#no amount of keeping shit clean is gonna save you if youre stretching too fast tbh

[razette]

re-stretching my ears after losing all my earrings. gonna have to go from a 2g back to a 00g is gonna suck. im gonna do it right this time to avoid more scar tissue. it was whatever the first time, idrc, but im sober now so if i do it poorly its gonna itch the whole time it heals and im gonna go bonkers.

[recurring-polynya]

In tHiaM, Renji mentioned a fictional fateful encounter in which he and Rukia met in the circus. I can picture this deeply. The Rukon has circuses. It has gritty knife throwers, it has scrappy beast tamers, it has a lovely doe-eyed tightrope walker who does stunts so dangerous your hair'd turn white just watching her. It is for Renji's birthday so he should get Rukia being extremely badass and saving his life from a rampaging circus bear. Ideally, Kenpachi is there.

A lot of times, I’ll have some idea for a story, and I’ll do a bit of research and find out that the thing I wanted to do absolutely does not exist in Japanese culture, and I was completely sure that when I dug into it, Japanese circuses would not be a thing, or they would be extremely different from Western circuses, but as it turns out, circuses were absolutely a thing in the Edo era, and they had acrobats and strongmen and horseriding and more. I had so many tabs open about circuses, and almost none of it actually made it into this fanfic.

Anyway, THANK YOU ALOPEX, you know what I like to write, and what I like to write is Renji telling rambling stories of questionable veracity. I put in some lifting for good measure. This might be the most perfect Renji birthday story.

If it isn’t immediately evident, this takes place in the middle of the Advance Team Arc, or more specifically, in the middle of my Advance Team Arc story, See You on the Other Side, where Renji tells Chad a different RenRuki origin story that’s basically the desert bandit subplot from Crouching Tiger, and also a story about bees.

Read on ao3 | ff.net

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Renji hefted the last bumper plate onto the end of the barbell and tightened the collar. Chad watched him with narrowed eyes.

“You sure you want to try this?” Renji asked. “One thousand pounds. It’s the weight limit for this bar. Once you beat this, we gotta go back to Urahara’s place and pick up big rocks.”

Apparently, Chad worked part time at his gym, which meant he had a key, which meant that he and Renji could go in at two a.m. so that Renji could teach him how to lift absurd amounts of weight with his reiatsu. It was pretty convenient, as long as you didn’t mind lifting weights at two a.m. Renji loved lifting weights at two a.m.

“You just don’t want to tell me another story,” Chad replied, flexing his shoulders in anticipation.

“Whatever, I got a million of them.” Renji took a few steps backward.

Chad flared his nostrils and stepped up to the barbell. He squatted down and curled his fingers around the grip. He took three deep breaths as he stared straight again. Leading with his hips, he straightened up in a smooth, textbook perfect movement, the sinews in his neck popping out, the air around him boiling with power.

Renji wished he could drag Chad over to Squad Six, so those spoiled weenies could see what hard work actually looked like.

Chad dropped the weight and a huge breath burst out of him, his eyes widening in relief. “I did it,” he gasped.

“You did it, buddy!” Renji shouted, pointing at the barbell. “You’re a machine! You didn’t even make it look hard!”

“It was hard,” Chad managed.

“I don’t believe it!” Renji continued. “One thousand pounds! You’re incredible, dude!”

“What do you mean, you don’t believe it? You told me to do it.”

“I mean, when I told you we were gonna work for the big one-kay, it was, you know, a stretch goal. I didn’t expect you to get there so fast!”

“You said you would tell me another story when I hit it! I assumed it was a reasonable goal.”

“I keep making unreasonable goals and you keep hitting them, so I’m just sort of winging it, now, t’be honest! I’m actually really bothered how much you are motivated by my dumb stories. If I had any human money, I would just offer to buy you tacos or something.”

“I can make my own tacos. I like the stories.”

Renji sighed. They didn’t have tacos in Soul Society and he was determined to eat as many tacos as he possibly could while he was stationed in the Living World. “Go get cleaned up, and I’ll put the weights away and try to decide which story to tell you this time. I did bring us some protein shakes. I can’t vouch for them, because they’re made out of stuff I found in the Shouten, but it’s important to get some calories in you after lifting. ”

“I’m sure they’re fine. I like your protein shakes. Oh, and I know which story I want to hear--how you met Rukia.”

Of course he did.

Renji was a man of many stories. He had so many good stories. He had Inuzuri stories that were full of mischief and dirtbaggery. He had Squad 11 stories that were full of headbutting and idiocy. He had interesting stories about his clever friends Izuru and Momo and funny stories about his goofy friend Shuuhei and horrible stories about his horrible friends Iba and Madarame. But Chad had asked him once how he met their mutual friend Kuchiki Rukia, a very reasonable and natural thing to ask, and Renji had responded with a ridiculous story that was very obviously not true. Now, all Chad wanted to hear was ostentatious lies about how he, Abarai Renji, had met the incomparable Kuchiki Rukia.

Renji racked his brain as he racked Chad’s weights. This would probably make the eighth or ninth Renji-Rukia origin story, he’d honestly lost count. He was running out of material. There was a bulletin board next to the weight storage rack, covered with flyers for a weightlifting tournament in Naruki City, the Karakura High kendo team, tumbling lessons. Renji stared at the picture of the girl in the sparkly leotard on the last one. He thought about how he and the gang used to make up stories of how they were gonna make it out of Inuzuri some day. He thought about Rukia’s absolute favorite, the one she told over and over, the way it got bigger and sparklier every time she told it.

Chad returned, a tracksuit zipped overtop his workout clothes. “Need help?” he asked.

“This is the last one,” Renji replied, hefting it up onto the shelf. “You can put the bar away, though.”

Chad did.

It was kinda nice, Renji thought, being in a gym in the middle of the night with Chad. It reminded him of hunching over his dorm room desk across from Izuru, cramming for written exams. It reminded him of achy muscles in a dim Fifth Company dojo, trying to figure out the mechanics of Zabimaru’s shikai deep into the wee hours. It reminded him of long runs with Ikkaku as the sun was just peaking over the city walls. The hours between dusk and dawn were a pretty good time for doing things, in Renji’s opinion.

“So, did you remember? How you met her?”

“Of course I remember!” Renji protested. “You think I would forget something like that?”

“You do get hit on the head a lot,” Chad rumbled gently and it took Renji a moment to realize he just got dragged. Chad was actually a really funny guy, you just had to pay attention.

Renji plopped down on a pile of mats and started rummaging around in his backpack for the two bottles of questionable nutritional substance he had mixed up earlier. “Well, I certainly remember the time I ran away from home and joined the circus, I’ll tell you that.” It was a good opening line, and he paused a few seconds to get the full effect.

“The circus?” Chad echoed skeptically, sitting down next to Renji and accepting his smoothie.

“The circus,” Renji replied after taking a long swig. It was very, very strawberry flavored. “So. I think I mentioned once that when I died I got sent to the shit-end of Rukongai. District 78 of the Southern Quadrant, where your best hope is to die soon and catch an express trip back to the Living World. I was too dumb and stubborn for that, though, so I was always on the lookout for a way out. Now, it’s pretty hard to move between districts in Rukongai-- it’s illegal without a special permit, see, and special permits get harder to get the further out you go. But there are a few kinds of permits that allow you to travel all up and down Soul Society, and one of those is for entertainers.”

This was more-or-less true. It was true in theory, but travelling shows never made it out to the deep Rukon-- there was no profit in it. Rukia used to swear up and down that a circus had made it to Inuzuri once, basically just passing through on their way to capture wild animals from the magical wilderness past the end of District 80, but she had seen it. Rukia was older than the rest of them, and she used to talk about it in such nauseating detail that they had no choice but to believe her.

“When I saw the posters plastered up all over town, my first thought was that it was an opportunity to pick up some quick kan as temporary labor. My primary job skill at the time was picking up heavy objects, you see, perhaps moving them from place to place. Circuses always need help with set up and tear down. I mean, do I look like a theater kid?”

Chad stared at him pointedly.

“I don’t know why I asked that,” Renji quickly corrected, “but also, keep in mind that I am Like This because I was in the circus, not the other way around. Anyway, my instincts were correct, and I found myself gainfully employed, carting crates and also tying and untying knots, another of my many talents. But then two things, or rather two someones made me decide that I needed to hitch my star to this ridiculous pageant. The first, I will admit, was a complete castle in the sky, but what is being an adolescent boy about if not chasing after hopeless dreams?”

Chad frowned. “Well. There’s school.”

“There is no school in Inuzuri, actually, and perhaps that would have kept me out of trouble, but instead, I became absolutely entranced by the glittering star of the show-- a tightrope walker of exceptional agility, grace, and beauty. Her most defining characteristic, though, was her audacity. There was no trick too dangerous for her. She somersaulted through hoops of fire. She juggled daggers. She’d stop halfway across the tightrope, pull out a tokkari, and pour herself a saucer of sake and drink it, while the audience gasped.”

“It was Kuchiki,” Chad guessed, the corner of his mouth tipping up into his shy grin.

“It was Rukia,” Renji agreed, “but imagine Rukia in head-to-toe spangles, with bells in her hair and glitter painted around her eyes, 20 feet in the air. She was unreal. She was an apparition, a spirit. I was desperate to meet her.”

“Did you?” asked Chad.

“Chad,” said Renji.

“What?”

“Did you just… did you just ask me if I ever managed to meet Rukia? Your friend and mine, Kuchiki Rukia? In the middle of this story about how I met Rukia?”

Chad thought for a moment. “It’s two a.m. and I just deadlifted a thousand pounds.”

“That’s fair, and the answer is yes, eventually, I did meet Rukia and she saved me from being eaten by a bear, but we’ll get to that. Are you drinking that protein shake?”

“Oh, sorry! It’s really good, I just keep forgetting because this story is a good one.” Chad took a long sip. “Hey, Abarai?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to interrupt again, but I have a question about the bear.”

“The bear is later.”

“Yeah, I realize that, but does the bear die?”

“Huh?”

“I’m just asking up front, because I don’t like stories where animals die, and if the bear gets hurt or dies, maybe could you skip over that part?”

“Oh! No, the bear is fine. Well, he’s probably reincarnated back into a living bear by now, he was pretty old even then. I exaggerated a little to make it sound dramatic, he probably wouldn’t have eaten me in any case.”

“Okay, you can go back to the story now, I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.”

“No, no, it’s cool. I’m glad you checked in.” Renji took a deep breath through his nose and mentally rearranged his story so that Rukia no longer defeated the beast in a dramatic knife fight. “Right. So, as I said, there was a second person at the circus who influenced me greatly and that was the most famous strongman in the entire Rukon, Zaraki Kenpachi--”

“Wait, Captain Zaraki? Big guy? With the bells in his hair?”

Oh, shit. “Uh, yeah. That’s a circus thing, you know. Hair bells. You, uh, know Captain Zaraki?”

“Yeah, Orihime made friends with him, and he broke us out of prison, but then we split up because there was someone he wanted to fight.”

“That sounds like him. Anyway, yeah, he’s in this story, too. I used to be in his squad, you know?”

“I gathered that from the way Madarame and Ayasegawa talk to you.”

“He helped me get in the Gotei, you see. Because of our time together in the circus. That’s a different story, though, we’re focusing on circus times, here. He wasn’t even the Kenpachi, yet, actually. One of the reasons he’s so strong is because before he was a fighter, he lifted things, heavy things. He did all the typical strongman stuff-- bending iron bars, biting through teacups, tearing packs of cards in half, but his most famous trick was balancing bamboo poles on his shoulders and then various acrobats and other performers would scramble up on them and do tricks from on top of him. He was wildly popular, pictured on all the posters. People would come to the circus just to see him. I did not have a lot going for me at this point of my life, but I was strong, and when I saw this guy, it occurred to me that if I could get him to take me on as some sort of apprentice, I might finally be able to use my strength to get out of that shitty town.”

“Seems like a good plan.”

“It did. It seemed like a good plan, except that Zaraki had a very busy schedule of getting drunk and napping when he wasn’t lifting things, and he was absolutely not interested in Inuzuri punks who had been hired to move crates around.”

“So, what did you do?”

“Well, speaking of Inuzuri punks, I may have been a fairly honest and hardworking fellow, but one day, a couple of my reprobate neighbors decided to sneak in and try to get a glimpse of some of the wild animals. The fellow who looked after the menagerie was a little guy by the name of Mameji. Very kind and loved the animals deeply, but not very good at standing up for himself. I barely knew him, but I don’t like bullies, and I owed most of those guys a punch in the nose anyway. Mameji was pretty grateful for the solid I did him and asked if there was any favor he could do me in return. Naturally, I asked if he knew Zaraki, but unfortunately, he was terrified of the guy, so I told him I was just happy to do a good deed and make a friend.”

“You should have asked him if he knew Rukia. Rukia likes animals.”

“You’re very smart, Sado, but remember that this story is about me, not you. It didn’t matter anyway, because the next day, he comes to find me and says there’s someone who wants to talk to me. I can’t imagine who he means, aside from holding out hope that maybe he did know Zaraki after all and was just slow-rolling me.”

“But it was Rukia.”

“It was. Mameji leads me over to the area where the animals are kept, and there, in a blue kimono embroidered with silver stars and crystals in her hair, was The Fearless Rukia.” Rukia’s circus stories were usually at least seventy-five percent descriptions of her outfits, and Renji felt obligated to keep up that detail. “‘You helped my friend out,’ she says to me. ‘I appreciate that.’ And I replied something very smooth and suave, like, ‘I like the way you do cartwheels’ or possibly just “Guuuuuuh.’ And then she says, ‘I hear you’re interested in Zaraki, what’s up with that?’ and as you know, I’m much better at talking about muscle stuff, so I explain about picking up heavy things and Inuzuri and my ambition to join the circus and she just listens carefully, nodding from time to time. She makes me pick up a few barrels and then Mameji, for good measure, and finally, she nods and says, ‘You’re pretty strong and I like your hair. Come back here tomorrow. I’m going to help you impress Zaraki.’”

Chad’s eyes sparkled with anticipation.

“So, the next day, I came back, like she said, and Mameji was there, too and they’ve got this big sack of yams. I’ve told you before about eatin’ in Soul Society, right?”

Chad nodded and belatedly took another gulp of his shake.

“My initial thought was that they were gonna try to bulk me up. Raw yams may not sound very exciting to you, but after years of living on near-moldy rice and the occasional sad vegetable or bony fish, I was watering at the mouth. ‘You’re gonna feed these yams to Sunny,’ says Rukia. ‘Who?’ says I. ‘His stage name is Brawler,’ says Rukia, ‘But he’s a good boy so Mameji and I call him Sunny. It’s a joke. Because he’s a moon bear.’ Brawler, you see, was the second scariest thing in the circus, right after Zaraki-- the biggest, ugliest moon bear you can possibly imagine, probably 200 kilograms. A lot of circus bears do tricks-- balance on balls or some shit, but Brawler’s only trick was looking mean as Hell. Sometimes they’d throw him a deer haunch and he’d eat it in a real gross way, I guess people like seeing stuff like that. I, like most people growing up on the southern border of the Rukon, had a healthy fear of large carnivores, but I had a much larger fear of looking like a weenie in front of Rukia, and I was determined I was gonna do whatever she told me to. The first time wasn’t so bad-- I just tossed the yams in and he snuffled over and gave me the hairy eyeball before snorfling them up. We did that the next day, too, but the day after that, Mameji took me into his enclosure to give him his yams. I was a little surprised, you see, because I would have expected a bear like that to eat meat or something like that, but he sure did like those yams.”

“Moon bears are omnivores,” Chad supplied. “They like sweet things.”

“You’re right, and I later found out that Sunny did get meat and other stuff at other times of day, but yams were his absolute favorite thing. Again, Rukia did not tell me this, because Rukia often neglects to tell me important things. I found all of this to be absolutely terrifying, and I probably would have given up and stuck to my crate moving, except that Rukia and Mameji were just about the nicest and amazing people I had ever met. They let me hang out with them for a bit and they told me stories about traveling with the circus and I told them about Inuzuri. They introduced me to their other friends, Fujimaru, who could do all sorts of knife throwing tricks, and Kosaburou, who had the most beautiful singing voice you could possibly imagine. By the time Rukia asked me to give Sunny the yams right out of my hand, I was doin’ it, not because I was desperate to get out of Inuzuri, but because I was desperate to do anything to stay with my new friends.”

Renji paused and pretended to be interested in his protein shake. Usually, he tried to fill these stories with a lot of daring-do and badassery, but he’d gotten a little off-track when had to junk his big exciting Rukia versus Bear fight scene. All he could think of was lying around the squat on miserable rainy days, one-upping each other with stories about their ridiculous circus acts. He hadn’t thought about those days-- hadn’t let himself think about those days-- in years. What a sap he was turning into. Maybe it was because Rukia was back in his life. Maybe it was because there was a war coming, a war he might not make it through. Maybe it was because it was two a.m.

“I know how that feels,” Chad said very quietly, so quietly that Renji almost didn’t catch it, and it occurred to Renji that maybe sometimes it helped to hear a sappy story at 2 a.m.

Renji snorted softly. “So, the day before the circus was set to pack up, Rukia explains her big plan to me. Up until now, I’ve sort of been assuming that this is all an exercise in building courage or some gonzo shit like that, but it turns out it’s very straightforward. Zaraki’s dream the whole time he’s been in the circus is to pick up Sunny as part of his act, except that Sunny has zero interest in being picked up and ends up chewing on Zaraki’s head every time he tries. If Zaraki had ever bothered asking Mameji for help, maybe he could have tried the old yam trick himself, but then this wouldn’t be much of a story.

“I wait ‘til the big guy is done with his nap and is prepping for the night’s performance, inventorying his lead pipes and such, and I go up to him and I say, ‘Zaraki the Great, I am very strong, you should take me on as your apprentice!’ Now, Rukia had seen people do this to him before, and she knew that he always came back with ‘Oh, yeah? Do something to impress me, then.’ Of course, I was prepared, and I said, ‘I am going to pick up Brawler, would that do it?’ and Zaraki laughs in my face and says ‘If you can do that, I will definitely take you on, kid.’”

