#light and dark echo are both just how he copes with his fragmented memory!

[hexavexen]

here lil buddy have these. -gives 3 candied apples- One for you, one for the sad one and one for the angry one! Everything is better with yummy food

They're just in my head and don't eat....but I can. Thanks.

[cdroloisms]

more of the ghost!dream au!! still no good names for it, sorry (feel free to give me recs? maybe?) - picking off right where we left off here [x]. i’ve gotten quite a bit of this pre-written already as well as quite a bit planned - it’s definitely one of my favorite universes at the minute and something im really excited to show yall !! 

tw: death, memory loss (?), grief, unhealthy coping mechanisms, unhealthy relationship, grief, emotional distress, implied torture/abuse, aftermath of prison arc/pandora’s vault, dark(ish?) portrayal of c!sam (he’s one of the main figures of this au lmao but it grapples quite a bit w/ what he did in pandora)

Sam had only met Ghostbur once.

He never knew the former president well, had been busy with his own base during the Revolution and came back to the server in chaos after an ill-fated election and the man exiled. It hadn’t mattered, much, at the time; Wilbur was an imposing man, even in others’ recollections of him, and their words left very very little to the imagination. From what he knew, Wilbur was a smart man, cunning and silver-tongued, brimming with an unending fountain of belief that he could change the world with his words and his words alone; the server, overrun with memories of scuffles and battles and wars and countries Sam had not been around to remember, only seemed to serve as proof that he could. The few glimpses of the man that he managed to catch showed dark, tired eyes, a figure that stood almost as tall as he did, lips twisted in a perpetual tight-lipped smile.

Even as he spiraled, unexplainably, whispers of madness chasing the wind and landing in choppy fragments in the Badlands meetings held over Skeppy and Bad’s dinner table, those eyes never became less piercing, never failed to seem like they were burning through whatever and whoever they looked at. Sam hadn’t been the subject of that stare many times, but he remembers the bone-deep anxiety from having those eyes on him, even now.

Ghostbur, somehow, was the complete opposite; where his eyes had once been all-too knowing, belying their owners’ intelligence, a ruthless penchant for analysis that would split bone from marrow with a single sharp-edged glance, the phantom’s eyes were completely vacant. Instead of the glossy whites and rings of brown that would flicker warm to cool and warm again without warning, there was only an empty, all-encompassing blue.

He had floated over to Sam following a particularly difficult- session, with the prisoner, greeting him with an airy call of his name as Sam set off to his base for the night. He’d startled, then, still fresh off the adrenaline that was sent coursing through his veins each time he entered those blackstone walls, and started a sort of easy, unfocused conversation as they went along the path to the nether portal.

Ghostbur was - off, for the lack of a better word, even with Sam’s lack of familiarity of either side of the man - who he’d been before and what he’d become. His memories slipped through his mind like water seeping through fingers, and his attention span didn’t seem much better. Still, Sam listened to that echoing, otherworldly voice, nodded along as he eagerly recounted his day - or what he could recall from it, at least, until his feet had brought him along the same well-worn path to the nether portal, spitting purple sparks into the night.

“I’ll have to be going, Ghostbur,” he’d said through a thin smile, muscles aching under netherite as he pulled his shoulders back. The ghost’s head had cocked to the side, watching him with empty eyes, hands outstretched in front of him, palms up.

“Sam-” the ghost blinked slowly, “Are you sad?”

Sam froze. Ghostbur stared at him, face still kept in that same blank expression, eyes still an endless blanket of blue, but something - in his stance, perhaps, in the echoes of his words as they reverberated off of nothing, felt familiar, felt like looking up expecting a window and coming face to face with a shattered mirror - before the phantom’s face broke out in a weightless smile.

“Have some blue!”

The blue was dropped unceremoniously into his hands as he fumbled the catch and nearly let it fall to the ground; the clear, glassy surface of it tainted blue by his fingertips, the color swirling and darkening in his hands. He watched it, mesmerized, as blossoms of blue bloomed beneath his skin; his feelings, sharp-edged, became sea glass tossed in its shifting waves, smoothed, numbed, slowly sucked away in a pulsing chorus of blue blue blue-

“That’s quite a lot of blue,” Ghostbur chirped, and Sam blinked at the thing in his hands - navy, the same color as the sky above their heads clinging to the last remnants of twilight - “Would you like some more?”

“...no thanks, Ghostbur,” Sam looked back up, feeling through the new, blue-tinged fog in his brain, memories blurred at the edges but lacking the same burning sting of regret, “Good night.”

“Good night, Sam!” Wilbur smiled, blank blue eyes trained on his face even as Sam stepped into the portal and the world swirled away. “See you soon!”

---

“Sammy,” Dream walked - no, floated, forwards as Sam took a step back, unresponsive, “is there something wrong?”

Sam swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.

He was a spitting image to Dream as he first knew him; the same tousled hair, freckled face, down to the ratty old jacket that he’d insisted on wearing at all times, made of a garish shade of lime-green and covered in customized patches that Bad - unable to resist his puppy eyes - had always ended up fixing the thing with. He had a gap in his teeth that had left him with a lisp for weeks back then, prompting Sapnap’s teasing much to Dream’s annoyance; his head tipped to the side, curious, familiar, and something deep inside Sam’s chest ached.

“Dream-” he tried, chest tightening further when the ghost’s face broke out into a brilliant smile, “why are you here?”

Why do you remember me?

He hadn’t talked to Ghostbur much, but he’d heard, to some degree, about how the ghost operated, how his memories were inconsistent at best, seemingly dependent on the emotions he’d attached to them while alive. How he went through the world in a state of unshakable bliss at the cost of his mind. Dream’s memories of him should’ve been anything but happy; why was he here?

“What do you mean?” Dream blinked at him, eyebrows scrunched, lips set in a small frown. His eyes, black and vacant, seemed to swallow all light, even with the sun streaming through the branches. “Where am I suppos’d to go?”

“Don’t you want to be with George and Sapnap?”

Dream’s face was blank, and the pit in Sam’s gut grew deeper. “Who’s that?”

“George?” Sam could feel his voice begin to tremble, eyes widening. “Sapnap? You know them, right?”

“No?” Dream drew out the word, looking at him like he’d grown another head. “Should I know them?”

“Should you- Dream, this isn’t funny- they’re your best friends! They were your best friends- Pandas? Do you know Pandas?”

“You mean like in the jungles? I haven’t been in a jungle before, Sam, d’you think we could visit one?”

“No- Pandas, do you-” Dream only looked at him with the same confused, uncomprehending expression, not even a flicker of recognition in his face; Sam could hear his heart thudding in his ears, a distant horror growing and wrapping around his throat, “How about Ponk? Alyssa? Calla? Bad?”

Each name did nothing to change the blankness on Dream’s face, the screaming thoughts in Sam’s head growing to a fever pitch when the ghost in front of him shook his head, hair whipping back and forth.

“Nope!” His hands tugged at his hoodie sleeves, the movement familiar in a way that had echoes of long-forgotten memories drifting to the surface, holding his heart in a chokehold and squeezing tight. “Are they your friends?”

“Dream,” he stepped forward - felt a shadow of a pickaxe held in his fists, the shape of the name in his mouth bringing forth the taste of iron and smoke and painting the inside of his eyelids red - and stopped in his tracks. The images melted away, left just a kid standing in front of him, rocking back and forth on nothing, and Sam was going to be sick.

“Who do you remember?”

Dream smiled as the question registered, directing a look of such open, unadulterated adoration his way that it stole all of the air from Sam’s lungs.

“You, dummy!” He laughed, airy and light. “Who else?”

---

He brought him to his base, because what else was he supposed to do?

Dream skipped behind him, entirely enamoured with Fran; he watched as she melted under his enthusiastic scratches at the tufts of fur at her neck. He’d always been a soft touch with animals, had brought home stray mobs more than a few times as a kid; Sam swallowed around his unease and trudged forward.

“Puppy!” He nearly screeched with laughter, and Sam looked back to see Dream with his arms wrapped around Fran’s neck, face buried in her fur as giggles made his shoulders shake. Fran gave him a sloppy lick on the cheek, making him break out into a new round of high-pitched wheezes, “Good girl! Good puppy!”

“Hurry up, Dream,” Sam turned away. “We don’t have all day.”

“Oh- m’sorry,” Dream’s voice quieted, almost seemed to wobble, and Sam bit down on his tongue as they continued to walk back. He- didn’t know what to do, not with this version of Dream, not the little kid he’d half-forgotten instead of the masked monster he’d become so accustomed to. It was so much easier to slip into the mask, let his voice drop cold and deep and empty, the role of the Warden heavy and comfortable like a set of netherite armor. He pointedly kept his eyes staring forward, looking for the edge of the forest they’d ended up stuck in so he could finally see.

A sudden, yipping bark came from behind, thoroughly startling him and sending a sword appearing in a flash of white. He huffed at Fran, looking at him with faux innocent eyes, really?

Unfortunately, both she and Dream had somehow fallen ridiculously behind, the ghost having lowered to the ground at some point as Fran sat and wagged her tail. He rolled his eyes, making his way back towards the duo, feeling irritation press in the form of a headache against the front of his skull.

“Come on,” he muttered, wincing at how clipped his words sounded, even in his own ears. Not the same Dream, Sam. You’re not in the prison anymore. He shoved his hands into his pockets, eyes narrowing as he came closer; Dream hadn’t just stopped because of some distraction, as he first assumed. The kid was leaning against Fran, hands twisted loosely in her fur, head tipped forward and leaning against her body.

“Dream?”

The ghost looked up at his voice, one hand going to rub at his eye. His hair seemed to be moving around less than earlier, lips twisted in a small frown.

“M’sleepy, Sammy,” he mumbled around a yawn, bottom lip jutting out in a pout. He reached both hands up, palms facing the sky, as he stared expectantly. “Up.”

Aren’t you a little big to be carried? The retort came to mind as easily as breathing, echoed in his own head by his own voice, younger, exasperated but fond. His arms shook with the memory of a kid wrapping his arms around his neck and fumbling with his crown, with the feeling of a dead weight resting against the crook of his elbows, tall and lanky and far too light for its size, held in his arms one final time-

“Please?”

Sam shook his head.

“We’re walking to my base. Come on.”

[hugos-mind-on-films]

Empathic emotion in film - essay - The perks of being a wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The 2012 film, starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller is a masterclass on vehemence. Perfectly expressing the epitome of teenage existence. A story which barely avoids becoming an epitaph for our main character, Charlie. A beautiful life so close to being lost, a theme so violently relatable. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an anthology of tangents, telling the totality of trauma. A story of being ‘both happy and sad’(7:44). Charlie grows and loves, yet within that is a constant reminder, an eternal echo of memories unknown. In this scene, the writer of the original book, the screenplay and the director, Steven Chbosky works with Lerman to reveal the insides of Charlie’s mind and convey Charlie’s crescendo as the realisation and weight of his life crashes down on him. A pure display of emotion and control over the emotion of an audience via the forms of cinematography, sound and mise en scene colliding to create one of the most powerful and memorable scenes in all of cinema. 

