#mention of asphyxiation

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic

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Chapter 28: Hope dead lives nevermore

[CLICK]

[EVERYTHING IS VAGUELY MUFFLED]

[CAR ENGINE RUMBLING, SLOWING DOWN, AND THEN SHUTTING OFF WITH A CLUNK]

GERRY

What the fuck…?

…Oh, God, no.

[CAR DOOR CREAKS OPEN, THEN SLAMS SHUT]

[VARIOUS CROWD SOUNDS, PUNCTUATED BY THE OCCASIONAL RADIO SQUEAK]

[FOOTSTEPS CRUNCHING ON GRAVEL]

GERRY

Excuse me! Hey, excuse me!

FEMALE VOICE

You need to back off. This is a restricted area right now.

GERRY

No, wait, look, I—I got a phone call, I’m—someone called Roy DeSoto called me? To…pick up my…partner…what the fuck is going on here?

FEMALE VOICE

Oh, yeah, he’s with the medics. Across the street over there. One of those two tents.

Should be good to go if they were calling you. Just don’t go in. And don’t get any closer.

GERRY

…Yeah. Sure.

Thanks, Officer…Hussein.

[FOOTSTEPS GO FROM GRAVEL TO PAVEMENT TO DRY GRASS, GETTING FASTER AS THEY GO]

MALE VOICE

Whoa, hey, sir—sir, you can’t be here—

GERRY

DeSoto—are you Roy DeSoto?

DESOTO

That’s me. Oh—wait, are you, uh, Delano? Jareth Delano? Tim Stoker’s point of contact?

GERRY

Yeah. He—h-how is he? What happened?

DESOTO

He’ll be fine. He’s doing good. Damn sight better than the other guy. (Grumbles) At least he’s not being too difficult.

He’s probably going to be sore for a while. Bandages need to stay on for at least the next twenty-four hours before changing them. We’ve called in a scrip for an antibiotic cream, but he might need help with that. We gave him some painkillers, too, and there’s a scrip in for that as well. Probably want to check in with his regular doctor to see how things are healing up.

Oh, and make sure he gets as much fresh air as possible for the next few days, too. Drinks a lot of water. And if you want to get some of those ice lollies for him to suck on, that might not be a bad thing, because he’s probably going to have a sore throat for a bit.

But he’s good to go. We don’t really have a reason to keep him anymore, and he says he doesn’t want to go to hospital, so you can take him home.

GERRY

…Thanks. Where is he?

DESOTO

Right in there. I—

DISTANT VOICE

Roy!

DESOTO

Coming!

Yeah, right in there, go ahead.

GERRY

Thanks.

[RUNNING FOOTSTEPS]

[SLIGHTLY MORE MEASURED FOOTSTEPS]

[DEEP BREATH]

[RATTLE OF PLASTIC]

TIM

(Tiredly) Hi, babe.

GERRY

(Horrified) Oh, Tim.

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

[STIFLED GROAN FROM TIM]

GERRY

Sorry, sorry!

Jesus. What happened?

Also, if you ever call me like that out of the clear blue sky again—

TIM

I know. I’m sorry.

Look, let’s…let’s get out of here. I can tell you everything when we get home.

GERRY

Okay, but one question before we leave.

TIM

Sure.

GERRY

Why is your belt around your head?

[CLICK]

———

[CLICK]

JON

Just have a seat, Tim, I—

Oh. Elias?

ELIAS

Yes. Tim has…left us, I’m afraid.

[CHAIR SCRAPES AND CLATTERS TO THE GROUND]

JON

What?!

ELIAS

I hadn’t seen him before I came down here. Not since he was taken into quarantine. But when you asked for him, of course, I went to find him, and when I couldn’t, I spoke to the paramedics.

They confirmed he was gone.

JON

(Voice tight) What happened?

ELIAS

Apparently they called his partner to come and get him. Once he was released from quarantine, there was no reason to keep him on the premises, and the police didn’t feel the need to speak to him. I believe they said he left an hour…ninety minutes ago.

[JON EXHALES HEAVILY, AND THERE IS A SOFT THUMP, LIKE HE’S SUDDENLY BRACING HIMSELF AGAINST A DESK]

Jon, are you all right?

JON

So he’s gone…home.

ELIAS

Yes, I—ah. I apologize, I didn’t think about how I was phrasing that.

Yes, Tim is alive and…about as well as you are, I suppose. Perhaps not. He did have to be in quarantine a fair bit longer than you were—I’m not certain as to why—but he’s been released.

JON

And he just left?

ELIAS

I’m sure he didn’t know you needed to speak with him. Why would he have run if he had?

[A FEW BEATS OF SILENCE]

JON

Does he know?

ELIAS

That Martin found…? I doubt it.

You can talk to him later, Jon. Not tonight. He’s likely as tired and sore as you are.

JON

I’m fine. And I don’t want this to wait.

ELIAS

Well, I suppose your choices are to call him—

JON

I need it on record.

ELIAS

—or to go and speak with him personally.

I gave you a copy of his CV, did I not? I believe it has his address at the top.

JON

(Unconvincingly) Yes. Yes, of—of course.

I’ll, I’ll do that. Thank you.

ELIAS

Right. In that case, are we done here?

JON

No. I still need to talk to the others.

Send Sasha in, then.

ELIAS

…Of course.

[CLICK]

———

[CLICK]

TIM

Yeah, looks like it’s got something in it, all right.

GERRY

I don’t remember grabbing it. I don’t even remember having it.

TIM

It’s mine. I thought I brought it to work with me today, but…well, guess I was a bit distracted this morning. I must’ve dropped it in your coat pocket by mistake.

Good thing, too. With everything that happened, I’d probably have lost it.

GERRY

Let me go walk the dog while you relax and then you can tell me all about it.

TIM

When’s the last time he went out?

GERRY

Just before the paramedic called me. I couldn’t get hold of you and I was having trouble concentrating.

Figured going for a bit of a walk might keep me distracted enough that I didn’t storm the Institute looking for you.

TIM

Then he should be fine for a bit before he needs to go out again.

I know he’s back in the bedroom. I also know you’re worried about him jumping on the holes, but, honestly, I’m so doped up right now I wouldn’t feel it if you jabbed a sword into my chest.

GERRY

You mean like this?

[TIM GIVES OUT A YELL OF PAIN]

[BARKING FROM DOWN THE HALL]

TIM

(A bit breathlessly) Okay, I might have slightly overestimated the efficacy of medical-grade narcotics, but…

GERRY

Sorry.

[SOFT KISS]

I’ll let him out. He’ll probably be gentle with you. Then we can…talk.

TIM

Sounds good. Thanks, babe.

[FOOTSTEPS DOWN THE HALL]

[TIM SIGHS HEAVILY]

[TOENAILS CLICKING ON HARDWOOD GETTING GRADUALLY LOUDER, JINGLING OF TAGS]

[SQUEAK OF SOFA SPRINGS]

[ENTHUSIASTIC LICKING]

TIM

Hey, yeah, good to see you, too. Yeah, I’m okay, I’m okay. Ow—ow—easy there, boy—(laughing) Okay, okay, enough. Enough.

Rowlf, down.

[LICKING STOPS]

[SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAK AGAIN]

GERRY

Hey, budge over, mutt, I want to sit down, too.

Actually, don’t bother. Sit up, Tim.

[SOUNDS OF SHIFTING, MORE SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAKING]

[TWIN SIGHS]

GERRY

This okay?

TIM

Yeah. Yeah, this is good.

GERRY

What happened? You called me in the middle of the workday, yelled that you loved me, and immediately hung up. Tried calling you back and went from not getting an answer to the connection not even going through, and the next thing I hear is six hours later from a blocked number saying you’re fine, but they don’t trust you to leave on your own. And then I get to the Institute and…

I saw the EDC truck. I’m not stupid. The Corruption attacked, didn’t it?

TIM

Long story short, yeah.

GERRY

And…short story long?

TIM

Anything by Ernest Hemingway.

[GERRY GIVES A LONG, DRAWN OUT, EXASPERATED GROAN]

GERRY

I’m serious. If ‘the Corruption attacked’ is the—what’s it called? The Cliff’s Notes version—at least give me the Readers Digest Condensed Version.

TIM

…I think the Web pushed the Corruption to attack.

GERRY

…

…Okay, you’re going to have to give me the full novel here, Stoker.

TIM

(A bit teasingly) You want my statement?

GERRY

Do I look Eye-aligned to you?

TIM

Yes.

GERRY

(Brief chuckle) Fair enough.

TIM

(Seriously) It was around lunchtime. Sasha and Martin were both out, and I was just packing up to go myself. Lou—you remember Lou, my old boss from Velvet and Crow?

GERRY

The one you said went to school with Gertrude?

TIM

Yeah. She—fuck, I’m going to have to reach out to her, she probably thinks I blew her off. Today’s her birthday, so she asked if I’d meet her for lunch. I was just getting ready to tell Jon I was going when I heard this…thumping noise from the Archivist’s office. I went in, and there was Jon, standing by the wreckage of the shelves. He said he’d been trying to kill a spider and the whole thing just…collapsed.

GERRY

And that’s why you think the Web was involved? Hate to break it to you, Tim, but spiders do occasionally turn up for innocuous reasons. Maybe it was just lost.

TIM

Believe me, I thought the same thing. But he described it as a “nasty, bulbous thing”—and, okay, Jon super hates spiders, which makes sense since he’s definitely been marked pretty deeply by the Web—

GERRY

How do you know that?

TIM

Please. After almost three years, if I can’t pick out a mark that obvious, you and Gertrude did a shitty job of training me.

But yeah, I guess there was the possibility Jon was exaggerating, either because his fear made it seem bigger and nastier than it was or because he needed it to be big and nasty so I wouldn’t get mad at him for killing a harmless little lint speck. You know how it goes. Except when I got closer and looked, I realized the shelves had made a hole in the wall. And I could smell it—that dry, musty, earthy smell I last smelled, or at least last smelled that strongly, when I went to Martin’s place.

I’m sure I’ve been smelling it around the Institute, too, but it just faded into the background after a while. This was intense.

GERRY

Are you telling me there were worms in the walls? I thought the building was solid stone.

TIM

It was. It is.

We thought the wall he went through was an exterior wall. Nope. It was just plasterboard, and…behind it was a space. Not just a gap of a few inches to allow for wiring or whatever, but actual tunnels. Deep ones. I realized later it was probably the remains of the old Millbank Prison.

GERRY

(Surprised) There actually are tunnels under the Institute? Fuck me. I thought the old bat was joking.

TIM

What? When?

GERRY

Not long after she told me about the rituals, right around the time I thought I found Leitner. She caught me snooping through her papers—

TIM

Seems to be a habit with you.

GERRY

Shut up. She asked if I’d found anything interesting, and I said I was looking for her nefarious plans…she said she wouldn’t keep those with her papers, and I made a joke about hidden underground tunnels, and she said that oh, yes, there was a whole network of tunnels under the Institute that she’d conveniently forgotten to mention. Her tone of voice sounded like she was joking, but…

TIM

(Slowly) At the time, maybe she was. I think you maybe got her curious, and that’s how she found them.

She definitely knew about them. I’m sure of it. It’s why those shelves were where they were. That was where the plasterboard was thinnest, she must have known if anything broke in it would be there. Wanted an early detection system, I guess.

GERRY

So what happened after you smelled the Corruption in the tunnels? Please tell me you didn’t go down looking for it.

TIM

No, it came up looking for us. Jon poked at the hole and made it a bit bigger, and the next thing I knew the office was teeming with worms.

Martin was back by then. I managed to get him and Jon back into that secure Document Storage room, the climate-controlled one, you know? Not easily, mind you. Jon was insistent on bringing the recorders along, I’m still not sure what that was about. Not like the tape would have survived if he hadn’t. We made it, but he got bitten on the way, so I had to get that out…Sasha was still out there, though, and, well, I was worried about the worms. So I went out to fight them off. Got Sasha out of the Archives, told her to get help, and I wound up in the Archivist’s office.

I, uh…they were close. Really close. The worms, I mean. I wound up falling into some case boxes that turned out to have fire extinguishers in them, so I was attacking the worms, but…

GERRY

These would be the extinguishers that are useless for the kind of fire you expect at the Institute? The ones filled with carbon dioxide?

TIM

Yeah. They do work on the worms, though.

GERRY

Most things die when you suck the oxygen out of their lungs.

