mix because “it’s cheaper here than at the North Pole”. The Spirit of Halloween would start pestering people in beginning of September to put up their Halloween decorations. The Easter Bunny would be a local attraction to go see, as it would be in a meadow every Easter making eggs and giving them to other bunnies to go hide. There’d be tones of restaurants in Fawcett with from from multiple creatures. You can go to a small place on 45th, where you can order from fairies who make sandwiches and soups using traditional fairy recipes and herbs. Or a small stand ran by orcs who sell Owlbear on a stick and roasted Blood Hawk legs. There could be a pair of yetis who sell snow cones using snow from the Himalayas. They have human flavors like grape, and yeti flavors using fruits grown from their tribes. When zombies crawl out of their grave, there’s insurance for both the damage to the coffins and the ruined grave and for people who get bitten. Doctors tweaked the polio vaccine for zombification. Wind elementals help people they favor when they fall. Water elementals help move snow from roads. Earth elementals help with construction. Fire elementals help melt down metals for jewelry stores and factories. Harpies sing for crowds. Gelatinous Cubes can be used as lubricants for machinery and extremely strong glues. I also think the rock messed with time. There are dinosaurs displayed at the zoo. Certain buildings look like they’re from different eras. Gothic architecture, favored by vampires. Victorian architecture. Neoclassical architecture. Also there are wyvern. Though they’re all the size of vultures. They’d have multiple different scale colors which have been made into jewelry or bags. Animal rights activists heavily protested that, and did the same thing they would do to mink coats in the 90’s to the dragon scale items. They threw paint on them. Mimics have exterminators to sniff them out. Shapeshifters wear certain tags while in magical form so they won’t get flagged for animal patrol. There’s also a bunch of other races such as lamia, gorgons, lizard people, homuncules, and goblins.

[misguidedasgardian]

Wildcats (Part XVII)

XVII. Home

MASTERLIST

Summary: Your “tried”, and in doing so, you had come oblivious to the danger from within 

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Zombie apocalypse AU, living dead, zombies, guts, blood, guns, injures, mentions of domestic violence, a fist fight, imprisonment, talks about slitting throats, kissing, longing, angst, fluff, might miss some important warnings, but you know what this is about

+18, MINORS DNI

Notes: ALRIGHTTTT!!! these dorks are finally… “a punta de caramelo” JAJAJA ready to party, I think, enough build up… Alright…the timing in this chapter might be a little flimsy, but what’s important are those dorks so… let’s do this! 

You waved Daryl and Aaron goodbye as they went through the gates and out of Alexandria, you wanted to be optimistic, but still, you still felt a bit sad that Daryl had left you here, you didn’t even trip once! Has it been so bad for him? you had such a good time. It had been a lovely  day. But still, he had been right about the run the day before, so, if he said it, he must have a reason. 

The dead had been buried, and even though your family had taken a big hit, you needed to keep going, this is what the new world looked like, you mourn your dead by keeping living, and that is how you needed to proceed.

Real or not you had a mission now that Rick had put on you, search for an alternative, a plan B, some houses to go to if Alexandria goes poorly. 

Your meetings with Reg about “development” had been canceled indefinitely, of course, he was mourning his son, so now that Daryl was gone you had to keep your hands busy.

You had become comfortable in the days you had been here, and today, you were determined, you went to see a person that was going to help you get the skills that you needed to become stronger to approach the new mission. 

“Espinoza”, you called with a wide smile on your face, she was already smiling when she turned, you found her by the trucks that needed fixing. 

“... I just realized I don’t know your last name”, she said with a frown

“Well, it’s very native, ANYWAYS”, you said with a wide smile, “I wanted to ask you something…” 

“Tell me”, she said

“Well… I can’t think of anyone better to help me improve my upper body strength”, you said softly, “I’m fairly good with guns, and my ax, but the other day back in Atlanta I could barely keep out a walker who fell on top of me, and neither the second one when he fell in top of the other…”

“Say less”, she said with a big smile, “I need to practice some new skills as well”

“You’ll help me? I want to be able to fight too, people, you know? fists”

“It’ll be fun”, she said with a soft smile.

You bit the dust like twenty times in the morning, until Carol managed to scrap you off the floor and into the house for a quick lunch, and then you spend the whole afternoon helping Rosita fix cars. Or at least those who didn’t have computers, those where your favorites to try and  fix. 

“So this, can be easily fix with a simple wielding, don’t let the shape fool you”, she said as you held up the broken hood of the car for her

“I always though radiators where a pain in the ass”, you said

“They are, they are easy to break, but easy to fix”, she said with a soft smile

“Great, you know what I was thinking? to install a good thick bumper in front of that truck… so we can run over walkers more easily”

“You know? i was thinking the same thing, but I’m worried about the weight, we would need to make sure to weld it good to the…”, the sounds of what must have been a window breaking interrupted you, followed by the sounds of screams and yelling. You both started running towards the commotion just in time to see Rick punching Jesse’s husband into the road.

“STOP IT PLEASE!”, screamed Jesse, trying to separate them as her husband was the one choking Rick into the grounds, but he pushed her away, making her fall. You ran towards her and helped her up and away from the fighting men.

“Dad! stop!”, Rick had the upper hand now and now it was Carl being pushed. Who was grabbed by Rosita.

“RICK!”, you called angrily, but he didn’t hear you, but he did hear Deanna as she came angrily.

“STOP IT RIGHT NOW!”, you hugged onto Jesse softly, as she grabbed onto you. She was crying, and in distress, you didn’t understand what’s going on, but you could take a pretty good guess.

“Hey, hey, everything will be fine”, you said softly, she barely nodded, “we are here for you, you’re gonna be fine”, you echoed

“You touch them again and I will kill you”, Rick threatened Pete, that’s his name. Jesse whimpered behind you 

“Damn it, Rick! I said stop!”, demanded Deanna, only then Rick stopped pounding into that sorry bastard

“Or what? You gonna kick me out?”, he asked, there they were, those crazy eyes again. It was odd, Rick was wearing the constable uniform, his beard was trimmed and his hair combed back, but, his eyes, it was the same as that night, with the claimers. You didn’t even notice he had pulled out a gun until everybody gasped and stood back, at least, the Alexandrians did. You were so used to it by now it scared you. 

“Put that gun down, Rick”, said Deanna, her hands in the air trying to calm him down.

A million thoughts ran through your mind, where did he get the gun? why?

“You still don't get it. None of you do!”, he said, waving the gun aimlessly, “We know what needs to be done and we do it. We're the ones who live. You, you just sit and plan and hesitate. You pretend like you know when you don't. You wish things weren't what they are. Well, you want to live? You want this place to stay standing? Your way of doing things is done. Things don't get better because you… you want them to. Starting right now, we have to live in the real world. We have to control who lives here”, his speech told you this was coming for a while, it made you tremble in your spot, you looked over at Rosita as she was as impressed as you, telling you she didn't know anything either.

“That's never been more clear to me than it is right now”, sentenced Deanna, uf, you better rush that search for a home, soon.

“Me? Me? You…”, he chuckled in a way that it was so dark it made you tremble, “You mean me? Your way is gonna destroy this place”, he said, his face was bloodied, so were his knuckles, “It's gonna get people killed! It's already gotten people killed! And I'm not gonna stand by…”, you didn’t even see her coming, Michonne had clocked him so hard in the back of the head that Rick collapsed into the ground.

An awkward silence befell all of those who were watching, Abraham came out of nowhere as you could only look at Rick, as your dreams collapsed around you.

“Please, place him in the basement of the apartments”, said Deanna gently, “until he can cool down, take the gun…”, she started giving directions while you could only follow Abraham and Michonne who had grabbed Rick and were taking him to the place directed by Deanna, also, Rosita and Carl followed you.

As you walked, you catched a glimpse of all those scared faces staring at you, at your group, like you were the worst criminals they had seen.

It was done, here it was, the crash, the collapse. 

They were never gonna let you all stay, or worse, they were going to make you spell Rick 

And if he was expelled, you were going to go with him.

Abraham left him in a small room, and Rosita brought things to patch him up, as she did while he was still unconscious.

Glenn came running

“Maggie will calm Deanna down”, he said softly, you looked at him with a frown.

“Does anybody know what is going on?”, you asked angrily, looking around the room, but nobody said anything

“This took me by surprise as well”, said Michonne 

“What happened with that guy?”, Carol appeared in that second, looking angrily at everybody. “If all of us are here, it's going to look like we are cahooting”, you said

“Nobody saw me coming”, she said, “Pete had been abusing Jesse, and the children, I told Rick yesterday”, there was an awful silence.

“And where did he get the gun?”, you asked her, she shook her head

“I don’t know”

“...Nobody was doing anything?”, asked Glenn, “About Jesse and Pete?”

“No, he is a doctor”, Carol said, with a dark tone in her voice. You sighed, rubbing your face. Eventually, you all went away, leaving only Carl and Michonne with Rick.

Rick had taken his role seriously, he had beat up a guy who was beating his wife, and probably the children, the bastard deserved it, the tricky part was now…

The fucking gun.

You passed by the house where the armory was, and now, two Alexandrians stood by the door, one of them was Tobin, one of their toughest guys.

Well… shit. 

You needed to think, so, you went to keep an eye on Tara, the calming environment of the infirmary was just what you needed right now. The night already falling over Alexandria. 

. . .

He was so thankful he didn’t bring you along this time. 

First, Aaron and him found a woman all torn out, tied to a tree, and an unknown man dismembered on the ground next to it. It was a horrific sight and even though you had probably seen worse, this was best.

They had to spend the night out there, in the car. They preferred it so, because they had advanced a lot, and at night, they had seen the man with the red poncho, and had better chances of finding him if he lit a fire again. 

But the next day, they keep following the trail, and they had found something that look promising

But now? He was going to die, most likely.

He took a long drag of the cigarette he found, as he watched those ugly, decomposing faces, scratching the glass, trying to get to them. 

It had been an obvious setup, (now that he thought about it), and now he was trapped in a car with Aaron, surrounded by walkers, and to get matters worse, an unknown group of deranged maniacs were coming his way, most likely, those who had been carving people, and their foreheads with a W

He was going to be the one to try to fight it off, as he looked at Aaron from the corner of his eye, Aaron was a good person, he had taken them to Alexandria, he had a husband, a home, he was a decent man, he deserved to be the one to live, Daryl was here to protect him.

But as he took another drag, he thought about his family.

Rick, Carol, Carl, baby Judith…

He thought of you.

Of your face, of your smile, of your arms around him yesterday when he took you for a ride, about the excitement he felt when he heard your voice whispering in his ear, about yours cent wrapped around him, he thought about how badly he wanted to be around you, with you… he thought about how much he wanted to kiss you, to hold you, and now… with how things were looking…

He was never going to get to.

He was proven to be right, in not taking you here, if you would have been here, things maybe could be worse, you could have been attacked, bitten or worse.

It was better this way.

Now he was never gonna know what it would be like, to be with you, to hold you in his arms, to kiss you. He liked you, and he just had come to realize it. 

He looked down

“I’ll go, I’ll distract them while you make a run f’it”, he mumbled, “just let me finish my smoke first”

Maybe he could make it. He promised you he was going to come back to you, he promised, perhaps with one arm less, but he was gonna make it, he had to. He had to tell you. 

Would you still want him with only one arm? hell, did you want him at all?

He had to find out. 

He felt silly, thinking those things in a time like this, what did you do to him? 

“No”, said Aaron, looking at him decisively, “this was nobody’s fault, we’ll do it together”, he nodded, Aaron wanted to get home as bad as he did, and they were gonna do it together.

And then, one of the walker’s heads was crushed by what looked like a wooden stick. 

. . .

The very next morning, you woke up a bit startled, with everything that happened with Rick, you had forgotten about the archer. You ran downstairs, only to find Maggie making breakfast

“Hey, good morning”, she smiled at you softly

“Good morning”, you whispered, “Is Daryl back?”, she looked at you with a glint in her eye

“He didn’t”, she said, “but he and Aaron reported they were going to stay out there one night, so don’t you worry”, she said softly.

“Alright”, you said, but the fact that they gave notice, didn’t soothe your nerves.

“He is going to be fine”, she said softly, “but we need to focus on keeping the place they are going to return to”, she said, and you nodded

“I’ll go see Rick”, you whispered

“I will go and talk to Deanna”, she said, and exited the house.

You walked quickly, you needed to figure this out and the only one who could answer all your questions was Rick. 

entered the room where Rick was, with Glenn, Carol, and Abraham, you needed answers, you needed to know what was going on. SOme of them acknowledge you, not all of them, but Abraham closed the door behind you

“Where’d you get the gun?”, asked Michonne

“You took it, right? From the armory? That was stupid. Why did you do it?”, grilled Carol, Rick’s face said it all, so you looked at the gray haired woman with suspicion, she was in on it, you realized as you looked back at Rick wide-eyed. 

“Just in case”, said Rick, not taking his eyes off of Carol, but then he looked at you, and he seemed surprised to see your angry face. 

“Deanna's planning to have a meeting tonight. For anyone who wants to…”, started Glenn

“To kick Rick out?”, asked Abraham, you didn’t say a thing you just looked around.

“To try”, said Carol

“We don't know that”, you said, finally 

“Maggie's with Deanna right now. She's gonna find out what it is”, assured Glenn

“At the meeting, you say you were worried about someone being abused and no one was doing anything about it. You say you took a gun just to be sure that Jessie was safe from a man who wound up attacking you. You say you'll do whatever you want them to. Just tell them a story that they want to hear. It's what I've been doing since I got here”, said Carol, and you chuckled, you knew she was lying front the second she stepped through those gates. 