The cinematography by Andrew Dunn is exquisite. Although released in 2012, The Perks of Being a Wallflower was shot entirely on 35mm celluloid film. A creative choice that helps tell the story as the celluloid’s noise and softness act as another character in the scene, helping sell the setting of the film in the ambiguous 90’s and it exemplifies Charlie as a person and his foreboding internal struggles, inviting the audience to empathise with Charlie’s emotional state. Shooting on film adds texture to the shot that is not found in the ultra crisp cinema cameras we know today. In the relatively mundane world of suburban Pittsburgh, Tarkovsky like texture is not available, so the in-camera texture of celluloid adds interest and movement into sometimes still shots, while the noise captures the chaos that is Charlie’s mind. The background pandemonium created by the film draws the audience into the world, into the scene and into Charlie’s mind. A chaos and despair that is personified through colour.

Colour is not expressly used in this scene and that is the power of it. The overexposed sky eradicates the tranquil blue from the scene. The walls of his house washed in a dull beige. In his room, the walls, furniture and Charlie himself are cast in shadow. The life of each shot, colour, is sucked out, swept away and neglected. The absence of vibrancy limn the feeling of pain and suffering that Charlie is currently enduring. His memories even follow this same suit. Dark, dingey scenes with deep shadows that shrink even the brightest colours, like the yellow of his sleeping sister’s sleeping bag as he is told not to ‘wake’ (1:25:16, 1:25:39) her. This use of earth tones, dark and boring colours, helps emphasise the low of Charlie’s life. Now that Sam and Patrick have left, the reason to keep going has faded, much like the colours in the scene. The realisation of Aunt Helen and Charlie's ‘little secret’ (1:25:21, 1:25:53) appears through the colour and is accentuated by the lighting.

The lighting in the scene is natural and practical. The front door and hallway are lit only by the windows in the house creating a dark tunnel leading to his room, a visual cue to the darkness he is entering. His room is dark, lit only by the sun entering through his only window. From the straight shot, the harsh 5500 kelvin lighting puts Charlie and his emotions on display. No shadows on Charlie, Dunn and Chbosky’s way of showing he has nowhere to hide. His pain has reached its boiling point. The single lighting setup also creates an agonizing attachment to reality and reminds the audience that this film is real, the emotions are real and Dunn is telling the audience that the danger Charlie is in, is real.

Sound is the engineer of emotion and that notion does not differ in this scene. To begin the scene, a non-diegetic symphonic swell pulls the audience into the brittle, fragmented mind of our main character. The dialogue from Aunt Helen forms in the center of our collective consciousness, just as it does for Charlie. The shattering of Aunt Helen’s car window sends us back into the present where we can witness his whirlpool of pique represented as the piano lulls the viewer through his mental wounds, inviting us into his life. As the piano plays, it motivates the cut to his childhood photos and the visualisation of his innocence lost. As Charlie revels in his guilt for an atrocity he didn’t commit, ‘It’s all my fault’ (1:25:46 - 1:25:52) repeats with the audience throughout the scene both diegetically and in the non-diegetic cadence of the chords. Every sound actuates the visuals via J cuts and audio match cuts. This editing technique links the audience’s eyes, ears and emotions together allowing for us, as the viewer, to latch onto Charlie and become one with him. The sound design of this scene allows a change in the audience dynamic from spectator to participant. The non-diegetic inflating drones expand, heightening our empathy and highlighting his turmoil and as the score introduces more chords to us, creating a cohesion between Charlie and his woe’s, an artificial disarray tethers his memories to the audience’s audio-visual experience. Lerman’s repetition of ‘stop crying’ (1:26:06 - 1:26:15) speaks more to the audience than him. A subversion of a 4th wall break that allows the audience to share their trauma with Charlie and Charlie with the viewer. The creation of a shared emotional experience between Charlie and the audience consolidates itself as all the fragments of his memories and self come together in his head at the height of the score. 

Mise en scene, specifically the placement of props and objects in the frame and costume are vehicles for storytelling that seldom receive adequate respect. In this scene, mise en scene contributes to the conveying of Charlie’s agony and loss of self. Patrick and Sam leaving propels a new found pain in Charlie to the surface of his mind, beguiling him into unwrapping his forgotten trauma. The photos in his house of him and his siblings as children cites a purity and naivety no longer present in Charlie after his sexual assault at the hands of Aunt Helen. A conviction compounded by his wardrobe. A grey suit, provided by Patrick, as a suit is what ‘all great writers wear’ (39:52), ages Charlie far beyond his 15 years. Charlie wearing the suit is a subconscious coping mechanism offering an escape from his past but one he cannot run from. His past catching up to his present. In the back of his room, a light is turned off, indicating his separation from existence and his will to leave rather than live, as a result of his discovery. Charlie continues his catharsis in front of his typewriter. The best present he has ever received, places the audience in a new perspective. Charlie writes letters to a friend and by the end of the film we are writing our letters to him. Pleading him to hold on.

As the scene draws to a close, the frame of Charlie’s head fills the scene into darkness, literally putting the audience into his mind as we are left looking back at ourselves in the reflection, left to write our letters to Charlie.

Steven Chbosky and Andrew Dunn have provided a perfect example of how to convey emotion in film and how to sire empathy within an audience. Through the use of mise en scene, costume, the sub arts within cinematography and sound, the film produces emotion within the viewer and allows for the true depth of the film’s themes to resonate in the audience.

Bibliography:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Motion picture, Summit Entertainment, Mr. Mudd, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America. (All quotes are time stamped for the original movie.)

[sylph-feather]

delta echo alpha delta

Summary: 

He is here, for some reason, in this place and with these people he vaguely recognizes. He wants help. Please, please, please. 

(All they see is a haunting and a monster.)

Prompt by @ectopal

“Jack and Maddie, at the end of their rope,  beg Vlad to come to Amity to help stop the ghost that's haunting their family. Vlad realizes that it isn't a ghost that's terrorizing them, but their son, who recently became a half ghost and is having just about the worst time in the world dealing with it. Bonus points if in his human form Danny is extremely unsettling. ”

Notes:  (yes the title is from lemon demon’s lifetime achievement award). this... i spent. way longer setting it up so sorry about minimal vlad but. uhh im really proud of this. i went. i went a little nuts, admittedly. with imagery. i hope its not incomprehensible? 

Wordcount: 2825

Being dead… is new.

The Phantom isn’t sure just how it is new, it contemplates as it stares at two children who scream and scrabble at a smoking portal. Blank in their terror, they ignore him.

His eyes flicker towards a mirror on the other side of the room, and it only shows the two of them.

The phantom ignores them— who is he to interrupt? Dead men tell no tales. He gets the distinct feeling that everything is wrong, and a piece of that puzzle is the pair’s odd familiarity— but hey, he just died, he’s really not feeling up to much of anything.

Green eyes stare in the mirror, but that’s all he is— two green wisps, apparently ignored in the panic of two teens.

He supposes he should feel weirder having, presumably, died. No, he innately knows he died.

But mostly he just feels… confusion. Displacement.

And cold, not unpleasantly so, just a buried, almost peaceful chill.

In between blinks— perhaps he is tired, so tired, dead tired (he laughs to himself), the two teens flicker away, basement restored, before he can even think about questioning them. Why are you so familiar? Why am I here? It pokes sharply at his heart.

For the phantom knows he is dead, but he never considered that means alive once, too tired and dead-brained (hah) to question implication.

The ghost of Danny Fenton closes its wispy eyes, not strong enough to maintain form, let alone to pervade that shock scrabble at memories that may lead him to living again.

xXx

Three days pass. The ghost, in moments of waking, had decided Phantom. There is something so familiar about that name, the way it rolls off his (hypothetical) tongue.

In between blinks, he sees the Family in the basement, that place of awakening.

They speak of someone missing, lost. They gesture to the green, swirling abyss, upset as they work on something that looks like a rocket. Rocket. Stars pervade his mind as he lazily blinks, and he falls back asleep to dreams of space before he can even think again of questioning the Family, of asking can I help?

He knows what it is to be lost, but he is too tired and unfocussed.

xXx

The one with the firey, long hair notices him first. He has taken to floating about the abode. Nothing physical keeps him here, but there is some tug in his heart that makes him want to stay.

He likes the red haired one. She reads a lot. Talks about bad coping to the Parents, though he’s not sure what those words mean (he’s unsure also why he gets the feeling of vague annoyance, oddly familiar, and the stinging in his chest becomes so painful when he thinks like that, like a scorpion’s deadly barbed stinger).

One day, one higher energy day, a week after the awakening, Phantom lazily swishes after her, into her room. Sometimes he blinks and he hears the swishes of pages and a drip of water, and he has enough energy now to be curious.

The doors, the walls, the floor— they’re all nothing. Or maybe, rather, he’s nothing, he observes as he notes the girl crying on her psych book.

He frowns, distantly. She’ll ruin the pages like that. Maybe there’s something more he should be concerned about, but he is so young and lost, and so tired.

He runs a finger along a page, rolling away a tear, in an effort to dry it. The pages flutter in a wind, and the girl startles, glancing at the closed window.

For just a moment, Phantom sees not two piercing green wisps, but something blue and glinting, and a fragment of a foggy body in his place. He glances down— there is no second person here.

He’s distracted by the fact the girl is crying again, harder, scrubbing her eyes.

Distressed, he thumbs at her face, and a cool, wintery wind blows over her hair.

He’s too tired to do much more, and his chill becomes like a blanket to him.

xXx

It’s small, but maybe Phantom can help the family. His waking moments get more frequent and longer, and he starts to fidget with objects; the daughter cries, and he rustles her hair. The mother sleeps on her research of the great swirling door, and he drapes a foggy arm over her. The father squints into darkness at his foggy form as he goes down for a midnight snack— then blinks and rubs his eyes. He flickers the computers off when they should be sleeping, touches at their shoulders in comfort, because he wants to help them and he wants to be with them so bad. The flailing stinger pierces again and again.

“We’ll find him,” the Parents insists, and the Phantom tries to support them as best he can. The Daughter has given up, but he tries to help her, too.

Bluntly, the Phantom notes perhaps he is not exactly selfless— one of the few concrete truths he knows of himself (the other being an enjoyment of word play; he’s twisted dead and ghost every which way). There is some innate desire within him to be with them; seen, known, interacted with.

At the moment, he’s not more than a blustering wind and a foggy reflection.

He sinks to the floor, ghostly sigh escaping his ever invisible lungs. He’s wondered if ghosts are supposed to breathe as he does, but it’s not like anyone’s around to ask. His crackled voice is never heard by the Family, responded to by nothing but icy silence.

He brushes a hand against the cold lab table from his floating position. His hands feel solid to him, but again, do not reach the Family.

The Phantom takes a look around at the toxic green beakers and sleek white tech. He is slipping away again, not that he wants to— but not that he has a choice.

In what feel like his last moments for the day (week? Month? Time is undefinable) he grasps at a beaker, curious.