Speaking of, do you want some water or something? Medic said you’ll probably have a sore throat for a while, I assume because you were breathing carbon dioxide.

TIM

I’m okay for now, but…yeah. That’s what was going on. Got a little lightheaded, too. But I did realize I needed to get out of there somehow.

That’s when I called you.

GERRY

Oh, good. I’m so glad that was on your list of priorities.

TIM

Making sure you got to hear my voice one last time, just in case I didn’t make it out of there alive? Yeah, that was pretty much top of my list.

GERRY

Okay, now I have to kill you.

[TIM LAUGHS]

I’m not joking, Stoker. Do you have any idea what it would have done to me if that had been the last communication I ever had with you?

You didn’t even give me a chance to say it back.

TIM

…I know. I’m sorry.

I guess it was a little selfish. I was going to do something I knew was dangerous, and I wanted to hear your voice one last time, just in case I never heard another one.

Plus, you know, oxygen deprivation. Wasn’t exactly thinking the clearest.

GERRY

I’ll give you that one.

TIM

Anyway, I went down. God, it was like a maze down there. Down was up, up was down, left and right meant just about nothing…and I know what you’re thinking. I couldn’t sense the Spiral. Or the Buried, for that matter, so that was good. It was just…confusing.

If it’s the remains of Millbank Prison, that makes sense, really. Smirke designed it, and he obviously knew about the Fourteen, so he might have drawn on elements of the Spiral without actually…invoking it. Probably not to draw it. Probably just to make it confusing for any prisoners who managed to get out of their cells. The guards would have had maps and directions and all that sort of thing, but a convict making a break for freedom? They could wander for ages and not find the way out.

There weren’t as many worms down there, though. Not at first. Most of them must’ve been up in the Archives, which was not comforting, but I figured I’d worry about getting out and then I could worry about destroying Jane Prentiss and her filth. And then…I found a room full of them.

GERRY

(Quietly) Alive or dead?

TIM

Alive. Alive and building.

They were…Ger, I think I’m right, I think that was a Corruption ritual. Or at least it was meant to be one. The worms were stacking themselves together, kind of twisting around one another, and…it looked like they were making a doorway. I can only assume it was for the Creeping Rot to enter our world.

GERRY

You stopped it, though, right?

TIM

Oh, yeah. I pumped two and a half canisters of CO2 into that room. Nothing was getting out of there alive.

I wandered a bit after that and eventually came to a wall that looked different from the rest, like it was thinner. And I could hear voices on the other side—

GERRY

Voices?

TIM

—that I recognized as Jon and Martin’s. So I broke through the wall, and yeah, there was Document Storage. It’s on the same wall as the Archivist’s office.

The worms were getting pretty bad up there, so I figured my first priority was to get them out of there and somewhere safe. I reckoned if all the worms were in the Archives, they’d be all right in the tunnels. Jon was hurt, though, and his leg was slowing him down, and…there were enough worms in the tunnels. A wave of them came at us, and we lost—lost track of Martin.

I, I don’t know if he—I don’t know if he got out, Gerry. I don’t know if he found his way to the surface, or if he’s still trapped down there, or if something else got him or—

GERRY

Easy, babe. Easy.

[ROWLF WHINES SOFTLY]

TIM

Sorry. I’m good. I’m good.

[DEEP BREATH]

Anyway, we, um, turns out breaking through the walls isn’t the only way into the Archives from those tunnels. There’s a trapdoor. A big one. Jon and I found it and…I should have made him stay in the tunnels. I tried to make him stay in the tunnels, but Jesus Christ, we thought Gertrude was stubborn? Jon makes the Alps look easy to shift. So we went up together.

And Jane Prentiss was waiting for us.

GERRY

Shit. How’d you fight her off?

TIM

I didn’t. The fire suppressant system finally kicked in. Last thing I remember before I blacked out was the screaming.

GERRY

Jon?

TIM

The worms. I guess. Or maybe it was the dying scream of the ritual fizzling out, I dunno.

Just…that’s going to be haunting my dreams for a while, I think. Thousands of tiny things without mouths, screaming for a god that isn’t listening.

GERRY

And now that’s going to haunt my dreams, thanks.

TIM

You can’t imagine it unless you were there. Trust me. Whatever you’re thinking…it was a million times worse.

GERRY

I can imagine quite a lot.

TIM

I know.

[SEVERAL LONG MOMENTS OF SILENCE]

GERRY

You stopped her, Tim. Even if you’re not the one who kicked off the overhead system, you slowed her down enough that it could work, and you put Sasha in the position that she could do that.

You did good.

TIM

Yeah.

I’m just…I’m worried. About Martin. About Jon.

GERRY

Jon’s fine. Or at least fine enough to be a problem. When I picked you up, the paramedic was grumbling about “the other guy” being difficult, and I assume that was Jon.

TIM

That’s…good. I tried to take the brunt of it for him, but there’s only so much surface area to my body, you know?

GERRY

I am, in fact, quite aware of the surface area of your body.

[TIM LAUGHS]

You’re not worried about Sasha?

TIM

No. She got out. She’s probably fine.

And she’s short enough that the worms probably looked right over her.

[GERRY LAUGHS]

I mean, I am worried about her, but…less than the others.

GERRY

Gertrude’s going to be proud of you.

TIM

I hope so.

And I fucking hope she gets back soon, because if she doesn’t, I’m going to have to make a call myself.

GERRY

On whether to tell the others about…everything?

TIM

Yup.

I don’t think knowing would have kept them safe. Sure as fuck didn’t do jack shit for me. But going forward…God. Are they going to make smarter decisions if they know that stuff is literally trying to kill them?

GERRY/TIM (SIMULTANEOUSLY)

No.

[THEY BOTH LAUGH THIS TIME]

TIM

Really, I think…I think if I’m going to tell anyone, it would need to be Jon. I just…don’t know if I should.

GERRY

Why Jon? Why not Martin or Sasha?

TIM

Jon is…until Gertrude gets back, he’s the acting Archivist. I haven’t been calling him that, and I don’t think he’s noticed or really thought about it. But he’s still…

He’s at least nominally in charge. He’s the one calling the shots, or at least he should be. And I can’t help but wonder if he’d make different decisions if he knew everything.

GERRY

…I mean…

On the one hand, probably? If he knows about the Fourteen, if he knows Jane Prentiss wasn’t just an isolated thing, if he knows what’s going on behind everything, he might make different decisions. About research, about how to run the Archives, about what he should be doing. It’s highly likely.

On the other hand, I think the question you should actually be asking is if he’d make better decisions if he knew everything.

TIM

Yeah, that’s a good point.

He’s…curious. Too curious for his own damn good. And I know he makes bad decisions. He wouldn’t have got hurt today if he hadn’t gone back for the tape recorder—it slowed him getting out of the office, and then he dropped it on his way to Document Storage and that’s why he got bit. And he…focuses too much on the immediate problem and not long-term solutions.

Like the carbon dioxide system. I don’t know how he talked Elias into that. It doesn’t actually work on the kind of fires we’re likely to get in the Archives. I mean, it comes—came—out cold, and sinks to the bottom of the room, so that’s not the issue, but it doesn’t go deep enough to put out fires on, say, paper. And if it dissipates, but the actual source of the ignition isn’t removed, the fire’s quite likely to flare up again.

All of which he would have known if he’d done just a little bit of research, or put any thought into it. Collect the extinguishers, sure, but replacing the whole system? That was stupid. Now we’re safe from the Corruption—or specifically from the worms, which aren’t going to be a problem anymore—but we’re at risk from the Desolation.

GERRY

And if he’d known about both? Would he have done that? Got the extinguishers and not pushed about the overall system?

TIM

…No. No, I don’t think he would have. I think he’d have said to get the CO2 system and supplement with the ABC extinguishers rather than the other way around.

I’ll grant you that we probably wouldn’t have survived if he had done it the other way around, but…

GERRY

But Gertrude wouldn’t have.

TIM

Gertrude wouldn’t have involved Elias at all if she could help it. Also, I know she was trying to get the ABC system installed, because that’s what I gave her the recommendation for.

GERRY

Yeah, true.

So. What are you going to do about Jon?

TIM

Not sure yet. Luckily, I think I’ve got time to work that out.

GERRY

Did the paramedics tell you how long it’s going to be before you can go back to work?

TIM

Not their call. I’m going to have to go to a regular doc and get checked out. Probably tomorrow, but…fuck it, I might wait until Thursday or Friday and rest tomorrow.

I’m thinking probably a few weeks. Some of these holes are deep.

(Groans) Aaaaand the painkillers are starting to wear off.

GERRY

Hang on. I’ll go make tea and get the bottle out.

TIM

Thanks, Ger.

[FOOTSTEPS FADING INTO THE DISTANCE]

[FAINT SOUND OF RUNNING WATER]

[TIM SIGHS HEAVILY]

[SUDDEN JANGLE OF TAGS]

TIM

What? What is it, boy?

[KNOCKING AT THE DOOR]

[ROWLF BARKS EXCITEDLY]

[TOENAILS CLATTER ON FLOOR, TAGS JINGLING]

TIM

Ow! Christ—

GERRY

(From the other room) Tim, you stay right there. I’ll get it.

TIM

I’m—

GERRY

Don’t say you’re fine.

[FOOTSTEPS ALONG THE HALLWAY]

GERRY (DISTANTLY)

Get back, you menace. Rowlf, heel.

[DOOR CREAKS]

Can I help you? This is a private residence.

[FAINT, INDISTINCT VOICE]

Who’s asking?

[FAINT VOICE EVIDENTLY REPLIES]

Oh—yeah, yeah, come on in. Don’t mind the dog. Rowlf!

MARTIN (DISTANTLY)

It’s okay. I like dogs. And we’ve met before.

TIM

(Surprised) Martin?

GERRY

Timothy Rodolfo Anthony Stoker, you keep your ass on that sofa.

TIM

(Groans) Yes, Dad.

GERRY

Have a seat. I’m making tea.

MARTIN

No, no, it’s okay, it’s—I-I’m not staying long. I just…

I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Jon was, um, he said you left before he could get your statement.

TIM

He was—never mind.

I’m okay. Bit sore, but I’ll live, you know? Partner’s just a bit overprotective.

MARTIN

Right, right, yeah, that’s—you know, I don’t think you’ve, um, you haven’t mentioned his name before?

GERRY (CALLING FROM THE OTHER ROOM)

It’s Gerry.

MARTIN

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

S-sorry, I—I shouldn’t have—I, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.

And…well, to say I was sorry. I—I didn’t mean to leave you behind, I—

TIM

What? No. No, no, no. Martin, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you.

I should be the one apologizing. I—fuck it.

[SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAK OVER MILD SOUNDS OF PROTEST FROM MARTIN]

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

I’m sorry, kiddo. I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight. I was trying to get you both out safely, but…

MARTIN

You did, though. You—we’d both be dead if it weren’t for you.

Thank you. I, I don’t think I said that while we were in the tunnels, but…thank you. For looking out for us.

TIM

Hey, that’s what I’m here for.

You did good, too, Marto. You found your way out. You didn’t get bit, did you?

MARTIN

No, no, no. No, I—I didn’t see many worms. Actually, (nervous laugh) that worried me a bit, you know? Like if there weren’t any worms, I’d gone too far from the Institute. That’s what I told Jon.

I was just trying to find my way back, a-and then I heard the screams. And then I started finding all the withered worms in the tunnels, and that’s how I knew she—that Jane Prentiss was dead.

TIM

That’s…good to know, actually.

MARTIN

You didn’t know she was dead?

TIM

No, I did. She was looming right over me, and I sort of figured that was part of the screaming. I just didn’t think about the worms being…connected to her. Or part of her or whatever.

Anyway, I’m just glad you’re okay. What did you do, follow the worms out?

MARTIN

(Brief pause) Why didn’t I think of that? Stupid. Stupid. That would have been so much easier.

TIM

(Firmly) You’re not stupid.

MARTIN

Yeah, but I didn’t think to follow the obvious clue! I just, I just wandered, looking for a way out. I thought I found one—a-a door—but it turned out to just be a room.

TIM

Filled with dessicated worm corpses, right?

MARTIN

No. No, the worms didn’t…

Did, um—w-when did you leave?

TIM

Pretty much right after I got out of quarantine. I joked about itching a little with the paramedics and they kept me longer. Why?