“Why?”, asked Glenn

“Because these people are children and children like stories”, she said

“What happens after all the nice words and they still try to kick him out? They're guarding the armory now”, muttered Glenn, as you thought he was the one who was taking the same side as you, the concerned side 

“We still have knives. That's all we'll need against them”, said Carol

“Well, tonight at the meeting, if it looks like it's going bad, I whistle. Carol grabs Deanna, I take Spencer, you grab Reg, Glenn and Abraham cover us, watch the crowd”, muttered Rick, and then his eyes landed on you.

“This is “trying” for you Rick?”, you asked him angrily

“We can talk to them”, said Michonne, “there is no need…”

“Yeah, we will. If we can't get through, we take the three of them and say we'll slit their throats”, said Rick as it would have been easy, “we did try, (y/n)” he said gently, “we tried, but this people don’t understand how things are now”

“Like at Terminus?”, asked Glenn, “where’re gonna slit their throats like they’re cattle?”

“No, we just tell 'em. They give us the armory and it's over”, said RIck, like he had everything figured out

“Did you want this?”, you asked him, “just making us try our best just in case so you didn’t feel bad about this?”, Abraham placed his hand on your shoulder and then you noticed how riled up you had become, taking a step forward, your voice rising. Anger taking a hold on you.

“No”, said Rick, looking straight at you, “I hit my limit. I-- I screwed up. And here we are”, he said, “I want you to stay here, that mission will have to wait, now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna sleep some more”, he said, dismissing the lot of you. 

How could you become so short sighted? 

As you were trying your ebay and play house, your family was collapsing around you, Rick had crazy eyes, Carol was scheming right along with him, you had lost Noah, and Tara was in the hospital… Sasha was turning into a sniper, she spent all the time in the watchtower, and people had become actually scared of the lot of you, because of your aggressiveness. This was bananas, as Maggie, Abraham and Tyresse had actually reached a position of power in the matters of days.

But that part relieved you, actually, you wanted your people in power, because they knew what they were doing, not because they were gonna threaten to cut people’s throats out. 

This was a whole mess

Were they going to expel Rick? were you going to go with him?.

You found a map of the state of Virginia, you opened it in the dining room table, and you began planning.

You could take a good guess where you were, and then there was Washington… you wanted to go to Washington, if they do expel you from here, that was your safer bet, to find a building and spend a couple of days there until you found something more permanent. 

The map was pretty detailed, and you noticed groups of buildings near you. 

“Is that a factory?”, you whispered, looking at the squared looking buildings in the map, that had been taken by a satellite a couple of years back. you certainly didn’t want to go there. DC was still the safest bet, especially if they evacuated most of the people.

But Rick won’t go

Rick wanted to stay here no matter what, he wanted to take the place. 

And even if you weren’t comfortable with that, you were not going to fight it, to fight him, or Michonne or Glenn, or Abraham 

Maggie and Glenn were building Rick’s defense, so you had to stay put, and try to stay calm.

It will not come to this, it will not come to that, to slitting people’s throats.

But if it did… Did that make you the bad guys? certainly not better than those psychos from Terminus.  

You thought again about Daryl, about what he might think about all of this, was he in on it? It was weird that Rick was planning something and not including him. Was he in on it? You really hoped he wasn’t. 

You watched the sunset through the windows, you didn’t even know where the whole day went, you had spent hours and hours over that freaking map, walking around the house, thinking about scenarios and possibilities, and freaking out. 

Was Daryl going to spend the entire night out again? Was that alright? On top of everything else, you felt so nervous, he was gone… What was going to happen when he came back? Was he going to go onto the plan of threatening them? You had seen what he could do, he was quick with his crossbow and he was fiercely loyal to Rick.

Whatever it was, you needed to stand by your family, even though you didn’t agree to the plan, you had to see it through and see to it that nobody was going to get hurt. 

You needed to go to the thing, what were they calling it? you didn’t remember. But you didn’t move a muscle, not a single one, you were afraid of what is going to become. They were not going to kick him out, the group was not going to allow it, instead they were going to take the place.

The decision had been made.

You were not consulted on it, and yet, you were expected to support it.

But you needed to go, and prevent the hostile takeover, you could, you only needed to be truthful. You were on your way out, when you heard the rumble of a motorcycle outside. You smiled at the thought of the archer. So you got out of the house in a hurry. 

“Hey you’re home!”, you said happily when you saw him cross the porch to the house. You were so relieved, not only because you were worried for him, but because of everything that happened with Rick… But he didn’t even mind anything else. He came straight for you, he seemed driven, pushed by invisible motivations.

He encased your face with one of his hands, everything was so fast you barely had time to react, and he leaned in, and trapped your lips with his in a chaste kiss

You smiled into the kiss, grabbing his shirt.

This was happening, this was really happening and you wanted to make it last as much as you could, his hand traveled to the back of your head, to hold you steady.

All your thoughts and worries went away as easily as that. Everything was going to be alright, and he felt heavenly. He felt the same, kissing your lips was the best thing he had felt in a long while. He separated from you, even though he didn’t want to, you didn’t want to. But still, he needed to see your reaction. 

“M’sorry”, he whispered against your lips, “I wanted to do that:”

“Took you long enough Dixon”, you said against his, and this time, you grabbed onto his shirt and you pulled him towards you, you kissed him again. This time, it was more intense, you actually heard him whimper against your lips, as you both took a deep breath into each other. Grabbing each other more tightly. You didn’t know how you were ever gonna stop it. 

But of course a gunshot rang through the air, making you split up like the other was on fire. 

taglist @crazyunsexycool @capricxnt

[magicpotatothoughts]

SVSSS | The absolute GENIUS meanings behind the name Shen Yuan 沈垣

Ok so most of us already know the meaning of SY 'cause it's in the appendix of the official translation books but I was today years old when I realised just how much meaning MXTX embedded into this name. *spoilers ahead*

Level 1 Meta

Official translation of the word Yuan垣 means wall. But not just any wall, a wall that surrounds something else. It would be specifically used to describe city wall 城垣 or garden fence 花垣 would use this character. This is incredibly fitting for Shen Yuan because his whole story arc is his battle between his logical conscience for survival and his compassionate gut instinct to protect LBH, in other words, to surround and to shield LBH from harm. But this wall of protection functioned against Bingqiu psychologically because SY kept on making decisions without talking to LBH and decided a lot of things on his own. SVSSS is a novel about achieving that balance, to allow both partners to take agency and face life side by side.

Level 2 Meta

Normally, surnames don't have any meaning. Shen�� is largely used as a name for things/people buttttttt it can also mean liquid or to pour. Guess what, Luo Binghe 洛冰河 means Luo frozen river. So it could be interpreted that Shen Yuan's entire job in the novel is to make LBH achieve his final crybaby form by getting the frozen river Luo to melt, to "pour".

Also, SY made himself melt as well in a way, his internalized homophobia potential toxic masculinity as well as his need to maintain a cool composure were also things he needed to overcome. We finally see him cry for real in the 3rd book, right after LBH scolds him out of anger and worry. Our protagonist learns to break his own walls down and show emotionally vulnerable parts of himself to LBH.

Level 3 Meta

Chinese characters are made up of radicals, meaning more complicated looking characters are made up of simpler characters (radicals) that give clues to their meaning and pronunciation.

Shen沈 is made up of the radicals:

氵 [ shuǐ ] water 💦

冘 [ yín ] can mean to move on OR doubtful of something/someone

The water radical氵💦 occurs in all three characters in Luo Binghe 洛冰河. This can mean that Shen has influence on Luo Binghe's development and overall life. It also reaffirms their compatibility as as couple. I mean let’s be honest, SQQ cries inwardly and LBH cries outwardly, they are both crybabies.

yín冘 perfect describes the base functionality of SY's character; he has a strong survival instinct but is also extremely doubtful of everyone's intentions, especially LBH's.

Yuan垣 is made up of the radicals:

土 [ tǔ ] soil, earth; items made of earth 🌎

亘 [ gèn ] to extend across (dimension/space), through; from 🚀

I find it so fucking funny that MXTX took the tǔ土 soil radical seriously and literally just had SY zombie-himself out of the dirt after 5 years. But it's also really poetic that it once again goes perfectly with LBH's name; the river and earth go hand-in-hand. no wonder LBH asked for Shizun's hand in marriage. 😳😳😳

gèn亘 perfectly describes SY as a transmigrator, someone who travelled across dimension and space. But also SY is really the ultimate sightseer of SVSSS, casually crossing between the human realm and demon realm while also going on road trips with SQH. It's honestly so fucking mint. But I'm here to point out to you how Xin Mo 心魔 LBH's sword (heart demon) is how LBH travels across dimension/space for the majority of the book.

Ultimately, Yuan垣 highlights the importance of finding a home in the people you love. Bingqiu both enjoy that sightseeing lifestyle but the book constantly has important relationship developments, smexy times and domestic Bingqiu set in the Bamboo House. Ultimately, no matter how far you travel, run or chase, you cannot get away from your problems. You need to extend and make effort in understanding and communicating with your SO 🚀 and work on feeling grounded 🌎 in your relationship together.

MXTX you freaking genius I-

[theminecraftbee]

fic masterpost

last updated: august 2024

note that this masterpost does not include tumblr-exclusive fics, because i write those as effectively "sketches"; they're practice and meant to be easy for me, so i deliberately don't 'take them seriously' enough to list them here. (also, there are probably over a hundred at this point.) you can find the tumblr exclusive fics in the tag 'a bee fic' if you're looking for them.

additionally: for ANY of my fics, you can always DM me to ask me to give you spoilers if the tags and summary do not give you enough information to decide if you want to read the fic or if the fic might contain one of your triggers. just let me know in a way i can respond privately, and i will give you that information!

-

multichapter fics

this is about a stuffed bird, hermitcraft, T (warning: a bordeline M), 78k. in which an apocalypse happens that turns much of humanity into horrible monsters, mumbo gets a distressing call from grian and decides to travel across the country to meet him. still my most popular hermitcraft fic and my second-most popular fic overall. heavy on body horror, themes of what makes someone a person, and also evil x is here. i still love the mumbo voice in this, and it even has a complete podfic by quackingfish if you prefer audiobooks.

the continued adventures of the boatem road trip, hermitcraft, T, 28k. a series of events that take place as boatem is trapped in the void together for three months after big moon. originally written as a series of vaguely-connected oneshots on tumblr, gathered here into one place. the ending is a little abrupt, but if you're looking for something with the highest concentration of some of my favorite jokes i've made sitting right next to some good old cosmic horror, this is the fic for you.

the last days of the free angel of carrows, hermitcraft, T, 79k. the angel joe hills and the zombie cleo, owners of the atsign agency, investigate a strange mystery brought to them by pearl, and must save their city as they go. a noir-inspired urban fantasy i originally wrote for a big bang, and still my longest fic! it's got some of my favorite worldbuilding i've done, a great joe-and-cleo plot, a pearl i'm still obsessed with, and so much angel symbolism. if you like aus or urban fantasies, this is the one of my fics you should read.

solving counting sheep, evo, T, 78k. blade-three, living weapon of the watchers, is stolen by martyn after martyn finds its command words and taken home to jimmy to try to rehabilitate. what neither the property police or three itself know is that three is the ultimate fate of grian, their friend who they presumed dead. a fic that is very VERY much about identity and learning who you are, and also plays into many of my favorite living weapon and watcher!grian tropes--as well as subverts them in some heavy ways. probably one of the most personal fics i've ever written, as well. my understanding is that both people who like watcher!grian and people who hate it like this fic, which i take as praise.

the carriers, life series, M, 40k. PET mail (the group made up of Pearl, Etho, and Tango) are mail carriers after the zombie apocalypse, as well as asymptomatic carriers of the zombie virus. when cleo, a person from pearl's past, asks them to bring her a package, they go on a journey that barrels through all three of their pasts. this one is rated M for two specific reasons (both violence) but if you're chill with violence this one turned out pretty well! it is a very me take on a zombie apocalypse, what with the fact that the remnants of heavy industry are almost as much of a threat as the zombies, and a fic that leans pretty heavily on the double life soulmate pairs.

san luis, dream smp, T, 23k, perpetually unfinished. after the other three members of sbi die, philza tries to put back together the pieces. it would be easier if he wasn't hearing their ghosts. this is a fic i'm unfortunately unlikely to finish because it just makes me too sad to write after irl events, but it has some of my best handling of grief, and i know it brings some people comfort. if you don't mind me at my most unrelentingly sad, or are looking for that, i might still recommend it.

in deference to saint george, original superhero work, T, 42k. superhero superball, aka jack harlan, starts dating a customer he meets at the coffee shop he works at, while at the same time dealing with the attacks of the villain dragon and natural disasters. a hero/villain fic with a very ME kind of ending, i am still SUPER PROUD of this. i think the worldbuilding and characters work and it's my proof to myself i can write ow! also, if you've always wanted to read a superhero au from me, good news: this may not be an au, but it's very much exactly that.