Green oozes onto the floor as it blows over. Frantically, the Phantom tries to correct his mistake— but touching it… touching it feels good. A jolt of electricity and energy. The tiredness… is gone.

Something flickers beneath him, and the Phantom jumps into the air. White feet follow black legs. Him.

The mirror that showed green wisps and two teens now show a white haired boy, with two green eyes. Something seems… underneath that reflection, though. Approaching the mirror, Phantom tilts his head, and the picture glints into something blue eyes and black haired for a fraction of a second, as though it is iridescent.

And then he blinks out altogether again.

xXx

Phantom’s first appearance is in the night. The girl has put away her book she was crying over while reading in the kitchen, and the Parents are upstairs; they eat, softly, quiet. It’s like walking in snow. The cold is not tranquil, the flakes not soft, they are just sharp things that land quietly in flesh.

The Phantom decides to break it with an icy crunch.

From the shadows, from the floors, he claws at that energy.

The Family stare in shock at the white haired, green eyed form that flickers in the shadows.

Their ears ring as his form, like static snowflakes, glints into something familiar, as they sit frozen.

xXx

He sleeps again, after that stunt— but the Phantom wakes, hopeful. The Family is searching for the lost person— perhaps they will also be sympathetic to his cause. Maybe they don’t even need to find the lost one, Phantom considers; this feels so much like home, maybe… maybe. No, no, you can both get help, he scolds in gentle reminder to himself, reminding those thoughts are the scoprion’s poison. It’s not malevolent— it just, in some way, he just knows he’ll slot in like a missing puzzle piece. He doesn’t know how he knows, and thoughts like that make the urge of please see me, the love, the need, grow so strong.

His voice reaches them in a static scream; he gives that approach up quickly when the Parents shoot into the nothing. He doesn’t want to scare, he wants to be helped, and to help. He’s finally a little less braindead (his chuckle is tinny static) and can contemplate a little more emotionally complicated situations— in other words, he can tell continuing to screech is perhaps not the best idea, and perhaps more subtlety that is available to him with his increased thoughts is required.

The TV channels, the word magnets, the radio. Static and the message lost lost lost please help lost lost forgot forgot see me see see see seeseeseeseesee me.

The Phantom feels his message is going well until the Family destroys those things in a green fire.

I need your help, though, he grimaces. Perhaps they just aren’t getting it. The dead cannot speak, are not supposed to; he knows this when he writes messages, something grating in his mind that keeps him from communicating all but his basic thoughts and wants.

Determined still, he starts flickering into existence again, clawing out of shadows. Lights flicker at his arrival.

It’s hard to do much like that, though; his brain dies (more?) and it’s all his concentration of see me see me.

The Family shoots at him, and more sleek machinery invades the household— defenses.

It doesn’t hurt him.

But… if he gets frustrated, slams at the fixtures a little harder than needed, rakes the words into place to try to say something, who can blame him? The Phantom, for some reason he cannot explain, feels the Family is his family. The Phantom wants to be seen. The universe tries to keep the dead in line, restrain the dead from disrupting that natural order of their old life and their afterlife. It’s a lot of factors, the Phantom dismisses, very much like a sassy teenager, and slams a door a little harder to get someone to notice.

The real problem is that they notice, then react in all the wrong ways. But the Phantom cannot swallow that, that his efforts are squandered, because then where would he be?

xXx

By the time the Fentons are valiant enough to get Vlad to get the “gang” back together, the creature is a constant. The ghost scrapes its filthy claws over the lights, resides in mirrors, screams over anything electronic— and their tech puts no stop to it. It’s like it has a foot in each world, caught between the ghost zone’s intangibility that would let it not be hurt but make it challenging to interact and the human realm’s solidity that would allow it to be wounded.

It is too powerful.

xXx

The Phantom can feel that the irritated old man is powerful. Something about his eyes glints red, in that same iridescent way that something inside Phantom’s green eyes glint blue like a glacier, if you just tilt your head and squint just right.

The Parents, who the Phantom has grown wary of— and yet he’s still here— why? It feels so much like home. He wants it to be home, because it’s always felt his place. Maybe that missing person doesn’t need to be found— maybe he can—no, no, remember!— the Parents, they are ranting about ghosts loudly. The man is impassive, and the Phantom plays with tilting his head just right to get the man’s skin to flood blue.

“I think it’s Danny,” Daughter says softly. That name stings him, but Phantom doesn’t think Daughter means to hurt him. She, Phantom still likes. She looks at him when he shows, looks at him like someone is concerned, even if she cries harder than ever nowadays (maybe Phantom is just awake to see it more, but he notes the constant redness of eyes and face is new, so maybe not). She doesn’t destroy his messages, just stares. Not helpful in the least, he notes sarcastically, plucking at the invisible yet black (—how can it be both? How can he be two things that are so opposite and parallel?) jumpsuit of his (how can it exist when he never can exist, so many hows).

“That isn’t Danny,” the Parents cement, and Phantom frowns. The name stings again, the scorpion sitting perched upon a rib and taking personal offence to that person. Who is Danny?

xXx

Watching the old man is tiring and boring. Phantom doesn’t have enough energy to reach him, to say help me (because the old man has the glint and that has to mean something) so he decides to change that.

When he sleeps, he dreams of so many glinting things. Flickering figures of the Family and the Teens that visit sometimes. But they are just ghosts of memories.

xXx

It is in the night when he wakes up, green eyes staring at the silver pool moon, pleased as he ever is staring at those stars.

A breath passes his lips, and his nonexistent form shudders. Someone—!

“You must change back,” the ghost he saw in glints of the old man says. Belatedly, he introduces— “I am Plasmius, and I am… like you.”

“You see me,” Phantom murmurs, breath foggy. No, that isn’t right. The ghost is squinting in general directions, as though Phantom is a glimmer in his eye. Phantom is a glimmer in his own eye in the mirror, so he understands.

“You are... foggy,” the blue ghost amends, confirming Phantom’s thoughts. “Something about you is wrong.”

“Thanks,” Phantom says sarcastically (a new ability, a new joke that he loves), “tell me something I don’t know.”

“What happened to you?” the ghost asks.

“I woke up,” Phantom says bluntly. “I’m here now. They won’t help me.”

“Their son— they ignored their son?”

“They have a Son?” Phantom’s eyes flutter— “is he the lost one?”

xXx

The ghost went back to flickering inside the old man, because the Mother charged in.

“Oh,” she sighed, “it’s just you.”

“Yes,” he says, and he glimmers and shows fangs and horns, “just me.”

Phantom does not like the way he is looking at the Mother, but he’s not that good at judging subtleties in people still, so he lets that feeling pass.

xXx

The next… Phantom isn’t sure if it’s the day, he fell asleep, but his naps are less and less, so he feels safe in calling it the next day… the next day, the ghost flickers out of the old man to float with him again.

“How do you do that?” Phantom wonders. Is it the key to not being seen, to guise oneself as one of them, as not dead?

“You should be able to do it, too,” the ghost mutters, “I see it in you.”

“The blue eyes and the black hair,” Phantom breathes. Like a bird feather that shows green at an angle, so too does his other, and this ghost is the same.

“But you are unstable,” Plasmius informs in a frown. “You never settled into one world, so you are stuck unable to traverse between them.”

Phantom blinks, confused, and Plasmius heaves a sigh of thin patience.

“You flicker a lot more than I do,” he informs bluntly, in a tone that suggests perhaps Phantom is an idiot. “And,” he tacks on, more contemplatively, “you seem to not remember anything, as though you’ve separated yourself from that essential connection.”

“Connection,” Phantom echoes, and he yearns for that connection. His entire soul keens for it, to fill that hole.

“Yes Danny,” Plasmius grunts, and that scorpion strikes again, “a connection.”

“I’m Phantom,” he defends, tapping at his ribs like he can knock the stinging creature off, away from his vulnerable chest.

“You’re both,” Plasmius says.

“Danny is the other?” Phantom asks.

“The blue eyes and the black hair? Yes. He is your glint, and he is the lost one, and he is just you.”

“Oh,” Phantom breathes, and the scorpion is writhing and striking his heart and itself and his ribs and— and—

He passes out, green eyes going out like a light.

—But the flickers, the flickers finger around him, crawling over his form like electricity for a moment, and his form is a patchwork of two, and his mind is a flood of memory.

xXx

“I defeated the ghost, last night, and he gave me your son,” Plasmius’ old-man voice rings.

And Phantom is Danny and Danny is Phantom— and as usual he sleeps. Memories came in dreams, an eruption after so long of being dammed, brought forth at simple acceptance. Despite the dreaming, or rather because of it, he is achingly tired, with zero energy.

This time, his family (the Family, the same) surrounds him in warmth, in that thread of connection, and inside, in more normal and soft dreams, he feels something become filled.

The scorpion crawls away into the soft, soft snow.

[drawing079]

Exception On Line 129

Chapter 6: Ephialtes Interlude

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

A Human AU SCP-079 x SCP-682 Fanfic

Warnings: Violence, Alcoholism, Brain damage/trauma, Police brutality, Sexual content

Description: Zero is a reclusive computer science major, floating by in college with the help of vodka by his side. His only human interaction seems to be from his distant father, who abandoned him as a child but now is trying to make a bit of effort to be back in his life. And after a failed virus he sends to a Cray supercomputer gets exposed, he is forced to pay for the consequences of his cyber crimes in more ways than one.

During an unnecessarily violent arrest, he suffers a brain injury and anterograde amnesia, damaging his short-term memory. But during his time detained, he meets a violent man with an infamous short-temper, who takes a surprising interest in him.

(Read it here on Ao3 or continue below)

Exception On Line 129: Ephialtes Interlude

Most people know their body and sleep patterns well enough, that they can predict certain things. Maybe they know what will make them sleepwalk, or give them nightmares. Maybe they know how to wake themselves up from a bad dream, or fall asleep within minutes of deciding it’s time for bed.

Zero never understood people who were really in tune to their sleep like that. Although he was broadly categorized as an insomniac, he learned that he could sometimes invite sleep sooner with a few shots of vodka. Or, it would keep him up later by encouraging him to have another round, but it wasn’t consistent which way the night would swing when he went to pour one out. However, if there was one thing Zero could guarantee about his sleep, it was that he got wet dreams when he was stressed.

Embarrassing, but true. Maybe it was his subconscious way of coping with stress. Makes sense why when he has a bad day nothing takes the edge off more than a night of drinks and going home with a stranger.

But, somehow, tonight’s dream was way more vivid than the usual.

The first part of the dream that really started being memorable was Numin pushing him aggressively up against a wall.

The room was dim and cold, and so was the wall behind him, but Zero’s lips were locked with Numin’s, and their bodies pressed up against each other provided a sweltering heat that kept him warm.

The place was familiar, and the second Zero spared a thought about it he realized they were in his apartment. Or maybe their apartment? It felt like they lived together in this dream.

