#meta human reader
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kakusu-shipping · 7 days ago
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you know what? yeah!
i wanna hear some gaster x reader!
i wanna hear about gaster being head over heels for the player
but the player just wants to inspect him under the microscope
and once we know everything we just move on to the next interesting thing
so gaster has to keep making content to keep us around!
Oh that's not the dynamic I had in mind but I also loooove that concept okay hold. We're cooking.
(Mild) Yandere Gaster X Player!Reader Headcanons
All he originally wanted was to know you existed. Just a tiny bit of proof of you would have been enough to satisfy him at first. But now that he's reached you, know that you're Connected, he just can't be without you.
It's like an addiction, if he looses your attention for even a moment it feels like his world is crumbling.
He talks very slowly to you on purpose, slow and unskippable dialog to keep you locked in and with him for as long as he can
The story he weaves for you isn't all that vast, but he fills it with secrets, difficult things to find and rare dialog to hunt for. Things that will keep you coming back, trying again, up for hours searching
He chose the Shadow Bosses for this same reason. They're hard to find, harder to beat, frustrating but not impossible. A challenge worth conquering. Time worth spending.
Whatever makes you stay longer...
When you do finally close out if feels as though all the air as left his body. He's drowning without your gaze, your smile and laugh and voice over of the characters
The dark is just so crushing without you
And when you come back its like he's been reborn. Suddenly he can breath and see and think. The world isn't so dark anymore, with you there behind the screen, talking to who you think is yourself
He hangs on your every word, your every laugh, your every crinkle of a smile, like a drug it all makes him feel on top of the world
Don't turn the game off just yet. There's still more to see. More people to talk to. More secrets to uncover. Just a few more battles. Another attempt at that boss. Just another hour. Just a little bit longer
Please.
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happybunny999 · 7 months ago
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(Dangerous monster!) Neglected Omnipotent fem reader x Yandere Batfam
Prologue
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Gotham….a place known for its crime, drugs, poverty, corruption, violence and vigilantes and villains and how people in the city know the rules. Keep head down,don’t get involved,and if you see a group of vigilantes or the Batman fighting someone you pretend you didn’t
But that didn’t matter to you at all because any normal person would be scared of Gotham but you weren’t normal not in the slightest in fact you are not fully human and not a normal 4 year old either since your mother is a powerful meta human with so, well almost every abilities you could think of and that if you try and named them all it would take years to describe them all
You took after both parents with your hair being one side pink and the other side black just like your eyes that you were told by your mother to hide since as she said that if people found out about my powers and how I looked they would hurt me and only show your face to people you trust and you believed her. how could you not?
Your mother is a kind, caring and beautiful woman who never use her powers outside the house and who you know had gotten lucky with the one and only Bruce Wayne aka the Batman and after just one night she had you and never told Bruce about you since he already had sons and daughters
And well Gotham was a city that was cruel an everyway which is why she always kept you close to her when ever you and her go out for groceries and the bare minimum and you were happy with that and your mom because despite her never talking about your father or his other children you still loved her because you could always play with her and she was the one who was there for you
But the happiness was cut short when the day she told you that she would be right back from the store and gave me a small smile and before leaving she told me something that you will never forget
“Sweetie I want to know that mommy will always love you and remember to please stay in control of your powers”
(That was the last time you would see and hear from her)
Because remember how you said that she had almost every ability….that excluded her ability to heal and reviving herself too(guess you must have gotten more power then her) so when she want out for food and got in the middle of a gang war by accident and the end result was her getting shot in the head and chest while you were sitting at home waiting for her until realizing that she was gone when a couple of police officers came to get you from your home and take you to the police station with you cry the whole time
After that you were sitting on a chair holding your plushie and your mother’s scarf as well as the cloak she made for you as a man called Jim Gordon comforted you and after running some test and they found out Bruce Wayne was your father you are taking to the manor where a butler was waiting for you and greeted you with a warm smile as you held his hand as he led you inside the manor
And so your new, terrible life began.

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dragonridernoobie · 7 months ago
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Jason Todd Having a crush with a meta human hc?
Sure, I will try my best. Sorry for not being around for 3 months...or more....been in a dark place.
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Jason Todd x Meta Human Headcannons
First encounter
When Jason first met (Y/N), it was when he found them in an alley way.
(Y/N) was beating the living shit out a child rapist that escaped prison.
Jason came in to stop them but ended up fighting them also.
At the end, he got away with a broken arm and a hurt ego.
2nd encounter
He met (Y/N) out of crime and being all superhero like.
He cought sight of them in a coffee shop being denied coffee since they were a meta human.
Jason came over and offered (Y/N) a free drink somewhere else.
There, he talked to them and tried to get as much information about them.
At the end though, he was the one who got beat again.
Right before they split ways, (Y/N) said "cya later, nightwing".
Jason's ego is hurt once again.
3rd encounter
Jason and (Y/N) met again, after Jason found their number and sent a text. He offered a time to hang out since they were pretty cool.
(Y/N) accepted and met at a arcade.
There, they played some games, won some prizes, and ran out of there after stealing some coins from the coin machine.
At the end of the day, they agreed to meet again.
Jason has a friend.
Dating
When Jason and (Y/N) started to date, it was (Y/N) who went to Jason first.
Jason had feelings for (Y/N) but was to scared to say anything so he acted "cool" but he looked more like a dork then anything.
He loves holding (Y/N)'s while walking through puplic places.
He also gifts flowers to (Y/N) with the side of chocolate.
He will beat up anyone who is mean to (Y/N).
Bruce was not on bored with Jason dating since (Y/N) could be in danger of Jason's identity comes out.
Jason dosnt care.
First date failure
Their first date failure was because of Jason.
He wanted to act cool and impress (Y/N).
So he stole of Bruce's cars and drove to (Y/N)s place.
Not even 5 minutes after picking (Y/N) up, he crashed the car into a shop.
Let's say Bruce was not happy.
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valeriehalla · 10 months ago
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I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
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iydiamartinx · 23 days ago
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CHRONOLOGICALLY INCORRECT
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Age regressed!Dick Grayson ft batmom! reader x batman
divider by: @cafekitsune word count: 1.5k synopsis: When an age regressed Dick Grayson wreaks havoc on the Justice League. a/n: Wanted to write something light and humorous, this idea is inspired by a ideo I saw on tik tok giving a similar scenario.
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The Watchtower medbay looked like a warzone.
“—How the hell is he still moving?!” Barry Allen exclaimed, clutching his ribs as a small, dark blur zipped past him and slamming a fist into his knee before launching himself at Hal Jordan.
“Ah—ow! He bit me! He bit me!” Hal yelped, clutching his arm.
Earth’s greatest defenders—gods, aliens, meta-humans—stood in disarray, thoroughly outmaneuvered by one small, barefooted terror: Nightwing. Or rather, a ten-year-old, age-regressed version of him with no memory of the team and no mercy to spare.
“Did he just throw a bedpan at me?!” Barry cried out, ducking behind Hal as a metal object flew past his head and shattered against the wall. “Was that filled?!”
“Focus!” Diana barked, deflecting a flying needle with a sharp clang of her bracers. The boy dove straight through the air like a missile, teeth bared and expression wild. “He’s a child! Contain him, don’t kill him!”
“The little shit’s trying to kill us!” Hal snapped back, clutching his forearm—now sporting a fresh, red crescent from a vicious bite.
“Language,” Superman muttered absently. He hovered midair, cape billowing, eyes carefully tracking the boy as he darted like a wolf through shadows. “He’s de-aged and disoriented. Likely under psychic regression. But—”
A sudden blur of blue and black shot from the ceiling like a launched arrow.
With a feral yell, the boy dropkicked Hal Jordan square in the back of the head.
“SON OF A—!”
The Lantern hit the ground with a heavy crash.
“Do not swear at the child,” J’onn said calmly from the corner, watching with the detached exhaustion of someone who had already tried and failed to telepathically soothe him.
“Child?!” Hal sputtered from the floor. “That’s not a child. That’s a miniature assassin in spandex! He's worse than Robin!”
“I’m surprised the suit shrunk down to fit him,” Barry commented, peeking from behind a toppled stretcher. “Who knew Nightwing was this feral as a kid? Where the hell did he grow up—the circus?! He’s like a deadly little raccoon.”
“And armed,” Diana added, eyes narrowing as a third batarang embedded itself in the wall just inches from her face.
Another smoke bomb detonated.
Thick grey fog billowed out, blanketing the medbay in a choking haze. Even with enhanced senses, thermal vision, and metahuman reflexes, the League found themselves disoriented. The child was too quick, too unpredictable—a wraith of his own, slipping through their fingers every time they thought they had him cornered.
“…You know what?” Flash coughed, waving smoke from his face. “I think I prefer having a bedpan flung at my face.”
“Fantastic,” John Constantine muttered grimly. “Why did the bloody Bats have to be in Gotham today?”
Superman finally exhaled. “That’s it. I’m calling him.”
“No!” Hal and Barry both snapped in unison, panic clear in their voices.
“We can handle the kid!” Hal added quickly, just as another tray came flying from the smoke and narrowly missed his head.
They could not, in fact, handle the kid.
After another five minutes and three minor injuries—plus one deeply bruised ego—J’onn and Clark made the call.
It didn’t take long.
The Zeta-Tube flared to life behind them with a mechanical chime and the light blue glow of teleportation.
“ZETA-TUBE ACCESS: BATMAN. ZETA-TUBE ACESS—”
The moment Dick saw the glow, he froze mid-swing—one hand still holding a scalpel, the other mid-throw with a stolen IV pole. His head whipped toward the portal with an almost animalistic instinct. Before the system could even finish the second name, the boy bolted like a bullet, launching off the medbay bed and leaping over Diana’s shoulder.
“MOM!!!”
Every head turned.
And who they saw wasn’t Batman.
It was you.
Still dressed in full gear—sleek black tactical armour molded to your frame, twin daggers crossed on your back, and a black half-mask framing your sharp eyes. You had only just stepped onto the Watchtower floor, barely blinking in the artificial light, when a small body slammed into you at full force, arms and legs wrapping around you like a vice.
You staggered back a step under the momentum.
But old instincts had you swiftly catching the small body mid-air.
“Hi, baby,” you breathed with a soft grunt, arms tightening instinctively around the ten-year-old clinging to your front like a baby koala. “I’ve got you.”
Dick buried his face in your neck, panting, heart racing against yours as he trembled in your arms. You just rocked him gently, hand sliding up to cradle the back of his head, thumb stroking through his sweat-damp hair.
Behind you, Bruce stepped out of the Zeta Tube in his full Batsuit, gaze sweeping the Watchtower, assessing the stunned and dishevelled  heroes, the utter destruction of his multi million dollar medical bay, and finally to his son, perfectly still in your arms.
He turned back to league, levelling them with a disapproving glower that could freeze blood.
“…What did you all do?”
No one answered at first.
Superman blinked. Green Lantern’s mouth opened and closed. Flash lifted a hand and pointed limply at his bruised knee.
“He’s—he’s been like this for three hours,” Barry finally blurted. “He got hit by some rogue spell, de-aged to, like, ten, and then just snapped. We tried to sedate him, but he kept dodging and fighting—he made traps, Bats! He booby-trapped the medbay with firecrackers and fishing wire!”
“The little—” Hal started, then faltered when Bruce’s gaze narrowed on him. He cleared his throat, backpedaling quickly. “The kid bit me.”
“Almost knocked him out too,” Barry added helpfully.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Hal muttered, cheeks flaring red as he tried to hide his bruised pride.
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.
You said nothing.
Your entire focus was on the boy in your arms—no longer Gotham’s golden prodigy, no longer Nightwing, or physically the eldest of your brood, but once again your baby boy. You gently smoothed your fingers through the back of his hair, rubbing slow, comforting circles at the nape of his neck, just like you used to when nightmares woke him at the manor. You could feel his breathing ease, chest no longer heaving with panic, lashes fluttering against your collar.
“Are you okay?” you whispered against his temple.
“’M okay now,” he mumbled sleepily, his voice muffled but laced with comfort. He was crashing, worn out from the adrenaline and the confusion, but safe.
Bruce stepped in beside you, his presence relaxing Dick even further now that both his parents were in his sleepy sight. Something in Bruce’s stance shifted as he looked down at his first son— the shift was small, nearly imperceptible—but you saw it. You always did. No one else would’ve caught the way his shoulders eased, the faintest softening his mouth as he continued staring down at Dick.
“Wait…” Diana’s voice broke through the quiet, her eyes looking at the three of you in confused curiosity. “Why did he refer to you as his mother?”
You glanced up, arms instinctively tightening around Dick before glancing at Bruce who gave a barely perceptible shrug, clearly telling you it was your choice whether or not you wanted to share the truth.
“Because he’s my son,” you said simply.
Hal blinked. “Wait, I thought he was one of Spooky’s brats…” He paused. His gaze pinged between you and Bruce, taking note of how close Bruce stood beside you and the subtle way his arm almost brushed yours. Something clicked behind Hal’s eyes. His jaw dropped. “Wait a second—are you and Spooky a thing?!”
You tilted your head slightly, teeth catching the inside of your cheek to suppress the smirk threatening to break loose. Still, you couldn’t resist shifting a little closer to Bruce, letting your shoulder bump his.
“Sev— What?!”
Diana looked genuinely stunned. “I… How did none of us know this?”
“I knew,” J’onn said calmly.
“You always know everything,” Barry muttered under his breath.
“So did I,” Clark shrugged.
Hal was still flailing. “No. No way. You two have been on the team for years! How did we not know this?!”
“Because the two of us know how to be professional,” you replied smoothly, one brow raised in amusement.
Diana turned back to study you both again—more carefully this time. Her gaze sharpened, eyes narrowing slightly. And then her expression shifted, something else dawning. “…How many children do you have?”
Bruce grunted.
Your smirk widened. “Define ‘have.’”
“HOW MANY?” Hal all but shouted, throwing his arms into the air.
“Too many,” Bruce muttered tiredly. “And they’re all worse than him.”
“I heard that,” came a muffled, sleepy protest from your arms.
“Of course you did,” Bruce said dryly.
J’onn stepped forward, his tone calm and even. “He has calmed in your presence. Your bond appears to stabilize his regressed state. I recommend removing him from the medbay. For everyone’s safety.”
Bruce gave a short nod. “John, contact Zatanna. Have her meet us at the cave.”
“Alright. Just bloody get that demon out of here,” Constantine muttered, exhaling a puff of smoke and glaring at the scorch marks on the floor.
You adjusted your grip on Dick, who had already begun to drift off against your shoulder, then turned toward the Zeta-Tube.
Hal found his voice again—just in time. “Wait—what else have you been hiding from us? Do you have a dog? A Bat-cave under your Bat-cave?”
You didn’t even glance back as you stepped into the light.
“We also have a Batcow,” you called over your shoulder, voice light with mischief before you vanished, Bruce following a moment later.
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abyssurvived · 1 year ago
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hi im here and thinking about ivy fresh out of the fae realm 💕
having to relearn/remember how to be human again 💕
having to remind herself that humans ( at least a majority ) don't welcome each other with syrupy comparisons of how the sunlight pours out of their friends skin 💕
having to remind herself that she can't just open portals to hop & travel about 💕
having to remember that getting into fights with people can't be solved by biting at whatever flesh is closest 💕
that you can't jokingly turn ppl into random animals or plants after they pissed you off cause they can't turn their self back 💕
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damselneedssaving · 1 month ago
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BATBOYS BUT THEY WITNESS A STRANGER PULL F!READER INTO A HUG AND CLAIM TO BE HER BOYFRIEND. FT. MARK GRAYSON! P.T.2
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★ TAGS: older!damian wayne, older!duke thomas, everyone is 18+, mention of death, romance, mark is utterly devoted to you, jealousy, lots and lots of jealousy, little bit of dark!batboys, kind of dark!mark too
★ A/N: tim didn't get to speak much last chapter so i'm hoping this one makes up for it!! also also, you guys have acc overwhelmed me with all the support, thank you all so much 😭💞💞💞
★ 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐕 ★ | ★ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ! ★ | ★ 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 ★
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MARK DID, IN FACT, SAY 'DIFFERENT DIMENSION'—
—and now, he's sat on your bullet-hole-covered couch, head moving from side-to-side as he watches you pace the room behind your broken table, one hand holding your elbow, the other situated beneath your chin.
You're half paying attention to him, half stuck in your own thoughts, his earlier words repeating in your mind like a mantra, a broken record player you can't seem to fix no matter how much you move its lever.
"Okay," you whisper, maybe to him, maybe to yourself, "let's... let's run this back. You said you're my... boyfriend, right?"
Mark nods in time with a few growls in the background.
"But... from a different dimension?"
He nods again.
"Right, okay." You echo his action, nodding to yourself like any of this makes sense, like you don't have a million thoughts running through your mind right now.
"This is ridiculous," Damian voices one of them with a scoff. "How do we know this isn't another one of Darkseid's schemes? Something to lower your guard with so that he can capture you as leverage against us?"
You breathe in through your nose, pinching it again. "C'mon, Dami, would you really let him follow you to me?"
He purses his lips, not another word falling from his mouth.
That settles that.
"Sorry about that, Mark. Can you elaborate?"
You turn back to the otherworldly meta human, only to find his eyes already on you (still on you), wide, and with his face a little stuck out, like he's actively trying to get closer to you, like he can't bring himself to be too far away.
The thought turns your insides to mush.
You clear your throat, ignoring the tingle in your stomach. "Um, Mark?"
He blinks. "Huh?"
"I, uh, asked if you could, y'know, explain a bit more?"
He blinks again, slower this time. Then, with a shake of his head, he lifts a hand behind his neck, rubbing it in a habit so boyishly awkward, you have to fight back the smile threatening to climb onto your face. "Right." He clears his throat. "I was sent here by this guy in my dimension—Angstrom Levy?"
He peers up at you, as though expecting some sort of reaction to that name, but when you frown back at him with a quirk of your brow, he continues his explanation slowly.
"He can, uh, open these portals at will."
"Right..." you trail off, turning your head down as your eyes glaze over, "and in your world, I'm your girlfriend?"
"Were," he corrects, and it's so quiet, you almost don't catch it.
In fact, you're sure you heard him wrong.
"Sorry?"
"You were my girlfriend," he speaks again, firmer, but in a tone no less far, no less clouded. 
"We broke up?" You furrow your brows—no, that doesn't make sense. If you did break up, why would he come to your door claiming to be your boyfriend and not your ex?
The answer to your question lies in the man seated on your couch, but unlike before, he suddenly can't seem to bring himself to look at you, gaze instead trained to your wooden floorboards like they're the most interesting things to grace the planet. What? Does he not have wood in his dimension?
A beat passes without Mark saying a word.
The silence sits heavy, like the humid air of a rainforest swallowing you whole and threatening your very ability to breathe.
You find yourself awaiting escape from it, his words, however long they may take to come, like a promise of salvation from your woes.
But it isn't him that saves you.
"You died," a voice cuts through the silence, sharp and through gritted teeth. "He let you die in his world."
Instantly, Mark's head shoots up, and he narrows his eyes into sharp, lethal daggers at Damian.
"I didn't let her." He snarls, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth. "I just..."
And then, just like that, he loses all the fight, fingers loosening their tight grip around nothing as his form all but falls, folding over like a wet noodle with no will to keep going.
"Fuck me..." you breathe out, hand already up and pinching your nose again.
To think, another version of you, a different version of you—with a different life and a boyfriend and maybe even no wood in her world—died.
Fucking hell.
"I need a drink," you find yourself muttering, shaking your head lightly before peering up at Mark. "Do you, uh, also need something?"
He's back to looking at you, gaze wide and brows knitted and lips parted by just the slightest hair as he whispers with all the sincerity of a samaritan, "Just you." Then, a little louder, "All I need... is just you."
You think the world stops when you catch air in your throat, that it drowns out until it's just the two of you when those words leave his tongue.
All of a sudden, you seem to be floating on a cloud, drowning in his gaze of pure intensity as your own heartbeat thunders in your ears and you forget how to even breathe or blink or see anyone that's not him for a brief second.
But then that second passes, and you find yourself on land once again.
You quickly excuse yourself, ignoring the holes that bore through you as you leave the room to enter your kitchen instead, the cold of it like a breath of fresh air against your warm skin.
God, fuck, that moment was so intense, you don't know if you can even think about what was revealed before it, his gaze lingering on your skin like rain after a hurricane.
So vivid. So loving. So utterly devoted that you could see nothing but yourself reflected back in those eyes.
The cup in your hands almost slips from the cabinet above your head at the memory.
In fact, it does slip. But it's quickly caught. Though not by you.
A warmth radiates against your back, and you turn, just to have it radiate against your front instead.
"Tim..."
His head is tilted to yours, eyes glazed over as one hand places the cup down on the counter to your left, and the other situates itself firm on the counter to your right.
For a beat, he just stands there, trapping you to the corner of your kitchen with a gaze as clouded as the Gotham night sky.
Then, just as you part your lips to ask why he's here, he speaks.
"Tell me I was seeing things."
His voice comes quiet, whispered and pleading as his brows knead up with a shaky sort of pull.
"What?" you can only ask, his breath hot against your face, close and feeling like it won't be moving anytime soon.
"Tell me..." he starts again, repeating without hesitation, "that I was just seeing things."
When you furrow your brows back at him, he continues, almost desperately.
"That you weren't... that you weren't looking at him for a second like..."—his face scrunches up, expression pained, like you've just gone and hit him with an axe—"like you believed him."
"Tim, I—"
You don't know what to say, not when he looks at you like that, like you've just shattered his whole entire world right in front of him.
"Like..." Tim continues, and the next words he has to really push out, wincing like it hurts just to say, "like he's actually your boyfriend."
Your stomach drops, insides churning as Tim's fingers curl against your counter with an audible scratch.
"You know he's not, right..?" he whispers, like not even he's sure. "That he's just a stranger?"
You furrow your brows, gulping down saliva and steeling yourself. "Of course I know."
But it's like Tim doesn't even hear you.
"He doesn't love you. He doesn't even know you."
You narrow your eyes, going to respond when he beats you to it again.
"Not like I do," he continues, and your words die on your tongue, eyes going a tad wider as he leans in just a bit closer. "Not like I've done for years."
Whether he's talking about knowing you or loving you, you're not sure.
And you continue to be unsure as he softly reaches for your dominant hand, gripping the back of it like he's afraid that if he lets go, you'll slip from him entirely.
The next thing you know, your hand is cradling his cheek, and he's holding it there, allowing your warmth to bleed into his skin as he looks at you with those wide, shaking eyes you seem to be on the receiving end of quite often these days.
"Tell me," he begs—lips wobbling, brows knitting, expression pleading.
And you don't think you can even if you wanted to, mouth too dry and head too empty to even voice a clear thought as he moves to slip his free hand around your waist and pull you closer.
"Please."
You think you're only able to snap out of it when you're just a breath away from his lips, just a hair from touching them with your own as he drills into you with those wide, shaking, desperate blue eyes of his.
And once you do snap out of it, once everything becomes just a little too much, you place a hand firm against his chest, whispering his name with a small, light push.
His grip around you tightens for a second, eyes glazing over, but before they can stay that way, before he can do something without a lick of sense or reason, they clear up again, and he slips his hands from your waist, letting you part from him as his arms fall to hang limply by his sides.
And when you move to further part from him and the room, you pretend not to hear the loud bang against your kitchen counter.
So much for a drink.
TAGLIST: @silas-222, @bloofairyfox, @wiseavenuelove, @inkycapps, @velovicy, @mmentallyelsewhere, @verysynical, @1abi, @bluepartywobblernickel, @krys0210, @patatasolitaria, @mazixxss, @nova916, @federalprison78-4, @crissy09yesso, @minhyrin, @nutella-hitler, @kvzutora, @starslightzz, @alishii, @crybabyghostie, @jsprien213, @cupid73, @doggyteam2028, @invinciblewaffles, @love-theangel, @butterbiscuit444, @thecrazyone2007, @reaperxdeath, @mexxs-xs, @gaychaosgremlin, @pookiei-bookie
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echo-exco · 3 months ago
Text
❝DOCTOR I CAN’T TELL IF I’M NOT ME.❞
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୨⎯ ┊BATFAM X NEGLECTED!HEALER!READER ꒱
✰ ৎ──────SYPNOPSIS: all you ever wanted was a purpose. something that would give meaning to your existence, your power. healing others was the only thing that ever made you feel alive, needed… until you ended up in that awful place.
✰ ৎ────── masterlist. | next.
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There is only one thing you ever truly wished for in this life: a purpose.
Something that would justify your existence, that would give meaning to every breath, every wound, every sleepless night.
And you found it. Not in an empty promise or in the affection of others. You found it in your own power.
A selfish desire, yes, but undeniably yours. A purpose born not out of love, but out of need.
From that strange power growing inside you, the one that forced you to look at others’ suffering with cold, almost cynical eyes. As if every wound were a problem only you could solve. As if every scream of pain were a prayer meant solely for you.
You clung to that.
To the idea that your worth existed only in your abilities.
The ability to stop someone from dying in front of you. To rip death from their body with your own hands. To stitch broken flesh with threads that hurt, yes, but worked. That was the only thing that ever made you feel alive. The only thing that ever made you feel alive, needed.
For a while, it was enough.
For a long while, you were selfish.
It didn’t matter if they used you. It didn’t matter if it hurt. If every healing left another scar on you. If every salvation cost you a little more of the little you had left.
As long as you could keep doing it—healing, fixing, protecting— the price didn’t matter.
Because at the end of the day, you could lie down on that mattress of emptiness and tell yourself: “Today, I made it worth it.”
Your existence and your power meant something.
Of course, you didn’t have a mother to share secrets with, nor guardians who offered you love. Only faces that came and went, and the bitter understanding that you were just another burden in a broken system.
Until, by some twisted stroke of fate, you had the “pleasure” of meeting your biological father.
Bruce Wayne.
Billionaire. Philanthropist. Playboy.
Batman.
Even so, none of that really mattered to you. What truly hit you was learning that you had to leave everything behind and go to Gotham.
That cursed city, that concrete jungle drowned in darkness and crime. Where dreams go to die and bodies, if they’re lucky, go to sleep.
Gotham wasn’t a home. It was a prison for someone like you.
A place where meta-humans like you were enemies, threats, problems to be contained.
Your power, your only purpose, was stripped away with nothing more than a change of zip code.
And that was the cruelest part of all.
Not being able to use it.
Not being able to save.
Not being able to be useful.