MARTIN

Then you didn’t talk to anyone? Elias, maybe?

TIM

…About what?

MARTIN

O-oh. Um, um, you…you maybe want to sit down or—

TIM

Martin! Just say it, all right? What was in the room?

MARTIN

It—I-I found Gertrude Robinson.

TIM

(Exhales) So she was down there. I wondered…

MARTIN

Yeah. Sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. No worms. No cobwebs. Just…the dust and the cardboard boxes full of cassette tapes.

And an old corpse.

TIM

What?

MARTIN

I mean…it’s been more than a year, Tim. If it wasn’t so dry and dusty down there, I wouldn’t have recognized her, I don’t—

Tim? Tim, are you okay?

TIM

(Quietly) What happened to her?

MARTIN

…She was shot. Three times that I could see. In the chest.

TIM

…Jesus.

…

Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?

MARTIN

Yeah, I’m—I’m going back to my place.

I don’t know how long I’m going to stay there, honestly, but at least I know it’s safe now. And, um, Elias said we can take the rest of the week off.

I probably have to go back in tomorrow, though. The, the police want me to try and show them where her body is. I-I’m not sure I can find it again, but…

TIM

You’ve got my number. Call if you want company, okay?

MARTIN

I mean, I don’t think you’re in any fit state to go anywhere, but—sure, yeah, okay.

You’re sure you’re okay?

TIM

(Unconvincingly) Fit as a fiddle.

Go home and get some rest, okay, Marto? And…you did good today. Real good.

MARTIN

Thanks, Tim. You, too.

Bye, Rowlf.

[FOOTSTEPS ACROSS THE FLOOR, DOOR OPENING AND SHUTTING]

[SEVERAL SECONDS OF SILENCE]

GERRY

Tim?

TIM

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”

GERRY

What? Jon or Sasha?

TIM

…You didn’t hear any of that, did you?

GERRY

Just you asking Martin if—Tim. Tim, what’s wrong, what is it?

What happened?

TIM

…

…Gertrude’s dead.

GERRY

What?! Dead? Since when?

TIM

From what Martin said…Elias was right. She’s been dead this whole time. Someone shot her and left her in the tunnels under the Institute.

Along with—(Sudden realization) the tapes. Martin said she was surrounded by cardboard boxes full of tapes.

GERRY

(Softly) Oh, God.

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

[SQUEAK OF SOFA SPRINGS]

You are not going down there looking for them. Not in the shape you’re in. We’ll have to…we’ll figure out how to get them later.

TIM

They’re probably going to be in a police evidence locker for a while. Assuming they find her.

GERRY

Won’t be the first time I’ve broken into a police station. Probably won’t be the last.

[SEVERAL LONG MOMENTS OF SILENCE]

What are you thinking?

TIM

I’m thinking that answers the question of whether or not to say anything to Jon.

GERRY

…Okay, you’re going to have to run that one by me. How?

TIM

He must know more than he’s letting on. He’s got to have some idea about all this already.

Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s just a power hungry idiot. I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I’m still not going to talk to him about all this, not yet.

GERRY

Why not?

TIM

Because right now, the best conclusion I can come to is that Jonathan Sims is the one who murdered Gertrude Robinson.

[CLICK]

[citricacidprince]

...Mable stuck with bill timestuck, you say? I wonder if that would go better or worse than dipper being alone with bill.

Here to mention that I somehow only noticed your signature when it was next to fiddleford, and thought you were (rightly) calling him a prince. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to connect the dots.

Haha you’re not the first person to mistake my signature for actual writing so dw you’re good lol!

And as for my thoughts of Mabel and Bill in a Timestuck AU,,,

I may or may not have written a drabble in a mutuals DMs a few years back about a confrontation between Mabel and Bill and the aftermath of it! I also may or may not have just fixed it up and straight up doubled the word count haha-

Since I’m feeling a tad bit brave I’m gonna post the drabble under the cut for anyone to read along with two doodles I’ve done for it, I only ask that yall be nice to me since I don’t write very often and know I ain’t that good at it hehe-

Also I’m not lying this is like,,, 4707 words… I got possessed to write this haha

Before I begin!!! Important!!!

Trigger Warnings: Choking/Asphyxiation, harm to children, minor descriptions of small cuts and minuscule amounts of blood, verbal planning of commiting a murder/killing

(if I missed any please tell me!)

With that out of the way here's my stupidly long Timestuck AU drabble that's been on my back burner for years! The only thing you really need to know is that the twins time-traveled back after Weirdmagenddon of their own volition. Dipper is with Stan and Mabel is with Ford and Fiddleford. Mabel has been staying with the two for almost a month now and Fiddleford is the only one who knows she's a time traveler.

With the stage set, please enjoy!

💫—————————————🚩

It’s late into the night, Mabel is tossing and turning and can't go to sleep. Her mind is spiraling as she overthinks and worries about Bill, her brother, her Grunkles, everything. So at about 1AM she decides that she’s not going to bed anytime soon and gets up off the living room couch which she has called her new bed while staying with her younger Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford.

Despite it being the dead of night Mabel thought it’d be a good idea to just make something food related in hopes it would tire her out. Also, she figured it would be a fun idea since she knows Stanford is most likely still awake and probably hasn’t eaten in a while. She could make him something easy and sweet, like a batch of cookies, and give them to him as a gift! Who doesn’t like 1AM cookies?! If she doesn’t have the stuff to make that, eh, she’ll figure it out and make something else!

A bonus to this is that if Ford says he’s not hungry, a bold faced lie, she’d use her sweetest and biggest puppy eyes until he ate some. Maybe she could even convince him to go to bed and not stay up till 4AM!

The brunette starts making a batch of cookies in the cover of night, making sure to have plenty enough for Fidd's in the morning, and putting her entire heart and all her worries into the mix in hopes the oven would ease away the stress weighing down her mind.

Sure it took a while, but it would totally be worth it to see her young Grunkle's face light up in shock at the sight of a warm batch of cookies shoved into his face and getting crumbs on his nerdy notes!

Right as she was finishing up wrapping up three separate plates worth of cookies in a napkin with a pretty little bow, for the ✨aesthetic✨ she happily told herself, she hears a pair of heavy boots walk into the kitchen.

The voice of her, now young, Grunkle Ford calls out her name in the quiet kitchen. Just as she had expected, he was awake.

Before the excited brunette could whirl around and surprise Ford with the 1-2 AM batch of cookies she lovingly went and made by hand, his low voice rumbled out, “Could you grab me a mug? One from the cabinet.”

He sounded a little funny, like he just woke up. Mabel smiled as she could already picture Stanford’s bleary and tired face as he goes to make a cup of coffee with the mug he’s asking for. She lets out a small sound of exertion as she pushes herself onto the counter since she’s too short to reach the cabinets otherwise and gingerly opens the cabinet so it doesn’t squeak and pulls out a mug. Based on the small cracks and worn paint on the ceramic it seemed a tad old, the faded words of ‘Backupsmore 1973’ barely legible.

Just as Mabel turns around, about to lightly scold her young Great Uncle for drinking coffee at 2 AM instead of getting some rest, a large hand wraps around her little neck. She didn’t even have a chance to scream as she’s suddenly slammed into the now closed cabinet, the air knocked out of her lungs and her head spinning from the impact, a loud sound of ceramic shattering on the wooden floor echoing through the kitchen and Mabel’s ringing ears

A fearful confusion consumes her mind as she, unsure of what’s happening in her dazed state until she catches a glimpse of Stanford. Gone were the warm brown eyes she’s grown accustomed to, in their place were the sickly yellow slit eyes of a monster she knew all to well.

Bill Cipher.

“Shooting Star, there you are! I think you're getting a tad too comfortable around here! Let's fix that!"

Malice built in her throat as she spat out, her brows furrowed and her brown eyes glaring down his yellow ones, “Bill! You-”

“Ah, so you do know me! I assumed so, but wasn’t quite sure!”

The six fingered hand around her neck pressed a tad harder against the wooden cabinet behind her, making her wince from the pressure.

“Here’s the deal, Shooting Star, you’re being a massive thorn in my side.”

Her back was already aching from the impact of her getting slammed against the cabinet.

“Making Sixer second guess his trust in me with your insufferable kindness and child-like whimsy.”

Her sock-covered feet were slipping and sliding on the wooden countertop, legs uncontrollably trembling as her fingers gripped at Stanford’s large forearm in hopes of steadying herself.

“It was amusing at first but now it’s just annoying. So I need you,”

His hand tightened even more, making Mabel let out a sharp hiss of pain.

“Out of the picture.”

Mabel’s feet no longer are touching the countertop as Bill suddenly pulls her away from the cabinet, easily dangling her little body in the air and effectively hanging her. Panic instantly shoots through her and tears well up in her eyes as her airway is suddenly completely cut off, her little hands grabbing and clawing at her possessed great uncle’s forearm while her legs wildly kick at the air, too short to even graze against Bill’s chest.

Bill’s free hand raises up and idly taps his chin, as his musing over something indecisively, an wide and uncanny grin stretched across the possessed scientist’s face as he loudly questions, “Hmmm… how about… throwing you in the lake! If the water doesn’t kill you the cold air will!”

Mabel started to thrash around even harder, her heart pounding in her chest as fear coursed through every nerve in her body, her flight response in full gear as she tried over and over again to get out of Bill’s grip with no avail.

“Oooh! Or I could just tie you up and bury you in the snow! I hear frostbite is real killer these days!”

Blood was rushing to her ears; she could barely hear a word he was saying. All she could focus on was the panic bubbling in her chest and adrenaline pumping in her veins, screaming at her that she didn’t want to die.

It didn’t take long before her vision began to blur, her clawing hands and kicking feet getting more and more numb and slow with each passing seconds. She could faintly hear Bill say something about ‘throwing’, ‘roof’, and ‘classic!’ before she could feel herself almost completely clock out, vision fluttering in and out as her hand weakly claws at his arm one last time.

Just as she was about to give up completely, the polydactyl hand around her neck suddenly let go, sending Mabel unceremoniously crashing to the floor. She let in a large gasp of air, coughing her lungs out as air desperately tried to fill them once more. The brunette doesn’t even care about the small shards of broken ceramic cutting into her hands or shins, she was trying to make sure she didn’t accidentally start hyperventilating as drool and tears drip from her face to the floor with every sharp breath.

Mabel, disoriented and dazed, manages to glance up through strands of her long and curly brunette hair to see Ford still standing there with those disgusting yellow eyes, which were now staring off to space with annoyance clearly visible in his gaze.

"Geez Sixer, you chose the worst time to want your body back to 'test a new theory' huh?" He quietly mumbles under his breath, looking upset that his fun was being rudely ripped away from him.

Suddenly he stares down at Mabel, who was clutching her throat and panting heavily, brown eyes unable to stop crying. Despite this, despite all the pain and numbness that ran through her, she still found it in her to glare at the dream demon with as much animosity as she could muster while surrounded by ceramic shards and small prickles of blood.

"Well… we’ll just have to pick this up another time, won't we Shooting Star?"

The possessed body of Stanford Pines strolls towards the archway leading out of the kitchen, however before he leaves completely, he stops and whirls around with that same twisted smile Mabel vividly remembers seeing on her possessed brother’s face just a few months ago. "Oh, Shooting Star? Would you be a doll and clean up this mess? Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt now, would we?"

And with one final cackle he left, making his way back downstairs to Stanford’s study, presumably to make it appear like he never left in the eyes of the oblivious scientist, leaving the little brunet alone on the floor to lightly grip her neck, wincing at the bruise that's bound to appear the next day.

She stayed there silently for what felt like hours but was only just a couple minutes, the adrenaline coursing through her veins slowly but surely fading away as the feeling finally came back to her numb fingers and toes, relieved that she isn’t hyperventilating anymore and she can actually breathe.

She eased herself off the cold wooden floor, her little body trembling the entire time.

Despite the feeling of spite coursing through her veins for that awful dream demon, he was right…, she really didn’t want anyone to get hurt… So instead of immediately going to fix herself up she spent the next 10 minutes sweeping up the broken mug and getting all the broken shards of ceramic into the trash.

Curse her and her big heart…!

When she was done it was about 2 AM, and it was now officially time to check the damage.

Before she left the kitchen she made sure to put the plates of cookies into the fridge.

She didn’t really feel hungry anymore.

