#no fence at animal care center

[petnews2day]

Family devastated after dog killed while running from Fairfield vet office

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/mk1oA

Family devastated after dog killed while running from Fairfield vet office

BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio (WXIX) – A Fairfield County family is grieving after their 4-year-old dog Roscoe escaped from a veterinarians office and was killed. Roscoe was getting a test done at Animal Care Center Wednesday when he got away. “He wasn’t gone for more than 6, 7 minutes and the doctor came in and asked […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/mk1oA #DogNews #8220Roscoe, #19, #AnimalCareCenter, #AslynnHaag, #Channel, #Cincinnati, #CityOfFairfield, #DogGetsLooseGetsHitByCar, #FairfieldCityCouncil, #Fox, #Fox19, #News, #NoFenceAtAnimalCareCenter, #PamHaag, #Wxix

[just-a-sewer-goblin]

Collars of Duty 1

Hybrid!Simon x reader - Chapter 2 -

When a new problem hybrid is brought to the rehab center, you're called in from medical leave. Having been through hell he's classed as dangerous but you believe he deserves a chance. Hopefully you both can heal each other without adding to old wounds.

I dedicate this story to @kiwiimochi because they said they'd be interested in a story like this. I hope you enjoy and you're welcome to tell me what you think.

Content: hybrid AU, brief description of wounds, allusions to torture

The call comes through in the middle of the night, ripping you from deep slumber that for once was peaceful.

You wake with a gasp, heart immediately racing to outrun the invisible danger. It takes you a few seconds to blink the last remnants of sleep from your eyes. You’re at home, in your bed. There is no danger around, except the phone that rings impatiently in your bedside drawer.

You recognize the ringtone. It’s your work phone, which hasn’t rung in weeks even though you always keep it on and charged. It’s slightly unsettling to hear it ring at such an ungodly hour. It’s freeing too, to realize that your heart slowly calms down and you do not spiral into a panic attack.

Yawning your reach into the drawer and open it, getting the angrily vibrating phone and hold it up to your ear.

“Hello?”

“We need you here.”

You’re stunned into silence. Everyone knows you’re on medical leave. They should know better than to call you in randomly during the night. They -

“Like right now.” You recognize Elizabeth’s voice and your heartrate skyrockets again.

“Liz, you know that I’m on leave. You know wh-“

“They want to put him down.” Her voice interrupts you, full of urgency.

That has you sitting bolt upright. Putting down hybrids has been illegal for years now and the center mostly adheres to those laws. Mostly, not always and when they don’t they usually have a damn good reason not to.

Working at a government managed rehabilitation center for hybrids meant that sometimes they put their decisions above the law.

You’re already out the bed and stumbling around the room while trying to get dressed one handed.

“I’m coming. Anything I should know?”

You tuck the phone between your shoulder and your ear so you can use both hands to pull on your pants. The short pause strains your nerves. She wouldn’t have called you if the others could handle whatever was happening.

“Liz?” You prompt her.

“Belgian Malinois hybrid. Military. They found him after he was MIA for moths. Severely malnourished, signs of torture all over him. No idea how they managed to get him into a chopper and bring him here, but he is here.” She rattles down and if you didn’t know her better you’d think that she doesn’t care. But you do know her better. Staying professional helps her not to break down with cases like this.

Hectically you tuck a shirt over your head, gather your things and basically run out the door. When you started working at the center you moved as close as possible to your new workplace and because you were lucky that meant living just down the street.

Running along the sidewalk you urge her on. “What more, Liz. I need everything you can give me.”

The silence speaks volumes. She hesitates, then goes on.

“He attacked and killed one of the soldiers that brought him here. They sedated him but said if no one wants to work with him, they have to put him down. I’ve seen hybrids go animal before but not like this.”

You grit your teeth at that. You hated the term ‘going animal’ even if it was a widely accepted term when working with hybrids. Just because they we’re genetically part animal didn’t mean, that them going berserk was less human that an ordinary person losing it.

And if what she told you was true, he had more than enough reason to lose his marbles.

Before you can ask another question you reach the fence of the rehab compound and to your surprise Liz is there, already opening the door for you so you won’t have to use your access card. You end the call and pocket your phone when you approach her.

“I want to say it’s good to have you back but the circumstances make the whole thing slightly less cheery.” She greets you and then engulfs you in a heartfelt hug.

Damn, you missed her. Liz didn’t work with the hybrids as a handler. She was part of the office team but she was one of your favorite coworkers here. Liz got shit done while taking none and still she was the nicest, sweetest person around.

You nod, returning her hug. Then you breathe deeply, preparing yourself to actually step foot into the facility again. The very reason why you were on medical leave in the first place. It doesn’t feel as bad as you feared but you’re not sure how you will react to the hybrid.

“Where is he? What’s his name?”

Liz sighs deeply. “He’s in the cell. The others refused to work with him when they heard the details from the soldiers. Honestly, I don’t blame them but I thought it was worth calling you.”

You nod grimly and let her lead the way. The facility worked with aggressive hybrids a lot. Problematic cases were nothing new. But one who had murdered mere hours ago was new territory. You’re not sure this is the best decision.

Was this the kind of case you were ready to come back for? After what happened? This had the potential to ruin any progress you had made during your leave.

No. You couldn’t let him be put down just because you were scared. He deserved a chance and if all the others were too worried then you’d give him the chance. Even if it might cost you the stability you’d gained back.

Liz comes to a halt before the cell and turns to you. Her hands clasp onto your shoulders, looking at you through her glasses.

“Thank you for trying.” She hesitates briefly. “Don’t destroy yourself over it though. If he’s lost, he’s lost. You can’t save everyone.”

Her words make your throat tighten and swallowing seems like an impossible feat. You nod, despite the unease bubbling up in you.

He’s a person, you remind yourself. It’s not like you’re meeting a wild animal.

Finally you turn to look through the small window into the cell. The large hybrid nearly steals your breath. He’s still unconscious, lying on the mattress at the far end of the otherwise unfurnished cold cell. The dark pointed ears that peek out of his shaggy hair twitch every now and then.

“His name?” You ask again, your voice a whisper, even though you’re not entirely sure why you feel the need to quiet down.

He is dirty beyond belief; his hair unkempt and you can make out a slight beard on his strong jaw through the bars of his muzzle.  You grind your teeth at the sight of it. Using muzzles of that type on hybrids has also been forbidden and you wonder if they found him like this or put it on him.

The fact that he doesn’t wear a shirt, only ripped and sullied pants, grants you an unobstructed view of his torso. There are various wounds in different phases of healing and his ribs are overly visible beneath his skin.

The twin wounds on his left draw your eyes. They seem almost circular and are located between his ribs. Already crusted over messily they seem to not be the newest ones; still you shudder with how painful they look. Over the ribs that lay between those wounds the skin is blackish blue and bruised.

You decide to not look closely at his other wounds as to not make you feel shakier than you already do. Instead you look at his face again. That too is covered in shallow cuts but those do not make your insides want to turn over.

His hair seems to be a deep, dark brown, matching the ears and you wonder how he’ll look, once he’s clean and not on the brink of starvation. Liz’ voice interrupts your thoughts.

“Simon Riley. Lieutenant.”

You both know rank means almost nothing when it comes to hybrids but you don’t comment on the information. You’re about to ask something else when he starts stirring and you hold your breath. Even though you’re outside you feel the tension rise along with his consciousness from the artificial sleep.

Two figures, that were obstructed from view before because they stood so close to the wall, step forward. Soldiers, you realize and they have their weapons trained on the slowly waking hybrid. On Simon.

As soon as he’s halfway conscious he scrambles to his feet, slightly swaying in his spot. He tries to bring his arms to the front but they seem to be tied behind his back. His tail grows stiff behind him, the ears tilt back and his upper lip curls into a snarl revealing his canines while his eyes fixate on the soldiers.

You can hear his deep resounding growl through the door and everything in you wants to run. This is a military hybrid, all right. Everything about him is big and intimidating, the aggression rolling off of him in waves along with the resounding growl.

Instead of running you set your shoulders and breathe deeply. “Let me inside and get the soldiers out.” You say a lot more confidently than you feel. Evidently their way of handling him is not working.

Liz raises her eyebrows but communicates with the guards inside. Slowly they back towards the door, keeping their guns pointed at the hybrid while Liz unlocks the door. Quicker than you can comprehend you changed positions with one of the guards, the other staying with his gun still pointing at Simon.

“”Out.” You command. You wish your body was as unwavering as your voice but you can feel a subtle shaking start in your legs.

The soldier seems conflicted but Elizabeth keeps the door open and he backs out too. Everyone at the center knows that working with hybrids comes with a lot of risks. If this goes south all you’ll be is a small stack of papers on Liz’ desk, waiting to be signed. And maybe a body to be buried.

You’re alone with him now, the heavy door closing behind you and the hostility rolling off Simon nearly suffocates you. His eyes are now fixed solely on you and he seems to be weighing his options, every muscle in his body coiled tight, ready to attack you.

You pray that he doesn’t.

You study him for a moment longer and you see the sheen on sweat that appears on his skin. This is not only aggression. He’s scared. Scared of you and somehow the fear being mutual calms you down. This hybrid must have been through hell and now he woke in a strange room after forcefully being sedated. You’d be scared shitless too and growl at people.

“Hello.”

You hold the eye contact and the way his ears perk forward for a second before going back again would be adorable in any other situation. The growl stutters before returning stronger than before. He reacted to being spoken to. Liz’ had exaggerated, maybe they’d misinterpreted him, because this hybrid was not on a murder spree.

Yet he’d killed earlier, you have to remind yourself. Just because you were a softie didn’t mean he’d spare you.

Slowly you raise your hands. “I’m just going to sit down, here. Do you know where you are?”

You can see the confusion on his face at the fact you talk to him and you mentally curse the soldiers that brought him in. Despite his display being more animalistic than human he is still a person before all else. How come they hadn't had the common sense to talk to him?

His keen eyes don’t miss even one of your movements as you settle down and cross your legs.

“You were found just north of the border in Texas.” It’s difficult to keep your voice as soft as possible with the way your throat is so tight. For a second you hate yourself because you’re thankful that he is muzzled and his arms are restrained.