Your existence, reduced to ashes, like the bodies of those you didn’t reach in time.
It must be poetic, right? The healer who cannot heal. The savior without faith.
They hate you. You've felt it. That visceral resentment from those who survived because of you, but still blame you for what you couldn’t stop. Screams, stares, choked pleas— all of them pierced your soul deeper than any weapon ever could.
For someone who once swore to save lives, it’s only natural that those you vowed and wanted to save now express their utter disgust and despair toward the false, horrific salvation you once offered them.
And now? Now you live among strangers.
An immense mansion full of absences. With brothers who seemingly don’t recognize you, and a father who doesn’t see you.
Your arrival in Gotham wasn’t exactly ideal, at least, that’s how you think you remember it.
It’s hard for you to remember that moment. You don’t hold on to unnecessary memories… none of it will make you feel alive again.
Apparently, your new father figure has several children. Some of them are already adults. With lives of their own far from the mansion, you don’t know much about them, they were almost always too busy to say anything to you.
You can’t understand them, can’t they come up with better excuses? You don’t want these people’s attention.
These people can’t help you with your abilities. They can’t make you believe you’re still allowed to use them freely.
No, these people are just strangers who stumbled into your life overnight and want nothing to do with the problem. Not even your new father had the decency or responsibility to try forming a bond with you.
Bruce Wayne was an absent father. Not in the way someone leaves and disappears completely, but in the kind of absence that feels stronger the closer the person is. A hollow physical presence, like a ghost made of flesh and bone. One who could look you in the eyes and still not see you.
He struggled to communicate, to make time for you, to even remember that there was now one more occupied room in that massive mansion of his.
He doesn’t know how to deal with you, and you don’t know how to deal with him either. At first, you wondered if the problem was you. If you had done something wrong. If the way you talked, walked—even breathed, was so bothersome that he’d rather bury himself in work than give you an hour of his time.
But soon, you realized something even crueler: You don’t need a father. You’re not looking for one. You’re not waiting for one.
What you need is a patient. Someone you can heal. Someone who needs you.
Because that’s what you’ve always done. Heal. And Bruce… Bruce simply refuses to be healed.
But he doesn’t understand.
When you approach him, when you seek him out, when you try to speak to him, all he does is throw up a wall made of cold words, as practical and impersonal as that damn business suit of his.
“I’m busy.”
“Not now.”
“We’ll talk later.”
“It’s for work.”
Always the same. Always excuses with the bitter taste of indifference.
Is this what having a father is supposed to feel like? Because if it is, then it doesn’t feel any different from your days in foster care.
At least there, you knew you were alone. Here, they make you believe you’re not… but you are, more than ever.
You’ve learned to observe the details, as always. It’s one of the few things you’re good at, aside from using your power.
You notice the tired look in his eyes, the dark circles underneath, the way his fingers tense around his pen like he’s trying to crush it. The stack of papers on his desk never gets smaller, it’s like it multiplies just to keep you at a distance.
And the subtle changes… that lower tone in his voice when he sees you, like he can’t even be bothered to raise it for you. The way his eyebrows furrow, not out of anger, just… annoyance. Irritation.
That’s what hurt the most.
So you stopped trying. Because if you kept going, you were only going to be reprimanded by the one you were supposed to please. You convinced yourself that you don’t need his approval. That you don’t need his love. That you’re better off without him.
But then, why is it that every time you walk past his office, you pause for a second, hoping that door opens, just once, without you knocking first?
Why do you still need him to see you?
Richard Grayson is the eldest. The first adopted son of Bruce Wayne. Everyone sees him as a beacon of hope, the moral compass of this family made of shadows and scars. And it makes sense. He has that bright smile, that genuine warmth the others can barely fake. He gives out hugs without being asked, listens patiently, laughs easily, and has that absurd gift of making anyone feel seen, at least, if you’re one of his.
Because with you, it was always different.
From the beginning, Richard seemed kind. Seemed. But between that warmth and you, there was always a distance, like someone had drawn a curtain between the two of you. You heard his apologies more than you heard his actual voice.
“Sorry, I have to head out right now.”
“Sorry, I was already on my way to Blüdhaven.”
“Next time, I promise.”
He was always rushing. Always busy. Always somewhere else. And you… you’re not someone who believes in empty promises.
At first, you thought it was just bad luck. That maybe if you insisted a little, if you found an excuse, if you caught him in the kitchen, he might stay for five minutes. Just five. But those minutes never came. And you started to notice a pattern. How his demeanor shifted the moment you walked into the room. How his smile became more diplomatic. More rehearsed. How his footsteps sped up when he thought you weren’t watching.
You didn’t want to admit it at first, but something inside you began to whisper an uncomfortable truth; He was avoiding you.
And then you understood. If Richard Grayson, the kindest, the most human, the most "big brother" of them all, couldn’t be around you, then what was the point of trying with the others? What could you possibly expect from Jason, who barely speaks to you? From Tim, who seems more invested in his computer than in actual people? From Damian, who can barely tolerate his own shadow?
So you did the same.
You avoided them. One by one.
You decided it wasn’t worth it. That if you weren’t going to be a real part of this family, you weren’t going to pretend.
It’s easier that way. It doesn’t hurt as much if you’re the one walking away first.
But sometimes, when you see them laughing together from the staircase, or hear Richard speaking so fondly of the others, a part of you wonders if it was ever really your choice to walk away, or if they’d been leaving you behind from the very beginning.
Your suspicions didn’t take long to confirm. All it took was talking to a few of your supposed brothers to realize the pattern repeated itself.
Jason, Tim, Damian…
Each one was a story unto themselves. Each one was a maze of traumas, masks, and poorly calibrated emotional responses. But if you had to describe them in one word, it would be: inaccessible.
The second of your brothers was Jason, and from what little you could gather, because no one seemed eager to talk about it much, Jason had died. And then he came back. It wasn’t a metaphor. It wasn’t an exaggeration. He had been buried, and now he was not. That simple statement was enough to provoke a morbid curiosity, almost scientific. What had changed in his body? Did he suffer from partial necrosis? Brain damage? Did his muscles regenerate? What residual effects did resurrection have on human physiology? Everything in you screamed to investigate. To dissect. To understand.
It was a dangerous thought. You knew that. You repeated it to yourself like a mantra: too tempting for your own good.
But what confused you the most wasn’t his condition, it was his behavior toward you. Jason had this aura of latent violence, like dynamite that could explode with the wrong spark. But that wasn’t what kept you away. Not entirely. It was his inexplicable rejection.
You didn’t understand it. You didn’t provoke him. You didn’t talk to him, you didn’t interfere, you didn’t cross the line. And yet, his gaze was always sharp. As if your mere presence triggered something in him. Irritation. Annoyance. Maybe even disdain.
You wondered if it was your fault. If the way you were, the way you spoke, the way you were, simply bothered him. But you couldn’t find an answer. And though you wanted to, you knew that getting closer would be too risky.
Because you’ve seen the broken walls. The misaligned doors. The tables split in two like they were made of paper. You’ve felt the tension in the air when Jason enters a room and isn’t in the mood. And you know, without needing confirmation, that his punches aren’t soft. That his rage doesn’t distinguish between the guilty and the witnesses.
So, you avoid him.
Not out of fear exactly, but out of caution. Self-preservation. You don’t want to be the next crack in the walls of this house.
Tim was a different kind of strange. More than Jason, though in a completely different way. His oddity didn’t stem from aggression or visible trauma. It was more subtle. More internal.
Almost clinical.
You observed him, like you observe everything. With that gaze of yours that searches for patterns, inconsistencies, vulnerabilities. And in him, you found many.
Surprisingly, Tim was brilliant. Not just "smart for his age," but one of those cases where the brain moves faster than the body. Too fast. So much so, that sometimes it seemed like his body gave up halfway through.
The dark circles under his eyes were a constant. His responses were slow, as if they had to pass through a filter of a thousand thoughts before being verbalized. He walked like his mind was too heavy for his spine to carry. A shadow carrying ideas. You were surprised he hadn’t fainted yet from the combination of insomnia, chronic stress, and mild malnutrition.
No one asked you.
No one thanked you.
But still, you started leaving him food. Food that could sustain him without causing a stomach collapse. Nothing too obvious, of course. A yogurt here. Cut fruits there.
Something easy to eat between keystrokes. You allied yourself with Alfred in that small act of silent intervention. The old butler seemed to notice, but he never mentioned it. And you never confirmed it.
Tim would probably assume it was all Alfred’s doing. In fact, you counted on it.
Not because you wanted to keep it a secret. But because you knew that if he suspected you were behind something so... "thoughtful," it would only make him uncomfortable. He doesn’t know how to respond to care, to the intention behind such detail. Tim doesn’t know how to handle it if that sincere gesture comes from you.
Just like you would if any of them ever tried it with you.
Alfred... Alfred is a different matter.
Of all the people in the house, he’s the only one who acts like your existence isn’t a miscalculation. But he doesn’t fool himself. He doesn’t offer you love, or tenderness. He offers you structure. Routine. Measured phrases and cups of tea.
It’s not affection between you.
It’s a sort of tacit alliance.
Two functional people in the middle of a broken ecosystem.
You know he tries. But you also know it’s not enough for you.
You’ve seen children like you. In hospitals. In refugee camps. In temporary homes. Children who cling to an adult figure as if their life depended on it, and are then destroyed when that figure leaves. Or worse, when they stay but stop looking.
You don’t want that for yourself.
You convince yourself this is better. A working relationship. A dynamic where each one fulfills their role and no one crosses the line into the personal. Because if you get attached, if you let yourself believe this could mean something...
You know how that ends. They can’t give you what you’re looking for.
They can’t give you purpose.
They can’t return what was taken from you when you understood that your value only exists if you can heal, if you can serve, if you can be useful.
You still don’t know who you are when you’re none of that.
Back to the subject of your "family," the last on the list of who your siblings were, was Damian.
The youngest of the group. The second biological son of Bruce Wayne.
You said it out loud once, casually: "Ah, so he is the real one."
No one found it funny.
Unlike the others, Damian didn’t need time to show you that you weren’t welcome. He didn’t bother to fake courtesy or neutrality. From the beginning, he made it clear that your existence was expendable.
Maybe it was your silence. Maybe it was your lack of reaction to his provocations. Maybe he just didn’t like you. But he pointed his katana at you the first month you arrived.
The blade against your neck wasn’t a metaphor. It was real, cold, intimidating contact. You felt a thread of power activate instinctively in your body, a reflex of defense, of desperation. If you had let it go, well, you wouldn’t be here, mentally recalling this account.
You didn’t. Not for him. For you.
Because it wasn’t worth it. Because using your power on someone in your “family” would mean admitting they were important enough to hurt you.
They weren’t. Not yet.
You can’t risk being discovered. No one can know that you actually have this power. None of them can know.
Bruce appeared just in time to prevent the confrontation from escalating. Did he protect you? Not exactly. He simply said something like, “Damian has a complicated history,” as if that justified a death threat in the family kitchen.
Is it common in Gotham to justify a child’s homicidal impulses if they've had a difficult childhood?
That was your question. You didn’t ask it out loud. No one would have liked the answer.
It was also that day you found out that Damian was Bruce’s biological son. And you couldn’t help but think about the irony of it all.
The same Bruce Wayne who, in the public eye, was a scandalous figure, a charming, charismatic playboy billionaire with endless parties, had exactly one biological child. One. Not five. Not a legion of illegitimate children scattered across the world. Just one.
That kid turned out to be a ticking time bomb with a traditional sword.
Everything fit so perfectly wrong that it almost seemed planned.
With the girls, it's complicated. Maybe even more so because, deep down, a part of you thought they could be different.
Stephanie. She was like a female version of Richard, a constant smile, a vibrant energy that everyone seemed to adore, except you.
She greeted you with empty enthusiasm, one that never went beyond the surface. It was easy to see that behind her good mood, there was a locked door she wasn’t going to open for you.
And you understood. Because you'd seen it before.
People who act as if everyone is welcome, except you.
Stephanie was just another confirmation that no matter how hard you tried to fit in, this home was already full. You weren’t in the original plan. You never were.
Barbara, on the other hand, was simpler. She was hardly ever at the mansion. You’d see her sporadically, a red ghost in the shadows of fleeting visits. And still, in that limited time, she always found a way to smile at others, share a joke, a quick conversation, a knowing glance… Never with you.
Not once.
It was as if your presence went by unnoticed, not even worth including out of courtesy.
Cassandra was the most honest, in a way. She didn’t pretend. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak.
She ignored your attempts to help with almost admirable efficiency. You could attribute it to her trauma, her history, her way of seeing the world… but that excuse starts to wear thin when it’s the only one left to justify everything.
Maybe you’re just not interesting. Maybe you don’t even stand out enough to be actively rejected.
Or is it because you don’t even deserve her attention?
It was easier to believe that they all had a reason not to see you.
Easier than admitting that maybe, you weren’t that hard to ignore.
What was dangerous about this family wasn’t the weapons, nor the katanas, nor the fists that had broken ribs more than once.
It was the mask.
It took you time to understand it. First, it was a hunch. Then a suspicion. Finally, a certainty: they were all vigilantes. Heroes of Gotham. The same ones who make your hands tremble when you try to use your power. The ones who make your gift feel useless. As if it were a mistake rather than a blessing.
The irony is so perfect it could almost make you laugh.
You can’t feel useful, can’t do the one thing you know how to do perfectly, because you’re surrounded by those who fight so that people and beings like you are neither necessary nor welcome.
And yet, you prefer them this way.
Cold. Distant. Detached. Unknown. Because connections are dangerous. Because memories weigh. Because at some point, someone taught you that affection is the hook that precedes the pain.
Because you know it better than anyone. When you get attached to someone, it’s not just pain that you feel when you lose them. It’s as if a part of you dies too. Not because you lose them, but because without your power, without that “usefulness,” you feel like you never deserved to have them in the first place.
In Gotham, you can’t do anything.
You can't heal.
You can't save.
You can't be useful.
You can't be loved. Or at least, that’s what they taught you to believe.
Here, you have no parts left that you can afford to lose. Not while you're trapped in this city that doesn’t need what you can give. A family that doesn't know what to do with you. You don’t know what to do with yourself either.
They can’t give you a purpose.
They never could.
They didn’t even try.
You expected so little, that not even that surprised you.
Until you found him.
The only living person who not only recognized your power, but accepted it for what you wanted it to be:
A miracle.
He called himself Doctor Masashi. A kind voice, a serene figure. But behind that calmness was surgical precision. He knew exactly how to shape you. How to rebuild you, only to destroy you again with elegance.
He was the only one who never lied to you about what you were:
A weapon.
A tool.
A precious jewel that only shines when it bleeds for others.
A perfect puppet.
And you, grateful for the strings.
He gave you direction when all you had was guilt.
He gave you structure when all you had was emptiness.
He gave you… meaning. A cruel meaning. A conditioned meaning. But still, you took it.
It can't be that bad, right?
Clinging to that.
Clinging to him.
Clinging to something that tells you that you can still be "something."
Because if someone, even just one person, can look at you and say that you are good for something, then you're not broken.
Then you're not alone. Then everything that hurt was worth it.
Even if guilt drowns you every night.
Even if the nightmares never rest.
Even if the hands you tried to save still drag you from their graves, begging for a second death.
It doesn't matter. As long as someone believes that keeping you alive makes sense... then that’s enough.
Right?
Maybe you're a weapon.
Maybe you're selfish.
Maybe you did it all just out of fear of disappearing, for that unbearable need to feel alive.
The need to feel that you matter. To have a place to fit in.
But at least you're something. In this shattered world, that's already more than many have.
But how much more can you take before you truly break? How much longer before you completely crumble, like so many times you did on the inside? How much will the price of his greed cost… and your desperate desire to remain useful?
Because in the end, it wasn't Bruce.
Nor your brothers.
Nor your sisters.
None of them ever knew who you were.
None of them understood.
Only him. Only Masashi.
That’s what scares you the most. Because if even he can make you believe that’s all you’re worth. If even he manages to make you cling to that idea, then maybe, you were never more than that.
Maybe you were never more than your power, and in Gotham, where you can no longer use it...
Not even that belongs to you.
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scriptseekstories · 3 months ago
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Invincible and Dc Crossover.
Mark is Reader’s boyfriend and he comes over to visit her, only to find out how shit her family is.
In this au, Reader could even be the Atom!Eve, since Eve’s family as totally shit as well. Hey, it means she gets a sibling relationship with Oliver.
Bruce when he realises that his child’s boyfriend’s dad is a fucking maniac and so is the boyfriend: 😐
Fun fact the reason I made my last post was because I just got into Invincible and I was like “you know what? This shit slaps”
Change in Family
Yandere Batfamily x Atom! Reader x Yandere Invincible
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Okay, let’s do this one more time.
If we go for the Atom Eve!Reader route, then we know what the batfamily is like. More of the same with any other neglected!Readers. But this would be worse as you’re considered to be a Meta and we all know how Batman feels about Metas in Gotham
Let’s say we go with the similar stories of neglected readers. You were ignored and tormented by certain robins (Damien lol), you only had Alfred and/or Duke, you gained your powers in your senior year, graduate and moved away to leave your family behind, with the occasional calls from Alfred and Duke.
You joined the Guardian of the Globe to save people, and that’s where you meet Mark Grayson, this slightly awkward and shy kid who is apparently the son of THE Omni-Man. You were obviously intimidated by this dude, but soon your feelings got the better of you, and you fell for Mark.
Saving his ass was one way to get him to fall for you too. Unethical way for romance, but hey, a big win for you. He fell harder for you, and you both decided to get your feelings out of the way and had your kiss on the battlefield, immediately getting scolded by Cecil.
OR-
We have a none super story where you were the only normal kid in your family, the familiar story goes where you met Mark at college. You needed a fresh start that didn’t involve being in the shadows of the Waynes, so having all this hard work and studies is better than nothing.
You actually didn’t technically meet in college, you met when some villain was in the city and crashed into the campus, where you were almost crushed if it weren’t for Invincible. You had your fair share of attacks back at Gotham, so he was surprised when he saw your calm demeanor before getting back into fighting the villain.
After a while he caught up to you as Mark Grayson, who awkwardly stumbled next to your seat and rambling about the attack earlier, and he mentioned about seeing you almost getting killed, even more shocked to see you shrugging.
“It happens more than you think, especially in Gotham,” He was amazed you moved all the way from Gotham, and it just went on from there. You eventually found out he was Invincible after months of being friends, with in turn became dating.
No matter which path you choose
You are adored by Mark, which extends to his family. Oliver looks up to you, whether or not you’re human or Atom Eve!Reader, he sees the way Mark has heart eyes for you, and he declared you to be the best future sister-in-law ever.
You would always recreate his toys to be cooler, despite Debbie’s raised eyebrow and crossed arms at your sheepish smile while Oliver played with a heat seeking foam missile.
Of course, you kept in touch with Alfred, telling you the adventures you went on as Atom Eve, or your studies if you were human. You never told him about your boyfriend as despite being the only father figure you know (the addition of Cecil and Nolan), you knew his opinions about metas.
Your calls with Alfred eventually led you to work up the courage and confess to him that you have a boyfriend, and you don’t know by the look on the butler’s face that he was proud or horrified.
You could feel the glare of Alfred through the phone when you moved the camera to face Mark. Poor guy was sweating bullets by the stare he gave. “I-Is he going to… kill me?” He meeked asked, “I mean he almost killed Superman with not even Kryptonite… so I wouldn’t be too worried?” You sheepishly replied.
Unfortunately, your confession about Mark was being eavesdropped by Stephanie, who spat out her orange juice and tackled the phone out of Alfred’s hands, shouting into the phone -which in turn the whole manor- about; “(NAME)!! SINCE WHEN DID YOU MOVED OUT?! AND MANAGED TO HAVE THAT DORK BAG A BADDIE LIKE YOU?!”
What a snitch, now your other siblings are freaking out at the fact you moved out. “Yeah, for ONE year!! The fact you didn’t notice is very comforting!” you scoffed, all the while Mark was awkwardly laying next to you.
Bruce was distraught, not just the fact you were far away, but you have a BOY in your ROOM!! It doesn’t matter if you had a girl, boy, genderfluid or non-binary!! Why are you dating?!
“You shouldn’t be dating at your age!” He shouted through the phone, “I’m 21!!” You said in disbelief, making Mark cover his mouth to hide his smile while you elbowed him.
Dick was more distraught than Bruce if that was even possible. He was trying to tear the phone away from Bruce while crying his eyes out. “B-Baby bird!! Why did you leave us?! You shouldn’t be out there filled with overpowered monsters!! You should be inside the manor where it’s safer!! I-in fact, we’re coming right now!!”
You panicked, trying to find and excuse to sway them. If you choose Option A: Confess you have powers and is the hero Atom Eve “I’ve had powers since I was 16!!” You showed them through the phone by making one of Mark’s rock collection into a statue of a middle finger.
Or Option B: Throw Mark under the bus and say you have Invincible as your boyfriend to protect you. “He’s half-Viltrumite! He can protect me more than Batman!” You pulled Mark to your hip.
If you choose either one, congratulations!! Both were the wrong answers!! Now you either have your family freaking out that you had powers and only told Alfred, or they’re freaking out that you’re dating Invincible.
Whatever the outcome, you hid in the home of Mark, where Debbie treated you like you were her child, and Nolan? He approved of you so that’s good.
“Babe, it’s okay! Maybe they actually want to make amends with you!” Mark being the optimist he is he tired to reassure you while you shook your head. “You don’t know my family like I do, Mark! They only care now because of Steph eavesdropping! They wouldn’t even have remembered me if it weren’t for- UGH!!”
If you were Atom Eve! Reader, your frustration would’ve gotten a few items from Mark’s room turned into liquid. Human! Reader would’ve just kicked Mark’s chair to the ground. Mark frowned before holding you close.
“I’m sorry for whatever you been through. I promise you, they won’t take you away from your home. Away from me,” You wiped your tears of frustration and smiled at him, kissing him softly before hugging him again.
Mark wasn’t going to let your neglectful family to finally see you as one of their own, for they had years to do so. He confided to his dad, worried that you will be sent back to Gotham.
“If you want me to give them a total beatdown, I’m on it!” Oliver grinned while the Nolan boys were in an open field to talk about your situation.
“I don’t want to lose them, dad. I love them so much, a-and they want to take that away from me!!” He shouted before sending a boulder into the sky. Nolan simply hummed while floating next to Mark.
“Son… You know how much I love your mother,” Mark nodded, “I would do anything for her. (Name), they mean so much to you as well. They even managed to wiggle themselves into this family,” He chuckled.
“Duh! You gotta show those dorks that we ain’t gonna to let anything slide with us! (Name) is practically family!” Oliver floated upside down while attempting to land.
“They’re yours now Mark, and you can’t let others take what’s yours…” Usually, Mark would question such words his father would say, but he was right. You are his just as much as he is yours, and he’d be damned if he let these neglectful people show up suddenly.
“Don’t worry dad, I won’t let them go. Ever,” Nolan smiled softly, “Good, because between the three of us, your mother got more attached to (Name) than we did,” Mark laughed, but knew that Debbie loved you more.
There would be a dinner, hosted by the gracious Bruce Wayne to show he means no harm, (to you of course he’s going to kill this Mark). It was time to meet the family, the Nolan’s included.
Cecil is on watch with the GotG (not those guardians) as he grew attached to you as well, in case the Bats pull something, and Alfred has the Justice League on command to swoop in just in case things got ugly.
“It’s so great to have the family back together for dinner,” Bruce smiled brightly as you were forced to sit between him and Selina, who was amused by this whole ordeal, but was still happy you were back.
With the state down between Mark and Nolan vs the Bats, Debbie and Selina were casually talking and in their own vibe.
“You must be Selina Kyle. Debbie Nolan, and I must say you definitely manage to hold down this family with a lover who is… delusional,” Debbie chuckled, “No judge though, been there,” Selena grinned while clinking her glass.
“Glad you like my style, truly amazing to see how the men try to pin against each other when we could really need the extra support in keeping them safe,” They already agreed that you were the number one priority between families and that you will be protected.
“Psst, you already got dirt on them?” Steph whispered to Barbara and Tim as they typed on their tablets under the table. They nodded as they gave glared at them, to which Mark glared back before focusing his lovey dovey eyes back on you.
It made them furious to see how he touched you (holding your hand) how he pampered you (gave you a kiss) how vile he is (he blushed when you complimented him).
“Baby bird, may I ask why you’re dating a hero who has the same last NAME as me?!” Dick accused, making you and Mark look at each other before an awkward silence filled dinner. Jason had the decency to stomp Dick’s foot hard to make him shut up.
Duke at least tried to give you his blessings, but even he knew something was up with your boyfriend’s family, specifically his dad. The way he stared at them as if they were mere ants.
Cass noticed too and they both spent called for backup of the Young Justice just in case.
“(Name), I find it absurd you take amusement in this Superman wannabe. Powers only make a being more perceptible to deadly scenarios,” Damien crossed his arms while glaring deadly daggers at Mark.
“Sooo, you’re their little brother? Pssh, I can already tell you’re a spoiled brat who thinks he’s better than everyone else here really he just has mommy issues,” Oliver smiled while stabbing his steak with his fork.
“Shut it, your purple grape!” Damien snarled, slamming his hands on the table, “At least I actually learned not to kill!” Oliver quipped, “Barely!” Both kids glared as you were about to just bolt out of here.
“Nolan Grayson,” Bruce cleared his throat, causing the shouting silence, “While I do appreciate you have given a roof over my dear (Name), I highly doubt it would be safe for them to continue living at your residence. They’ll be better staying here,” He said with a steady tone.
“Bruce-,” You started, but Nolan simply hummed, “Funny, I think it’ll be better for them to be protected by someone who they actually call dad,” Ohhh that made Bruce furious.
If things so seriously bad, then let’s just say that you’ll be seeing superhumans fight to the death just for you.
Meanwhile, Mark took you away from the outright war to give some kissing times with you.
Don’t get me started about the Markverse, that’ll give Bruce a stroke seeing them looking at you with hungry eyes.
Taglist: @pix-stuff @jellystar-star @moon0goddess @bad4amficideas @lettucel0ver @lithiumval @degenerates-posts @ryuushou @deathbynarcisstick @silverklaus @artistwithcreativeburnout @middevil465 @jsprien213 @1abi @oliviaewl @redkarmakai @nxdxsworld @the-dumber-scaramouche @sc3n3mo-t3to @tw-om-gi-hs-56387 @bunniotomia @welpthisisboring @rad4bean @ithoughtthinks @reeyy0-2 @ceramic-raven
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invincibledc · 5 months ago
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“Just a little guy…”
RACCOON!READER X slighty yandere? ROBINS!BATBOYS
Summary: a little rascal comes into in a bunch of boy’s lives. 