Chad’s face had split into a huge grin and he leaned forward in anticipation.

“We go over to Sunny’s pen, and of course, Mameji’s already given him his dinner and he’s feelin’ real fat and happy when he sees his old yam buddy Renji coming. I slip him a yam that I had tucked in my sleeve and I start rubbin’ his side, which is a thing we’d been practicin’. He leans into it, ‘cause he was a big, itchy boy, and I just… flipped him and picked him up like a baby.” Renji made a scooping motion to demonstrate. Chad’s face absolutely lit up. “He was incredibly heavy and also he did not really like that,” Renji continued, “but I put him down right away and gave him another yam and he forgave me. Zaraki was laughin’ his ass off, but he kept his word and got me signed on as a Strongman-in-Training. We went on to have many more adventures, both me an’ Zaraki and me an’ Rukia an’ Mameji an’ Kosaburou and Mameji.”

“And Sunny.”

“Sunny continued to be a hideous, angry bear for the crowds, but I kept giving him yams and never picked him up again and we were great friends for the time we spent together in the circus.”

Chad sat back, smiling his usual inscrutable smile. “Thank you, Abarai. That was a really good one.”

Renji cocked an eyebrow at him. “Was it?”

“Yes. It had friendships and a nice bear and I felt like Rukia would really appreciate the effort you put into describing all her outfits. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t true, but it was a good story.”

Renji heaved a big sigh, as though he’d honestly thought Chad was gonna buy it this time. He stretched his arms and legs out in front of him. “Let’s go home. I could go for a few hours of sleep before the Shouten Shouting starts. You’re taking a rest day tomorrow, but don’t forget to stretch.”

“The last time I had a rest day, you came over and you taught me some stuff about reiryouku.”

“Did I?” Renji frowned.

“Can we do that again? You said you would try to explain how flash step works.”

Shit, he did remember promising that. He’d just gotten overenthusiastic because it was nice to be the guy who knew things for a change. On the other hand, he also remembered the enthusiasm of going to school for the first time and wanting to know everything, and could hardly fault Chad for the same. “Sure,” he agreed. “After noon.”

“Let’s make it noon,” Chad amended. “I’ll make you tacos.”

“That,” replied Renji, “is a deal.”

[crimson-dxwn]

AT ODDS 6 (Kal Skirata x F!OC)

Summary: Tea gets spilled at Kyrimorut. Ordo gets involved. Ori makes a choice and a new enemy.

Warnings: Mando profanity, pregnancy, SPOILERS for Republic Commando books (all but the last one), medical shit, surgery, fucking SADS

As always, so many thanks to @detroitbydark who lets me screech about my weird fic and Kal and Ori! Also this is barely edited be kind, I’m on my psych rotation and barely scraping by. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kal realizes he’s slipped the figurine into the pocket of his bodysuit semi-consciously in his hasty retreat from the apartment. Knotted Jonah wood whittled smooth forms two stylized figures, one large and one small, their hands joined between them. 

He barely registers the ride back home and comming Mij. They need a plan, and they need one fast if they are going to find her. He knows little about how the Empire treats their prisoners compared to the late Republic, but he isn’t about to have any illusions of honor or fair play. After all, he doesn’t play fair himself. But there’s a hydrospanner thrown into the mix. What he doesn’t know is how the Imps treat prisoners with … unique health conditions. Or if they even give half a bantha’s shebs. Odds are they send men and women alike to those osik’la camps he’s gotten word of. Yeah, the Empire was equal opportunity like that. 

If Mereel can’t slice into the system remotely, they were going to have to do an old-fashioned infiltration. He’d ask his ad’ike if they were up to task, there’s no way he could ask to put them in danger, not after the entirety of their lives being war. It hurts him to even think about asking. But he has to do this, even if it’s just his sorry shebs. 

He tries to put on a good Sabaac face when he’s back in the karyai, discreetly gathering up all the surplus weapons they have that he finds might be useful for an infiltration into a heavily armed and fortified position. 

Mereel of course, catches on within minutes. 

“You’re going to find her,” Mereel interrupts. Kal yanks his head up out of the gun locker to look at his son. “And you didn’t even think to ask for backup?”

His son’s tone is accusing, edging on hurt. That he did not expect.

“It’s my fuckup, son,” he replies, “I’m the one who needs to fix it. I can’t ask you to do this.”

“What’s so special about this doctor?” Mereel slams the door of the locker shut. It’s obvious his ad’ika is protective. They all are. 

“She delivered your ba’vodu’ad, Mereel. I’m pretty sure she saved Parja’s life.” Kal says, keeping his eyes on his work, cleaning the weapons, arranging the ammo he needs. Sharpening his father’s three-sided knife. 

“And that’s enough to go up against the Empire? ”

He’s going to have to spit it out. Mereel is looking at him expectantly, sure that he’s going to change his mind, see reason. 

“She’s pregnant, son.” Mereel, who has been away for the events of the last few months, just stares back at him in a puzzled fashion, brows slightly furrowed. Looking at him like he’s lost his damn mind. Maybe he has. 

“It’s yours, isn’t it?”

In comes a second voice, and the accusatory tone startles him enough that, when added to his baseline urgency and anxiety, causes his hand to slip and nick itself as he sharpens his knife. 

“Osik,” he hisses, holding pressure to the cut as blood wells, looking up to the figure in the doorway. Ordo. Mereel stares at his brother, unsure whether he is joking. Kal sighs. He should know better, trying to keep things from them. The last time he was successful at that was when they were four. 

“Does it matter?” 

“Maybe,” Ordo replies, just this edge of indignant, “is she carrying my vod?” 

A strange and protective piece of him flares at Ordo’s tone and Kal stands, still holding the cloth to his cut hand. 

“Most likely.”

“Then we need to get her back.” Ordo meets his eye finally and Kal nods, satisfied, and starts gathering ammo from the safes. This time Mereel moves to help, still in a rare state of stunned silence. 

By the time they’ve gathered what they need and loaded it into aayhan, Mereel has a willing team assembled and what they know of the building schematics up on a datapad in the karyai. Fortunately for them, the team won’t be breaking into any prison blocks, which are bound to be heavily guarded. 

“All we have to do is get into the information security room that houses the main terminal,” Mereel starts confidently. “We can stay far away from the security blocks and the bucketheads.” 

“Though it would be fun to bust some vode out of there,” Scorch adds. 

“Not our mission,” says Mereel, regret plain in his voice, “we’ll have to get them another time.” The realization that they were leaving prisoners at the mercy of the empire sobers the group even more. It was becoming more and more apparent that more planning was needed before they could root out the Empire on Mandalore. Meanwhile, Kal had set Uthan to the task of trying desperately to make their own homebrew vaccine. 

---

It’s been many many years since he’s fastroped. Lately, he has been finding that it’s been years since he’s done many things. Fastroping, underwater diving...fathering kriffing kids. He swallows, hard and regroups himself. Every single one of them needs to be focused if they’re gonna pull this job off. 

Yes, he’s fast roped before. But he’s never liked it. Where his sons get twitchy when confined to tight spaces, he finds himself sweating more than usual under his beskar the more stories they climb. Right now, they’re about ten stories up, far above the sensors of the garrison and way above his tolerance for heights. They have about a minute to pull this off before the Imps realize this transport is lingering too long in their airspace. 

Mereel, Sev, Scorch, and Kal are in Aayhan, hovering silently above the Keldabe imperial garrison in the inky black late summer night. The humidity sticks his tactical garments to his skin, making it itch and crawl in addition to his surging adrenaline. That was one thing that never changed, no matter how old he got, no matter how many missions he’s finished - that nauseating spike of pure fear and bliss. 

He gives the signal to move move move and soon he’s roping down, strong north Mandalorian wind whipping around him, soaking through his underlayer. The four of them land silently on the roof of the compound, and Scorch starts laying a strip charge along the floor to create a hole leading below, straight into the admin offices. Four sets of Mando armor gleam lowly in the moonlight. It’s a perfect night for an op like this, whipping wind obscuring any slight noise they did make and the faint whine of aayhan’s engines. The charges detonate with a controlled bang and flash of bright light that briefly blinds his HUD. Kal switches to night vision.

*His child*. It’s barely a concrete concept in his mind yet, but an instinctual piece of him knows the truth. The timing is too perfect for him to be wrong. The way Orla had looked at him in the med center…

The stakes are too high to fail, and distracting thoughts get men killed. Mereel leads the way through the door, rifle at the ready, and Kal banishes his musings to the back of his mind, pushed away by a fresh rush of adrenaline. It’s a stealth mission, and they navigate by night vision, as silently as their boots will allow. 

They stalk through dark quiet hallways lined with innocuous office doors until they reach the end, what is presumably the CO’s office, with its durasteel double doors and obviously larger size. 

Mereel starts in on slicing the door panel while Sev shoots out the camera in the hallway corner while the rest of them listen for any approaching patrols. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed they were there, whether it was the hole in the roof or the blacked out camera. The double doors open quietly and they head inside. Vau’s boys guard the door while he and Mereel crowd the desk in the middle of the room. 

“I need a few minutes to get into this,” Mereel says, eyes locked onto the screen before him. One of his slicing tools is between his teeth.

“You’ll get it, son. We’ll take care of anything that tries to get in our way.” 

So far it looks like no one has noticed them. The imps must really be confident in the plan to neutralize Mandalore with so few guards and patrols. Sweat drops trickle down the back of his neck and into his bodysuit.

Mereel studies the datapad stripping the system for a few more moments and turns it towards Kal. There’s a concerned look stretched across his handsome face. Together the watch the recorded scene on the screen before them. 

There’s Orla, still in her work clothes, talking with an Imp who’s behind this very desk, flanked by two stormtroopers. He knows those gestures - she’s spitting mad, barely containing the fury that was directed toward the man behind the desk. Without audio he can only guess as to the contents of their conversation. The Imp behind the desk gives a short reply and nods curtly to the right-hand trooper who, without hesitation, raises his blaster rifle and cracks her across the face with the butt end. She doesn’t even see it coming. Even in the shades of blue from the holoprojector the blood is obvious, trickling down the side of her face. 

Kal is livid, trembling so finely it’s barely visible, and he almost forgets where they are for a moment. Deep in enemy territory, with hostiles incoming any minute. 

Mereel makes a disgusted noise from deep in his chest as they watch her be pushed to the ground. They follow the video feed where she’s led to a cell. His breath catches. There’s a chance she’s still here. His hope is tempered, however, when an alarm starts to sound from within the garrison. A patrol must have finally found their breach point.

“Sarge?” warns a voice from outside the door. It’s Sev, by the gravelly tone. 

“Almost finished,” he shouts, over the screeching din. Mereel continues to work furiously, his bulk hunched over the console. He’s able to parse through incredible amounts of data with immense precision; Kal can practically feel the concentration rolling off him. 

“Wait,” Mereel says. Kal looks over at the screen. They’re centered on a video feed again, this time outside. The sheer amount of prisoners in line for the transport is shocking enough, but the fact that none of them are in armor is even more appalling. The Imps are slowly stripping their culture away, plate by plate. 

“She’s not on the manifest for this transport, even though the records say she leaves.” 

It doesn’t make sense. Unless… Kal knows Mereel must be thinking the same as him. Judging by the brutality of the footage they’ve watched, the stories from around the planet, he wouldn’t put it past the Empire to take care of a pesky problem in the easiest way they knew how. It wasn’t something that supposedly peaceful, orderly governments liked to keep records of. His dread and guilt intensifies, leadening his limbs already weighed down by heavy beskar. 

He chokes the words out. He has to know. “Is there any footage of…” Kal can’t bring himself to say them. It doesn’t need to be said, Mereel knows what he’s looking for. He’s been in a war zone long enough to know that armies aren’t sentimental. 

“No, no footage. Just them leading her away.” The alarm continues to blare. It could be minutes, seconds before they have to blast their way out. 

“Here.”

Kal steels himself to watch. It’s his fault, he reminds himself again. Two more fresh marks in his ledger. His arm reaches automatically to his son’s to steady himself. He feels Mereel’s slump ever so slightly, whether it’s in relief or defeat, he can’t tell. 

“I have what I need,” he says, “time to go. Debrief can wait for later.” Distant footsteps start to echo towards them, modulated shouts following close behind. They were about to be grossly outnumbered, by the sound of it. Kal shoves his helmet back on, heading through the doorway and signaling Sev and Scorch to follow. 

They wind through the garrison, avoiding both patrols and squads of stormtroopers sweeping the building. It’s laughably easy compared some of the other heists they’ve pulled - except he speaks too soon. As they make their way out of the back door of the garrison onto the Keldabe streets, one squad catches up to them. Ordo has aayhan back at Kyrimorut - earlier they had decided it was too risky for the four of them to fly home and possibly expose the homestead. So instead their plan was to run the winding streets and strategically borrow a transport. The problem is that Kal is pushing sixty and the other men are - physiologically at least - still in their early twenties. They’re a lot kriffing faster than him, even with his ankle fixed. 

The streets and alleys twist and turn, switching from ancient cobbles to smooth duracrete without warning. Easy enough to get lost if you’re a local, they are impossible to navigate as aruettiise. Soon the four are panting, ducked into an alcove off a cobbled alley. Finally, it seems they’ve dodged the patrol. Only time will tell if they were recognized. Kal finds he doesn’t much mind if they know his face. In fact, he hopes they do. He wants to meet that garrison officer. 

-------

Imperial Rehabilitation Center

Weeks later

19 BBY

Life isn’t all doom and gloom. They are kept...occupied. Like rats in a maze. Ori shares a bunk with another Mandalorian, the only other there. Taren is a kid really, small and slight except for her distended belly. It’s obvious she’s used to wearing armor by the way she walks, how upright she holds herself, arms swaying slightly away from her body. And how she closes in on herself when she realizes it’s not there, when it’s nighttime in their room and thinks Ori can’t hear her sob breathlessly into her pillow every night. 

It’s almost childish, the way they’re herded from room to room. Chaperoned and on a schedule, like one would handle a naughty child needing extra discipline. It was how she imagines Coruscanti boarding schools some of her medical school classmates attended - polished stone floors and crisp uniforms, all strict routines and synchronized repetition. It’s meant to numb the mind, making days run into weeks. She suspects they’re kept intentionally disoriented. After all, most of them are still political prisoners, and many she’s found have important connections on their respective homeworlds. 

They’re at lunch, scattered around their assigned tables. Generously, they are allowed to converse during meals, though their seats remain assigned. The ‘rehab center’ has proven to be much more expansive than she expected - some rooms are swallowingly large, like the one she is in now, and some are as small as a broom closet, connected by narrow winding hallways. The building itself could have been any number of things in a past life - a school, factory, or prison. She supposes it doesn’t matter much now. Today there’s a newcomer, sitting quiet and sullen at a back table with the Corellians. Time would tell if she was one of them or if she hailed from a different world. 

An arm jostles her, hitting her square in the ribs. It successfully knocks her out of her analysis of the newcomer. 

“-did you hear what I just said?” Taren says, mouth full of tasteless nutritional paste. It’s far from delicious, but you ate what they give out and she is hungry *all the time* nowadays. A fleck lands on Ori’s face and she wipes it away with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry, al’verde.” Commander. Her eyes roll automatically. She knows she doesn’t deserve the title. Discreetly, Ori shushes the younger woman - they’re lucky the stormtroopers here don’t understand Mando’a. 

They put together kit for new stormtroopers, morning and night. It’s another endurable humiliation. She stabs at the cubes bitterly with her spoon, scattering crumbs across the table. They’re not allowed forks or knives, not after Taren’s first week. A tiny smile flits across her face as she thinks on the memory. 

 Ori feels like a geriatric compared to the spry warrior, though they’re less than ten years apart in age. She’s seen things in that time, lost people, buried dreams. Though Taren is looking older and older by the day, cooped up in this place. 

“Theera is gone,” Taren says, “she wasn’t at breakfast either.” 

Looking around and finding no sign of the woman, Ori hums an agreement. She’ll be gone for good soon, and her baby as well. Every time someone delivers it sends a sense of unshakeable dread down her spine and into the pit of her stomach. All of them are marching slowly towards that finish line. 

The artificial hierarchy into which they are forced has made the two Mandalorians de facto leaders, despite Ori being one of the newer inmates and to cement her as *alverde*; her medical expertise makes her invaluable. 

The room hushes as Dr. Loesch sweeps down to the cafeteria, all business in crisp grey scrubs, so confident in his admiration. He insists they call him ‘Doctor L’ like he’s a popular lecturer at a university. He’s the worst kind of hut’uun, just as bad as the rest of the Imps she’s met here. Loesch is in charge of their medical care, all 100-some of them, including herself. Loesch towers over most of them, even herself. 

As a physician, Ori is personally insulted at his complacency, the fact that he is perfectly content in his post and cemented in his belief that what he was doing is just, his complicity. She stabs at her cubes some more to try and make herself feel better. 

As a woman, she’s decidedly less surprised. Men like him are everywhere, tall and handsome, handed success on a silver platter, born into families of privilege and power. Taking and taking with no thought of the carnage they leave behind. 

He saunters his way over to their table and sits with a charming smile. 

“Beviin,” he starts, “I heard through the gossip chain that you were an obstetrician before you came here?”

It’s physically painful to keep her retort in hand. She’s been here long enough to see women sent to solitary. And to see them come back, changed indefinitely. 

“Mmm,” she mumbles affirmatively through a mouthful of cubes. She swallows. “Yes.” Keep it simple, that’s easy enough. 

He smiles sardonically. “How ironic,” he adds, obviously pleased with the revelation. Expectantly, he looks around the table to gauge his joke, and they catch on, laughing softly, nervously, afraid of what might happen if they don’t. Even Ori joins in, the butt of the low blow, though her simmering rage ratchets up another level.