-

long oneshots

consequentialism, hermitcraft, M, 5k. as the members of boatem start falling in the boatem hole, their own dead bodies start showing up. peak "WOULD THAT BE FUCKED UP OR WHAT" horror from me, and also the first hermitcraft fic i ever wrote! if you like my horror writing and aren't too squeamish, good news: this exists.

to convey a certain brilliance, hermitcraft, T, 21k. joe hills and zombiecleo slowly, and through many death loops, drag their way out of their collapsed base to try to survive after a lunar apocalypse. this is the second hermitcraft fic i ever wrote and i wrote it before we knew how moon's big would end, inspired by super hostile; people still tell me it has some of their favorite joe characterization.

cura te ipsum, hermitcraft, T, 15k. tango, in a world where the hermatrix is canon, wakes up on-board the hermethius after dying to the moon and has to try to figure out how to cope. still one of my favorite oneshots i've written, full-stop, and the culmination of all my big moon emotions. it can be considered fully canon-compliant, and it's mostly about all the big emotions something like big moon would cause.

jevin's egg disaster, hermitcraft, G, 7k. the eggs from the season nine egg hunt turn into real children. chaos ensues. this is technically sorted into chapters, and written as a series of very short ficlets on tumblr originally. it doesn't really "conclude" as a result. however this is me on pure crackfic and contains my favorite joke i've ever made (it's in chapter 7 if you're wondering) so PLEASE read it if all the rest of my 'everyone talks about their big feelings' is causing you to need a laugh because it WILL make you laugh.

attempt thirty-three, hermitcraft, T, 14k. joe hills experiences the thirty-third loop of the time loop he's been stuck in, trying to save the world from the rift. a fic exploring the idea of "what happens in that middle part of the time loop when you've been there a while, but don't have things solved yet?" if you like joe hills and you also like hurt/comfort, this is very much a fic with both of those things, and some of my best with both of those things.

a thing that is thicker than starlight, hermitcraft, T, 13k. after reuniting on an adventure through space, long-lost siblings cleo and gem return home and try to figure out where they're supposed to fit into each other's lives. written for recursive exchange and based on "out to the galaxy steady she goes" by thedepressedcanary, although this fic stands on its own. it's a vaguely treasure planet-like au, but it's also MOSTLY about the trauma your parents leave you and the feeling of knowing you're supposed to care about someone (but don't know how to yet). this is my sibling feelings fic, read it for sibling feelings.

the inner mechanism of a black box, dream smp, T, 14k. techno is trapped, isolated, in a horrible version of the prison with only his voices for company. still my most popular fic, and also the fic of mine that is most describable as 'whump'. i still really love the techno writing in this one; it may be the first complete thing i posted to the account but it's still good. written before we knew anything about the prison, and so the situation is entirely speculative; also written before 'techno in prison' really became a genre. you can tell both of these things, for both good and ill.

revenant, dream smp, M, 11k. jack manifold descends back into hell in order to drag tommy back up and out with him. written in a fugue state during the like, three days tommy was still dead. jack manifold is way cooler than he deserves in this fic (he is also EXACTLY as cool as he deserves). to be honest i don't remember why i rated this one M, but not stuffed bird? if you can read stuffed bird you can almost certainly read this. has some of my cooler weird formatting decisions in it and a WAY COOLER VERSION OF HELL THAN THE DSMP GAVE US I'LL STAND BY THAT.

bad beat, dream smp, T, 10k. techno goes to play a high-stakes game of poker against quackity, hoping to win insurance for his friends' lives. do you like card games? i like card games. most of this fic is a thriller in which they are playing poker. both people who like and dislike poker like this fic, though, because the thriller elements still work. also, my one take on casino quackity, so if you like quackity, give it a shot.

a kind of playing heartstrings, empires smp, G, 6k. jimmy invites scott to a cod empire gathering. an older fic of mine that's a cute take on empires flower husbands with a LOT of music culture worldbuilding for the codlands! this is just a fic that makes me feel cozy and happy. it is uncomplicated fluff.

survivorship bias, empires smp, G, 9k. an amnesiac jimmy is fished out of the water and into a surviving village that exists a few decades after the rapture, but still a great deal of time before empires season two will happen. a combination of worldbuilding of that transition period and emotions about jimmy, who doesn't remember why he's sad but certainly feels it. i enjoyed meshing different empires cultures together for this a lot!

the perils of updating your vault hunters server before even the public release (seriously who qa checks this), vault hunters smp, G, 9k. in which a bug on the vault hunters server turns all of iskall's friends into cute small children and he has to get them out of a vault again. this one is just an excuse for me to write endless Cute Baby Shenanigans, and if Cute Baby Shenanigans sound like they're your kind of thing, give it a read!

it's a long way down if you want to get up again, yugioh dm, T, 12k. mokuba tries to puzzle out why his brother is acting so strangely; as it turns out, this is because kaiba has recently time traveled. a fic shoving DSoD kaiba into the earliest parts of yugioh. he is very bad as a time traveler, and he's not necessarily making things better, but they aren't necessarily worse. also, a fic with a lot of my feelings about mokuba and seto's relationship, as well as their relationship with gozaburo. the kaibas will always make me feel things.

on burdens, yugioh dm, T, 11k. kaiba realizes that jounouchi is both more complicated than he gave him credit for and probably being abused, which changes his perspective on him. violetshipping, but mostly pre-violetshipping. another fic where i write people playing a card game! it is also as much about kaiba having the world's worst emotional intelligence as it is about kaiba and jounouchi both having shitty dads.

-

selected short oneshots

a question for the dead, life series, G, 1.2k. a script-format fic interviewing the dead players of last life. one of my favorite experiments with formatting of all time, line after line of character study with no wasted words. read it.

different sort of soulmates, life series, G, 926. an aromantic mumbo jumbo hears about double life after the fact, and talks through with grian his fears that he wouldn't have been capable of having a soulmate. cute grumbo friendship and also some feelings about feeling disconnected from the people around you. a personal favorite ficlet of mine.

the long odds, life series, G, 1.8k. martyn is invited to the table with the other writers to play a game. a very meta fic in which martyn plays blackjack with watchers and listeners. this fic is like 80% metafiction and allegory by weight, and i like it very much.

a murder, life series, G, 483. before limited life, jimmy and joel realize it's coming via a flock of birds on empires. a fic both with jimmy and joel's unique friendship and a meta twist on the whole canary thing.

task: answer the following question: do you believe in curses?, life series, G, 1.2k. the surviving members of secret life explain their thoughts on curses. a spiritual successor to 'a question for the dead' and another one of my absolute favorite experiments with formatting. another one with no wasted words that hinges on the character voice of it all.

home, life series, G, 887. cleo and etho have a conversation about their new relationship after secret life, given that cleo's aromantic. man, i love cletho so much, and i also really like the idea of aromantic cleo, so this is my ficlet with both of those things.

do you even lift, bro?, hermitcraft, G, 2.4k. boatem fluff about who can bench press the most members of boatem. this fic is still really cute tbh, not much else to say.

like father, hermitcraft, T, 2k. grumbot prime decides he has to protect grian the same way grian protected grumbot in another world. the horror of being trapped by something you can't escape in a box designed to stop you from hurting yourself; also, the horror of your mistakes coming to haunt you.

forgetful, hermitcraft, T, 977. an interaction between evil x and xisuma near the end of season eight. a ficlet exploring some of my feelings about how season eight evil x can very easily be read as abusive and not even xisuma ever seems to acknowledge that. also, the horror of admin powers in minecraft.

to spite your face, hermitcraft, T, 980. a ficlet where joe gets to be mad about how he was treated by hermitopia during the crossover. i just think i still have so many crossover feelings about joe hills on empires, that's all.

as what you make becomes you, hermitcraft, T, 3.2k. decked out consumes tango, as seen from three perspectives. technically three separate oneshots collected into one fic as one story, the idea of decked out 2 'eating' tango is one of my favorite horror concepts from season 9. this is my execution of it.

missed the shovel talk so this is the next best thing, hermitcraft, T, 941. the rest of the NHO throws a party for doc and then interrogates him about when he even got married to ren in the first place. a goofy, funny fic about the hermits hanging out and being friends. this one is mostly jokes, but i think they're very funny jokes.

-

i also have a number of other 'shorter' oneshots that aren't included here for the sake of the length of the post. to find all of my fics, including those left out of this masterpost, check my ao3! and, as suggested above, browse the 'a bee fic' tag on tumblr to find a collection of everything i've written, including things i either haven't yet transferred to ao3 or will not transfer there.

i hope you enjoy my writing!

[kurithedweeb]

In my recent post about base game Minecraft mobs in MCD rewrites, I mentioned that I like to include random little scenes from canon and I got a comment from @lucky-guess asking if I’d include Aph eating rotten flesh. I thought “maybe I will, it’d be funny.” I remember the time Brendan startled her and she accidentally ate the zombie brains in her hand. I was thinking about this comment and I had a Very Good Idea.

You know how Garroth was pretty hands-off with Aph at the start of Season 1? They’d talk, sure, but he just let her wander around and fix things up, he had bigger things to worry about until he realized that, hey, she’s basically a Lord now.

Here’s how it goes:

You’re the head guard of a tiny rundown coastal village, and you’ve been scrambling to keep everything together ever since a mysterious fire killed your Lord. Your apprentice has been a great help and he’s the only one who knows the real scope of your worries, your guards have been stressed enough with all the suspicion and accusations and extra patrols and they don’t need to carry the same weight you have on your shoulders.

It’s another dreary day of rain, one of your guards is recovering from a bad injury, and you’re not halfway through evening patrol when a random maiden crashes out of the woods. She’s only wearing what amounts to underwear, drenched, barefoot, her arms and legs are covered in mud and there are twigs in her tangled hair. She looks half-feral and the look in her eyes does nothing to discourage that.

You, obviously concerned that she’s being chased, ask her what happened, is she injured? Please, miss, come inside and take a seat by the fire before you catch your death. The maiden does not care even a little. She says she was chasing a mysterious man in green and have you seen him because she wants to know what’s up with that guy. You have not, and the idea of some random man being chased by this tiny woman is slightly concerning, but all you’re worried about right now is getting this woman inside before she dies of hypothermia. She does not care about hypothermia, she just wants to chase her mystery man.

Suddenly, a sound! A man in what might be green, it’s hard to tell in the rain! That’s the man, the maiden cries! After him!

You will go after him. The maiden will be going inside with your apprentice, right now, please, please go warm up. Your apprentice manages to wrangle the half-feral woman into the nearest open building, the library, and you take off after the mysterious man in maybe-green. You chase him through the trees, down the slippery slope of a hillside, into a clearing. You’ve lost your lantern somewhere along the way, and in the dark you trip on the lip of a crater you’re sure wasn’t there when you last passed through. You know these woods like the back of your hand, but the crater and the mud and the rain have blinded you in a moment of confusion and the man is gone by the time you get your bearings. Any tracks he may have left are too murky to follow. You stumbled back to town in the dark to check on the maiden.

You can call her Anastasia. That’s all your apprentice has been able to learn from her while you were gone. She’s washed, more-or-less dried and in proper clothes thanks to Emmalyn the librarian, maybe you’ll have more luck now that she’s bundled in front of the fireplace with some warm broth in her stomach. She tells you again of the man, of a clearing she didn’t recognize, and nothing of any use. You leave her to rest, thinking maybe she’ll remember more in the morning. She’s gone in the morning.

You’re half-convinced you hallucinated the whole event, but the time you spent that night furiously scrubbing down your armor convinces you it’s true. Anastasia reappears a few days later, breezes past you without a word and starts doing something to the road on the edge of town. You’re a little concerned you’ve possibly begun to lose your mind from the stress except other people are stopping to stare at her too.

For weeks, it continues like this. Anastasia appears in town, drops whatever she’s collected while she’s away at the library (infuriating Emmalyn more and more each time), messes around with a broken-down road or some fences or digs through the bed farmland, and then vanishes for days or weeks at a time. No one knows what she’s doing or what to do about it, but so long as she’s not hurting anyone it’s fine, right? She even helps clear out monsters from time to time.

You think, wasn’t that fence broken last week? Wasn’t that road in disrepair last month? Was that condemned plot of farmland suddenly sprouting healthy grass? Weren’t these Anastasia’s projects? Oh, you realize, she’s been fixing up the village for some reason. She’s been doing a surprising number of Lordly things, actually. And that little hut up on the cliff—was that also her? What else was she doing? She was making her own gear, her own house, helping with farms and patrols, and also apparently taming wolves and teaching them to fish—where did she learn all this stuff anyway?

You ask. She says she doesn’t remember. She says it just seemed obvious to do it like this. She says it seemed like these are just things people are supposed to do. Aren’t they? No? Well, that’s the way she’s doing things. You think she’s joking about not remembering how she knows, well, everything.

And then, as she’s helping clear away the bodies of yet another small horde of zombies, Brendan startles her and Anastasia shoves the zombie flesh into her mouth. SPIT IT OUT, everyone who’d seen this tragedy yells, SPIT IT OUT SPIT IT OUT RIGHT NOW! But no, this crazy weird woman has committed to her mistakes and you can see the disgust on her face as she chews. And swallows. You are fighting the urge to jam your fingers down her throat and make her throw up because you know her well enough to know you’d get stabbed for it on reflex. Within minutes, she is heaving into a bucket, miserable, and saying that she wouldn’t have done it if she’d known it’d make her so sick.

You, holding her hair back as she throws her guts up, realize that she was not joking. She was not joking about not knowing anything. Anastasia, the half-feral maiden from the woods who's been doing basically half a Lord’s duties around the little town under your care, is an amnesiac. She has actual, literal amnesia. That’s the only explanation. Everyone knows never to eat zombie flesh for this exact reason, everyone, no one is that dumb. Oh dear Irene, she’s going to end up doing this again, isn’t she? Anastasia, the woman who’s been caring for this town just as much as you have, is going to die from food poisoning because she can’t remember which berries are bad for you. If not that, then hypothermia. If you leave her alone, she’s done for.