Then you remind yourself that he is not Phillip and despite what Liz told you, you will judge him based on his behavior not on the stories. Like you should have with Phillip.

Something about what you said makes his ears perk up. He’s still careful but the previous stifling aggression is gone. Once again you try to suppress your anger at the soldiers not talking to him. This isn’t nearly as bad as they made it out to be.

“They brought you to a rehabilitation facility for hybrids that work with the authorities or the military. You might have heard of it before. It’s called “Rehybrid” which is a stupid name if you ask me but I wasn’t born when they decided on that so…”

Now he cocks his head at you and you try to keep from smiling. You know you’re rambling but it seems to help so you keep going.

“Not everyone is gifted in name giving.” Without much of a pause and consciously casually you continue on. “Mind if I take the handcuffs off of you?”

That makes him stiffen, reflexively his lip curls up again a small growl starting up. Of course he doesn’t trust you. But you’re also very aware of how unfair it is to have him shackled and muzzled when he feels threatened already.

“I know. I wouldn’t want anyone near me too if I were in your position but I think it would only be fair.” You’re very aware of the fact, that Liz, and the soldiers probably too, are watching through the window, most definitely thinking you’ve lost your mind.

Simon shakes his head and even if it is disappointing it makes you feel incredible that he interacted with what you said. Your chest expands and you suddenly feel like a big boulder lifted off your shoulders. That’s a good start.

“It’s okay, I won’t do it then. Just give me a sign when you’re ready.”

Once again you briefly glance at the state his body is in and you slightly wince. Yeah, maybe you would have to press a little harder.

“Listen. I really want to give you the time and space but I think your wounds and your body are on slightly tighter schedule than I am. I won’t force you but I don’t want you dying on me.”

His eyes widen at that and in that moment you’d pay to know what he’s thinking. It’s interesting to watch him as he seems to mentally take note of his body. He nods at you and you breathe a sigh of relief.

“Take the cuffs off?”, you ask again just to be sure. Simon nods again.

Keeping it slow and easily predictable you stand up again and raise your hand to the latch in the door, opening it and sticking your hand through it. If Liz and the soldiers listened, they’ll give you the key, hopefully.

For a few agonizingly long heartbeats nothing happens, then a key is dropped into the palm of your hand and you close the latch again.

“I’m going to take a step towards you and then you can come to me. Sound good?”

Simon nods again and you take the step. His body tenses but then he crosses the small space and turns his back to you. His chest is heaving and his back is damp with cold sweat. It’s almost unnerving the way he has his head tilted as far to the side as possible, watching you out of the corner of his wide eye. If you make one wrong move he could still easily put you on the ground.

This close you can smell him and the stench coming off of him almost makes you gag. You try to breathe through your mouth at the smell of something rotten assaulting your nose. There's also the underlying smell of piss and filth along with other scents you can't identify. You concentrate on the task at hand in order not to imagine what might have happened to him.

Trying not to stress him out more, you talk him through the short process of taking off the handcuffs. His fast breathing makes you slightly worried that he’ll hyperventilate.

The moments the cuffs are on the floor he’s on the other side of the room again and his hands are tearing at the muzzle on his head. His fingers are frantic and a nail on his already damaged hands breaks, a little bit of blood welling up.

“Wait, please!” You call out desperately but his movements only grow more hectic. The muzzle he has on is designed so the hybrid is unable to take it off without seriously injuring themselves. His nimble fingers flit all over the piece, grabbing and tugging until he decides to just start pushing it upwards off his face.

Immediately the metal cuts into his cheeks and you know he’ll do it anyway. He doesn’t care about cutting his skin in the process. Panic swells in your chest at the thought of him shredding his face just to be muzzle free.

“Please, Simon, Stop!” You say desperately in a last attempt before he pulls it off his face. Against everything you expected he freezes, eyes going wide.

“Simon, that’s your name, right?”, you question your hands outstretched as if you could keep him from hurting himself further by sheer force of will.

You’re shaking and you know he can see it. Swallowing is almost painful. “Please don’t hurt yourself, I’ll take it off of you but please stop hurting yourself.”

His eyes narrow but this time he hesitates less before nodding and stepping towards you. God he is big. You’re all too aware of how incredibly vulnerable you are right now. He could probably rip you apart with his bare hands if he wanted to.

He’s a fully trained soldier and you… you’re just an ordinary person who helps hybrids to get back on their feet. You specifically chose this line of work because you’re soft and stupidly selfless. Using those traits for work seemed like a good option to turn them into strengths.

Now you’re all too aware of how little your softness would guard you against Simon’s brute strength. Even on the brink of starvation the fact that he’s a weapon remains.

Achingly slow your hands reach up to the muzzle, feeling along it for the mechanism to unlock. His eyes stare into yours and this close you can see that they’re the color of dark honey. Nothing about the expression in them is sweet though and you have to consciously swallow against the lump forming in your throat.

You unlock the mechanism and Simon stays in your personal space for a second longer. You don’t break the eye contact and slowly he moves backwards until there is enough room to breathe between you two again.

He flexes his jaw for a moment to test it and this time you smile. His eyes narrow at that but you don’t let it deter you.

Until now he hasn’t made a move to hurt you and you decide to introduce yourself. When you tell him your name he still doesn’t answer but he’s attentive and you think that maybe it will be fine after all.

[the-californicationist]

Good Fences (Fluffuary #11)

FEB11: First "I Love You"

You and John fell into a sort of routine. You slept at yours, or sometimes his. You shared his bathroom, and cooked in his kitchen. It was like your two apartments had become one home, and you were juggling the space, trying to figure out how to make it work. 

You were just finishing up with dinner, cleaning your plates and putting them away, and he was helping you dry. He nodded to the den,

“You wanna watch your show? That one with Attenborough that you like to fall asleep to?”

He was talking about your recent obsession with the Planet Earth docu-series. It was so relaxing, listening to David Attenborough talking about birds and bats and God-knows-what. You had been on a bit of a tear with it lately, keeping it on in the background while you worked. 

“Yeah,” you smiled, “Sorry I’ve been so obsessed.”

“I just like it when you doze off on me, love. Makes me feel…” he shrugged, looking for the words and coming up short, “I dunno. Makes me feel good to take care of you.”

You knew what he meant. Falling asleep in John’s arms on his big, warm sofa was strangely hypnotic. It made you feel relaxed and safe and… more than a little horny. It had led to a bit of fooling around once or twice. Moving from bedroom to bedroom had been fun, but there was something liminal about the couch. No man’s land. 

After all the dishes were squared away, you grabbed the blanket and curled up with him, nesting into your favorite spot. The television was set to a low volume, and as you watched, you felt John’s hands begin to wander. He was rubbing your bare thigh. You were barely dressed, having spent all day doing chores, wearing his big tee shirt like a gown, letting the soft fabric hide your curves, but it was doing little covering now that you were seated. It had hitched up to your hips, pulled tight around your thick ass cheeks, showing off almost all of your leg to him. 

You could see his hand moving under the blanket, tracing little circles up your thigh until he got closer and closer to your warm center. The documentary was playing softly in the background, but you couldn’t concentrate on anything except his deft fingers. His hand ventured higher and higher, traveling as slowly and gently as it could, until it reached its destination. 

It was as if his goal was just to pleasure you, but he wasn’t looking to make you come from his ministrations, necessarily. He touched you almost languidly, driving you to the point of near insanity, writhing against him and mewling like a wounded animal. 

“Bloody hell, love. Those sounds you make…” he purred under his breath, trying not to talk over the television, “Drives me mad.”

“Please, John…” All you had to do was ask, and he was your devoted servant, refocusing his attentions to draw you up over your peak. 

You clutched at his chest, holding onto him for dear life as he made you fall apart. He put his forehead on yours, keeping his eyes closed, whispering to you with a deep hunger in his voice,

“Tha’s it, pretty girl. Just relax. God, I love…”

He stopped himself, but you both heard his confession. You could see him trying to backtrack, his eyes still closed but squeezed tight now, trying his best to cover up his sudden admission. 

“John,” you said, and he looked straight at you, obviously still worried. But, you assuaged his fears, “I’m in love with you.”

“I’m in love with you, too,” he looked as if a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, and he kissed you deeply, pulling you in to his body, making you feel as if you were one living, breathing being; like you’d never be apart.  

You didn’t make it to the bed, but the couch suited you both just fine.

Check out the schedule here.

AO3 Link

[naughtyneganjdm]

Lost & Found - Chapter 2

Summary: Once Negan gets better, he tries to teach Mia to fend for herself so she can take care of herself when he leaves, but Negan finds himself more attached to this girl than he expected to be.

Characters: Negan, Mia, Y/N (reader/OC), etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53376820/chapters/135146467

Warnings: Swearing, Gore, a child gets hurt, Severe Angst, etc.

Notes: I was going to wait to post this, but since it's already done and the reason I didn't post it all at once because I thought it may have been too long is why I'm just posting it today. I know it won't get the hits because it's not smutty, but that's okay. I wrote this all in one night a few weeks ago. (Chapter 1)

“Would you knock it off,” Negan looked back over his shoulder to see that Mia was standing in the middle of the woods with her head tipped back and her hands thrown up in the air. With the rays of sun shining through the trees, she was enjoying the way it felt over her flesh. “You’re being weird again.”

“I’m sorry man, it’s just been a long time since I got to be outside this long,” she informed him, her long eyelashes fluttering when she turned her head to stare out at Negan with a big cheesy smile. “It feels nice to get the sun on my skin.”

“You have to listen to me,” Negan snapped his fingers to get her attention hearing her huff loudly. “You’re never going to survive if you can’t focus.”

“I’m focusing! I listened to you when you explained to me how to dress a wound. Which I obviously knew by the way since your ribs. I helped you move the bush and the branches over the gates to hide the fence. I listened to your long ass description of each and every gun,” she listed off the things they had already done together, “So please excuse me if I take a moment to enjoy the warmth on my skin after being locked away inside of a house for so long.”

“Mia, I’m leaving tomorrow,” Negan reminded her of what was happening. Over the last few days Mia had been taking care of him and nursing him back to health. Today was the first day he actually had the strength to get up and move around. “If you don’t pay attention now, you are never going to make it. You have to find your own food and be able to survive.”