Broad, strong hands slid over his slender waist, teasing him as they stopped at his hip bones, and with a yearning whine Zero pressed his pelvis forward to invite those wandering hands behind him. With a dark chuckle, Numin pulled his tongue out of Zero’s mouth for a split moment, so he could watch his face as he aggressively grabbed his ass with both hands.

With a delight groan, Zero arched back into his grip, throwing his head back ever-so-slightly to ravish the feeling.

The hands underneath kept a firm cup under his bottom, and in a sudden motion Zero felt himself hoisted up, which he greeted with a short gasp of pleasant surprise. Almost naturally, his legs came up to wrap around Numin’s waist, steadying himself by a needy grasp encircling the larger man’s neck for support. Upon looking up, he saw some of the glint of light barely filtering into the room hit the bright canines of Numin’s devious smirk.

Something about the way his teeth glistened threateningly felt as if Zero couldn’t tell if Numin was going to kiss into his neck or rip out his jugular between his incisors.

And before he could predict which one it would be, the beast rushed forward to devour his prey, and Zero couldn’t help the little noises escaping his throat as he felt those dangerous teeth leave a certainly inhibited bite on the skin between his neck and shoulder.

The idea of wearing a scarf of delicious bruises and hickeys from Numin’s mouth made his hip buck forward, grinding down on the man he was wrapped around. Almost as a reward, he felt himself rub over something firm and prominent, albeit muted from the barriers of fabric between them.

Eager to make his own excitement be known as well, Zero gave a rolling arch of his back, allowing his own erection to rub up against Numin‘s. And almost as if rewarding him, Numin gave a fervent suck of the stolen flesh between his teeth, not ceding until it tinged with a reddish hue. The tangible formation of that hickey made Zero whine needily under his mouth, only encouraging Numin’s ego.

Upon drawing back to admire his own work, he saw Zero’s mouth agape in carnal delight, and pale face flushed into a rouge hue. Heaving, still enraptured by the fresh bruises blessing his neck, Zero licked his bottom lip at him, carefully pushing the ring around it suggestively.

Entertaining him, the larger man tightened his grip around Zero, before pulling his hips down against his own to grind up into them. It earned a desperate cry from the smaller man, but he was in the mood to hear more from him than just incomprehensible noises.

“Say my name.” He commanded, voice husky and laced with an obvious note of his own enrapturement. The way that voice commanded the air sent a wave of goosebumps sailing over Zero’s skin, intoxicated by his deep and velvety tones.

Eager to comply, Zero’s mouth opened on a moan, ready to put his name on his lips-- until, he realized, he didn’t know his name.

A sudden embarrassed panic dropped in his chest, and he hoped it was too dark for the man to make out the obvious perturbation in his face. How could he forget the name of a man like this?

“Zero. My name, say my name.” The voice commanded again, although less commanding and more… monotone, this time. Like the texture of his vocal cords was getting lost in Zero’s fragmented memory.

“I-I don’t know, it doesn’t matter…” huffing, feeling the spike of adrenaline in his blood, he tried to wave it off and continue on with the more sexy details.

Until those details weren’t there anymore. The hands on him stopped feeling hot, or even warm. It was getting too dark to even distinguish anything but a silhouette of the man before him.

What happened to the details?

“What’s my name? What’s my name, Zero?” This time the voice wasn’t just monotone, it was borderline inhuman. Like a bird spitting out sounds that it didn’t understand, mimicking words in pseudo-speech that treaded into the uncanny valley.

Regretting his position against the wall, Zero had no room to distance himself and he meekly unhooked his legs from the strange figure, stumbling a bit on his feet as he squeak back, “I-I’m sorry, I don’t know--���

The place where those hands made contact with him had noticeably lost its warmth; the man’s skin felt like ice, almost as if he had become a corpse. The creature holding onto him wasn’t even human at this point. The noises out its mouth were merging words like one big stream of sound, spitting out gibberish that was only vaguely understandable.

“My name, what’s my name? What’s my name, name, name? Zero, what’s my name? Name? What’s my name?”

Like a horrible interlude, it began just making noisy lip smacks and pops, like the mouth around those words were melting as it spoke, and it needed practice with it to accommodate. It babbled like its tongue was sticking to the roof of its mouth, like it was speaking with a gloopy mouth full of peanut butter. The outline of the figure got fuzzy, alike to the blurry details in a dark black-and-white photo or an out-of-focus polaroid, walking the line between being something to being nothing. Staring at the supposed edge of the silhouette didn’t help either, as it continuously yet slowly distorted beneath the gaze, at a rate slow enough that the perception felt more like vertigo than a sincere deformation of the figure. The growing pit at the bottom of Zero’s stomach twisted in nausea the longer he tried to discern its shape, dread swelling up in his chest and settling in all the wrong places.

He didn’t just forget the name; Zero couldn’t even remember the face of who that creature was supposed to represent, and that failure of his memory reflected back to him through this eldritch simulacrum. Before him was the culmination of every vague and forgotten information lost from the individual it once represented. The silhouette was ever-changing, yet remaining a looming dark mass. The details of color, shape, or likeness had melted into the backdrop of darkness around it, and its only dimensional consistency was its lack thereof.

Worse yet, the simulacrum continued its mockery of speech once it had adjusted to its malformed mouth.

“What is my name. What is my name. What is my name—“

To call it a voice was unfitting, the words lacked any nature in their cords that could lead Zero to believe a living creature was making them. Even trying to imagine it was a creature producing them tinged the presence of metal in Zero’s mouth. The simulacrum, this vile ephialtes invading his consciousness, spoke so uncanny that its words were stuck echoing in his ears, as if the garbled voice was ricocheting inside his own head.

“I don’t know! Just stop, please just stop…” Voice straining against the thick suffocating air, they sounded almost mute compared to the insistent repetition of the simulacrum.

Then, as if the world was pulled out from under him, he felt a sudden drop out of this horrific rendition of reality, snapping back into the real world with such a speed that it felt like conscious whiplash.

Startled, he jumped, and in that moment he recognized the departure out of dreamland and into his body. Even though the sheets around him were light and airy, his skin felt hot and damp, and the first thing he became aware of was his sweat mending his back to the fabric beneath him.

The lights were dimmed. It was the middle of the night according to the plain white clock ticking softly above the door, contesting with his heart rate monitor between being the only noises in the room. Yet, their off-sync tempos almost made it seem as though they were complementary, somehow adding calmness to the room. Or, perhaps anything compared to that nightmare seemed like the epitome of tranquility.

Confused, he checked his hand, and surely enough noticed his IV line was taped back upon the poor vein it has been yanked from one too many times. And next to the IV printed in neat lettering was a name: Numin.

A sigh of relief escaped at the recognition of that name.

He was so certain he had forgotten. Actually, even now, he can’t remember the last interaction he had with Numin. After freeing himself from his medical shackles and shuffling over with a grace that rivals a toddler learning to walk, Zero didn’t remember much besides kissing his roommate.

A sudden color tinged his pale cheeks.

They kissed. That much, Zero is certain of-- even though his memory after said kiss got very butchered afterwards. On top of that, beside the certainty of said kiss existing, he was also positive that it was Numin who had grasped his hospital gown and pulled him down into it.

The color on his face intensified, waxing with every second he spent dwelling on that memory.

They hadn’t just kissed; Numin instigated the kiss.

However, like a dismal cliffhanger at the end of a fantastic season finale, Zero drew a blank on what exactly happened next. Hell, he couldn’t even remember returning to bed and falling asleep. Did they spend the time fondly cuddling and sharing intimate thoughts on hushed, quiet breaths between themselves? Did they continue making out, before not really feeling into it and learning they didn’t have as much of a spark as once thought? Did they just flat out have sex last night?

Anything was on the table at this point, and Zero was prepared to play this scavenger hunt with his own memories. After all, it would be quite embarrassing to wake Numin-- whom Zero could tell was fast asleep from his sporadic snoring across the room-- and ask him what happened. Not only would it be embarrassing on Zero’s part, but what if his lack of recall of a potentially fond and intimate moment was a red flag to Numin that’ll make him recede his interest in a fresh amnesiac?

Sitting up, slow enough in case Numin was a light sleeper, Zero brought his hand up to the faint glow of the heart rate monitor to examine the IV line.

Despite the darkness of the room, the dim monitor light was just enough illumination to realize he didn’t even have the IV line in. Rather, it looked as if the medical tape was just tape back over the vein to hold the line in place, leading Zero to the relieving conclusion that a nurse hadn’t come in and interrupted them. Instead, it appears Zero himself probably taped the line down and planned on pretending to a nurse in the morning that it had fallen out of the vein during the night. After all, he didn’t have the original needle to insert the IV tube, and probably wouldn’t have the best idea on doing it both safely and believably.

Even though it was the plan of a forgotten consciousness, a soft smirk of pride ghosted his lips at the idea of taping the IV line down. Or perhaps, maybe he was just retrospectively grateful his former self even put an effort to hide the freed IV line at all, for Zero could completely see himself having a steamy night with an interesting man and going to bed without a care how conspicuous he appeared the following morning, consequences be damned. Said consequences would without doubt be sharing Numin’s state of handcuffed confinement, although unlike him Zero would sooner break his own wrist before successfully breaking out any cuffs.

Disrupting the line of thought to continue his own self-detective work, Zero carried on.

It only took an exploring hand snaking into his gown to tell that the stickers holding the heart sensors were also inexpertly returned to his chest. So more or less, he was checking all the boxes to at least appear at a glance like he had spent the whole night in his bed.

Now that he had confirmed his former consciousness had already established his alibi, his efforts redirected to figuring out what exactly happened after their kiss. Lucky for him-- although not as lucky for his liver-- Zero has had plenty of experiences deciphering a night he doesn’t remember from all the countless times he’s gotten blackout drunk.

If there was anyone who would probably make a good amnesiac detective, it was Zero. That or every morning-after hangover investigation he had ever done would have all been in vain.

There was a bathroom door in the room, on the far side closer to Numin’s bed. If he could make it there, he could check if maybe he had a hickey or two that’ll allude to what he and Numin was up to a few hours prior.

Zero couldn’t help a little smirk at the thought. After all, maybe Numin finally put those dangerous teeth to use.

Aside from a sly bite of his lip, exciting himself at his own thoughts, he made an effort to try and not let himself get carried away by his suggestive imagination.

Once again, he undid the taping on his hand to detach himself from the IV, and peeled off the sensors from his chest with a bit more care than his haphazard yank earlier. After pushing back the sheets that freely crinkled noisily amidst his stealth, Zero stole another glance up towards Numin, confirming he was still deep in sleep whilst he pushed smoothly off the bed.

Or at least, as smooth as he could over his still unadjusted feet. There were a few patters as he calibrated himself, the balls of his feet meeting the floor and dancing his weight back and forth between the two as if they just weren't landed on the floor quite right, before the muscles of his legs finally all synced together and kept him steady without feeling the need to constantly shift his weight. The sensation of jelly in his legs didn’t go away, but at this point it wouldn’t be a shocker if his head injury was compounding with his lack of coordination. Nevertheless, feet ready to be walking or not, Zero made his way towards the bathroom door as softly as he could to remain quiet.