That’s how you end up personally guarding the new Lord of Phoenix Drop. And how you end up breaking her out of jail when she gets wrongly arrested for murder a month later.

[deancasbigbang]

Title: twisted knife; sleepless night

Author: s7jacket

Artist: TwinOne

Rating: Mature

Pairings: Dean/Castiel

Length: 20000

Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence

Tags: Zombie Apocalypse, Outsider POV, Road Trip, Established Relationship, Second Person POV, Canon Divergence

Posting Date: November 12, 2024

Summary: All you’re trying to do is survive the night.

Survive the night and get to Safe Winter without running into too many zombies along the way.

You don’t expect to run into them, two guys who looked like they murdered the world and kept on walking.

Still, maybe an alliance wouldn’t be so bad.

DCBB 2024 Posting Schedule

Excerpt: The map rustles when you spread it across the counter, thumb running over the red sharpie line that marks the route you've taken across the country, a haphazard zig-zag pockmarked by tragedy. Safe Winter is marked with a X, just another few weeks walk from where you are. It's been a long journey. A fucked up, doomed proposal from the start, but no one had a reason to argue or to stay behind. There were nine of you when you set out and now there's just you, alone and lonely and too damn stubborn to lay down and die, so you're pushing on regardless. You'll get there, or you'll go down fighting. At this point, either option will do.

You're just drifting off, dozing in that half-wakeful world beyond, when you hear them. Voices, drifting through the glass doors at the front. You're grateful for the shelf, but you don't relax. Relaxing is what nearly got you killed the last time. What actually did get the others killed. Not your fault but still. Hard to get past that one. The voices—two of them, both male, move away for a moment, then come back, loud enough that you can hear it even with one ear pressed against the fabric of your pack. 

They must have found a back entrance—maybe a propped open side door or a window that hadn’t latched properly—and now they’re in that back office, the one you’d so carelessly left unguarded. Still, the lock. The one line of defence between you and possible doom. The hair on the back of your neck prickles; your heartbeat pounds steadily in your ears. 

They seem to be having some sort of argument, but it sounds like it's been rehashed and revisited, an old wound that neither of them can stop picking at. Their voices are deep and rough. 

“Dude, I’m telling you, he’s not going to be there,” one of them is saying, and he sounds insistent, if a little desperate.

“We’ve checked everywhere else,” the other voice, somehow lower, replies, and he just sounds completely exasperated. “And don’t call me ‘dude’.”

“Sorry, buddy,” the first voice says. There’s the tiniest hint of a smile in it, like this is an old, inside joke. 

There’s a clatter and a rattle as they try the door and the low sound of under-the-breath swearing. A “fuck, c’mon—“ from the first voice and then a “here, let me—“ from the second, and then the creak of hinges shatters the already tenuous quiet. 

They come through the door. 

[gottalovetumbler]

TF141 Zombie Apocalypse AU pt.2

Info: very gory and decently dark, cussing, slavery-esk, kinda obsessive too

Setting info: so I live in Colorado so this story is widely based on where I live and the Denver airport. To help set the scene I’ve included a picture I took outside of my house to show where the main character and Johnny live.

Anyways I hope y’all enjoy!

————————

“For the last damn time we are not going anywhere near Denver!”

“Come on bonnie! Juist imagine the untouch’d mail thare! It woul’ be like gettin the winnin lotto ticke’ !”

“Yea but instead of walking away with a shit ton of cash we’d be walking into a shit ton of zombies! Also don’t forget the sign saying to stay away from the airport.”

“Ah come on, whan has thon sign iver been richt aboot anything? remember earlier this year whan it says,’best outpost this side o the rockies juist 15 miles south.’ an then the same outpost blew up no e'en 2 months later. Tha’ sign has alway’ been full o lies.”

“No that sign has always been full of false hope, not lies. And it sure as hell has never been used as a warning sign, especially with how far whoever wrote it must have traveled to get up here. Whatever they’re warning people about, it’s serious and we’re gonna heed it. End of discussion.”

With that, you flip and stalk up to your house. Pulling open the door you walk in but don’t hear the door slam shut behind you so you know he’s followed you in. Of course he has, it’s your turn to cook dinner so he’ll be here all night.

“But Bonnie, it’s only aboot an hour drive.”

He whined, shutting the storm door and following you to the kitchen.

“It used to be an hour drive Johnny, 5 fucking years ago before the world went to shit. Do you know how many pileups and walkers there are in that city? Too many.”

You glance up from the pot you were stirring. The soup just about done and the scent wafting around making both your stomach growl. You’ve solemnly seen Johnny so defeated, the last time you saw him this bad was the day he turned up on your door step 2 years ago.

“Listen, I get it I do. It’s hard being in the middle of nowhere, nothing to do or to see. I get it I promise, I grew up here. But the possibility of finding some cool package meant for some chick named Racheal at the FedEx hub is not worth the risk. It just isn’t.”

“Yea you’re richt. The packages aren’t worth the risk o ane o us gettin hurt or worse,’ you turn your gaze back to the oven, glad you’ve finally got through to him. It sucks being stuck here but atleast you’re both safe-,’neither are the animals. They deserve tae stay trappit where they are because they just….. aren’t worth the risk. Right Bonnie?”

The glare you send his way just about lays him on his ass. The cocky smirk he sends you makes you nearly explode with anger. How fucking dare he use the defenseless animals against you.

“You and I both know any animals trapped down there are long gone and sadly there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Maybe…… but wha’ if they aren’t? Ye gonna let thaim suffer alone a scared while ye sit here eatin chicken noodle soup?”

———

Back before the outbreak, you thought no car rides would ever be worse than the family road trips you used to go on yearly. They were full of anger and arguing, mainly between your parents but what you would give to be back there. Not just because you miss your parents, you do, but because if you hear Johnny sing one more damn Rihanna song, you may just give yourself to the zombies.

“Umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh, Under my Umbrella-ella-ella-eh-“

“Johnny, shut the fuck up! You don’t need to sing this song 50 times in a row! I promise you’ll live if you stop singing.”

“For all ye know bonnie, ma beautiful voice coud be the one thin’ keepin us safe so hou aboot ye respect it a bit more? hmmm?”

“I highly doubt that if your voice is keeping things away, it’d be because it’s beautiful.”

He turns to you with an eyebrow raised but before he can retort, the large (and frankly, ugly) FedEx logos appears. Sun damaged and looks to have been half plowed down by a minivan, but recognizable non the less. You can’t tell if it’s the tires or Johnny squealing as he veers the car towards the front doors.

———

It’s been 4 hours since you pulled up to this God-forsaken warehouse and you’ve barely glanced through half the packages, let alone open and look at them like Johnnys doing.

“How much longer are you gonna take? I’d like to leave before I begin turning to dust if possible.” You ask/complain as you sit on a Samsung fridge new in box, probably cost more than 2k before but now it’s nothing more than a crappy bench. You guys spend another hour loading all the ‘good’ stuff into the trunk of the car and begin the long trek home.

It was about 4 am when you started the journey down and it’s just about to get to 9:30 pm as you make your way back up. On the drive back you guys stick to the highways instead of the side roads/land. It looks like when shit hit the fan almost everyone started making their way south to try and get out of the city, clogging up the roads while the north bound road had a few straggling cars but no big blocks luckily.

“Grumpy, grumpy. Absolutely na respect for the hunt. Back whan A wis i the military A usit tae have tae sit still i ane spot for hours hopin tae catch a glance at the missions target. Aye could hunt for hours an niver get borit.”

“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned your time in the military in a few months.” You say staring straight ahead at the ‘road’ (it’s a fucking field) processing what he said for a moment. “Do you miss it?”

“Miss wha’ exactly?”

“Ya’know the missions and the ‘doing the greater good.’ Getting the bad guys and putting them down.”

“A dae miss the missions a little bit, ay. But A miss ma fellow soldiers more. We were a family, a found on’ but on’ nonetheless.”

You guys banter and talk for a bit more, effectively killing time till you have to inevitably had back north. Luckily the drive down wasn’t too bad since you were able to cut through fields and avoid any towns with ease.

If there’s one thing zombie movies and shows got wrong, it was the amount of zombies walking the earth. Sure, there used to be about 7 billion living people and that number has now dropped to a measly 400 million. But that doesn’t mean every other body is a current zombie. In the beginning there were loads but as the years went on and more were killed, the hoards became far and few between. On the drive down you guys maybe encountered 10 or 15 zombies, majority once you reached Denver. The drive back you’ll probably only see 5 to 10, if that.

You’d about halfway out when the car starts the slow. Your head had just knocked the door in your attempt to get some shut eye so your heart was already pounding as Johnny hit the breaks. Looking up you expect to see a pile up, a hoard or maybe worse, survivors, but all your met with is an open road. Glancing to your left to see what Johnny’s looking at you follow his gaze to your right and see a giant sign for the airport.

“No Johnny don’t even think about it. We talked about this, whoever wrote that sign was truly scared of whatever’s in that airport so we’re aren’t going anywhere near it.”

He shoots you a quick glance, studying your quirked eyebrow before he mutters a quick, ‘Sorry Bon.’ and veers toward the airport. Stupidly (don’t this at home kids) you reach for the steering wheel while yelling at him to stop. The second you get both hands on the wheel he grabs your wrists with one and holds them to his chest. Still muttering apologies as he reaches 60 mph and weaves through stopped vehicles. One too many close calls cause you to shut your eyes tightly waiting for the inevitable impact. A few minutes later you both come to a stop on the top floor of the DIA parking garage.

As he put the car in park and looks over, he expects you to yell or maybe even slap him. What he didn’t expect were the fat tears rolling down your face and you stared petrified at the entrance.

“Juist a quick in an oot ok? We’ll be back home i na time- oh bonnie i’m sorry ok, I’m so sorry.”

He pulls you in for a hug and strokes a hand down the back of your head and spine a few times.

“Ye don’t have tae gae i gin ye don’t want tae ok? A juist have tae see somethin for ma own piece o mind but ye can stay oot here.”

As if you could have gotten more upset at that moment. Pulling back from him you shoot him the most scandalized look. “And what Johnny, leave you alone to fucking die in there? ‘sniff’ No I’m coming in with you, but don’t think just because I’m going in either you means I forgive you for this.”

You both waited for your tears to stop and your breathing to even out before you steeped out of the car and up to the once working sliding glass doors. Newspaper had been plastered up and covered all the windows, you just hope it’s to keep zombies out and not in. Producing a crow bar from the trunk, Johnny wedges the doors open and you both sneak inside. You’re up on the second floor and begin walking around, passing the small shops and gates as you went. Up ahead you both see one of those floor cut outs with the railings where you can look over the edge to the lower levels.

When you first pulled up, there were no signs of life but as you draw closer to the viewpoint you begin to see faint light and hear voices. Shucking off the little stuff you brought in, you and Johnny lay flat to the ground and begin to army crawl toward the ledge, hoping to catch a glimpse at whoever’s down below.

The sight your met with makes you feel a bit sick, whether that due to the amount of zombies or what’s happening to them your not sure. Down below is a giant wheel, that seems to be hooked up to a generator, being pulled in circles by 20-30 of them. It isn’t unheard of for people to keep zombies and use them for some sort of manual labor but it is looked down upon. Just put the poor bastards out of their misery and let the rest.

Transfixed on the hoard you almost miss the very obviously human man walking up to one of the limping zombies that’s not moving quite as fast as he’d like. He stands there watching the poor thing drag its bum right leg for a good 30 seconds before it crumples to the ground.

Not even a second after the zombies knees hit the ground, the human man unchains it and begins dragging it away. The second he grabs the things shirt it begins to beg? You look to the right and meet Johnnys equally wide eyes, both of you realizing the sickening truth. Those aren’t zombies, those are fucking people.

Seemingly rritated by this, he begins dragging the human mam towards a wall. Clearly this is not a good wall because he begins to fight and yell, trying to get free but is quickly overpowered and chained up onto the wall. A bright light flicks on suddenly, momentarily blinding you as it points towards the man. Your heart skips a beat as you read the words over the top of the man’s head and holy shit you’re gonna be sick.

‘Johnny MacTavish, a traitor’

You look back over at Johnny but he’s transfixed on what’s happening below, unable to pull his wide and terrified eyes away. As the man walks away a new one appears with an all too happy voice.

“Oh Johnny, we finally found you! Do you know how hard it’s been withou' you all these years? I’ve missed you so dearly brother.”

The new man is clearly crazy because judging by the state of the wall this is not the first ‘Johnny’ to be chained up there. He approaches the chained man with a cart of knives and other torture items and from this far you can still see his manic grin. Not wanting to see the way this plays out you turn back to Johnny to say you guys need to leave but as your eyes slide over to his you catch something straight across from you on the opposite side of the opening.

Sitting in the same position as you, is a masked face. Just staring, not moving, just laying there watching you both. You kick Johnny to get him out of whatever trance he was in and before he can question you, your pointer finger directs his gaze to the man across the way. As Johnny makes eye contact with him his body grows frigid and he quickly stand pulling it up with him. The masked man tilts his head and slowly stands as-well, mirroring your movements perfectly.

Johnny grabs your hand and before you can even process the masked man running towards you both, he’s yanking you towards the exit.