With a couple of winces and hisses of pain she managed to tip toe herself up the stairs and to the bathroom, making sure she didn’t accidentally wake up Fiddleford by stepping on a loose plank or opening the door too loud. Once inside she gingerly pulls out the old timey medkit from under the sink and sits on the floor.

Well, technically the medkit was modern since it was the 80s…

Wah, Mabel! Not the time!

With a deep breath she gingerly treats the tiny cuts gracing her hands and shins, trying not to cry as she disinfects each cut just like Grunkle Ford taught her to at the end of the summer, plucking out mini pieces of ceramic embedded in her skin with a pair of tweezer like how her Grunkle Stan had taught her at the beginning of the summer (note from her past self, splinters are never fun).

Cleaning and applying band-aids to the cuts was the easy part, most of the bandages would be hidden under her sweater and the winter pants Fiddleford had gifted her during her first couple days staying at the shack.

It was her neck that was going to be hard to hide.

Mabel stood up and got on a step stool to look into the minor, immediately wincing at the sight of her bare neck, dark purple was already creeping in and bruising every bit of her neck. The brunette leaned closer to get a better look and almost whispered out one of the many swears she had accidentally learned from Stanford while living here.

There was a hand bruised into her neck, and it encompassed her entire neck.

She gingerly touched her neck and winced at the dull pain. Guess she wasn’t going to take off her sweater for about 2 weeks now… just 1 week if she was lucky enough…

She tentatively took a step outside of the bathroom and tiptoed down the hallway again, trying to not make a single sound. Just when she got to the steps she heard a door open behind her, causing her to instantly crouch down and hope that she was far enough down the stairs that her body was hidden from sight.

She dared herself to peek just above the top step to see Fiddleford standing outside of his room, stretching and yawning before closing his door and walking towards the bathroom Mabel just left, making the 13-year-old let out a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to see her like this.

She knew she should probably tell Fiddleford what happened, but she just couldn’t. Maybe it was that childish fear of getting in trouble over nothing getting to her, or maybe it was the fear that her young Grunkle would be blamed for what Bill did.

Regardless, despite her better judgment, she kept her mouth shut and decided to hide her bruises from everyone else in the house, silently thinking of a way she could somehow protect herself from Bill.

She could practically hear Dipper yelling at her about how bad of an idea this was, but she was too shaken up to think of anything else…

So, she kept with the plan even as she shakily slipped a sweater over her large t-shirt she wore as a night gown and fell asleep on the couch, huddled in the corner in a ball as vivid nightmares haunted her fitful sleep, showing flashes of a possessed Stanford Pines throwing her off either the house or a water tower.

She woke up the next day to the warm smell of breakfast and the soft tones of Fidd's humming a tune in the kitchen, her body absolutely aching and a tad sweaty from the combo of the sweater and the fireplace keeping the room warm.

Mabel winced as she got off the couch. Yep… her back is definitely bruised.

She tentatively walked towards the open archway leading into the kitchen, silently calming her nerves and trying to put a smile onto her face. It helped that Fiddleford is making breakfast, she loves his food.

The kicthen was so empty when she first arrived but the southern man immediately starting keeping the place stocked when it was clear that she was going to stay there for a while. He also insistent on making her a meal 3 times a day since she was a ‘growin’ lil’ girl’. Because of her memories of Fiddleford being ‘Old Man McGucket’ were much more prominent in her brain it was easy to forget that he was once a father, but in those domestic moments when he doted and fussed over her it was clear that he was a good one.

Well, when he was sane that is…

She quickly shook off the bleak memory.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts…

She let out a low breath as a wide smile covered her face, her round cheeks rosy as she happily skipped inside.

Fiddleford perked up at the sound of Mabel walking inside, smiling as immediately spoke with a fond voice, "Ey there sweetpea, sleep well?" He idly glanced behind to see Mabel in her baggy t-shirt/sleep gown as well as a sweater on top of that, making him raise an eyebrow as he playfully asks, "Did someone get' cold last night?"

"Just a little bit." Mabel playfully replied back, unable to stop the wince that crossed her face at the sound of her hoarse voice.

Fiddleford, who was already done making breakfast, immediately whipped his head around at the sound. "Honeybee, are ya' alright?"

She lightly coughs into her fist a couple times and passingly remarks, “I’m fine, it's just morning gunk! Just need some water, haha!” Trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

Fiddleford still had a suspicious look in his eye as he looked over the little lady before deciding to let her off easy with this one, grabbing a rag and wiping his hands while replying with a quiet, “Alright, if ya say so, sunshine…”

He quickly pours Mabel a glass of water and then grabs a plate of bacon and pancakes. “Fer you, made just how you like it,” Mabel sits down in her chair as Fiddleford places the glass of water in front of her and a plate of pancakes and some bacon that is extremely burnt. “Burnt in a volcano.”

The brunette drinks some water first, happy to note that it actually does ease the pain in her throat! After that she eagerly grabs a burnt piece of bacon and shoves it into her mouth, loving the way flakey black residue smears onto her fingers and the overwhelming taste of what can only be described as ‘BURNT’ fills her mouth. She muffles out, “It’s perfect!” In between bites as Fiddleford chuckles at her antics and makes himself a plate. “Yer such an odd lil’ duck, honeydew! Only kid I’ve ever met who wanna me ta’ burn their meal!”

Mabel immediately shoots back, pointing at Fiddleford with a mouth full of bacon, “Tahts cause ohther peowple are COWERDS!!!”

The lanky man lets out a full on belly laugh as he grabs his plate and sits at the table, the two beginning to talk about anything that crosses their mind.

Stanford wasn’t going to join them for breakfast. He’s usually asleep at this time or buried in whatever notes he was currently writing.

…Mabel feels a little bad that she's kinda happy he wouldn’t join them… Her throat feels like it’s constricting all over again at the thought of those sickly yellow eyes and horrid laughter…

At some point while eating, Fiddleford makes a joke that makes Mabel loudly laugh, the sudden shout of laughter causing her to wince and try to grab at her throat. She stops herself a couple inches short of the grab and quickly puts her hand back down, but the damage was already done.

Fiddleford, concern coming back at full force, puts down his fork and immediately asks with a concerned tone, "Honey, is ‘ere somethin' wrong with ‘ur neck?"

Sweat began to bead on Mabel’s forehead and she tried to immediately brush off the concern with a not so convincing, "Whaaaaat, psh, nah!"

He raises an eyebrow at the clearly nervous little girl. "Mabel, if yer' hurt I'd like to know."

She starts to fidget in her seat, fingers wrapping together and her brown eyes darting away. "Look, it's not thaaaat bad you don't gotta worry about it-"

At the confirmation that she is indeed hurt makes him sit up and shoot back, "Well tha' just makes me MORE worried bout it!"

Unable to come up with anymore excuses Mabel plays with a fork in front of her, eyes locked with her plate. Fiddleford let out a soft sigh and leans closer to the brunette across the table and rests his hand on hers, a kind smile on his face as he gently adds on with that fatherly tone that immediately made Mabel feel better, "Darling, it ain't gonna get better if ya’ don't lemme help. I promise I ain’t gon’ get mad, ya hear?"

Mabel tentatively glanced up at the southern man’s soft green eyes and could tell he meant every kind word.

So, despite her promising to keep her injuries a secret, she takes a deep breath and nods her head, gingerly taking off the thick hand-made sweater to leave her neck and bandaged up arms exposed to the world. The lanky southern man’s eyes seem to grow more horrified every passing second.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-"

Fiddleford jumps up from the table, almost making his plate fall off while doing so, quickly rounding the table and crouching in front of the brunette with green eyes filled with so much worry and horror.

He found himself fussing over the girl who had easily wormed herself into his and Ford's hearts and found himself growing even more sickened at every bruise and cut he found, though nothing could compare to that sinking feeling of dread he felt looking at Mabel's bruised neck.

He cupped the brunette’s face and could feel tears well up in his eyes as he stuttered out a confused, "W-wha'..., Mabel wha' on earth happened-" His heart breaking trying to even comprehend what could have happened to her.

On the opposite end, Mabel could feel her heart swell at Fidd's fatherly fussing, but tried to brush it off the best she could, not wanting him to worry about her.

"I'm fine really! I just, uh… tripped down the stairs…? …Yeah! Didn't want to worry you, haha!"

Fiddleford, who suddenly stopped paying attention to what Mabel was saying, let his eyes looking closer at the girl's neck before they widened in a horrifying realization.

"I… Is tha' a hand…?"

A rush of panic suddenly runs through Mabel as she tries to come up with some excuse to throw him off, something, anything!

"Fidd’s it's FINE! I just… uh… wore a sweater that was too tight…?” Goodness she’s screwed, even she was aware of how unsure she sounded.

Fiddleford still wasn’t paying attention. Instead one of his hands lowered from her rosy cheeks and ever so slightly touched her neck with the lightest of touches. His green gaze was analytical as finger traced down the bruised skin, talking to himself so quietly that even Mabel almost didn’t hear him as he quietly began to count.

“One, two, three, four, five, s-”

The blond cut himself off with a sharp inhale through his nose as the look of worry that had previously graced the southern man's face suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a look Mabel had never seen on his face before.

It was a quiet anger. The kind of anger that's terrifying to witness as it bubbles from deep inside but you refuse to let it show on your face, even as your hands begin to tremble and your vision goes red.

Without saying a word Fiddleford stood up and stayed completely silent, unable to say a word for about 10 seconds while his face was blank and unreadable. Finally, Fiddleford looked down at Mabel and gave a kind smile that didn't fully reach his eyes.

"Sweetie, could ya' stay here a sec? I have something importan' I need tha’… discuss… with Stanferd."

After finishing that statement he gently patted the top of her brunette head and walked out of the kitchen archway, turning the corner and heading up the stairs that lead to Stanford's room, walking with such silent intensity that it kinda frightened her.

After a couple moments of staying frozen in her chair she finally managed to shake off the feeling, realizing she had to stop Fiddleford! As scary as it would be seeing Stanford again after last night's… incident… she couldn't just let Fiddleford go confront Ford without the full story!

She sprang up from her chair and winced at the pain radiating from her back. Yep! Still definitely bruised!

Mabel rushed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. She stumbles to a stop at the end of the steps as she sees Fiddleford standing outside Ford's door, just as quiet as he was downstairs. He raises his hand and gives a firm echoing knock and she could faintly hear her young Grunkle respond with a strong, "Come in!"

She hates that she shivers a bit at his voice.

She hates that she's a little bit afraid of him.

Fiddleford doesn't respond and instead just opens the door and then quietly closes it behind him. The door doesn’t close all the way which makes a sliver of light from Ford's bedroom/study shine against the floor in the hallway.

Well... Fiddleford hadn't broken any windows or started yelling, so maybe, just maybe, he's going in there to calmly talk out the problem with Ford? Well, that was more wishful thinking on Mabel's part. She HOPES they will just, talk it out, and no one will get hurt...

A loud crash and shout echoed through the hallway.

A girl could dream can't she?

Mabel sprints to Stanford’s door, tripping over herself the whole way, and yanks open the heavy wooden door as quickly as she could.

When she finally pries it open she’s greeted with the sight of Fiddleford in the middle of trying to choke out Stanford, while Stanford is leaning against one of his smaller wooden cabinets, pushing Fidds away (to the best of his ability) with his foot, clutching his very bloody nose in confusion.

Mabel rushes in and pushes the southern man away from her bleeding Great Uncle to the best of her ability but Fiddleford upon seeing Mabel finally backs off from trying to murder Ford, but the look of pure anger firmly remains on his face.

Ford looks at Fiddleford with pure confusion as he pushes himself off the small wooden cabinet, clutching his bleeding nose all the while.

"F, what on earth has gotten into you!"

Fiddleford stared back with his mouth agape, absolutely gobsmacked, before finally yelling back, "Wha'- what's gotten into ME?! What's gotten into YOU Stanferd Pines!"

Fidds pushed past Mabel and jabbed his finger into the brunet’s chest.

"She's a lil girl?! How DARE you even lay a FINGER on her!"

"F what on earth are you talking about?!"

Fiddleford roughly grabs Ford's shoulders and pushes him to look towards Mabel with a surprising amount of force.

"SHE'S what I'm talkin' bout! Stanferd Filbrick Pines who gave you tha' idea ya' had tha' GODDAMN right to even lay a FINGER on her-"

Stanford couldn't focus on the rant Fiddleford poured into his ears instead his eyes state frozen on the disgusting purple mark staining Mabel's neck.