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There you are, hissing at some kids that are teens to pre teens. “Standing” on all four of your human limbs with your raccoon tail and ears perked up.
Apparently, the 14 year old Damian took you from the dumpster and showed you to the others who apparently screamed seeing a young hybrid of a human and raccoon.
You screamed back before scratching Damian. The brown skinned boy let you go as you ran around messing up the manor up.
Damian looked at the scratch in admiration. You scratched him but he took as you just showing affection as he rushed after you. “Come back!! I wanna pet you!” “Dames no!” Dick(17) yells as he rushes after his younger brother.
Tim(15) and Jason(16) look at each other before running off towards the other two and some crazed child.
Damian was giggling manically as dick was hot on his tail while praying that Alfred doesn’t come around the corner. You started to hop around as you ran into the kitchen and climbed the counter with a bit of effort.
“No! Get down you.. whatever you are!” Dick says yelling at you. You hiss as you swat with your sharp nail like claws. “Me no! Me rule!” You said in weird phrases. Damian bull rushed dick to fall on the ground as he puts his hand out. “Don’t worry about him. Come to me!”
You glare with your ears a little flat against your head. “No.”
Damian frowns as Tim and Jason come into the kitchen. “Yo! Get your stinky ass feet off the counter you homeless little shit!” Jason yells, pointing at you who hisses at him. Jason scrunches up his face and rolls his sleeves.
“Guess we’re doin' this the hard way.” Tim just pats Jason’s back as comfort. “Get em.” As this was going on, Dick finally gets up rubbing his head with a concerned expression. “Be careful, it may have rabies.”
You glare at those tan arms of Jason’s with small scars. You didn’t like how close he was getting to you. Damian was glaring at Jason, daring him to make the slightest aggression towards you.
Before you could jump off the counter and dash off, Jason grabbed you into his arms. “Gotcha!” “No! No! Unhand me! Hand off! Handsss!!!” You screeched as you try to claw at him. He used one arm to hold you down while his other was using his hands to cuff your wrists down.
“Phew..” dick says clutching his shirt as Tim could only take a picture of this. “This.. was an eventful afternoon.” Jason turns around smug, happy to hold you down. “Hah! And this little one thought it could just mess with us.” Damian scrunches his nose. “Hey! Be careful with them…” as Damian goes to walk towards you. Dick puts a stern hold onto his shoulder.
“Damian, you need to stop bringing in animals. YKNOW how dad is.” Damian rolls his eyes before crossing his hands. “That’s not an animal, that’s a potential friend in the making.” Dick and Damian look at you still going ape shit in the tanned teen’s arms.
“Yeah no, it looks like you kidnapped a furry kid from the streets.” Tim says as Damian glares at him. “Actually from a dumpster for your knowledge.” “That’s not better you demon.”
After calming you down, you were cleaned by Damian and given a big shirt from Jason. You sat on the couch eating crackers, kicking your feet back and forth. You smiled while munching on the delicious crackers with slight salt on it. The four boys look at you before looking at each other.
“We can’t just keep them here!” Dick says
“Why not!?” Damian exclaimed, gritting his teeth.
“Uh hello, they’re some random meta.. or whatever they are… plus dad wouldn’t let Damian keep another 'pet' unless he wants to be grounded.” Tim says as he stares at Damian then to dick.
“Right.” Jason says lastly.
As the four brothers turn to look at you, they can’t help but stare at how adorable you are. You lick your small hands with a small smile, rubbing your belly and looking at them as if you didn’t just want to claw their eyes out.
“…okay maybe we can keep them.” Dick says with soft eyes. You looked so cute with those soft chubby cheeks. Looking better without that much dirt on your face and that angry stare for the past minutes of chasing you.
“I call dibs on clothing them!” Damian says as Tim nudges him. “We’re not callin dib—”
“I call dibs on feeding them.” Jason says nonchalantly, putting his hands into his pockets. Tim looks at his older brother in shock as Jason just shrugs.
“What? The rascal is actually cute when it’s not trying to claw our eyes out.”
Tim sighs as dick could only chuckle. “I guess… i call dibs on their speech impediment…”
Dick pats Tim who is slightly flustered as he crosses his arms. “Then i suppose im the one that calls dibs on hiding them and having them in my room.” Dick says with a smile.
The other three erupted in yells.
“That’s not fair!! I found them first!”
“Just cause you’re the oldest doesn’t mean shit!”
“Over our dead bodies!”
You can guess who said who as you just wiggled off the couch and walked over to them. The big shirt making your walking a little wonky as you looked at the black haired boys and pull on the one with the fringe.
“M-Mo-more. More.” You said as you pulled his shirt and point to your mouth. Tim turns to look at you, for a second he felt an arrow hit through his heart before he picked you up and ran.
Seeing this, the other three boys stared flabbergasted before Damian yells pointing out.
“He’s getting away!!!!”
Jason smirks and runs, “First one to get them back lets them room with them!” He yells as he was on the go.
Dick and Damian were running as well.. and the chase was on.
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thedensworld · 1 month ago
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The Margin | J. Ww
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Pairing: Wonwoo x reader Genre: Dark Fantasy, Meta-World Au!, Parallel World Au! Words Count: 23k Preview: A very well known illustrator went missing after the villain in the story was defeated.
The assistant illustrator couldn’t help it anymore — he had to report his boss, who hadn’t shown up at the studio or answered a single call in nearly a week. Soonyoung now found himself pacing in front of your apartment door, chewing at his lip while the building owner spoke in hushed tones with two uniformed officers. Any moment now, they were going to force the door open.
A thousand troubling images clawed at the edges of Soonyoung’s mind, but he clenched his fists and shoved them away. You were eccentric, sure — always lost in your stories, always scribbling out scenes that made even hardened editors flinch — but you weren’t reckless enough to hurt yourself, not just because the world had turned on you overnight.
There was only one reason the internet was tearing you apart now, one “crime” that made fandoms froth at the mouth and the comment sections drip poison: you had killed off Wonwoo, the villain in your latest web-comic — the villain people secretly adored more than the hero himself.
The last time Soonyoung saw you, you’d laughed off the hate comments, tapping ash from your cigarette out the studio window, and shrugged when your editor pleaded with you to “fix” the ending. But now, standing here with the hollow hush behind your door pressing into his ears, Soonyoung wondered if maybe — just maybe — the world’s cruelty had clawed deeper than you ever let him see.
You had left him with only one final, cryptic draft: Wonwoo’s funeral, rendered in stark, aching lines — a villain laid to rest in an empty graveyard under a cold, unfeeling rain, watched by no one except a lone stranger standing at a distance, unnamed, faceless.
Every time Soonyoung reread that scene, the same chill crawled under his skin. The pages were too quiet, too final — as if you’d been trying to say goodbye to more than just a character.
Who was the stranger at the funeral?
Why was there no hint about what came next?
And most importantly — where were you now?
Soonyoung had tapped his pen uselessly against his empty sketchpad for days, eyes flicking between the unfinished panels and the increasingly frantic messages from the publisher.
No Safe Place was your crown jewel — a web-comic that had devoured the internet whole, translated into a dozen languages, flooding timelines and group chats from Seoul to São Paulo. It told the tragic story of Choi Hansol, a hero weighted down by injustice since childhood — betrayed, framed, yet always rising again, righteous to a fault.
But the heartbeat of the story, the dark star that pulled millions into your orbit, was never Hansol alone. It was Jeon Wonwoo — the villain people loved to hate and secretly wished you’d redeem.
Handsome, cold-eyed, and terrifyingly clever, Wonwoo slit throats and burned secrets; he murdered Hansol’s fiancée and closest friends without blinking. He came for Hansol’s life, too, driven by a hunger so raw it almost made him human. That brutal contradiction — a monster drawn like a fallen angel — turned your comic from just another hero’s tale into a global fever dream.
So when you dropped the final episode, the internet howled as if you’d stabbed them instead: Wonwoo, defeated at last by Hansol’s trembling hand, two deep wounds blooming red across fresh snow. No redemption. No mercy. A villain dying alone under winter’s hush.
At first, some called it poetic. Then the hate began. How could you? they raged. Bring him back. You betrayed us. Your inbox drowned overnight in death threats and demands. Fan forums burned with conspiracies about secret drafts, alternative endings, half-mad theories about why you’d done it.
Soonyoung swallowed the sour taste rising in his throat. He should have stopped you. He should have begged you to let Wonwoo live a little longer — or at least forced you to sleep, to eat, to turn off your phone for one damned day
When the lock finally gave way with a sharp snap, Soonyoung’s heart lodged in his throat as the door creaked open.
Soonyoung stood frozen in the doorway, the metallic click of the cop’s radio muffled by the pounding in his ears. The moment the lock gave way and the door swung inward, he’d half-expected to see you — curled up on the couch with your laptop burning your thighs, mumbling a half-apology for ignoring his calls.
Instead, silence pressed against him like a heavy hand.
The hallway light flickered over your tiny living room. He stepped inside, shoes squeaking faintly on the polished floor. At first glance, nothing screamed danger: your beloved blankets draped over the armrest, a mug ring staining the coffee table, your phone abandoned near the charger — its black screen reflecting his pale face.
But when he turned toward the kitchen, his breath caught in his throat.
Shards of ceramic crunched under his heel — the shattered remains of your favorite mug, the one with the faded comic panels you’d joked was your “good luck charm.” Beside it, near the base of the counter, a dull brown smear spread in a jagged trail. Dried blood. Not fresh enough to drip. Not old enough to ignore.
“No... no, no, no—” Soonyoung’s voice cracked as he stumbled closer. He crouched, trembling fingers hovering just above the blood, afraid to touch it and make it real.
Behind him, one of the officers muttered into a walkie-talkie, calling for forensics. The building owner stood frozen at the threshold, one hand covering her mouth, eyes wide.
Soonyoung’s vision tunneled. He looked from the broken mug to the blood, to the bare hallway that led to your bedroom. No forced entry. No dragged body. Just this mess — a single, silent scene that made no sense.
“What the hell happened to you…?” His whisper trembled. He should have been angry at you for scaring him like this, for vanishing when the whole world wanted your head for killing off a fictional villain.
Now, with you missing, Soonyoung wondered: was this really just fan rage gone too far?
*
He knew something was wrong long before he had any proof. He’d always known, in the quietest corners of his mind — when the roar of his rage faded, leaving behind only questions he could never quite kill.
That day, he’d been wandering the aisles of his old library, hunting nothing in particular, haunted by everything he couldn’t name. His eyes caught on a thin, battered copy of The Little Prince — the same edition he’d clutched at ten years old, back when life was only lonely, not yet steeped in blood and sin. He traced a fingertip over the faded cover, feeling the soft paper buckle under his touch, and for one heartbeat he felt... almost real.
He sank onto a creaky wooden chair and cracked it open to the first page. But the words blurred the longer he stared, drowned by flashes of himself in every mirror he’d ever broken: his reflection, but never just his alone. There was always something behind his eyes — a ghost whispering orders, a script scrolling where his thoughts should be.
Every time he’d aimed a gun at the innocent, some quiet animal part of him had begged him to stop. His hand would shake. His pulse would hammer rebellion against the cruelty he was known for. But the bullet always found its mark. His will always drowned under a tide he didn’t control.
And then — he met you.
One moment he was tracing the little fox on page twenty-four. The next, his breath caught — the musty hush of the library vanished. In its place: the low hum of an old computer, the dry warmth of a single desk lamp flickering in a cramped, paper-crowded room.
He blinked. Not his house. Not the library.
A narrow, cluttered room greeted him: walls tattooed with sticky notes and scraps of sketches pinned in frenzied constellations. Unwashed mugs on the floor. Crumpled snack wrappers. And you.
You were hunched at your monitor, eyes bloodshot from too many sleepless nights, shoulders stiff from hours chained to the same unfinished panel. Your stylus hovered over the glowing screen when the faintest breath — not yours — brushed the back of your neck.
You froze. Your pulse ricocheted into your throat. Slowly, you pushed your chair back until the wheels squeaked against the floorboards.
There. In the far corner by your battered bookshelf — a man, half-draped in the lamp’s flickering shadow. Tall, broad-shouldered, clad in black from throat to boots. Unfamiliar, yet your gut twisted with a terrifying recognition.
A fan? A stalker? A thief? Your mind clawed for logic, but your voice failed when your eyes found his face. It was as if someone had carved him straight from your imagination and then let him bleed into your reality — eyes too sharp, too deep, a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile but hadn’t forgotten how to sneer.
He stared at you like you were a riddle he’d never agreed to solve.
“Who—” Your voice cracked, too high to sound brave. You brandished the stylus like it might fire a bullet or at least buy you a few seconds to breathe. “Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?”
He flinched — just a flicker — as if your fear startled him too. His eyes darted across the chaos of your walls: sketches, sticky notes, draft pages stamped with his name on every line. He looked like he was piecing himself together from scraps he didn’t remember leaving behind.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. A faint scoff escaped, half a laugh, half a curse. He looked furious that he couldn’t make sense of any of this.
“I should ask you that,” he rasped. His voice was rough velvet, scratching your name straight out of your bones even though he didn’t know it yet. “What is this place? Where am I? And—” He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, like testing the floor before lunging. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
You stumbled backward, spine slamming the edge of your desk. Pain cut through your panic, anchoring you just enough to register the impossible: this man shouldn’t exist. He was lines on a page, a snarl in speech bubbles, a villain you’d birthed out of ink and exhaustion at three a.m. — not this living thing breathing your air, glaring you down like you were the monster.
Your heart rattled so hard your chest hurt. Now that you really saw him — the razor cut of his eyes, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his dark hair fell messily over his brow exactly as you’d drawn it a thousand times — the truth knocked the breath from your lungs.
You knew this face better than your own.
You had sketched it laughing cruelly, smirking behind a gun, spitting threats through bloodied teeth.
“Wonwoo…” you breathed. It slipped out raw, like a prayer you regretted the second you said it.
His brow twitched — confusion flaring so violently it made his hands clench at his sides.
“You know me?” His voice dropped softer now, but it was softer the way a blade is soft just before it bites.
“You—” you gasped, pointing a trembling finger at him as if that alone could keep him back. “You’re Jeon Wonwoo. You’re not real— I made you. You’re—”
He closed the gap in two strides. The movement made your stomach twist; it was too smooth, too quiet — exactly the way you’d always written him: a beautiful predator who never missed his mark.
“Stop.” His snarl was barely controlled. “How do you know my name? How do you know me?” His eyes darted past you — catching the glow of your computer screen, the pinned sketches around your walls. His own face stared back at him in half-finished scowls and ghost-smiles.
The way he looked at it all — raw confusion, rising fury, a storm brewing just under skin — terrified you more than his threat ever could.
“Answer me.” His voice knifed through the air. He lunged before you could flinch, grabbing your wrist so hard your stylus slipped from your fingers and clattered to the floor. He yanked you closer until you could feel his breath and the tremor in his chest where it touched yours.
“Tell me the truth,” he hissed, each word scraping against your cheek. “What is this place? Where am I?”
You both stared at each other then — creator and creation, but neither fully aware yet that the line between you had just shattered.
His grip on your wrist tightened, then slid up to fist the collar of your worn T-shirt. You squeaked out a half-word — a plea or a protest, you didn’t even know — but he yanked you closer, so close you could see the way his pupils flickered and shrank, anger and confusion devouring each other in endless loops.
“Speak!” he barked, his breath hot against your cheek, trembling with something too human for the monster you’d created in ink and pain. “Why is my face everywhere? Why do you know my name? What did you do to me?”
Your hands scrambled at his forearm, your fingers digging into solid muscle that felt far too real under your palms. His strength was terrifying — not superhuman, but human enough to bruise you, break you. Yet your eyes, wide and glassy, locked on his with a quiet that made his throat seize up.
You didn’t look like his victims did. You weren’t begging for mercy — not exactly.
You looked at him like you knew him. Like you pitied him. Like you were seconds from confessing something so heavy it might crush you both right there on your cluttered floor. And that look twisted behind his ribs, scraping at something raw he didn’t have a name for. It made him angrier than any lie ever could.
“STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!” His snarl split the stale air, rattling the lamp and your bones alike. In a blind lash of frustration, he shoved you backward.
You hit the floor hard — a dull, shocking thud — and the breath punched out of your lungs. For a heartbeat, the ceiling blurred above you as you sucked in air like a drowning thing.
Above you, he staggered back, both hands raking through his hair so hard you thought he might rip it out by the roots. His chest heaved as he spun in a frantic circle, eyes snatching at every scrap of himself plastered on your walls — young, old, laughing, bleeding, always wrong but always him.
“Why…?!” His voice cracked like splitting ice. He slammed a fist into the drywall beside your pinned sketches, rattling a cascade of thumbtacks to the floor. “Why am I drawn?! Who am I?!”
He turned back toward you, but the snarl had broken. Beneath the fury, you could see it now — the terror, the desperate wanting to understand. Something no amount of hate mail or final drafts had ever prepared you to face in flesh and bone.
You lay there, chest hitching. But before you could shape even a single word— before he could hear anything from you, his eyes flickered — the anger flickered — and something inside him cracked like a mirror catching the sun.
Wonwoo staggered back a step, pupils blown wide and then drifting somewhere you couldn’t reach. Not here. Not with you. Somewhere deeper.
He blinked once. Twice.
The harsh yellow of your desk lamp flickered into a single dusty sunbeam slicing through grimy library windows. The slap of your heartbeat faded under the dry hush of turning pages and a far-off cough from the lone librarian.
His fists clenched around something soft — thin paper under his knuckles, the cover folding where his nails bit too deep. The Little Prince lay splayed across his knees, right where it had been before he’d vanished. Page 24, the fox waiting patiently in its ink lines.
His chest rose in a shudder. He twisted in his old wooden chair, eyes searching the cracked marble floor, the tall shelves, the drifting motes of dust caught in afternoon light. No blood. No trembling voice whispering secrets he couldn’t bear. No walls covered in his stolen face.
Just books. Just silence. Just him — and the tremor in his ribs that insisted he was real enough to fear his own heartbeat.
Wonwoo pressed a palm flat over his chest, feeling that traitorous pulse hammer against his skin.
“...What the hell…?” he murmured to no one but the echoes, voice hoarse, softer than the rustle of pages.
He didn’t know if he’d dreamed you — or if, for a moment, he’d woken up from the lie he’d always believed was his only truth.
He didn’t know at all.
*
It had happened a month before you ever dared to draw him bleeding into the snow.
You told yourself it was stress — that infamous “artist’s madness” everyone joked about when deadlines crawled into your dreams and stole your sleep. You’d laughed about it once. Maybe you should’ve laughed harder while you still could.
Because the first time you saw him — standing solid in your apartment, warm breath ghosting over your cheek, eyes glinting with a predator’s confusion — you realized madness was too gentle a word.
The grip of his hand on your wrist. The rasp of his voice demanding truths you couldn’t give. The faint heat of his forearm brushing yours when he leaned too close. None of it was paper or ink or your exhausted brain short-circuiting after too many all-nighters.
He was too human to ignore.
You went to the psychiatrist the next day, trembling so badly you spilled water down your chin when they offered you a paper cup. You told them — haltingly — that you were seeing things. That you’d made a monster and now he wouldn’t stay on the page.
They asked if you heard voices.
You said yes — his.
They scribbled notes you couldn’t read.
They gave you pills.
This will help with the hallucinations, they promised, their smile stretching too wide. Take them before bed. Sleep will help you separate fiction from reality.
But sleep didn’t save you.
Because sometime later — maybe days, maybe weeks (you’d stopped counting) — Wonwoo came back. Not with confusion this time, but with a polished gun clenched in his steady hand. Just like you’d written him. Just like you’d drawn him a hundred times, perfect and terrifying.
He cornered you in your kitchen, stainless steel cold under your back, barrel kissing your temple while his eyes searched you like an unsolvable riddle.
“Who am I really?” he hissed, every word precise and soft, the way you’d loved scripting his lines. “What did you do to me? Why do I exist like this?”
You could barely choke out an answer. It wasn’t the gun that broke you — it was the way his desperation bled through the barrel and sank into your bones.
It drove you mad.
He ate your sleep. He gnawed at your sanity, your drafts, your trust in your own hands. It was like watching your mind rot from the inside out — and you had made him this way.
So you did the only thing left that made sense to your splintering mind: you decided to kill him first.
Hansol would help you. Hansol, your poor righteous hero who had always deserved to bury the monster who made him suffer. It wasn’t the plot you’d started with — no, Wonwoo had been just another chess piece to deepen Hansol’s tragedy — but readers had twisted him into something you couldn’t control anymore. Something they worshipped more than the hero.
So you locked yourself away for three nights that blurred into one long, jagged heartbeat. You didn’t let Soonyoung touch a single panel. You didn’t sleep. You didn’t eat. You just drew — every drop of your fear and rage bleeding through your pen until the final stroke sealed your freedom.
Two stabs in the chest. Snow blooming red. A villain dying alone.
You uploaded the episode before your own hands could betray you. Before your fear could beg you to save him again.
And when the server confirmed the update, when Soonyoung’s panicked messages blinked unanswered on your phone, you sank to the floor under your desk and laughed — raw, exhausted, almost hysterical.
You had finally killed him.
You were free.
*
You woke up from a thin, drugged sleep — the kind where dreams and nightmares bleed into each other, where you half-believed you’d finally banished him for good.
But the scream that dragged you awake wasn’t yours.
At first, you thought it was just the pipes moaning through the walls, or maybe your own throat raw from nights spent mumbling his name like a curse. But then you heard it again — a choked, guttural rasp coming from your kitchen.
Your feet hit the cold floor before your brain caught up. You stumbled through the half-lit apartment, pills and papers crunching under your soles.
And then you saw him.
Jeon Wonwoo, sprawled in a mess of dark, glossy blood against your cabinet doors. Pale skin splotched crimson, shirt clinging wet to the ragged wounds carved right where your stylus had last touched the tablet: two deep stabs in his chest, red soaking the linoleum beneath him like spilled ink.
His eyes fluttered up at you — glassy, struggling to focus. But they were still his eyes: sharp even dulled by agony, beautiful even in ruin.
Your mouth opened, but your voice cracked like an old record.
“Oh my god, Is it real?” you whispered, the question trembling from your lips before you could stop it. You sank to your knees, heedless of the blood soaking into your sweatpants.
He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that made your skin crawl. His fingers twitched weakly, groping at the floor until they found the hem of your shirt — grasped it like a lifeline.
“Help me…” he rasped, the syllables bubbling through the blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes locked on yours — not cruel now, not mocking. Just a man begging, like he’d never begged for anything before. “Save me. Please.”
And you — fool, creator, god trembling before your own monster — you pressed your shaking hands over the wounds you had given him. You felt the heat of his blood seep through your fingers, felt the heartbeat stuttering beneath your palms.
Your tears dripped onto his cheek, mixing with sweat and red and the last thread of whatever sanity you still had.
“I killed you,” you whispered, voice breaking. “I killed you — why are you still here?”
Wonwoo’s lips parted, but no words came out — only a shuddering exhale that smelled of iron and loss. His grip on your shirt tightened, a pitiful strength for a man who once slit throats without flinching. Now he clung to you as if you were the only thing left tethering him to breath, to pain, to existing.
“Don’t… don’t let me go,” he gasped, the plea breaking apart in his throat. A violent tremor coursed through him, blood bubbling between your fingers as he tried to hold himself together by sheer will. His eyes searched yours, desperate and terrified — the look of a man meeting the void and wanting anything but its cold mercy.
You choked on a sob so raw it burned your lungs. This was wrong. This was so wrong. He was your nightmare, your villain — you had sculpted every cruel smirk, every crime, every unredeemable sin. He deserved this ending. You had given him this ending.
So why did it hurt like you were killing him again?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” You pressed harder, your hands slick with him, your voice shaking apart with each word. “You weren’t supposed to suffer this long, Wonwoo, you weren’t—”
His eyes rolled back for a second and you panicked, slapping his cheek lightly, your tears splattering on his ashen face. Your vision blurred. Your heartbeat pounded against the cage of your ribs like it would tear free to keep him alive if you failed.
You grabbed his clammy face between your shaking hands and pressed your forehead to his, breath mingling with the scent of metal and sweat and the ink of your own sins.
“I’ll fix it, Wonwoo. I swear to God, I’ll fix it. Just stay.”
Somewhere deep in him, past the pain, the violence, the villainy, you felt him believe you — just for a heartbeat. His eyes slipped shut, his lips moving in a ghost of a word you almost didn’t catch.
“...please.”
It was enough to break you. It was enough to make you crawl through hell again — for him, your monster, your fault, your unfinished prayer.
You remembered.
The stranger at his funeral — the faceless silhouette standing under the gray rain while everyone else turned away. You hadn’t named him, hadn’t given him lines, hadn’t even told Soonyoung who he was supposed to be. He was just there — a margin in the story, a whisper you’d meant to revisit but never did.
The Margin.
Your heart stuttered with something like hope — foolish, desperate hope — as you cradled Wonwoo’s head against your chest, your fingers trembling in his hair sticky with sweat.
Maybe they could help. Maybe the forgotten ones could fix what you broke.
With one arm wrapped around Wonwoo’s shaking shoulders, you fumbled for your laptop on the blood-slicked floor. Your palm left crimson smears across the touchpad as you dragged up your hidden folder — the one you never showed Soonyoung or the publisher. Drafts. Abandoned arcs. Ghosts with names you never spoke aloud.
You clicked The Margin.
The folder flickered open: dozens of half-finished files, lines of dialogue that led nowhere, silhouettes that waited to be drawn. Unused, unseen, but breathing in the dark corners of your mind.
You whispered like a prayer to the screen, to the hidden codes, to the characters you’d once left behind:
“Help me… please, help me save him…”
Wonwoo stirred in your lap, groaning weakly, blood pooling warmer under your thighs. His hand twitched near the laptop’s edge, as if even dying he was tethered to the story that birthed him.
And then — the cursor froze.
The screen dimmed.
A hiss of static crawled up your spine.
The light in your apartment flickered, once, twice — then darkness swallowed everything. Not the gentle dark of a power outage — but a pulling, as if the shadows under your bed had grown teeth and wanted you back.