———————

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 11: The Innocent Can Never Last]

A/N: Below are your guesses…let’s see how you did!!! 🥰😘 Only 2 chapters left 🥳

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.3k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“You could have gone to California with them,” Rio says as he flips open the fuel cap of a black Nissan Frontier, parked in the driveway of a two-story brick house on National Avenue, not far from where Route 95 branches north of Winnemucca like an artery from a heart.

You squint up at the cumulus clouds to avoid meeting his eyes. You keep thinking you’re going to cry and have to suffocate it, drown it, slit its throat. “I didn’t want to.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Sweat runs in rivulets down his face as he slides in the semitransparent siphoning hose, the one with the little pump on it that Jace had when you found him in Iowa. Aemond gave this to Cregan; he kept the hose without the pump for himself. A small, curious sacrifice. You are fanning Rio with a magazine, Bow International. You had grabbed it thinking of Daeron, then remembered he wasn’t here to give it to. “Jesus Christ, it’s so fucking hot…”

“Djibouti was hotter.”

“Djibouti had a beach. And an air conditioning unit in every window.”

Cregan is waiting by the Tahoe and leafing through a guidebook he found at the Maverik gas station. Ice is lying on the ground and panting beside him, her shaggy grey coat filthy with dust and sand. “The town was named for Chief Winnemucca, who was born in the 1820s in what would later become the Oregon Territory. It either means ‘the giver of spiritual gifts’ or ‘one moccasin,’ depending on the interpretation.”

Rio says: “Damn Cregan, you can read?”

Cregan frowns down at the guidebook with feigned regret. “I really wish Trump had built that wall.”

Rio guffaws. “Cregan, man, I told you. I was born here!”

He continues: “Winnemucca was a stop on the transcontinental railroad.”

“Great. Let’s get that up and running again.” Rio groans as he squeezes the pump on the siphoning hose with increasing frustration. “Absolutely nothing. Not a drop.”

“We probably have enough to get to Denio Junction,” you say gingerly, knowing he’s suffering. It has to be over 100 degrees.

“Yeah, and what if there’s no gas there? How the hell are we going to get to Adel, Oregon?”

“We could walk if we have to.”

“85 miles? In heat like this?”

“In basic training we had to run—”

“We had water in basic training, Chips!” he snaps; and Rio never snaps. “And real food, and corpsmen for if we passed out, and also there were no fucking zombies running around eating people, remember that part?!”

You stare down at the dirt. You can’t cry; you can’t waste the liquid.

“Wait, no, no, no, I’m sorry.” Rio lifts your chin so you aren’t able to hide from him. “I’m…you know…I should already be there. I could be in Odessa in six hours, I could be with Sophie and the baby before sundown, and instead we’re stuck here in the desert and I’m thinking…what if what should take hours ends up taking weeks? What if when I get there, I’m too late?”

You nod, you understand. Out on the road, Cregan keeps his face buried in his guidebook, trying to be polite and pretend he can’t hear you.

“And, I’m also thinking…” Rio says, soft and low. “That I don’t want to be the reason why you miss out on a chance at happiness when the world could literally be ending.”

You gaze up at him, dejected, pathetic. “I can’t handle any virgin jokes right now.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to make one.”

“I didn’t want to go with them to California,” you lie. And then a truth: “And I would never leave you. I promised.”

Rio smiles. “You promised not to let me die alone, and I don’t plan on dying. You’ve gotten me most of the way already.” He glances towards the Tahoe. “I think Axe Boy would have rather stayed with them too. When he was asleep last night I heard him mumbling something about Helaena.”

Cregan? Helaena? Interesting. “Aemond doesn’t want me.”

“Oh, come on. You know he and his one eye are sobbing into a can of SpaghettiOs right now.”

“Be nice,” you murmur morosely.

“Why? He can’t hear me,” Rio says. “Look, Aemond’s fucked up. And of course he is. He went from learning how to save lives and deliver babies to watching his friends die horrible, preventable, completely meaningless deaths. That’s gotta suck. It sucked for me, and I barely even knew them, and no one expected me to be able to do anything about it. Aemond’s the one people trusted to protect them, and he couldn’t. So why would he be able to protect you?”

I never wanted Aemond to protect me. I just wanted him to take me away from here, even for a minute, even for seconds, one hushed stolen moment at a time. “I wish I had said something different back in Battle Mountain.” I wish I had told him I love him. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

“You deserve to have the whole wholesome normal family thing, the husband and the kids and the warm fuzzy holiday traditions. I know you’ve always wanted that.”

“If I choose the wrong person, I’m going to end up alone and miserable. And I’ll turn into a monster like my mother.”

“Hey,” Rio says, like he’s ready to fight you. And then he uses your real name, something he’s done maybe five times since you met him, just like you almost never call him Bryan. “You will never be like your mother. Okay? It’s not possible. You don’t have it in you. You’re not a parasite, you’re not mean.”

You want to believe him. “Okay.”

Then Rio chuckles. “Actually, you’re going to end up like my mom. Living in the middle of the woods, making your own soap out of goat milk, growing weed and knitting sweaters.”

You smile wistfully. “I have no idea how to knit. I want to build things.” Then you remember something from when you were fishing on Lake McConaughy in Nebraska. “Aegon said I look like someone who knits. Whatever that means.”

“It means you’re from Kentucky.” Then Rio asks, tentative: “So…what do you think about Aegon?”

This seems random. “He’s cool. I like him, obviously. He’s, um…I don’t know how to describe it. He’s so sad but so warm. It’s impossible to feel nervous around him, which is nice.”

Rio nods, giving you a teasing smirk. “Alright then.”

“Why?”

“Well I was just thinking that if he grows up a little more, he might be good for you.”

“Rio, he’s thirty.”

He bursts out laughing. “So give it another decade and he’ll finally be baby daddy material.”

“I’m sure he’ll be preoccupied with his drug dealing and brothel empire by then.”

“You aren’t even the tiniest bit intrigued?”

“I’ve never really thought about him that way.” And there’s another dimension to it that wouldn’t occur to Rio: Aegon is an addict. You know what it’s like to have to depend on somebody like that. You would never allow yourself to fall in love with him, not the way he is now.

Rio sighs and pivots. “You want me to give you a baby?”

Now you’re giggling. Of course, he’s not serious, just like he wasn’t serious when you were trapped on that transmission tower together back in Pennsylvania. “Stop.”

“I’m super tall and charming, and I was a great electrician back when electricity existed, and I have luscious curly hair that you can readily observe since the U.S. Navy isn’t around to make me shave it off anymore.”

“Sorry, I don’t reproduce with Enrique Iglesias fans.”

“You are so racist, and yet I’d still be willing to help you out with a sperm donation. I’d blindfold myself and struggle through it somehow.” He’s grinning, but his dark eyes are kind. “As long as I’m alive, you will always have a family. And Sophie gets that. Her parents were fuckups too. That’s why she’s so close with mine even though they’re insane.”

“They’re exactly the right kind of insane for the way the world is now.”

“Remember when my dad went through his ‘wifi gives you cancer’ phase and would only communicate with me via Republican-president-themed postcards?”

“The Ronald Reagan one was neat. So many eagles.”

“Truly an excessive amount of eagles.” Rio goes for the porch. “I guess we’ll scrounge whatever we can inside and check the rest of the cars on the street before we head north.”

“I ain’t seen any others without the fuel cap already open,” Cregan says from the Tahoe, dispirited but trying not to show it.

“If we end up having to walk, we’re going to need water or Hawaiian Punch or something. A lot of it. Maybe we can find some of that Pedialyte stuff Aemond got for Jace when he was sick.” Rio pounds one closed fist against the front door. “Hey! Anybody home? We’re looking for supplies. Not trying to cause any problems. If somebody’s in there, just give a shout and we’d be happy to keep moving.”

You’ve followed Rio up onto the porch. “If there’s no water inside, canned fruit will work. You can drink the syrup for hydration, and all the sugar gives you calories.”

Back by the Tahoe, Cregan is leaning down to pet Ice. She’s still panting hard, foamy saliva dripping from her muzzle. “Y’all, we gotta get moving,” Cregan says. “Princess needs to be back in the truck with the AC, and I don’t want to waste gas by letting it idle.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re working on it.” Rio kicks the door once, hard enough that you hear the wood split near the hinges, dry and cracking. He backs up to prepare to give the door another blow, which is all it will take. Then there is a muffled voice from inside the house.

“Get the hell off my property!”

Immediately, you are stunned by the boom of an explosion, shards of wood flying like shrapnel, the steel barrel of a shotgun jutting from the fresh hole in the center of the door. Rio is scrambling off the porch and dragging you with him. With your free hand, you grab your M9 from its holster and begin shooting before the man inside can fire again, before he can kill Rio or Cregan or you. Your bullets pierce through the blackness of the gaping wound in the front door. You hear shrieks of agony; you see flecks of blood painting the wood. Now there are people shooting from the second-story windows, and you feel the wind of bullets clip by as Rio pulls you towards the Tahoe. The engine starts; Cregan is already in the driver’s seat. You return fire until your M9 makes only small, hollow clicks when you pull the trigger. And by then Rio is shoving you into the truck.

“Go, go, go!” Rio yells at Cregan the second he crawls in behind you and slams the door shut. Cregan swerves away from the curb and barrels down the street, tires squealing, gunshots still ringing out from the house. Ice is barking franticly.

“Rio, I’m out,” you say, terrified.

“What?”

“Bullets. I’m out of bullets.”

“We gotta go,” Rio concedes. There are scratches on his cheeks from splinters of wood, sweat turning from clear to blood-tinged pink as it drips down onto his shirt. “We gotta get out of Winnemucca. If we have to walk, we’ll walk. At least there’s no one north of here to worry about for a hundred miles. Not living and not dead either.”

From the backseat, you glance over at Cregan. “Oh my God, Cregan, you’re hurt.”

“I know.” His right forearm is covered in blood. It’s a graze wound, but deep; when he turns the steering wheel, you can glimpse the white of bone as his shredded muscles open like a mouth.

“You need stitches!”

“Oh yeah?” Cregan replies as the Tahoe bumps over corpses in the street, bodies mummified by the wind and the sun. “And which of you two would be better at that, you think?”

“We’ll get supplies to patch you up,” Rio says, peering out the window, searching for someplace to stop. “And enough food and water to last us through the desert. Right there, hop on Route 95, and we’ll find a store at the edge of town before we’re in No Man’s Land.” Cregan jerks the wheel; the Tahoe veers onto Route 95 heading north. Boarded-up houses and graffitied overpasses and gnarled bristlecone pine trees and lifeless traffic lights and looted storefronts pass by in a blur.

You turn to Rio. “What if those people try to follow us?”

“It’ll only take five minutes.”

“Rio…”

“We don’t have enough to drink. If we get stranded in the desert, we’ll die. I’m not dying out there. I didn’t cross 3,000 miles to drop dead just a few hundred away from Sophie.”

He’s right. There’s no other option. North of Winnemucca is a wasteland, a boneyard. “Okay,” you surrender, helping him look for stores. “But we have to be quick.”

“I can be real quick, baby. You’d know that if you took me up on my very selfless sperm donation offer.”

Cregan raises his eyebrows; you can see his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Y’all have a mighty strange relationship.”

Rio is pointing. “Right there, Riverside Grocery & Liquor. Let’s give that a try. Cregan? You see it? By the Taco Bell.”

“Of course you’d be attracted to Taco Bells,” Cregan says as the Tahoe zigzags across the parking lot, but his voice is woozy. Blood pours from the gash in his arm. What if the bullet severed a major artery? What if he’s bleeding to death?

You ask: “Cregan, do you feel okay?”

“I’m alright. Don’t you worry about me, Miss Chips. You got enough worries already.”

“You don’t look alright.”

His eyes meet yours in the rearview mirror; they are fearful. “I think I need to get pressure on it.”

“We’ll take care of you, buddy,” Rio says. And as soon as Cregan shifts the Tahoe into park, Rio is out the door and striding into the small grocery store, his Remington 12 gauge in his hands. It’s unloaded, but still good for blunt force trauma. The glass of one of the front doors has been shattered. Rio steps inside, his boots crunching on broken glass. You are right behind him; Cregan lifts Ice with his uninjured arm so she can get inside without cutting her paws.

Harsh desert sunlight streams in bright enough that you can see reasonably well, dusk or dawn instead of midday. The air tastes like dirt and decay. The shelves of alcohol have been picked clean, but cans and bottles and cardboard boxes have been left strewn haphazardly around the rest of the store. There are several circular racks of souvenir t-shirts: horses, mountains, pine trees, I was a buckaroo on the Cowboy Corridor, #DesertLife, Straight Outta Winnemucca. You yank a white shirt with a rattlesnake on it off its hanger and tie it tightly around Cregan’s bleeding forearm, closing the ragged ends of his wound.

Ice is whining and nudging at Cregan. “There’s one in here,” he warns.

“Yeah, I got it,” Rio says. She staggers out of the stockroom hissing and growling, the flesh on her face almost completely gone, her exposed skull stained with clotted blood, her teeth chattering. Long strands of blonde hair hang in patches from the back of her head. She is wearing a red vest with a nametag on it. Once upon a time, her parents called her Jasmine. Rio strikes the zombie with his Remington so hard it is decapitated, and the corpse crumples to the filthy tile floor as its head rolls over towards the cash register. Then he slings the shotgun over one of his shoulders and begins shopping.