"Mabel… who-"

Stanford knelt next to the sweet girl who reminded him so much of Stanley in his youth and felt a familiar pang in his chest. That feeling he'd feel whenever Lee came home covered in bruises. That feeling to protect… and to hurt anyone who dares to hurt them.

"Sweetheart… who did this? What happened?"

Fiddleford scoffed. "Ya should know."

Ford shivered at how cold F had sounded. Out of all of his years of knowing him, Fidds had never sounded like this.

Then the meaning of those words finally hit him.

Stanford rushed to stand up and looked back to Fiddleford's furious eyes with his own look of disbelief.

"Y-... You think I did this?"

Fiddleford's eyes didn't change in the slightest.

"Ya'. Ya' I do."

"We've known each other for years, we went to college together, I went to your wedding, you are easily my best friend. Do you honestly think I'm capable of doing something like this?!"

"I used ta'," Fidds crossed his arms. "Now I ain't so sure."

Ford didn't know HOW to feel. This felt like a betrayal but not in the way Stanley's felt. He also felt offended. And hurt. And so many other emotions that were swirling in his chest.

"How? How did you even get it in your head that I had something to do with this!? How could you look at me and even IMAGINE me hurting her?! I can't even imagine myself hurting her! She's-"

"Hand."

Ford froze from his rant.

"What."

"Yer' tha' only one who coulda' done it. How do I know? Hand."

"Ya' always go on an' on about the statistics of someone' being polydactyly. About how different ya' are."

"I want ya' to look at how many fingers are on that handprint on 'er neck, look me in tha' eye, and tell me who's most likely tha' guilty party."

Stanford froze, his face turning white at the realization. He didn't need to turn around and investigate the bruise on Mabel's neck. He now knows it had 6 fingers. When you put all the facts together, one thing is clear.

He IS the most likely person to have done it.

But there's a problem with that.

He DEFINITELY didn't do it.

He glanced back at Mabel, who seemed to be nervously pulling at her nightgown the entire time. After a moment she finally glances up, but after looking into his brown eyes for less than a second she quickly looked back down.

He didn't do it. He knows he didn't.

But if he didn't, why did she look so scared of him?

He didn't do it…

…Didn’t he…?

❔—————————————❓

Now this is a bonus doodle based on an idea I had for the aftermath of this! Stanford is stuck mulling over this in his room and when he finally leaves he notes that Mabel isn't asleep on the couch like usual. So of course he freaks out and assumes she ran away, running all over the house in hopes of finding her. He runs upstairs to Fiddleford’s room and knocks frantically on his door to get him to help him find the missing girl.

Fiddleford opens the door looking annoyed and tired. When Stanford says he can’t find Mabel and that he’s looked everywhere the southern man cuts him off by instantly replying “I know where she is.” That instantly calms down Ford but he looks confused as he asks “You do?” To which Fidd’s opens the door a little bit more to show Mabel asleep on his bed.

Stanford lets out a soft ‘Oh.’ And just stands there, looking awkwardly at Fiddleford for a moment before trying to break the tension with a weak chuckle and asking “Did she want to have a sleepover?” The blond doesn’t even hesitate to reply back, “Yeah. Because she’s scared of you, Stanford.” And closing the door on the brunet’s face.

Stanford doesn’t move for what feels like forever before he heads back to his room, feeling a little sick.

Anywho, I’m done now!!!

I’m happy and sorry you read through all of that, you can leave now! 💥💥💥

[otter-chaos-violence]

mining but whump (especially pre-industrail safety guidelines)

black lung, silicosis, falling off the ladders, carbon monoxide poisoning, mayve whumpee's the bird they bring down, cave ins, electrocution, axphyxsiation, trapped under rubble, boss is working Whumpee until they die, dynamite accidents, amputation.

so many flavors

[surplus-of-sarcasm]

Romance Your Demons

TW: Blood, bruises, asphyxiation attempt, gun mention, violence

Happy late birthday, 🎂 @thelazywitchphotographer

"Darling," Villain growled, baring their teeth in a predatorial fashion.

"Dear," Hero replied languidly, although their eyes were glued to the criminal's balled-up fists, to their arched body, ready to pounce.

They were far too reminiscent of an old, married couple, something everyone and their mother never ceased to point out, much to both the crime-fighter and the evil-doer's chagrin.

The villain rammed into them, the hero's body slamming into the wall with an audible thud, the force just shy away from breaking something.

"Well, this is intimate," the hero scoffed, swinging their leg and slamming it harshly into their adversary's ribs, letting the criminal fall to the ground, spitting blood and a flurry of filthy curses out of their mouth.

The dagger-sharp smirk on the hero's smug face was arguably a more painful blow than that merciless kick. Villain had always been told that their pride would be the end of them.

Well, now it would be the end of Hero too.

Wiping the blood from their mouth, their fingers clawed around Hero's neck, digging into their skin, leaving scratches and bruises in their wake, ripping out shallow breaths from the hero's lungs as their pale face slowly turned a sickly shade of blue.

"You're not laughing now, are you, sucker?" they seethed, loosening their death grip around their enemy's throat by a mere fraction.

Gasping and taking greedy breaths of air, the hero still had the audacity to flash a dirt-eating grin. "No, I s'ppose not."

It made the villain wish to squash the life right out of the crime-stopper's body, to beat them to a bloody pulp on the sidewalk, to empty a gun (that they unfortunately lacked right now) into the jerk's head.

But it also made them want to pull them up against their chest and kiss the hero's cheekbones and bring that oh so pretty blush to their face and neck, one that they'd only seen because Hero was exerting themselves and not because they were flustered.

The hero had dark circles under their eyes and dry skin. They'd lost weight, and not in any way that was healthy, dropping muscle from what was once a gorgeously lean figure. They were young, but their eyes were a hundred years older.

But they were struggling in the criminal's vice-like grip, still fighting for what most would deem a lost cause, still grinning in that stupidly carefree way they did when they were just starting out, barely in high school and nowhere near as broken. And it was beautiful.

The villain wanted to curse themselves, so they did.

"What? Are we just gonna keep cuddling here together for all eternity?" Hero supplied in a mostly sarcastic tone, but the strange edge it had could almost be read as flirtatious.

Villain released them from the bruising grip on their neck, their nemesis took in great breaths of air, their body shuddering as they almost fell to the ground, only for the evil-doer to catch them with a steadying arm wrapped around their waist.

They couldn't even tell when the hero's face went scarlet.

"So, where's the part where you commit homicide?" they asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'll save that for later, dove. Right now, you're all I can think about," they admitted, almost guiltily.

Surprisingly, they weren't met with another infuriatingly attractive, lopsided smirk. The look on the crime-fighter's face was nothing, if not utterly dazed.

"M-me? But I'm a mess. Like that one article so eloquently put it, I'm a cocktail of problems in a spandex suit with a few witty catchphrases," they replied, laughing humourlessly.

Villain's grip around their waist tightened subtly. "You're just tired. Sure, you could find great use for a physiotherapist, a haircut, a whole, new diatery plan, some basic skin care an-"

"Yeah, a whole makeover. No need to rub it in, though," they attested, only mildly irritated.

The villain rolled their eyes. "My point is, even through all this, you still manage to shine like a diamond in the rough."

"Oh so personality over looks? Got it," they chuckled slyly.

The criminal paused in their walk and pulled their enemy forward by the collar, "Do I have to spell it out for you? You're so goddamn hot even when you're not supposed to be, so awfully dishevelled, and yet here I am," they whispered, their lips almost brushing the hero's ear.

A tense moment of awkward silence passed as the crime-fighter pulled away from them, their eyes wide and their lips parted, trying uselessly for a few false starts. "So, where to now?" they said, straightening their posture gracefully and attempting to regain their composure, like the flustered mess of emotions from just a moment ago had never been.

"My place. We'll fix you up a little, and then we can go get something to eat," the villain replied, failing to keep the smile out of their voice.

"What happened to me being all glowing?" the hero teased.

"You're very lucky you're pretty," Villain snarled through gritted teeth, their hand resting on the back of Hero's neck.

They quickly tensed up, until the villain started to rub their neck, as though apologising for the damage they'd previously caused. The dark scowl was quickly wiped off their face as they watched the tightness dissipate from the hero's form. How had they not taken that adorable, little idiot out before?

"You're still good-looking, Hero. But you owe it to yourself to at least take care of yourself. Live a little." There was no mocking or cruelty, no sharp edges to their smile and nothing but gentleness in the villain's golden, honey brown eyes, making the hero's own hazel ones go as wide as saucers.

No one's ever talked to Hero like that, cared about them this way, or looked at them like they were a treasure. So, they nodded, hooked their hand into the villain's, placed a quick kiss on their forehead and allowed themselves to be lead forward.

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Strong emotions often find themselves mixing together, melting into one another. The fine line between love and hatred defines itself by desire, a treacherous walk to make, but all the more worth it. And the heart can so strangely burn a different flame, beat for a whole new cause, adore what it used to despise, and admit what it so vigorously used to deny.

✨️Le Taglist: @larinzz @syberianjade @lateuplight @altu-interactions @enbious-prince @astr0-mj @thelazywitchphotographer @addictedsandwhichaki @justalittlecorrupted @quaggasus @theangstyclown @vernilliom @mothmancommitsarson @starssabove @kurai-hono-blog @talkingsperm @catsarecool00 @muffinrebel44 @sunnynwanda @annablogsposts @cardboardarsonist @itsmyworld23 @onlywhump @shr3ya @crotchgoblin69

Wanna be on the taglist? This'll take you there!

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 1,207 Word Count

Summary: Stitchwraith has a way of breaking his new soon-to-be allies. Blood Moon gets the unfortunate result of being the main victim.

Warnings: Injury, Mild Gore, Torture, Controlled Shocks, Mind Control, Separation, Asphyxiation, Near Death Experiences, Cannibalism, Blood, Blood Loss, Angst, let me know if I should add anything else.

Ghost Of You: Chapter 1

“Get in!” The tangle of wires and metal somehow had beaten them. Dragged to the ground with blows and damage inflicted to their newly fixed body. A few error messages flashed in their eyes of the damage.

It was mainly cracks and holes etched into their outer shell but one blow had severed the inner endo of their right arm from its circuit, warping the metal that now poked out of their shoulder in a twisted spike of metal through their shoulder. The other major injury was their left foot that had been crushed under the Stitchwraith’s foot.

“No.” They spat at him.

“You’re going to be difficult?” The being growled, yanking them up by their thin neck.

“Of course!” They laughed at the prospect. They didn’t fear him, they didn’t fear death even.

“Then I will put you in.” The Stitchwraith picked them up by their neck frame and shoved them into the tube, a sort of machine, the twins didn’t exactly know what it did but the way they floated in the tube brought to mind a test tube. “And you two will know how it feels to truly lose.”

The machine stuck out a mechanical arm and put something on the back base of their head, under where their hood usually hit but it had fallen down in the fight. Blood Moon’s vision gained a black aura, like the room was closing in.

Something felt painful enough to scream but Blood Moon wasn’t sure if he was actually screaming or not. He heard someone screaming but he wasn’t sure it was him or his twin. Could it be them? It might be with how painful whatever Stitchwraith was doing was.

“See? This isn’t all of it.” Stitchwraith growled at them, almost tormenting them. What even was ‘this’? What had he done? Their body felt weird and different! Was he fixing them? He couldn’t be, it was too painful to be ‘fixing’.

Suddenly a splitting migraine began and both twins screamed, their screaming bouncing off each other’s voice, frying their voice box since both of them didn’t use it at the same time ever, they’d been careful of that because it could overload. But the pain caused them to break it.

High whirs, loud rattles, and deep glitching noises let out of their damaged voice box as the migraine continued to grow and suddenly Blood Moon couldn’t feel his twin, he could hear his twin screaming but he couldn’t feel him there. He took rattling breaths as the migraine settled and looked up at the damned Stitchwraith.

“What? Scared?” The thing chuckled.

“Why the fuck would I be afraid of you?” Blood Moon spat at him.

“Because I own you two now. You’re mine. My personal little slaves.” Stitchwraith chuckled at them.

“Like hell we are!” Blood Moon screamed back.

“It seems this one needs some reformatting. Hold still.”