They finish the rest of their lunch largely in silence and Loesch pulls her away when she files out with the others. 

“Ms. Beviin,” he says conspiratorially, “I know it must be difficult for you to be here.” 

The man over her, face too close for comfort, his voice deep and low. Alarm fills her as the other people in the room dwindle until it’s just the two of them and the scattered troopers on the upper level. All Ori can think about is where the nearest exit is located when she realizes he’s still speaking to her. 

“...what do you think?” He waits patiently, a benevolent expression in his face. He blinks too little, she thinks, and his eyes are devoid of expression, shining with an amused sort of malevolence. They’re a strange shade of brown...no, green? The little noise he makes in the back of his throat brings her back to their conversation.

“Ah...sure?” she replies weakly, stunned and frozen.

“That’ll be nice for the other inmates,” he says. Incredibly white, straight teeth flash as he smiles down at her. “I think it will give them comfort to have you there. I’ll have the guards collect you when it’s time.” 

——

Three nurses eye her from across the suite. They wear sweet matching hospital uniforms, in the same soft fabric as hers except in a delicate petal pink. With a pang, she misses her fellow nurses and doctors on Mandalore. Who knows how many had fallen ill? Been arrested? The way they clustered in a little group reminded her of her schoolmates, when they found out she didn’t like fighting, whispering rumors from across the room. That she thought she was better than them, that weird girl who was more concerned with grades than winning fights and impressing boys. Now they stand across the room from her like a little bunch of flowers in their coordinated outfits, identical and perfect. She’s an other in their world, someone to be feared and hated, pitied at best. 

Orla stands awkwardly, waiting for the show to start when her stomach flips. The scrub top she has on stretches across her middle awkwardly, pulling at the seams and the soft shoes that cover her feet are obscured by her bump. The strange sensation returns, a little differently this time, just the barest flutter, deeper down than that nervous feeling. Her baby. She lays a gentle palm over the swell, as discreetly as she can, still feeling the scrutinizing looks of the women across the room.

Another nurse wheels a bed into the room, complete with Theera shivering atop it, her hair and gown drenched in sweat. Orla rushes to the head of the bed as she’s prepped for the operation. Theera is dazed, too exhausted to make much sense of anything right now, glassy eyes focused on the ceiling. She smoothes back the sweaty hair from Theera’s forehead. 

“Hey cyar’ika. It’s Ori,” she says softly. The woman’s eyes focus a little, just enough to meet hers. She bumps their foreheads together. It was as much to comfort herself as much as the other woman. Non-mandos typically didn’t understand the meaning behind the gesture. She can’t squeeze her hand like she wants to - it’s being hooked up to IV tubing.

“I’m cold,” she mumbles. Some of it is adrenaline, some from fear, and the rest from the icy operating room temperature to keep the surgeons comfortable. Drenched as she is, it’s no wonder Theera is shivering. 

Ori asks the wary tech for a warm blanket, terrified of overstepping and getting her shebs kicked out of the operating room. She’s promptly ignored in favor of his work. Dr. Loesch enters the room and the nurses titter around him while he ensures everything is prepped to his liking. Ori settles for as much skin to skin contact as she can get with Theera, trying to warm her, mumbling comforting nonsense into her ear as Loesch starts to work. A warming bassinet waits ominously against the wall for its prize. 

A thin cry interrupts their mumbling and Theera’s eyes sharpen at the noise. Loesch holds the little thing over the curtain separating them indulgently, just for a moment. A boy, he says, and she and Theera find themselves mesmerized by the bloody little thing and his tiny squished face and flailing arms, already so angry at the world. He’s held up for a second, allowing Theera a cursory glance and then whisked away by the nurses to the bassinet. His mother is still paralyzed on the table and it makes it all the more unjust that she isn’t even allowed to touch her son, see him up close. The nurses at the bassinet laugh and coo, oblivious to Theera, who starts weeping pitifully. Fat tears slide down the side of her face, wetting the starched white sheet beneath her head.

Ori is in the middle of the absolute emotional chaos around her. Theera crying, Dr. Loesch talking with his assistant about weekend plans, and the nurses with the baby, who have turned back at the sound of crying to glare at them judgementally. She can practically hear them now. Serves her right, their looks say. She deserves it. The rage congeals around Ori, settling itself in her throat. This feeling is exactly what had put her in this place to begin with and she knows she has to control it, use it somehow. She watches them place a little bracelet around the infant’s ankle and scan it into a datapad. They don’t bother with Theera. It dawns on her then that if she’s lucky - incredibly lucky - she can use the Empire’s obsession with order against them. 

She makes her way over to the bassinet under the ruse of joining the indulgent cooing that is going on, trying not to throw elbows before she’s kicked out of the room. The little boy’s leg is caught for a heel stick an she gets her chance. The number on the leg band is just visible, only for a second. She sends a prayer up to the Manda that she gets it right. 

Taglist

@clonewarslover55 @simping-for-fives @808tsuika @jedi-mando @cherry-cokes-world @nelba @fractiouskat @passionofthesith 

[apexqueenie]

Combat Medic

Hi BBYS! I know I haven’t been posting in a while, school, work, and family have been top priority for a while, but I had some time over Christmas break to write this! Enjoy!

Bakugou knew the risk of being out in the front lines, he knew there was always a possibility of bullets hitting him faster than he could react, but he didn’t think it’d happen so close to winning the war.

“Heh? My letter? For what? I haven’t died yet cuz I’m gonna win this war, and I’m comin back home with something better than a damn letter. It’s gonna be the head of that Shirigaki bastard”

At least, that’s what he hoped when he told Aizawa off. His General only shrugged, knowing that no amount of convincing will go anywhere with Bakugou. They weren’t going into a major battle yet, just ambushing an outlying base for a better sleep at night. The blonde’s pride in his winning battles wouldn’t let him pick up the pen, and now, he cursed himself for not writing it. He peeked around the corner of the wall he was using as cover, attacking Shirigaki’s men at one of their bases. His men thought they had the advantage, but they were wrong about the amount of people Shirigaki had and were now outnumbered in enemy territory. The men had found the window showcasing hundreds of men, outnumbering them at least 10 to 1. Bakugou barely took in the scene before he ordered his small crew of men to turn back. There was no chance they could fight them all. Even he knew that. As fast as they could, they made their way back, finding every way they could to stall the rest of the base, but the enemy overcame the obstacles with their sheer numbers alone.

One of the many bullets sent his way in the last hour made contact with his abdomen, piercing his right kidney. It was a clean shot. The bullet nested itself among his organs. He winced, but his mother raised a stubborn bastard. One bullet wasn’t gonna kill him. Unfortunately, that one bullet wasn’t alone. Another grazed his left shoulder, shredding the fabric of his shirt. The one after that shot the other side of his abdomen. Katsuki lost his footing and his knees crumpled underneath him. As soon as he went down, the rest of his platoon began to lose hope, one by one. Fear crawled its way through their bones as they watched their strongest man drop his weapon in pain.

Desperately, his fellow soldiers tried to cover him, but they were lost without a commander. Katsuki painfully watched his men struggle as he helplessly lay on the floor, clutching his open wounds. This was probably the end of his journey. He was gonna die as his parents’ only child, and he didn’t even give them anything to remember him by.

His vision began to blur. He was losing too much blood. Was this gonna be the end of the Bakugou lineage? He shook his head, he couldn’t be worried about that right now, he led these scared shitless men here, the least he could do is get as many out alive.

Gritting his teeth, he picked his gun back up, shooting wobbly into the stray bullets at blurred figures. His attempt was rewarded with enough time for him to shuffle backwards into cover.

“Captain!” one of his men said, sliding next to Bakugou and throwing the injured man’s arm over his shoulders.

“What the hell are you doing?!” he barked, wincing as his wounds got stretched, “leave me here so I can blow these assholes up and send ‘em straight to hell-!”

“-No! You’re coming back home with the rest of us, whether you like it or not!” the man grunted.

“Kirishima”, Bakugou warned, wheezing from his open wounds.

The men that were left formed a protective ring around the two, slowly inching their way back to the outside world.

“Almost...there-” Kirishima said, practically dragging Bakugou to the back towards the entrance they came in.

Through his blurred eyes, Bakugou could see his comrade’s empty magazines and cursed himself for under preparing his men. The ring of soldiers was getting thinner as the men protected their leader. The entrance was too small for all of them to leave at once, but their leader was the most important. If he makes it out alive, their lives made a difference in this war.

Before they could reach it though, the wall blew up in front of them, filling their lungs with dust.

“GET DOWN” a familiar voice yelled from the other side. Aizawa had come to save his ass.

The men instinctively dropped to the floor, and a flurry of bullets rained down on the surprised enemy men. General Aizawa waved his arm, signaling his troops to cover the injured. A figure slid down between him and Kirishima, taking his place and pulling him to the hole in the wall. They were smaller than the two of them, but were easily able to support almost all his weight.

“I’ve got him, get yourself up there!” they said, holstering their pistol and wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Who….the fuck are...you…?” He mumbled. His legs were starting to buckle underneath him and his head felt heavier by the second.

The figure didn’t answer, but instead hoisted him onto their back. His arms fell limp over their shoulders and his face was buried in the crook of their neck. He would’ve protested being carried like a child, but he didn’t have the strength to lift his head up. He picked up a sweet scent underneath the reek of spent gunpowder that surrounded the area. It was oddly soothing. Consciousness was slowly fading, the pain slowly becoming more and more numb until everything around him turned dark.

***

He hated the dark.

Bakugou was a tactical man, and being blind was being vulnerable. Still, the dark was comforting. He could rest… but being a stubborn bastard still, he couldn’t keep his eyes closed forever.

With great difficulty, he opened his vermillion eyes, wincing at the bright fluorescent lights above him. He was going to make a snark and colorful comment about them until a blurry figure hovered over him, sparing his eyes from more uncomfort.

“How are you feelin?” She said. It was the same voice from earlier.

His vision cleared and he was met with two beautiful pairs of eyes bright enough to show his reflection with ease…and boy did he look like shit. At least, that’s what he thought. He was scuffed down to the bone, but he didn’t feel any of it. Your appearance caught him off guard. You were too...clean, and dare he say, beautiful… he’d never described anyone as beautiful before. He wondered if he was in heaven, but you looked too real for him to be dead. You wore a standard uniform, like his, but your arm was adorned with a bandana bearing the symbol of a cross. You were a combat medic, but somehow dust free...and that made no logical sense to Bakugou.

“Did we win?” He replied.

You let out a chuckle and stood straight again, “Wow, you really DO have a one track mind to victory.”

Bakugou propped himself up on his elbows, feeling his bones pop in various places. You helped with a hand to his back, careful not to touch any major wounds. He’d been taken back to their home base and was inside his own room at the medical facility. Looking around, he found his uniform freshly washed and folded in a neat pile on top of a small dresser, his gun right next to it leaning against the wall. Above that, a window that gave a view of the hallway and of the numerous different soldiers and staff heading to their stations. Two soldiers passed by, laughing among themselves. Everything seemed so normal...it's hard to believe he was alive when last time he was conscious, he was close to dead.

“Yeah well, I need to know how many of my men got out.” He sighed

Your gaze softened at his words. “All of them made it. Thankfully, we got there in time to prevent any fatalities. Aizawa was notified that the numbers had dramatically increased and immediately put together a squadron to come get you. We got your men out and blew what we could up.” You said while helping Bakugou sit upright comfortably.

“Ok, now who the fuck are you and how fucking long was I out?” He grumbled.

You grinned, “I’m (y/n), Aizawa’s appointed combat medic...and surprisingly, you’ve only been out for less than a day.”

He blinked in shock. Less than a day? So many questions started filling his head, but before he could ask any of them, he twisted the wrong way and pain erupted over his body again. Your actions immediately halted and you looked at his wound for any bleeding. He looked down and realized he was shirtless with bandages covering the majority of his torso, stained with dried blood. No sign of bright red blossoming anywhere, so he continued sitting upright.

Easing Bakugou back on to the bed, you continued talking, trying to distract him from the pain. “Aizawa talks very highly of you, you know, but I never had the chance to meet you. He said your ‘shitty attitude’ would scare me away.” You chuckled, waving your fingers into quotation marks. “Still, you’re the first person that comes to mind when he needs a strong fighter.”

Bakugou scoffed, curling his lips into a smirk, “Hah, I knew the old man felt something, it’s just a pain in the ass to get him to admit it.”

You hummed in amusement while grabbing a flask of water from your bag and handing it to Bakugou. He took it eagerly, realizing how parched he is. The refreshing liquid was always welcome. Meanwhile, you grabbed some clean bandages and rags from your bag. By then, Bakugou had already finished the entire flask and set the empty container aside.

“I need to change your bandages” you said, gloving your hands. Carefully, you peeled back the dirty wraps, cleaning his stitches as gently as possible, then re-wrapping everything back up. His piercing red eyes watched you the entire time, studying your every move.

“You’ve got steady hands.” He muttered.

For someone who works with life threatening wounds, that was a major compliment, and your face heated up quickly. You looked down, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but it was pointless.

“Oi, are you dying on me?” Bakugou asks, narrowing his eyebrows.

“As if.” You replied, but a waver in your voice only made him chuckle. Desperately, you tried to change the subject. “Anyways,” you cleared your throat, “Uhm, where are you going? After the war is done.”

The man sighs, staring at the floor for a few seconds. “Home, I guess.”

“Oh nice,” you say, “you have someone waiting for you?”

“My parents, obviously,” he snorts.

You shook your head, “no, I meant, do you have a girl at home? Or guy...I’m not gonna judge.”

“HAH,” the blonde scoffs loudly, “I got nothing else on my mind except winning this damn war. A relationship was only going to distract me.”

“I see…” you said, trying to look as neutral as possible. You were lying if you said you didn’t find Bakugou attractive. His body was sculpted like a god, something that Aizawa never mentioned. You’d always pictured him as an older man built like a lumberjack, probably has a smoking habit- but nothing close to the perfect blemish free skin, toned muscled, handsome YOUNG man he was when you were tasked with stitching his wounds.

“Holy shit, this is Bakugou? I was carrying Captain Bakugou this whole time?!?” You exclaimed when Aizawa pointed to him.

“But...“ he continued, pulling you out of your thoughts, “that doesn’t mean I don’t want one. After we win this war...I’m definitely looking forward to giving my parents some grandchildren.”

“Ew” you said, scrunching up your face in feigned disgust.

Bakugou laughed a bit, or as much as he could with two recent bullet wounds. “Hah, loser. You don’t plan on havin kids?”

“Nah, of course I do, the world needs more of me hanging around”

He just rolled his eyes, “I think you’ve mixed up the word “me” for “The Great Bakugou Katsuki”.”

“Damn, I think I’m gonna have to leave, I’m suffocating underneath your ego” you said melodramatically. You smiled, glad that your conversation was more casual now.

“You should be, that’s how I win wars, princess. What are you planning to do?”

“Hmmmm” you pondered, “Home too? The war has been my whole life so far, and I’m good at my job, so I haven’t really thought of doing anything else.” You said, staring at your hands. It’s true, you enlisted as soon as you got the chance, and this has been your only occupation so far.

“Well, we’re still pretty young, physically. You have time. I, for one, I’d like a legitimate cup of coffee at my buddy’s coffee shop. The stuff here tastes like ass. Pikachu is too dumb to be a doctor, but he sure as hell can make a good cup of coffee.”

“Oh,” you hummed, “will this “Pikachu” give me some free coffee if I tell him the great Bakugou Katsuki sent me?”

“Heh, wouldn’t it be better just to go with the great Bakugou Katsuki himself?”

You raised your eyebrows, “ Are you asking me on a date?”

“No, I’m telling you to come with me so we don’t waste gas, dumbass.”

“Sure you are. I didn’t realize you were an environmentalist-“

“-fuck off-“

“-buuuuut, I accept your offer” you beamed.

Before your face could heat up again, you hastily picked up the dirty bandages, disposing of them and your gloves before washing your hands. “I’d love to stay here and chat, but unfortunately, I have to file a report on your status and your platoon’s to Aizawa. Do you need anything before I go?”

With a quick glance, he almost looked like he was disappointed, but the image was so fleeting, you thought you imagined it.

“Pen, paper, and an envelope. My parents are probably worried sick not hearing from me.” Bakugou grumbled.

“You sure? You just got up-“

“Oi, you asked, princess”

You rolled your eyes, leaving momentarily and returning with the requested items. “I’ll be back in a few hours or so to check up on you again.” You said, setting the supplies down on the bedside dresser. “Get some rest and tell anyone if you need anything!” You waved before walking down the hall and out of sight.

He sighed and picked up his pen. He didn’t write often, only seeing it as time wasted that he could be using to sleep or work out- besides- all that he could write about are the mushy things that his parents already know. He wasn’t really one to tell his parents he misses them all the time like a little baby (even if he does miss them a lot). No, he was a MAN in uniform, fighting for a noble cause that so happens to be stuck in a hospital bed currently with nothing better to do...which is the only reason why he’s writing a letter if anyone asks.

As he hovered his pen over the blank piece of paper, he remembered the last time he talked about girls to his parents. They wanted to know absolutely EVERYTHING and the thing was...he didn’t even like her, she was just a classmate that did something cool. Of course, his parents completely ignored that and pried into it as much as possible, even offering to meet her parents. He thought it best to not mention girls after that. Ever. But he sealed his fate when he asked you for these things, so there was no going back now. He might as well tell them he was bringing someone over for the first time.

[nickelkeep]

Find a Little Magic

Pt. One of the Runaway Series

Pairing: Pre-Dean/Cas, Gabriel/Meg Rating: Mature Word Count: 6.5K Warnings: Major Character Injury, Graphic De Written For: nickel’s Storytime, AMOK2020 (Day 3), and the new Runaway series. On Ao3

Dean loved working the overnight shift. It was quiet, Dr. Vaugier let him use one of the monitors to watch Dr. Sexy, and honestly, he enjoyed the laid back nature of the job. He absolutely loved what he did for a living, as it was better than what his father had trained him for, but there wasn't much money in the business, and scrubs cost a lot.