Cregan is tall enough to see the tops of shelves where items have been missed; he pulls down bottles of Snapple, Gatorade, Yoohoo, Jarritos soda and stuffs them into his backpack. You are on your hands and knees sorting through the debris on the floor, everything coated with a layer of dust and sand. You find cans of mandarin oranges, boxes of graham crackers, tuna pouches, and packets of Tylenol. Cregan will need them. He needs more than that, but you can’t give it to him. You’ve never been to medical school. You grab more souvenir shirts to use as bandages later.

Maybe there are doctors in Odessa.

Rio says excitedly from the other side of the store: “Chips, they got Cheddar Whales!”

Maybe there’s a life worth living in Odessa.

“Just hurry up so we can go.”

“Yeah, yeah…” He’s filling his arms with boxes and bottles, making a lot of noise. Ice is pacing and whimpering, panting like she can hardly breathe, drooling gluey strings of saliva. The grocery store is an oven. Cregan pops open a can of Arizona iced tea and pours it into her mouth to be gulped greedily down. Still, Ice’s yellow wolfish eyes dart around the room, vigilant, rattled.

“I think there’s another zombie,” you say, watching her. You reach for your M9 before remembering it’s unloaded.

Cregan replies: “Sure she ain’t just overheated?”

Somewhere close, less than a mile away: gunshots out on the streets of Winnemucca.

“Ready, kids?” Rio says, his arms overflowing, half a Slim Jim hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette.

“Yes sir,” Cregan agrees. The t-shirt you knotted around his forearm is splotched with crimson, but the bleeding appears to have slowed. Fragments of glass shatter as he crosses through the doorway and out into the parking lot, carrying Ice as she struggles and barks.

Rio pauses as he passes one of the other t-shirt racks, circles of metal that gleam like halos. He’s rearranging his supplies so he has a free hand to grab a shirt he likes. There are more distant gunshots outside, and the squealing of tires. In the parking lot, Cregan is starting the Tahoe.

You say distractedly, noticing an empty Twizzlers wrapper on the floor and thinking of Jace: “Rio, let’s go.”

“Hold up, this one has an elephant on it—”

The hand juts out from below the rack and seizes his ankle, claws up his legs, rips and tears at him, grey flayed flesh and screeches from rotting vocal chords, something that used to be a man or a woman and is now only a monster, half a body, nothing from the waist down but shred of black necrotic muscle, skin, intestines, too close for Rio to push away, already clinging to him like graffiti on concrete, like a pair of stainless steel dog tags hanging from his neck. Without thinking, without hesitating, you are across the store and trying to get it off him, screaming as your fingers rake through disintegrating gore, so deep you can feel the zombie’s ribs like rungs of a ladder, trying to get a grip on it, trying to kill it. Now Cregan is back with his axe and he’s hacking at the skull as best he can without hitting Rio, and Ice is barking, and Cregan is yelling for you to get away before you’re bitten, but you don’t listen, you don’t care; all your life you were homesick until you found homes with Rio thousands of miles from where you were born, and if he’s gone then so is the only place you’ve ever belonged. There is a surge of blood, hot and metallic, rot and iron in the air, and you don’t know whose it is.

He can’t be gone. If he’s gone, who am I?

An arm hooks around your waist and drags you backwards, so roughly you lose your breath for a moment and cannot fight them; over your right shoulder, you see a hand holding a Glock. Aemond pulls the trigger and the zombie falls to the floor, a mangle of decomposition and exposed bones, because wherever the others ended up they found bullets and gasoline…and then they came back for you.

Aegon is stumbling over the rubble that litters the floor to get to Rio. You can hear Daeron and Rhaena’s voices out in the parking lot, and the blasts of Rhaena’s Ruger, the revolver she once didn’t know how to use. Cregan is trying to help Rio up, but he can’t stand. He is slumped against bare shelves and holding a hand to his throat, where he’s hemorrhaging from a gaping, ragged wound, torn arteries and lacerated veins. He’s been bitten, but his transformation won’t take long. He’s bleeding out. His dark eyes are on you, and beneath the glassy sheen of catastrophic blood loss is disbelief and fury and grief. He will never see Sophie again; he will never meet his child.

Your voice is a whisper, a phantom. “Bryan…”

“It only takes once, right?” he says, weak and guttural, already fading, blood on his lips. Then his eyes drift to Aemond. “Get her out of here.”

“No!” you shriek as Aemond pulls you towards the door, his arms locked around your waist, his lips to your ear as he begs you to come with him, that you have to leave, that it’s not safe here, that Rio doesn’t want you to see what has to happen next. Aegon is sobbing as he touches Rio’s face. Cregan bows his head; but he’s already looking at the Marlin .22 that hangs by its leather strap from Aegon’s shoulder. “No, I promised, I promised! I promised I wouldn’t let him die alone!”

“He’s not alone,” Aemond tells you, and he doesn’t let go when you struggle, when you scream. Burning sunlight floods over you, and you are in the parking lot. Rhaena and Daeron are shooting down zombies as they lurch towards the grocery store, drawn by the commotion, the symphony of the dead and dying. Luke is using a siphoning hose to fill the Tahoe’s tank with the remaining fuel in the Ford Expedition. Helaena is moving their supplies into the Tahoe, weeping softly to herself, her long ghost-pale hair flowing in the desert wind.

The racks, you think, you remember. You can see Helaena shining the flashlight into your eyes like you’re back on a living room floor in Iowa. I forgot to remind Rio to check under the racks. And now he’s gone.

You’re screaming that it’s your fault as Aemond forces you into the Tahoe, and you don’t care what anyone says to you: Luke trying to tell you that’s not true, Rhaena swearing that you’re safe now. There is a gunshot from inside the grocery store. Your heart and lungs have turned to iron like the anchor of a ship, cold and still and heavy, unmovable, unbearable. You cannot breathe through your sobs; you cannot see, cannot speak. You curl up on a seat and wish you were dead. All your life you have been compelled by a blind belief that there are better places even if you cannot imagine them, that sometimes when it feels like the world is ending the only way out is through. For the very first time, you want to give up. You want to let all the poisons of this earth seep into your bloodstream until they stop your pulse and everything goes quiet, quiet, quiet.

Aemond is pouring bottles of water over you so he can wash away the blood and sand and gore. He is searching your skin for bitemarks. People are climbing into the Tahoe and a key turns in the ignition. The wheels are spinning; shadows fall over your face through the windows as you sail beneath overpasses. You hear voices but not words. You feel Aemond’s hands on you and do not flinch away.

Someone is putting pills in your mouth and telling you to swallow. “What is it?” you ask.

“Tramadol,” Aegon says. “It will take you somewhere else.”