“Huh?” Blood Moon looked up as Stitchwraith hit a button and Blood Moon felt agony through his endo, like volts running through his body but it wasn’t normal controlled shocks, it felt…different. His body felt different. It felt weird.

Once the jolts ended, Blood Moon looked down at his body and screeched at the flesh he could see, covering his arms feeling the skin on his arms and stomach. He was fleshy! He was human!? Why could he feel hair falling into his eyes!?

“The other one, don’t have too much fun.” The tanks suddenly released the both of them, Stitchwraith nowhere in sight, the devices on the back of their heads disappearing and Blood Moon fell over himself and knelt on the ground, huffing and confused. He looked up to see his twin standing before him, still a machine, still animatronic.

“Brother?” Blood Moon asked his twin’s attention but his twin didn’t respond, eyes blazing a glow of black unlike the usual white his twin’s eyes were in their mind. But his twin’s eyes glowed down at him.

“Target. Devour. Consume.” Harvest Moon spoke unlike himself, he sounded different, devoid of emotion. Blood Moon couldn’t move away faster than his twin reached down and grabbed him by the neck.

Blood Moon tried to yelp or scream, but Harvest Moon’s hand was tight on his neck, slamming him into a nearby wall and Blood Moon felt the air knocked from his lungs, struggling to get it back with the hold on his throat.

The feeling of the lack of air was dizzying and he felt his heart beating what felt like far too quickly. Harvest Moon was looming over him like some kind of demon, like he wasn’t himself anymore but a monster and Blood Moon was scared. He was actually afraid of his own twin.

Then Harvest Moon seemed to glitch a second, eyes flashing between white and black, hand releasing Blood Moon’s neck and dropping him to the floor gasping and choking on air, holding his achy throat.

But then Blood Moon have a scream as Harvest Moon sat on his stomach, the weight of it feeling painful on his insides. It felt like his twin weight thousands of pounds right now. Did he? Probably not, they weighed several hundred pounds of machinery but not thousands.

Black glowing eyes stared into his with a manic look, this was his twin, but warped and twisted, more dangerous to Blood Moon himself now, especially because Blood Moon was human now.

“W-What are you doing?” Blood Moon whispered.

“Consume.” Harvest Moon’s voice came out as some form of demon, mouth opening and Blood Moon gave a scream as he felt Harvest Moon’s teeth sink into his neck, hands gripping at his twin’s head and trying to pull it away to no avail, shivering as Harvest Moon sucked at and swallowed down the blood that was flowing from the bite.

“Please stop!” Blood Moon hiccuped.

“No.” Harvest Moon’s voice was dark and twisted, something about it was malicious unlike his twin brother was to him.

Harvest grabbed his hands and slammed them into the floor, making them ache and his wrists hurt at the hold. Blood Moon shivered at the feeling of being bled and fed from like they used to for their victims. He was getting lightheaded and dizzy, eyes glassing over and simply staring at his twin, breath shaky. He couldn’t fight back, he was trapped here and he couldn’t get away from his twin.

“Blood is sweeter than any. Keep you.” Harvest Moon growled, seeming to have some form of self-control as he drew back with blood on his face and Blood Moon shuddered shaking with blood loss. He felt cold, everything felt cold.

“Sleep.” Harvest Moon demanded, throwing a blanket haphazardly at Blood Moon. Blood Moon shivered under the blanket and held it close with his fingers as tightly as he could. Blood Moon could feel arms under him but he could barely move so he simply accepted it being moved.

He looked up to see Harvest Moon but his twin’s heaters were so warm, it felt so comforting when he was so cold and he couldn’t really struggle at the moment either way. So he let Harvest move him into a nearby half-broken bed and Blood Moon curled up and quickly fell asleep.

[enderthevulpix]

Headcanon: The corpses in Anomaly Found died from a combination of asphyxiation, excessive bleeding out of orifaces, and lacerations.

[runawaycarouselhorse]

[goldammerchen]

No dejar títere con cabeza

Day 3 @hetahorrorweek, Experiment + Needles (some Distorted Vision too)

[Modern era] Out of nowhere, someone finds himself fighting for his life… (Something from the past comes to bite him)

(outdated screenshot, actual fics has more warnings for accuracy. see tags)

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 27: The little shivering gaping things

It had been a long, frustrating month. Actually a long and frustrating year. So when Tim got an email from Lou asking him to meet her for a late lunch to celebrate her birthday, he’d jumped at the offer, even if it meant he’d have to catch a cab or extend his lunch, since he hadn’t driven to work. He wouldn’t vent to her, wouldn’t ruin her day, but it would be nice to get to talk to someone who wasn’t involved in…all this. And maybe she’d know some places to find Gertrude.

He’d insisted on both Sasha and Martin going at their regular time, assured them he would talk to Jon, and used the span of time he had to himself to probe at a few threads he’d deliberately left hanging from statements he’d been assigned, secure in the knowledge that Jon wouldn’t call him on it…yet. He was just packing his laptop up to head out the door when he heard a thump, a clatter, and a rustle from the Archivist’s office.

And every sense he’d honed over the last two years fired off at once.

Tim was out of his seat and across the Archives floor before he had a chance to consciously think about it. Jon was standing over by the shelving unit he’d put up against one wall of the office, or what was left of it, anyway; it looked like it had collapsed, maybe because he’d put too much weight on it. There was dust all over that part of the office and a…tang in the air Tim couldn’t quite place but definitely didn’t like.

“You okay?” he asked Jon, who looked momentarily flustered.

“Ah…yeah,” Jon said, straightening his shoulders. “A…spider.”

Something prickled on the back of Tim’s neck. It could have been completely innocuous, but if the Web was involved…“Did you get it?”

“I…hope so.” Jon looked at his hands, as if searching for evidence. “I think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing.”

A big, obvious-looking spider? If it hadn’t had a clear marking that told Jon it was toxic, it was certainly there just to draw attention, and that definitely meant the Web. Tim’s eyes roved over the shelving unit. “What did you do, try to tackle it?”

“No, just…” Jon waved at the shelves. “Cheap things, I guess. I was just trying to—”

Tim sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes locked onto what he hadn’t realized he’d been looking for. The shelving unit, as it had collapsed, had slammed into the wall. Not hard, probably, or at least it didn’t look like it should have been hard, but there was a distinct dent in the plaster. No…no, not a dent. A hole.

The tang in the air got a bit stronger, like a gust of wind had just come out of that hole, and he recognized it all at once: the sickly, musty odor he’d last noticed, last consciously noticed, in the corridor outside Martin’s flat. The smell of insects, and rot, and…filth.

Corruption.

Oh, shit.

“Jon,” he said sharply, cutting off whatever Jon had been trying to explain.

“What?” Jon looked at Tim, then followed his gaze. “Oh…uh…got dented when the shelf collapsed, I suppose.”

“That went clear through.” Fear was encroaching, threatening to choke him, but Tim had to stay calm, had to stay sensible. “Fuck, that’s supposed to be an exterior wall.”

“It—it should be.” Jon, in defiance of all logic and common sense but totally in line with his insatiable curiosity, bent over to examine the crack in the wall. “I think it’s just plasterboard.” He reached out, tentatively, and pushed at the largest portion; it crumbled away almost instantly.

“Jon, don’t, get away from there!” Tim shouted, lunging deeper into the room.

The musty, decaying smell got even stronger, and he heard the wet squelching sound of too many crawling, writhing things eagerly rushing towards them. Jon reeled back, throwing his arms up over his face. “Tim, run. Run…”

Too late. Way, way too late. The weakened wall ballooned briefly, then crumbled away at the bottom, and hundreds, thousands of the grey and white worms started erupting out of the wall. Jon yelled in dismay and backed off. Tim thought he was going to run—sensibly—but instead he lunged for the Archivist’s desk and began scrabbling with one hand across the surface, his eyes darting back and forth between the onslaught of filth and the desk.

“What are you doing?” Tim shouted at him.

“Almost—” Jon half-gasped, and Tim realized he was going for the tape recorder.

“Leave it, it’s not—” Tim half ran, half jumped over and reached for Jon’s arm.

Jon, not even looking in his direction, nearly folded himself lengthwise and managed to seize the recorder with a glad cry. “I got it!”

There was a sudden bang as the door to the office swung inwards and hit the wall, and Martin’s voice came from behind them. “Guys? Is everything—oh, Christ!”

“Shut up and get the extinguishers!” Jon yelled back.

“What?” Martin squeaked out.

“Fuck that,” Tim ground out. Jon’s eyes were still fixed in terror on the invasion, Martin was obviously too frightened to think clearly, and while it would obviously be best to extinguish these before they got any deeper into the Archives, his priority had to be getting Jon and Martin out of the line of fire. If these things got into them…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. He grabbed Jon’s arm and yanked him hard, then turned and dragged him towards the door, shouting at Martin, “Out, out, out! Grab the nearest CO2 and let’s go!”

“Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, yep.,” Martin babbled, backing out of the doorway, stumbling over his own feet, before turning and darting for the wall near the computer, where the little black-banded CO2 canister still hung. Tim knew, knew it had been serviced and replaced after he’d used it on the outlets behind Mister Megabytes and hoped and prayed nobody had used it since then.

In that, at least, his luck held; Martin grabbed it, aimed it at the threshold of the Archivist’s office, and let loose with the gas. Tim kept dragging Jon forward. “Come on! Don’t stop to fight them all! Document Storage, now!”

Jon was stumbling along at Tim’s side, running well enough on his own, and Tim, stupidly, released his arm, intending to drop back a little and go for one of the bigger extinguishers that had to be around somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, he did so at the exact moment as Jon looked back, presumably to check the pursuit of the worms. He slammed full speed into Sasha’s chair, which crashed to the ground with Jon on top of it. The recorder flew from his free hand and slid across the floor towards the shelves.

“Dammit!” Jon flailed, panicked as a drowning swimmer, and managed to free himself from the chair. Instead of continuing towards Document Storage, though, he started scuttling sideways to the worm army, obviously intent on the recorder.

“Jon! Santa cazzo Madre di Dio,” Tim swore. He put on a burst of speed, full Big Brother Mode activated, and caught Jon around the waist. Jon yelped, then screamed in the instant Tim hoisted him up over his shoulder.

“Jon, it’s okay, it’s just Tim!” Martin cried frantically.

“Martin! Get in the fucking storage room!” Tim bellowed, stomping a patch of worms with a disturbingly satisfying pop and vaulting over the chair. He was rewarded by the sight of Martin sprinting, almost as fast as he’d left his apartment, towards Document Storage.

His intention had been to toss Jon in, slam the door behind himself, and go back out to do battle with the things invading his Archives, dammit, Gertrude wasn’t here and she had left him in charge, Elias be damned, the Archives and those in it were his to protect, he’d already failed once, twice if you counted Breekon and Hope turning up to make their delivery, thrice if you counted Sasha getting lured out by the Twisting Deceit…all of that ran through his mind in the three bounds it took to get across the Archives to safety, but Jon’s hands were balled up in the back of his shirt and Martin was holding the door for him and he had to at least get in and get Jon down safely before he went back out there, and the second he was across the threshold Martin slammed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

Jon was whimpering faintly as Tim slid him back over his shoulder to sit on the cot. Tim was about to reassure him that they were safe when his brain locked onto the pitch and timbre of Jon’s screams. Not fear. Pain. He instantly gave him a once-over and quickly found what he was looking for and afraid he’d find, in what little meat there was to his calf, just behind his left ankle. “Shit fuck damn! Martin, bottom left drawer, there’s a first-aid kit, I need it now!” He quickly patted himself down and—as he’d expected—came up with nothing but his key ring. He gritted his teeth. “This isn’t going to be fun, but it’s going to be the best I can do.”

“Wh-what are you—I, I didn’t get the recorder, I need to go grab the recorder,” Jon chanted, looking pale and dizzy. “I need to—”

“I’ve got one,” Martin said over his shoulder, rummaging through the drawer. He came up with the small metal kit triumphantly, then looked over at Jon and paled. “You’re bit!”

“I—nngh—“ Jon grimaced as he tried to move his leg.

Tim tried his hardest to keep his voice calm and level. “Jon, there’s a worm in there. I need to get it out. This is going to be messy, but—”

“Here. Use this.” Martin pressed something into Tim’s hand. “I’ll, I’ll get that recorder, okay?”

“I need you to hold him still,” Tim said, at the same time as Jon blurted out fervently, “Yes, please.”