"Dean?" Dr. Vaugier came around the corner, and he pulled his feet off of the chair next to him. "Dean, Sam just called. He and Benny are coming in."

"I take it you need me to set up a bed?" Dean pushed himself out of his chair and stretched up, letting out a soft moan as he loosened his limbs.

"Please. And you seriously need to move around more. Don't make me regret letting you have a TV on." She winked and opened the door into the supply room. "Four and Six are open. Your choice."

Dean walked out from behind the desk and headed down the hall to room six. Despite it being further away from his desk, it was closer to where Sam and Benny would bring in their patient. It totally didn't have anything to do with the Doc's comment about him needing to move more.

As he slipped in the room, Dean flipped on the light switch and looked around. He had done a thorough wipe down of the unit when he started the shift. However, the bed still needed to be made up, and depending on the patient's state, he would need to prep for any possible damage to the room.

Dean laid out the sheets, wrapping them around the bed and leaving a pair of pillows on the side. He wasn't sure what form the patient was coming in, so it was always best to make the pillow optional.

A knock sounded on the door, and Dr. Vaugier walked in. "Almost done, Dean?"

"Yeah, Maddie." Dean pulled down a tray out of one of the cabinets, setting it down on a nearby cart. "Did Sam say what we're looking at?"

"Shifted Were, silver-laced buckshot. Sam's fairly certain the Hunter only clipped the wolf, but silver..." Dr. Vaugier, Madison, nodded solemnly. "We'll need to work fast."

A few minutes later, the sounds of the modified ambulance came into earshot, and Dean met the vehicle at the emergency entrance. "Sammy! Benny! Room Six. Let's go!" Dean clapped his hands and almost laughed at the bitchface his brother shot him.

"You know, you could come and help us, Cher," Benny replied as he opened the ambulance doors. "Get this guy inside faster."

"That's why I'm here. Maddie's getting her special gear since I hear we're dealing with silver." Dean walked up to the rear and took one side of the stretcher the Were was on. "How'd you even find out about this guy?"

"His brother was with him. He was able to shift back and call dispatch." Sam hopped out of the back of the ambulance. "The hunter was smart, stood downwind, had injured a deer to attract them." He grabbed the end of the stretcher and helped carry the stretcher. "I told him where to come, but he wanted to go warn the rest of their pack first."

"We have a new pack in town?" Dean stared down at the beautiful black wolf he was helping to carry. "Does Maddie know?"

"Not sure, Cher." Benny shook his head. "Could be a nomadic pack passing through."

The trio carried the litter into room six and carefully shifted the wolf onto the bed. Under the bright lights, Dean had, unfortunately, a better view of extensive damage on the wolf's rear flank. "Holy shit." He carefully ran his hand through the fur and pulled some silver out of the thick coat. "Fuck. Maddie can't work with this. This'll eat right through her gloves and then her skin." He dropped the buckshot into the tray he pulled down earlier. "Did you get this guy's name?"

"Uh... it's something strange." Sam ran his fingers through his hair. "Castle? Casteel? His brother was understandably frantic."

"Cas it is then." Dean grabbed a comb and started pulling it through the wolf's fur. "Sam, go warn Doc that I don't think she should be on this one. Benny, glove up for me?"

Benny nodded as Sam headed out of the room. "Cher, tell me. We gonna be able to save him?"

"You help me out, he'll be just fine." A loud commotion came from outside of the room, and Sam peeked his head in.

"His brother and a couple members of his pack showed up. Madison's going to speak with them, considering she's lead of her own pack, and I'm going to back her up since I helped bring him in. You two gonna be okay?" Sam looked back and forth between Dean and Benny.

"Yes, Sam. You go back up your girl. Benny and I got this." Dean noted the bright blush in his brother's cheeks as he slipped back out of the room. "One of these days he'll actually ask her."

"Doubtful. Wish he would, though. Boy pines after her like a dog whimpers for scraps." Benny gently patted the wolf's neck. "No offense, brotha."

"Don't think he heard you, Benny." Dean closed his eyes for a moment. The amount of fur and blood was making it difficult to find all of the buckshot, and time was of the essence. "Benny, bottom cabinet, closest to the wall, there should be some electric shears in there." He shook his head. "I hate to shave off his fur, but I think his life is more important at this point."

"Agreed, Cher." Benny quickly grabbed the shears, plugging them in before handing them over to Dean. "What you need me to do."

"Get your Vamp on." When Benny stared at him in confusion, Dean clarified. "I mean, be prepared to hold him down. While I know he's unconscious, there's a slight chance he'll wake up. I need you to hold him down, cause he's in too weak of a state to put under."

Benny nodded, and leaned over the wolf, carefully pinning him down to the bed. "You could have just said that first, you know."

"I know." Dean turned the shears on and waited for a moment to see if the wolf - Cas, he reminded himself - would wake up. When there was no movement, other than his chest going up and down in shallow breaths, Dean moved quickly to clear the fur off the injury.

"Dammit, Cher. That looks worse without all that fur." Benny commented, gently running his fingers through the wolf's scruff.

Dean ignored the fact that Benny was right, cursing the asshole that shot the gorgeous Were beneath him. "His breathing is becoming labored, Benny. Get him hooked up to oxygen?" Dean continued plucking out the buckshot he could find. "I may have to use my other skills for this."

"I'm surprised you're not using them already," Benny commented as he slipped the muzzle over the wolf's snout.

"You know I'm all about consent with my powers, Benny." Dean cursed as one of the silver balls slipped out of his grasp. "Fuck. He can hate me later." Dean placed his hand gently on Cas and started speaking an incantation aloud. He felt his power surge through his hand and into the wolf, and then Benny shuffling at his side, most likely to keep the wolf stable.

Dean felt each of the remaining pieces of buckshot push out from under the flesh and skin. His heart broke, as he realized this Hunter was most likely not out for the kill, but to maim and then capture. As the last ball came free and clinked onto the ground, Dean did a quick read of Cas, seeing how much got into his bloodstream.

"Dean?" Benny questioned. "He's startin' to bleed kinda heavy there."

Nodding, Dean refocused his energy, forcing the skin to mend back together. He stumbled backward and would have fallen if it weren't for Benny throwing his arm behind him and catching him. "That's all I can do right now."

"Cher, you've done enough." Benny guided Dean into a chair. "Stay here, I'm gonna go grab Sam, he can help you out. The blood..." He spun his finger around the room, gesturing. "It's getting to me."

"Go, Benny, you're fine. Sam can spare some of his reserves to catch anything I may have missed." Dean slunk down into the seat, removing the bloodied glove off his hand. He carded his fingers through his hair and watched Cas' breathing steady out while waiting for Sam to come back.

"Dean?" Sam stepped into the room and looked at Dean before looking at Cas on the table. "You did use your powers. I thought I felt that." Sam walked up to Dean and pressed two fingers against his older brother's temple before whispering a spell.

A cold surge ran through Dean. "Dude, don't worry about me. It's nothing that a day's worth of sleep can't replenish. Make sure I didn't miss anything on Cas there."

"Yeah, I'm allowed to worry about you too. The patient feels stable, you're about to pass out." Sam sighed and turned to go check on the wolf. "Spoke with his older brother Gabriel, the one who called dispatch." Sam's magic flowed through the room as he did his own scan of Cas. "His pack was chased out of town a few states over when the town blamed them for a bunch of wendigo kills. Apparently, the victim's families hired a couple of hunters to track them down."

"Not..." Dean questioned, raising his eyebrow.

"They don't know who. And if it's him, he knows he can't come into limits." Sam's magic faded and turned to face his brother. "Looks like you got most of it. I still felt a few minuscule traces, but nothing lethal."

Dean nodded tiredly. "Let me clean up in here." He pointed down to the silver buckshot on the floor. "And then his brother and other pack members can come back and see him." Dean pushed himself to his feet and started working to make the room safe for the other weres.

A few minutes later, Dean collapsed back into the chair, before calling out to Madison. As she entered the room, she let out an audible sigh of relief. "Dean, thank you..." She looked down at him. "He smells like he's recovering."

"I didn't realize that it has a scent," Dean commented, tapping the side of his nose.

"It does, he's at rest and not stressed out." Madison crossed to Cas' bed and pulled back the blanket. "Sam and Benny said you used your magic. It looks good. Shame you don't use it more." She crossed back to the exit. "You getting up, or are you staying put?"

Dean waved Madison off and stayed put in the chair. If the pack really wanted him out of the room, he'd leave. But honestly, his limbs were starting to feel like jelly, and he'd probably need to be sent home early. Dean hadn't been kidding about possibly needing twenty-four hours of rest after that.

"Cassie!" A short, blonde man ran into the room, followed by a short brunette female and a statuesque redhead. "Dammit, Cassie."

Dean stayed quiet, not wanting to interfere when the redhead offered her hand. "I'm Anna. You must be Dean."

"That's me." He offered a tired smile and shook her hand. "My apologies for not standing up."

"None needed. Dr. Vaugier said you almost completely depleted your power saving Castiel, and I can feel it." Anna offered a small smile of her own. "We're grateful for your assistance."

"This is my fault. I should have told him to stay behind." The guy was grabbing on to Cas' scruff and crying into the jet black fur.

"Gabe, you know he would have fought you on that. Leader or not." The short brunette turned around and joined Anna. "Thank you, Dean. I'm Meg, and this is our pack leader, Gabriel. He and Castiel were out hunting when they were ambushed."

"You all are very welcome. Cas didn't deserve that, and I wanted to make sure he survived." Dean rubbed at his eye. "I know Maddie would have helped, but I'm sure you know why I wouldn't let her."

Gabriel finally turned around and acknowledged Dean. "She's a good soul. Not often you see a female pack leader with such kindness. They're usually cold, like Naomi." Dean made a mental note of the name as Gabriel continued. "She's offered us sanctuary in town if we want to stay."

"Sounds about right. You won't be the only pack in town. You'd be the fourth. We've got a nice little sanctuary going on here." Dean watched as Gabriel kept glancing back and forth between him and Cas. "We'll be here until seven when Dr. Fitzgerald and his wife take over for the day shift if you want to go get some rest."

"Gabe?" Anna questioned. "Do you want me to stay, and you can go get the pack gathered?"

The blond Were hung his head and let out a heavy sigh. "Please. While I trust Meg and you to handle the rest of the pack, I think they'll probably want me there."

"I promise that I'll be here to keep care over him for you, Gabriel." Dean patted the chair next to him, gesturing for Anna to sit. "Go, make sure your pack is okay. Give them some updates, let them know that Cas is going to be okay."

"Cas?" Gabriel raised his eyebrow.

"Sorry, I'm not 100% sure how to say his full name, and I like to know who I'm helping." Dean cringed, suddenly worried that he crossed a line.

Gabriel shook his head. "Nothing to be scared about, Dean. Just caught me by surprise. Already endearing yourself to our pack." He held out his hand to Meg. "Come with?"

"Of course." She waved to Anna and Dean before exiting the room behind Gabriel.

After a few moments of silence, Anna spoke up. "You know, you don't have to stay. You've done so much already, and his healing abilities are kicking in." Just as he had done earlier, Anna tapped the side of her nose. "I can smell how much power you put into healing him. I don't know how you're still going."

"Barely, and pure stubbornness." A knock at the door and Benny stuck his head in. "And if Benny has what I think he has, a crap ton of coffee."

"You got that right, Cher." Benny stepped in and handed a travel mug to Dean. "It's my brew, so you know it's the good stuff." He nodded politely at Anna before looking back at Dean. "I left the thermos at the desk if you need more, but Sam and I need to get going. Sounds like Amy's going into labor."

"Thank you, Benny. I'll swing by the maternity ward before heading home." Dean took a deep drink of his coffee, sighing contently as the hot liquid warmed him.

Anna chuckled. "You sound like you've found your happy place."

"It will be when Cas wakes up." Dean winked at her before taking another drink.

...

Several hours later, and Cas still hadn't woken up. With his shift coming to an end, Dean was nervous. His thoughts were racing at a mile a minute. What if he had missed something, what if there was something more he could have done? He had moved to the desk to work on Cas' chart and paperwork, so Bess and Garth would have information to review when they came in. While he would still take the time to talk to them and pass off his charge, for some reason, he needed Cas to be taken care of. More than any of the other patients he had helped before.

"Dean-O!" Garth entered through the emergency bay with Bess next to him. "I hear we had something big happen overnight?"

"Were hit by buckshot. Intentional, it was an ambush with silver." Dean focused on the paperwork in front of him, making sure to get every detail down. "His older sister is in there right now. Their pack leader accepted sanctuary from Madison. She was going to talk to you about your pack, and then reach out to Kate and Michael about their pack."

"Shoot, there's plenty of room for another pack. I hear that they're on the run for something they didn't do. So why would we say no?" Garth wrapped his arm around Bess and gently squeezed her.

"And I'm sure Kate and Michael will be on board," Bess added, before leaning up and kissing Garth on his cheek. "Are you okay if I go check in on Amy real quick before taking over? I just want to see if there are any updates on her status."

Dean nodded and waved to Bess as he leaned back in his seat. Garth sat on the edge of the desk and rested his hand on his knee. "How are you doing, Dean? Really? You look like you've been going nonstop."

"Just tired, Garth."

"Right, and the fact that I can smell your magic all over this wing has nothing to do with that?" Garth leaned forward and took a deeper sniff. "Huh, you're anxious, aren't you?"

"Why would I–" Dean was interrupted by Anna sticking her head out into the hall.

"Dean! Castiel is shifting back to human form!"

Dean pushed himself out of his seat quickly, finding a sudden and much appreciated second wind. He entered room six to find a slightly shivering, presumably naked, human laying where a wolf had once been. "Garth, heating pad, please."

Despite being the doctor, and Dean being the nurse, Garth didn't hesitate and reached into one of the cabinets to grab an electric blanket. He unfolded it, handing a side to Dean, and draped it over Cas before plugging it in. "Let's get this turned on, and get him warmed back up, shall we?"

"Anna, this is Dr. Fitzgerald, the one I mentioned would be taking over this morning. He and I were just going over what happened last night."

"You're another Were." Anna tilted her head and smiled before looking at Dean. "You really weren't kidding, were you?"

"Nope." Dean shook his head as he found Cas' pulse. He took a moment to count - and maybe admire the man's hair and face - before continuing. "Just like I was telling you last night, this town has a little bit of everything. Werewolves, Vampires, Kitsune, Witches..." He winked. "Maybe if you guys stick around, you'll even get to meet the Phoenix who lives in town."

Dean reached into a drawer on the medical cart, pulled out a stethoscope, and wiped it down before putting it in his ears. He placed the chestpiece against Cas' back and listened before nodding contently.

"He sound good, Dean?" Garth asked.

"Yeah, the shift didn't throw off any of the human vitals. He's going to be fine." Dean slowly and gingerly started to pull back the heated blanked and sheet off of Cas' thigh, and swallowed down a startled cry as he got to see the rest of Cas' human physique. "His regenerative powers helped a lot, but he may have a limp for a week or so." Dean pressed his fingers into Cas' thigh and frowned. "Yeah, there's still some muscle damage that needs to be repaired."

"But he's going to recover?" Anna asked, her voice slightly quivering.

"If Dean says that your brother is going to be fine, I believe that your brother is going to be just fine." Garth flashed a toothy smile that Dean learned was actually meant to be comforting, not intimidating. "I'm going to send Dean home so he can rest, though."

"Thank you, Dean." Anna wrapped her arms around Dean's neck and hugged him. "You've kept our brother with us."

Dean felt his cheek turn bright red. "You're welcome." He waited until Anna let go before heading back out to the desk. Bess was sitting in the chair he had vacated to go see Cas. "He shifted."

"Is he awake?" Bess smiled sweetly.

"Not yet." Dean pointed down at his notes. "Wanna add on for me?" Bess waved the pen before bringing it down to the chart. "The patient shifted back to human form while unconscious. The temperature dropped, as expected, an electric blanket has been applied to help the warm-up process. The patient remains unconscious, and after a check of the wound site, should make a full recovery within..." Dean hummed in thought. "Within two weeks."

"Overestimating again, Dean?" Bess looked up.

"There's some muscle damage that will take some time to repair, and while it's not extensive, he is a Were. You guys don't understand rest." Dean winked before tapping on the desk. "Hey Bess, give me a call if he wakes up before I get back in tonight?"

Bess looked up, her confusion apparent. "I mean, I can, but why? Considering it's a wound with silver, we won't let him out before tomorrow."

"Honestly?" Dean shrugged. "I don't know." He stretched up before leaning back down to grab the remainder of his coffee. "You know if they're letting people see Amy, or should I wait 'til tonight for that?"

"I'd wait until tonight, she wanted to try and get some sleep before that little kit comes." Bess practically bounced with excitement. "Between you and me, I hope they need me over there."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Don't ever change, Bess." He gave her a salute. "Tell Garth I'll see him either tonight or if Cas wakes up."

…

Everything smelled wrong. It was sterile, clean, with a scent that reminded him of antibacterial soap. And his bed. When did his bed become so hard?

Castiel rolled over, and the light blinded him through his closed eyelids. He lifted his arm up, groaning at the sheer heaviness of it, before draping it across his face.

His skin smelled of Hickory and Whiskey. What the hell.

Castiel groaned as he slowly started to open his eyes behind his arm. He could hear Anna call for someone, Fitz? There was no Fitz in their pack. Castiel licked his lips, surprised at how dry and chapped they felt. "Anna?"

"Castiel!" He felt his sister squeezing his arm. "You're awake!"

"You make it sound like that was almost not a possibility." Castiel slowly started to slide his arm off his face, allowing more light into his eyes. "What's going on? Where am I?"

"Oh, Castiel." Cas finished removing his arm as Anna squeezed him tightly. He realized then that he was lying in an elevated bed and not his own. "What do you remember?"

Castiel squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to remember, before the visions of a forest flooded his mind. "I was about to shift."