Your breath caught in your throat. You clutched Wonwoo tighter as the chill pressed into your skin, dragging at your consciousness like greedy hands. The laptop fan whirred one last time — then died.
And before your scream could escape, the world folded in on itself.
*
You wake slowly — not with a jolt, but like drifting up from deep water.
At first, you feel warmth against your cheek, the faint scent of wild grass, the sound of leaves whispering overhead. You blink your eyes open to a sky so wide and blue it makes your chest ache.
You’re lying in a clearing beneath a canopy of ancient trees. Sunlight filters through branches heavy with wind-chimes made from broken pens and paper scraps — your paper scraps, you realize with a jolt, words you once threw away now dancing above you like blessings.
Around you, winding stone paths lead to mismatched wooden bookshelves, some leaning sideways under the weight of dusty tomes, others half-swallowed by flowering vines. Low stone benches circle each shelf like tiny reading shrines. It feels like a park built from every soft daydream you’ve ever had about books and second chances.
And the people—
Your breath hitches.
Scattered in the grass and along the benches, you see them: men and women, young and old, draped in half-familiar clothes. A girl in a yellow raincoat you never finished writing a storm for. A man with an eyepatch, reading aloud to a group of children that never made it past your old notebook margin. A boy with wild hair and a grin so sharp it cuts through your memory — Seungkwan, your trickster, alive here like a rumor the world forgot.
They pause, one by one, as if sensing your heartbeat quicken. Heads lift from open pages. Eyes lock on you — not with blame, but a solemn recognition. The ones you abandoned, the ones you swore you’d come back for but never did.
And then you remember —
You sit up so fast the world spins. Next to you, half-cradled in the curve of your body, lies Wonwoo. His head rests against your thigh, dark hair sticking to a forehead slick with sweat. His chest rises and falls in shallow, trembling breaths — but he’s breathing. Still warm. Still real.
You brush his cheek with shaking fingers. His lashes flutter, but he doesn’t wake.
When you look up again, the characters are closer now. Forming a quiet circle. Some carry books — your books. Others hold old sketches, pages you thought you lost forever. One by one, they study you and the bleeding villain in your lap.
Seungkwan steps forward first. Mischief flickers in his eyes, but this time, it’s tempered by something older, wiser — the part of him you always imagined but never wrote down.
“Well, look who crawled back to the margins,” he says, voice a soft laugh that drifts through the leaves. He flicks a glance at Wonwoo and then back at you, tilting his head.
“You’ve brought him.”
He nods at Wonwoo — your monster, your contradiction, your bloodstained fox under the oak tree.
Around you, the others murmur like turning pages, some curious, some wary, all impossibly alive.
The garden hushes again, waiting for your answer — the answer that might heal the bruised stories still breathing between these pages, and the villain in your arms who was never just bad or good, but something painfully, beautifully human.
Your mouth opens, but no sound comes out — only the raw scrape of your breath fighting through disbelief.
Seungkwan watches you patiently, like a cat waiting to see if its prey will bolt or beg. Behind him, more of them drift closer through the rustling garden paths: half-finished dreams wearing your words like borrowed skin.
Your heart stutters when you see him — Joshua. Not the angel, not the saint you meant to finish someday, but the tired, gentle father you once scribbled lines for on a rainy bus ride. He stands a little apart from the others, a little sad around the eyes. A small girl clings to his trouser leg, peeking shyly at you from behind his knee — the daughter you never got to name.
Your lips form his name before you can stop yourself.
“Joshua…”
He smiles at you, soft and forgiving. It guts you more than anger ever could. He rests a protective hand on his daughter’s hair but doesn’t come closer. He just nods, as if to say: I knew you’d find your way here, eventually.
Your gaze skitters past him — and snags on a figure leaning against an old iron lamppost, arms crossed, a familiar smirk playing at his mouth.
Kim Mingyu.
The vice captain you made too reckless, too golden, too big-hearted for his own good. His letterman jacket is unzipped, wind tugging at his hair, just like in the final match scene you never wrote. He lifts two fingers in a lazy salute when he catches your stare, but there’s a bruise blossoming under his eye — the fight you’d planned but never finished.
And beside a shelf blooming with lilacs, half-shadowed, you spot him: Jihoon.
The wizard who once studied charms in a castle built of your childhood wonder. His robes are dusty, ink stains his fingers, and a battered spellbook dangles from his wrist. His gaze is sharp, calculating, but when your eyes meet, there’s a softness there too — the forgiveness of someone who understands how many drafts a miracle can take.
You sink back on your heels, your hands trembling where they cradle Wonwoo’s sweat-damp hair. He groans faintly in your lap, dragging you back to the sick reality of flesh and blood and consequence.
The characters wait. So many shades of you. So many pieces that were never just light or shadow — always both, always alive in the margins.
You swallow, voice barely more than a cracked whisper.
“I don’t… I don’t understand. Why are you all here? Why is he—” you look down at Wonwoo, at the monster turned man, at your fear made helpless in your arms — “Why is he still bleeding? I killed him. I killed him.”
Seungkwan clicks his tongue, crouching so close his grin brushes your panic like a knife.
“No, darling. You wrote an end. That’s not the same as killing.”
Behind him, Joshua’s daughter giggles softly, clutching a flower she’s plucked from the grass. Mingyu tips his head back to watch the clouds drift like torn paper across the sky. Jihoon flips open his spellbook, murmuring under his breath — perhaps already plotting a charm to mend what you’ve broken.
Hansol’s eyes gleam as he leans in, nose almost touching yours.
“This place — the Margin — is where the unfinished things wait. Good, bad, broken, hopeful. Us. You. Him.” He flicks a glance at Wonwoo. “You gave him too much of yourself to truly die. You stitched kindness into his cruelty. You doubted him, and you loved him. And now — here he is. Asking you to decide which part of him gets to live.”
The wind stirs the pages on every shelf, like a thousand heartbeats holding their breath.
“Tell us, author…” Seungkwan purrs, voice warm and deadly all at once.
“Will you keep running from your monsters — or will you set them free?”
Wonwoo’s breath stirs weakly against your thigh, then catches on a soft, pained laugh. His eyelids flutter — heavy, reluctant — until they crack open enough to find you, blurry and bright and trembling above him.
His fingers curl in the fabric of your pants, gripping just enough to anchor him to something warm. His lips twitch into a shape that almost resembles a smile, ruined by a tremor of agony.
“Am I…” He coughs, the sound tearing at your chest. His voice is hoarse, but you can hear the ghost of that cruel lilt that once made your readers flinch — twisted now into something childishly fragile.
“Am I in heaven?” He drags in a ragged breath, eyes skimming the sun-dappled leaves above, the soft sway of books and petals drifting on the wind. The other characters — your half-forgotten children — watch him with an odd, quiet sorrow, like old ghosts paying respect.
“Do I… even deserve it?”
Your throat clamps shut around a sob. You want to say yes. You want to say no. You want to scream that this place is not heaven — it’s your fault, your punishment, your miracle.
So you do the only thing your broken creator’s heart can manage: You cradle his face in both palms, pressing your forehead to his. The warmth of him sears your tears clean.
Around you, the Margin seems to breathe — the other characters watching, waiting, their layered stories rustling through the trees like wind through an orchard of second chances.
And in your arms, your monster — your mercy — bleeds and breathes, daring you to decide what you truly believe in his endings.
*
You woke up with a dull ache pounding behind your eyes, the kind that made the ceiling blur and tilt before settling back into focus.
For a breathless moment, you didn’t dare move. You lay there, half-tangled in crisp linen sheets that smelled faintly of old wood and some expensive soap you’d never buy for yourself. A massive window spilled soft morning light across polished floors. Heavy curtains, carved panels — all too grand to be yours.
Your mind reeled, scrambling for something solid. The last thing you remembered was the Margin with Wonwoo.
Your eyes flew open. Wonwoo. Where was he? Was he still bleeding? Still clawing at his own existence?
You pushed yourself upright too fast, the world spinning so viciously you nearly collapsed back onto the pillows.
And then —
“Excuse me…”
The gentle voice startled you. A woman, perhaps in her forties, stood just inside the doorway. She bowed her head politely, her hands folded at her apron front. The soft lines around her eyes crinkled when she offered you a careful smile.
“I’m Mrs. Park,” she said, in a tone so calm it only made your heartbeat worse. “I’ll be the one to serve you while you’re staying here. At Jeon’s house.”
Jeon’s…
The words hit you like ice down your spine. You stared at her, your lips parting, mind skimming frantically through old drafts, background notes, family trees only you ever cared about.
Park… Hyungrim.
Daughter of Jung Seo — Wonwoo’s most loyal servant. A side character you’d named in a margin note, half-intending to give her a line or two someday.
Your gaze flicked from her kind eyes to the unfamiliar grandeur pressing in from every wall. The high ceiling, the carved beams, the muted luxury that felt exactly — horribly — right.
You were in Wonwoo’s world. Inside the fiction. Inside him.
“Park Hyungrim…” you whispered her name aloud, more to prove you hadn’t lost your mind again.
She beamed, seemingly pleased. “Ah, so you do know me, Miss. Master Jeon will be pleased you’re awake. He instructed us not to disturb you until you’d rested properly.”
You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Master Jeon. So polite, so proper — as if he hadn’t once pressed you to the floor with blood on his hands and yours.
You swallowed hard, voice a bare breath. “Where is he?”
Mrs. Park’s smile softened into something almost maternal. “Master Jeon is waiting for you in the study. He said you’d have much to discuss.”
And for the first time since you’d opened your eyes, your pounding head went quiet — replaced by a single, echoing thought that felt both terrifying and inevitable. You were in his world now. And there would be no running from the ending you owed him.
“How… how did I get here?” you croaked out, your voice still raw from sleep and disbelief. You clutched the blanket tighter around your waist, needing something — anything — to anchor you to the fact that this wasn’t another fever dream.
Mrs. Park stepped a little closer, lowering her voice as if sharing an intimate secret. “Master Wonwoo and you were found outside the main gate early this morning. It startled the entire household. Master said you… you saved him.”
Your heart stuttered painfully in your chest. Outside the gate. The Margin. The promise to find the end — did it fling you straight into the story’s spine?
“He was injured,” you whispered, your throat closing around the memory. Blood on your hands, his broken plea: Save me.
“Yes,” Mrs. Park nodded, her eyes shadowing with concern. “Badly hurt. But the doctor came at once. He’s resting well now, stronger than any of us could have hoped.” She hesitated, searching your face as if weighing how much truth to spill. “He insisted no one disturb you. He sat by your bed all night.”
You felt the floor tilt again, but this time it wasn’t the headache — it was the sheer absurd tenderness of it. Your villain, who once threatened to gut you like one of his victims, had guarded your sleep as if you were the fragile thing.
Your lips trembled around the question that slipped free despite yourself. “Why… why did he say I saved him?”
Mrs. Park tilted her head, confusion and gentle fondness mingling in her expression. “Perhaps, Miss… because for Master Jeon, being alive at all — that is your doing, isn’t it?”
You laughed then, an exhausted, broken sound that tasted too close to tears. Because of course. It always came back to you. His pain. His breath. His mercy — or lack of it — all crafted by your hand.
And now you were here. Trapped inside the fiction you’d stitched together.
And somewhere beyond this room, Jeon Wonwoo — the man you’d written to be both monster and tragedy — was awake, waiting, and wanting answers only you could give.
Mrs. Park bowed politely, stepping back to the door. “When you’re ready, Miss… the study is just down the corridor. Master Jeon is waiting for you.”
You padded barefoot down the hallway, trailing your fingertips along the walls — smooth polished wood, the carved crown moulding exactly as you’d drawn it, the embroidered runner soft beneath your feet. It all looked like your story, but living in it turned out to be a maze: corridors twisted into each other, doors you never bothered detailing led to entire wings you’d never planned.
You cursed under your breath when another turn ended in a dead end lined with framed calligraphy and a cold window staring at the courtyard.
“Great,” you muttered, pressing your palm to your forehead. God of this world, but can’t find the villain’s study to save your life.
Then behind you — low, rough, and unmistakable — came the sound of someone clearing their throat.
You spun so fast you nearly slipped on the rug.
Wonwoo stood half-shadowed at the intersection of the hall, leaning more heavily on the wall than he probably wanted you to see. His torso was tightly bandaged under an open black shirt that hung loose on his broad frame, fabric brushing his hips but baring the bruises you’d put there yourself.
His eyes — your undoing every time — locked onto yours, hungry for answers, flickering with relief and raw confusion.
“You’re hopeless,” he rasped, and the corner of his mouth twitched, like he was half-amused, half-pained. He pushed himself upright and nodded his head toward a door just behind him. “You walked past my study twice already.”
You opened your mouth, found nothing useful to say, and snapped it shut again.
Wonwoo’s eyes dragged over you slowly, taking in your disheveled hair, your wide stare, the tremor in your hands. His voice dropped, rough but softer now — maybe for you, maybe for himself.
“Come here. Before you get lost again.”
*
You sank deeper into the cushions, the plush velvet swallowing your shoulders while you watched him — Jeon Wonwoo, your beautiful nightmare — fuss with the buttons of a shirt that didn’t quite hide the bruises or the faint wince every time he moved.
He pulled the old corkboard closer, the squeak of the wheels dragging over the marble floor cutting through the heavy quiet.
Gone were the grainy photographs you’d pinned there for him — Hansol, his mark; that lover he’d used for leverage; the detective’s blurry license plate.
Now only jagged notes scrawled in black marker covered it. The Margin. Source Stream. Memory Loops. Control Points.
Wonwoo faced the board, but his eyes flicked to you in the glass reflection.
“You promised me an ending,” he said, voice calm, but the undercurrent rippled with a threat you couldn’t name. “That’s why we’re back.”
You flinched. Back. Not we’re home. Just back.
“You’re back,” you corrected under your breath, but he heard you, of course. He always heard everything.
Wonwoo’s fingers ghosted over the biggest word in the middle — MARGIN — underlined twice.
He spoke slowly, almost carefully, like testing the edges of a blade.
“We’re connected through The Margin. Because that’s where you pull it all from. The scraps. The lives you half-built. The truths you left unfinished — including me.”
His knuckles tapped the board once, too sharp, too close to anger.
“You sound smart,” you mumbled before you could stop yourself. Regret bloomed immediately.
But instead of snapping, Wonwoo let out a low, humorless laugh — one you’d written for him a hundred times, now bleeding through real lips.
“You made me smart,” he said simply. Then he turned, pinning you to the couch with that impossible, too-human stare.
“Now, creator — Y/n — tell me honestly.” His jaw flexed, the words grinding out like stone.
“What was the goal? Writing me.” 
Your mouth was dry. He waited, breathing ragged in the hush.
In that moment, he looked nothing like the neat lines on your tablet screen — just a man who realized he’d been caged in ink and was clawing for a door.
Your voice cracked at the edges — too much truth pressing out all at once, pushing past the fragile dam of guilt you’d built every time you put your pen down.
“You weren’t supposed to cross both worlds,” you said again, as if saying it twice might shrink the horror of it.
Wonwoo, standing by the board, went still. One hand flexed at his side, restless and half-curled like he wasn’t sure whether to reach for you or for your throat.
“But you…” Your breath hitched. Your eyes blurred at the memory — your dingy apartment lit by the flicker of your desk lamp, your own wrists bruised where he’d pinned you. His voice, a low growl in the dark: Tell me who I am.
“I thought it was all a dream,” you confessed, voice no louder than the rustle of papers drifting behind him. “You came to my place. You threatened me. You aimed a gun at my head. You haunted me. And I—”
You swallowed, shame sour on your tongue. “I thought I was crazy.”
Wonwoo’s jaw twitched, but his eyes didn’t leave yours. When he spoke, his tone was stripped bare of any monster’s snarl — only weary certainty: You’d written him too deep. You’d made him want more.
“That night,” you whispered, voice trembling as you looked at the neat bandage peeking from his open collar, “when I realized I’d lost control of you, I decided your end. I had to finish you — I had to end it…”
He tilted his head, eyes dark and searching, as if reading the unwritten pages still hiding behind your ribs.
“You always planned to kill me, didn’t you?” His tone was half-accusation, half plea.
“No — I never tried to kill you,” you blurted out, voice cracking as your hands clenched uselessly in your lap. “You were… you were there for Hansol. I needed you, Wonwoo. I needed you to break him, to build him, to—”
“But you were about to kill me, Y/n!”
Your name in his mouth tasted like rust and accusation, each syllable bitten off like he resented having to say it at all.
“Because you— you started to fight for your life!” you cried, the confession tumbling out raw. “You weren’t supposed to want it that badly. It scared me!”
His laugh came out sharp, cracked at the edges. “I scared you?”
There was something so small and so vicious in his eyes, the thing you’d written into him — a monster, but too human to accept that word quietly.
“You never did,” you whispered, shoulders sagging. “Not until that.”
A tense silence pooled between you. Wonwoo’s tongue darted to the corner of his lip, catching a drop of blood from where he’d bitten it. He looked at you like he might devour you or collapse at your feet — and he hated both options.
Then, in a sudden, tired gesture, he turned away, palm flattening on the board so hard the paper pinned beneath it crumpled.
“Enough. Let’s talk again tomorrow,” he said lowly, not looking back. 
You rose from the couch on unsteady legs, the taste of your name still burning on his tongue long after you slipped from the study’s doorway.
*
You woke up to the faint clink of porcelain and the soft rustle of fabric. Park Hyungrim stood by your bed, her hands folded politely in front of her apron as if she hadn’t just arranged half your breakfast and an entire boutique in your room.
“Good morning, Miss,” she said with a slight bow. Her voice was calm, gentle — the way you’d scripted her mother, Jung Seo, to soothe the monsters that haunted Wonwoo’s halls. Now the daughter did the same, but for you instead.
On your nightstand: toast still warm, a delicate cup of tea, fresh fruit you hadn’t seen since your last attempt at healthy living.
And beside your bed, servants flitted in and out, arranging a small forest of dresses, blouses, skirts, even shoes you’d never pick for yourself.
“Master Wonwoo had these prepared,” Hyungrim explained, her tone betraying neither judgment nor curiosity. “He also wishes for me to show you around the house once you’re ready.”
You sat up slowly, blinking at a cream silk blouse hanging from a carved oak rack — your reflection caught in the brass mirror behind it, hair a mess, hoodie collar stretched, sweatpants wrinkled at the knee.
Your life at home: instant ramen, half-finished scripts, coffee stains. This life now: gold-thread curtains, high windows, an entire wardrobe you never asked for.
A hollow laugh slipped past your lips before you could swallow it.
You made him — made all this — and now he wants to give you a tour like some polite landlord showing a clueless tenant around her own mind.
“Miss?” Hyungrim asked softly, eyes kind but too observant for comfort.
You dragged your eyes from the silk and forced a smile.
“Okay. I’ll get ready.”
And as you ran your fingers over fine cotton and delicate lace, one thought drummed under your ribs:
He’s more than what I wrote. And maybe… so is this world.
Hyungrim’s footsteps were soft but unhesitating on the polished floors, her voice steady as she guided you past rooms you half-recognized from your sketches and half-felt for the first time with your own skin.
Your mind, though, barely clung to her words about family portraits, study halls, and the greenhouse behind the east wing.
Instead, your thoughts drifted down familiar back alleys and precinct corridors in another part of this world — the threads you’d woven so carelessly late at night and left dangling because life, or heartbreak, or deadlines got in the way.
Hansol. Your reckless police officer hero who was more fists than caution tape, always coming home bruised but never beaten.
Dokyeom. Bright-eyed chief of Team 3, all warmth until he slipped on gloves. Sihye. Your breath caught on that name. Your sister’s eyes, your sister’s laugh — borrowed, resurrected as a gentle doctor tending to broken bones and broken men in a city that didn’t deserve her softness. 
You snapped back when Hyungrim stopped at the main doors, bowing lightly.
“Miss?”
You turned to her, your chest so tight it made your voice come out raw.
“Hyungrim, I need to go into town.”
Hyungrim didn’t flinch. She only dipped her head again — your unwavering servant in every version of this story.
“Yes, Master Wonwoo mentioned you might wish to explore. He has arranged a car and driver for your comfort and safety.”
You half-laughed, half-scoffed, words spilling fast. “But I need cash, Hyungrim — real money.”
Hyungrim nodded as if you’d asked for tea instead of freedom.
“I’ll prepare your bag immediately, Miss. Please wait here a moment.”
And as you stood by the carved doors of the Jeon estate — your own palace, your own cage — you wondered if your characters would even want to see you.
After all, what did you ever give them but unfinished endings and borrowed hope?
*
Wonwoo stepped out of the glass-walled dining lounge just as the midday sun dipped behind passing clouds, softening the sharp lines of the towering skyline that hemmed his empire in steel and secrets. He slipped on his sunglasses, ignoring the bowing host trailing behind him with murmured thanks.
Jun — his right hand since VEIN’s inception — matched his pace easily, a discreet file tucked under one arm and a subtle bulge of a sidearm under his jacket.
“Mr. Jeon,” Jun began as they passed the marble lobby’s silent fountains. “The board is satisfied with your agreement. The Ministry liaison will handle the new shipment from Busan.”
Wonwoo gave a curt nod, mind only half on the logistics of memory chip couriers and clinic expansions. He was already sifting through the next puzzle: you. His unexpected, stubborn guest still tucked away under his roof like a secret he couldn’t burn.
A discreet vibration against his palm drew him back — Jun handed over a slim phone. He flicked through the latest security update: your breakfast, your walk with Hyungrim, your request for money — and now, a note that you’d left in a black sedan headed toward the old river district.
“Curious little god,” he murmured to himself. What are you digging for this time?
Wonwoo’s eyes found Hansol instantly. Even in the gentle bustle of lunch hour crowds, Hansol looked like tension made flesh: clean blazer, faint holster imprint under the left arm, a restless glint that had never dulled despite his disgrace. A woman walked beside him, slim in a pale coat — Sihye, the doctor. Wonwoo’s jaw tensed around a crooked half-smile. You always gave him someone good to protect. Even if he had to bleed for it.
“That’s Officer Choi,” Jun repeated, voice low. “He… hasn’t given up, sir.”
Wonwoo adjusted his cuffs, then let his gaze linger on Hansol’s silhouette in the crowd.
“He was never written to give up,” he said simply — almost fond, almost pitying — before slipping into the waiting car, doors thudding shut like the click of a rifle bolt behind him.
The engine purred alive. Through the tinted window, Wonwoo allowed himself one more glance at the stubborn detective you loved so much — the loyal hound you’d set on his trail long before he himself knew he deserved to be hunted.
He closed his eyes as the city slid by. The day Wonwoo first felt the fracture in his own mind was the day he named his kingdom: VEIN — an unassuming biotech front woven tightly with a network of data brokers, black market pharma, and discreet clinics for the desperate rich and the dangerous sick. A perfect name, he thought. A lifeline and a chokehold.
He’d once believed every ambition in him was his own: the sleepless nights in overseas libraries, the charm he sharpened at law school roundtables, the hands he dirtied in Seoul’s neon alleys — all stepping stones for a man who wanted power to flow through him like blood through a vein.
But then there was that cop.
A routine nuisance at first — a mere local detective trying to pry open VEIN’s clinic back doors with cheap warrants and moral righteousness. A flick of Wonwoo’s finger could have erased him. One bullet, one whisper to a debt shark. Simple.
Yet he didn’t.
Instead, Wonwoo found himself sparring with the man, baiting him into dead ends, feeding him crumbs of false evidence, watching the frustration carve lines into the officer’s youthful face.
Choi Hansol. Young, tireless, irritatingly incorruptible. Wonwoo could have ended him a dozen times. But he didn’t. He didn’t even want to.
Instead, he played.
He toyed with the righteous dog long past reason, sabotaging raids only to leak hints later. He twisted Hansol’s life just enough to keep him close — but never close enough to break free.
And the strangest part? It made no sense. Wonwoo was never so indulgent. Never so sentimental. Never so careless. And yet, a hunger for this dance dug itself into his marrow, whispering “more.”
So when he first breached the boundary — stumbled through the shadow between his world and yours — he found the truth scrawled across an old sketch in your apartment. He was written that way. The ambition. The hunger. The odd fascination with a cop he should hate. The compulsive mercy that made no sense for a man like him.
He wasn’t a king at all. Just a creature on strings — greed stitched in by your pen, compassion dripped in when you were feeling soft.
VEIN had never been his alone. It was a monster’s dream borrowed from your sleepless nights. And every time Hansol’s stubborn eyes flashed with defiance, Wonwoo saw not just an enemy — but your favorite blade.
Jun, strapped in the front beside the driver, spoke with the hesitant tone he reserved for anything concerning you.
“Sir… it seems your guest has caused a scene.”
Wonwoo didn’t bother looking up from the report file in his lap.
“Main station confirmed: she attacked someone. They’re holding her for questioning.”
Wonwoo shut the folder gently. The slap of paper closing made Jun flinch more than any shout would have. Wonwoo’s mouth curled — but not into a smile. A cruel twist, more irritation than amusement.
“Drive to the station. Now.”
He leaned his head back against the seat, jaw tensing until it ached. Outside the tinted window, the river glittered in the distance — the same place where he first tested how far your invisible leash would stretch.
Now you were tangled in your own plot and Wonwoo wondered if you could survive him.
Wonwoo’s shoes clicked on the station’s cold tile floor, each step an echo loud enough to hush the low murmur of busy officers. Jun shadowed him, silent and sharp-eyed.
He didn’t bother greeting Hansol — only let his gaze sweep the scene: you, a mess of stubborn defiance and trembling wrists, seated across a metal table; Hansol and that same woman standing guard like a mismatched pair of guardian angels.
Wonwoo’s voice cut the tension like a scalpel.
“She’s my guest. My people will take care of this.”
Hansol stood immediately, his chair scraping back so hard it nearly toppled.
“This is a police station, Jeon. We do things under policy. She stays until this is settled properly.”
Wonwoo’s smirk was an insult and a promise in one curve of his mouth. He didn’t even spare Hansol a full glance — eyes flicking instead to you, assessing: your raw knuckles, your bitten lip, the manic shine barely hidden under that exhausted guilt.
“My person,” Wonwoo enunciated slowly, “will have it settled. Officer Choi.”
Hansol bristled, heat climbing his throat. The other officer — some senior detective — stepped in quickly, a hand on Hansol’s arm, voice placating:
“Hansol. Let it go. Sir Jeon, we’ll discuss this with your lawyer. Please have her stand up.”