Martin hurried over to his things, and Tim resigned himself to the fact that Martin was always going to do what Jon asked first. He looked at the object Martin had pressed into his hand and was surprised to discover it was a corkscrew—probably the one they’d used for Jon’s birthday wine last year. He eyeballed it, then the hole in Jon’s trouser leg…yeah, okay, that was probably about the right size.

“Okay,” he said, as calmly as he could. “This is still going to be messy, but probably not as bad. Sit still, okay? Can you do that for me?”

Despite the situation and the pain he had to be in, Jon still managed a pretty impressive glare, if not up to his usual standards. “I’m not a child, Tim.”

“You’re younger than my brother. You might as well be,” Tim shot back without thinking. “Sit still and try not to kick me in the face.”

He pushed the leg of Jon’s trousers up, exposing the bloody hole, and swiped at it with the first piece of gauze he found in the kit until it was clear enough for him to see. Gripping Jon’s ankle in a firm but not too tight hand, he lined the corkscrew up with the hole, gritted his teeth, and shoved it in.

Jon, unsurprisingly, screamed and—as Tim had more or less expected—jerked back, trying to pull himself free. Tim was stronger than he was, and he’d extracted enough splinters, thorns, and God knows what else from his daredevil baby brother, and he simply stiffened his arm to hold him steady and twisted the corkscrew in deeper. It squelched unpleasantly.

“And…there we go. Recording again,” Martin said. “Did you get it?”

Tim felt the tip of the corkscrew catch on something that he really hoped was the worm and not a muscle. Jon cried out in pain, and Tim’s heart, despite everything, clenched. He glanced up at Martin briefly. “Martin, I need you to sit behind him and hold him. Jon, Martin’s going to hold you, okay? This won’t take long, but it is going to hurt. I need you to be brave, okay?”

Evidently the pain was overriding Jon’s sense of indignation, because he nodded, then gave another soft cry of pain and closed his eyes. Martin, his whole face creased in anxiety, hastily sat on the cot next to him and wrapped his arms around Jon’s torso from behind, hesitantly at first, then more confidently and securely when Jon leaned back into him, almost involuntarily. Tim nodded, even though Jon couldn’t see him. “On three, all right? One…two…three.”

He pulled the corkscrew straight out. Jon cried out again and gripped Martin’s arm with almost clawlike fingers, but the corkscrew came free with a sucking pop and on the end was a feebly wriggling worm that, despite the bit of metal wrapped around its arse, seemed relatively intact. He pinched it off the end with the gauze, dropped it to the floor, and stomped on it as hard as possible. He wiped the blood off with a fresh piece of gauze, tapped a plaster in place, and—without really thinking about it—kissed the injured spot before rolling Jon’s trouser leg back down and patting it gently. “There. All done. Good job, Jon, you did good.”

Jon was breathing heavily, and his face was streaked with tears, but he sounded almost like his normal self as he opened his eyes. “Thank you, Tim.”

Tim glanced up at Martin, who—reluctantly, it seemed—let go of Jon. He didn’t go far, though. “Quick thinking with the corkscrew, Marto. Why do you have it, anyway?”

“For the worms.”

“What?” Jon looked up at Martin in confusion and some irritation, although noticeably less than usual.

“For pulling the worms out of people.” Martin gestured at the smear on the floor. “Like now.”

Jon followed Martin’s gesture, then cut his eyes away quickly; Tim swiped it up and lobbed it towards the rubbish bin in the corner. “How’d you think of that?”

Martin shrugged. “I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting laterally into someone wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line, so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.”

“Well, you’re right. Although I really hate that this is something you had to think about.” Tim found an alcohol wipe in the kit that probably wasn’t any good anymore, at least not for cleaning people, and began methodically wiping the blood off of the corkscrew.

“Thank you,” Jon said softly.

Tim glanced up at Martin. “You thought of this place without me shouting at you about it, right? That’s why the cot is in here?”

Martin’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah. The room’s sealed. I checked it myself when I moved in.”

“Climate controlled, as well,” Jon put in. “Strong door. Soundproof.” He sighed. “These old documents are better protected than we ever were.”

“I did my best,” Tim muttered under his breath. He handed the corkscrew back to Martin and pushed to his feet. “Anyway, it’s a good place for you two to lie low.”

Jon looked up sharply at Tim. “What do you mean, you two? We’re trapped in here.”

“Look, someone’s got to stop those things,” Tim argued. “Gertrude Robinson trained me, so right now, I’m the best we’ve got. You two stay here and—”

“No,” Martin blurted out, his face drained of all color and his eyes huge with fear. “Don’t go. J-Jon’s right, it’s not safe, it—d-don’t go out there!”

They were well and truly scared…which was good, Tim supposed, it would keep them here and not getting themselves in trouble. On the other hand, their fear was going to draw the Corruption to them at some point or another, and even though the worms couldn’t easily access it, they’d get in eventually. He’d need to make sure they were either calm or protected before he could leave them.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

He glanced out the window of the door. No sign of Prentiss, not yet—that was good. And the worms seemed to be…backing off? Maybe he had a shot at this. He turned back to Jon and Martin. “Listen to me. Listen. It looks like we’ve got a clear path to the exit right now, but I know that’s bullshit. They’re waiting for something, and if we try to run for it they’ll be on us so fast, you have no idea. The Archives are in danger and so are we, and we’re not going to fix it by hiding in here. So unless you want to wait until someone comes to save us—”

“O-oh, God. Sasha!” Martin’s face, impossibly, got even paler. “I think she was out at lunch. She doesn’t know—we should, someone should call her, tell her not to come back inside.”

“There’s no signal in here,” Jon said, looking stricken as well. “We’ll just have to hope she heard the noise.”

Tim turned to look out the window again and cursed at the sight of the figure. “Too late! She’s just come in—fuck, she doesn’t see them.” He whirled back around and stabbed a finger at Jon and Martin. “Keep each other safe. Don’t open this door for anything unless I tell you it’s safe. The code word is ‘candlelight.’ If anything else tries to come through, you spray it to death and you run, and you get out of the Institute by any means necessary. Do you understand me?”

“Tim—” Jon protested, starting to try and get up, then collapsing to the ground with a cry. Martin rushed to his side. Tim used the momentary bit of chaos to open the door wide enough to admit himself and squeeze out, slamming the door behind himself.

His worst nightmare…well, close enough to it anyway…presented itself. Sasha had stooped to pick up the tape recorder and was looking at it carefully…but there was another figure behind her. This one wasn’t as tall as Sasha, with long, stringy dark hair and the tattered remnants of a red dress…and honeycombed all through it were holes, out of which poked more of the greyish-white worms.

“Sasha! Behind you!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

Sasha turned around and gave a ragged gasp, clutching the recorder to her chest like a talisman. The thing that had to be Jane Prentiss smiled at her with a mouth that was more worms than teeth.

“Do you hear their singing?” she asked. There was a swelling hum that was almost musical if you didn’t think too hard about it as hundreds of worms suddenly began squeezing up through the cracks between the floorboards around her.

“RUN!” Tim put everything he had into his bellow as he cleared the distance in two great strides and slammed into Sasha, tackling her out of the way as Prentiss and the worms sprang for them. She screamed and hit the floor, and honestly a whole lot of worms in the process, which made her scream louder. Tim quickly rolled to one side and onto his back, then sprang to his feet.

Prentiss was close. Too close. And they’d killed a bunch of worms when they landed, but there were still more, and more coming by the second. He leaned over, grabbed Sasha’s arm, and bodily hauled her upright.

“Go! Run!” he shouted, propelling her towards the door.

“Tim! Come on!” Sasha held onto his wrist and dragged him along behind her, still clutching the recorder with her free hand, worms popping and squishing under their feet.

Tim let her until they reached one of the shelves and he realized how full of worms it was. There were…way more than he’d expected, and yet somehow not as many as he would have expected if the Creeping Rot was seriously invading. He shook off the moment of analytical paralysis and let go of Sasha’s hand. “Run! Get help! I’ll hold them off!”

If she heard him, or responded, he didn’t notice; he only noticed that, thank God, she made it out the door of the Archives. Tim blew a raspberry at the shelf full of worms, then turned and bolted for the Archivist’s office. It was the logical choice—it was Ground Zero for the invasion, but also, it was Gertrude’s office. If there was anything in the Archives that could fight off an invasion, it was probably hidden in there somewhere.

Some of the worms leaped at him as he reached the door. He yelped, secure in the knowledge that there was no one to hear him, and dodged to the side to avoid them. Naturally, he overcompensated and tumbled headlong into a pile of boxes holding old case files. Or at least, they should have held old case files. From the solid nature of the things he hit, they didn’t—and from the faint clanking, they were probably fire extinguishers. God bless Martin and his paranoid hoarding.

Tim dove into one of the boxes and came up with an extinguisher. He twisted the pin and yanked it out, aimed the nozzle, and squeezed the trigger.

Just as Sasha had said in her statement, the worms died fairly quickly on contact with the extinguisher. He sprayed, and sprayed, and sprayed, until the extinguisher came up dry, then dropped it, grabbed a new one, and repeated the process. There were too damn many of the things, though, and he couldn’t get out of the office to get at them properly, so it was just…spray them until they stopped coming at him, specifically.

Had Elias actually had the new system installed? Tim vaguely remembered something about men coming to install, but had they…? Yes, yes they had, because the crew boss had gotten into a twenty-minute argument with Jon about it and then insisted on Elias signing about fifty different waivers saying they wouldn’t hold the company accountable if the Archives actually caught fire and the system didn’t do anything, and he recalled now the kid on the crew mentioning offhand that they’d assumed it was a computer archive rather than a paper one. And he’d managed to convince them not to install it in the Document Storage room, so if they managed to get it active, Jon and Martin would be safe.

Tim probably wouldn’t, but he’d suffocate if he had to.

He managed to clear enough space that he could slam the door shut. It wouldn’t help for long, though, since the hole in the wall was right there, but nothing seemed to be coming at him at the moment. He had five…maybe ten seconds’ breathing space. Well, breathing was optimistic. Still…he fished his phone out of his pocket and hit the preset number, then jammed his phone against his ear as he dug for more fire extinguishers. One ring, two, three…

“Delano.” Gerry sounded slightly distracted, like he’d been engrossed in his art, which he probably had been.

“Gerry, I love you,” Tim blurted out before Gerry could say anything else.

“What?” Now Gerry sounded startled, which was fair. Tim calling in the middle of the day was usually met with something joking, and since they rarely said that…

“I love you,” Tim repeated, the words tumbling over one another as he darted his eyes back and forth from the door to the ruins of the shelves. He could hear the squelching, squirming noise, and over it all, in his own head, he could hear the loud ticking of a clock slicing off seconds of his life. He didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t have time for anything else. “Whatever happens, I need you to know that.”

“Tim, what—?” Gerry’s voice sharpened with fear, but Tim had already seen the first worm poke its head out from under the door.

“Gotta go!” He hung up without further ado and kicked viciously at the worm attempting to squeeze through; he killed it, but he also put a noticeable dent in the bottom of the door. Oops.

It wasn’t safe in here. Sasha would get help, she’d—she was smart, she’d figure out a way to activate the fire alarm and get the fire suppressant system working in the Archives, even if there would probably need to be an actual fire to activate it, maybe one of the worms would bite through Mister Megabytes’ cord and short it out. Jon and Martin would be okay in their incredibly defensible position, hopefully, at least long enough for the system to activate; it wasn’t airtight, obviously, but they should be okay. Tim needed to go, though, and it looked like the only way out was to figure out where the worms had been. Probably just a narrow space between the walls, a secret passage that had been boarded up or a temporary wall put in to portion off the building when it was modernized or something. Either way…it wasn’t here.

The hole was bigger than it had been when he’d hauled Jon’s scrawny ass out of the office. Not a surprise, Jane Prentiss had to have got out somehow…God, she’d been in the damn walls. Tim moved a little closer and sucked in a sharp breath, ill advised as that was, when he realized it wasn’t just a gap in the wall. It was a proper tunnel.

Hadn’t Gertrude said the Institute was built more or less right over the remains of Millbank Prison? This could have been part of that original complex. Which meant these could go anywhere, extend for miles under the surface. They probably weren’t in great shape, except that if it was Millbank, it had been designed by Robert Smirke, who built to last. Either way, it also likely meant the space would be a bit more open, so he might be able to get away from the carbon dioxide. On the other hand, it was going to be dark, and he’d need both hands to work the fire extinguishers.