“Okay! Okay! I’m listening boss,” she lowered down into the same position that Negan was in noticing that he was pointing to the footprints that were in the grass.

“You have to be able to track and be quiet,” Negan motioned her to follow him to track the deer that they had been for a while now. When they made it to the bush, he motioned her to be quiet and reached for the bow to give it to her. Pointing out in the distance to where the deer was, he saw her face turn pale at the idea of actually killing the animal. Motioning her to use the bow the way he taught her earlier had her expression changing and he could tell she didn’t want to do it. “I know you’ve never done this before, but it’s the only way to survive.”

With a frown, she did what Negan had shown her earlier in the day with the bow and arrow. When it hit the deer and it let out a pained sound, Negan reached out to pat her on the shoulder, “Good job. We’ll have a good meal tonight because of you.”

“I just feel like a horrible person doing this Negan,” Mia stated when Negan moved up on the deer with his knife and she had to look away when Negan finished the deer off. A gagging sound fell from her throat when Negan looked back at her with his hands bloody. “I hate killing something else…”

“It’s the only way you live,” Negan reminded her hearing the sound of something moving in the bushes and he pulled his handgun out, stepping before Mia to keep her behind him when he saw three men approaching them. “Back off.”

“Hey, we don’t mean any harm,” the man in the center explained, his features softening when he looked beyond Negan to see that Mia was with him. “We just didn’t know someone else was out here hunting. We didn’t mean to scare you and your daughter.”

“I’m not his daughter,” she spoke up, her face scrunching when the man that was speaking gazed over her. Negan hushed her and tried to push Mia back behind him to keep her safe. Hearing someone else refer to her as his daughter out loud made even him uncomfortable. “What?”

“She’s not your daughter? With the same eye color, the dark hair and the dimples?” the man inquired drawing Negan’s lips to part, getting distracted in that moment to look back at Mia. Clearing his throat, Negan noticed the way that the sun hit in her hazel eyes and he felt a breath catch in his throat. “I’m sorry young lady. I just thought this was your daddy.”

“My dad died,” she responded once more and immediately Negan cut her off.

“The deer is ours,” Negan informed them, his thick eyebrows bouncing up.

“Do you have a place around here somewhere?” the stranger questioned, but Negan remained quiet. “If you’re looking for a group to join, we have a campsite about a mile or so away. If it’s just the two of you, it might be easier if you join us.”

“We’re good. We’re not alone and our group is waiting for us,” Negan lied, keeping his gun up like he had taught Mia days earlier. “The three of you can move along now. We’re fucking good.”

The three strangers stayed where they were and Negan clicked something on the gun drawing the stranger in the middle to throw his hands up, “Listen fucker, if you don’t leave, I’m going to put a bullet right between your eyes and then your friends. So I suggest you get the fuck out of here.”

“Like I said, we didn’t want any trouble,” the stranger hit the chest of the other two he was with before nodding in another direction. “We will get on our way.”

“Better do that,” Negan waited for them to leave, never lowering his gun until he knew they were far out in the distance. Swiftly moving down, Negan grabbed the deer the best he could and threw it up over his shoulders. Motioning Mia to stay close to him, he walked around in circles for a while and out of the way to make sure that people weren’t following them. Just in case they might be tracking the two of them, he hoped by doing what they were, the strangers would get lost.

“What are we doing?” Mia questioned when she even picked up on Negan acting strange. “This isn’t…”

“Quiet,” Negan hushed her with a hiss before finally leading them back to the cabin. Once they got there, Negan did his best to hide everything and dragged the deer into the kitchen. Dropping the deer on the counter, he heard Mia let out a disgusted breath when the blood splattered. Starting to pace back and forth in the kitchen had Mia’s eyes locked on him, confused. “Fucking hell.”

“What is it?” Mia didn’t understand what was going on and he gave her a glare.

“You are going to fucking die Mia!” Negan claimed with tension flooding his veins.

“What?” she gave him a surprised expression when Negan threw his bloody hands up in the air. “Why?”

“You don’t give strangers personal information!” Negan snapped at her, his face twisting with anger when she looked up at him with her big hazel eyes. “People aren’t nice anymore Mia! They are more dangerous than the walkers and you are able to wind up dead in those kind of situations.”

“You were a stranger,” she reminded Negan and he immediately shook his head.

“I’m not like everyone else Mia! You have to be cautious of everyone. You have to be prepared to kill anyone because they are going to do the same to you. They don’t care if you’re a kid,” Negan continued to lecture her seeing the color growing in her cheeks the further he yelled at her. “People will kill you or they will do something…much, much worse.”

“What’s worse than killing me?” she whispered, her eyebrows furrowing and Negan let out a growl of frustration. “I just don’t understand Negan.”

“People aren’t good Mia. That’s why I had to walk around like I was so they couldn’t follow our tracks,” Negan educated her on what he had done, his head shaking when he stared her down. “Men like that are dangerous. You’re a pure, sweet, little girl that they can take advantage of and hurt. Do you understand me?”

“Negan, I just…” she tried to reason with him since she hadn’t really felt like she did much wrong.

“Do you understand me?” Negan screamed at her causing her to lower her head.

“I understand,” she nodded, a lump growing in her throat while she tried to avoid getting upset with him screaming at her like he was.

“If you don’t listen to the things that I’ve been telling you, you’re going to die and then there will be nothing for your mother to come back to. Do you understand?” Negan snarled when he noticed the redness growing in her cheeks as she continued to avoid looking at him. Curling his finger underneath her chin, he forced her to look up at him and let out a shuddering breath. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes sir,” she responded with a firm nod trying to hold back on her emotions that she was having. Even though she was trying to put up a façade, Negan could tell that she was getting emotional. “I’ll pay attention and listen to everything that you have to say.”

“I’m going to show you how to deal with this deer. It’s very similar to how you would deal with any other animal. You don’t let things go to waste. Not anymore,” Negan started, leading her toward the counter while he started doing the process of what to do after you killed the deer. Even though she was uncomfortable, he made her do a lot of it with his help and instructions because he knew she would be left alone. Whenever it looked like she was going to get sick, Negan would take over and give her a break. At the corner of his eye, Negan could see that Mia was observing him closely. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Do you think that guy was right?” Mia brought up the men that they had run into and Negan stopped for a moment to look over at Mia. “Do you think you look like you’re my father?”

Hearing her ask him that question caused his heart to skip a beat. A breath caught in his throat and he immediately lowered his head to go back to work trying to avoid the question. It had been something that he considered several times since being here, but he didn’t want to bring it up to her.

“We do have the same color eyes. The dimples,” she pointed to her cheek when Negan gave her a quick look trying to avoid getting blood on his face. “Even the freckles on our shoulders.”

“Your father died, Mia,” Negan reminded her, his nose wrinkling when he tried to stay firm about everything. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but maybe my mom was lying like you said,” Mia suggested and Negan almost heard a hopefulness in her voice. “We have so much in common and I do look like I could be yours. We both love peanut butter…”

“Everyone loves peanut butter,” Negan corrected her with a grunt, shaking his head when she was considering this whole thing herself. In one hand he had a knife when he shrugged his shoulders and he noticed that he was dripping blood all over the floor. “You know, unless they are allergic or some shit.”

“You don’t think I look like I could be your daughter?” she wondered having him step back to stare out at her. The truth? Yeah. She looked very much like she could be his. He thought it from the first moment he saw her.

“I’m not your dad,” Negan shook his head, refusing to allow that thought to linger between either of them when he went back to work. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Some random woman gets pregnant with my baby fourteen years ago and just somehow, miraculously I find her in the middle of the woods in a cabin fourteen years later?”

“Weirder things have happened,” she went to try to help Negan when she noticed his hands were shaking and he lifted his hand to stop her. “So there is no way that you could be my father? You weren’t with anyone back then?”

“Mia, I can hardly remember what I did last week let alone fourteen years ago,” Negan reasoned with her, his Adam’s apple bouncing in this throat. “I’m not the only person in the world to have dark hair and hazel eyes.”

“Yeah, but the dimples and the freckles,” she reasoned with him, tugging at her shirt to reveal the freckles that were over her flesh. Stepping forward, she tugged at Negan’s shirt to look at the freckles that were on his shoulders and he pulled away from her with a huff. “Maybe it was the world’s way of…”

“You’re not my daughter!” Negan snapped at her, throwing his hands up in the air to have her stop talking. “I understand that you are probably feeling a certain way because your mother has been gone for so long. You’re looking for someone to cling onto, but I’m leaving tomorrow, Mia. Think about what the chances would have to be for that to happen. It’s impossible. And I have a family. A son that I have to get back to. He needs me.”

After Negan brought up Joshua to her, it made tears burn at her eyes and she nodded her head, “you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. My dad is dead.”

“Can we finish this please? I’d like to get some sleep tonight so I can start early,” Negan begged of her noticing her lifting her arm up to wipe at her eyes with an area of her arm that didn’t have blood on it. Without another word, she stepped forward to help Negan.

Most of the night she stayed quiet, even throughout dinner after they cooked. That was rare for Mia, but she talked. A lot. Just like him. Negan taught her how to preserve the meat and use other parts of the deer. When it was time to separate for the night, Negan went to the room he had been staying in. During the middle of the night, he heard movement in the hallway and he carefully got up to look through the small crack in the door. Mia was sitting on the stairs and she looked deep in contemplation, but also sad.

Considering talking to her, Negan realized it would only make things harder in the morning when he left so he just went back and crawled into bed. By morning, when he came out with the bag he had upstairs packed, he found her sitting on the couch and he wondered if she had been up all night.

Usually Mia never shut up. Yet she was speechless right now. Mia went to sit on the stairs again with nervous energy, but she still said nothing. With him packing the rest of the supplies that he would need that he was taking from what Mia had after their agreement, he could see that her face was red and she looked extremely upset.  

“Well kid,” Negan went to the bottom of the stairs with her hazel eyes lifting to meet his. “I guess this is it. Thanks for taking care of me.”

“Yeah,” she moved down the stairs and held out the thing that she had in her hand. Seeing that it was a full jar of peanut butter made Negan’s eyebrows bounce up. “Here, you should have this since I know peanut butter is your favorite.”