Embarrassingly enough, the lack of adjustment showed in his gait, as it swayed unsteady and borderline on a stumble at points before evening out as best Zero could manage. Perhaps, what with his lack of an audience it was only embarrassing for himself, but it still brought a sensation of heat to his cheeks that made him that much more cautious to not wake Numin.

But somehow his feet still found it’s way guiding him to the bathroom door, even if he walked with about as much confidence as a newborn deer. There was an auditable sigh of relief upon reaching the door, and completely ignoring the loud creak it made on its hinges, he hurried inside and flicked on the light.

The sudden brightness made him recoil, hands reflexively coming up to shield his unprepared eyes. After a series of squints and blinks, the room became perceivable, albeit a lackluster view what with the bland setup. The walls were a simple powered blue, and the sink and toilet the same porcelain white. Adjacent to the mirror above the sink was an automatic soap dispenser, the kind Zero remembers seeing at shops or restaurants bathrooms, generic for commercial use.

When his eyes laid on his own reflection, he gave a meek whimper at his face.

Adorning one side were the dark blots of bruises, discolored with greenish hues to suggest they were days old, trailing over the cheek of the side the cop had kicked mercilessly, and fading off slightly over his brow. Zero often had bags with his chaotic sleep schedule, but the dark puffiness beneath the eye on the more abused side looked much different than under-eye circles, instead it was more rounded and shiny in appearance. Never having a black eye before in his life, it almost turned his stomach to see one on his own face, even if one so minor in comparison to ones he’s seen on people before.

The gauze around his head was wrapped expertly and tight, with particularly thick padding above that sore spot on his head that wouldn’t stop throbbing. Worst yet, perhaps exacerbated by his recent activity, there was a tinge of bleed-through coloring the thick padding over his head injury, suggesting he had reopened the wound.

Lastly, and probably just as disheartening as the rest of his appearance, he bore no hickeys or bite marks over his neck. But after taking in his own reflection Zero almost doesn’t even blame Numin; he looked so battered and frail that it was no wonder the nurse was surprised he had woken from his coma so soon; it almost looked as if he had no right waking from his coma at all.

A dark, dismal drop sank deep into his hollow chest. He wasn’t in any state that even remotely screamed desirable. And while that was a silly thing to be worrying about at the moment, it was a major clue that things probably didn’t go anywhere exciting last night with Numin.

In all honesty, Zero was surprised he was even interested in him enough to kiss him.

Dejected, and a bit over this whole detective game, he shuffled out of the bathroom pitifully, hunched over and over wishing he hadn’t gotten out of his bed to begin with. Yet, to his even sadder surprise, Numin appeared roused awake upon his exit from the bathroom.

Even though the half-lidded look upon his face suggested the lingering presence of sleep, Numin still offered a single raised brow at Zero, a silent question to what he was up to in the dead of night.

“Ah, I didn’t mean to wake you.” He offered sheepishly, almost phrased like an apology. Compared to only hours before, his demeanor had noticeably repressed, not even offering eye contact as he kept his downcast gaze locked on the powered blue vinyl lining the floor below.

“Doesn’t take much to stir me.” With a casual stretch, Numin replied with a cloudy tone, sleep still overtly overcasting his newfound wakefulness. “Can’t sleep very well? You don’t look rested.”

Offering a half-hearted shrug, Zero shifted to leaned against the closed door of the bathroom, having a bad feeling this wasn’t going to be a short conversation.

“I slept some, just had a bad dream,” with a nod towards the bathroom he came from, he elaborated, “I figured I haven’t seen myself in the mirror since the incident so I got up to check.”

The delivery was shallow, as if meant to hide the deeper disturbance Zero held underneath to seeing his reflection. Enough so that Numin could note it, knitting his brow at the smaller man slouching meekly against the bathroom door, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Don’t like what you see?” Guessing, Numin straightened up, seemingly more alert at the notice of Zero’s perturbation.

Unintentionally confirming, he slouched in even more, wishing the darkness of the room was enough to hide his marred features.

“Nah, I’m absolutely thrilled with the bruised and bloody look.” Zero retorted, voice with a backbone of sarcasm, yet delivery surely missing a few vertebrae.

The corner of Numin’s lips just barely peaked, gauging the jest as a good sign. “You’re in the hospital for a traumatic brain injury and currently being detained for a felony cyber crime. But sure, your swollen eye is definitely your biggest problem right now.”

Reflexively at those words, Zero folded his arms around his chest tight, unintentionally emphasizing his thin, fragile-looking frame.

“I’m not saying it’s my biggest problem. It’s just, I’m not exactly the fighting type, so this look is just…” hissing, as if he was trapped into finishing the sentence now, Zero struggled to pin down the correct adjective,“...it is just unsettling, to me.”

His anxieties were only met by a deep, reverberating chuckle from the larger man, who only seemed amused. “Guess I’m just used to seeing people bruised and bloody.” Numin shrugged before looking up, but upon noticing the red glow of embarrassment adorning Zero’s face, a deep part of him stirred in discomfort.

Before he had even realized, his tone took on a much different tenor as new words suddenly found their way on his tongue, that deep part of him yearning to diminish that disheartened look on Zero.

“The black eye will fade in about a week and a half. And your bruising has already turned green so I’d give it another five days, seven tops.” Huffing out a sigh, feeling that deep part of himself settle, Numin offered another ever-so-slight peak of the corners of his lips before finishing. “You’re fine, Zero.”

Blinking thrice, Zero found himself taken aback.

“Th… thanks. That’s good to hear the worst of it should subside in a week.”

If Zero didn’t know any better, he would have guessed that was Numin’s best efforts at trying to comfort him. At least, it would seem that way in his delivery, but such an assumption would be a bit brash to make with a seemingly heartless individual like him. Or perhaps there was a heart in there, somewhere deep and hidden as to not invite harm, that Numin kept guarded ferociously lest he be taken advantage of.

Zero had to wonder if he was born so abrasive or if it was learned, like a defense mechanism. And he couldn’t lie; he also wondered what was so different in himself that Numin cared not to bare his teeth and intimidate him, like he seems to do to all others who dare interact with him.

Shrugging off the wall, Zero took a few idle steps forward.

“Or at least the worst appearance-wise should clear up, that is. I’m honestly not sure about my memory, though.” On finishing, he was just about at the foot of Numin’s bed, and he extended both hands down on the plastic baseboard to lean in a bit. “If I’m being honest… I can’t even remember what happened between us earlier tonight.”

Although his body language was noticeably less embarrassed, there was an obvious shame in Zero’s expression, and he bit absently at his lower lip as if his lip ring was still present to fidget with.

Numin’s brow peaked up.

“You don’t remember anything?” Stiffening up, Numin tried to ignore that deep part of him festering once more, sitting like a weight at the bottom of his throat. Swallowing didn’t help; it only made the heavy sensation more vivid. “Do you remember my name, Zero?”

He pretended that he didn’t notice Zero’s mouth twitch into a momentarily frown, before his jaw noticeably clenched to keep himself leveled.

“When… When I woke up, I didn’t.” Woefully, he raised his right hand, and gave a tap to the name still penned on the back of it. With what could only be described as a pitiful smile, he assured Numin, “I did remember where to find it, though.”

Releasing a controlled sigh, Numin accepted those words as enough for him.

“But a few hours ago? Nothing?” The inquiry held an awful weight in those words, one that Numin wasn’t bothering to hide.

Clicking his tongue, Zero’s gaze wandered up momentarily, as if testing his own recall.

“I remember what the nurse said, about you attacking your previous roommates. And that you offered a trust-fall exercise to show you weren’t a threat to me.” The pale color of his face reddened slightly, and Numin noticed his gaze was now more purposely avoiding his own as he continued, “I-I went over to your bed, and… w-we…”

“We kissed.” Numin finished for him. An uncharacteristically soft smile graced Numin’s features in response to how bashful Zero had become, knowing well it wasn’t the amnesia that was holding Zero back from completing his sentence.

Rewardingly so, he watched as Zero sighed in relief, as if he had been self-doubting if the memory was even real.

“Y-yes, we kissed. But, after that, I-I’m not all too sure what we did…” trailing off, Zero’s eyes kept low to avoid contact with Numin’s, but his diffidence wasn't about to be coddled and catered to by the other man.

“We didn’t fuck if that’s what you’re asking.” Numin supplemented, albeit delivered with a grin of jest. Part of it was just to take delight in watching Zero’s face immediately flush and redden, but a sliver of it was indeed meant to clarify.

And redden he did, almost instantaneously feeling the heat rush to his cheeks. Yet watching Numin subtly smirk at the rise he got out of him, Zero felt the need to justify himself.

“No, no of course not. After all, it’s not like I woke up sore or bleeding down there or anything--” Cutting himself off, Zero realized his insinuation exposed his typical role in the bedroom, and although it didn’t take a lot of detective work for Numin to figure that one out, Zero still found himself somehow even more embarrassed by the second. Which only served to widen Numin’s already entertained smirk.

“For shame, Zero! Give me more credit than that.” Brazen, but still maintaining an atmosphere of jest, Numin continued with a cocky grin, “I would never prepare a partner so half-heartedly that they bleed from being with me. Or hell, even feel sore.”

“I-I didn’t mean to insinuate, I-I’m just used to—“

“Used to tops that don’t know what they’re doing? Come on Zero, you don’t need to put up with that.”

Zero gave a meek shrug, before slouching into himself.

“I know, I-I know… but I’m used to it, it’s not a big deal.” He leaned off the baseboard, and stepped around it to sit at the foot of Numin’s bed before continuing. “Besides, it already comes with the territory that it’s gonna hurt a little bit each time.”

This time Numin scoffed a bit, seemingly a little less entertained and a bit more irritated at whoever convinced Zero that anal sex was doomed to always hurt a bit. Surely a former sex partner, to excuse their own laziness or inexperience; or at least, Numin guessed so.

“I’m telling you, it really doesn’t have to.” The slight irritation in his tone almost immediately waned upon seeing Zero’s worried gaze up at him, and instead Numin found himself forming his next words before a devilish smirk even had time to grow on his lips. “Still don’t believe me? Oh Zero, don’t make me prove it to you.”

Immediately, the lewd suggestion earned a flustered squeak of surprise from the very much embarrassed Zero.

The amount of blood rushing to his face looked enough to cause a faint, what with the bright vermillion glow his naturally pale skin bloomed with. So much, in fact, that Numin almost expected him to swoon— in the quite literal sense of fainting, that is. It wasn’t as if a man as thin and lithe as Zero exactly had so much blood to spare to bring with.

“P-prove what—?” Finally managing to stutter out a line, Zero looked as if he didn’t believe what Numin just suggested. Perhaps in his already sensitive and embarrassed state it wasn’t the right atmosphere to pose such an offer, but Numin couldn’t lie that it was quite cute to watch his sarcastic demeanor wither away into endearing bashfulness.

Numin caught himself thinking that word again. Cute.