Actually, that was an easy fix. Tim whipped his belt off his waist, threaded it through the buckle, and tugged it around his head so it was almost but not quite snug. Then he activated the torch on his phone and tucked it on one side, then turned on the pocket torch on his keys and stuck that upright on the other before tightening the belt and securing the tang. Definitely not the most elegant thing he’d ever worn, but hardly the worst, and in the absence of a wreath to set candles in it would have to do. He grabbed a trio of extinguishers under one arm, crossed himself, and sent up a quick prayer to Saint Lucy, then plunged into the hole.

It was…dark, obviously, and the light of his improvised crown cast odd shadows on the sides of the tunnels, but it was cool and dry and oddly quiet. At first he thought there were no worms left down here, but then he saw some—moving faster, and much more quietly than they had in the Archives. Something up there, probably Gertrude’s wards, was slowing them down, but down here they were…stealthier. Quieter. A different kind of fear, maybe.

It didn’t matter. Tim unleashed the first of his canisters of carbon dioxide on the batch and watched them die, then ran over their corpses. He had to find…something. An exit. An answer. Fucking Gertrude.

She had to know about this, didn’t she? Was that why she’d put the shelves where she had? To know if something tried to break through that wall? Obviously there had to be other entrances, this couldn’t be completely sealed off…well, Jane Prentiss had got down here somehow, and even if the worms could squeeze through the floorboards, she couldn’t. She’d never mentioned it to Tim…or Gerry, probably…but that didn’t mean she didn’t know about it, only that she didn’t mean to tell them about it. Which meant that she was either not sure of how dangerous it was, or using it as a contingency plan for something. Either way, there was the possibility she was down here somewhere.

There was also the possibility that, if she was down here, she was lost. Hopefully she had enough food to last her a while, because this place was a fucking labyrinth. Tim wasn’t sure if he was more worried about meeting the Minotaur, the Goblin King, or the world’s biggest lab rat, but at least he didn’t sense the Spiral down here, so this was…probably real. Probably not changing. Probably. He didn’t really sense the Buried, either, so there had to be a way out.

He was…definitely a little dizzy. Okay, so maybe pumping six canisters of carbon dioxide into a room he was actively standing in wasn’t the smartest idea, but what was he supposed to do, let them get to him? Or worse, destroy the Archives?

He had to get back up there. Had to find another way up, had to find another way in. If he could get outside and loop in through the side door, maybe he could start a fire and—no! No, he couldn’t actually start a fire, Jon and Martin were trapped in there, even if the fire suppressant system put it out right away they might still get hurt.

Frith in a barn! What a business. The line popped into Tim’s head, and he took a deep breath to center himself. He was starting to think in circles. Right. Focus on getting out, then he could figure out how to save the others and stop Jane Prentiss.

The realization that, if this was the Creeping Rot’s attempt at a ritual, it was likely going to make Jon and Martin sacrifices for its ascension struck Tim at about the same moment as another small wave of worms appeared. He sprayed the fuck out of them with the first of the CO2 canisters and ran, ran like he could outrun his poor decisions, ran like he could outrun his past, ran like he could catch the future before it slipped out of his fingers. Ran like his life and the lives of everyone he cared about depended on him, because they did.

And, of course, he made a wrong turn and found a dead end. No…not a dead end. A room.

A room that was filled with worms. Tim quickly hopped backwards through the door—and then paused in the act of aiming the fire extinguisher. He turned his head slightly and cut his eyes to the side so he had a bit more light and could see better, because the vague impression he got looked…odd, and he needed to make sense of it. Without consciously being aware he was doing it, he crossed himself and recited the old familiar novena to Lucy of Sicily, Santa Lucia, bringer of light, patron saint of the blind and those who wanted clearer sight.

And his eyes opened, and he Saw.

The worms were knitting themselves together, weaving themselves into a solid mass. The structure rose into the air, creeping up the wall. Two structures, really—two columns, curving slightly in on themselves, not quite meeting but getting closer by the second. Silent but fast, the worms crawled up over their brethren and twined themselves into the ends, securing in loops and links and chains. It would take so little time for them to meet. At the rate they were going, Tim estimated another ten minutes, tops, before the two halves connected into an arch.

Into a doorway.

“Not on my turf, bitch,” Tim snarled. His voice echoed oddly in a way he wasn’t entirely sure had to do with the tunnels but couldn’t spare the brainpower to think about just then. He dropped the two spare canisters to the ground, raised the nozzle of the one he’d already started using, and squeezed the trigger hard.

The gas hissed as it dispensed into the room. The worms didn’t scream—of course they didn’t, that would be ridiculous, they didn’t have mouths—but he felt them screaming to the core of his being as the ones he touched with the carbon dioxide died. Not enough of them. Not nearly enough. He squeezed and sprayed until the fire extinguisher was empty, then dropped it to the ground, snatched up the next one, and sprayed it into the room as well. It was definitely getting harder to breathe by the time that one was spent, but Tim was absolutely not finished. Coughing violently, he scooped up the third one, backed out of the doorway, and sprayed it into the room, filling it like a hellish steam room.

Maybe Gertrude would have had a better solution, but hey, it was Tim’s first time disrupting a ritual. And he was improvising a bit.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think that was the end of it, though. He’d disrupted the portal, but Jane Prentiss was still out there and she was still going to try…even if she couldn’t bring the Corruption into the world fully now, she might still hurt his people if he didn’t find them and get them out. He hefted the canister to gauge if there was still anything in it. Felt like there was.

Right. Tim backed further down the corridor until he was far enough away from the tendrils of carbon dioxide that he could safely take a deep breath, then turned on his heel, squared his shoulders, and kept moving. Briefly, he touched the Saint Anthony’s medal beneath his shirt and murmured a quick plea for assistance—hey, Lucy had done him a solid back there, no reason to think the other saints wouldn’t get in on it—before focusing his attention on finding his way out of the tunnels, back to the Archives, and back to stopping Jane Prentiss.

Back to saving the others. Back to saving the world.

Gertrude had left him in charge. She had trusted him with her Archives in her absence. He had to keep proving himself worthy of that.

[monogatcri]

━━ ˟ ⊰🍁DESOLATE . DILAPITATED. RUINED. GONE. FORGOTTEN. what words one can use to describe somewhere so filled with life, a beacon of prosperity ; a surface of joy ; a community of others so willing to take it upon themselves to extend a hand for one another. it's quiet here, sullenly so, and, by some account of miracle there were no people here to interview him ; it's by this extension of delight that he can wander about the streets he used to know like the back of his hand alone. tap tap tapping of geta as they maneuvered one after the other, down beyond the doctor's home, elderly woman always woven with bags beneath her eyes. by sheer force of will does he not turn his head, determined to keep moving. tap tap tap. a broken bicycle on the side of the path, its wheels rotting away while the chain that once moved it now held hands with rust. tap tap tap. a wooden sign folded over on the street, loose cord nailed to back weakly splayed out, whose words were easy to picture in his mind's eye, vivid and written to help others know:

        THE NIWA RESIDENCE !

        progress halted suddenly, apt for the constant push and pull of his mind's health. home. this was his home. was. a suffocating term that wrapped its hands tightly 'round his throat and threatened to squeeze the life from him ; it wanted him to acknowledge its painful revelations -- that he didn't really belong back home. niwa would never really belong anywhere, would he? that's the crux of every issue he's faced: too stuck in one place, too incapable of pulling one foot from the ground and placing it forward, too afraid of losing what he once held dear...what he did hold dear.

        the burning in his lungs reminded him to breathe. ripping those hands from his throat felt easier said than done, tragedy would always find him, it seemed, but with enough force does he yank those tiresome appendages from around his neck, thrusting them aside. home. this...home...is nothing more than a burial mound. to those that peer upon it, they will see what once held life and, the unfortunate fact of the matter, is that niwa should begin to see this, also. this place no longer held his family's bodies, this place no longer held the laughter it once had, this place was sickeningly vacant.

        bending down, he picks up the wooden sign and stared at it, finger pads tracing over the characters, watching the dirt and dust trapped atop it peel away on to interloping skin. home... this was no longer his home.

        inhaling, however, he places the sign back upon the wall, a smile pulling his lips upward, tired gaze watching as it swayed in gentle morning breeze, dew droplets leaking down the sides to assist in the cleaning -- a passionate reminder that his presence here wasn't needed for life to eventually go on.

        his head tilted back, glistening gaze staring toward the doorway, the collapsed interior only invisible in his mind, but...this was a start. he could not enter yet, but...this had been enough for the last surviving niwa today ; he would try again to enter his old home...

        ...tomorrow...

[willtheweirdrat]

the REAL question is how the actual fuck do people enjoy neck hickies

[seafavoured]

@pyratezlife / ned.

𝐇𝐄'𝐃 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐓𝐔𝐁 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐅𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆. edward couldn't begin to describe what had possessed them into it. what terrible force had shrouded their mind and taken root. spread its tendrils throughout, to wrap 'round his heart and squeeze it black. they had stood vigil, motionless, staring into the depths of that porcelain deathbed. thick and crimson still. the paramedics had pulled the old man free of his grave but none had yet tarnished the scene.

none but edward.

it seemed a distant memory already. the way he'd shed his housecoat and stepped, bare, into the bath. submerged himself into the sickly red water ( baptized in the blood of jesus christ ). still warm. well, it had long grown cold by now, and they hadn't moved an inch. they laid within, a mockery of his father's corpse when they'd found him. spread long and languid and swallowed nearly whole by it, made one with the remnants of carnage. only their face from the nose up remained unsullied. long, dark tresses of black swirled out around him ; a terrible halo formed from the wet waves of their hair.

they had fallen asleep like that and awoke with an odd, lazy sort of contentment at odds with the context. some sordid voice in the back of their skull whispered about freedom : from expectation, from responsibility, from his father. edward was free to do whatever they liked now. lips curled slow to a grin, teeth white against their scarlet backdrop.

just as lazy, as casual, a hand drifted down the flat plane of his stomach and abdomen. a thrill took hold of them, heart racing, breath hitching, as their fingers curled about the hard length of his cock. no reservations struck him as they might have weeks ago, no cause to stop, to judge his motives. he could do whatever the fuck he liked now. hadn't they just thought that? an idle stroke pulled a moan from him. their very skin felt alight, buzzing with electricity, sensitive to touch. his grip grew firm, jerking himself off in earnest, slow but deep, thorough. languid rolls of their hips and an arched back. muscles of their arm rippling with the movement. he held a breath and dipped the last of himself beneath the waterline. stayed down as long as he could. whose hand did he imagine held him down beneath the surface? whose fist that they thrust their cock into?

they reemerged, birthed anew from the blood of their holy father. free hand wiped the blood from his face, enough to blink his eyes open and gasp a stuttering breath in the same moment he came. orgasm tore through them like a fucking hurricane, shook him bone deep and left him trembling. god, it felt like it would never let up. wave after wave, whimpering, whining through it. their father had always called them a whore. the memory struck and he began to laugh, light and breathless as the afterglow hit. only then did they hear shuffling at the entryway. big brown eyes blown wide and cast to ned, leaning against the doorframe. innocent, euphoric, ❛ hi. ❜

[nobully]

' So where's a good scenic spot to suffocate someone in private... '

' Does it matter if they're good murder spots? I guess Nicolette can take care of any guys that try to mug us in the middle of it. '

Gotta get the first date right.

[nashvillehotchicken]

since my mom has some trauma from being ex-mormon and ex-nazarene and there have been a lot of issues between us both in some held-onto beliefs and triggers, i've not been wanting to tell her explicitly that i'm converting until i'm able to move out and have a bit of stability and a better sense of safety

i do still want to be at least slightly open about this and sort of sneakily educate may family for the better so i've been using the "my friend" rule to talk abt my studies and its working hilariously well lmao

[13thdoctorshitposts]

how are you this evening?

Good, I'm rewatching Orphan 55 rn after making tomorrows quotes. It's genuinely one of my faves, just bc the Doctor, who needs less air bc of her respiratory bypass, is the first to run out of oxygen bc she just won't stop talking.

[the-great-donatello]

Fuck I miscalculated where the cookies should appear. They should've appeared in front of the anon not in them! It was supposed to be a good curse!

-🍪

Keep their airway open, we can get there in around twenty minutes.