You didn’t move. You stared at the floor — at the faint stain of your own drama playing out like spilled ink. But Hansol’s voice broke that moment of retreat. “She attacked Sihye!” His voice cracked.
Wonwoo’s steps were unhurried as he guided you out of the suffocating air of the station. Eyes darting for threats that didn’t dare appear while Wonwoo’s presence darkened the exit like a stormcloud.
Outside, the sun was sharp, the street too ordinary for the mess you’d caused inside.
But Hansol followed. Of course he did. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders tight with barely caged defiance. He barked past you, straight to the man you’d written as his enemy.
“Are you his girlfriend?” His eyes cut to you, unblinking. “Do you know what he does?”
Wonwoo didn’t stop walking until he did — a single pivot on his heel, the sudden stillness more violent than any blow. The grin was small but lethal, a blade turned politely outward.
“You should know when to close your mouth, Officer Choi. I taught you plenty, didn’t I?” His head tilted slightly, an animal’s warning.
You hovered wordless by Wonwoo’s shoulder, the only sound of your quickened breathing. When Hansol stepped closer, you instinctively shrank behind Wonwoo’s broad back. Ironic — how the hero you’d made to save others now looked at you like you were a mistake, and the villain you’d built to ruin lives shielded you like a wall.
Hansol’s eyes flicked down to your shoes, up to the faint bruise near your collarbone. Each detail stoked the anger in his jawline.
“She doesn’t have an ID. No records, no prints — no one knows her. Another name to vanish under your rug, Jeon?”
At that, Wonwoo’s hand swept behind him, palm pressing against your hip to pull you closer into his shadow. A quiet, possessive gesture that made Hansol’s fists ball deep in his coat pockets.
“Let’s meet again — on real business, Officer Choi.” Wonwoo’s voice lowered into silk lined with iron. “Bring your gun next time. Maybe it’ll make a difference.”
He guided you toward the waiting black sedan, the tinted door swinging open as his driver slipped ahead to clear the path.
Behind you, Hansol’s voice cracked the air one last time, rough with something dangerously close to grief:
“I see she's yours, Jeon.”
Wonwoo didn’t answer. He only nudged you gently into the backseat — his monster’s promise warm at your shoulder, the door slamming shut between you and the world you’d written for him to devour.
He leaned one shoulder against your bedroom doorframe, arms folded loosely across his chest — looking more at home than you ever did, though this was technically your mind made real, your words given walls and floors and furniture.
“First day here and you already managed to get yourself locked up in a police station.”
His voice was deceptively calm, dark amusement simmering beneath the chill. He clicked his tongue, a small, mocking laugh escaping him. “You really don’t know how to live a life, do you?”
You sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, legs tucked under the unfamiliar nightgown Hyungrim had laid out for you. The lace collar scratched your collarbone — too pretty for the way your chest felt tight and raw.
“You weren’t supposed to find out so soon,” you muttered, eyes darting to the floor. “Or Sihye, or Hansol— I didn’t plan—”
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. “That’s your excuse for everything, isn’t it?”
You flinched as he stopped before you, close enough to see the faint bruise blooming along the line of his bandages, where your betrayal still lived in his flesh.
“Why did you hug her?” he asked, quieter now — not the villain’s voice, but something more human, more disappointed. “The doctor.”
You squeezed your fists in your lap, nails digging half-moons into your palms. “She shouldn’t have looked that much like her. I — I panicked.”
A silence fell between you, heavy with everything you never intended to write. Wonwoo crouched down, knees cracking softly. He looked up at you from beneath dark lashes, eyes sharp yet weary — a predator forced to carry its wounded prey.
And then — softer, almost too soft for your chest to bear. “Rest. You’ll need it. Tomorrow, you’ll tell me exactly how you plan to end this story.”
He stood, the room suddenly emptier as his shadow slipped back to the door. Leaving you with the ache of every word you’d ever written that never learned how to stay safely on the page.
Your plan sounded logical — on paper, anyway. A neat conclusion, a redemption arc, a sacrifice to balance out all the blood and secrets you’d poured into him.
But the second the words left your mouth that morning in his study, you regretted them.
Wonwoo laughed. Not a quiet, amused laugh — but the kind that cracked through his teeth like glass under a boot. He tossed his pen aside and shoved away from his desk so hard the heavy chair scraped the floor like a threat.
In three strides he was before you, and you nearly flinched when the shadow of his frame fell over yours. His arms shot out — one hand slamming the wall beside your head, the other braced against the bookshelf behind you — boxing you in with the sharp scent of his cologne and the faint, metallic tang of wounds still healing beneath his shirt.
“This,” he hissed through clenched teeth, voice trembling at the edges of his rage, “this is your grand plan for my ending? I rot in a cell so your precious hero can stand above my grave and bathe in pity?”
He snapped his chin toward the coffee table where your folder lay, pages bleeding out like open veins. With a guttural snarl, he grabbed the whole thing and hurled it so hard the papers burst apart mid-air — drifting down behind the sofa like feathers, mockingly gentle against the storm in his chest.
“Fuck!”
He turned away, fingers clawing at his hair until the strands stood wild and jagged. You could see it — the tremor in his shoulders, the truth that fear mixed with fury when a monster realizes its own cage.
Your knees threatened to buckle, but you gripped the shelf at your back so you wouldn’t collapse under the weight of your own creation.
“You want me to surrender everything I crawled through blood for? The money, the power — the way they tremble when they whisper my name?” He stabbed a finger at the floor-to-ceiling window behind him, where the city glittered like prey under moonlight. “You want me to kneel so that bastard cop can stand over my corpse and call himself righteous?”
His laugh split the air again — brittle, a knife dragged over glass.
“Tell me, Creator — where in me did you ever write the word mercy?”
When he turned back, his eyes locked on you — sharp and wild and too human for something you’d crafted in a midnight draft.
Your breath snagged in your throat. You felt it — your heart drumming terror into your ribs because he was right. You’d made him a monster with a mind sharp enough to hate it.
“I don’t want you to break…” you whispered, your voice trembling like your hands.
He crowded closer, so close your back pressed deeper into the books. His forehead nearly touched yours; his next words were a threat and a plea wrapped in a confession of all he couldn’t control.
“Then write a better end, Y/n.” His breath ghosted your lips, hot and ragged.
“Or I’ll carve one myself — and you won’t get your happy ending this time.”
You returned to the Margin that night — or maybe it was dawn, or dusk. Time curled strangely there, bending to the flick of your desperation like pages warping under rain.
You stumbled past the familiar oak trees and scattered benches, your footsteps echoing over the soft grass. Here, characters who had once whispered secrets in your dreams paused to watch you. Some nodded in silent greeting, others simply kept reading, bound to their fates between covers you’d left half-shut.
You collapsed by the fountain near the center — the heart of your abandoned stories. Your fingers trembled as you tugged open the folder on your lap, pages yellowed by neglect but still humming with promise.
Title by title. Year by year. Notes scribbled in your tired college nights, outlines drafted on train rides, character sheets born in the blur between heartbreak and caffeine. You read them all — searching for loopholes you’d never written, prayers hidden in subplots you’d discarded.
Somewhere, you thought, you must have planted a seed for him.
Something good.
Then you found it.
*
You pressed your back into the old wooden chair in the library’s quietest corner, the smell of aging pages and dust grounding you more than the marble halls of Wonwoo’s estate ever could.
Myungho was probably still in the car, chain-smoking nervously because you’d threatened to fire him — a laughable bluff, considering he’d take Wonwoo’s word over yours any day. But at least he’d left you alone for now.
Your fingers traced the frayed spine of The Little Prince, that battered comfort you’d clung to as a kid when walls trembled with your parents’ anger, when love cracked apart in the dark and you had nowhere else to sleep but under your own thoughts.
You flipped to the chapter you always returned to — the fox and his quiet plea: “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
A bitter smile tugged at your lips. You never intended to tame Wonwoo. But you did.
Your thumb lingered on the delicate illustration, the tiny prince’s scarf flaring in a wind that had never been kind enough to you, either.
Somewhere between the sentences, the library’s hum softened to a hush so deep it pressed against your eardrums. The fluorescent lights flickered, warped into a golden dusk that wasn’t there before.
You knew this feeling.
The pull — not of this library, but the Library.
A door to the Margin within the real world.
You’d cracked it open before, half-asleep at your old studio desk.
And now it opened for you again.
The fox on the page seemed to lift its head. The paper prince turned slightly in your mind’s eye. And you felt yourself drawn under — not drowning, but drifting deeper into words you’d once written to save yourself.
You were back in your stories, hunting for another answer buried in the lines.
You closed your eyes against the library’s glow and whispered into the hush, “Show me another way to save him. Before he destroys everything… before he destroys me.”
And the fox — or the book — or the Margin itself — answered with the faint rustle of pages turning themselves.
You barely noticed how the chatter of the students nearby faded into a dull echo, how the dusty light filtering through the high windows blurred to a soft glow behind your lashes.
Your finger rested on the line you’d underlined years ago — “One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets oneself be tamed…”
A brittle laugh bubbled up your throat.
Isn’t that what you did to him?
Tamed a monster with half-baked mercy and lonely nights, then recoiled when he turned his fangs on you for answers.
Your vision pulsed — the black letters swimming — until the margin of the page bled outward, curling up at the edges like burned paper.
And then you were falling through it.
The musty library air thinned, replaced by the dry, warm hush of your own constructed nowhere — the Margin — infinite aisles of half-born ideas, boxed scenes, handwritten scraps you’d never shown anyone.
Your old apartment unit.
Inside, the air smelled like dust and stale instant noodles. Everything was exactly as you’d left it — the stack of dog-eared manuscripts on the tiny desk, the mug with three pens and a single dying highlighter, the sticky note on the mirror that read You owe them an ending.
Your throat tightened. You owe him an ending, you corrected yourself this time. You caught yourself on a shelf labeled VEIN — Early Drafts. Behind it: folders and loose pages, secrets too grim to publish, dreams too soft to stand in the real world. You dragged your fingertips over the binders until you hit one marked in your scribbled pen: Characters: Minor/Discarded. Your heart lurched.
This was where the overlooked lived. The side characters, the failed plot devices — the ones you’d promised next time.
You flipped through the folder so fast paper cuts stung your knuckles.
Behind you, the floorboard creaked. You froze, a cold current slicing down your spine. You didn’t dare turn — not until you heard that voice, low and almost gentle, yet heavy enough to press your heart flat against your ribs.
Your eyes met his in the reflection of your mirror: Jeon Wonwoo, leaning casually against your doorframe. Dressed in black again, hair still tousled from the car ride you didn’t know he’d taken right behind you.
He looked impossibly large for this room — for this part of your life that once felt too small for even yourself, let alone him.
Your voice cracked as you twisted to face him fully. “Wonwoo — how are you here? You… you shouldn’t be here. Not here—”
He tilted his head slightly, but this time there was no smirk — only the barest flicker of something unsettled behind his sharp eyes. He looked at you, then past you, as if the peeling wallpaper and flickering dorm light might offer an explanation he’d missed.
He stepped closer, slow but not deliberate this time — more like he was testing if the floor would hold him.
“Where are we?” he asked, voice lower than a whisper, and not for effect. He truly didn’t know. His hand reached for the edge of your desk, gripping it hard enough that your scattered notes trembled.
Your breath caught as you realized it. The monster was lost.
“Wonwoo… this is—” you started, but your throat closed up.
His eyes snapped back to yours, sharp again, though confusion still bled through the cracks.
“This isn’t my house,” he said, more to himself than you. “This smell… the hallway… it’s old. It’s…” He looked you up and down, taking in your clothes, your trembling hands, the ancient little prince book half-buried under a mess of scribbles.
“You dragged me here,” he accused — but it wasn’t the cold venom you knew. It was frustration. A flicker of fear under all that rage.
You shook your head, desperate to make sense of it too.
“I didn’t mean to! I just— I needed a place to think— to fix this—”
Wonwoo barked out a humorless laugh, raking a hand through his hair. The motion exposed the faint line of stitches on his temple — a reminder of your last attempt to control him.
“Fix this,” he echoed, almost mocking but more tired than cruel. He looked around again, at the tiny room that reeked of old anxiety and stale coffee and everything you’d once been.
His eyes found yours again, searching, pleading despite himself.
“What did you do, Y/n? Where did you take us? When did you take us?”
And for the first time since you’d ever written him, you realized he wasn’t your villain or your creation at all — he was a man who’d been dragged across stories and time without a map.
And he was just as scared as you.
You tried to steady your breathing, but the lump in your throat only grew.
“This is… my old studio,” you forced out. “Where I wrote most of you — the early drafts. The first scenes. All those nights when I—”
Your voice caught when his eyes flickered at the word wrote. He was still trying to piece it together. Still fighting it, even now.
“I was looking for answers, Wonwoo. I thought— I thought if I came back to the beginning, maybe I’d find a way to fix you. To fix this.” You gestured weakly around you: the faded curtains, the cracked plaster, the boxes of old manuscripts and half-dead pens you’d hoarded like talismans.
Wonwoo’s throat bobbed as he swallowed whatever curses or threats rattled inside him. He stepped back just enough to lean against your rickety bookshelf, arms crossed tight over his chest like he needed to hold himself together.
“I was in my office,” he said, voice low but clear — a confession forced through clenched teeth. “I had a meeting. Jun was reporting about you — how you were poking around an entertainment agency building. And then—”
He broke off, brow furrowing as if he could claw the memory back from the haze. His gaze flicked to the grimy window, the taped-up corner of your old laptop, the dog-eared books that made up the bones of who you used to be.
Wonwoo’s breath hitched as his hands planted on either side of you, caging you against the edge of your old desk. The tiny lamp buzzed between you, throwing his eyes into restless shadow and light.
His voice was low but ragged, scraped raw with a question too big for the peeling walls to contain.
“What did you do, Y/n?”
You flinched at your own name in his mouth — so human, so accusing.
“I— I didn’t mean to—”
He cut you off with a sharp, disbelieving laugh that died as quickly as it rose.
“I was in my office. I had control. I had my people, my rules—” His palm slammed the desk by your hip, rattling pens into your lap.
“And then I’m here. No power. No way back.”
You couldn’t help it — your voice cracked, trembling worse than your hands clutching the hem of your old sweater.
“I came here to find answers, Wonwoo. To fix you. I thought… maybe if I went back to where I made you, I could undo it — the blood, the killing, the— everything.”
His jaw tightened. A muscle jumped under the faint scar near his temple.
“So instead you dragged us both backwards.” He leaned in, forehead almost brushing yours, the heat of him wrapping around you like a noose.
“Is that it, Y/n? You wanted to rewrite my hell so badly you tore it all open? Time, place — me?”
You squeezed your eyes shut, a single tear slipping free before you could swallow it down.
“I didn’t know this would happen. I swear. I thought maybe— maybe the beginning could show me the way to give you a better ending. Or at least… save you.”
His laugh ghosted across your lips, bitter and helpless all at once.
“Save me? Or save yourself?”
His eyes bored into yours then — not your villain’s eyes, not your monster’s. Just a man’s. Furious, fractured, and terrifyingly real.
“What did you do to us, Y/n?” he breathed.
And for once, you had no line, no plan, no paper shield to hide behind. Only the truth that maybe you’d broken the lock on the very cage that made him yours.
*
You watched Wonwoo asleep on your bed, the floor around you littered with notes and scribbled timelines from every version of this mess you’d ever tried to control. Paper crumpled under your bare feet each time you shifted, but he didn’t stir — not until your stomach betrayed you with a low, sharp growl.
His eyes fluttered open, dark lashes brushing his cheekbones before they focused on you. You’d inched so close you were leaning over him, your head tilted at the edge of the mattress, just watching him breathe.
“You have money?” he rasped, voice rough from sleep, but his gaze flicked to the chaos on the floor like he already knew the answer.
You blinked, then remembered the stash of emergency cash you’d once hoarded for late-night ramen runs and rent you couldn’t pay on time.
“Let’s go out to eat,” you murmured, half a command, half a plea.
Oddly — maybe because he was too tired to argue, or maybe because in this world he had no empire to guard — he just nodded and swung his legs over the edge.
You pulled on an old oversized hoodie over your thin dress, the fabric swallowing you whole, and slipped into a pair of scuffed sneakers instead of your usual heels. Wonwoo’s eyes lingered on you, narrowed, curious — as if he was seeing a version of you he’d never been allowed to touch before.
When you stepped out of the tiny studio, the night air slapped your cheeks cold and real. You ducked your head low, hiding your face from the street’s indifferent glow, too busy bracing for a stranger’s glance to notice the way Wonwoo’s eyes followed every step you took.
You ended up in a modest restaurant you’d always passed by back then but never once stepped into — too clean for your student budget, too proper for your unwashed hair and all-nighter sweats back then. Now, at least, it gave you warmth and a moment’s pause to swallow real food for the first time in days.
Your fork froze halfway to your lips when the TV above the counter blared breaking news:
“A powerful earthquake struck Busan earlier this evening…”
You didn’t hear the rest. The numbers, the shaking towers, the headlines dissolving into a date that burned behind your eyelids:
10 August. Four days before Independence Day. The day you didn’t go home. The day you missed her funeral.
Your chair scraped back so hard it startled the couple beside you. Wonwoo’s hand shot out, catching the edge of the table before it tipped your plate to the floor.
“Where are you going?” His voice was too calm, too sure — but his eyes were locked on yours, searching for the storm he knew was coming.
You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.
Wonwoo dropped his fork, metal clattering against the ceramic plate, but he didn’t flinch. He just watched you — your back retreating through rows of still-eating strangers, head lowered under that oversized hoodie that did nothing to hide how shaken you were.
He stood, slower than you, ignoring the waitress’s startled “Sir, the bill—” as he followed. One hand slipped into his pocket, fingers brushing the folded cash you’d forgotten to take — the only anchor he had left from his world in this mess.
Outside, the late summer air hit harsh and humid. He found you half a block away, standing at a dusty bus stop sign that looked like it hadn’t been painted since the year you wrote him alive. You were hunched, arms tight around your middle like you were trying to hold something in. Or maybe keep something out.
“Y/n.”
His voice cut the buzz of cars and far-off traffic. You flinched, but didn’t turn.
He came closer, not stalking like your villain — not hunting. Just moving. Heavy, deliberate steps on cracked pavement.
“Where are you going?” he asked again, quieter now. No threat. Just the question — and something ragged underneath it, as if he hated needing to ask at all.
Your fingers dug into the hem of your hoodie.
“It’s August tenth,” you whispered. Your voice trembled worse than your shoulders. “That earthquake… I remember now. That day, my mother—”
Your breath hitched and your next words came out broken.
“I didn’t go home. I didn’t see her one last time. I stayed here. Writing you. I stayed here for you.”
Wonwoo’s eyes flickered. A pulse of understanding — and something colder — behind the confusion. He reached out, touched your wrist with fingers that could break bone but only rested there, too light, too human.
“Y/n.” He forced your gaze up, two wrecks caught in the glow of a flickering bus sign.
“You can’t change that,” he said. Not unkind. Not gentle either. Just brutal truth, shaped in the mouth of the man you’d once written to be invincible.
“You drag yourself back here, back then — but you can’t rewrite her. You can’t rewrite that.”
Your lip trembled. The truth slammed your ribs worse than any villain could.
“But if I could—”
He cut you off, firm fingers at your jaw, grounding you.
“You can’t.” His eyes narrowed, voice a hoarse whisper meant for no one but you. “You want to fix me. Fine. Fix your story. Fix the ending. But don’t lose yourself in the part that was never yours to hold.”
And as the old bus rattled up, brakes screeching through the sticky night air, you felt it — the choice pressing against your ribs like a knife: save him, save yourself, or bury it all under the ruins of your past you couldn’t dig up anymore.
You and Wonwoo stood at the edge of the crowd, half hidden behind a rusted iron gate and the old lilac tree your mother once planted in a cracked pot on the apartment balcony. Now it grew wild beside her coffin — a reminder she’d always loved beautiful things even when they died in her hands.
You pulled your hoodie tighter around your face, sleeves tugged over your fists like they could hold in the storm brewing under your ribs. Beside you, Wonwoo was silent, hands shoved in his coat pockets, his eyes flicking over the black-clad mourners with an unreadable coldness. To him, it must’ve looked like an irrelevant side plot, a scene he’d never been given to play in the margins of your draft.
You wondered if your old self was somewhere nearby — the you that never made it here, that stayed locked in a dorm room, scribbling villains and empires while the real world crumbled outside her locked door.
Wonwoo leaned closer, his breath warm against your ear.
A flicker of something crossed his eyes. Regret? Sympathy? Or just curiosity that the one who played god in his world could still be so painfully small in her own.
He shifted closer, enough that the cold wind couldn’t slip between your shoulders anymore.
He glanced back at the line of mourners, the hushed prayers, the echo of grief he could mimic in your pages but never feel like this.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured after a moment. One gloved hand brushed the edge of your sleeve. “Are you cold?”
You laughed, choked and watery. “No. I’m terrified.”
He didn’t say don’t be. He didn’t promise to protect you — that was never him. Instead, he stepped behind you, close enough that his coat brushed your hoodie.
*
Wonwoo’s steps halted when you veered off the narrow gravel path, deeper into the quieter rows of stone and framed photographs. He almost called your name — but the look on your face stole the word from his tongue.
You stopped in front of a headstone tucked between a wind-worn willow and an old brass lantern left by some devoted relative. There, pressed to the cold marble, was a photo he recognized instantly. A gentle smile. Sharp, kind eyes behind slim glasses. Ji Jihye.
Wonwoo’s pulse thudded in his ears.
“She’s in my world.”
His voice came out lower than he meant, brittle in the hushed air.
“The doctor. The one you…” He hesitated, thinking of that night — the trembling relief in your face when you clung to her like a drowning child to shore. In his world, she’d been the calm in his storms, a plot device he’d never questioned.
“The one you hugged that day.” You nodded, eyes fixed to the photograph as if you could fall into it and never come back.
“She’s my sister. She raised me when my mother—” Your voice cracked, but you didn’t bother hiding it. “When she couldn’t.”
Wonwoo’s jaw worked, silent words trapped behind his teeth. He glanced at the picture, at the name carved so neat and final: Ji Jihye.
He almost asked What happened to her there? — but the truth landed in his gut before you said it.
“Murder.”
You didn’t flinch when you said it. The word sat between you like a bloodstain no rain could wash off.
For a moment, the wind rattled the willow branches overhead. Wonwoo turned back to you — really looked at you, past the creator, past the coward who ran from funerals and folded reality when it didn’t obey. There it was: the child left behind, the sisterless girl who stitched monsters out of her grief.
Wonwoo didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Because suddenly all the twisted knots that made him — the rage, the power, the endless hunger for fear and control — trembled on a single question:
Was he really evil, or just a vessel for every wound you never mended?
His fingers curled, nails biting into his palms. He watched you, your eyes shimmering under the willow’s shadow, and for the first time since stepping from the pages into your fragile reality, he wondered:
What was he really for?
*
You and Wonwoo sat side by side on the dusty wooden floor of your old studio, knees brushing, backs pressed to the peeling wallpaper like you both needed it to hold you upright. Between you lay a scatter of papers — the same half-baked plot threads and character sheets you’d clung to for years like they were prayers that might save you.
Outside, the cicadas were singing — an old summer song that once made you feel small and safe at the same time. But inside, the silence between you and him was heavier than grief.
You picked at the edge of a yellowing notebook. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. I remember… I was supposed to be in Jeju. I ran away after my aunt texted me. I couldn’t… I couldn’t see her like that.”
You didn’t have to say your mother. The word was already a bruise in the room.
Wonwoo didn’t comment, didn’t pity you — he never did, never would. But the way his shoulder leaned just barely into yours was louder than a thousand sorrys.
He turned his head, watching you from the corner of his eye. “How did you come back? To this version of now?”
You laughed — a thin, breathless sound that made him frown. “I was reading. In the town library. I was trying to find another way to fix you. I thought maybe if I found my old ideas…”
He finished it for you, voice softer than you’d ever heard. “Was it The Little Prince?”
Your breath caught. You turned to him, eyes wide. “How did you know?”
Wonwoo dragged a hand through his hair — he looked almost embarrassed, if a man like him could be. “It sent me too. To your place. I was in my office. Then… there.” He gestured vaguely at the air, as if the whole universe was just an untrustworthy hallway you could slip through by accident.
Your lips parted, memories flickering: a child curled under a thin blanket, whispering to a paper prince to save her from doors slamming, from the crash of glass, from fists and broken promises. You’d written him to be your monster, but before that, you’d begged a little boy on an asteroid to protect you from adults.
And now here he was — no asteroid, no desert rose, just Wonwoo, an echo of every shadow you’d loved and feared.
“The Little Prince…” you murmured, almost to yourself. “It was my sanctuary. When they fought. When she cried. When I was too small to stop anything.”
Wonwoo let out a dry, near-silent laugh. “Mine too. It made me hate the king less.”
For a heartbeat, your monster and your child self sat together on that floor — two broken kingdoms connected by a single, fragile story about a boy too gentle for the world.
Wonwoo nudged your knee with his. “Maybe that’s it,” he said, half teasing, half serious. “Your prince keeps dragging us back when we run too far.”
Your laugh cracked open something in your chest. And you wondered, for the first time in years, if maybe neither of you was too far gone to come home.
*
You woke up tangled in warmth you didn’t remember climbing into — stiff sheets, a familiar weight against your side, and a scent that was unmistakably his: crisp, deep, edged with something dark like wet stone.
Blinking through the fuzz in your head, you shifted — and found Wonwoo half-asleep beside you, sprawled on his stomach, face turned toward you. His hair fell messily over his forehead, shadowing the faint scar at his temple.
He cracked one eye open, caught your startled stare, and groaned into the pillow.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep and still a little rough. “Too tired to drag you to your room.”
Before you could answer, he let out a long breath and promptly buried his face in the pillow again, clearly intending to finish what little rest you’d stolen from each other all night.
You sat up so fast the blankets slipped to your lap. Your head spun. The familiar carved ceiling above you wasn’t the dorm’s cracked plaster — it was rich mahogany, polished and cold. His world’s air was heavier, scented faintly of cedar and the garden roses you knew he never watered himself.
Back. You were back.
You swung your legs off the bed and found your shoes still on. The hoodie swallowed you in its softness, a piece of the past now clinging stubbornly to your present. Carefully, you slipped from the bed — Wonwoo barely stirred, just an arm flung out to claim the empty space you’d left behind.