“I already have enough,” Negan pat his backpack knowing that she had already given him supplies for his journey. When she held the jar out further toward him, he accepted the jar of peanut butter and gave her a small nod. “Thanks kid.”

“I hope you find them,” she whispered, a tremor falling from her throat as she tried to keep things together. Holding her hand up, she curled it into a fist and held it out to Negan. With a smirk, Negan fist bumped Mia and gave her a wink. “Goodbye Negan.”

“Goodbye Mia,” Negan motioned her to follow him outside so she could let him out of the gate. Before he left, he made sure to help her chain everything back up. “Make sure you cover everything once I leave,” Negan gave one more order noticing that she was having a hard time looking at him when he left. “I hope your mother comes back Mia.”

There was a single tear that was sliding down her face when Negan frowned and lowered his head. Maybe he should have said something more or done something, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Pushing forward, he knew that he had to keep on and find his family. It was hard leaving a kid that he knew had nothing, but he had to. His family was out there waiting for him and he had been gone long enough.

For a while he walked and made some good distance. After some time, he started to hear footsteps following him and he would steal a look over his shoulder to try to see what it was. Keeping on, he heard the footsteps start to quickly come up on him. Turning on his heel, he brought his gun up only to come face to face with Mia who had been following him.

“Mia! What the hell are you doing?” Negan yelled at her, his heart pounding away inside of his chest. Mia had stumbled back when he had thrown the gun in her face out of surprise.  

“Do you think…do you think that maybe you could just stay until my mom comes back?” Mia requested causing Negan’s throat to tense up, a small rumble of a groan falling from his throat. “Please. I have so much to learn still and…I don’t want to be alone again Negan. I’ll give you all the medicine that I have if you do. Please.”

“I can’t,” Negan shook his head, clinging tightly to his bag drawing the color from her features to return. “I have a family of my own that I have to find and get back to. I can’t just wait with you until your mom finally comes back.”

“You’ve been away from them this long,” she reminded him causing his dimples to become more prominent with the anger that flooded his veins when she brought up how long they had been apart already. “Why not wait a couple more days? What difference would it make if you just stayed with me a few more days until my mother came back?”

“I owe you nothing Mia,” Negan reminded her, his eyebrows bouncing up and his head tipping to the side.

“I mean, I did save your life,” she pointed toward his ribs, her chest aching at the annoyed glance he gave her. “You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.”

“And I paid you back plenty with my knowledge,” Negan insisted, throwing his hand up in her direction. “So don’t pull that shit on me.”

“Just a few more days,” Mia placed her hands together, her jaw clenching when she stepped forward toward Negan who pulled the cowboy hat he was wearing from his head. “And when she comes back, then you can just…”

“Your mom isn’t coming back Mia!” Negan interrupted her having a frown flood into her young features. “I hate to be the one to tell you this Mia, but your mom is dead. You know that I’m right. If your mom was alive, she would have come home a long time ago. Something obviously happened while she was out on a supplies run. I can’t stay waiting forever with you because I have a son and a wife to find. You can’t trap me into staying with you while waiting for your mother to return when we both know it’s never going to happen.”

“Just a day?” she tried to get him to agree to something, but he frowned and shook his head. “Please? My whole life I’ve felt like I was just some kind of mistake. It’s my biggest fear. It always was. That I was something my parents didn’t plan and I shouldn’t have been here in the first place. I felt like a waste of space Negan. Until you came along. I felt like maybe I wasn’t a mistake anymore. I saved you. I took care of you. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“Go home Mia,” Negan ordered, clutching to his bag and letting out a long sigh. It was breaking his heart hearing all of this, but there was nothing he could honestly do. “You’ve got a target on your back if you stay out here.”

“Negan?” she whispered his name with a whimper and he shook his head before continuing in the direction that he was headed all along.

It hurt leaving that girl all alone, but he had to or else he knew that he would never leave. There was no way that Mia was ever going to understand that her mother wasn’t coming home. He couldn’t get stuck in a child’s dream that was never going to happen so he had to make his way onward. For a while he walked until he came up on a small camp where a fire was burning. Swiftly making his way into the bush, he wanted to get by without being detected until he heard the sound of a radio being used.

“We found the girl from yesterday,” Negan stopped when he heard that and looked over his shoulder to see one of the men that he had ran into with Mia the day before. Biting down on his bottom lip, Negan squeezed his fist closed and lowered his head.

“Just keep going Negan,” he tried to coach himself, cussing under his breath.

“Did you find out where they were hiding?” the man stood from where he was sitting beside the fire and Negan lowered down. “Did you find the guy that she was with?”

“It was just her. She won’t talk,” the voice on the radio responded leaving Negan to lower his head. “I can’t get her to talk, so we’re bringing her back to the camp.”

“Good idea,” the stranger replied with a grumble, pacing in the small area that they were taking up in the woods. “I can think of a few ways to get her to talk. And if she doesn’t, I really don’t care. I’ll make good use of her.”

“Fuck,” Negan lowered his head into his hand. There were four people already at the camp and he had no idea how many were coming back. Cussing to himself, Negan thought about what he was supposed to be doing. Where he belonged. If he stayed behind to help this girl, he would likely get hurt again or die before he found his family again. “Come on Negan.”

Trying to stay close to the ground, Negan managed to get out of the area of the camp, keeping his head down. He couldn’t let a few days ruin the few years of planning that he had done. It was the sound of a gunshot going off that made him panic. Rushing back toward the camp, Negan carefully came up on it noticing that one of them he had just seen was lying face first in the dirt dead.

“Stop moving you little shit,” the original stranger they interacted with was screaming at Mia from where she was underneath him on the ground. Two of the others were holding her wrists down while she struggled. “You just killed one of my men, you can’t just expect me to let you go without punishment.”

“Get off of me you fucker,” Mia spat at the man and Negan could see that her face was bloody from whatever the men before had done to her. “I’ve got nothing to give you.”

“Where is your dad?” the man questioned, grabbing a firm hold of Mia’s face to get her to look up at him. One of Mia’s eyes were swollen and Negan felt his chest tightening when Mia said nothing. Reaching behind him, the stranger grabbed a hunting knife and held it to Mia’s throat hearing her whimper. “Where is your dad?”

“He’s not my dad,” she repeated what she had told the man the day before. A scoff followed and the stranger dug the tip of the knife further into her flesh. “He’s not my father!”

“Come on little girl. You look exactly like that guy and you expect me to believe you aren’t his kid,” the man half laughed drawing Mia to swallow down hard. “It be one thing if you weren’t a spitting image of him, but you are. You’re expecting me to believe that you aren’t a product of that man’s nutsack?”

“I’m not. Even if he was my dad, he’d want nothing to do with me,” Mia explained wincing when the tip of the blade cut at the side of her face. “He left me! He was just a stranger. Please.”

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t care, he’s not your daddy,” the man mocked her hearing her straining to get out from beneath him. “Where is all of your stuff? Your community?”

Instead of answering the man above her, Mia spit causing the blood from her mouth to spray in his face. With a laugh, the stranger shook his head and wiped at his eyes, “You don’t want to talk? Fine. I’ll find other things to do with you then…”

Going to reach for Mia, the man screamed out when she sank her teeth into his hand causing him to yelp. Trying to pull his hand back, the man couldn’t get her off him and when he finally did, his fist came crashing into her face.

Immediately reaching for his gun, Negan started firing it off hitting one of the men that was holding Mia down on the ground between the eyes. There was no more holding back, Negan needed to protect her now. Shooting the gun at the other one holding onto her wrist had the man rolling backwards and Negan felt his body being tackled by someone from behind. The gun fell from his hand, sliding a few feet away while he struggled with the weight that was over him. Bringing his elbow back over and over again, Negan managed to get the person that was there off before he reached for his hunting knife to bring it back to stab the person that was behind him in the throat.

Shoving the weight off of him, Negan swiftly got to his feet only to feel someone tackling into his ribs drawing him to hit the ground hard. That knocked the wind out of him, especially since he was still tender there from being injured. Over and over again fists hit him and he did his best to block the punches, but the person still got a few good hits in. When the man over him got tired, Negan managed to get a few powerful hits in before bringing his knife up to dig it into the center of the attacker’s chest. Pulling it down gutted the stranger that was over him, causing blood to pour down over Negan. Grunting out, the weight of the body fell in over him and Negan hissed shoving the weight off of him. Struggling for the gun that he had dropped, Negan scoffed when someone shot at the gun causing him to fall back. Gazing back over his shoulder, Negan saw there were two of them left. One was the main stranger that they had seen yesterday and Negan presumed he was the one in charge. He was the one with the gun and the second stranger was approaching Negan.

“I knew daddy wouldn’t be far away,” the man in charge muttered when Negan considered his next move. Noticing that there was a rock beside him, Negan waited until the man approaching was close. Sweeping his legs out, Negan locked his legs with the stranger causing him to stumble, hitting his head on the oversized rock leaving a large blood smear across it. Snatching his gun up from the ground, Negan held it up at the stranger in charge while keeping his knife in his opposite hand. It was then that Negan noticed the stranger had an unconscious Mia in his arms with his knife pressed to her throat and his gun pointed at Negan. “Don’t!”

“So you get your rocks off hurting little girls?” Negan questioned wiping the blood away from his bottom lip. “Is that your thing?”

“Drop your gun or I swear to God I will cut her throat,” the man screamed at Negan watching Negan toss his gun to the side and hold his hand up in the air. “You give me your group’s location and I will let you have her.”

“See, here is the thing,” Negan took a step closer hearing the nervous breath that fell from the stranger. It had him clinging tighter to Mia and Negan clung tightly to the knife in his hand. “You hit that little girl. There is no fucking way I’m going to keep you alive.”

“I said stop,” the man warned, shooting the gun off and hitting Negan in the arm with the bullet. A grunt fell from Negan’s throat when he looked to it and then back to the man. “I said stop!”

Rushing the man, two more shots went off, but a gurgling sound fell from the stranger’s throat when Negan managed to bring his hunting knife into the stranger’s belly before pulling up. Dropping backwards, the stranger released Mia who fell to the ground as well. Standing over the stranger, Negan looked to his own shoulder with a wince. One of those two shots hit him in the shoulder, but the second missed him completely.  