"You don't remember anything from after you shifted?" Anna's voice trembled, and Castiel found himself oddly unnerved. "Do you remember going hunting?" Cas shook his head, and he heard Anna's heartbeat speed up. "I need to go grab the doctor."

"Doctor?" Castiel called out to departing ss. "Whtepat happened?" He opened his eyes and tried to push himself up to a sitting position. "Where am I?"

"Sioux Falls Cryptozoological Health Center." A new voice - a fresh scent - entered the room. "Or as we lovingly call it, The Cryptohospital." Castiel looked at the man who had entered, taking in his lanky features. "Glad to see you're finally awake, Castiel. You're family's been worried about you."

Castiel shook his head in confusion. "Why am I here?" He took another sniff and looked at the doctor. "Are you?"

"A Were?" The doctor smiled. "I am. Dr. Fitzgerald, but you can call me Garth." He held out his hand.

"I would say it's a pleasure to meet you, but I don't even know why I'm here." Castiel took Garth's hand, and gingerly shook it. "What's going on?"

"Anna mentioned that you don't remember anything post shift. That may be because you shifted back to human form while unconscious. It's been known to happen in injuries of your caliber." Garth flipped a paper over on a clipboard and took a moment to review it before looking at Castiel again. "Your sister is calling your brother, so I believe he'll be here soon. He's been worried sick since you were brought in last night."

"I've been here since last night?" Cas ran his hand down his face. "Can I sit up?"

Garth pushed a button on the side of the bed. "Of course you can. Don't blame you. Those lights are horrendous."

A knock on the door drew both of their attentions. "Garth, Dean asked that I called him when the patient was awake. Should I do that, or wait for the rest of Castiel's family arrives."

"Call him in about 30 minutes. That'll let me check our guest over here, time for his family get here, and hopefully, Dean will sleep more." The woman left, and Garth turned back to face Castiel. "Dean was worried sick about you last night."

"Who's Dean?" Something about that name stirred something in Cas like it was engraved into his being. "I should know Dean, right?"

Garth shook his head. "From his and Dr. Vaugier's notes on your charts, you were brought in unconscious, and you haven't woken up until just a few minutes ago. Unless..." Garth flipped through a few more papers. "Dean did use his magic to heal you. You may be feeling a few remnants of his spell work."

"Spell work?" Castiel tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean, spell work?"

"Dean is one of our nurses on staff. And the guy who saved your life." Garth replied, writing something down. "Almost passed himself out using all his mojo on you."

"Saved my life!?"

The doctor started to speak when Anna came back in, followed by Gabe and Meg. His older brother rushed over to him, nearly knocking over the doctor. "CASSIE!"

"Gabe?" Castiel gasped as Gabe squeezed the air out of him. "What's going on, why am I here?"

"You really don't remember?" Gabe's face fell, and Meg came over to rub his back. "I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"It seems that he only lost his memory from his time as a wolf. I don't think it would hurt if you told him what happened." Garth spoke up before looking at Castiel. "I'm going to check your vitals, then I'm going to call Dean since he wanted to be here when you woke up."

Castiel nodded before turning to his brother. "What happened, Gabe?"

"Anna said you only remember right before you were about to shift?" Castiel nodded, and Gabe continued. "We needed to hunt. I said I was going, and you insisted on coming along. Someone to watch my back."

"That sounds like something I would say." Castiel raised an eyebrow.

"We headed out into the woods nearby and caught the whiff of a deer. It had been set up for us to catch, like a trap. You took the silver buckshot that was meant for me." Gabe hung his head. "You went down like a sack of potatoes, and I thought you were gone. I went berserk and went after the Hunter who hit you, but he ran off."

"Clearly, I'm not dead."

Garth tapped him on the thigh. "That's cause you got hit in the hindquarter. The initial silver impact took you down, but it was all removed before too much got in your bloodstream."

"How?" Cas tilted his head and squinted at the doctor checking his thigh. "You're a Were. It would have hurt you."

"Would have hurt our nightshift doctor too. But! That would be where Dean enters the story." Garth winked. "I'm gonna go call him now."

Castiel waited until the doctor left. "Continue the story, please?"

"I shifted back to human and dragged you to the side of the road. I called the local Cryptid Emergency Line, and they sent an ambulance to come and get you. I ran back to the pack, told them what happened, and left Balthazar in charge while Me, Meg, and Anna rushed here." Gabe frowned. "It's my fault you're here."

"No, it's not." Castiel smacked his brother upside the head. "You didn't shoot me."

"But you were protecting me." Gabe rubbed at the spot Castiel hit.

"As is my job as Den Protector, assbutt." Castiel frowned and looked at Meg and Anna. "You two have been trying to tell him that, right?"

"I have," Meg spoke up. "Anna hasn't left your side."

Castiel looked at his older sister in awe. "What?"

"Well, Dean stayed until his shift was over, and they practically forced him to go home." Anna smiled. "I can still feel his magic in the room. Almost like it's watching over you."

"I..." Castiel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's an extraordinary feeling I'm experiencing right now."

A knock on the doorframe caused the pack members to look at the door. "Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt, but I just wanted to check in."

"Dean?" Castiel wasn't sure why he was asking when he knew that the man in the doorway was the one who saved him. He could feel the magic in the air grow more robust, and what had been a faint hint of Hickory and Whiskey washed into the room and over Castiel.

"That's me." Dean nodded and walked in the room, the rest of his pack moving out of his way. "Glad to see you woke up, Cas. You were still out cold when I left this morning."

Castiel looked over Dean, studying the way his light brown hair stood up, how his freckles were dusted over his face... How purely green the eyes watching him were. Realizing he hadn't responded to Dean's statement, Castiel stumbled over what to say. Thank you didn't seem to convey enough. Not with the rampant curiosity inside him.

"Well, let me tell you again how thankful we are." Anna jumped in, and Castiel had never been more grateful. She turned and winked at Castiel before addressing Dean again. "You saved our brother, and you're showing him a level of care that I don't think we've ever seen from someone outside of the pack."

Dean blushed, and Castiel was amazed by how much his freckles stood out. "Well, I figured his pack needed him, so I made sure to uh..." Dean scratched at his temple. "You know, that sounded better in my head. So, um. I'm going to uh. Yeah. I'm going to go get ready for my shift." He pointed over his shoulder and stumbled over his feet, causing Meg - of all people - to giggle.

"Well," Gabe waited until Dean had exited the room. He wrapped his arm around Meg's shoulder and shook his head. "Is it just me, or do we have two very smitten men on our hands."

"Two very smitten men." Anna nodded in agreement. "There's a new scent in the air, one that I can't put a finger on. Well, I can. But it's better to let Castiel wallow."

"Didn't I almost just die?" Castiel asked exasperatedly.

"Dude, Cassie. The smell is coming from you." Gabe shook his head. "You smell content."

"Fuck off, Gabe." Castiel sat back against the bed, staring at the door. "I don't know what's going on."

Meg tapped Gabe's hand. "I'll go grab the doctor."

"What? Why?" Castiel watched as Meg walked out of the room.

"Because of the way you and Dean just interacted." Anna took Castiel's hand into hers and squeezed. "Dean's a witch, Castiel. And while Dr. Fitzgerald and Dr. Vaugier both assured that Dean is one of the best healing witches in the country, he almost passed out healing you. Apparently, that amount of spell work can cause some interesting side effects."

"Like...?" Castiel inquired.

"Like, maybe he tapped into his life source to heal you, instead of yours," Gabe suggested.

"Or maybe he confused you in some way..." Anna added. "Like by making a bond between the two of you."

…

Dean stood in the locker room and ran his hand down his face. He knew that Cas was gorgeous, Dean had examined him after all. But what he hadn't expected was the way that there was an instant pull from the werewolf.

And that meant he fucked up. Big time.

There was a reason Dean was reluctant to use his magic when doing extensive injuries and wounds. His mother made a point of hammering it into his head when Dean showed his power, and then again in Sam's when his powers manifested. Every witch capable of healing magic forms a bond with the person they heal. The bond allows the transfer of energy from a witch to their patient. With the extra power from the witch, the injury heals faster.

Something like a fever or a headache? Two fingers at the temple, push small amounts of power through.

A broken bone? Set it first, don't ever use your magic to set and heal.

Loss of blood or extensive blunt force trauma? Do everything you can outside of healing first, then use your magic.

There was a reason healing witches were becoming fewer and fewer. It was too risky. Even ones like Dean and Sam, who had the white magic passed down to them, often found ways out of being forced into medical careers. The risk was high, and the reward too low. But for Dean, and eventually Sam, they wouldn't have had it any other way, both needing to follow in their mother's footsteps.

Now, Dean stood, staring at himself in the mirror, wondering if he followed too closely to his mother's footsteps. He leaned forward on the sink and stared at his own eyes, hoping some kind of answer would reveal itself. Poor Cas couldn't even agree to the healing that Dean poured into him, being both in wolf form and unconscious.

"Dean?" The door to the locker room opened, and Madison walked in. "Sam said you came in early."

"Yeah, Cas woke up. I wanted to make sure there were no ill effects from... you know." Dean pushed back off of the sink and walked over to Madison.

"And?" Madison crossed her arms over her chest, looking up at Dean."

"And I did what I'm not supposed to do, okay?" Dean threw his arms out in defeat. "I couldn't just let him die. They tried to trap and kill him and his brother. Because they're Weres, and they were framed for Wendigo kills."

"Dean." Madison placed a hand on his arm. "No one blames you for going above and beyond. You saved his life. He may be a little in awe just because of that. And unlike what happened with your mother, if it did happen, you're under no means necessary to pursue any bonds." She softly patted Dean's cheek. "Now, don't make me wolf out and drag your ass out to your brother."

"That's not nice, Maddie." He walked past her. "I don't witch out on you."

"You do. Every day, Dean."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Well, then how can I make it up to you?"

"It's not necessary." Madison shrugged. "But you could go convince your brother to ask me out. He's not as subtle as he thinks he is."

"I tell him that all the time." Dean shot a pair of finger guns at her before walking out onto the floor. He walked over to the nurse's desk, sat down, and pulled out the charts about their current patients. As he read over them, his gaze kept flicking up to the monitor for room six.

Cas was alone with Anna. Gabriel and Meg probably had to return to their pack. Their absence reminded him to ask Madison what Kate and Michael had said in regards to a fourth pack settling into Sioux Falls. Dean looked back down at the charts in front of him. A broken leg in room two and stitches needed in room three.

As he wrote down some notes on each chart, Anna's voice startled him. "Dean?"

"Hey, Anna." He set his pencil down and ran his hand down his face. "What can I do for you?"

"We wanted to ask before he did it, but is Cas allowed to shift?"

"He's a wolf, Anna," Dean replied, as though it were the most obvious answer in the world.

She shot a glare at him. "He is, but we didn't want to just assume. He's feeling odd, and he thinks if he shifts, he'll be okay."

"Right." A pang of guilt came over Dean. "Every room is made to be able to handle shifts." He pointed up at the monitor. "We can watch from here to make sure he goes through it okay. Is it safe to assume he keeps his mind when in wolf form?"

"We're pureblood, yes." Anna nodded. "So, you lock him in while he's shifting, and then... what?"

"We prefer to check vitals first, then he can shift, and we'll recheck vitals to make sure there wasn't any injury or stress. He can stay in there, or he can come out to the desk here while in wolf form." Dean pointed to a spot next to the desk. "When he's ready to shift back, he can go back in, we follow the same process."

"Will you come and take his vitals then?" Anna looked like she had no issues resorting to pouting if need be, and Dean let out a sigh.

"I..." He looked down at his charts and nodded. There went the idea of keeping his contact with Cas to a minimum. "Yeah, give me a minute. Need to get Dr. Vaugier to keep an eye on the monitors."

"I'm here." Madison walked down the hallway. "What's going on?"

"Cas asked to shift," Anna replied. "Dean said he has to take vitals."

Madison nodded, and Dean gave her a pleading look. She smiled at him and raised her eyebrows mischievously. "Go ahead, Dean, I'll look over the charts."

"Let's go." Dean pushed himself out of his chair and followed Anna back to room six. As they entered, his heart fell. Cas was curled up on the bed facing the wall. He had been so set on not watching Cas' monitor, Dean had neglected to notice that Cas wasn't right. "Cas?"

"Dean?" Cas sat up quickly.

"Hey, Cas." Dean gave a half-hearted smile and crossed to the medical cart in the room. "Anna tells me you want to shift?" Cas nodded enthusiastically, so Dean continued. "Cool, that's fine. Let me just take a few vitals, grab this cart, and then Anna and I will step outside, okay?"

"Thank you, Dean." Cas smiled, and Dean felt his heart swell with emotions new and old. He was so very screwed.

[pvntherz]

Summary: Kitty gets an amazing idea and drags the rest of the kids along with her (fluff)

A/N: I wrote 1, 830 more words than I should have. Which is to say I shouldn't have written this at all, because it's trash. Please be nice it's my first time writing.

Spell check?: Nope, not at all

Word Count: 1830 words of trash

----

It had been a long week. Rehearsals had been kicking all the queens in their respective asses. The kids had been tied up with school and had no time to just have fun. Today was different, today was Saturday.

At approximately 4:30am Katherine Howard had awoken with the best idea she ever had in years. She quickly got out of bed and brushed her teeth. After throwing on some more presentable clothes she peaked out her door. She looked left and right. It was empty. Just what she needed. She quickly ran down the hallway as quietly and as quickly she could. She stopped in front of Mary's door and opened it slowly. "Pst, Mary..wake up!" Mary shot up quickly and looked around. "Huh-why are you waking me up at 3am!?" Mary grumbled and ran a hand through her ginger hair. Mary had never been a morning person and she really didn't like waking up early on Saturdays at all.

"I have an amazing idea, I need you to wake up all the others up!" With that Katherine made her way towards the kitchen to prepare for her grand scheme. She opened the fridge and got the eggs and milk. She searched cabinets and pantry for sugar, salt, vegetable oil, and baking powder. "Right, cooking stuff!” Katherine looks through all the kitchen drawers to find everything she's looking for

It wasn't until Mary obnoxiously cleared her throat did she realized the others were in the kitchen “We're all here, what is it that you want?” Mary's eyelids were still heavy with sleepiness and it was hard to tell whether she was glaring at the older woman or just tired. “This better be good..”

“Yea..mommy isn't even up!” Little Edward rubbed his eyes and yawned. He still had on his paw patrol pajamas on. They were pretty clean for the most part, save for the damn spot of what could only be drool near the collar.

Elizabeth stretched slightly. Her upper arms were covered with paint splashes from an all nighter she never got to finish. “If we're doing what I think we're doing, I demand extra food.” Elizabeth's statement cause both Edward and little Mary’s eyes to light up with excitement.

Katherine couldn't help but smile at the excitement of the younger kids. "Elizabeth's right, we're gonna make our mom's breakfast, but we have to be quick and quiet. We don't wanna wake them up." Mae and Edwards nodded excitedly. Elizabeth and Mary nodded still too tired for excitement. "So here's the deal. We need someone to mix the batter, someone to make cook the waffles, and some one to prepare the plates." Edward raised his hand jumping up and down. "I wanna make the batter and I call licking the spoon!" Little Mary pouted and crossed her arms. "I wanna lick the spoon!"

"Calm down, once we finish there will be enough batter to lick up." Katherine clapped her hands together. "Alright, now…I'll start making the batter and you guys can pick what you want to put in the waffles!" Katherine turned around to face the small amount of ingredients she had laid. She paused for a moment. Her brows furrowed together and she bit her lip. "You have no idea how to make pancake batter do you?" Mary asked as a smirked dancer across her face. Katherine ran her tongue across her teeth and quickly pulled out her phone. "Hey siri how do I make pancake batter?"

There was a burst of giggles in the kitchen. "Whatever, one of you gremlins start making the bacon." Katherine grumbled as she followed the directions that the video had given her. "On it!" Elizabeth said as she grabbed a pack of bacon and a stick of butter out of the refrigerator. "How much do we need?" Elizabeth turned on the stove and placed a pan on top of it. "All of it!" Katherine said as she started mixing the batter together as well as she could.

"What about the berries, we need to clean them!" Little Mary said as she placed a box of strawberries and blueberries near the sink. "Right, you and Eddie start washing them!" Katherine order the other children around. "Mary you're one waffle duty with me!" Mary sighed as she helped Katherine pour the batter into the waffle maker. "If these turn out to be trash, I'm never letting you live this down." Mary grumbled under her breath. "That's fair."

Everything had be running smoothly for the the most part. It was already 5:30. Most of the other queens woke up no earlier that 7 or 8. They bacon had been cooked and the waffles were almost all done. All that was left to plate the waffle and serve it with the rest of the food. Everything was just fine until Catherine Parr decided to wake up early. "What's with all the noise?" Catherine said just loud enough for all the children up front to hear her. "Crap, Mary, go distract your mom so we can finish!" Elizabeth said in a hushed tone as she forced the go anger girl out the kitten and towards her mother.

With Parr distracted the rest of the kids worked twice as fast to get done. They piled the waffles onto plates along side a few pieces of bacon and a bowl of fruit. "Now for the hardest part, we have to sneak these into their rooms and then sneak to our own rooms and pretend like we were never awake." Katherine peaked outside the kitchen and motioned for Mary to get her mother away from the hallway. Katherine couldn't make out what Mary had said, but it had worked. "Let's go!" Running as quietly as the could down the hall, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Mary placed the trays of breakfast on the nightstands of the mothers. They all scrambled to get back to their rooms before their mothers could wake up.

Parr was the first one to see her plate of breakfast. The waffles were a little too soft to be waffle, more like a pancake with abs. "Mary sweetie, do you know who did this?" Mary shook her head. "Nope. No idea." Catherine raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" Mary nodded again. "Yep, I have zero idea how that got there.." Mary smiled nervously as looked at her mother. “Alright then, let's eat!” Mary shook her head again. “No, i- they made those for you!” Mary pouted and made puppy dog eyes. "Please, just enjoy the food?" Catherine clinched her jaw. "Fine, I'll eat the magical fairy food." Mary grinned and happily made her way back to her bedroom.