Padding to the heavy door, you cracked it open, peeking into the wide, sunlit hallway that could never belong to a cheap old dorm. Marble floors, oil paintings, hush of distant servants. His empire — real again.
You stepped out, only to freeze as a soft gasp broke the quiet.
Mrs. Jung stood there — sturdy, neatly dressed in the dark uniform of the household’s inner staff. Her hair was pinned tight and her eyes were sharp, though they widened when she saw your disheveled hoodie and bare feet peeking from beneath it.
Mrs. Jung. Hyungrim’s mother. The real iron backbone of Wonwoo’s household — the one who knew every secret passage and every lie.
She blinked once, took in your flushed face, the door cracked behind you, and gave the smallest bow, voice utterly neutral but her eyes curious as ever.
“Miss Y/n,” she said, smooth as tea poured into porcelain. “Good morning. Did you… rest well in the Master’s chamber?”
You opened your mouth, closed it, then managed a strangle, “Yes. Thank you.”
Mrs. Jung’s lips twitched like she wanted to smile but had trained herself not to.
“Very good, Miss. Shall I prepare your room again? Or… would you prefer breakfast brought here?”
Behind you, Wonwoo’s sleepy grunt drifted from the bed — a muffled, lazy sound that somehow made your heart kick against your ribs.
You swallowed, tugging the hoodie tighter around yourself, suddenly feeling sixteen again and older than you’d ever been all at once.
“I— I’ll take breakfast here, thank you. And… Mrs. Jung?”
“Yes, Miss?”
You met her gaze — the mother of your villain’s most loyal man, standing in this world you’d spun from your grief and hunger for protection.
“Thank you for… looking after him..”
You sat stiffly on the edge of his leather couch, knees drawn together, the hoodie sleeves tugged down over your fists like a child’s security blanket. Outside the tall windows, the courtyard gardens basked under the late morning sun — a sight so distant from the cracked dorm ceiling that your head still ached trying to reconcile the leap.
Footsteps padded behind you — soft, slow, and unmistakably his.
Wonwoo dropped onto the couch beside you with all the lazy, fluid grace you hated to admit still made your chest tighten. He smelled freshly showered now, hair damp and pushed back, but his eyes were heavy-lidded with leftover sleep.
He slouched into the cushions, head rolling toward you until his sharp gaze pinned you like a bug on velvet.
“How we got back?” you asked before you could second-guess yourself. Your voice betrayed how raw your throat still felt, scratchy with exhaustion and words left unsaid at that graveyard.
Wonwoo’s mouth curved — not quite a grin, more a crooked slice of mischief through lingering fatigue.
“Myungho found you,” he said lazily, like recounting a half-remembered dream. “Passed out in the town library. I was too in m study.”
You blinked. “Passed out?”
Wonwoo lifted a brow, amused by your disbelief. He mimicked your tone under his breath: “‘Passed out?’ Yes, darling, that’s what happens when people rip holes in their heads, hopping worlds and time.”
You scowled at his mockery but he only hummed, ignoring it as he stretched out an arm behind you along the back of the couch — not touching, just there, like a bracket holding you in place.
You pressed on. “Then why was I in your room?”
At that, a real grin ghosted over his lips — fleeting, crooked, so achingly boyish it almost didn’t fit the monster you’d carved him into.
“I was too tired to carry you to yours. You passed out, remember?” He nudged your knee lightly with his own. “And don’t flatter yourself.”
You shoved his leg half-heartedly, heat crawling up your neck. “I wasn’t flattering myself. I just— it was surprising.”
Wonwoo laughed under his breath. A sound that, for once, held no threat. Only a secret understanding between the creator and her creation — two ghosts returned to the flesh, sharing the same borrowed couch in a world neither fully owned anymore.
His eyes softened just a fraction as he watched your face — as if daring you to ask the question that trembled behind your teeth: What now?
But for now, he didn’t press. He just tipped his head back against the cushion, eyelids drooping again, a king at rest beside the only storm that could shake him awake.
The quiet between you barely settled before the faintest knock, polite but firm, tapped at the door frame. You flinched, twisting just as Mrs. Jung stepped in carrying a tray balanced with more care than a royal offering.
She dipped her head first to Wonwoo — “Master,” she greeted with gentle respect — then turned her warm eyes to you.
“Breakfast, Master. And for your guest.” Her voice was steady as ever, but you caught the subtle flicker in her eyes when they lingered on your oversized hoodie and the way your bare feet tucked under you on the couch.
Wonwoo, half-slouched with his arm draped over the couch back, cracked one eye open, a lazy smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.
“She demanded my share too, Mrs. Jung. Make sure she leaves me at least the fruit.”
Mrs. Jung’s lips twitched at his dry humor — she’d clearly survived it for years. She set the tray carefully on the low table in front of you, arranging the bowls and teacups with a grace that almost felt ceremonial.
“I’ll bring more tea if you wish, Master,” she said, her tone softening when she spoke to you too, kind but clear. “Please eat well, both of you — you need your strength after worrying us so.”
You mumbled a quiet thank you, cheeks warming under the hood as you avoided Wonwoo’s look — a mixture of amusement and something else you couldn’t read.
Mrs. Jung’s eyes lingered on you for another heartbeat, as if she wanted to say more but thought better of it. Then she bowed her head again, turned, and slipped out — the door closing with a gentle click behind her, leaving the scent of warm porridge and faint herbal steam curling around the room.
Wonwoo reached for a bowl and pushed it toward you, his knuckles brushing yours without apology.
“Eat,” he ordered, voice rough from sleep but softened by something like care. “If you faint again, I’m not dragging you next time. You’re heavier than you look.”
He claimed his own bowl, folding one knee up beside you as if this — a monster and his maker, side by side over breakfast — was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Outside, the courtyard glowed under a patient morning sun. Inside, for the first time in a long while, neither of you felt like running.
*
The sun was dipping low when Myungho knocked twice and stepped into Wonwoo’s office without waiting for permission — which was enough to make Jun look up from the couch, eyebrows raised. Wonwoo didn’t lift his eyes from the contract he was marking up, but the quiet knock alone had already put him on edge.
“Master,” Myungho said, voice tight. He didn’t bother with titles this time. “We have a problem.”
Wonwoo’s pen paused mid-sentence. He finally looked up. “Speak.”
Myungho’s throat bobbed. He shifted his weight like he didn’t want to say it at all.
“It’s Miss Y/n. She was at the town library. About an hour ago, witnesses say a black SUV pulled up. Two men forced her inside. One local vendor found her bag in the alley behind the bus stop.”
Jun sat up straight. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. Her guards said she slipped them by going out the back gate. She didn’t want them trailing her that close — she told them she just wanted quiet.”
The room stilled. Wonwoo didn’t slam the desk or shout — but Jun, who’d known him long enough, saw the change immediately: the pen dropping soundlessly, the barely-there tremor in his knuckles before he curled them into a fist.
“Where was this? Which street?” Wonwoo asked. His voice wasn’t cold — just quiet, so quiet that Myungho almost preferred shouting.
“Near the east gate road, Master. Traffic cameras caught the SUV heading out of the old market district but we lost it near the industrial park.”
Wonwoo leaned back, eyes on the ceiling for a heartbeat — like he needed to keep the anger in check just to stay focused. Then he pushed up from the desk, methodical. He shrugged on his black coat, buttoning it with steady fingers that betrayed none of what tightened his throat.
“Start with the market CCTV. Block every road out of the district. Call the inspector directly, use my name if you have to — I want every exit checked. If they switched cars, trace every plate that left that zone in the last hour.”
Myungho nodded, halfway out the door already, phone in hand.
Jun stood, rolling his shoulders. “Sir—”
“I know,” Wonwoo cut in, voice softer, tired. His eyes flicked to Jun, a shadow of worry slipping through the usual steel. “She hates people trailing her. I should’ve—” He shook his head once, as if to snap himself out of it.
Wonwoo huffed a breath that was almost a laugh, but his jaw clenched right after. He grabbed his phone, already dialing, eyes distant but burning with a promise.
You owed him an end, but this isn't something he expected.
Wonwoo had barely made it down the marble steps when his phone vibrated in his coat pocket — just once, an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. He answered it without thinking, half-expecting Myungho with an update.
But it wasn’t a call. It was a text.
“So you have a vulnerability?”
Attached below, a single photo loaded.
He stopped cold on the last step. Jun, coming up behind him, nearly collided with his shoulder.
“Sir?” Jun frowned, peering at the frozen look on Wonwoo’s face. “What is it?”
Wonwoo didn’t speak right away. His eyes traced the picture, the cheap motel wallpaper, the too-bright flash. The raw knot in his chest squeezed tighter at the sight of you — wrists bound to the headboard, head turned away, hair spilling across the pillow like you’d fought before they forced you still.
The phone trembled in his hand — barely. Just enough that Jun saw it.
Wonwoo exhaled through his nose. Slow. Measured. But when he looked up, the cold calm he always wore was gone. Something far more human burned through his irises — fury, yes, but beneath it, a helpless ache that scared Jun more than the rage ever could.
“They want me to panic,” Wonwoo said, almost to himself. He lifted his thumb, saving the photo to his files as if cataloging evidence, not an open wound. His other hand clenched the stair rail until the veins stood stark against his skin.
A second vibration buzzed through the silence. Another message:
“You want her alive? Come alone. Tonight. We’ll send the location soon.”
Wonwoo’s eyes flicked to the clock on the hall wall. Not nearly enough time to wait. Not nearly enough time to forgive himself for letting this happen.
Jun slipped the phone back into Wonwoo’s palm.
“I’ll have everyone track the signal. You’re not going alone., sir”
Wonwoo’s fingers closed tight around the phone — as if he could crush the message, the photo, the threat itself. He didn’t argue. For once, he didn’t care about pride or image or playing the perfect chess game.
*
In the stale half-light of the run-down motel room, the buzz of a flickering ceiling fan blended with the shallow rasp of your breathing. The rope bit cruelly into your wrists; your throat tasted of cotton and regret.
You barely registered the dip of the mattress until a familiar weight settled near your hip.
“Hey.”
You forced your heavy eyelids open. Blurred outlines resolved into a face you knew too well — Hansol. But not the Hansol who’d laughed through his meeting in the team 3 room, or muttered sleepy jokes behind stakeouts. His eyes now held something you couldn’t name, but you knew you never wrote it.
He watched you like a puzzle he’d half-solved. One corner of his mouth tugged upward, a smirk that made your pulse stutter for all the wrong reasons.
“You look smaller up close,” he said quietly, brushing a finger along your hairline. “Does he keep you hidden in that big old house? Or are you just too precious to show around?”
Your dry lips cracked when you tried to speak.
“H-Hansol…” you croaked. “Why… are you doing this?”
He clicked his tongue, feigning disappointment.
“You know, for someone Wonwoo goes soft over, you ask dumb questions.” He leaned closer, shadows carving sharper lines into his cheeks. “I don’t care about you, sweetheart. You’re just the leash. The king drops his crown when you scream — everyone knows that now.”
Behind him, two strangers — older, meaner — checked the window for the fifth time. One of them brandished your phone, the screen cracked from being snatched.
Hansol’s eyes flitted back to yours, studying the tremor in your lashes with unsettling patience.
“You really think he loves you, huh?” he murmured, voice dripping disbelief and something like envy twisted into contempt. “A man like him doesn’t love. He owns. And now… he’ll learn he can’t own everything.”
You winced as he thumbed your bruised cheek, tender as a lover.
“Tonight,” one of the men said gruffly, tossing Hansol your phone. “Drop sent. He comes alone, or she bleeds before dawn.”
Hansol pocketed the phone, then turned to you one last time — no warmth, no hate either. Just a wolf checking its trap.
“Try not to cry too much. Ruins the pretty face he likes so much.”
He stood and motioned for the others to tighten your bonds. Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him — leaving you bound, dazed, and painfully awake to the fact that in this nightmare, you were nothing more than leverage for a man you’d created but could no longer control.
The click of the door echoed in your skull long after Hansol and his shadows vanished down the hallway. You lay motionless for a few heartbeats, letting your breathing even out, listening — first for footsteps, then for the hush of the old building settling into silence.
Don’t panic. That voice — your voice — the same one that used to narrate these horrors from behind a safe screen. It sounded so far away now.
Your wrists burned from the coarse rope. Every shift scraped skin raw, but you forced your elbows up anyway, testing how much slack they’d left in their arrogance. The knots weren’t perfect; Hansol was cocky, not careful.
Your eyes darted around the dingy room: a battered side table, an empty bottle on the floor, a lamp plugged into a wall socket hanging loose from age.
You flexed your fingers until blood stung the tips. Inch by inch, you curled your knees under you, testing the rope at your ankles — tighter than your wrists, but not unbreakable.
You tugged once. Twice. The headboard rattled softly. No footsteps. Good.
Next, you twisted your body to the side, forcing your bound hands against the jagged corner of the bedframe’s rusted hinge. Metal bit skin — you hissed through your teeth, the smell of iron blooming fresh.
Keep going.
Your breath hitched when you heard faint voices down the hall. Hansol’s laugh. A lighter flick. Then footsteps retreating toward the far end of the corridor.
You pressed harder. Back and forth, flesh tearing, fibers loosening.
A single rope strand gave way with a muted snap. Pain blurred your vision but you swallowed it down, gasping through grit teeth as you slipped one wrist out.
Free. Half-free.
Ignoring the sting, you scrambled to untie your ankles, each tug punctuated by the terror that any second the door could burst open. Finally, the rope fell to the floor with a soft thud.
Your legs trembled as you stood, barefoot, hoodie rumpled and sticky with sweat and blood. You scanned for anything useful — no phone, no weapon, just a creaky old lamp and your pounding heart.
You padded to the grimy window, praying it wasn’t painted shut. Your trembling fingers worked the rusted latch loose. You shoved. Once. Twice. The frame groaned in protest before giving way an inch at a time — a humid gust stung your cuts but tasted like salvation.
Below, a dirty alley sloped into shadows. No time for fear. You swung one leg over the sill, biting back a whimper when your scraped palms pressed into the peeling paint.
A voice shouted inside the room — too late. You pushed off, dropped into the night, knees buckling as you hit the gravel. Pain shot up your shins but you forced your feet to move.
One breath. One thought: Run.
You bolted down the alley, bare feet slapping against broken concrete and puddles that splashed up your legs. Behind you, shouts erupted — Hansol’s voice, furious and sharp, echoing like a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from.
Your breath tore at your throat, each step a prayer to whatever cruel god still watched over you and the monsters you’d unleashed. You veered right, shoulders crashing against an overflowing dumpster, then stumbled out into a dim side street lit only by flickering neon signs.
A black car screeched to a halt at the curb just as you shot across the gutter — headlights blinding you, tires squealing against wet asphalt.
You froze. For half a second, the world stilled, your scraped hands trembling in the glare, your chest heaving, your heart a war drum.
Then the car's door slammed open.
“Y/n!”
Wonwoo’s voice — raw, frantic — cut through every other sound.
He was on you in two strides, one hand gripping your shoulder so tightly it almost hurt, the other brushing your hair back, searching your face as if to confirm you were real, whole, not just a vision conjured by rage and fear.
“Are you hurt?” he rasped, scanning you up and down. You tried to answer — your mouth opened — but over Wonwoo’s shoulder, another figure emerged from the shadows.
Hansol.
He slowed to a stop at the edge of the headlights, breath misting in the night air, his eyes locked not on you now but on Wonwoo — and whatever twisted history the margin had let grow between them.
Wonwoo didn’t turn, but you felt the tension coil through him, like a bow pulled so taut it could snap bone.
Hansol cocked his head, wiping a smear of blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. He didn’t look at you — you didn’t exist in his eyes anymore. Only Wonwoo did.
“So,” Hansol said, voice calm, almost amused, though his knuckles were white at his sides. “Seems you do have a soft spot after all, master.”
The word dripped with mockery, a dare.
Wonwoo’s hand slid from your shoulder to your waist, anchoring you behind him. His other hand curled into a fist. He didn’t answer Hansol — didn’t need to.
You could feel it in the way he shifted his weight: this wouldn’t end in words.
Wonwoo’s arm tensed across your stomach, pinning you back a step as Hansol lifted the gun — careless, casual, yet steady as stone. For a split second, you thought he was bluffing.
But the glint in his eyes wasn’t madness — it was something colder. Certain.
“Don’t,” Wonwoo warned lowly, voice a dangerous calm that made the men behind him — Jun, Myungho, a handful of guards in black — shift their stance, guns discreetly trained on Hansol’s head and chest.
Hansol laughed, almost gentle. His finger curled tighter on the trigger.
“Look at you, Wonwoo… playing hero for a woman.” His eyes flicked to you, just a flicker, then right back to Wonwoo’s.
“Did she soften you so well you forgot what you are?”
“Hansol,” Wonwoo growled, moving half a step forward — but Hansol’s aim never wavered. The muzzle of the gun aligned perfectly with your chest first, then flicked back to Wonwoo’s.
“Stay behind me,” Wonwoo murmured to you without looking — an order threaded through with something fragile.
Your breath caught.
“Hansol — stop this. You don’t have to—”
Hansol’s grin twitched. For a heartbeat, regret flickered across his sharp features — gone before you could name it.
“Too late.”
The gunshot cracked the night open.
Wonwoo jerked — a sound, not a scream but a punched-out breath, left his lips as his shoulder snapped back. His grip on you faltered but didn’t break; his weight leaned into you for half a heartbeat before he forced himself upright, staggering once but staying between you and the barrel that still smoked in Hansol’s hand.
Time splintered around you — guards shouting, Jun lunging, Myungho cursing as he tackled Hansol from behind, the gun clattering to the pavement.
“Y/n—” he rasped, his forehead brushing yours, breath warm despite the cold. “Stay… behind me…”
Time fractured.
Wonwoo’s weight sagged into you — warm, heavy, terrifyingly real — as a second gunshot cracked through the air, closer than the first, sharper, final.
Your head snapped up just in time to see Jun, breathless and stone-faced, lowering his pistol. Smoke curled from the muzzle. Hansol’s body lurched back, the force sending him sprawling to the filthy asphalt. His gun tumbled from lifeless fingers, skittering away until Myungho’s boot pinned it down with a crunch of gravel.
For a moment, no one breathed. Then the night erupted: boots slamming pavement, men shouting commands, two guards wrestling Hansol’s barely-conscious cronies to the curb. Somewhere in the chaos, a siren wailed — distant, irrelevant.
But all of that blurred when you looked down at Wonwoo. His eyes fluttered open just enough to find yours, a glassy stubbornness shining through the pain.
“Hey— hey, don’t—” You pressed your hand hard against his shoulder wound, the heat of blood seeping too fast between your fingers. “Wonwoo, stay with me. Please, just—”
A choked laugh rattled out of him, strained but real.
“Y/n..” he rasped, half a smirk ghosting his lips. “You don’t… order me…”
You wanted to scream at him to shut up, to save his strength — but all you could do was press harder, leaning over him as Jun dropped to his other side, barked something you barely registered to the guards about an ambulance and backup.
“Jun—” you gasped, your voice breaking.
“I know.” Jun’s eyes flicked to yours, softening only for a fraction of a second before hardening again at the sight of Hansol’s limp form a few feet away. “I got him. Focus on master. He’s going to make it — sir, you hear me?”
Wonwoo’s breathing hitched, then steadied, his lashes fluttering against your wrist as you held him.
In the periphery, Myungho’s voice rose over the chaos, sharp and venomous as he kicked Hansol’s gun away and helped bind the man’s wrists in blood-smeared plastic cuffs.
And in that chaos — asphalt, blood, the ruined echo of betrayal — all you could do was bow your head over Wonwoo’s chest, feel the stubborn pulse beneath your palms, and pray that this time, for once, your story would let him live.
*
When your eyelids finally fought their way open, the first thing you saw was the sterile white ceiling — too bright, too still — and the frantic blur of Soonyoung’s worried face leaning into your blurry vision.
“Y/N! Y/n — hey, look at me, look at me — Doc! She’s awake! She’s—” He turned his head and bellowed down the hallway, his voice cracking halfway between relief and panic.
You blinked hard, your tongue dry as you tried to form words. It felt like waking from a lifetime underwater.
“...S-Soonyoung…?”
He almost collapsed over your bedside rail, grabbing your hand so tight you felt it through the IV tape.
“Holy shit, don’t you ever— I mean— where the hell were you?! Do you know what—” He choked on a half-laugh, half-sob. “The whole country could’ve gone to war and you wouldn’t know, you— oh my god—”
A doctor brushed past him, checking your pupils with a penlight, mumbling something reassuring about dehydration and mild concussion. Soonyoung refused to let go of your hand the whole time, his thumb sweeping your knuckles like he needed to remind himself you were really there.
When the doctor finally stepped back, Soonyoung dropped his voice, fighting the tremble that made him sound ten years younger.
“You were gone for two weeks, Y/n. Two weeks! A farmer found you lying by the side road near the rice fields — said you were passed out in the dirt. Police brought you straight here. We—” His breath caught. “We thought—”
You squeezed his hand weakly, a reflex to hush the tremor in his voice.
A soft knock at the door cut through the haze — two plainclothes officers stepped in, polite but clearly exhausted. One flipped his notebook open, voice gentle but firm.
“Miss Y/n… we know you’ve just woken up, but can you tell us anything about what happened? Where you were? Anyone who might have—”
You stared at him. The white walls swam a little. Wonwoo’s blood, Hansol’s laugh, Jun’s voice telling you to hold on — all of it pressed like a bruise behind your ribs.
“I…” You wet your lips. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I don’t… remember anything.”
The older officer exchanged a glance with his partner, then nodded, jotting something down.
“That’s alright. When you’re stronger, maybe something will come back. Rest for now, Miss.”
When they stepped out, Soonyoung exhaled shakily, dropping into the chair by your bed again.
“You don’t remember, huh?” he whispered, searching your eyes for the truth you couldn’t say out loud.
You only shook your head.
Soonyoung didn’t let you drift back into that soft, dangerous haze of half-sleep — not when he’d waited two weeks and nearly lost his mind doing it. He perched on the edge of your hospital bed, his knees bouncing, hands flying everywhere as he retold everything in the only way Soonyoung knew how: animated, loud, and bursting at the seams.
“You should’ve seen it! I mean— no, you shouldn’t have seen it— it was terrifying! There was blood on your floor, your notes scattered like some horror movie— I thought you’d been murdered!” He smacked your pillow, startling you. “So I called the police immediately — and the landlord — and then the internet exploded, obviously. Everyone thought some stalker fan did it, or one of your haters, or— god, I don’t even know, people started fighting in your comment sections—”
He pressed his hand to his chest dramatically, catching his breath like he’d run laps around the hospital.
“Your name trended for days. Then the whole ‘#ComeBackY/N’ thing — people apologizing for leaving hate, people crying they’d misunderstood you — ugh, the drama. Half of them are still scared you’ll sue them for defamation now that it looks like an actual crime scene—”
You groaned softly, your dry throat protesting. “Soonyoung… please…”
He ignored you completely. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you sneaky genius — you finished the damn manuscript before you vanished! You sent it! The publisher called me to check if it was really you — I almost fainted—” He jabbed your forehead gently with a finger. “You didn’t even tell me the last chapters! How dare you wrap up his arc without me. It’s going live tomorrow, do you know that? Tomorrow! I’m your biggest fan and you didn’t even spoil me!”
Your tired chuckle cracked open past your dry lips. It hurt, but it felt good too.
“Sorry…” you rasped. “Had to… finish it before—”
Before everything bled over. Before you lost control completely.
Soonyoung softened then, all the noise melting into a fond grumble. He brushed your hair gently from your eyes, the way only an old friend could.
“Yeah, well. You’re finishing this first — getting better. Then you’re gonna tell me everything. Even the parts you swear you don’t remember. Deal?”
His pinky hovered near yours. You hooked it with yours, sealing a promise neither of you fully understood yet.
Outside your room, the sun was already setting. And tomorrow — tomorrow, the ending would finally belong to the world.
The next morning, the hospital felt like it pulsed with a quiet hum — nurses at the station murmured about your trending name again, passing by your door with curious eyes. But you didn’t care about them. You were propped up in bed, blanket twisted around your legs, eyes glued to your phone screen.
Soonyoung sat on the recliner, scrolling too — at first pretending not to care, then stealing glances at your expression every other second.
You’d stayed up all night refreshing the publisher’s site, waiting for the final chapter to drop. You’d written the ending weeks ago: Wonwoo would die in winter’s first snow, tragic but poetic — the only way to end him before he devoured everything. Hansol was just a thread you’d never fully pulled tight; a side piece, never meant to bloom into a real threat.
Except now, you scrolled line by line in growing disbelief.
It wasn’t your ending.
In this ending, Wonwoo’s death was there — a single, startling moment in a half-frozen courtyard under falling snow — but it came like a dream: hazy, shifting, wrong. Instead of fading out, the chapter kept going.
Hansol rose out of the ashes you’d never planted. Darker, stranger — his voice split between what readers knew and an alter ego no one had guessed. Sihye — a minor guard you’d half-named once — appeared at his side like a shadow stitched to his heel, coiled and hungry for vengeance on Wonwoo’s ghost.
And you — you were gone. No trace of the girl who should have been kneeling in the snow, holding the monster she’d built. In this version, you’d been erased entirely, replaced by Hansol’s distorted memory of Wonwoo’s only weakness: a secret no reader could name but every line implied.
You exhaled a shaky laugh, the phone trembling in your palm.
Soonyoung jolted upright. “Why are you laughing like that? Don’t do that, you look possessed—”
“It’s not mine,” you said, voice cracking somewhere between relief and horror. “It’s… not my ending. He— he rewrote himself, Soonyoung. He rewrote himself.”
Your friend blinked, squinting at your screen as if the code behind the page might explain it better than you ever could.
“But you sent the final draft, right? Like… the publisher didn’t—?”
“They didn’t change it. Look at it.” You shoved your phone at him. “This is him. Wonwoo—Hansol— it’s them. I didn’t write this part. They— they finished their own story.”
Inside your ribs, your heart thudded at a truth too big to put into words: the monsters you’d made had crawled off the page — and somewhere, somehow, they were still writing the next chapter themselves.
Soonyoung stared at you, then at your phone screen again, then back at your wide, exhausted eyes. He let out a long, dramatic sigh — the kind he used when you forgot your umbrella on a rainy day or burned your rice three days in a row.
He reached out, gently pried the phone from your fingers, and tossed it onto the side table, ignoring your weak protest.