“Your aim is shit,” Negan reached for the gun that the stranger had used, his head tipping to the side. “Are you part of a bigger group?”

“Fuck you,” the man snarled and Negan pointed the gun down at the stranger’s groin. “I’m not telling you shit.”

“Fine,” Negan shot the stranger in the groin hearing him crying out in agony. “Are you the last one?”

“I’m the last one. Please…” the stranger begged holding up his hand for mercy when Negan moved further in over him. “It’s just me. It was only us.”

“You should have left the little girl alone,” Negan took one final shot, hitting the stranger right between the eyes. Dropping the gun on the man’s chest, Negan looked to Mia and frowned. Picking her up in his arms, Negan made sure to grab his things before carrying her back toward the cabin. It took longer since he was injured, but once he made it back, he carried her into the cabin first and laid her down on the mattress that she had previously pulled into the living room for him. Going back outside, he locked things up and hid the gate as best as he could before heading back inside. Getting some water to clean Mia up, Negan frowned while he took care of her hating that he let this happen. He wished she would have just stayed in the cabin like he asked.

After he was done cleaning her up, he could only really see that she had a swollen eye with a bloody nose and lip. Which she should have never had in the first place. Once he was sure that she was okay, he shakily pulled his shirt off and assessed the damage of his gunshot wounds. The one in the shoulder was a whole lot worse than the one that hit his arm. The one in the arm was a flesh wound, but the one in his shoulder was one that he would have to dig the bullet out of.

Shakily searching the medical supplies that Mia had, Negan did what he had to in order to get the bullet out of his body finding himself thankful that this guy had a shit shot enough that it didn’t hit anything major. It was hard to clean up the wounds but he did what he had to in order to make sure that he was safe.

Waiting in the chair that Mia had before when he was hurt, Negan stayed there until morning. Toward the middle of the night he had started to drift and he tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. When it was morning and she started to shift, Negan noticed her trying to lift her head up and he motioned her to stay when he moved to the bed beside her.

“Hey, it’s me. It’s Negan,” he hushed her noticing the way that she seemed to calm down when she heard his voice. “You’re safe. I’m with you.”

Shakily her hand reached for his and he hooked his fingers with hers hearing her breathing uneasily, “I’m sorry I left. I’ll stay with you until your mother returns. Okay? I won’t leave you again. I promise.”

Mia said nothing, just gave a nod and lowered her head back to the bed weakly. Clearing his throat, Negan went to pull his hand away, but he felt her still clinging to it, “Please don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” Negan assured her lowering down beside the bed to allow her to keep holding onto his hand. “I’m right here.”

It didn’t take long for Mia to fall back asleep and he frowned looking her over. The thoughts about what the stranger said about her looking like him was running through his mind. They both had questioned in multiple times and he really did wonder if he was her father. Getting into the bed beside Mia, he laid at the other side watching her while she slept.

After a while he had fallen asleep as well and in the middle of the night woke up to see that Mia had cuddled up next to him much like he had described Joshua to her in the past. Clearing his throat, Negan lifted his head to see that her head was laying over his chest and he was thankful it was on the side that wasn’t hurt. Cautiously, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him so he could nestle his chin in over the top of her head. There was something about Mia that felt personal. And now he knew that he had to stay with her. There was no other way.

----

“Would you show your cards already?” Negan snickered from where he was sitting across the table from Mia who was staring out at her cards that were in her hand. It had been a month and a half since Negan had decided to stay with Mia and wait for her mother to return. Each day Negan could tell that her belief and hope that her mother would return was leaving her. But Negan did his best to keep her hope alive. “You take forever with this game. If I would have known you were incredibly slow, I would have never taught you poker.”

“Hold your horses old man. There is a lot at stake here,” she pointed toward the potato chips that they were playing with in order to do the game. Tossing the potato chips into the center to match his bet made Negan smirk and shake his head. Lowering down his cards, he showed her that he had a straight.

“Not so arrogant anymore, are you?” Negan stole one of the potato chips and she playfully swatted his hand away from the rest of them. Plopping one between his lips, Negan watched her lay down her cards to show that she had a full house. “Jesus. How do you always beat me?”

“Because I’m awesome,” she dropped her hands forward to scoop the potato chips in closer to her. A snort fell from Negan’s lips when she shook her head and pushed the potato chips forward. “But we can share.”

“Very bold of you kiddo,” Negan winked at Mia, taking another potato chip for himself before relaxing back in the chair that he was sitting in.

While relaxing, Mia collected the cards and started to shuffle the cards. It made him smile to see her working them the way that he had taught her. Grunting out, Negan pulled himself up from the chair and moved toward the fire that they had set up earlier in the fireplace. Grabbing his chair, he pulled it to him. Taking a seat, he got comfortable and looked to his wrist. Around it was a bracelet that Mia had made for him in their time together. Sadly, it made him think of Annie and Joshua. It had been six weeks since he agreed to be here with Mia and he never thought he would wait this long for Mia’s mom. It had been over two months since Mia’s mother had left and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she was never coming back.

“You know,” Negan began, looking back over his shoulder at Mia while she was playing a game of solitaire on her own. “You just keep beating me at all the games that I teach you.”

“That’s because you’re a good teacher,” she got up from where she was seated and grabbed her chair to move in beside Negan. Clearing her throat, she stared out at Negan who was looking at her funny. “What is it?”

“Can I ask you some things?” Negan inquired knowing that they had been on his mind for a while, but he was worried to ask them considering the topic at hand. When Mia gave him the go ahead, he stretched out his legs and frowned. “What else do you know about your father?”

“I told you everything I know about my father,” she reminded him, her jaw flexing when she reached up to stroke over her earlobe in a moment of contemplation. Grumbling to himself, Negan knew that was something he did when he was uncomfortable too and it made him sigh.

“You never saw a photo? She never gave you a name?” Negan threw his hand up in the air pretty sure at this point that Mia was his. That stranger wasn’t wrong. The more time that Negan spent with Mia, the more he realized it. From her physical features to some of the ridiculous quirks that she had—she was so much like him.

“I think it just hurt her so much to lose him,” Mia attempted to explain her mother’s behavior. “I don’t know Negan. She just has a ring that she wears. They were married and she never took it off. That’s all she has from him.”

“What does the ring look like?” Negan’s eyebrow arched up as he stroked his fingers down through his short beard. “Is there anything that stands out?”

“I don’t know, it looks like a ring,” Mia was dramatic, a laugh falling from her throat at how serious Negan was being about everything. “Why? What does it matter about the ring that she wore?”

“I don’t know,” Negan lied knowing that he was just trying to strike something in his memory that would make him think about a moment in his life where things made sense. “I just…I feel like if I heard something or knew something, it would make me remember.”

“Remember what?” she could tell something was wrong and she reached out to place her hand in over his. Negan’s fingers hooked with hers and he gave her a weak smile.

Negan’s lips parted when he considered telling her that he thought he was her father. Instead, he waved his hand in the air dismissively and shrugged his shoulders. There was a long silence that lingered over them for a while when they both sat by the fire before she finally cleared her throat. “I was thinking…it’s been over two months since my mother left. I uh, I know I shouldn’t think like this, but I was wondering…”

“Yeah?” Negan tipped his head to the side seeing the color draining from Mia’s features. “What’s on your mind kiddo?”

“If I was ready to finally let go, would you take me with you to go find your family?” she threw out the idea that had been on her mind for a while now after they had waited so long for her mother to return. “I know I’m just some stranger to them, but I really like being with you Negan. You’re the closest thing to a real parent that I’ve ever had.”

“Hey,” Negan frowned, hushing her when she said that out loud.

“I mean it. I loved my mom, but she never used to play games with me,” she pointed back toward the cards that they had been playing with. “I’ve learned more from you than I ever did my mother. I know about football because of you. So many new games. I’ve actually gotten to see the outside. And you make me actually feel seen. Before I felt like my mother’s pet.”

“You don’t mean that,” Negan’s Adam’s apple bounced in his throat and she shook her head with a saddened breath. “I’m sure your mother loved you.”

“My mother loved me the best way she knew how. You’re the first person I’ve actually felt safe with,” she insisted, turning in her chair so that she could face Negan. “You want to get back to your family Negan and I can’t keep holding you back. So why don’t we pack up and I’ll go with you? I’m helpful. I’m a decent cook. I can teach Joshua games. I can babysit when you and Annie want to have alone time.”

“Mia,” Negan snorted, rolling his eyes at the last comment.  

“Please?” she begged of him, her eyes gazing over Negan when she shook her head. “I’d rather just go with you than stay waiting for someone who really never loved me that much in the first place. I know you don’t feel the same way, but I lo…I care about you Negan. You’ve cared for me more in the last month than anyone has in my life.”

“I…” Negan could see the hopefulness in her eyes. It took a minute before he sighed and he gave her a slow nod. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll take you with me to Missouri. You’re just going to have to listen to me and be on my ass at all times.”

With an excited breath, she jumped across the small space to give Negan a hug. An amused sound escaped his throat when she put as much of her strength into it as she could. Hugging her back, Negan nuzzled his nose in against the side of her neck and smiled.

“Thank you, Negan,” she was grateful for him agreeing and she excitedly hopped up from her seat. “I’ll pack tonight! What should I take? How much should we bring?”

“Hey! Calm down. We have to think things out and then we can pack tomorrow. We’ll leave the day after,” Negan announced knowing that he had found comfort in this home, but he wanted to find Annie and Joshua. Staying here was nice, but this wasn’t where he belonged. He knew that. “Let’s just sit and talk about it. Then we will figure everything out.”

And that’s what they did. They planned everything. They packed and she asked a million questions about Annie along with Joshua. What they were like. The things they liked. And he found it charming that she was doing that. With how much she talked, Negan couldn’t help but find amusement in it. She was so much like him and he knew that. They had fallen asleep talking about things before waking up in the morning to go over everything.

“When are we leaving?” Mia seemed frustrated while she paced the living room with Negan taking in account of everything they were bringing with them. “We should just go.”