And it does, this poison he doesn’t know you are starving for; it erases the future and the past until you don’t exist, you never have, and this is a relief.

~~~~~~~~~~

Glimpses through fogged vision, disjointed flashes like dreams: Aemond cleaning and suturing Cregan’s arm, Helaena’s fingers threading through Ice’s shaggy grey fur, smoke from smoldering Marlboro Golds billowing from Aegon’s lips and out through an open window, coyotes watching the Tahoe pass from the shoulder of the highway, mountains and barbed wire, clouds and useless power lines, land that turns from flat and vast and vacant to steep hills thick with pine trees, so many they block out the sun.

You are dimly aware that the Tahoe is stopping frequently, long lulls to hunt for gasoline in small towns, one gallon here, three gallons there, discussions over which routes to take as Aegon scrutinizes his map. Aemond is always with you, coaxing you to take sips of Gatorade and nibbles of Ritz crackers, feeding you spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup straight from the can, and each night when you fall into numb unconsciousness in a dead stranger’s bed he sleeps on the floor in case you need him, and eventually you do. You jolt awake from a nightmare, not death but cursed immortality, a bite he missed somehow that turned you into a monster, into a murderer, your raw skin and muscles sloughing off your bones.

“You’re fine, you’re fine, look at your hands,” Aemond says, taking your wrists and holding them gently. “No bites. You’re going to be okay, I promise. Hey, hey…” He cradles your face, he pleads for you to believe him. “I swear to God, you’re going to be okay.”

“It should have been me,” you whisper in the red glow of the candlelight. “I don’t have a family that would miss me if I was gone.”

“Yes you do,” Aemond says fiercely; and it takes your drugged, horrorstruck mind a moment to realize who he means.

The next day the Tahoe runs out of gas, and you know this because Aemond wakes you with a palm resting lightly on your forehead and an apology sighed through your hair. “What’s wrong?” you murmur.

“We have to get out and walk for a while. Can you do that?”

You force yourself to sit up, blinking at him. “Where are we?”

“Kingvale, California. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains.”

“We’re going to the beach house,” you realize.

“Yeah,” Aemond says, smiling a little. “Yeah, we are. We’re going home.”

On Donner Pass Road, following in the centuries-old footsteps of doomed westward migrants, someone always walks with you as you shuffle along in a daze. Aemond tells you about California, Rhaena reads aloud from Mockingjay, Ice licks your knuckles, Aegon talks endlessly about golf and yachting even when you can’t respond. His burned leg is still bandaged, but healing, and he’s found a Converse sneaker a few sizes too big to wear on his left foot; Aemond treats and wraps his wounds each morning and night, and Rhaena observes and takes notes so she can learn how to do it.

One afternoon just north of Beale Air Force Base, Daeron sneaks a Marlboro Gold out of Aegon’s backpack when no one is watching and lights it as he lingers in the back of the group. Aegon smells the smoke immediately and whirls, runs to him, snatches the cigarette from between Daeron’s lips and stomps it into the pavement.

“You’re not going to be like me!” Aegon shouts at him in the middle of the road. “Goddammit, you’re going to be safe, and you’re going to be happy, and you’re going to know that people care about you because I’ll break your fucking arm if I ever see you smoking again. You don’t get to poison yourself. You’re going to live to be a hundred years old. Got it?”

“Got it,” Daeron echoes, startled, petrified; and then Aegon hugs him, hanging on for a very long time.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is midnight in Meridian, a miniscule town founded in the 1850s on the banks of the Sacramento River, a relic from a time when travel meant ferries and railroads and wagon trains. Here, well outside the state capital, there are no sounds except the breeze through the trees—blue oaks, sycamores, willows, white alders—and the hoots of owls. The house is old, built in the 1950s or 60s, creaking steps and a screened-in front porch where Cregan and Daeron are playing Uno while keeping watch. The moon is new and invisible. The stars are bright.

Aemond appears in the doorway of your room. You are on the edge of the bed and staring at the wallpaper, flickering candlelight and scenes of galloping horses. Aemond is not letting you have any more Tramadol. He’s also not letting anyone load your Beretta, although you saw a box of 9mm bullets in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag. Maybe he’s worried you’ll try to shoot yourself. Maybe he’s not too far off.

He closes the door, crosses the room, and sits down on the bed beside you. In the firelit quiet, Aemond says: “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to help you.”

“I can’t stay here. Take me somewhere else.”

At first, he doesn’t understand what you mean. Then you reach for him—for a life raft, for something to tether you to the earth—and the lines of your palm press against his scar, flesh he stitched back together himself, proof he can heal people, a reminder of how temporary any of you could be. Aemond lays his hand over yours and closes his eye, holding you there against his face, feeling your warmth and your forgiveness, your need to be close to him in a way that is suddenly so uncomplicated. There is no fear left in you. Perhaps there’s nothing left at all.

Aemond kisses you, and there are blooms of golden light through your darkness like what you call lightning bugs and he says are fireflies. You are entangled on the bed together, and all the sounds still ricocheting in your memory—screams, gunshots, bloodlust, hunger, anarchy—fade until they cease to exist. He is touching you, and you can feel lost pieces of yourself returning to you like rain soaking through parched earth, faith and resolve and desire. And now, and now…

Now Aemond is taking you far, far, far away, to bottomless blue water you can drown in, to where Diego Garcia lies marooned in the middle of the Indian Ocean, to the sun-glinting waves off the coasts of Chinhae, Corpus Christi, Key West, the Horn of Africa. He is between your thighs, and you want him through the pain, a razor-sharp fullness that seems so immaterial and so fleeting; and you lie to him over and over again because if he knows he’s hurting you he’ll stop, and in this world one cannot assume there will be second chances. Aemond stills once he’s inside you, giving you time to adjust but also overwhelmed by the intensity of it, his hands in your hair and trembling all over, kissing your face as the pain bleeds away and leaves a shade of craving you’ve never felt before, something deep and indistinct, something intangible like a spell or a myth. You move first, rolling your hips with a slow, cautious rhythm, and only then does Aemond follow you. It’s in his voice, in the reverence of his hands, in his iris like a clear secretless sky; you have taken him far away too.

“I love you,” Aemond says afterwards as his head rests on your belly, your fingers tangled in his damp hair and your skull hushed like calm seas. “And I can’t pretend I don’t anymore.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to.”

And in the morning, there is something different about the world: a hopefulness that makes you want to wake up, a radiance like moonlight on the wave crests of the Indian Ocean.

[james-is-here]

I've had this idea for three months and it took so long to put into words because I was trying to come up with...not lyrics so to speak but what I think it feels like in a position like this.

Zombie Au? There's an infection and it's spreading but it's not necessarily zombies. Felix is your little brother.

Blogs: @belladonna6-6-6 @heartbinn @leezanetheofficial I genuinely forgot who else wanted tagged, please let me know again if you want to know when I post

Tags: Death, angst, you might cry (I genuinely cried), I'm so sorry if you cry 🥺, blood, kn1fe, Felix being the precious soul he is even in a dire situation, lots of crying, th-the use of st-stuttering since i've once read that the stuttering is annoying so I'm just warning. LMK if I forgot anything.

You ran and ran, hand tight around your brothers as you keep looking back to make sure he's still keeping up with you and also look out behind the both of you.

You shouldn't be outside at night but your original camp was surrounded by the creatures, slimy, gross, deformed creatures which use to be human beings. It was dusk, barely enough light to see where you're going.

The slow ones were called draggers, the fast ones were called runners, three runners were currently chasing you and your brother. You look back in front of you to find a couple draggers and skid to a stop, running to your left but you went to fast and Felix tripped, loosing the grip on your hand and falling to the ground with a grunt before shuffling back to his feet and catching up to you, taking your hand again.

His fumble unintentionally let the runners catch up to you both as you pant heavily. You still don't know where you're running, the road you're on unfamiliar as you run past buildings after buildings.

You suddenly hear a high pitched whistle and look ahead to your left, a person waving you over to an abandoned convenience store, they wear some sort of head cover that they seem to wear to blend in with the monsters but you saw their eyes and the fact that they were waving you over. You're quick to run over to them but suddenly your hand is empty again.

Turning around, you weren't expecting to see a dragger on your brothers foot. "Felix!" You dash over to him, kicking the dragger in the head before picking your brother up and running into the store.

You set Felix down, cradling his face and looking over him to make sure he's okay. "You guys okay?" The person- or the man- took his head over off and you see someone around you and Felix's age. "Yeah...Yeah, I think we're good. Thank you." "No problem. I'm Chris." "I'm Mn, this is my little brother, Felix." "It's nice to see a few new faces. Come on, there's a few more of us in the staff room."

The other survivors you met were really nice, they were friends of Chris'. Minho, Changbin, and Seungmin. They all lost someone to the infection.

Minho lost his lover, Jisung.

Changbin lost his best friend, Hyunjin.

Seungmin lost his little brother, Jeongin.

and Chris lost his wife and daughter.

You and Felix lost your whole family, you only had each other.

You both were currently on the floor in front of a fire Chris made, everyone else either somewhere in the store. Felix was curled up in your arms between your legs, one leg extended and the other you had your knee up the Felix leaned back on, your body was like his own little bubble, his comfort as your arms were secured around him and you just stared at the dancing flames in front of you.

He shifts, burying his face further into your neck as he slept but slowly he began whimpering and shifting, squirming in your hold as he tried to bury further into your neck. "Felix, bubs, wake up." You rub his arm gently, trying to wake him up and you know he's awake when he moves to face you, you move your legs to hold him properly in your lap as he cries on your shoulder. "Felix..." "I'm so scared, Mn..." "I know...I-I am too." "N-No, I-I'm scared of being in here..." "Wha- Lix, What do you mean?"

He sniffs, moving off your lap to rest his leg on your lap and pull up his pant leg. "No-" The tears hit you fast as you sob and gently graze your finger over the wound. "Th-The Dragger g-got me...I-I'm s-sorry, Mn. I-I'm so s-scared." He's started sobbing now and you just bring him into your arms, holding him tight. "I-I'm sorry..." You shush him, gently rubbing his back. "I-It'll be o-okay, Lixie." You bury your face in his shoulder and hold him tightly. "I-It'll be okay..." If you were reassuring him or yourself, you couldn't say.

Although, someone over heard you, and they were happy that an infected was now in their safe space.

In the stillness of the night, I hold you tight.

As time slips away, fading out of sight.

Every beat of your heart, a whispered plea.

Begging for salvation that I cannot decree.

There was one night, or day, you don't even know the date anymore, that you all gathered near the fire ring, conversing about anything and everything. Chris was telling stories of his family and Changbin told stories about him and Hyunjin, it hurt to learn that Changbin loved Hyunjin but never got the chance to tell him until Hyunjin got infected.

You and Felix were sitting on one of the break room tables, you could tell he's getting weaker, he was getting more tired and he didn't have as much energy anymore.

"I'm sorry...I have to say something before we're all dead." Minho suddenly spoke up and stood up, pulling a knife from the counter. "Woah, hey, Minho! What are you doing?!" "There's a runner or dragger here and I need to take care of it before we're all dead."

Your protective instincts gave it away as you stood and stepped in front of Felix. "Mn?" Seungmin questions your sudden shift before standing up, watching you protect the boy. "Minho, please..." "You really expect that'd change my mind?! Come on, wouldn't any of you want to kill the infected before it took your loved ones?" "Minho, this is my brother, my baby brother, he's all I have left, Please." "You'll end up loosing him." "But I still have him! I still have him now! I don't- I don't want to loose him yet, I-I just can't." You cry, turning towards Felix and cradling his face, gently shushing him as he sobbed, holding onto your wrists as he placed his forehead on yours.

He's muttering that he's scared, that he doesn't want to go, that he doesn't want to leave you and it hurts you even more, leaning back to kiss his forehead before returning to your previous spot.

Suddenly there's hands on your biceps, pulling you away from the boy and you sobbed, begging that this doesn't happen, trying to pull out of Chris' hold but he's stronger than you in the moment. "No, No P-Please! Please, just a little longer please!" Chris pulls you to the back wall of the break room, you try to pull your arms out and run to your brother but suddenly Changbin and Seungmin are holding you in place by your shoulders, keeping you from escaping Chris' hold. You struggle against them as Felix limps backwards away from Minho before falling to the floor.

"I-I'm sorry, Felix..." Minho stutters before driving the blade into his stomach. "No!!" You choke, watching Minho do it a couple more times before dropping the blade and stepping back. "Felix!"

They finally let you go and you dash over to your brother, kneeling next to him and bringing him into your hold, placing a hand on his heart and sobbing heavily. Every other beat is strong but the in between beats are slow and barely there.

"Felix, No..." He sobs, tilting his head into you and you lean further down to connect your foreheads. "I'm scared, Mn..." "I know...I know, bubs, I'm so sorry..."

Your breath grows faint, a fragile sigh,

Yet in your eyes, a fire refuses to die.

I'd trade my every breath to keep you here,

But destiny's grip, I cannot interfere.

His chest begins to rise and sink slowly, but when you lean back to look at his eyes, they almost look alive still, wide and looking up at you the usual way he looked at you, like you were the most amazing guy in the world. He always looked up to you, he loved you as his big brother.

"I-I wish I c-could take your place...give you all that I have. I w-wish you didn't have to go th-through this, Lixie...I-I'm such a terrible brother, I-I'm so sorry." You place a slightly bloody hand on his cheek and wipe his tears away. "Y-You're wrong-" "Ssh, save your breath." He chuckles weakly. "Ironic." His eyes glance down to his stomach where his shaking, bloody hands rest.

Through every gasp, I whisper tales of our past,

Each memory a lifeline, meant to last.

Though time may steal your earthly form away,

Our love's immortal flame will forever stay.

"You'll be with Mama...a-and L-Livy...a-and Rach..." "B-But th-they w-were turned..." "No, that's- That's not them...they're somewhere b-better..."

You move a few strands of hair out of his face and reach down to hold his hand. You don't care about the blood anymore.

"I-I don't w-want you to g-go, Bubs...Y-You belong h-here." "I-It w-would've h-happened...s-sooner or l-later." He inhales shakily, squeezing your hand. "I'm n-not r-really l-leaving." "What do you mean?" He raised a hand slowly and pointed at your chest. "I-I'll b-be here...y-you'll always l-love me, Nn. I-I'll a-always be here..."

I'm here by your side, my love, don't fear,

In the darkness, I'll be your light, my dear.

Though I cannot save you from fate's cruel art,

I'll stay with you, till the last, never apart.

"I-I don't want to leave you now...D-Dying is s-scary, I-I'm s-so s-scared." "It's gonna be okay...I'm gonna be here with you, it's okay. It's okay..."

You stayed the whole time, rubbing your thumb back and forth on the back of his hand and occasionally kissing his forehead. "I-I wish I could've s-saved you. I-I wish th-this didn't have to happen, I-I'm so sorry, Felix..."

You were gonna stay until his last breath.

As your eyes meet mine, in the final gaze,

I'll be the guardian of our love's eternal blaze.

Though you depart from this world's embrace,

You'll find me waiting in love's timeless space.

You had your eyes closed the whole time, you couldn't handle seeing him the way he was but you finally open them, Felix should see you before he goes.

"I-It'll b-be okay, Nn." He raised a hand to the side of your face and you held it tight. "Stop fighting it, Lix. I-I know you are, it's okay. I'm here, y-you're safe. S-Say h-hi to th-the girls and Mum if you see th-them...a-and l-let me know y-your with me every- every once in a while, mkay?" "I-I will a-and t-take m-my locket..." "Lixie..." You choke out as your eyes remain locked and you watch the light fade, his eyes filled with tears and his hand goes limp. "Lix..." You sob with a whine as the others finally kneel by you.

"I'm really sorry, Mn..." You were silent, sobbing over your brother. "Mn, we should move him." You sniff, moving a shaky hand to his neck and Minho gently helped you unclasp the locket, you clutch it in your fist before you leave a final kiss to his forehead and close his eyes. "Okay." You say softly, barely above a whisper.

You pick him up and turn to the other guys. "I-I can't...I-I don't have the strength to just l-leave him somewhere." "I'll take him for you..." Minho offers with his lips pressed together in a soft, apologetic smile. "I-I happen to know a nice area nearby so he won't just be out in the open." "Thank you..." His eyes widen at your words, he just killed your brother, why are you thanking him?

"Wh-When it got worse, I-I don't think I-I'd h-have the strength to actually l-let him go..." He hums in reply and steps up to you, letting you place Felix in his arms before he walks away. "Wait!" Minho turns around and you walk over to him, taking Felix's bracelets, putting them on, and any other items he had on him. You also snatch the pocket knife you saw from a nearby table and cut a part of his hoodie off, the only light blue part of his sleeve that wasn't covered in blood, and put it in your pocket, saving it to make something later. "Thanks." Minho nods before walking away again.