“Yah. Enough. You’re not going to fight fictional men and real-life trauma in the same week. Not on my watch.” He jabbed a finger at your forehead, like sealing an invisible button to shut you up.
“But, Soon—”
“No but. You’re still hooked up to an IV, you look like you time-traveled through a blender, and I swear if you refresh that page again I’ll eat your phone.” He plopped back into the recliner with a huff, arms crossed like an overworked guardian.
“Just rest. Sleep. Let them rewrite whatever they want — you’re alive. That’s all that matters, okay?”
His voice softened at the end, enough to blur your stubborn argument into a watery laugh. You nodded, letting your head sink back into the pillow as your body — traitorous and bone-deep tired — finally agreed with him.
Soonyoung mumbled as he pulled your blanket higher under your chin, “Next time you want drama, just watch Netflix. Less kidnapping, more popcorn.”
Outside your hospital window, the world kept turning — while inside, for the first time in days, you let yourself drift without chasing any more endings.
*
You kept your announcement short — a single post on your page, pinned right above the final episode that had broken the internet for all the wrong reasons:
Thank you for reading my work all these years. I’ve decided to take an indefinite hiatus from creating comics. Please keep supporting new artists and stories. I’ll always be grateful. — Y/n
No dramatic farewell, no live Q&A. Just a quiet bow at the end of a stage you’d clung to for too long.
By the time you clicked ‘post,’ the comments were already flooding in — Take care of yourself, Author-nim! We’re so sorry for what you went through! We’ll wait for your return! — but you only let yourself read a handful before shutting your laptop for good.
The studio that had become your makeshift bedroom was a battlefield of cold coffee cups, scribbled drafts, and stacks of half-finished illustrations. You rolled up old posters, boxed every pen and sketchbook that still worked, and tied up bundles of storyboards you no longer had the heart to burn but couldn’t look at either.
Your tiny apartment — neglected for months while you hid among ink and paper — felt foreign at first. Sunlight spilled onto the dusty floor as you pulled the curtains wide, a broom in one hand and resolve in the other. You scrubbed, sorted, folded. Every faded mug and wrinkled blanket was a piece of your old life you were willing to keep — everything else, you stuffed into black trash bags and left by the door.
When the rooms were finally empty of yesterday’s ghosts, you stood in the middle of it all — the hum of the fridge, the ticking wall clock, the warm breeze sneaking through the open window — and breathed.
No Wonwoo. No Hansol. No margins waiting to tear open.
Just you. And this chance, fragile but yours, to live outside the page.
You tied your hair up with an old scrunchie, sleeves rolled high as you dragged a ragged mop across the narrow kitchen floor. The scent of pine disinfectant mingled with the faint, stubborn smell of ink and dust that clung to your walls no matter how hard you scrubbed.
Every time you opened a cupboard, a bit of your past life fell out: old character sketches wedged behind the plates, a mug etched with World’s Best Artist from Soonyoung (he’d spelled artist wrong, on purpose). You smiled weakly, tossing it into the keep pile anyway.
Your phone buzzed, rattling against the counter. You ignored it. Today wasn’t for calls or comforting words. Today was for clearing out the ghosts.
In the bedroom, you stripped your bed to the bare mattress. Crumpled sheets went straight into a laundry bag, along with the hoodie you’d practically lived in through every late-night rewrite. When you caught your reflection in the wardrobe mirror — hair a mess, sweat trickling down your neck — you almost laughed. Human again, you thought. Not an author. Not a hostage to a world you’d lost control of. Just… you.
By evening, cardboard boxes lined the hallway. Some destined for donation, some for the trash, some — the ones too heavy with memory — tucked carefully into the closet. You’d decide what to do with those later.
You sank down on the now-bare floor, back against the freshly wiped wall, and let the quiet wrap around you.
No drafts to finish. No margin to cross. No monster waiting behind your mirror.
For the first time in too long, your biggest problem was what to have for dinner. And that felt like freedom.
You were half-dozing on the bare floor when the knock came — three quick raps, one heavy thump. Classic Soonyoung, no doorbell, just his whole personality at your doorstep.
You opened the door to find him balancing a large paper bag in one hand and a soda bottle under his arm, grinning like he owned the hallway.
“Survival rations for the hermit,” he declared, barging in before you could protest. He paused mid-step when he saw the cleared apartment — the boxes, the empty desk, the naked walls where your storyboard clippings used to be pinned with colorful tape.
“…Whoa.” He set the bag down on your tiny dining table. “It really looks like you’re quitting your entire life in one day.”
You shrugged, pulling out the takeout boxes one by one. Rice, spicy chicken, egg rolls — all comfort food, all too much for one person. Soonyoung was good like that. Always bringing more than you asked for, just in case you forgot to eat tomorrow too.
“I’m not quitting my life,” you said, opening the soda for him. “Just… changing it. For good.”
He flopped onto the floor next to you, cross-legged like a kid. “Yeah, yeah. You know, people online still think you were kidnapped by a deranged fan.” He gestured with a chopstick. “You could clear that up, you know.”
You pressed your lips together. “Let them think what they want. It’s over.”
He went quiet for a second, then reached out and flicked your forehead — not hard, just enough to snap you out of your thoughts.
“Eat first, dramatic later,” he said, voice soft despite the tease. He cracked open a container, waved it under your nose. “I gotta go after this — there’s a meeting with my editor tonight. But I didn’t want you spending your first free night with instant noodles.”
You laughed, the sound a little watery. Soonyoung bumped your shoulder with his, eyes twinkling like always.
“Next chapter’s gonna be your best, okay?” he said. “Even if there’s no drawing in it. Promise me.”
You clinked your chopsticks against his, a tiny toast in the middle of your nearly empty home.
“Promise.”
*
You were jolted awake by a dull thud — something heavy shifting, then a soft scrape against your living room floor. For a few disoriented seconds, you lay stiff under your blanket, eyes wide in the darkness, every childhood nightmare crawling back into your mind at once.
Half-dreaming, half-dreading, you wondered if this was finally it — the day the anonymous threats turned real, the day the masked words became hands around your throat.
Your throat tightened as you slid your feet to the cold floor, steadying your shaky breath. You bent down, groping blindly under your bed until your fingers curled around worn, familiar wood — the old baseball bat you’d kept since college, back when you thought monsters only lived in alleyways, not in your inbox.
You clutched the handle so tight your knuckles whitened. Each cautious step made the floor groan just enough to betray you, but you pressed on, every nerve on fire as you crept toward the faint slice of light spilling under your bedroom door.
The quiet outside was worse than any noise. You could almost hear your heartbeat echoing off the walls. You paused by the door, inhaled once, twice, then flicked the switch with trembling fingers.
The harsh hallway light flared to life, making your eyes sting — and in that moment, the bat fell limp in your grip.
He stood there in the middle of your living room, as if he belonged in the mundane mess of your reality: a man in a rain-damp coat, droplets dripping onto your floorboards, a battered copy of The Little Prince dangling loosely from his hand. He was brushing rain from his dark hair with the other hand, utterly unbothered by the way your entire world had just jolted awake with you.
Your throat worked around his name, hoarse and disbelieving. “Wonwoo…”
He turned slowly, dark eyes meeting yours under the harsh ceiling light. Something soft flickered there, ghostly warmth beneath the sharp lines of a man you once wrote as unyielding steel.
“Hey,” he murmured, his voice deep and so achingly familiar that your grip on the bat finally failed you.
It hit the floor with a muted clatter — the only sound loud enough to remind you this wasn’t a dream, no matter how much your knees begged you to wake up.
Your mind reeled, lagging behind the sight of him standing there, flesh and bone and rain-soaked reality — not ink, not pixels, not a memory stitched into your pillow at 3 a.m.
You took a step forward before your legs betrayed you, buckling just enough that you grabbed the door frame for support.
“Y-You’re…” Your voice broke on the word, disbelief scraping your throat raw. “You’re alive.”
Wonwoo tilted his head at you, a faint crease between his brows as if he was gently puzzled by how fragile you sounded. He shifted the little book in his hand, like an absent gesture to ground himself in this place that wasn’t meant for him — your place, your clutter, your humdrum lightbulb humming above him.
“Of course I’m alive,” he said, and his tone held that soft reprimand you’d given him in all your drafts when he needed to remind people he was human first, ruthless second. “It takes more than a bullet to kill me, doesn’t it?”
You shook your head, eyes stinging, the rush of tears making your vision stutter like a broken film reel. 
“Wonwoo, I— I saw you—”
Before you could finish, he stepped forward, crossing the distance you couldn’t. His free hand, warm and real, cupped the side of your neck, thumb brushing your racing pulse. His touch made your heart lurch against your ribs, a startled bird in a too-small cage.
“You wrote an ending,” he murmured, voice lower now, nearer. “But you forgot something, didn’t you? I never really did what you told me to do, not completely.”
He lifted The Little Prince slightly, almost playful, like a conspirator showing you his secret.
“Wherever you put me,” he said, “I always find my way back to you.”
Your body moved before your mind could catch up as you stumbled forward and threw your arms around him.
“You’re alive…” you whispered, the words trembling out of you like a confession — like an apology for every night you’d cried over his death, for every version of him you’d buried in the drafts you never dared to reopen.
Wonwoo let out a soft grunt at the impact, but his arms wrapped around you without hesitation, steady and certain. He smelled like a cold wind and a trace of old paper — the way you’d always imagined his world to feel against your skin.
“I’m here,” he murmured into your hair, one hand splayed wide between your shoulder blades like he was anchoring you to him. “Look at you… You really thought you’d gotten rid of me?”
You laughed, a small, cracked sound muffled against his chest, your fingers fisting in the damp fabric of his coat. His heartbeat thudded under your ear, so solid and steady you almost sobbed from the relief of it.
“I thought—” you choked out, pulling back just enough to see his face. His dark eyes searched yours, calm even now, as if there was nothing more natural in the world than him standing in your hallway. “I thought you were gone. I thought you—”
He pressed his forehead to yours, his breath brushing your lips as he cut you off softly. “I’m not gone. You should know by now… I never die that easily.”
Your hands came up to frame his face, to prove to yourself this wasn’t another cruel dream. His skin was warm. His lashes fluttered when you touched his cheekbone with your thumb, like you were the fragile thing this time, not him.
His hand slipped from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair with a tenderness that contradicted the storm behind his eyes. Before you could answer, before you could even draw another breath to question him, Wonwoo closed the last inch between you and pressed his mouth to yours.
It wasn’t gentle — not really. It was the kind of kiss that said enough to every unfinished ending you’d ever written for him. His lips moved over yours like he was claiming lost time, like he needed to remind you he was flesh and blood, not a tragic line on a page you could erase.
Your knees nearly gave out. One hand clutched at his coat while the other fisted in his hair, and the bat you’d dropped rolled noiselessly across the floor behind you. The hallway light flickered above you, but you barely noticed. There was only his warmth, the taste of him — familiar and heartbreakingly real — and the soft rumble of his low groan against your mouth when you tugged him closer.
When he finally pulled back, your lips tingled, your breath stolen, your heart pounding so loud it drowned out every thought but he’s here, he’s here, he’s here.
Wonwoo didn’t step away. His forehead rested against yours, eyes half-lidded, voice rough when he spoke.
“Do you believe me now?” he murmured, the ghost of a smile brushing your swollen lips. “I’m alive. I’m not leaving you again.”
Your hands trembled where they clutched his coat, but you didn’t care — you didn’t want to care about anything except the taste of him and the warmth that bled through every inch where your bodies touched.
You tipped your chin up, breathless but hungry for more, and tugged him down to you again. This time the kiss was deeper, slower but impossibly warmer — no fear, no half-finished confessions, just you pouring every sleepless night and every secret wish into the press of your mouth against his.
Wonwoo made a sound you’d never heard before — half a groan, half a laugh muffled by your lips — as if he couldn’t quite believe you were real, too. His hands gripped your waist, pulling you flush against him until there was no room for the past, no room for doubt, just the frantic thrum of your pulse answering his.
When you finally pulled back for air, your lips were damp and your chest ached sweetly with relief. His eyes searched yours — dark, sharp, so alive — and softened when he saw the tears you didn’t even realize had slipped free.
“Again,” he whispered against your mouth, his thumb brushing your cheekbone. “Say it again.”
You breathed out the words like a vow, fingers curling into his hair.
“You’re alive. You’re here. With me.”
And this time, when he kissed you, it was softer — but it felt endless.
*
Soonyoung nearly choked on his iced coffee, eyes wide as saucers darting between you and the man beside you — the very real, very unbothered Jeon Wonwoo, who calmly stirred his latte like he hadn’t just upended everything Soonyoung thought he knew about you.
“Wait— wait,” Soonyoung sputtered, jabbing a finger accusingly at Wonwoo’s face. “You’re telling me… you— this— he’s real? And his name is actually Jeon Wonwoo?”
You pressed your lips together, trying to hide your laugh behind your palm. Wonwoo only raised an eyebrow, glancing at you with that faint, knowing smirk before returning his gaze to Soonyoung, unruffled as ever.
“Yes,” you said, voice light but betraying your thrill. “His name is really Jeon Wonwoo.”
Soonyoung gaped, looking like he was rethinking every midnight rant he’d ever heard from you about “that tragic idiot villain” you were rewriting for the hundredth time.
“Hold on— then all this time, the comic— you were inspired by him?” He leaned in over the table, practically vibrating with secondhand scandal. “You built that entire icy bastard king based on your real boyfriend?”
Your gaze slipped to Wonwoo, your hand drifting unconsciously to his on the table. He didn’t pull away — instead, his thumb brushed yours, so soft it made your chest tighten all over again.
“Maybe…” you murmured, unable to hide the tiny smile. “He’s my muse, after all.”
Soonyoung groaned, dropping his head dramatically to the table with a loud thud.
“I knew it. I knew you were secretly romantic, but this is insane. Next you’ll tell me Hansol’s real too and wants to kill me.”
Wonwoo’s low chuckle rumbled beside you. “Don’t worry,” he said smoothly, eyes twinkling. “Hansol won’t bother you.”
Soonyoung just wailed into his arms. “I hate both of you. But also — I’m so happy for you, oh my god.”
The End.
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radioactive-earthshine · 4 days ago
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Hello new Superman fans! Welcome to the fandom. We're SO glad you decided to show up, even if maybe your stay here is brief. Stay as long, or a little as you want to.
My name's Orla, I've been in the comics fandom for over twenty years, and I have been a comic reader for over thirty.
I'm here as your friendly guide to all things Superman from the comics perspective!
First off, I want to convey that the fantastic movie you just saw is referred to as an "elseworlds" story.
This means it is a story that takes place in a totally different universe from the comics, and it has no relevancy to the main comics at all!
Elseworlds are a lot of fun as they give creators an opportunity to explore comic characters, new teams, and even comic events, in a world that doesn't have decades or lore attached! Think of it as official fanfiction.
As a result, character origins, motivations, appearances, ages, team combinations, moral alignments, and even personalities might be drastically different from the comics, the source material.
Please do not think this movie is a full spectrum representation of the depth of comics.
But Superman has always been woke, that part is 100% accurate.
While you're puttering through tags here on Tumblr you might have come across a few things that I'd like to address with the truth.
Because in the Superman fandom, we care about the truth, that was one of the most poignant themes of the movie - getting the truth out there.
Unfortunately, the fandom is full of a lot lies and misunderstandings, or partial truths. So without wasting any more time let me deconstruct a few things.
Long post below.
1.) Kon El/Conner Kent
Fandom: "This is a Clex baby that Clark abandoned for his parents to raise and owes Lex child support, and his name is sometimes spelled Connor or Konner or Kon El Kent." The above is partial truth, but the only statement that is true is that he shares 50% of Clark's DNA and 50% of Lex's, making him on technicality a child of them both, but the comics use the word clone. This is not the first origin of Kon, in fact for the first 10 years of his comic lifespan he was a human cloned from a man named Paul Westfield, and his genes was altered to just look like Superman and he had meta abilities in the form of TTK. He was not a clone of Clark to start. Geoff Johns in 2003 retconned this origin to make him instead a Clex clone, and then launched off a hurtful eugenics narrative where Kon was written to believe there was a risk of him being evil because one of his genetic donors was evil (which didn't make sense because Paul was evil himself). Just coming from watching the film, I want you to remember what Pa told Clark - it's not up for parents to decide who their children are, that's up for the person to decide. Genetics do not dictate morality. And this is why this retcon put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. This is not to say you cannot enjoy it and find it compelling, and it can be compelling, but please understand what this retcon is - a retcon. Clark never abandoned Kon ever in the comics. He never was "weird about having his DNA stolen". He never held him being a clone against him. He never purged him when he found out he was half Lex (Batman was the one that made a fuss about it but people don't want to talk about that, I'll explain more below). There is no child support. That's not even how child support works. Neither Clark or Lex raised him and Kon doesn't formally see either as a father. Lex isn't even on his radar as "family". Clark is family however and he is sort of caught in this nebulous space between an older brother and a parental figure but in all honesty, it's a nonnuclear role. Kon's name is Kon El or Conner Kent. He is like an immigrant who has a birth/family name, and a given name. His given name is Conner Kent, his birth/family name (even though he did not have it when he was born) is Kon El. They do not combine, yes a lot of people do this, they are wrong. Please spell them correctly. Kon meaning "abomination" was a thing in main comics only briefly, and it is now no longer canon.
Originally, it had no meaning when Clark gave it to Kon. Clark did not knowingly name him abomination. This is false. Kon is not dating Tim Drake, that is not canon, and he really doesn't care who Tim is dating right now. Sorry.
2.) Lex Luthor is a good dad to Kon.
No, he isn't. I cannot even begin to explain how little care he has for that boy. He does not care for him in the slightest and only ever thought of him as a tool and a weapon to serve him.
3.) Clark is a BAD DAD to Kon.
No, he isn't. I cannot even begin to explain how much care he has for that boy. He trusted him so much, he trusted him with the people he loved most and feared for the most: his parents. He is not without faults, and a lot of them have more Doylest than Watsonians explanations for why he failed Kon in various things, but in general he loves Kon tremendously.
4.) Batman anything
Look. The Batman and BatFAM fandom is a huge monolith and a lot of the fans (not all) can be very weird, aggressive and outright vile to other characters without knowing that they are being unwelcoming to the greater fandom. That being said... Metas are allowed in Gotham, Batman has ZERO power to stop them from entering, and many (like many of his own rogues) live there. Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern, lives there. Dinah Lance, the Black Canary lived there. Ragman lived there. Duke Thomas, one of Batman's bat-brood lives there. Metas are allowed in Gotham. For some reason, many in the Batfam fandom, have decided that this trope is hilarious and fail to see the parallels of this and fascism, oligarchy, xenophobia, and in current events, ICE operations... Anyway this is not a thing that is canon, it was only canon in an elseworld's comic starring Barbara Gordon. Batman might not want other people in his city from time to time, and he claims to want to work alone, but he can eat shit and live, and he does. The comics call him out on this all the time. The Batfam are very frequently glazed in fandom at the expense of other characters by people in some pretty uncomfortable and sometimes vile ways. Example: the Green Lanterns are often painted as stupid or weak to prop up a Bat-character as better than them. Or a Super character is depicted as stupid an incapable of solving a mystery when Clark is an investigative journalist and has solved many mysteries on his own before. Or, in Young Justice circles, Bart Allen (a speedster character from The Flash) is an infantile child who needs his eyes covered in front of people kissing when he is the most punk of any of his team. My point here is, if you are NEW to the fandom and you see a lot of bat posts that use other characters to prop said bat-characters or their ships, have some extreme suspicion about how far removed this is from anything in reality and embrace it as CRACK FANFIC. Because that's what it is. If you ARE interested in the Batfam they are a compelling group of characters with a lot of depth and nuance, it is just a shame that much of the fandom space, fanon, has flanderized many of them down to basic tropes and their depth has been lost in many areas. If you like this, that's fine! It's your life, but please remember that there is more out there.........
5.) The comics are so confusing and contradict each other all the time and have rebooted so many times, every other year, there is no canon and no point in reading them.
This is a partial truth but there is nuance. The comics due to their nature have many writers taking on a character and when you have so many hands on one person, personality sometimes shifts and material is lost/forgotten/written over. But I promise you - you read enough comics you start to understand that barring something really unhinged, personality is consistent. There IS a canon. The comics do not reboot every other year, there have only been 3 major ones and once you know the DATES of these it's really simple. Comics really can be simple and many characters just start at #1 for reading. There are hundreds of fans that will gladly point you in any direction and will enthusiastically share their reading lists with you if you ask for help. We're desperate for comic readers and connections and love new fans. We are twirling our hair and kicking our feet when you ask for a reading list. Reading them is like reading a book, it's reading, it makes you think, it is good for you.
And finally
6.) Lois Lane doesn't do anything in the comics other than be a damsel.
Please. The movie you just watched provided you with one of the most breath taking takes of Lois I have seen. Lois Lane is a superhero in the comics where her curiosity, bravery, and passion for ending fascism is paramount to her character. She loves journalism and has a deep love and respect for the field and she is very, very good at it.
This is all for now I have for you. If you are curious about anything else regarding comics or source material, please reach out to me and I will love to help explain some things.
Note: this is not me saying fanworks with the above themes or tropes are bad or shouldn't exist, those are fanfiction where there are no rules, BUT, a lot of these themes have been confused for facts where new fans genuinely believe the above are real things that happened in the comics and are accurate depictions of characters and themes. I am here to sort out what is fanfic, and what is fact. Because we live in a world where respect for the truth, any truth big or small, is dwindling and that is a tool of fascism.
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one-green-frog · 3 months ago
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Hellooooo
Hope you're having a good day :)
Platonic yandere batfam x male/gn reader who's trying to hie their powers and/or scars?
Frostbitten
Yan!Batfam x m!reader with ice powers, because i love iceman (x-men)
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You were always good at hiding things. Even before all the training you received from the world's best detective. You lived a life of secrets even before you met your family, every day spent living as if the next moment your secret would be spilled. You learned to hide the scars, hide the accidents, you needed to, especially living in Gotham, the city where Batman ruled and one thing that Batman hated was metas
It is common knowledge that Batman hates them, hates their powers and hates them especially when they can't be controlled. So you hid them, never trying to learn how to control, just how to hide. Maybe that was your biggest mistake, but who could fault you, you just wanted to live a simple live in this god awful city.
And then you got adopted by Bruce Wayne, a dream come true. Suddenly you were thrust in this new life, filled with joy and laughter and a very loving family, you cherished every moment with them. But even more surprising was when they revealed their secret vigilante life. In that moment you didn't know whether to feel excited or scared. Sure, you looked up to Gotham’s vigilantes, almost everyone did, but you had a secret to hide, you had to keep it locked away and your biggest enemy is a family filled with detectives and a father that hates metas.
If you could hide your powers, hide the scars, then maybe everything would just be alright. Maybe they'd just dissappear and everything could be normal for once, a normal life with an almost normal family. They could never find out.
Because Bruce didn’t want those powers in Gotham. He never said it outright, not to your face, but he didn’t have to. You heard the way he talked about metas. Heard the tension in his voice when a case came in involving superhumans. How he preferred things predictable. Grounded. Human. Easy to controll
So you made yourself human.
Your family never asked why you always write long sleeves, even in some. Sure, the occasional "Aren't you hot? " was asked, but simply denying it sobbed that problem. Honestly you never were, you naturally run cold, probably because of you powers. The scars on your hands were a bit more difficult to hide, running around in gloves was just too obvious so when asked you simply told them it made you uncomfortable to talk about. Your family, every supportive and loving, stopped asking, not wanting to make you uneasy though their worried gazes never left you.
In all honesty, life was great, especially after you joined them on patrol. The training was hard, but worth it if it meant you could accompany them during the night. Everything was great.
Until it all fell apart.
It had been instinct, really.
The building was collapsing, a hostage still trapped inside, and you didn’t have time to wait. You didn’t even think. Just felt the fear spike in your chest—and then you were moving.
And freezing.
Everything in front of you exploded in jagged ice—brilliant, unnatural, alive. It lanced out from your arms, blooming outward, catching the falling beams, holding the wreckage suspended mid-air. You grabbed the girl, carried her out, felt her tremble in your arms—not from the danger, but from the cold that clung to your skin like a curse. You didn't even have time to feel relieved after exiting the flaming building, not when you saw the shocked faced of you family. In you adrenaline high you didn't think that they were just shocked, no, to you their faces obviously showed detestation. Especially Batman, clearly the guy with the no-meta-rule would absolutely loath you no matter if you are his kid or not.
You didn’t go home after that.
You couldn’t.
Not when you could still feel the way they looked at you.
Not angry. Not yet. But surprised. Confused. Like they didn’t know you anymore.
And if they didn’t know you—if they saw what you really were—what was stopping them from pushing you away?
You practically ripped the comms from you ear and ran. They could find you if they really wanted to, but you were hoping—praying—they wouldn’t.
Not until you could breathe again.
Not until the ice stopped crawling up your spine.
Not until the scars stopped burning.
---
You ended up in the park.
It was late. Empty.
Perfect since you wanted bo one to bother you.
You sat under the trees, hands shoved deep in your jacket, hood pulled low, hands shaking. You kept your gloves on, even though they were already half-frozen. They didn't protect you from anything, it was a way to hide the ice, hide it away so you couldn't see it. But you could feel the ache in your skin—those little jagged lines across your arms and hands, like old lightning strikes. Nerve damage, probably. But it wasn’t the nerves that hurt.
It was the memory.
Of growing up cold.
Of hurting people by accident.
Of locking yourself in closets to cry because your body didn’t know what to do with heat, and every time your emotions spiked, you left frostbite behind.
You used to think you’d grow out of it.
That was the lie that kept you going.
A nightmare that would someday finally end.
But now you were older. And it was worse than ever.
And now Bruce knew.
Your family knew.
And everything was ruined.
They were looking for you.
You should’ve expected that.
Dick was the first one you spotted—high above, on the buildings, doing that graceful acrobat silhouette thing he always did when he thought no one was watching. You could tell he was worried. He kept checking corners like he thought you'd vanish into shadows.
You pulled your hood lower.
Then you heard Red Hood.
Jason was stomping through the park like he’d kill the trees if they got in his way. Angry. Shaking. He was yelling your name now and then, but it wasn’t rage in his voice—it was panic. You’d never heard that tone from him before. Not even on the worst nights.
You turned away. Curled tighter. Pulled your knees to your chest and tried to stop the cold from spreading.
It was Tim who found you.
Of course it was.
He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t dramatic.