“Missouri isn’t that close Mia. We just have to make sure that we have everything. We have a very long journey ahead of us. Okay? Just let me make sure that we have everything that we are going to need,” Negan hushed her while he finished looking through all their stuff. The fact that she was so excited to leave surprised Negan. It was a huge difference from the little girl he had met originally. A laugh fell from his throat when he felt Mia wrapping her arms around him from behind. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you a hug,” she answered him, burying her head against the side of his neck drawing Negan’s laughter to grow. “I’m just glad you came into my life Negan. You showed up when I needed someone the most and I love you.”

Hearing that drew a breath to catch in Negan’s throat. Closing his eyes, he cherished the hug that she gave him.

Tension flooded Mia’s body when she heard a faint sound coming from outside. Looking back over his shoulder, he could see something change in her eyes when she looked back toward the door, “What is it?”

When they both heard it this time, Negan watched Mia scramble to her feet and run to the door looking out the front of it, “It’s my mom.”

“Mia, don’t,” Negan warned knowing that it had been so long that it likely didn’t make sense that her mother would be returning. It was too fast though because she was running outside and pulling away the brush that Negan had previously thrown in front of the gate. Once it was open, Negan saw a woman hunched over. She was thin, her hair messy, her clothes dirty and she was covered in blood. It made his throat go dry knowing that whoever this was, she had obviously been through hell. “Mia?”

“Mom?” she whispered and Negan heard the woman let out a tremoring breath before stumbling forward. With the way she could barely hold herself up, Negan swiftly swooped in and caught her when she collapsed. It was obvious she had passed out and Mia was scrambling to get a good look at her face. “It’s her. Negan, it’s my mom.”

“Run inside and get a cloth wet,” Negan instructed carrying the woman in his arms toward the cabin after making sure things were locked up again. Laying her down on the couch, Negan could see that Mia’s mom was likely starved and abused. Wherever she was, she had gone through hell. Footsteps were heard when Mia returned with a cloth. “Go find her some clothes Mia. Some clean clothes.”

“Okay,” Mia ran off to do what Negan requested of her.

Negan did his best to clean up the woman before him. Once the blood and the dirt was mostly gone from her face, Negan felt his heart sink finally seeing the features of Mia’s mom before him. An overwhelmed exhale escaped him when he looked to her hand. Observing the ring over her finger had the room spinning around Negan. Dropping back onto his bottom, Negan cleared his throat and lowered his head between his thighs.

“Hey?” Mia called out when she entered the room again with the things Negan asked of her. “Negan? What’s wrong? Is she okay?”

“I uh…I don’t know,” Negan stammered with an uneven breath brushing his hair back when he gazed over at Mia. “Let’s just get her cleaned up and we’ll have to wait.”

For days they actually waited. Mia was exhausted and finally fell asleep in her room leaving Negan alone with Mia’s mother. When he was finally about to pass out, he noticed her shifting on the couch. Sitting up straighter, he saw her eyelashes fluttering and she let out a pained sound. Moving in beside her, Negan was doing his best to monitor how she was so he could help her in whatever way possible. When she finally came to, she turned her head to gaze over at him and she let out a shocked breath.

“Negan?” she muttered his name, shakily lifting up to reach out and stroke her fingers over the side of his face. Leaning into her touch, Negan closed his eyes and felt his mouth dry when her whimper followed. “Am I dead?”

“No,” Negan answered her, his eyes opening and he could see that she was crying while she stared out at him. “Hey Y/N.”

“How is this happening?” she let out a tremoring breath, doing her best to pull herself up, but Negan hushed her and tried to stop her from overextending herself. “I thought you were dead. When I went to Alexandria, I was told you were gone. That you weren’t…”

“I’m not dead,” Negan shook his head, biting down on his bottom lip grabbing a hold of her hand while she brushed her fingers through his hair. “I never was.”

“How did you find us?” she questioned, noticing that Negan was crying while he stared down at her and she reached up to swipe the tears away. “I never thought…I never thought I would see you again. I tried to talk to Rick after Mia was born, but no one would listen to me. They took some of the people from The Sanctuary, but they wouldn’t take me. I was too loyal to you and they wouldn’t let me in. Even knowing I was pregnant. They just gave me some supplies and shooed me off. I tried going there. I did and I thought I would save you, I just…they told me you were dead.”

“You stayed at The Sanctuary?” Negan confirmed with a frown, his bottom lip trembling when she nodded.

“Until we couldn’t anymore. We were forced out after a while. It couldn’t sustain life there anymore and we had to leave,” she educated Negan, her fingers tracing over the side of his face while she slid in closer to him. “I’m so sorry. I would have kept trying if I would have known that they had you. I just didn’t and…”

“Y/N,” Negan breathed out feeling her lips claiming his and he was frozen against her kiss at first. Closing his eyes, he allowed her to kiss him before faintly starting to kiss her back. When her fingers brushed through his hair and stroked at the back of his neck, he pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. “I can’t.”

“You can’t what?” she repeated with a weak smile. “Does Mia know that you are her father? Did you tell her? She’s going to be so excited to know that her daddy found us.”

“I’m married,” Negan stammered, his body trembling when she stared out at him with confusion. When she went to kiss him again, he put a distance between them and shook his head. “I can’t Y/N. I’m married.”

“I know,” she lifted her hand to show the ring that he had given her when they were at The Sanctuary together. Y/N was someone that Negan had flirted with for a long time. Someone that he had relentlessly asked to be one of his wives, but she always turned him down. So he romanced her and he romanced her hard. And somewhere down the line he truly felt like he had fallen in love with her. So that’s why when she finally agreed to be one of his wives, he had given her a real ring. At the time, he promised her that after everything went down with Rick that she would be his only wife. And he did know that she was pregnant. It was something he learned toward the start of his war with Rick. It was just when he asked about the people that were still at The Sanctuary, he was told that they all died and he believed it. When he returned to The Sanctuary after he escaped his cell that one day, when there was no sign of Y/N or a baby there, he just believed them. He thought they were dead and never went looking for them again. He couldn’t believe it was something he forgot until he saw her face again the other day. “I’m your wife.”

“Stop,” Negan begged when she went to touch his face again and he lowered her hands down to keep her away from touching him. “I’m married to a woman named Annie. We have a son. His name is Joshua and they are waiting for me in Missouri. I found Mia by mistake almost two months ago. I started thinking she was my daughter, I just didn’t know for sure. We were going to leave for Missouri the day you showed up to go find my wife and my son.”

“You’re not being funny Negan,” Y/N declared with a saddened breath and Negan shook his head slowly. “It’s not…”

“I’m not kidding Y/N. I’m very happily married,” Negan informed her noticing the way that she looked down at the ring that she still wore that he had given her so long ago. “I’m sorry. They told me when I was locked up that everyone was gone at The Sanctuary. I believed them. I thought you were dead. I thought our baby…”

“But Negan, I love you,” Y/N whispered, her voice broken when she shakily reached out to touch him. “I’m your wife.”

“You were one of my wives,” Negan corrected her, leaning back on his knees and shaking his head slowly feeling his heart breaking when she started to cry. “You are a past that I wanted to forget Y/N and I did. I moved on. A long time ago. I thought you were dead and I fell in love with someone else. Someone really great. She knows all of me and she still loves me.”

“So did I,” she reminded him with a sob and he felt guilty, dropping his head down when he saw her sliding back on the couch that he had her on. “Why wouldn’t you look for us? You know that I would never give up on you because I loved you so much. We worked so hard to get pregnant with Mia. We were…”

“I know,” Negan interrupted her with a shake of his head, letting out an uncomfortable sound. “I know. I just thought you were dead Y/N and I moved on. And I’m happy. I was happy. And I want to be with my family. I didn’t mean to, but I completely wiped that part of my life out of my head that I shared with you. I didn’t even remember it until I saw your face again the other day for the first time.”

Silence. That was all that was heard other than her cries while she stared out at him, “Mia and I were going to leave to go to Missouri and search for my family. She thought you were dead and you weren’t coming back. We can take a while to get you feeling better and if you want, I can bring the two of you with me. I can wait the extra time and we can all go together.”

“No,” she immediately responded with a shake of her head, reaching for the pillow that was beside her to bring it in closer to her. “I refuse to go on some journey with you so you can find the family that you actually wanted.”

“That’s not fair,” Negan cried, his head tipping to the side while she stared at out him with pain in her expression. “I didn’t know you were alive.”

“You didn’t even bother to look,” she yelled at him causing the color to drain from Negan’s features. “Now you’re asking me to follow you to another state to find the woman you are in love with. So I can what? Watch you and her together for the rest of my life?”

“You’d be safer with me. You and Mia would be much safer with me,” Negan suggested, his eyebrows full of emotion and he let out a tremoring breath. Hearing her sobbing broke his heart, but he couldn’t fix what had already been broken for so long. “Just come with me. We’ll find my family and all of us can be together. Mia is my daughter too and…��

“Oh, fuck you,” she snarled at Negan shaking her head in anger. “You’re in her life for how long and suddenly you think that you can say and determine what I do with Mia? No Negan. That’s not how this shit works.”

“She wants to be with me,” Negan explained, his fists tightening up at his sides with his body clenching up. “She doesn’t even know I’m her father and she wants to come with me. She loves me. She belongs with me.”

“You didn’t even fucking care to look for her,” Y/N snapped back drawing a shuddering exhale from his throat. “So how dare you act like you even care now. Do you have any idea what I’ve done to get back to Mia. What I’ve suffered through? What those people…” she stopped to look down toward the ground and she shook her head. “No, I won’t let you take Mia from me. Not after what happened to me. You won’t take my daughter. Why don’t you just leave Negan.”

“I can’t just leave knowing that you and Mia are here, vulnerable,” Negan reasoned with Y/N hearing her sobs getting harder. “You aren’t healthy. You both need to be protected. Just rest and in a few weeks we can all…”

“Get the fuck out of here Negan,” she screamed at him shoving her hands into the center of his chest drawing him to fall back onto the ground. “I have been heart broken since the moment they took you away. I haven’t been the same since and you just think you can do this?”

“It sounds like you were so fucked up that you were a shitty mother to our daughter,” Negan erupted back on her, shocking her with his response. “You taught her nothing. If I wasn’t here to take care of her in the two months you fucking disappeared, she would have been dead. I kept our daughter alive and she almost…she almost fucking died at one point, but I saved her. And then she tells me that you never even acted like you loved her to begin with. She’s felt more loved in the last month with me than she ever has with you. So why the fuck did you have to show up and ruin it? It would have been fine if you wouldn’t have showed back up!”