It's lucky the convenience store still has running water as you move to wash off the blood. "Hey, found the clothing section for you." Chris announces, placing a hoodie and jeans on the counter next to you. "In a convenience store?" "Well, from the thrift store next door." "Light Blue?" "Had a feeling...if that's okay?" Tears gather on your lash line before you nod and extend an arm. With Chris' small nod and a gentle smile, he lets you hug him tightly.

"I'm surprised you're not mad at us." Seungmin commented and Changbin slapped his arm. "I-I'm actually grateful...Yeah, you let my brother...b-but it was a necessary thing to do...I-I wouldn't have had the strength to do it my-myself when i-it got worse."

"I'm back." You leave Chris' embrace and turn to Minho. "Thank you...again." "It's no problem...Sorry I got a bit angry before." "It was understandable. Now if you don't mind, the state of my clothes is making me want to cry again so I'm gonna change."

"We'll be out here." Chris said as you walked to the bathroom with the clothes he got you.

When the door closed, Chris turned to the others. "Him thanking us for killing his brother is weird right?" "A little but it makes sense. Were you watching back there? He held his to his final breath. I could tell he wouldn't have been able to let him go if the infection got worse."

"How'd you know?" "Saw them a couple nights ago, Felix showed him the bite on his ankle from the dragger that attacked him before they came in here. I could see him changing and didn't want Mn to keep him to the point of turning into one of those and attacking us." "Did it hurt?" Changbin asked.

"So much. He looked as precious and kind, I really didn't but I was protecting us." You then walk out of the bathroom, throwing your old clothes into a nearby empty box. "Can I hug you, Minho?" "Uh, yeah, sure." He asks hesitantly and you walk over to him, wrapping your arms around his back and shoulders as he did the same to you.

"Thank you-" "Stop thanking me for killing your brother, it's kinda weird." You laugh, pulling away and joining the others on the floor. "Was gonna say thank you for protecting us...although I was against it...what you did makes sense...as much as I want to hate you for killing him you did it to protect us so...guess that skims off some of the hate." "Some?" He looks at you bewildered and the rest of you laugh.

"You killed my brother, you expect there to not be at least a little hate?" "Yeah, but you said some which means there's more hate then gratitude." While you and Minho went back and forth, the other three watch small smiles.

Even in a world of chaos, there's still time to find joy.

😭 I'm sorry if this made you cry and also I wrote this in like three hours it was like 1:20am when I started and now it's 3:41am so I'ma go to bed.

The angst is angsting 😩

His locket had a picture of your family on one side, and him and you together on the other.

[abbysbodybag]

Flicker of hope

Ellie x reader

Description : Zombie apocalypse hit. Your at a camp, approached by newly arrived member.

fluff/kinda suggestive

It’s been six months since the world ended. Six months since the last time you set foot in your childhood home, since the countdown to college graduation parties and summer road trips turned into a countdown to survival. You remember the sirens blaring in the distance, the hurried whispers between teachers and students, the rush of panic as people ran to their cars, and the smoke that filled the air by nightfall. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Now, you’re here—in a camp tucked deep in the woods. It’s safe enough, far enough from the cities that the infected don’t wander near as often, but it’s still barely holding together. Each day is a strange mix of survival and routine, like a twisted version of normal life. There’s still the sound of clanking pots in the communal kitchen, the murmur of conversations around the fire, even the occasional joke to lighten the load. But every moment holds the quiet, tense reality that this fragile peace could be shattered at any second.

The camp is quiet tonight. After weeks of scouring abandoned towns for food and avoiding infected, tonight almost feels… peaceful. You sit by the dying fire, warming your hands, listening to the faint crackling of wood and the quiet murmurs of others tucked into their sleeping bags or huddled in small groups. A gentle breeze blows through the trees, bringing with it the faint smell of pine and damp earth.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” a voice murmurs, startling you slightly.

You turn and find Ellie standing behind you, her hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets, her hair half-covering her face. She looks at you, her gaze sharp but soft, with that mischievous spark you’ve come to recognize all too well.

“Didn’t want to miss the night,” you say with a shrug. “It’s rare we get a break.”

She lets out a short laugh, almost under her breath, and slides down to sit beside you. “Yeah, and here I thought I was the only one who couldn’t get comfortable.”

You lean back, watching the stars overhead as Ellie settles beside you. The silence stretches, but it’s comfortable, and her presence is warm and reassuring in the chill of the night.

“I don’t know,” she continues after a beat. “Sometimes I think I’m too used to moving. It’s weird to stay still.”

You glance at her, noting the way her jaw tightens, her gaze distant. You’ve noticed how Ellie is—a restless soul, always alert, always ready to fight or run. She’s guarded, hard to read, but you’ve caught glimpses of something else in her, a gentleness she tries to hide.

“Well, maybe I can help you get comfortable,” you say, grinning, your voice light.

She raises an eyebrow, a smirk playing on her lips. “Oh, yeah? Think you can make me feel at home here?”

“Could be worth a try,” you reply, shrugging casually, but your heart pounds as her eyes meet yours, a playful gleam in her expression.

For a moment, she studies you, as if trying to decipher your words. Then she nudges you with her shoulder, feigning nonchalance. “You’re alright, you know that?”

You laugh, nudging her back. “Oh, just alright?”

She shakes her head, grinning. “Don’t get all smug on me. I’m just saying… you’re a good addition to this group. Makes it easier to get through the days. And nights.”

There’s a hint of something else in her voice, something you can’t quite place. The air between you feels charged, the warmth of the fire suddenly not the only thing heating you up.

“Well, that means a lot,” you murmur, meeting her gaze. “Coming from you.”

Her smirk softens into something almost shy. She looks away, rubbing the back of her neck. “It’s just… you know… nice to have someone to talk to, someone who doesn’t make it all feel like a struggle.”

You reach out, placing a gentle hand on her arm, feeling her tense briefly before she relaxes. “Hey, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

She looks down at your hand, then back at you, her green eyes darker in the firelight. “Promise?”

You nod, your voice steady. “Promise.”

There’s a beat of silence before she speaks, her voice barely above a whisper. “I think… I’ve been wanting to hear that for a long time.”

Without thinking, you close the distance, your fingers lightly brushing her cheek as you lean in. Her breath catches, and then, slowly, she closes the gap between you, her lips soft and warm against yours.

The kiss is hesitant, testing the waters, but it quickly deepens, both of you clinging to each other as if the world outside doesn’t exist, as if you’re the only two people left. Her fingers trace patterns along your arm, pulling you closer, and for a few perfect moments, you’re wrapped up in her warmth, in the steady beat of her heart.

When you finally pull back, she’s smiling, her cheeks flushed. “Guess I owe you one,” she whispers, her voice teasing.

“Oh, you owe me more than that,” you reply, grinning.

And for the first time in what feels like forever, you both laugh, the sound blending into the quiet night, a promise of hope even in a world as broken as this.

part two?

[bumblepony]

Tess Lives Fic Rec (No Outbreak Version)

Here are my Tess Lives fic recs in no particular order! These are all fics where no outbreak happens. I have a separate list of Tess in the QZ fics coming in the next couple of days.

Making Mirrors, a Tess/Joel Modern AU by @hypnotisedfireflies - A parallel universe to Drifters - the life lived had Cordyceps not conquered the world. - Mature

Tin Star, a Tess/Joel Western AU by @hypnotisedfireflies - The Sheriff and the Outlaw: sweethearts, bandits, soulmates. Magic horses. - Mature

Night Fever, a Tess/Joel 1970s AU by @hypnotisedfireflies - 1970s Bodyguard/Boss AU. - Mature

Of Artists and Architects by @emilylawsons - A Cordyceps-Free Tessjoel AU. - Mature

littlest digit, you've got the world by the handle by @ketchupchipsaregross - Ellie turns one surrounded by family.

smoke, ash, and strays by @ketchupchipsaregross - Joel (a firefighter) just wants to do his job and go home smelling like a campfire, it'd be great if the raccoon child from the alley would let him do that in peace.

dodors (and other birds) by @ketchupchipsaregross - How Tess and Joel accidentally restarted parenting in their 40s.

put it down in the pleasure of your company by Nyxierose on AO3 - "Normal functional people who live in mid-ring suburbs occasionally ask favors from people nearby and it’s not weird at all." Or, in which Tess gets into a lot more than she plans, but what else is new. - Mature

sweeter than sin by @raffinit - MODERN AU: Joel is a single dad of tweeny bopper Sarah. Tess is a single mom of teeny bopper Ellie. They've established a pretty comfy routine of being strictly fuck buddies. Until they're not. - Mature

the conjuring by @bradfordchens - Married demonologists Joel and Tess Miller hunt the supernatural together, all while raising two daughters.

we could walk forever, walkin' on the moon by @boopernatural - The one where Joel, Tess and Ellie take a family road trip to see a shuttle launch.

If I Had To Stay In A Haunted House With Anyone, It Would Always Be You by Steph_Puppet on AO3 - If someone had told Joel a few years back that he would end up traveling across the country with a self-proclaimed medium, sending ghosts back to where they belonged, he would not have believed them.

This section includes stories in which Tess is a Part of the story, but the story revolves more around a different pair's dynamic. So, Tess is more of a supporting cast member. These are still great stories, but Tess is just not a primary player.

a light in the dark of this danger (bookshop!au) by @two-birds-alone-together - The Bookshop AU! Joel Miller owns The Back Shelf, a bookstore located in Back Bay. He has no idea that his life is going to change when a girl walks into the store on an oppressively hot Boston day.

Ellie Williams' Guide to Teenage Rebellion by @simoncowellstits - Ellie is the president's Daughter, and Joel is her secret service agent.

Right Where We Belong by cauldron_zeta on AO3 - Frank has upheaved his life to move to almost the middle of nowhere. His closest neighbour isn't really a people person but Frank has always liked a challenge. - Mature

Compassionate Friends by @mildredellie - Ellie & Joel meet at a grief support group they were both forced to attend.

move so quickly (it can't catch me) by @howtotrainyourdoofus - Ellie navigating her first job as a professional ballet dancer and all the joys and strife that come with it.

Stubborn Love by @renegadeknight - Your favorite feral father-daughter duo repackaged, now with 95% less zombies and 99% more modern problems (golfing isn’t one of them)

world around you by @boopernatural - Joel's first date in two decades gets interrupted when his kid needs him.

To Have Loved Someone by Joels_revolver on AO3 - On her way back to Jackson, Ellie is teleport into a world where the cordyceps doesn't exist and Joel is very much alive.

At the end here, I am adding a few authors who have written so many good Tess Lives stories it's best to just go pursue their AO3 pages.

tessaservopoulos - @bradfordchens on Tumblr - Mature

Glitter_Gecko - @seethesunny on Tumblr - Mature

sillylily07 - Mature

Last, I am going to add my Tess Lives fics under the cut because I really am not trying to toot my own horn, but I want to have them on the list so I can have them all in one place.

Fate Makes Fools of Us All - Tess is Ellie's foster mom AU. - Mature

A Soul For Sale Or Rent - Ellie is a Ghost, and Joel is the only one who can see her. She needs his help to figure out what happened to her before it's too late.

In Another Time and Another Place - Joel and Tess meet at a bar in an Alternate Universe where the Cordyceps Outbreak never happens. - Mature

Ashes denote that Fire was - Behind Closed Doors - The Firefighter Joel Miller AU that only a few people asked for and I just had to write it. - Mature

Construction Corner with Joel Miller - Joel has his own TV Show on HGTV and Ellie is a foster kid who comes on as a helper and things progress from there.

And Baby Boy Makes Four - An AU where no apocalypse happens, and Joel has two kids with his ex-wife, Sarah, and a son called Junior.

[thecrusadercomrade]

Currently thinking of an 'Ericson Family Road Trip' where instead of defending against the Delta, the kids take the offense and get out of dodge before the raiders can gear up and attack. Clem taking the long way around to New Richmond just to avoid the Delta and any other warring faction (〜￣▽￣)〜

Not much of an ask I know. I guess the 'ask' part would be how you think the season from Episode 2 onwards would've played out in that route lmao--

Interesting! If I remember right, the original idea for the Final Season was a kind of road trip, and I do think the group deciding to flee would make a lot of sense.

If things went this way, it would really emphasize the disparity between Clementine and AJ's survival experience compared to the Ericson kids. While the Ericson's kids have definitely suffered a lot, I can't help but feel that they've gone through the apocalypse somewhat sheltered compared to Clementine and AJ. They lived in an isolated school with solid brick walls and plenty of opportunities for food. Clementine would really be taking charge here, trying to teach them how to survive out in the wilds of the world.

Since it's a road trip I wouldn't want to go TOO dark with it, but if I were writing this I'd definitely give the group some exposure to the darkness of the apocalyptic world. Cannibals, massive herds, disputes between rival groups. There's a lot they'd need to learn to stay alive.

I don't think I'd have any major human antagonists, since I think that's an overdone thing in zombie media to have humans be the main threat, but I would include some ideas of "survivor politics." How do Clementine and the Ericson's crew handle running into other groups of survivors? Do they make contact, or try to hide? Do they let people join them on their trip, or stay exclusive? What if the place they try to use for shelter is claimed by someone else? Even without the other survivors being bandits, there's a lot of tension to negotiate in any encounter with other humans in the apocalypse. Some might be more friendly, some might be less.

I think a major theme would be the Ericson's kids "reintroduction to the world." None of these kids have really seen the outside world since they were sent to the school. How do they deal with adults after so long on their own? How do they handle knowing the world they knew is truly gone forever? Imagine Ruby scavenging the ruins of a fast food restaurant, part of a chain she and her father always used to go to. What kind of memories would that dredge up? Not to mention, these kids have been alone since the oldest of them were only around eleven. What kind of culture have they built for themselves, and how does it interact with other communities? For example, they seem to be making use of human bones for fishing spears. Maybe it's normal for them, but how would other survivors react to them "utilizing" corpses in that fashion? A lot to consider for something like this, though maybe I've made it more serious than it needed to be XD.

[themightymoose]

trolls au you say?

well.... let's do this... *large inhale*

okay so it'd be a basic swap au where the pop trolls are the villains and the rock trolls are good

"But Moose, isn't that the whole point of the second movie? That the Pop Trolls were the ones who started the whole thing?" Shhhhhhhhh shut up shut up shut up

Anyways-

The plot would basically start from World Tour. But the first movie is a little bit different, but the main character is Barb so we don't really ""see"" any of it.

First movie context: first of all I would want the snack pack to do more and be their own characters, especially DJ (girlie just disappeared off the face of the earth in the other movies) Branch is more like Creek while Creek is Poppy's childhood, gay BFF. Branch also has all of his colors for reasons. So Poppy throws an obnoxiously loud party and Bergens find them blah blah blah (side note: Poppy acts like a mixture between Adam and Alastor from Hazbin Hotel) Branch and Poppy go on their super fun road trip, they still think the other is annoying because they are massive hypocrites. They're kinda in a rivalry, always trying to one up each other with songs, parties, ect. The movie is basically the same. Creek doesn't sell them out and everyone is happy

World Tour: Barb and Riff are siblings for starters. Riff is older and king of the Rock Trolls, also an older protective big bro. Barb kinda has Poppy's personality, making her the odd one out. Branch is the one going out and stealing all the strings while Poppy stays in Pop Village to look after it's citizens. More Pop Trolls are with him, including Creek. Who does not like this at all. Between the first and second movie, Poppy and Branch grew much closer to each other, with rumors going around that Branch is going to be the king of the Pop Trolls. Which everyone is pretty fond of the idea, since he's very popular among the Pop Trolls. And Branch has grown very loyal to Poppy during this time. Then the same thing with the road trip happens, but with some minor changes. Poppy not only wants to take the strings but leave nothing left standing, so Branch also goes to Vacay Island where Bruce and Floyd are and take over that place as well taking over where the Putt Putt Trolls are staying. So on they're road trip they come across Branch's brothers + Viva. Then yeah when Branch takes the Rock string, Creek finally stands up to Branch (Creek probably had a bonding moment with some of the people on the road trip at some point) either way Branch ends up leaving Creek in the rock place while the Pop Trolls go to bring all the strings to Poppy. Branch probably tells Poppy that Creek is traitor and she probably doesn't even question it. Anyway they also kidnap Barb when she lies and says that she's the Queen of the Rock Trolls, while Riff is like "you fucking idiot"

things happen and now the leaders of each tribe are Pop zombies. The ones who aren't hypnotized notice that Branch looks kind of similar to the Pop zombies. Something that Poppy also notices. So apparently Branch would sometimes use the pop string on himself to make him happy and have color so he'd fit in, which Poppy had no idea about at all. Also Poppy has an existential crisis when she learns that Pop Trolls were the reason why they were divided. And things kind of play out the same until the third movie

also Branch gets taken in the third movie instead of Floyd but that's a different post