Then there was Aragon. When she woke up she already knew who put it there. She was more concerned as to how her daughter managed to sneak in her room without waking her up. Catherine got out of bed and stretched. It didn't feel right to have it all by herself. Once she'd brushed her teeth and stretched, Catherine made her way to her daughter's room with the gray of food in hand. She gently knocked on the door. Neither of them were morning people and shaking Mary up didn't seem nice at all. Mary stirred in her sleep and rubbed her eyes. "Ma'am?" Catherine gestured at the food in her hand. "Did you want to share?" Mary nodded. "I'd like that a lot actually." Catherine sat the food down on Mary's desk and sat down in the chair. "Be honest, is this story bought?" Catherine chuckled as she took a bit out of a strawberry. "Of course not. Kitty woke us up at 4am to cook all of this stuff and then try to pretend to be asleep once we finished." Mary chuckled as took a bite out of the waffle. Catherine rolled her eyes. "It must have been hell getting you out of bed that early."

Then Jane woke up to find Edward looking at the plate of food on her nightstand. "Honey are you alright?" Jane asked as she sat up in her bed. "Yea..I wanted to make sure no one took your waffles.." Edwards gaze stayed focused on the tray of food in front of him. "Well, since you were such a good guard, you deserve a waffle!" Jane smiled watching her son hop up and down. "Come on sit with mommy." Edward smiled as he sat down on the bed. He scored closer to his mother and rested against her. "Here, say ahh" Jane held a strawberry in front of Edward's mouth, which he happily ate. "Now tell me, how'd you get all this stuff?" Jane watched her son stopped chewing and thought for a minute. "It's a secret." Edward said as he swallowed down his food. Jane raised a brow at her son's answer, but decided not to question it.

Boleyn followed soon after. Her nose twitched at the smell of breakfast. She took a deep breath and inhaled the scent, it smelt delicious. Anne sat up and looked at the tray. She shrugged. "No point in keeping it all to myself." The woman forced her way out of bed and carried the tray to Elizabeth's room. She quietly opened the door. "Hey Lizzie, you up?" Anne's voice caused Elizabeth to shoot up from her spot at her desk. "Huh- oh mom..hi.." Elizabeth yawned and rubbed her eyes. "What's up?" Anne giggled. "Well this breakfast, is way too much for me to eat by myself..did you wanna split it with me?" Elizabeth nodded and sat up. "Sure, no harm in sharing." The two smiled at one another as Anne sat down. "I'm not sure what these..square pancakes are supposed to be, but they are not waffles!" Anne proclaimed as she took a bit out of the waffle. Elizabeth shrugged. "Don't look at me, I didn't make the batter."

Finally there was Anne of Cleves. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She looked at her night and smiled at the tray of food. She glanced at the door to her bedroom. She could see a streak of bright pink hair passing by her door. "I know you're there Kitty." The German smiled as she sat up. "No you don't!" Howard held back a fit of giggles as she entered the room. "Thank you for the breakfast, sweetheart." Anne smiled as Katherine leaned against her. "Sorry I messed up the waffles, I can't cook for shit." They both laughed as Anne began eating. "Well, they aren't the worst waffle. They actually taste pretty good!" Katherine shrugged and yawned. "Well I hope you like it, I woke up at 4am just to make everyone breakfast." Katherine laid down on the bed stretching out. "By yourself?!" Anne paused worry written all over her face. "Of course not, the other kids helped me too.." With that Katherine fell asleep.

"God damn it, I have to wash the fucking dishes!"

[bananashemmo]

Committed The Robbery (Part 2)

Pairing: Y/N/Gangmember!Ashton

Rating: NC-17

Request: Yes

Summary: On a scale from 1 to shit, how fucked would Ashton be if he ended up banging the other gangmember Luke’s little sister Y/N?

Read Committed The Robbery on Wattpad

”How did he-, I mean… How did this happen?”  

Ashton’s voice was in a mix of being soft like a feather but it also had a hint of anger. Not directed towards you in any way, it was all forced towards James. God, how he just wanted to rip him into broken pieces.

“I don’t really know…” You looked down at your fiddled fingers and winched when he gently lifted your chin up to look at him. It wasn’t something he intended to but the redness hurt a lot more than it seemed.

He shook his head in disbelief and looked around the art room for something to use. He had never treated a burn like this but neither did he ever come across the thought that James would be able to harm you again. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He hated failing.

“He was there all of the sudden. I’ve always been aware that we started at the same college but I haven’t seen the shadow of him. Only once but he didn’t lay a finger on me. It has all suddenly changed.” You watched him head towards the sink with pencils and water paint.

“We must assume it’s because we’re back. It’s what has triggered him again.” Ashton flipped his curls away from his face and looked in search for tissues. Anything he could use to gently clean your face.

“I was waiting for Luke outside and suddenly he just grabbed me. Out of nowhere. I wasn’t prepared at all and he was sneaky because everyone else had seemed to left. I had no eyewitnesses or someone to help.”

You mumbled the last part and scratched your arms where you were sure bruises would soon form. It wasn’t with gentleness you had been thrown into the trashcan that nearly couldn’t fit you. You already prepared for the marks.

“Not that I think anyone would have saved me for the matter. James is the most popular but feared person at the campus.” You touched a spot on your arm and looked over to see him glance up at you, “Not when you’re not around anymore.”

His eyes showed a mix of pain but also anger, he didn’t know how to react or what to say. He knew that the second they had been expelled from the place everything would change. It was the reason why they had left for a month to think and pass what was going to happen.

“I know.” It was simply said and he hated it, but nothing else could come from his mouth. It was the only thing he had to say for now.

Leaning over to take a few tissues he settled with cooling down your skin. It was the least he could do and knowing with chemicals like this the only thing that would help would be water. It always seemed to be the right solution.

“Does it still burn?” The question was a little bit dumb considering the massive amount of redness but he still needed to ask. Just to be sure.

“Yeah it’s-,” You trailed off nervously not really knowing how to describe the pain. It hurt more like hell, every time you spoke it started to stretch and burn.

“Here, let me.” He finished your sentence and wet the tissues with cold water.

You watched him take the walk between the tables filled with scattered brushes and old artwork, something you could recall as yours and others made by friends and acquaintances. This room had been your safe spot. Now it was almost scarier than being outside.

“I can’t believe he would do this to you.” He mumbled when using the tissue against the skin, wanting to be as gentle as possible to not hurt you more than you already were.

“I can.” You replied like it wasn’t a shocker and looked up at him.

“I mean I do too but I just still… I don’t understand how a human can be so mean… Not towards someone so kind like you I mean… You’re basically a baby seal. Nobody should ever harm you.”

His words made a deep blush appear on your cheeks almost deeper than the ones on your burns. He carefully moved the tissues over your lips and pressed his other hand against the table to lean closer without it being too close.

“It makes me the easiest target.” You admitted, saying the words that you both knew were the truth.

“Not only am I weak but he knows by using me he will get to Luke. He will get to all of you with one snap.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” He replied and folded the tissue to find a clean and cold side, “You didn’t choose the life. It was something you were dragged into.”

You looked down at your dangling feet against the table and hummed in response. It was true and you didn’t want to argue. Ashton had never been fond of that you were aware after witnessing many fights between him and your brother.

He looked over his shoulder to look outside of the window. You weren’t sure if it was because he wanted to distract himself or if it was because he didn’t like seeing you in pain. He didn’t say a thing and when he glanced back at you took a look at your skin to see if anything had helped.

“How ha-, How have you been?” You managed to stammer with a thick lump forming in your throat. You had been dying to ask since the first sight of him and it had to be said. One of you needed to ask and start the conversation.

“Shh… I don’t think it’s good for you to talk.” He whispered, not because he wanted to drag you down but because he could see by every word that came from your lips, the pain would increase.

You nodded your head silently and looked back at your lap. You weren’t sure whether the red and blue marks were coming from the water paint you had been using previously or if it was James and his strong grip.

“I’ve been… Well.” He suddenly announced and you looked up at him with a bit of surprise in your eyes. He didn’t sound as well as he was trying to convince you.

“Or I don’t really know how to explain how I’ve been feeling but it’s better. My apartment has finally been sold and a few days ago Luke, Cal, Mike and I moved into our new house. It’s like a new fresh start. For all of us.”

He made sure to add extra pressure and look carefully at you by his last words. He knew that it would be the best for everyone, to erase the not so old memories of his old bedroom, his old apartment and everything happening at once.

You blinked not really knowing what to say and decided to nod your head. It was somehow the best way to answer but also the most annoying way because it showed that you heard, but were closed like a book.

“I think that month away from everything seemed to do the job. It made me think of everything else, it made me think of the mistakes we did.” He announced and somehow you felt a stinging sensation by the word of mistakes.

You didn’t want to ask if he saw it as mistakes but of course, you knew it was the truth. But the truth hurt just like the burns and you decided to nod your head again. The most annoying answer of the world, you hate when people did it to you.

“It’s all put behind. We all have a new fresh start.” You added with a final nod and looked up at him with a sigh.

Everything was a new fresh start. Finally getting the chance to move out of Luke’s apartment and into a new freshly decorated dorm. It was your new start of life without troubles, mistakes and constant fights and battles.

When you started in college after the summer you believed it would be the change in your life. You know that thing where you believe it would be the right for you, that little burning sensation in the pit of your stomach telling you that it was time for a well-deserved change and that it would finally be different.

But what you hadn’t expected was James studying in the same place as you.

“You know it would all have just been easy if I could just beat the shit out of him and call it quits.” He hummed more to himself than you knowing how much you hated the violence. It showed the polar opposites you were.

“He’d never dare to do anything as much as having a single thought of you if he saw my face every single day. I’m sorry I can’t do that for you.” He looked down at the ground with a frown for a second, thoughts racing in his mind fast.

“You know if you’re too afraid you can always quit college and move back into Luke’s again. At least from that, we know you’re 100% safe.”

“No.” You were quick to answer and shook your head to illustrate how much you meant it.

“I need this degree, it’s the only thing that makes me look forward. If I move back the only thing I see is a future of living in Luke’s basement all covered up in bubble wrap. I don’t want my life to be like that, I want to wake up every single day preparing for my future.”

“He just wants to protect you. You’re the only thing he cares about in life.” Ashton reminded, not that he wanted to be annoying he just wanted to state the truth.

“I know but still it’s just…” You didn’t know how to properly finish your sentence so you shrugged your shoulder almost feeling defeated.

It had been less than a month and the feeling of freedom was the one keeping you alive every single day. It was only because you had once a week where you met Luke that you decided to still catch up with him now that he was also back.

“I just wish he could protect me a little less?” The sentence wasn’t supposed to come out as a question but it did and you squeezed an eye in hesitation.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen.” Ashton grinned by your words and placed the tissue on the surface on the table that wasn’t filled with artwork.

“I’m used to it I guess.” You shrugged again and smiled as well. It had been a while since you had talked like this. Without the awkwardness and tension. For once it was actually a real smile you were flashing him.

He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something but stopped in mid-track and laughed instead. It was quietly but still as contagiously as it had always been. The way he would flash his dimples and wide smile always made everyone around him in a good mood.

“As long as you’re okay now I’m happy.” He gently lifted his warm and large hand to touch the skin that wasn’t burned. His thumb was rough yet also soft against your cheekbone and you looked up at him with careful eyes.

“And you know if Luke doesn’t protect you enough…” He removed his hand and pressed it against the tables instead with the palms.

“I’ll always be behind to take over.”

You nodded slowly and let the words sink in. You always knew that they both shared the passion of protecting you. Sometimes it was like a constant battle you were surprised Luke hadn’t grown more suspicious over Ashton.

He gave you one last smile and furrowed his eyebrows when he felt a vibration in his pocket. It seemed to kill the mood completely but when Ashton heard what Michael had to say at the other end of the phone everything seemed to change.

“You did what?” It was an amused smile that came to Ashton’s face by Michael’s words but you weren’t able to make out what was being said. You could only hear who the voice belonged too.

“Okay, two seconds we will be out within a minute.” He replied before hanging up on the phone, not helping less on your sudden confusion and forced his phone back in his leather jacket.

“Come on.” He directed and helped you down from the table.

“I’ve got something to show you.”

It was with confusion and your eyebrow quivered that you followed him out of the classroom and towards the exit.

Glares were shared between the students you passed by, you weren’t sure it if was because you looked like someone who had been eating too many strawberries or if it was because you were walking with Ashton. Some were, in fact, quick to leave once his glance directed towards them.

You had no idea where he was leading you but once he opened the door in politeness for you to walk out first you sensed it. Everyone was running towards the same direction and it was towards the football field.

“They didn’t do something stupid, did they?” You asked nervously and passed by his familiar car, watching him open the door just for a second to place his leather jacket at the backseat.

“They did something deserved,” Ashton replied with a grin and didn’t help on the many scenarios going through your head at once. You knew what they were capable of when they put their minds together.

It was never pretty.

People were crowded around the place by the football goal close to the blue seats for people to watch. On distance, you hadn’t been able to fully see what was going on but once you were close enough you lost your breath completely.

“Oh my-, It’s even better than they explained over the phone,” Ashton said from your side, his hand coming up to remove his curls and his face fully impressed.

Luke and Michael were sitting on each side of the fence with their long legs dangling down, during their finishing touches for the work of ‘art’ they had made towards James.

He was from what you could see fully naked and all taped up in grey duct tape to make sure he was hanging onto one of the metal poles. On his nipples, they had made x’s and not to mention you could see his clothes were scattered on the dirty grass.

His mouth was covered with another piece of duct tape and his hair looked so tousled you were sure they had been pulling on the roots to get him up, it was Luke’s personal thing. He loved the pain it caused and how easy it was to drag people around with such little power.

Your jaw was almost close to touching the ground, no matter how many times you had seen or prepared for this they always seemed to take your breath and not in a good way. You felt deep inside that this was your fault and to see people’s reaction was hard.

Some were laughing while others were unsure if they should break in or not. No one had the guts to do it, no one wanted to mess with the gang. It was as if they had committed a robbery right away.

“What do you say?” Ashton asked into your ear still with the same smile on his face. You never understood why they enjoyed this.

“I-, I think it’s a little bit harsh.” You didn’t want to words to slip past your lips because you knew he wouldn’t understand but you still said it.

You didn’t want to think like this, you wanted to be a hard nut like the rest of the guys but you couldn’t. You wore your heart on your sleeves and carried it around for everyone to see. No matter how many times James had hurt you in some sort of way you still cringed by how hard the boys could do revenge.

“It’s everything he deserves. If he doesn’t like the backfire in his ass he shouldn’t be messing with you in the first place.” Ashton responded but wasn’t mad. He was used to you being this kind. It was what he loved for you.

“Maybe this teaches him one final time that he shouldn’t lay a hand on you ever again.”

You nodded your head in agreement but didn’t quite believe his words. It was all a game to them. To see who could do the worst thing and somehow you were always the puzzle, the one that they always had to battle around with.

“Should we take him down?” Michael asked with a laugh and looked over at Luke who shrugged with the same smile.

“I’m not sure.” He responded and leaned over on the metal to hover over James and lean down to grab the end of the tape around his mouth to pull it off.

You hurried to place your fingers by your ears to cover the horrifying scream that would come from James once Luke would pull off the tape but it still wasn’t enough. It left goosebumps on your arms you could almost imagine the pain was the same as yours.

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry?” James practically yelled in desperation, drool around the ends of his mouth.

“I’m not the one who you should apologize to,” Luke replied in a singing voice.

“And who allowed you to speak anyways?” Michael asked and flashed Luke a secret smile before he searched into his pocket for a bottle.

You couldn’t see what it was but by the excitement going through Ashton’s body next to you, you were aware that it wouldn’t be something good.

“Oh my, you didn’t.” Luke laughed and clapped his hands together in excitement.

“I stole it from the chemistry class. I thought since James is so happy to use hydrochloric acid how about he gets a taste himself?” Michael wiggled the bottle in front of James excitedly and opened it despite him constantly wiggling his head away.

“This is for my little sister,” Luke said through gritted teeth and watched Michael force the bottle into James’s mouth while he held it still, watching James squirm and choke on the liquid.

It wasn’t until the bottle was emptied completely Michael let go of it all and watched as James spit it out in pain. He was moaning, groaning and almost screaming all at the same time, the sweat was dripping from his forehead.

The burns around his mouth were much worse than they were on you, you stood completely stunned not knowing how to react or what to say.

Luke and Michael high fived each other and jumped down from the goal with yet another laugh, hearing the sounds of wheels driving fast from the parking lot and James’ friends coming out of the car in action.

“Looks like your puppies arrived just in time.” Michael leaned against the goal casually and watched them run towards the grass with a fast pace, almost knocking into each other during the process.

“I assume one of them will be dedicated to jumping into the sewage system to get your clothes. I mean unless you want to walk all the way back to your dorm in that attire.” Luke nodded towards the duct tape and watched Calum use his strength to open the lid and helped Luke to throw the clothes away.

You watched James’ friends trying to crawl up onto the goal to save their friend in need, looking in the corner of your eye to see Ashton make a hand sign to the boys.

They all smiled in satisfaction and walked together towards the parking lot, some students still standing to watch James’ misery while others left after the party had officially stopped.

You stood confused trying to let everything sink in. This wasn’t how you wanted everything to be, yet you were already forced into it without the power of saying no.

It was a gutted feeling that ran up your spine when James looked over at your direction with many different emotions in his eyes. He was clearly hurt, not emotionally but obviously physically though it wasn’t the thing that scared you the most.

It was that little bit of hardness he had in his eyes, that this had taken him down for fifteen minutes but he would back on track within a second. He could already taste the revenge and his dartboard was right in front of him.

But that was when you felt that quick sensation on your fingers. The way fingertips were suddenly brushing over yours.