“So you get to just show back up in our lives, say fuck you to me and take Mia away from me?” she spoke softly while Negan’s heart pounded away inside of his chest. “So what was I Negan? Just someone you used to get pregnant? You promise me things that you will never give? Did you ever really love me Negan?”

“Of course I did,” Negan replied back with a frown, throwing his hands up in the air. “I did love you Y/N.”

“Like you said, I was just one of the wives though,” she reminded him what he had said earlier and he reached up to shakily brush his hair back. “I was just the only one dumb enough to love you, wasn’t I? To let you get me pregnant.”

“I understand you have to be going through a lot of emotions right now because of everything,” Negan began, the vein at the side of his neck protruding with the tension that he was feeling. “And no matter what I say to you, you’re never gonna believe me because you’re hurt. Regardless of what you think, I did love you and I was happy that you were pregnant.”

“But you found something better,” she filled in the blanks, her head nodding slowly. “I understand. I’m glad you found what you always wanted. I hope it makes you happy.”

“I am happy,” Negan assured her with a nod of his head knowing that what he was telling her absolutely destroyed her. “But I would be a lot happier if you and Mia came with me back to Missouri. You’d be safer. I’d get to be with my daughter. It’s a win for all of us.”

“No, you don’t get to have the best of both worlds,” she denied him, shaking her head and confusing him. “You pick them or her, you can’t have both.”

“That’s not fair,” Negan countered, anger flooding his veins with her giving him an ultimatum. “I don’t want to lose Mia now that she is back in my life. I’m her father. I belong in her life. You know that you both would be safer with me, but you’re mad at me so you’re holding this over my head. Look what happened to you being alone Y/N. Get your head out of your ass and do the right thing. The right thing for you and the right thing for your daughter. The two of you are just going to die here if I leave you. Look at you Y/N.”

“And it’s not fair that you abandon us and then you get to have everything you ever wanted. A family. A wife that you actually love. Two kids. While I have nothing,” she shook her head causing Negan to frown and drop his head back. Dragging his hands down his face had Y/N dropping back against the couch. “I wish you would have just stayed gone. Because at least with me thinking you were dead I thought you died protecting us instead of knowing that we meant nothing to you.”

“If I would have never showed up, your daughter would be dead,” Negan reminded her with a bit of venom in his tone. “Our daughter deserves to know that she’s mine. I’m leaving to go find my family and I’m going to give her a choice. She can stay here with you. Or she can come. She deserves to have a choice.”

“And she will pick you because you’re what’s new. You’re the fun parent that has shown her love that she never felt,” Y/N pointed out with a frown, squeezing the pillow in closer to her. “Thanks Negan. I take over two months of abuse and torture to make it back to my daughter only to have you take her from me. Thank you.”

“It’s not my fault that all of this happened,” Negan stood up from the floor, staring out at her with confusion flooding his veins. “She deserves to know that she’s my daughter. And she has the right to pick who she wants to be with.”

“Great. I’m glad that you are going to go find your family. Your son. Your wife. And you get to have Mia,” she tremored, a long shallow breath falling from her lips. “Congratulations Negan. You got everything you ever wanted in life. Good for you.”

“I suffered too you know. I was in prison for seven years with people abusing me and treating me terrible,” Negan hissed, his eyebrows furrowing in anger when she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Fuck it. If you want to be like that. Be like that.”

“I should have known from the start you never loved me. They all told me,” she laid back down on the couch, turning away from Negan when he stopped to listen to her. “Sherry, Dwight, Simon…even Rick. I just never fucking believed it. I was too in love with you. Or the idea of you, I guess. How happy you got when you found out I was pregnant, I thought you were happy to finally have a family. But it was just the baby you wanted. Not me.”

“That’s not true,” Negan reasoned with her hearing her crying when he attempted to move forward to reach for her again. “Can you please just be an adult about this and understand? It makes more sense for you to leave with me and go to Missouri. We’ll all be together and…”

Negan knew it was no use talking to her like this. It just wasn’t. In the end they were never going to agree. Going over to the other end of the room, Negan sat down and cornered himself. Thinking about things, he rocked back and forth. It took him seeing Y/N’s face for him to actually remember that he had a woman that he was married to that was pregnant when he got taken to Alexandria. Maybe she was right. How could someone who loved someone like that forget?

Looking up toward the stairs, Negan knew that he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Mia, but he knew he had to leave. Grabbing his bag and one of the bag of supplies, he threw it over his shoulder and headed out the door. It was better for everyone if he just left and he knew that.

For a while he walked until he heard the sound of feet trying to catch up to him. Cussing out, he lowered his head and swallowed down hard, “Go home Mia!”

“No,” Mia’s voice responded while she moved in behind Negan. Looking back, he saw that she had the other supplies and her backpack on ready to go on the journey with him. “We made plans, we’re going to Missouri together.”

“Go home!” Negan screamed at her and she immediately shook her head. “Your mother is home now. We made a deal.”

“You promised. You told me that you would never leave me,” she reminded him with a whimper hearing Negan scoff.

“Until your mother returned home,” he reminded her with what he had said. “Your mother is home. Therefore, I owe you nothing. My promise? I made it. So I’m leaving.”

“Please,” Mia begged from where she was standing behind him with the bag over her shoulder. Her eyes were optimistic and she shook her head. “I want to go with you.”

“You are meant to be with your mother,” Negan could see that there were tears swelling up in her eyes while she stared out at Negan. Here she was begging to go with him not even knowing that he was her biological father. And that fact? It tore him apart. “You can’t come with me.”

Turning on his heel, Negan went to leave when he heard her feet following him and he stopped again, “Stop following me!”

“Negan,” she reasoned with him, her bottom lip quivering while she stared up at him. “I…we…I think…”

“You can’t be this stupid, right?” Negan dropped his bag at his side knowing that there was only one way he could think of to get her back to her mother and that was to break her. “I don’t love you, Mia. I don’t. You were a means of keeping me alive. I have no feelings toward you. You told me you cared about me and that you loved me. Did I ever tell you it back? I don’t love you.”

“That’s not true. You wouldn’t have stayed that whole month and a half if you didn’t care about me,” she reasoned with him, her dimples sinking in and it killed Negan seeing that he was breaking her down after his talk with Y/N. “I know you’re just lying to get me to stay here, but with you…I feel safer than I ever have in my life. I love you Negan. Please. I don’t care about anything else. I want to be with you.”

“I don’t want you with me!” Negan screamed at her, his body shaking and his eyes tearing over when she took a step back. Fear flooded into her features as Negan shook his head and bit down on his bottom lip. “You know, your father didn’t die Mia. In fact, your father knew that your mother was pregnant with you and he didn’t care. He didn’t even think about the two of you while he was gone. He just assumed the two of you were dead and he didn’t bother to come looking for you because he didn’t care. You and your mother? The both of you meant nothing to him.”

“That’s not true,” her voice tremored, her head shaking. “My mother said my father very much wanted me. That he loved me. That he loved her. That he would have done anything to keep me safe and…”

“Then why did he go off and have another family? He got married again and had a little boy,” Negan explained, his eyes narrowing when his jaw tightened. Contemplation started to flood her features when Negan started going off about things. “A little boy he loved more than he loved you.”

“Why are you saying these things?” Negan was hurting her and he could see that his words were breaking her heart. “You told me that I could come with you before. You said…”

“I thought your mom was dead,” Negan reminded her, his bottom lip quivering when he shook his head. “You see Mia. I know your dad isn’t dead because I’m your dad. We both know it. Even those strangers that we ran into knew that you were my daughter. All you have to do is look at us and you know that you’re my daughter. You have my eyes, my dimples, my freckles, my smart-ass sense of humor…”

Negan’s finger circled his own face and then he pointed out at her, “I’m your dad Mia.”

That backfired. After he confirmed for her what they both had wondered before her mother even came back, she ran to him and wrapped her arms around him to hug him. Holding his hands up in the air, Negan swallowed down hard and closed his eyes.

“Get off of me,” Negan demanded, shaking his head while venom flooded into his tone. “I didn’t want you then and I don’t want you now.”

Stumbling back, Mia looked up at him with her hazel eyes full of tears and Negan shook his head, “I knew your mother was pregnant with you. Once I was taken to Alexandria, I never looked back. I didn’t give a shit about the people there. I didn’t give a shit about your mother. And most of all…I didn’t give a fuck about you.”

A hurt sound fell deep from within her and her sobs followed. Even though he was trying to hold it together, he was breaking himself and he hated himself for doing this but he knew that he had to find a way for her to stay with her mother, “I could have come looking for you. And I didn’t. Because I didn’t care Mia. I started a whole new family. I have a son that I love. A wife…”

“Maybe…maybe you could learn to love me,” Mia whimpered, tears sliding down the sides of her face. “I don’t think we can make it without you Negan. I almost didn’t. Daddy please…”

“Don’t call me that,” Negan warned her, holding his finger up in the air and pointing it at her. “Don’t you dare call me that. You have no right to call me your fucking father. I didn’t want it then and I don’t want it now.”

“But you are,” she frowned, reaching up to rub at her tear-stained face while he continued to down talk her and chastise her. “I know you love me. And knowing that you are my dad, that just proves that this was meant to happen. You were meant to find me…”

“I have a son that I actually love and I’m going to find my way back to him,” Negan informed her with a shake of his head and he reached for his bag. This isn’t how he wanted things to go down, but Y/N made things clear earlier. There was no way that she would come with them and if he took Mia, it would destroy her. “I have a family that means something to me. And I’m going to find them. So why don’t you stay with your mother? Someone who actually loves you.”

“Please, I can help you find them,” Mia begged of Negan, her body shaking while Negan tried his best to stop himself from crying, but he couldn’t. “I’d be a really good big sister. I’d…”

“I’ve spent the last month and a half with you Mia,” Negan reminded her of the time they spent together and he shook his head. “And in that time, it only confirmed for me what I knew back then. I feel nothing for you. There is nothing here. You were a mistake. A poorly timed mistake that I never wanted in the first place.”

Calling her a mistake when that was the thing she was the most afraid of hearing hit her deep down and he knew that it would, “Goodbye Mia.”