It was surprising how much Zero drew that word into his head.

“So coy all of a sudden, hm? Do I need to be more direct?” Leaning in, confined by his shackled wrist from getting too close, his face still managed to be only a foot or two away from Zero’s. In his pause, he noticed that despite his blush, Zero leaned in towards him reciprocally, as if awaiting in bated breath for his continuation, sealing Numin’s confidence in what he planned to say next.

“Do you want to fuck me, Zero?”

Eyes immediately widening, Zero’s mouth parted momentarily as if the words got stuck in his throat. In those bright green irises pooled a storm of different emotions, all too intertwined to differentiate, but each playing a role in the dumbfounded look on his face.

No words. No reply. No nothing.

Numin, still smirking, was almost about to poke fun at his sudden stupor until Zero leaned in fast, crashing his lips onto his own hungerly.

And, pushing back into the kiss once he realized what was happening, Numin heard Zero’s non-verbal response. He heard it in the way Zero’s tongue slipped into his mouth, and in the way his slender hand found hold onto his shoulder. He heard it in the feel of Zero’s back arching slightly towards him, he heard it through the muffled groan released against his lips.

Zero’s whole body was practically screaming one word.

Yes, yes, yes.

[bitter-sweet-farmgirl]

Heal the Broken

OC gave her all to Thorin when they were in a relationship together, but when he suddenly moves on from her, she tries to learn to cope with a broken heart.