Looking up at Ashton with a blank expression he was still looking forward but was indeed smiling. You could feel how his fingers slowly touched yours, not in the way that he wanted to hold your hand but just the thing that gave the little tickling sensation.

The more he touched and didn’t see you flinch the more he tried. His fingers mixed between yours and the substance between cold and warm was there. He always had warm hands. It was like comfort to your cold ones.

You opened your mouth to let out a deep breath wanting to say something but in the end deciding that you shouldn’t.

Removing your hand away from his you turned around wanting to leave, mobbing between the few other people standing and didn’t dare to look over your shoulder as you had course towards somewhere else.

[swiggity-swump]

Out to Pasture

(the title’s really dumb lol)

@sad--ghost--kid I finished your prompt!! :D I hope you like 2600 words of hurt and minimal comfort. (This is actually pretty unusual for me since I lean towards comfort but I really had a lot of fun with this.) I hope you enjoy it!

Prompt: “danny breaks his arm in a ghost fight, and even though he can reset the bones with intangibility, and has fast healing (at least as i hc it), it will still take a few days for his arm to fully heal. how does he handle school the next day? hopefully it’s cold enough that he can wear long sleeves to cover the bruises, but that’s only one aspect of many regarding hiding a broken arm that doesnt even have a cast ;)”

Danny’s always been a pretty smart kid. He’s followed the rules, kept himself safe. He doesn’t run on wet floors. He looks both ways before crossing the street. He wears his helmet when he rides his scooter.

Unfortunately for him, he probably should have been wearing more than that.

He’s not sure at first what it is that makes him fly off of his scooter, but the chances are good that it’s another ghost. He’s actually relatively calm in the moments between when he’s knocked aside and when he hits the ground. There’s no reason to believe that this should be anything other than a routine battle. And then-

crRACK.

The sound Danny makes when he hits the pavement is somewhere between a gasp, a wheeze, and a whimper. Hot pain flares along the length of his left arm, with the worst concentrated just below his shoulder. Tears fill his eyes and he focuses on blinking them away, so much so that it takes him some time to realize that he’s been holding his breath.

His subsequent attempts to breathe evenly are cut short by a blow to the face that leaves a deep gash across his cheek. Danny jerks his head sharply away and scrabbles backwards, slowed by the fact that his injured arm is cradled tightly against his body.

Once he’s put some distance between them, Danny is finally able to get a good look at his attacker. He feels the smallest pinprick of relief that it’s not one of his more powerful enemies, just a mook, but he’s still on guard - the big bad could still be somewhere nearby. As it is, what he’s facing down now looking to be some sort of ghostly… buffalo? He doesn’t know. He got a C in Biology.

Well, whatever it is, the thing is pawing the ground with its razor-sharp hooves like it’s ready to charge. Danny’s going to have to transform, despite the throbbing in his arm.

He closes his eyes and breathes as deeply as he can. “I’m going ghost,” he murmurs, more to get himself in the right frame of mind than anything else. It takes an immense amount of willpower, but he forces his thoughts to the transformation.

The relief that comes once he’s transformed is immediate; the searing pain is replaced with a cool, tingly sensation. A cocky grin crosses his face. “Time to put you out to pasture,” he taunts, a plan already forming in his mind. He stares the ghost down, crouching as if prepared to wrestle with it.

The ghost’s red eyes narrow and it snorts angrily before leaping into a charge. The speed takes Danny by surprise, but he holds his ground as the specter bears down on him. He waits… waits…

And at the last second, he goes intangible. The buffalo doesn’t have enough time to stop - instead, it crashes headfirst into the wall behind Danny. He wastes no time in uncapping the Fenton Thermos and pointing it at the dazed ghost.

He races to come up with a witty send-off as the buffalo is absorbed into the Thermos. All that he manages is “Bye, son.” He winces at his own joke - even he knows that was bad. Are bison and buffaloes even the same thing?

He should have saved the pasture joke for the end. Now that one was good.

Reluctantly, Danny turns his mind from the puns. He has a more pressing issue to deal with. How, he’s not sure, but he can’t exactly waltz home with a broken arm.

Is it even broken? He hopes not, but given the pain that he was in earlier… On a whim, Danny lets his injured left arm go intangible.

Shit. Shit. That’s definitely broken. He squeezes his eyes shut and inhales shakily, desperate to get ahold of himself.

Okay. He’s gonna have to deal with this no matter what.

Danny tries to mentally detach himself when he opens his eyes again to get a better look at the fracture. It looks like a pretty clean break, at least, and the bone isn’t sticking out of his skin. A closer inspection reveals that there are a few fragments of bone floating freely. Danny figures that he should try to remove those first.

Very carefully, Danny reaches into the intangible arm and closes his fingers around a sliver of bone, extracting it easily. He stares at the tiny white chip in his palm, smaller than a dime, with morbid fascination. I just pulled this out of my own body.

Not sure what else to do with it, Danny lets it drop to the ground and goes back in for the next one. He falls into a surprisingly easy rhythm of removing the fragments, one at a time, one after another.

Eventually, all of the fragments lie piled at his feet, glinting dully in the harsh illumination of a nearby streetlight. There’s no ignoring it now, Danny knows. He’s going to have to deal with the real problem.

His upper arm bone - the humerus? - is jaggedly split a little below the shoulder joint. The two pieces are unaligned; the one connected to his elbow seems to be pointed too low.

Danny hesitates, then closes his eyes and gives the displaced bone an experimental tug. The sensation that results certainly isn’t pleasant, but it’s not quite painful, either. He can only describe it is a stretching sort of feeling, as if his muscles are slowly catching up with the bone that they’re attached to.

Time crawls by as Danny resets the bone, inch by inch. He keeps his eyes shut tight, going by feel instead of sight, forced to wait longer and longer periods of time for the muscles to match the bone. Soreness creeps into his arm despite the natural anesthesia that his ghost form seems to provide, and he dreads the agony that he knows he’ll be in once he switches back.

At long last, the edges of the snapped bones grind together. Danny opens his eyes and peeks at his arm, sighing in relief when he sees that the bones appear relatively normal. He would have appreciated a diagram to be sure, but he’s working with what he has. Which is nothing.

Only now that he’s finished setting the bone does Danny realize that he’s quaking with anxiety. He lets his broken arm return to its tangible form and lowers himself to sit on the curb, in desperate need of a chance to process the night’s events. His mind drifts to other things - how late it is, the homework that he still has to do, doesn’t he have a test coming up this week? - so that when he transforms back he does so without thinking about it.

This was a mistake.

The scorching, sickening ache tears through him anew, just as intense as the initial impact had been. Danny bites his lip to stop himself from screaming, so hard that the skin splits under his teeth and blood rolls down his chin. Nausea roils within his stomach and he tucks his head between his knees, frantically dragging air through his nose as his entire body tenses up.

Danny becomes acutely aware of the pounding of blood through his veins, almost deafening in the silence of the night. He latches onto it, grounding himself with the constant thump, thump, thump until it fades away. The pain lessens alongside it - not by much, but enough to be bearable.

Danny wipes the blood off of his chin with his shirt sleeve, wincing a bit when he presses the still-fresh wound against his teeth. He stands up decisively, glad to find that he’s much steadier on his feet than he would have predicted when he leans down to retrieve his scooter using his good arm.

As he sets off for home, pulling the scooter along behind him, it occurs to him that he’d been in the beam of a streetlight the entire time. It’s a real stroke of luck that no one had walked by and witnessed all that; he’ll have to be more careful in the future.

It takes him longer than he would have liked to walk the last block home, but on the upside, the house is dark and no one bothers Danny on his way upstairs, not even Jazz. It’s an absolute relief. He’s bone-tired and not in the mood to be interrogated, and he definitely doesn’t have enough of his wits about him to make up an excuse for a broken freaking arm.

Danny melts into bed without bothering to shower or change into his pajamas. His broken arm forces him to lie uncomfortably on his right side, with his injured arm tucked tightly against his body. It’s a completely unnatural position, and despite his exhaustion it takes Danny at least an hour before he finally is able to acquiesce to sleep.

-----

Danny feels like roadkill when he wakes up the next morning. His left arm is the worst of it, but the rest of him is stiff and achy from the awkward sleeping position. On top of that, he’s just plain tired. It’s as if he hasn’t slept at all.

He slides out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom in a daze. His face reflected in the mirror is a miserable sight - he’s pale and drawn, and the bags under his eyes are so swollen and blue that they look like bruises. His lower lip is crusted by a messy scab, which he cautiously probes at with his tongue. The only good thing that he can say for himself is that the cut across his face is completely healed.

The rest of him doesn’t look much better. A dark streak of dried blood stains the right shoulder of his shirt, which is torn in various places from the brawl the night before. He catches sight of a dark shadow underneath his left sleeve and rolls it up, apprehensive.

A mottled mosaic of bruising in various shades of yellow, purple, and black covers a huge portion of Danny’s shoulder. He runs his fingers over the area as lightly as he can, wincing when he notices the swelling.

Danny pulls the sleeve back down. He knows that he’ll need long sleeves to hide it, but there’s no way he’s lifting his arms up to change his shirt.

It takes him a while rooting around his room with one arm to find his red hoodie, and even longer to pull it ever so gently over his injured arm. The hoodie is old and a little small, and for a minute or so Danny thinks that it won’t fit over the swollen shoulder, but finally he prevails. Once the hoodie is zipped up, the injury is well hidden.

Danny zeros in on the medicine cabinet once he gets downstairs, intent on a pain reliever. There is no way he can make it through the day without one. He’s focused enough that he doesn’t notice when Jazz comes up behind him.

“Danny?” She places a tentative hand on his shoulder - the wrong shoulder. Danny flinches away from her.

“Don’t touch,” he snaps, more sharply than he means to. Jazz obligingly draws her hand back, concern painting her face.

“Danny, you look awful. You should be in bed. Did you check your temperature? If it’s more than a hundred it’s an excused absence.

It takes a second for Danny to understand the situation. “Umm…” he stalls, mind whirring. Then it clicks. “Uh, yeah, I did, it’s only ninety-nine. Point four. Um. And I have a test today… English test. You know how Lancer is, just won’t let up on us hardworking students!”

It’s a total lie, and Danny worries that his rambling cover-up will make his sister suspicious. Luckily, she seems to chalk it up to his supposed illness.

“Okay, okay, if you say so,” she relents. “But if you get worse you need to go to the nurse so she can send you home. And here, take these. They work best for me.” She grabs a box from the cabinet and sets it on the counter in front of him.

Danny deflates when he realizes that it’s cold medicine, not a pain reliever, but he knows Jazz isn’t going to let him back out of this unless he comes clean. He scarfs down a granola bar and mentally crosses his fingers before taking a small dose, hoping that it won’t have any adverse effect.

“I can drive you,” Jazz calls from the door. “I’ll be in the car when you’re ready.” The door slams behind her.

Danny doesn’t bother trying to get his injured arm through the backpack strap as he walks out the door.

-----

The cold medicine doesn’t kill him, at least, but it does make him very, very drowsy. As hard as he tries to pay attention, he finds himself nodding off, his head pillowed on his good arm. To his tired gratitude, his teachers all let it slide. Even Lancer, after an appraising look at his wan face, ghosts a comforting hand over Danny’s shoulder. “You can make this up another time,” he whispers. “Do you want to go to the nurse and take some medication?”

“I already did,” he mutters. It’s not technically a lie.

Mr. Lancer’s concerned look doesn’t lift, but he doesn’t press the issue, moving down the aisle to pass out the rest of the tests.

Danny’s sleep is fitful, disrupted by the sharp ache of his arm, which the meds haven’t made a dent in, and the noise of the students around him. He stumbles to each class more tired and disoriented than the time before. It’s a miracle he doesn’t get lost before his last period - gym class.

That miracle comes in the form of Sam, who carefully grabs Danny’s good arm and steers him towards the boys’ locker room before peeling off to go to her own. Vaguely, he recollects filling in her and Tucker on the details of last night and that morning.

Tucker finds Danny staring dully at his locker, groping for the combination to open it. “It’s all good, Danny, I talked to coach, he says you don’t have to participate. Honestly, all of the teachers know already, I’m surprised they haven’t sent you home yet.”

He gets the gist of what Tucker says to him. After his friend changes into his gym uniform, Danny lets Tucker lead him into the gym and to the wall. He immediately slumps against it, tilting his head back and drifting once again into a doze.

The class has hardly started when Dash’s voice rings out above the clattering din of the gym. “Looks like Fenton caught a cold. But can he catch this?”

Catch what? Danny forces his eyes open, but he’s too groggy to move, not even after he sees the football spiraling through the air toward him.

Yet another mistake in a long line of them.

The point of the football connects with the break in his bone. With sickening clarity, Danny feels it displace for the second time in as many days. A choked sob escapes him, and his eyes swim with tears. This time they fall, tracking freely down both sides of his face. His jaw clenches and his teeth slice open the cut they made last night. It’s all too much at once.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Dash!?” Sam’s voice, deep and throaty and fierce, like it gets only when she’s worried about something. About him.

Danny comes the the hazy realization that he’s balled up, lying facedown on the gym floor and cradling his abused arm. As black spots dance in front of his eyes, his pain and misery fade into relief.

At least I won’t have to hide it anymore, he thinks, before passing out cold.

[caranfindel]

Fic: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

Gen, angst | About 3100 words | Light R or hard PG

Something bad happens when you break a blood oath with a reaper. Sam and Dean have to fix it.

My first attempt at Summergen! Thanks to crowroad3 on LJ for being such an inspiration.

~~~

They leave the Impala at the Timber Lake Trailhead. Dean slams the trunk closed, shoulders his pack, and raises his eyebrows at Sam, as if to ask you sure about this? Sam shrugs. He’s as sure as he’ll ever be. It’s not like there’s anyone they can ask. Not like he has one of the most powerful witches in existence on speed dial any more. Not like there’s any real way of knowing if this is going to work, if the weeks of sweat and blood prepping for this are actually going to pay off.

He unfolds the map and lays it across the trunk. “If we head straight east, we’ll pick up Route 34 at Farview Curve, and we’ll miss all this.” Sam runs a finger along the switchback twists and hairpin turns of a section of Route 34. “Or we can go northeast, between these two creeks. It will take a little longer, since we’ll have to backtrack some once we get to the road, but we won’t have to cross a creek without a bridge.”

Dean squints up at the cold morning sky, down at the frozen ground. Scuffs at the hard crust of snow with his boot. “Creek’s probably frozen, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Okay. East it is.” Sam folds the map and keeps his face neutral. Doesn’t want to reveal how relieved he is that Dean actually… spoke. Contributed. Acted like he gives a shit, about this job or literally anything else. He threads his arms through the straps of his own pack, checks his compass, and starts down the slope away from the trailhead.

There is no trail between Timber Lake and Farview Curve, and Sam’s too distracted by the rough terrain (and other things, maybe) to be bothered by Dean’s silence. He was right about the creek being frozen, although Sam tests the ice with a kick of his heel a few times. More than strictly necessary, probably, judging by the look Dean gives him. Maybe it’s hit him already. Maybe the trepidation spilling out of that breach on Route 34 has already reached him, is already sinking into his bones. Maybe he’s crossed the line between cautious and fearful.

Or, on the other hand, maybe Dean just doesn’t give a shit if they drown in the icy water. Maybe despair is having its way with him.

What they need, right about now, is a reliable narrator.

The forest is thick along the creek and Sam feels closed in and claustrophobic (not caged, don’t think about a cage.) He’s relieved when the trees start to thin out closer to Route 34. When they finally reach the road, he stops to stretch and take a drink. Dean stares up at the sky, checking the weather or estimating how much daylight is left or just avoiding eye contact.

“Fucking Cas,” he mutters.

Okay then. None of the above. Sam motions toward the water bottle hanging off Dean’s backpack. “You should stay hydrated.”

Dean keeps his eyes in the distance. “I’m fine.”

“Are you? Are you doing okay?”

“Told you, Sam. I’m fine.”

“Okay, but… I mean, you know. We need to pay attention to -”

“Sam. I am fine. End of discussion.”

“You know,” Sam sighs, “it would be easier if you’d just talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Dean finally turns to look at him. “Actually, it probably wouldn’t.” He turns away and starts walking along the snowy ribbon of road.

~~~

A couple of miles later they come across a crude wooden cross peeking out of the snow. “That would be Corinne Treadwell,” Sam says, making a note on the map. “The one who drove off the road… straight into that pine tree, I imagine. Not much of curve here or anything. She must have been going pretty fast to lose control like that.”

Dean nods at the scarred tree but doesn’t comment.

“So, uh. She was… we know it goes at least this far.” Sam clears his throat, feeling inexplicably nervous. (Nervous? Or afraid?)

“Yeah, and you knew that already,” Dean says. “You mapped out all the deaths. You know how far they are from the… epicenter. You know the radius.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, why are you bringing it up? Why are we standing here talking about this? We know what we’ve gotta do, and we know where we have to go to do it. So let’s just go get this over with.”

“I’m just saying, we’re definitely in the affected area now. We don’t know how much it’s grown since Corinne died, but we know it’s at least this far out. We need to be careful.”

“And the more time you spend yapping, the more time we spend in the affected area. So can we get a move on? We’ve got at least a mile to go, and I don’t want to get stuck out here after dark.” He stares at the sky again, as if Cas is up there, and where do dead angels go, anyway? It seems like Sam knew the answer to that once.