He just sat down beside you without a word. Quiet. Calm. Familiar.
You didn’t look at him.
Didn’t say anything.
But you felt the warmth of his presence, and you hated yourself for shivering closer to it.
He wrapped his cape, it did little to fight the cold.
Then he finally spoke
“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked finally. Not accusing. Just soft. Tired.
You couldn’t answer.
You were too scared your voice would crack.
Too scared to speak the truth into the world.
Jason showed up next. Then Dick. Damian, sulking behind them, wrapped in one of Alfred’s scarves. They didn’t drag you home. They didn’t guilt you. They just sat. All around you. On the frozen grass. Wherever they could.
And Bruce came last.
Of course he did.
Silent. Steady.
You almost wanted him to yell. To be angry. To say you betrayed them. To banish you from the city.
It would’ve been easier.
But instead, he crouched in front of you, face unreadable.
“Do you want to come home?” he asked quietly.
That question shattered you.
Because you did.
God, you did.
But you didn’t think you deserved it.
They got you back to the manor somehow. You barely remember it.
Everything felt distant. Fuzzy. Like a dream you weren’t allowed to wake up from.
You ended up in your room, wrapped in three blankets and a hoodie you forgot you owned. Tim was fiddling with the thermostat. Dick was in the hallway talking to Alfred about heat pads, while Damian gathered all his pets to join you in bed.
Jason was closest.
He sat beside your bed, glaring at your hands like he wanted to fight them.
You didn’t mean to, but you flinched.
“I’m not mad,” he said, voice lower than usual. “Just… you’ve been hurting. For a long time. And you didn’t tell
The next day they finally saw you hands
They didn’t ask. But they were there when you woke up from a nightmare and ripped your gloves off in a panic. They saw the spiderweb of pale, cracked skin down your arms. The frostbitten patches. The places where the cold had eaten away at you from the inside.
You waited for them to recoil.
They didn’t.
Dick sat beside you and ran warm fingers along the worst lines, like they were battle scars, not damage, not a curse. He pressed his forehead to yours and said nothing.
Jason kissed the top of your head and told you that scars didn’t make you ugly.
Damian brought a salve that smelled like mint and helped rub it into your palms.
Tim found you a compression shirt designed for cryogenic trauma. Quietly handed it to you like it wasn’t a big deal.
Bruce didn’t say much.
He just held your hand one night when you were shaking too hard to sleep.
And didn’t let go.
That night you cried yourself to sleep, either from exhaustion or because of all the emotions going through you. That night you also realized that your family truly loved you. Bruce explained that he never could hate you or any meta, he was simply scared of what could happen to them or the people around them.
They loved you.
Not despite the cold—but including it.
The way the frost followed your footsteps. The way your tears came out as vapor in the air. The way you always wore gloves, even when it wasn’t needed.
They learned to warm your sheets before bed. Left heating pads in your seat at dinner. Gave you permission to feel—even when it made the walls frost over.
You were scared for so long.
But they never were.
You weren’t the monster.
Just a boy with ice in his blood, and too much fear in his heart.
And a family who would walk through a blizzard to bring you home.
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Thank you for requesting, i absolutely loved writing this, i hope this is similar to how you imagined it! And sorry it took so long!
Taglist: @lilyalone
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meowabunga · 1 day ago
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Super! - 2
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Superman!Clark Kent x Reader
Summary: Late nights and looming deadlines are part of the job when you’re a journalist at the Daily Planet. But getting mugged on your way home wasn’t in the assignment list. When Metropolis’s favorite hero swoops in and saves you, what starts as a scraped knees and shared soup slowly becomes something deeper when you find yourself caught up with two versions of the same man.
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The newsroom is bustling as usual.
You walked in right on time, 9 AM sharp. Eyes slightly bloodshot and puffy, knees pulsing and bandaged from last nights assault.
Voices faded in and out as you slipped through conversations about Superman’s latest save. Co-workers passing eachother articles, photos, murmuring connections between the meta humans and different events happening around Metropolis.
“One caramel latte, extra cinnamon. And a backup stir-stick, because I know you always snap the first one by accident.” Clark approaches with two coffee in hand, passing you your usual.
You raise a brow, taking the cup. “Is this some elaborate ploy to get me to stop accusing you of stealing my leads, Clark?”
He shrugs. A little too innocent. “Its not a ploy if I’m just.. being nice”
You sip the drink and narrow your eyes playfully. “Trying to one up me again, hmm?” 
Clarks face flushes red. “N-no. I mean. Not unless you’re keeping score?”
As you set the coffee down with a dull thunk, steam curls from the top, you laugh softly. Placard engraved with metallic gold of your last name pushed to the corner, pens and crumpled up sticky notes from last night tossed around it half hazardly.  You didn’t have time to organize, the Daily Planet paid you in ‘opportunity’ and ‘exposure’.
You slid into your chair with a different kind of exhaustion, fake leather and foam hissing as it dips. As you scooted forward, your knees banged against the underside of your desk. “Ah- Shit,” you hissed, biting your lip and gripping the edge of the desk. Your knees burned.
From the cubicle over, Clark was instantly on you. “You alright?” He asked, concern written across his brow as he leaned against the edge of your desk.
You waved him off with a half smile. “Yeah. Just.. residual knee trauma. Nothing too exciting.”
He didn’t back off.
“Did something happen?”
“Kind of,” you took a sip of coffee, then sighed. “I, uh… got mugged? Last night?”
“What?”
“Shhh!” You threw your hand up, glancing around to the other cubicles. “Im not trying to become office gossip before noon. I don’t want Lois and the intern squad forming a human wall around me with pepper spray and alarms!”
Clark looked anything but calm. His jaw clenched slightly, and his eyes scanned you, like he was checking for bruises he hadn’t noticed earlier.
“Are you hurt?” He asked, softer now, but with a kind of quiet intensity that made your chest warm.
You raise your hand once more, and felt a knot building behind your ribs . “Relax, I’m fine. Seriously. Superman showed up. Tossed the jerk into a dumpster nearby and reappeared next to me so fast I nearly got whiplash.”
He blinked. “He… threw someone into a dumpster?”
You smiled softly, “Yup, Lid and everything”
He exhaled a short laugh, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His shoulders were still tight and his eyes were scanning. 
“Still,” he said, “you shouldn’t be walking alone that late. You were working overtime again, weren’t you?”
You tossed him a knowing look over the rim of your coffee. “What, were you going to come walk me home, Kent?”
His ears turned red.
“No, I’m just… I’m just saying it’s dangerous. That’s all”
You couldn’t help but smile. And neither could he.
“Oh! And he came inside of my apartment after he brought me home last night”
“Wh-“
“Hey!” Jimmy Olsens voice cut through the moment.
You jumped slightly as he popped over the top of your cubicle, folder waving over.
“Either of you seen the file on Luthor Corp’s Weapons deal? Billion dollar contract with Boravia just leaked. Perry’s going crazy trying to find more deets, he wants this done A-S-A-P.”
Jimmy snorted and wandered off, but the interruption left a gap in the conversation you weren’t sure how to fill. 
You shook your head as you felt Clarks eyes on you. “Right, Boravian weapons deal, stat.”
What was supposed to be a semi- calm afternoon, turned for the worst when a fire broke out downtown.
By the time you reached 37th Street, the block was a blur of sirens, smoke, and officers ushering civilians away. Flames licked at the 4th story windows of a brick apartment building, the air thick with heat and panic. You ducked under the tape with your notepad already out, phone recording as your hand flashed your ‘press’ badge.
A firefighter barked into his radio, “there’s still a kid up there!, 4F, window right side!”
Your stomach did a flip, and you craned your neck, eyes narrowing in on the window.
And then, the wind changed. 
Not naturally, it burst against you like a wave, sudden and unreal. A flash of red and blue tore across the sky and the crowd gasped as one.
Superman.
He cut through the smoky air, angling toward the building in a blur. Your camera was on him. He crashed through the 4th story, glass shattering on the left side, flames being forced out of the windows as he made his way through the floor.
It took maybe ten seconds. Maybe less.
Then he was out. Cradling a small girl in his arms, cradling a stuffed animal in hers.
Onlookers cheered as he lowered. EMTs rushed forward when he landed and gently passed the girl to safety. He knelt, whispered something to her, then stood slowly as they moved.
His eyes met yours
You start to lift your camera for photos when he approaches you. 
“I hope this doesn’t mess up your deadline.” He quietly teases.
“Wh- wait!” Before you could say anything further, he was already in the sky. You lifted the camera and the shutter fired rapidly, snapping countless photos of streaks of red and blue, the curve of his cape, the glint of sunlight on his inky black hair
You stood there long after he vanished, blinking through the smoke as firefighters continued to battle the flames, your heart racing harder than it had before.
Something about him felt.. familiar.
Not long after, you’re staring at your photos and typed-up eye witness interview transcripts, half distracted. Clark sits nearby, scribbling notes and swiping eraser shavings off his desk. You keep glancing at him, brows drawn together.
You’d made a beeline for your desk after the incident. Shoving your notepad down beside your half drunk coffee, your mind wasn’t entirely on the article. But on him.
He’d returned later than the rest of the group. Dawning a slightly smoky scent that kept finding its way over to you.
Superman’s voice still echoed in your head, not the words exactly, but the way they fell. The easy rhythm of his voice, the way he said it like he knew you. Like you’d spoken before. Like Clark.
You glanced across the isle and found him at his desk. Sleeves rolled up, shirt wrinkled just enough to suggest he’d been doing something more than snapping photos and getting quotes. You didn’t recall seeing him on scene. No camera bag slung over his shoulder, nor a “hollar if you get a good quote!”. Nothing.
“Hey Kent, do you have any good photos?” You said, keeping your tone casual.
Clark glanced up quickly, like he hadn’t realized you were watching. He blinked behind his frames and nudged them up with his knuckle.
“Only a few,” His chair swiveled around, passing a computer loaded with his photos in your hands.
You squinted and leaned over. The usual, crisp perfectly times shots of superman in action, cape floating in the wind, crowd awestruck, somehow turned into blurry messes.
“Wow. These are… not your best.” You were genuinely shocked as your nail clicked the next button. Superman was only half in frame in one. One was the sky. Another was completely blurry. over half only had the sky and maybe a corner of his boot.
Clark laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah… I was stuck across the street behind some trucks when he showed up. Couldn’t really get a clean view.”
You nodded, lips pressed together. “That’s odd, usually your right on top of these things” 
He looked at you for a second. Just a second too long. Then back at the screen. “I guess I’m just off my game today.”
You didn’t reply. Instead, you let your eyes linger on him. He shifted again, posture stiff and lips pursed, and he reached for his coffee cup even though it was clearly already empty.
Then the corner of your mouth twitched. “Okay, whatever you say.” And you swiveled back to your desk, and began to gather your papers.
Where were you really, clark?
“I think I’m just too tired, also. Y’know, smoke, adrenaline, whatever.” You sighed, grabbing your purse. “Im heading out”
Clark still sat in the isle. “Get home safe,” he said, quieter then usual.
You glanced back over your shoulder, “You too, Kent.”
When the elevator doors slid shut, you found yourself staring your own reflection in the metal, brows furrowed.
There was something in the way he looked at you. Something in the way he sounded. You couldn’t quite name it yet, but it was there.
Tags: @kissmxcheek @rorysbrainrot @wordacadabra
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kentbot · 6 days ago
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Novelty
Superman | Clark Kent x Reader
Chapter 1: Pilot
Summary: Superman never used to stop for reporters, until he met you
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word count: 1k
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This was the third time in a week that Metropolis was under attack by cosmic intruder Gevaltron. Still, I guess these things become common and even expected when you live in a society where superpowers, meta-humans, and aliens are common.
Clark defeated the intruder quite easily, and while he wasn’t particularly concerned for his safety or the threat that Gevaltron posed to the civilians on the street, he was worried about being late to work again and being chewed out by the chief
“Superman, Superman over here!”
“Superman, can I get a quick interview?”
The moment he landed, he was accosted by hungry reporters desperate to get a soundbite, clawing at his hands, cape, anything they could get their hands on. Most superheroes would fly off after they neutralized the threat to the public, but Clark liked to fly down and check on the civilians who were most in harm's way, comforting and personally transporting those who were most hurt or vulnerable. This may make him a very juicy target for journalists and newscasters, but he figured it came with the territory; after all, he’d do the same thing if he had to
He parted the crowd like water, speaking occasionally to a reporter he’d recognize, but mostly kept his focus on greeting civilians and checking for those who were gravely hurt.
After surveying the scene and finding nobody requiring immediate attention, Clark preps to launch, and hopefully make it to the Daily Cosmopolitan in the next 10 minutes after his quick change.
“Superman, it took you five minutes to take down Gevaltron, your fastest takedown this week, yet you still caused around an estimated 1 million in property damage. Any comment on that?”
Your voice floats up to Clark like a song, and it would’ve been pretty if the question hadn’t been so mean-spirited
He turns his face away from the sky and slowly looks down to face you, A short -though everyone is short compared to him- but very determined journalist, who looked like you were one second away from writing a scathing review of his takedown of Gevaltron. For a split second, he thought you beautiful, undercut by the hard look on your face, but he pushes the thought away quickly to focus on answering your pessimistic, albeit honest, question.
Clark puts on his best Superman smile, showing all 32, while posing his hands on his hips
“I assure you that I tried my best to minimize any damage to public property while engaging threats; however, my focus and utmost priority is civilian safety-
“So you don’t care about public property damage?” You interrupt quickly
“I never said that! I just…” Clark fumbles
“Do you know how much taxpayer dollars go towards meta-human damage yearly?”
“No but…”
“How can you say you truly care about Metropolis if you’re not concerned about what kind of damage you do to the city while you attempt to 'save' it?”
Clark pinches the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath to avoid saying something he’ll regret. Squaring his shoulders, Clark faces you head-on with a stern face
“Look, I care about Metropolis as a city, yes. I love its buildings, public parks, mom and pop shops, and public monuments, but most importantly, I love and care about the people in it, so If I have to damage a few skyscrapers to neutralize a threat to public safety, then so be it”
Your face breaks then, taking in his impassioned rant as you begin to smile coyly.
“Thanks, Superman, that’s all I needed.”
“Wait, what even-”
“See you next time!” You call out as you turn and begin to walk away
“Wait, I-“ Clark calls out, but you fade into the crowd quickly, allowing him to be crowded again while you disappear
“Shit,” Now he was gonna be 20 minutes late
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“I know, I know, I’m Sorry, Chief,” Clark says, rushing to his desk while avoiding the most lethal side-eye from Perry
“That’s the third time this week Kent. The next time I should fire you,” Perry says cooly, making Clark wince and Jimmy snicker
‘It won’t happen again, ' Clark promises, settling into work while Lois whispers “Liar” behind him
“You’re lucky Superman likes you so much”, Perry remarks, sipping his black coffee while reviewing Cat’s OpEd on fashion fatigue. “I still don’t know how you get all these exclusives.”
“Just luck, I guess,” Clark murmured, earning him a glare from Lois, as he smirked quietly behind his desk
“No matter, you just might be on the chopping block soon, Kent. We’ve got a new reporter coming in from the Gotham Gazette. She’s written great articles on Batman and just submitted a superb Superman piece today for review.”
Clark ignores the dig and focuses on compiling his interview bits. “Cool, it’ll be nice to have a new face around here.”
“Ooh ooh” Jimmy chimes, raising and waving his hands, “Is she hot Chief?”
Perry shoots Jimmy a dirty look, refusing to dignify his comment with a response, while Lois throws a pencil at him from her desk, hitting him square in the chest
“Ow Lois! what the hell”
“Shut up, Jimmy.”
“Get back to work, Olsen”, Perry says, rolling his eyes as he walks away. “And everyone else too, I’ve got a Newspaper to run people.”
It’s quiet for a second after Perry leaves, with Cat being quick to interrupt the silence as she rushes into the space in her red stilettos.
“OOOOH I’m soo excited for the new journalist!!”
“Yeah, I’m tired of it being a swordfest around here,” Lois cajoles
“First of all, gross,” Clark says
“And second of all, you love us,” Jimmy finishes
Lois rolls her eyes, but she’s laughing as she turns back to her desk
“Speaking of drinks, are we still on for tonight?”
“Nobody was talking about alcohol, you degenerate,” Jimmy shoots back, “but yes, I’m coming.”
Lois waves a pen in Clark’s and Cat’s direction without missing a beat, “Clark, Cat?”
“I will be there,” Clark smiles
“Ooh, sorry babes I forgot I have a date tonight, but you guys have soooo much fun for mee!” Cat winks, speed walking away from Lois’s disappointed pout
The group laughs as Cat retreats back to her desk, everyone refocusing back on their work, with Clark attempting to put together this week’s Superman piece before the workday ends.
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a/n: watched the Superman movie yesterday and was EXTREMELY inspired LMFAO.
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limarkova · 6 months ago
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Experimental Obsession
Formerly Know as: Yandere Batfam x Neglected Reader x Yandere Al Ghuls
Pt 1.
Next
*Author's note: this was not beta and was written at midnight.
Two years. That's how long you had been struggling to survive in hell. The experiments had been brutal in every way imaginable. In the end they had gotten their goal: a meta human capable of healing any illness or wound, with an extended life span.
However you had come out of it too defiant. Some part of you had clung to the child's hope you're family would swoop in and save you. Sure they were often busy and didn't have time for you, but they had still cared right? There was no way they hadn't noticed you were missing for two years. No they had to be on the case, maybe just waiting for that last clue. A clue you would give them by escaping your captors and spitting in the scientist's face as your family torn their facilities apart. Beside, you were capable of escaping by yourself so who cared that they didn't show up.
The security system at the front gates still recongized your fingerprint and retinas. Walking up the pathway, you admired the gardener's work. It looked so different from when you were last here. There was a bubbling in your stomach. Imagines flash in you mind of your brothers being so happy to see you.
Dick with his wide smile, wrapping you in his arms. He would check for injuries and you two would finally have that movie night he promised two years ago. Jason would demand answers and swear to make whoever hurt you pay. You knew he would do it to, all so you could sleep easy knowing they couldn’t hurt you anymore. Tim would listen before getting to work. He would ensure everyone connected to the experiments would be destroyed. Hunt down their suppliers and financial providers. They would protect and help you move past the experiments.
After them were your sisters. Babs, Cass, and Steph would let you in to girls night this time. You would get to watch those cringy 'reality' TV shows, take part in the fashion show, and play around the whole night. Than in the morning Babs would help the boys take out the experiments. Cass and Steph would be right there with them of course before teaching you how to defend yourself.
Alfred would also help you. He would tutor you and help you catch up on school you missed. Not running off to help the others. Just you too bonding. Maybe he would even read the Wizard of Oz to you. Just he promised when you were five.
Lastly, your father Bruce Wayne. He would finally pay attention to you. Postpone his business meetings, decline the galas, take a night off from patrol as Batman because his baby girl was home. The last remaining shred of your mother and his lover. You would be important enough for him.
You blinked as your hand touch cold metal. The front door. Right you must have gotten lost in thoughts again. You could feel every hope you tucked into the hidden part of you heart over the past two years creep out of the shadows. They started to clean the cobwebs out of and prepare the space for warmth.
The door creaked up to a dreary entrance hall. You couldn't put your finger on what made the space feel dark. Sunlight still pour through the grand windows. There wasn't a speck of dust anywhere to be seen. Yet there was a weight in the air that made the room feel empty and wrong. It looked and felt as if you had never left.
You began to wonder the halls in search of anyone. The quiet pressed down on your shoulders and feet. You never had thought you would miss the continuous buzz of medical equipment you couldn't name. Yet that seem better the suffocating silence that was clawing at you. You heard a faint noise from the living room.
Sitting in the living room was Tim, Steph, and Jason. Tim was texting on his phone, Jason was reading, and Steph was eating popcorn as she watched a show. It was normal.
Completely normal.
It was as if you hadn't disappeared for two years. Steph turned to look at you, a fistful of popcorn suspended mid-air, "Hey. How you doing?"
"I'm..." Your throat felt like gum. Her reaction was disappointing? Confusing? You couldn't think of the right word, "fine."
"That’s good." She turned back to the TV. Conversation over. Tim and Jason didn't even look up from what they were doing. You shuffled to the next room in a daze.
The kitchen felt like it had also barely changed. There were some new appliances but they sat where the old ones had. Dick and Cass leaned against the center island enjoying steaming cups of something. Cass turned to nod at you and Dick smiled at brightly, "Hey (Name). It's been a minute, how you doing?"
Your head tilted to the side. Two years had to be more than 'a minute'. A weight began to push against the hopes in your heart. They slowed their cleaning, a few began to retreat back to the darkness. You blinked twice before answering, "Fine. Where... where's dad?"
"Oh I think B had a business trip this week. He'll be back Tuesday." Dick shrugged before someone walked into the kitchen. Someone new. He was taller than Cass and shorter than Dick but not by much. He was also young, you would bet a few years younger than Tim. Dick gave him an even brighter smile, "Hey Duke."
"Who's this?" You pointed at him and blinked. Was a friend of Tim's? Maybe Steph?
"Oh, you two weren't introduced. Duke this is-" Dick patted Duke on the shoulder gesturing to you.
"(Name)"
"Duke Thomas. Alfred didn't mention anyone else living in the manor." Duke gave you a friendly smile and held out his hand. You shook it but could feel your head spinning. This didn't make sense.
"Alfred didn't mention me?" The words felt blocky. It was like you were a computer shutting down. Not only was everyone acting normal, there was a new person and it seemed like they knew you were gone. "I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well. I... I'm gonna go... lie down."
"Oh, okay." Duke's face scrunched up. He looked as confused as you felt. You left the kitchen dazed, clinging to the hall as your feet stumbled to your bedroom.
Something wasn't right. Why was everyone acting like you had just gone on a trip? You were gone for two years. Ripped out of the garden and held captive for two years in horrifying conditions. Submitted to endless hours of shocks, shots, burns, and twisted wires to a point it all blend into a red flim in your memory. All that before finally escaping just to have everyone act like you had been on vacation.
Your thoughts were interrupted with a sudden harsh shove. A hand gripped your shoulder tightly creating temporary bruises on your skin. Ringing took over the cacophonous noise in your head. As you looked at your attacker you saw a boy. He wasn't that much taller or older than you. His mouth moved and you barely registered his words, "Who are you? How did you get into the manor?"
Something froze. This boy looked like a copy of your dad. There was a feeling of having all the puzzle pieces but no way to connect them. The bigger picture so blurred you couldn't tell what was supposed to go where. A voice broken the silence, "Master Damian! Unhand her this insistence."
Alfred. Surely he knew what was going on. He could tell you why everyone was acting like you were on vacation instead of kidnapped, or who this new boy was and why he looked like your dad.
The boy looked to Alfred but his hand didn't leave your shoulder, "Who is she and how did she bypass the manor's security?"
"She is your half sister." Alfred marched towards you. Taking Damian's hands from you, he placed himself in between you two. "She has been away at a boarding school for the past two years."
The pieces clicked with a deafening pop. Boarding school. It made sense now why everyone was so causal. You weren't kidnapped in their eyes, you had simply been sent away. Your coming back was expected on some level.
Another realization hit shortly after that. Boarding schools ment tuition payments that were expected to be paid by 'loving parents' who knew where there children were. Boarding school explained when a kid was missing from a wealthy for a period of time to those who would care to ask. A boarding school was the perfect cover for experiments in a highly secured facility.
Surely your dad wouldn't do that, right? He's Batman, a protector of the city. Someone who was ment to be moral and a role model. More importantly, you were what remained of your mother. The last piece of her and your dad's picture book romance. The billionaire CEO that falls in love with his secretary. This had to be a misunderstanding or miscommunication.
Damian's voice cut through your thoughts, again. "How old are you?"
"What?" The question was mis-timed and absurd to be asked immediately after he attacked you.
"I must ensure I am still the eldest blood child and father's heir." He said it so matter of fact like. As if he already knew the answer but wanted to confirm it.
"Ten."
"Hmm. We are the same age." He glared at you through Alfred before lifting his chin, "Date of birth."
"You first." You hated this boy already. He was as self-righteous and arrogant as the scientists in that damn place. Defiance crackled in your veins at the thought. You would not answer anymore questions from him.
"Both of you, stop it. Miss (Name) was born on (DOB) the year after you. You are older but not by much. Master Damian was born on November 11th" Alfred said the words and there was another pop.
"I'm going to my room." You didn't care what was said after that. It was like a wildfire started in your heart. Consuming the oxygen in your lungs to breath was impossible. You could feel them dying. Your hopes, succumbing to the flames, burning away to ash. Some part of you tried to save them with hot tears. It was already too late.
Your room felt like a tomb tucked away in the attic. A thin layer of dust coated everything, telling you not even Alfred bothered to come up here. Good, you wanted to be alone.
The numbers ran in your head again. Than once more. They raced through your head, years, timelines, before finally settling. In order for you and Damian to be born by those dates, your father had to be cheating on your mother with his. That or Bruce had used your mother to get over Damian's. You stumbled towards your dusty bed and fished around underneath it. Pulling out your mother's diary you began to skim the pages.
Swirls flew past your fingers. Finally you they ran over her cursive letters. "Bruce mentioned a woman name Talia. He talked about her with a mix of longing and betrayal. I wonder what happened?" There it was. The crack in your mother's love story, Talia.
Maybe it had been a whirlwind romance for your mother. Her diary was proof of that but your father. No, you couldn't prove she was important to him and by proxy you. Maybe you were so unimportant, unwanted, he could hand you other to those scientists and tell everyone it was a boarding school. All you had to do was prove it and burn him down.
Talia would never admit that she check on Damian frequently. No if anyone asked she was ensuring he followed his training regime. That didn't stop the surprise however to see a girl his age approach the manor gates.
She carried herself with a purpose but lack all the tells of training. Yet that wasn't what held Talia's attention, it was her eyes. They held a cautious fire and moved like she expected it be put out at any moment. It caused Talia's sixth sense to kick in, the one that told her this girl had potential that just need to be refined.
She followed her into the manor. Sure the security system was a pain but she need more information on this girl. When Damian shoved the girl into the wall Talia became certain of two things. One Damian was upholding his training and two this girl did have potential.
She didn't flinch at the knife to her throat. Talia doubted it even registered as a small amount of blood came out. When the butler interfered, Talia almost missed it. The wound sealed shut and the blood evaporated to leave no trace of a wound. Yes, this girl had potential.
"(Name) Wayne. Hmm, I've always wanted a daughter."
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