MASTERLIST

OC(s) Used:  Estelle

Word Count:  2,224

Warning(s):  Insinuations

Translation(s):  None

Inspired by 'Scars:  Neon Feather Remix' by TobyMac, Feat. Sarah Reeves.

~~~

Had you on my mind, I

Had a little time, I

Know we kinda overdue

I walked through the gardens, feeling the last rays of the dying sun caress my skin as I stood in it's orange light.  The earth cooled as night fell and the air became chilly, causing me to shiver and wish I had worn something more, substantial as the sun dipped below the horizon.  

All I could think about was the tall, long dark-haired, stony, yet kind-hearted, deep voiced, handsome, and strong dwarf I was in love with.  He was a constant presence on my mind, no matter the hour or activity I was involved in. 

But we hadn't spoken in days.  I had passed by him in the hallways of Erebor, but the royal home of Dwarves had truly lived up to its other name of 'The Lonely Mountain' as Thorin ignored me.  We had been so in love only a few days ago.  But we just stopped talking.  Something happened.  We argued for the first time in several months.    

Turnin' back the pages

To our younger days,

yeah

It made me think of when we had first met, of when we'd first begun courting.  We had been so young and naive then.  We'd thought that all we needed was love, that love solved everything.  We hadn't realized what problems love brought with it when it entered a person's heart and bound them to another person.  

I can still imagine you

Boomin' like the thunder

Chasin' life with wonder

With fire that could light a room

I could still see him, walking into a room where I was.  He had a presence that was unignorable.  His voice rumbled and rolled like the thunder in the rain showers that fell and watered the earth

during the summer.  It was so deep and sexy.  When he was alone with me, his voice grew even lower, into the tone he reserved for those he loved.  

We had chased after life together, exploring everything it offered and trying new things.  I could still see the smirk he'd worn after I'd made my first shirt of mail.  It had been a bit, well, uneven.  I'd been so proud of it until I'd seen what he had made.  It was a silver necklace, inlaid with a blue crystal.  Utterly perfect.

Even though Thorin was sometimes portrayed as unfeeling, I knew otherwise.  He had a fire within him, a passion that never ran dry.  After he came back from extended leaves required by his Kingship, he would come to my apartments and kiss me senseless, longing invading his heart for me.  

And his walk...  My heart would pound as I saw him swagger into the room.  His hips would swing about in the most alluring ways.  

In those days when we both attended court events, he would walk into the room and just stare at me, and I could feel his gaze even when my back was to him.  He brought fire to me, wherever we were, and there were days when I wanted nothing but him.

Bottom kinda fell out

Waited for the rebound

But you never made a move

And then everything changed.  We argued, and grew apart.  Where there had once been an unbreakable bond, there was only fragments that threatened to break at any given moment.  I thought it was just a phase we would go through, that Thorin would miss me and come back.

But he never did.  Months went by and he wouldn't even glance at me.  It hurt, to see him laugh at something someone else said, to know that he didn't even think of me anymore.  That he didn't desire me like he used to.  

When life cuts so deep

Try and remember

So I tried to forget him, but it just cut deeper.  I could never look for another Dwarrow because none were like him.  And I only wanted him.  Everyone else lacked something that Thorin had.  

I tried to be strong and bear it, but there were days when it just became too much, having to watch him flirt with another Dwarrowdame, and see that smile that he'd reserved only for me being given to another woman.  

Then I found an unexpected comfort in someone I'd never dreamed of being able to help.

You, you're not alone

We've all been there

Scars come with livin'

Thranduil saw my hurt when I visited his kingdom one day, and he drew me aside to ask what had happened.  He knew the feelings I tried to hide, and could see hurt in my eyes.  Hurt he'd once felt.

He had scars in the same places as me.  The same parts of his heart had been broken and never mended.  Life had treated us the same, even though we were of two different races.  

You, you're not alone

We've all been there

He told me of the days when his wife had still lived, of how broken he'd been when she'd passed on.  I could see tears in his eyes as he described her, of how she'd laugh over the silliest of things, of how her smile would brighten his darkest days.  

Another unexpected person also offered his help.  Legolas told of the day his wife had miscarried the child they'd so dearly wanted after so many centuries of failure.  

So, lift your head, lift your head

Lift your head to where your help comes from

They helped me bear my burden, and see that someday good would come out of this suffering.  That one day I would look back on this and see the good in it.  Perhaps it was Mahal's way of preparing me for some higher calling, to be able to help others in the same situation.

You, you're are not alone

We've all been there

Scars come with livin'

I would bear the scars as long as I lived, and it still hurt to see Thorin taking another maid out for a walk in the gardens when I had known such love and devotion from him before.  But what was life without heartbreak?  I had known hurt before, when my mother had passed onto the halls of Aule.

Life ain't got no sequel

We all broken people

I would have only one chance here, and I wanted to make the best of it.  I began to see the broken pieces in other people, and tried to help them mend them if I could.  Everyone had some hurt that had never healed, and still burned within them, causing pain.

The only road to found is lost

Oversimplifying

Ain't no shame in trying

As I continued walking my path in life, I found that my heart was healing, that I was overcoming my loss.  That after wandering through the dark for so many years, I finally knew my calling.  I had tried, and I was stronger than before.

Passion never counts the cost

Now you won't take my phone calls

You won't text me back at all

When I'd first fallen for Thorin, I'd never thought about what would happen if we had grown apart.  What would happen if I gave him all, and then he let me down.  My passion for him had overridden my common sense, and I'd gotten hurt, badly.

I just wanna see you

I can't stand to see you gone

I still wanted to see him, to talk with him, and say I still loved him.  It was impossible for me to forget my love for him.  It still hurt that he never came to see me anymore.  It was like there was a massive void in my life.  I had never realized just how big a part he played.

Yesterday I missed you

Yesterday I played your song

Tears fell as I plucked the strings of the harp, deeper tones echoing through the air as I played a song I'd written for Thorin.  There was deep tones, and then a happier, wild tune that compelled the listener to tap their foot and dance along.  It was my way of describing him within my music.  I rarely played the song, it brought up memories that made me miss him even more.

I'm oversimplifying

I'm oversimplifying

I just tried to do small tasks everyday, to pull myself from the hole I kept trying to push myself into so I could just fade away and escape from the hurt I felt constantly.  Everyone told me to push through it, but I couldn't.  I only functioned when I simplified.

But try and remember

You, you're not alone

We've all been there

Scars come with livin'

Thranduil was always trying to console me, even on the days I tried to push him away.  He knew what I felt on a daily basis, knew which scars hurt on what day, after what event.  He knew all too well how easily the scars formed.

You, you're not alone

We've all been there

So, lift your head, lift your head

Lift your head to where your help comes from

Now, more than ever I relied on Mahal for help.  I didn't understand why he had given me this tribulation, but it was for a reason.

There come a day when I felt a tug to be light-hearted through my pain.  I tried, I tried so hard, but it felt so unfamiliar, so wrong that I wanted to shy away.  But there was still that gentle, loving tug on my heart, telling me to cheer up, that I tried again.

You, you're are not alone

We've all been there

Scars come with livin'

Scars come, scars come, oh, scars come

Oh, scars come with livin'

Scars come, scars come, oh, scars come

Oh, scars come with livin'It doesn't matter who you are

I'd learned through it all, that everyone had scars, no matter their age or position, they'd all felt hurt that haunted them, that followed them around and tried to push them down on a daily basis.  

Thranduil had scars, both in physical and emotional form, and there he was, governing a kingdom and raising a son all at the same time.  Although I knew that he still hurt greatly from the death of his wife; she had been his most prized, best loved, and her loss broke him.

This world gon' leave some battle scars

It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars (battle scars)

It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars (battle scars)

It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars (ooh)You, You're not alone

I was a wiser person today than I was yesterday, and the years before.  I knew that everyone had scars from their own personal battles.  No one could say they didn't have scars and not be lying.  I would be lying if I said I had never been hurt by Thorin's leaving.  But I was not alone.  

I had Thranduil, and Mahal.  Mahal cared so deeply for me, and his love was helping me through this battle in my life.  With his help, I would make it through this.  

We've all been there

Scars come with livin'

You, you're not alone, you're not alone

So lift your head up (scars come, scars come) (head up)

To where your help comes from

Lift your head up (scars come, scars come) (head up, head up)

Oh, scars come with livin'

Lift your head up (scars come, scars come) (lift your head, lift your head, lift your hea-hea-head)

To where your help comes from

Lift your head up (scars come,

scars come)(lift your head, lift your head, lift your head)

Every day I would wake up with dread at facing a new day, a new experience.  The unknown.  But Mahal had worked in my heart, and was helping me heal, a little bit at a time.  He was helping me, giving me the strength and fatherly love I needed right now.

Oh, scars come with livin'

Lift your head up (scars come, scars come) (head up, head up)It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars (battle scars)

Lift your head up (scars come,

scars come) (lift your head, lift your head, lift your head)

It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars (battle scars)

It doesn't matter who you are (who you are)

This world gon' leave some battle scars

I had become secure with who I was, and it no longer hurt me to see Thorin with his current betrothed.  Mahal was the only one I bowed to, the only one who truly knew my pain and had helped heal it.  I could walk around with a smile on my face, feeling a true joy spark within me.

Watching the orange sphere begin to settle lower on the horizion, I smiled, feeling immense gratitude towards Mahal.  He was my King, the only King I would call mine.  He was my father.  He had such divine power that I never dreamed of.  Power that had helped heal a broken heart and make it whole again.  

He was the true King.

[scenitroute]

Scattered - Chapter One

PLEASE READ

So at long last, here is Scattered Chapter One....again.  But it  is VERY different so please read through.  Chapter Two should be up next week! Thanks to everyone for your patience with me!

Scattered

Synopsis: When the Core imploded, it erased all of Gaster’s team, including his eldest son, Sans.  Years later Gaster is still coping with the loss when a human appears underground.  The last human needed to destroy the barrier.

Chapter One - I’ll Have the Instant Noodles, Thanks

Their home sat away from the edge of one of the lesser crowded pathways from the Capitol.  It was away from the noise of the city yet close enough to the main labs and the Core to be convenient for the Royal Scientist.  There was just enough space for their small family, not that any of them would complain about the size anyway.  It was home.

Gaster stared at it as if it could disappear, pausing his unsteady steps for the first time since he left the Core.  Shaking, he bounded towards the front door, groping for the handle and collapsing on the stair when he couldn’t immediately turn it.

“Stop it, stop…” he pleaded to his own shaking fingers.  Another moment, and the handle turned.  He used the inward movement of the door to lift himself back to his feet.  He had no lungs to breathe, and still he panted, nearly hyperventilating.

The lights were out.  That was wrong.  The lights were always on when he got home.  They, no, he should be waiting up for him.  The door swung back as Gaster released it, not quite going back into place.

Shaking legs wanted to give out on him again, but Gaster willed them forward.  He had to see, had to know.  Somehow everything felt like a dream, a nightmare.  It had been hours since he’d seen this place and yet it felt like years.  His vision blurred, and he let out a panicked shout, frightened it would all disappear.

“P-Papyrus?” Gaster whined, clutching at his skull.  He found the bottom of the stairs and half walked/half crawled to the top.  There was a sound in the short hallway, a door creaking.

“PAPYRUS?!” He gasped louder.  Please.

“Daddy?”

Thank heavens.  Papyrus stood in his bedroom doorway, dressed in his pajamas and rubbing his sockets.  Gaster sat on the top step and opened his arms to the boy, beckoning him.

“DADDY!”  Papyrus grinned and jumped towards Gaster, wrapping his little arms around the scientist's neck.

“YOU’RE LATE!”  Papyrus chastised, sounding only a little angry.

Gaster could not think to answer, and instead held Papyrus tight, hands shaking but still feeling.  He was there.  Papyrus was there.  Gaster leaned back against the wall, breath hitching. He didn’t notice the child squirming in his arms.

Papyrus managed to sit back in his father’s lap enough to look up at him.  “WHAT’S WRONG?” he asked, smile falling away to concern.  “WHY ARE YOU CRYING?”

Blinking, Gaster looked back at him, unsure of what to say.  “I...Papyrus…”

“DID SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN AT WORK?”

Gaster nodded, gulping.

Papyrus frowned and leaned forward again, settling onto Gaster’s chest.  “It’s ok,” he said.  “You’re home now.  Tomorrow will be better.”

He squeezed the optimistic child again.  “Papyrus…” Gaster started.  His voice broke as he went.  “Your brother isn’t…”

He swallowed again and forced himself to look the boy in the eyes.  “Sans isn’t coming home Papyrus.”

Confusion fell over Papyrus’s face.  “What do you mean?”

“Th-there was an accident at the lab,” Gaster wasn’t sure how to describe what happened.  He couldn’t make sense of it.  “Everyone is...Sans is gone.”

Papyrus took a moment to consider the news, his expression still puzzled.  Finally he looked up at Gaster.  

“Daddy, what do you mean my ‘brother’?  Who is Sans?”

It seemed like every morning Gaster awoke suddenly, shaking with grief and grasping at blurred remains of memories dressed in nightmares.  Some worn and exhausted part of him yearned for the peace of forgetting entirely, but he could never let go.  In every dark corner he still saw Sans reaching for him, the last image he recalled of his son.

Pale violet light flickered from Gaster.  His soul fluttered in panic as his nightmares faded away.  The light cast shadows around the room and Gaster squeezed his eyes shut to block the sight.  His knees bumped against his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them, until he calmed.

Another typical morning.

With a heavy sigh Gaster swung his legs off the bed, determined to get on with his day.  Flicking on the light next to his bedside, he shuffled around the room on autopilot.  As he went Gaster could hear sounds from other parts of the house.  Papyrus was awake already too.  Gaster plucked at the sleeves of his sweater after pulling it on, straightening them.  His fingers, scarred with cracks, ached.  He held them close to his chest, using a fragment of energy to spread warm magic into the small bones, soothing them.

Papers were scattered across his desk, efforts from the night before.  They fluttered as he passed, and stopped quickly when he laid a hand over them, saving a sheet or two from sailing off the edge.  He didn’t glance at them before moving on, taking up his briefcase and heading into the hall.

“OH!” Papyrus stood there.  “I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU WERE LEAVING EARLY.”

“I don’t need to be,” Gaster responded, closing his door behind him.  “But I wasn’t going to get more sleep anyway.  What about you?”

A ghost of a frown crossed Papyrus’s face, replaced soon enough by a bright grin.  “JUST GETTING AN EARLY START MYSELF!  I MADE BREAKFAST ALREADY...THERE MIGHT BE A BIT EXTRA…”

Gaster waved a hand, a knowing and reassuring smile appearing on his face.  “I’ll take it to the lab with me,” he suggested.  “Alphys could do with something other than instant noodles for once.”

He led the way downstairs and they ate breakfast together.  They talked of their plans for the day, what errands needed to be finished, and ideas for improving the puzzles outside of Snowdin.  Neither asked the either what woke them so early.

Soon they were both headed out together.  Gaster wrapped his coat around him, bracing himself for the cold.  Papyrus handed him a bag, the extra food he’d prepared, and adjusted his red scarf.

Papyrus stepped out first, making his way to his sentry station out in the woods, but stopped as Gaster exited behind him.

“Dad?”

Gaster’s back was to him, double checking that he had everything and closing the door.  “Yes?”

“He...Brother would be proud of us right?  Of me?”

It was quiet and still outside, being so early yet.  The lock slid into place with a solid click that seemed to echo a little louder than normal.  Gaster turned to his son, sure of his response.

“He would be,” he said.  His voice shook only slightly.  “Sans would be so proud of you.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d given the boy the same reassurance.  Papyrus’s memory of Sans was incomplete, and he relied on his father to fill in gaps.  When he was alive, Sans doted on his little brother, doing everything to keep him happy and healthy.  Gaster was certain that no one was more important to Sans than Papyrus.