Dean clenches his hands as he turns and heads back to the road.

~~~

“Is this what you thought it would be like?” Sam asks, readjusting his pack.

“What, the Rocky Mountains? Been here before, in case you forgot.”

“No, I mean. What Billie said. Cosmic consequences. Did you ever think about what that could mean?”

Dean’s only response is a derisive snort.

“Just seems like it’d be something… bigger, you know?”

“People are dead, Sam. It’s fucking big enough.”

Which is true, but it still feels too contained, too quiet. There should be flames and brimstone and dark shapes blotting out the sun, a fiery opening torn out of the sky. Not just this quiet miasma of trepidation and fury and dismay. Not this small (but growing, don’t forget it’s growing) area of contagion so fierce that everyone who survived exposure reported feeling terror, hatred, a bone-deep urge to either kill or die.

On the other hand, the gateway to Hell was just a hole in the ground, so. There’s that. Sometimes the worst thing on Earth is actually pretty subtle.

Sam has to stop for a minute and work very hard at not thinking about a hole in the ground that leads to Hell. Dean walks ahead. The tense set of his shoulders doesn’t look fearful or vigilant, it just looks… angry. Sam trots to catch up with him. “How are you doing?” he asks, trying for nonchalant and not quite reaching it.

“Peachy.”

“Would you tell me if you weren’t?”

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Dean nods once, the way he does when he’s shoving something down deep, then looks at Sam thoughtfully. “Why’d you save the rest of the blood in the first place, when you were done rehumanizing me?”

Okay, that came out of nowhere. “Just seemed useful,” Sam answers carefully. He’s not sure where Dean’s going with this. “Sanctified blood. Lots of spells call for blood. Seemed like it would be good to keep on hand.”

“Not because you were waiting for me to go black-eyed again.”

“No. I never. No.”

Dean’s hands curl into fists (fleeting thought of that fist slamming into his own face, those fingers curled around a wooden handle, no, no, don’t think about that), then release. “Okay then.”

~~~

The sun is bright in the cloudless sky, but with every step, Sam feels colder and colder. “Damn, it’s really… weirdly cold.”

Dean shrugs. “Mountains. Winter. Do the math.”

But it’s not winter cold. It’s not the external temperature. It’s something inside leaching the warmth out of his flesh; it’s ice water flowing inside his veins, a cold fetid mist pooling in his gut, frozen bones ready to shatter on impact. It’s a cold he’s only felt in Hell. He watches Dean’s hands, watches them spasmodically clench and release, and he knows he feels it too. The wrongness of it.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

Something snaps; something deep inside lets go and Sam can’t control his fight-or-flight response any longer. He grabs Dean by the shoulder, whirls him around to face him. “Goddammit. You’re not fine. You are very, very not fine. What I need to know is, is this your normal level of not fine? Or is this some cosmically fucked-up level of not fine?”

Dean swats his hand away, his eyes suddenly wild. “I’m fine. You need to back the fuck off and worry about what’s happening in your own head. You think I haven’t seen the way you’re looking at me? Like I’m gonna throw you on the rack and peel your fucking skin off? You think I can’t tell what you’re thinking?”

(Oh god the rack don’t think about being on the rack don’t think about what Dean could do to you don’t think about Lucifer’s cold fingers peeling and scraping and prying and breaking…)

“I’m not gonna do it, Sam. I promise.” Dean lifts his hand, as if he’s going to touch Sam’s arm, but pulls it back at Sam’s involuntary flinch. “I’m not gonna do it to you. I know I did it to them, but I’m not gonna do it to you.”

Shit. Whatever it is, whatever is seeping out of that breach created by the broken blood pact, it’s wormed its way in. “Dean. This is it. It’s getting into our heads. We just gotta get through this.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Sam. I won’t. No matter what they say.”

Sam swallows, fairly sure Dean’s actually trying to convince himself. “I know.”

(But he would, wouldn’t he? He would and he did and he’ll do it again and there’s nothing you can do to stop him; if Dean really wants to hurt you there’s nothing you can do about it and there’s no one else to stop him, everyone is gone, it’s just you and Dean left in this world and he’s itching to kill you already, watch his fingers, curled like he’s holding a blade, a hammer, a scythe, ready to swing, eyes flipping black -)

“Stop!” Sam shouts. Dean stares at him, green (green) eyes startled, and Sam shakes his head, as if any amount of shaking could clear away the fear and despair. “Don’t listen to it, okay? We’re almost there. We can do this.”

Dean nods and takes a deep breath, pulls himself under control. “We got this.”

A hundred yards farther and they’re at the spot, the spot where the car stopped at midnight and everything went to shit. But it’s too clean. Too normal. There should be downed trees and scorched earth (don’t think about angel wings splayed out beside Cas’s body, scorched into the earth, don’t don’t don’t), there should be fire, there should be blood.

Oh, fuck. Fire and blood. “Dean. We gotta do the thing.”

Dean stares at him for a second, shoving his own demons down. Then he takes off his pack and retrieves the silver knife, hefting it in a trembling hand for a moment before he digs out the rest of supplies - the metal bowl, the dried herbs and kindling, the holy oil. From his own pack, Sam pulls out the carefully sealed container of blood, blood of the many, and is struck by the sudden terror that he interpreted the spell wrong, that this effort will fail, and who would have ever thought he’d miss Rowena, but if she were here, she would know. Rowena would know. But even their occasionally helpful enemies-of-my-enemies are gone, there’s no one to help, no one to ask, and they’re going to fail and they’re going to die here and the breach will get bigger and the contagion will spread and it will never, ever stop -

“Sam!” Dean is kneeling at the bowl, mixing the oil with the dried ingredients. “You okay? You with me?”

“Yeah. I’m good.” Sam runs a hand down his face, surprised to feel perspiration on his forehead. He’s so cold, cold down to his bones, Hell cold, Lucifer cold, and each bead of sweat should be a droplet of ice. He opens the container of blood and gently tips it into the bowl. As Dean mixes, Sam pulls a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. He used a marker to write out the spell, bold black letters that are easy to read under less-than-ideal circumstances, but the strokes stare at him like hard black eyes and he shoves it back in his pocket.

Dean digs in his own pocket for a pack of matches and sets them carefully next to the bowl. He takes up the silver knife and cuts a neat slice in his palm, holding his hand over the bowl, and Sam expects frozen crystals to tumble out (so cold, he’s so fucking cold) but it’s just his brother’s completely normal blood, trickling onto the mixture below. Dean looks up at Sam, raising his hand to offer the knife (still gripping the handle tight, his hand trembling slightly, poised to cut, close enough to tear through Sam’s flesh), then he shudders and tosses it onto the ground instead, like he wants it out of his own reach. “Your turn.”

But as Sam reaches for the knife, there’s a sudden gust of cold wind and a sneering laugh and a familiar icy voice.

What are you boys up to? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?

Sam closes his eyes but he can’t shut it out, can’t unsee Lucifer standing there, pale eyes and chilly smile, standing in the forest like an average guy in jeans and a faded shirt, because sometimes the worst thing on Earth is pretty subtle. “No,” he whispers, “no, no, no,” but even his loudest screams were never able to drown out that voice.

You don’t even know what your pet angel unleashed, do you? You have no idea what’s oozing out of that hole. What do you think happens when you break a blood oath with a reaper and tear open a hole in the world? What did you think would be on the other side?

It’s not real, he’s not real, it’s just the breach. It’s just the evil and the fear seeping out of the breach, seeping into his brain. Sam turns his head toward Dean because Dean will know, Dean won’t see him, and that will prove he’s a hallucination. But when he opens his eyes, Dean is staring in horror, and oh, God, no.

“Dean? You see him too? Lucifer?”

Dean blinks at him, confused. “Not Lucifer. Alastair.”

Lucifer chuckles. Everyone’s got their own personal version of Hell. Most of them aren’t as literal as yours, granted. He leans in, conspiratorially. I wonder what ol’ Alastair’s telling your brother to do to you right now? Think he can fight it off?

Dean’s shouting at him but his words are lost under the roaring in Sam’s ears and Lucifer’s cold laughter and he watches, frozen, as Dean lunges for the knife and whirls toward him, cries out and flounders helplessly as Dean wrestles him to the ground and then Dean’s above him, hand raised, flash of light on the silver blade (swinging a knife toward his throat a hammer toward his head a scythe toward his neck) and please, God, no, but there is no God, and even when there was a God it didn’t matter, God never listened to Sam’s prayers and he’s not going to start now and there is no angel behind Dean, no Cas there to stop the killing blow, no one but Sam and his brother who’s going to kill him and he failed and he’s sorry, he’s so sorry, and he closes his eyes because he doesn’t want to see his brother’s eyes go black, he doesn’t want that to be the last thing he sees, and he stops fighting because it doesn’t matter any more, they’re both going to die and then everyone’s going to die and he didn’t save them and he’s sorry.

But when he finally feels the bite of the knife it’s on his palm, not his throat, and when he opens his eyes, Dean’s holding his hand over the bowl. “Stay with me, Sam,” he mutters. “If I’m seeing Alastair and you’re seeing Lucifer then neither one of them’s real, and we just gotta ignore ‘em. You can do this.”

Yes, fuck, yes, he can do this. He set up the spell; it needs his blood. Sam rises to his knees and bleeds into the bowl, then wipes his hand on his jeans and digs the spell out of his pocket. The paper rattles in his quaking hands, but the stark black letters are legible enough. Sam speaks the words as Dean lights the pack of matches and tosses it into the bowl. There’s a gentle whoosh and the air abruptly feels warmer and lighter and not wrong. And Sam’s not afraid.

He collapses into the snow, face up, eyes closed, and hears a muted grunt as Dean does the same.

~~~

“You okay?” Dean asks, a few minutes later.

Sam takes inventory. Everything seems to be in working order. “Yeah, I’m okay. What about you? And don’t say fine or peachy or I swear to God, I will stab you in the face.”

Dean huffs a dry little laugh. “I’m good. I mean, shit was messed up for a while, not denying that. Hell, shit’s still pretty messed up. But it’s all right. We got this.”

Sam turns to look at his brother, who’s staring up into the sky again. Cas is out there somewhere, unreachable, gone. Mom is out there somewhere, unreachable, but… but not forever. They’ll get her back.

“Yeah. We got this.”

[hysterialevi]

cobblebats fanfic pt. 9 (Thanks for all the support so far!)

From Bruce’s POV

THE NEXT MORNING

“...Bruce.”

“...”

“...Bruce!”

“...”

Smack!

My eyes snapped open. There was a sudden, sharp pain on my cheek, and Oz was sitting beside the bed. His gaze was directly on me.

“...did you just slap me?” I asked groggily.

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

“You didn’t have to slap me.”

A wink. “Where’s the fun in that?”

I tore myself away from the cushioned, warm embrace of my bed--a task as difficult as ever--sat up, and stretched my arms above my head, yawning a bit. The bedroom was mostly dark, save for some pale rays of moonlight that had seeped through the windows, and I could see both mine and Oz’s shadows on the opposite wall. I glanced at the clock on the night stand, the neon numbers practically blinding me.

5:07 AM!? 

“C’mon,” Oz said, rushing to the door, “let’s go.”

“Go? Go where?” I rubbed my eyes. “And at five in the morning?”

Oz snatched my hand and yanked me out of bed with an amount of strength I didn’t know he had, causing me to stumble across the room like a fool and follow him aimlessly.

“Wait!” I tried to regain my footing. “At least let me change!”

He let out a playful sigh and slid his coat off before throwing it at me, the piece of clothing draping over my face like veil. That was when I noticed he was back in his usual attire and out of the Penguin disguise.

“Here, wear this. Now c’mon!”

For about half an hour, Oz dragged me through the empty streets of Gotham, the cool, night breeze tickling my skin and waking me up slightly. At the moment, the sky was painted a dark shade of blue, and the chirping of birds gradually got busier and busier with every passing minute. I wasn’t as bleary as before, and I actually felt much more refreshed due to the chilly weather, but it was still a bit tricky for me to keep up with Oz’s fast pace. Why was he in such a hurry?

Looking down at our locked hands, I couldn’t help but smile at the distant memories that began to flood my head. It seemed just like yesterday when Oz and I were still in elementary school, running through the sprinklers in his backyard while both our parents watched us from the patio, his dog happily chasing us around with a bounce in its step and barking at us while we got covered in blades of grass. What I wouldn’t give to go back to those times.

My heart sank with regret. It was all because of my father’s greed that those times came to an end. Obviously, Falcone and Hill shared part of the blame, but they were already enemies of the Cobblepots. My father was considered a trusted friend, and he still turned his back on them, throwing them into the gutter.

My eyes traveled to Oz. I could’ve only imagined what he went through as a child, watching his mother get locked away in Arkham while his father took his own life. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had to grow up in an entirely different environment, barely scraping by as a criminal in England. I never would’ve guessed that one day, he would return to Gotham.

“Hey.” Oz said, breaking me out of my thoughts. 

I looked at him with curiosity. “...hey.”

He paused for a second. “I just...wanted to say...sorry.” 

“Sorry? For what?”

“We didn’t exactly start off on the right foot--and we’ve both been through a lot of shit ever since Lady Arkham rose to power--but...now I can see that I might’ve misjudged you. You ain’t your father.”

“No, I am,” I corrected. “But Alfred is my real father.”

He chuckled. “You know, I was surprised to see Alfred still hanging around the manor twenty years later. That old man has loyalty I’ve never seen.”

“What’s that mean?”

Oz’s shoulders sagged with sorrow. “...it’s...complicated.”

“Hey, we’re a thing now. Right? If something’s bothering you, I want to help.”

He shook his head in annoyance. “It’s...Vicki.”

“What of her? Is this about her kicking you out?”

“Err, kind of.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “You see, Vicki and I...we used to be a couple. It was never anything completely serious like us, and our relationship had always been chaotic anyways, but when I found out that she intentionally tried to kill me, it was like a kick in the stomach. I dunno how she felt about us, but...I actually cared in a way--unusual, I know.”

“Oh, I had no idea. I’m...sorry to hear that.”

He grinned at me. “I can only imagine the look on her face when she finds out I’m dating her secret weapon. Kinda ironic, when you think ‘bout it.”

I grinned back. “So, you gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“Patience, grasshopper. We’re almost there.”

After a few more minutes of walking, Oz instructed me to close my eyes for the rest of the way, also promising that he wouldn’t let me trip or fall, but I still took the occasional peek just in case. He didn’t slow down either.

The further we traveled though, the more the sounds of the city began to disappear, replaced by the calming rustling of trees and grass. There was also the calming sound of crickets chirping and the wind whistling past my ears. Were we at the park?

“Here we are.” Oz finally announced, letting my hand go at last. “Take a look.”

Opening my eyes, I was greeted by a surprisingly beautiful view. We were at Cobblepot Park just as I suspected, but this was a part I had never seen before, or at least, didn’t remember. 

There were lush trees surrounding us, like some sort of grove, and unlike the rest of the park, this area looked untouched by the crime in the city. There wasn’t any graffiti or torn posters covering the walls, the ground was clean, no thugs were hanging around, and now that I thought about it--there wasn’t anyone here. As far as I could see, it was entirely empty. It almost felt like we weren’t even in Gotham anymore. I loved it.

“This is where I buried the bodies.”

I was caught off-guard. “S-sorry, what?”

“I just thought Batman might appreciate the info.”

I stared blankly at him. “Your sense of humor scares me sometimes, you know that?”

“Good, that means you still have morals. C’mon, there’s something else I wanted to show you.”

He took my hand again, pulling me even deeper into the park. By now, the sky had transformed into a bright, vibrant blend of blue and orange, and the sunbeams danced through the trees’ leaves, radiating the green from them. It looked like something you’d see in a painting.

Stepping out of the grove, Oz led me to what appeared to be a harbor, but I couldn’t see much, considering the tall, brick wall blocking our path. Though, that didn’t stop Oz from scaling it and sitting on top. He patted the spot next to him, gesturing for me to join him.

I easily hoisted myself up the structure, plopping down beside Oz and admiring the view in front of us. The white sun was just barely kissing the horizon, the water beneath it reflecting a path of rippling light as it splashed onto the edge of the harbor and sprayed mist into the air.

Oz scooted closer to me. “You’ll forgive me for waking you up so early, I hope?”

I smiled at him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, placing a kiss on his forehead. “Definitely.”

“This is where I come when I just need time to myself--which is actually a lot, these days. As much as I’d like people to believe it, I’m not terrorizing the streets, guns-blazing 24/7 as the media would have you think. Even Penguins need to relax sometimes.”

“I get that. Batman can also get worn out every once in a while.”

“...speaking of which,” Oz’s tone changed, “about Harvey.”

“What about him?”

“I saw that look you gave him when the police were taking him away. I dunno how you did it, but it couldn’t have been easy--taking down your own friend.”

I sighed. “It wasn’t, but Batman does what has to be done, whether he likes it or not. Harvey’s too dangerous to be kept out in the open.”

“And if you knew there was a cure to the drug, would you change your mind?”

“Wait--what?”

“Yeah, Vicki cooked up a cure in case any of our own men accidentally got infected by it. There’s the possibility it might not help Harvey that much since he’s already so far gone, but if you really want to help him, I could try swiping it for you and we could give it a shot.”

“You...you would do that? You’re not bullshitting me, right?”

“No bullshitting. I’m being serious.”

It took me a moment to take in everything Oz had just told me. Ever since that debate, I had believed Harvey was a lost cause, regardless of the countless times I told him I still had faith in his recovery and gave him meaningless encouragements. But if everything Oz was saying was true, then Harvey had a chance, and so did Montoya. It was going to be a dangerous task trying to obtain it, but I was willing to take that opportunity.

“We have to get that cure, Oz.”

He nodded, eyeing me up and down. “All right. It’ll be a pain in the arse to find it, but, hey,” he gave me a nudge, “I doubt it can hide for long from Penguin and Batman.”

“Thank you, Oz. I mean it.”

Just then, my phone began ringing in my pocket. I checked to see who was calling. 

Alfred.

Oz saw the contact name. “Go ‘head.”

I tapped the answer button, Alfred’s voice almost immediately breaking through.

“Bruce!”

“Morning, Al. Sorry I left unannounced. I didn’t really have time to leave a note.” I threw a playful glare at Oz, receiving a shrug from him.

“What? Oh, yes, of course--that’s fine, but that’s not what I called you about. It’s Gordon. The GCPD is at the manor.”

“What? Why?”

“They say they just want to ‘talk,’ but I’d still proceed with caution. Apparently, it involves the Penguin. They say there’s a rumor that the two of you are working together.”