Gaster stepped off their stoop to stand in front of Papyrus.  His youngest son was barely an inch from his own height now, but was slouching, avoiding his eye.  Gaster laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly.

“Sans loved you,” he said when Papyrus looked up at him.

The boy’s smile half-returned.  “He loved me, right,” he said, more to himself.

Backing away, Papyrus flashed his usual grin once more before leaving.  “THANKS DAD!”

The scientist sighed and went on his own way.  While not the biggest fan of the biting cold of Snowdin, Gaster enjoyed the peacefulness of the small town.  He was content to walk a little slower on his way to where the River Person was already docked and waiting for passengers.  He climbed aboard, simply nodding to the mysterious monster, and they were on their way.

He rarely paid attention to the passing sights on these trips, and this time was no different.  Gaster’s mind had settled back into gloom, the sing-song of the River Person tuned out.  He thought again on his dream, straining to remember the earlier images, where Sans was still whole, and terror didn’t yet show on his face.

What he was able to recall anymore was blurred and incomplete.  He had allowed the dream to slip from his mind for a short while, and it had gone too far.  To forget completely, he felt, would be a betrayal to his eldest son.  He stamped out whatever tiny relief he had from the nightmare receding to a fuzzy picture.

When the ferry stopped, Gaster walked a bit faster to the lab, stressed and eager to dive into any work to keep his buzzing mind distracted.

The lab was dark when the doors slid open, and Gaster paid no mind.  He easily fished his cell phone out of his coat pocket and used the light from it to find the door leading out of the main lab and into his office.  Once there he turned on the overhead light and settled behind his desk with another heavy sigh.  

The Core, ever since its creation had been heavily monitored.  It was an essential part of each monster’s everyday life and yet extremely volatile.  Gaster knew first-hand the kind of dangers it presented.  Its implosion happened years ago, and the incident caused the erasure of his entire crew of talented scientists, including Sans.  Not only were they destroyed, but every shred of evidence of their existence along with them.  Gaster soon realized that the families of those who were lost had even lost any memory pertaining to the crew.  The only exception was himself, and in some strange and small way, Papyrus.

After the core incident, Gaster worked alone for some time.  He searched for any way he could think of to try and return Sans and his old team to this world.  Numerous machines were built and countless tests run to find some hope that he could bring them back.  Little progress was made, and after several years yielding no results, Gaster pushed aside his blueprints and notes.  Feeling as if he were turning his back on those that disappeared, but unable to cope any longer with the false hope, he concluded his team and his son were gone for good.

Gaster shuffled through various documents, scans of the Core and its energy output.  He checked them daily still to make sure it remained stable.  Through his research and some insight from his new lab partner, they had found some time ago that the Core was somehow bonded with the magical barrier that trapped them underground.  Recently, he had noticed the readings from the Core had been changing.  The readings themselves were not concerning except that the Core itself seemed to be heating up with small spikes of energy.  It had happened before, but never so consistently, and as Gaster looked over the scans again that morning, he noticed that the spikes were slowly getting stronger.

A muffled crash sounded from the lab and Gaster frowned, setting down the papers and standing up.  He checked the time and seeing that a couple hours had passed, he picked up the bag of food from Papyrus and left his office.

The main lab was lit up when he entered, and he heard shuffling and a disgruntled moan from behind a desk.

“Dr. Alphys?” he called.

“Oh!” Alphys cried, sitting up from behind the desk suddenly, bumping it and causing a small untidy pile of papers to fall off the corner.  She groaned.  “I j-just picked t-those up!”

Gaster smiled sympathetically and strided over to assist her, setting the bag down on another table on the way.

“I didn’t k-know you were here already D-doctor,” she said as she placed a new stack of documents and a small cartoonish figurine back on her desk.  “I h-hope I didn’t d-disturb your work.”

“Not at all my friend,” Gaster assured her.  He straightened up and neatly set the remaining papers on her desk, along with a cup of instant noodles.

“I w-was just about to make that,” she said.  “D-do you want a-any?”

Gaster gestured toward the bag.  “Actually, I brought some breakfast from home.  Would you like some of that instead?”

“Erm…” Alphys avoided his gaze.  “I th-think I’ll st-stick with this, y-you can have your br-breakfast.”

“Oh come on now Dr. Alphys,” Gaster said, a grin starting to form.  “You know Papyrus is getting cooking lessons from Undyne.  It’s really not that bad.”

Alphys rolled her eyes but her cheeks flushed slightly.  “I d-don’t know th-that those lessons are going very well G-gaster, given the last m-meal you brought here.  H-have you ever tried U-Undyne’s cooking?”

Gaster chuckled lightly.  He knew that Papyrus’s cooking had indeed improved, but to many other monsters, that didn’t necessarily mean it was the most desirable option.  Not yet anyway. Still, he liked to tease Alphys on occasion.

“Despite that I’m sure you would be perfectly willing to have a lesson for yourself wouldn’t you?”

Alphys’s face turned bright red in an instant, and she spun around to face away from him.

“I n-need to ch-check the c-c-cameras!”  she squeaked.  “W-what are y-you doing out here anyway?  L-lose your glasses again?”

“I was actually on my way out here to get the Core readings for this morning.”

“O-oh!  I just p-picked it up!”  She turned back to her desk and rifled through the untidy stack she’d just placed and pulled a few sheets out, righting them before handing them to Gaster.

He thanked her, then handed her the instant noodles off the desk as a truce.  Still blushing, Alphys smiled, then headed over to the large screen against the wall to turn it on.

“May a-as well get th-this started up…”

Gaster walked back to where he left the bag of food and picked it up, taking it to the small fridge.  He tucked it inside and just as the door shut Alphys gasped.

“O-oh my god, Gaster, l-look!”

He rushed over.  “What is it?”

Alphys simply pointed at the screen.  Displayed was a view in the woods just outside of Snowdin.  It showed the end of the main path leading out of the small town up to the large door of the ruins of Home.  The door hadn’t been opened in years, yet on camera they watched as it opened, and something emerged.

Alphys gasped again.  “G-gaster is th-that…?”

Dr. Gaster could only stare for several long moments.  A human child came into focus on the camera.  The door closed behind them and they stood shivering in the snow, looking around curiously.

“That’s a h-human right?!” Alphys said frantically.  “What...what should we do?”

Immediately Gaster began to move.  He turned on his heel and rushed back towards his office.  Once inside he dropped the readings onto his desk and picked up his coat.  He strode back into the lab, pulling the sleeves on and feeding instructions to Alphys.

“Papyrus is the first sentry stationed from the ruins,” he answered finally.  “I’m going to go to him.  You contact Undyne and tell her the situation, and keep an eye on that child!”

“Gast-”

“That puzzle you designed, can you control it from here?  You can use it to stall the human, keep them away from Snowdin until the guard comes.”

“G-gaster ple-”

“I’ll call Papyrus on the way and have him leave the area...then once-”

“GASTER!”

“What?!”

Alphys stared at him with wide eyes and pointed again at the screen, hands shaking.  Gaster stood slack-jawed at what he saw.

On the screen, the human had progressed into the woods some ways, and was standing before the small wooden sentry station.  Before them, blocking their path was Papyrus, who was greeting them with a smile.

[alicetabitha-blog]

A Place With No Religion

My very first contribution to the Percy Jackson franchise, very kindly and expertly beta'd by the amazing Simran, who you should definitely go and check out @kazbrekkkerz  (give her credit for the last line especially. She managed to work through my 2am ramblings to help produce a clearer and more imaginative piece of writing.)

Words: 1702

Chapters: 1/1

Pairings: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson

Title stolen from Regina Spektor's Man of a Thousand Faces. Read it here or find it at http://archiveofourown.org/works/9370679

Be warned for PTSD and panic attacks.

Percy was falling. A never ending, insides ripping kind of falling - and he knew where he was going to land.

Percy relives Tartarus with every breath, every dark and broken night. His memories chase him, and the guilt feels like it will swallow him even deeper than the muskeg. He and Annabeth must try and cope together and learn to overcome their nightmares, but for now all Percy can do is keep breathing.

Percy was falling. A never ending, insides ripping kind of falling - and he knew where he was going to land. The knowledge of his destination made it all so much worse. At least the first time, he hadn't really grasped what would be waiting for him once he arrived there, but now his brain was racing with all of the horrors he knew he could expect, the ones that he had seen and he knew would be waiting for him yet still could produce no solutions on how to avoid them.

He reached out around him frantically, desperate for something, anything, to tether him to reality - or at least get a hold on the reality he was currently in. The first time he had clung to Annabeth, he knew she should be there somewhere, and yet he continued to fall alone, continued to feel nothing but intense isolation and blood-freezing fear.

Suddenly, he wasn't falling anymore. No, instead he was burning all over. Skin blistering and boiling as he drowned in the flames of what the rational part of his mind knew to be the Phlegethon, but the loudest, most coherent part insisted to be his ruin.

The burning stopped.

Annabeth was there now, wandering alone in the dark expanse of Tartarus, calling out to him, her voice filled with so much terror it shattered his icy heart into sharp, painful fragments.

"Why did you leave me all over again?" she cried, so fractured and weak, not anything like he knew her to be. "Percy, where are you?"

He tried to call out to her, reassure her he was there, but his throat closed up and he could make no sound. His body began to decay in front of him, turning to mist and bone. He fought his way over to her, but every time he drew near, she would vanish and reappear fifty feet ahead of him. Still, he tried, watching as his arms became skeletal, his voice still refusing to produce sound, his body still defiant in its movements.

"That's it, Percy," a different voice whispered. "Embrace the misery. Nobody is here to save you this time." And Percy was drowning for real now, trapped in the well where he, Piper and Jason had all worked to free the naiads. The water turned murky, getting thicker and dirtier, and Percy was no longer in the well, but the muskeg, the mud getting up his nose, in his ears, clogging his throat. The son of Poseidon being slowly lulled to death by the rocking of the water.

"She's right, Percy," Annabeth was back, talking to him through the layers of dirt and silt in the water. Her face appeared as Gaia's had in the ground on so many occasions. "No-one is going to help you out of this. Why should they? Do you really think you deserve to be saved?"

Another face replaced hers, Leo laughing at him as he suffocated, mocking the son of Poseidon, failing in his element. "That's it, Percy. You go drown yourself. It's hilarious really - we both faced our own strengths and had them turn on us." He absent mindedly began tinkering with something, morphing copper and screws into a replica of the minotaur horn that still hung above his bed. "You know, you could have done something for me. I could do something for you now, but why should I? You let me die. I think I'll return the favour."

The scene changed abruptly, and Percy coughed and heaved the water out of his lungs against a river bank, disoriented and broken. He watched in horror as shapes formed around him, showing him Luke dying on the ground, his fault. Bianca vanishing into the death trap of an automaton, his fault. Beckendorf detonating the bomb, his fault.

Bob.

Damasen.

Silena Beauregard.

Ethan Nakamura.

The faces of the dead just kept coming.

So many lives lost, and Percy knew it was because of him. Because he didn't try hard enough, or because he didn't look for another option, always too hasty in his decisions. None of them should have died - it should have been him instead.

Then more images sparked into view, this time showing him the future, what will happen soon. And still, he knew it would continue to be his fault.

Annabeth held down, crying out and struggling as her skin was slowly peeled back by her own dagger. Piper going mad, staring into Katoptris unblinkingly, stuck forever in her looking glass. His mother ambushed in her own apartment, easily taken down by the same minotaur who first caused Percy's life to be turned upside down, torn up and precariously stitched back together.

Suddenly, he felt someone touching him. Something gentle in this unforgiving nightmare . That's the thing - he knew it was a nightmare, just a bad dream all in his head- demigod dreams should be something he was used to by now, but when he woke up all he could see was the dead. Annabeth's worried eyes turned black, bleeding.

He gasped, throwing himself away from her and out of the bed. He wasn't ready for this. He thought it would be over once the war ended - the second war he had had to fight, to be out on the front lines again, so close to the first.

He watched as Annabeth's lips moved, aware that she was talking to him. But he couldn't breathe. He couldn't see anything other than the bodies he had caused and the nightmare he had just lived through. His heart pounded heavily in his chest, almost breaking out of his ribcage. Every day was no longer a life-or-death situation, and so his nights decided to take over and offer him new dangers every time he closed his eyes, making him relive his old battles but so much worse. He felt like he was going to die.

He kept seeing them, kept feeling his past wounds, and kept suffocating. He was under the earth again, and he couldn't get any air into his body. Distantly, he felt hands on his face, stroking under his eyes, around his mouth. He could hear the echoes of a voice - a familiar, gentle, loving voice.

"It's okay, Percy, just squeeze my hands," Annabeth soothed as she took his shaking hands, and it was such a stark contrast to everything he had seen and felt and heard in his dreams, he could barely allow himself to believe it. "Just breathe, okay? That's it, like that." Percy's breathing became gradually less erratic, but it wasn't enough. He could still feel the pressure of that muskeg over his mouth. He squeezed harder.

"Shh, come on Seaweed Brain. With me, Percy," Annabeth instructed, pressing her cool forehead against his. "That's it, time your breathing with mine."

Percy didn't know how long they stayed there like that in the corner of his room, just breathing. Eventually he managed to control his body enough to release the tension that had stayed with him from his dream, letting out a final rattling breath as he almost dropped to the ground in exhaustion. Annabeth moved closer to him and enveloped him in a hug, her small body encompassing his in a way that caused Percy to calm down considerably, leaving him with shaking fingers that he combed through her hair methodically, but at least he wasn't suffocating any more.

Still, neither of them talked except for the occasional Shh that came from Annabeth as she gently stroked up and down his back. Finally, she moved back enough to be able to look at him, but still she kept hold of his arms, never stopping the comforting patterns she traced on them with her steady fingers.

"Do you want to talk about it?" They had been doing this same routine since coming back from Tartarus and ending the war with the Giants. Some nights, it was as it was now, while others Annabeth was the one in the corner while Percy kept her warm and safe from her memories.

"Annabeth..." he whispered raspily as though he had spent the past hour screaming- and perhaps he had. He was scared, yes, but he was also mad. Mad at himself but also at the Titans and Giants, even the freaking Gods up on Olympus that shouldn't even exist anymore. The ones who made him angry with himself, while they should really get the blame.

"Fuck, Annabeth. We're just kids." He moved away from her, looking her in the eye. "I don't understand..."

She looked at him with his grief and anger reflected in her stormy gaze. Percy half expected lighting to flash across her face by how intense it was. "I don't think we ever will, Percy. We are kids.We're fucking seventeen. We've been through two separate wars we got dragged into when we were twelve. But Percy," she looked down and touched his necklace, lifting it up in between them. "We're still here. We're still collecting these godforsaken beads. And you know what? I bet there will be more wars, more stupid arguments between the gods that we have to pick a side in, have to fight in. But we will keep being here. Because that's what we do.

"I don't understand why, and neither does any demigod ever born, but for some reason, we will keep fighting out parents' battles because they're our battles too. So forget the gods for a minute, and the titans and the fucking giants and just be here. With me." She took a shaky breath and dropped the necklace back to Percy's chest.

He shifted slightly, resting his head on her shoulders and breathed her in. "I just wish I wasn’t so scared all the time."

They didn't say anything more after that. Neither did they go back to sleep. They simply sat there, in the corner, being with each other. Eventually, Percy hoped it would be okay, but for now, he knew he would have to suffer through more nightmares, whether they be his own or Annabeth's. They would simply just have deal with them together. And Percy accepted that. What more could he do?

After all, he never asked to be a half-blood.