Her sobs filled the woods and Negan continued walking through them. After a minute, he felt her running out and grabbing a hold of him in attempts to keep him near. Yanking his arm away, Negan spun on his heel and stared down at her, “I don’t want you, Mia. What about that don’t you understand?”

“Then I will sit here. And I’ll wait for one of the flesh eaters to get me,” she whimpered dropping down in the middle of the woods that they were in. “If you don’t want me, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t like it with my mother. I love you and I want to be with you. Please.”

“I don’t care Mia,” Negan scoffed, grabbing his bag hearing her cries getting louder when he threw his hands up in the air. “If that’s how you want to leave your mother, then that’s your decision. From here on out? You aren’t my problem.”

“Please Negan,” Mia’s voice was broken when he turned away from her to look in the other direction. He had to convince himself to keep going. He couldn’t let this break him. He made his choice and so did Y/N. “Daddy. Please. If you leave, you’re leaving me to die. I’m begging you…”

Walking away, Negan could hear her cries no matter how far away he got. And he had to force himself to keep going. After what her mother told him, there was no way that it would have ever worked. And he had to tell himself that. He had to find Annie and Joshua. There were no other options. Y/N was his past and while he understood why she was hurt, she was the one that denied them going with him. So he had to respect her wishes. The best that he could hope for at this point was that they were able to keep going. That they would find a community and be able to move on.

More than anything he wanted to bring Mia with him, but her mother made it clear that wasn’t a possibility, so he had to wipe that idea from his mind and keep going. No matter how much it broke his heart.

[iheartvmt]

So this afternoon I was chilling in my Mom's little backyard, the whole family, dogs and all, were there because it was my nephew's 8th birthday party (plus a surprise little belated Happy Birthday party for my stepdad and me, who had birthdays earlier this month), the kids were all playing in the above-ground pool...

And a freaking *hawk* stooped onto their TMNT ball, flopped about a bit, and then flew up to sit on the fence like 5 feet away from the pack of screaming, splashing little boys.

Needless to say, that's not normal hawk behavior.

Then it tried to stoop on the ball again, with similar bad results, and fluttered atop an old canopy thing folded up against the shed. We were all keeping an eye on it because wtf? It was sitting a little hunched so I thought "Maybe it's just overheated and dehydrated," and I set a bowl of water next to it. It ignored both my approach and the water.

Then it started eyeing the dogs, tilting its head this way and that as they ran by playing chase. Most of the family dogs are much too big to be taken out by a little hawk, but my two dogs are on the smaller size. Still too big for a hawk to carry off, but if one were desperate enough it might give it a go and do some damage.

Before we could shoo it away, it stooped on the largest dog, Oreo, a 70 lb pit bull/husky mix! O.O

Fortunately for the bird, Oreo was too startled to do anything but yelp, shake it off her back, and run under the table. (Don't worry, Oreo didn't have any injuries, except maybe to her pride!)

It didn't fly back to a perch this time, just sat on the ground hissing amidst the chaos of dogs and very loud humans.

Rin, my newest dog, is an 11 lb poodle mixed with what I'm now certain is terrier, and she ran straight at it, barking and ready to tear it up, talons be damned, but my stepdad scooped her up before she made contact.

I quickly grabbed my cousin's shirt from a beach chair and caught it up (while the other adults impressed upon the kids that this is something You Do Not Do, Auntie is a Professional). As it hissed and snapped at me, I could see it had some kind of white plaque in its throat, and its mucous membranes were bright red, either from stress or possibly stomatitis :(

Then Mom -- well used to animal shenanigans by now, bless her -- appeared with the cat carrier and held it for me so I could get the hawk inside and carefully free the shirt from its talons.

After setting the carrier in a quiet, shaded spot away from the party, I called the local rehabbers on the game department website who are listed as licensed to care for raptors, all of which were currently full. Well, crap. So then I called the Wildlife Center of VA, but it was already after-hours, and I had to leave a message in their non-emergency box (I tried the emergency line first, but the voicemail message has a very clear set of what qualifies as a true emergency, and this wasn't it so I didn't bother the poor vet intern on call). They'll call back during their regular hours tomorrow, and I'll drive it wherever they tell me to take it.

In the meantime, I have a very unhappy hawk in a cat carrier in my bathroom 😬

[waywardstation]

O had an idea a while back, but I don't remember if you were the one I sent the ask to or not for it about a potential Ingo/Alari reunion. In hindsight pretty sure it was someone else, but my idea was that after reuniting with her family, Akari would remember Ingo had been Unovian and decided to take a trip to Univa in hopes of finding him. Since Castelua City is a port town, she'd lively make landfall there and stay in a pokecenter. One hesdcanon about pokecenters i have that aren't seen in the games is that they have various facilities within them dedicated to pokemon care, which we know, and that includes a place for trainers to freely roam with their pokemon, )ike a fenced-in harden in the back or something that we never get to see, and it's a sort of communal locations for trainers to meet up and talk about the latest gossip, discuss their pokemon, or trade news together. And while in the Castelia Pokecenter's communal area with some of her pokemon, our favorite girl overhears some rumors about a 'Subway Boss who went Missing Being Found' and the Battle Subway's subsequent grand reopening. Since the description matches her Uncle Ingo, you can guess what Akari does next.

In regards to my interactive reblog game

Ahh yes! I do have the same idea about pokemon centers, because in the anime, we do see other facilities within them, like designated places for trainers to sleep overnight if their Pokemon are there, and cafeterias to go to, as well as phone booths and different rooms for different injuries a Pokémon has! Your headcanon can certainly expand on this further, too! I love the idea about backyard areas!

And I do really like this idea for the Reblog game! I have a loose visual of how I want a scene like this to go in the comic, and it is close to this, but I’m not developing it too much now so I don’t end up getting too attached to it, just for a winning choice somewhere in the middle to steer it away from it happening that way ^^;

BUT they will find each other again! That is a guarantee for this story. With Ingo having only fragments (but he can regain them throughout these segments, I already had a way set up in case this happened), Akari will probably have to do most of the work finding him. Probably a lot like this scenario you’ve presented!

Thanks for the ask anon!! I appreciate you sharing it with me!! ^^

[2w1ld3st-2dr3ams]

𝔻𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕞 𝟙: ℍ𝕪𝕓𝕣𝕚𝕕𝕤

K!nkt0ber Day 1: Hybrids

➸ Muse 1: Tomioka Giyuu (Demon Slayer)

➸ WC: 3.3k

➸ CW: Cow Hybrid!Giyuu, mentions of pornography (or a raunchy scene in a movie), inexperienced Giyuu, mentions of past abuse, fluffy shit all things considered, a lot of boob stuff, TLDR: Just milking Cow Giyuu's tits and there's feelings in there.

➸ Mumbles: Recycling baby (this was meant for last year, help me) Also, an excuse to write for Giyuu tits tbh.

It wasn't often that you heard rustling in your backyard, given that you didn't have any pets and wild animals weren't anywhere near your house. Perhaps it was your neighbor's dog or that one raccoon you saw stuffing it's face with garbage nearby that one time. Either way, you didn't particularly like the idea of something rummaging through your backyard, especially if that thing decided your backyard would make an adequate toilet. God knows you had one to many debates with your neighbors about their animal's bathroom habits and, in your personal opinion, too little time had passed between the last one and this up and coming one.

Whatever the reason, you decided it was better if you shooed the little critter out yourself. If you caught it early enough, maybe you could persuade it to leave it's business elsewhere, preferably not in your recently remodeled backyard. You grabbed a nearby broom to shoo the animal away and begrudgingly made your way to the origin of the sound. When you got there, however, all that greeted you was the stillness of nature and a prominent hole near one of your recently planted bushes. This, in turn, damaged the structure your bushes were resting on and managed to make one fall over. As you could imagine, there was an even more sizable hole in your backyard now, not to mention the de-rooted bush that lay so pathetically on its side.

Irritated by the revelation of such sabotage against your hard work, you made your way back to your house to look for your tools—the faster you took care of the now ruined section, the faster you could set up some proper fencing to stop any further incidents. You quickly zoned out as you got to work, trying not to think of the culprit of this crime most likely laughing at your agony or the fact that you were feeling very strongly over a simple hole. Just as you were finishing the maintenance and re-planting the bush, you noticed some rapid movement out of the corner of your eye. A flash of hair was escaping the corners of your vision when you turned your head towards the movement. All you could figure out from all the rapid head turning was a scurrying tuff of dark hair that seemingly swayed with hurry.

You, of course, deducted that whatever that was had to be connected to your backyard. It was a rather large animal too, considering the size and quantity of the hair. You couldn't think of many animals near your area that would match the description, so you settled on incriminating the little trash eater that still made such a ruckus at night. Deciding to leave the thought of sentencing animals like a judge aside, you made your way back inside once you had finished packing your tools away. You would go visit the town center and find some fences tomorrow, today you had promised one of your neighbors that you would dog-sit while they went on a weekend getaway with their boyfriend.

A few hours later, you found yourself hiking to your house as exhaustion was dragging you down by your hairs. Any chiropractor or orthopedic would be cringing at your posture right now, your back almost made a perfect arc forward and your head was inching closer to the ground. Your neighbors dog was adorable and you didn't mind doing them a favor every now and then, but if you heard that damm dog bark at the wind outside one more time you would've lost your sanity. Apparently, all the other dogs of the neighborhood had been feeling some sort of way about the outside of their comfortable homes at exactly the same time. You would hear a cacophony of barks during the late evening and sit there rethinking your choice of living situation.

Through the snippets of conversation your tired ears caught, your neighborhood was being haunted by…something. You weren't sure if haunted was the right word, more like invaded. There had been multiple reports of something terrorizing people's backyards and an increase in black-haired-animal sightings nearby. Considering a possible raccoon infestation, you made a beeline to your backyard, getting anxious by the second that your little thief-cosplaying friend had decided to pay you another visit. The noise you made clearly scared whatever was inhabiting your garden, as you heard a very pronounced "Ah!" coming from the darkness.

Instead of being greeted with a chubby, short, and dual-colored cretin, you were greeted with a very naked man sporting peculiar cow ears and horns and a matching tail. He was in a horrible state, if being publicly naked wasn't bad enough, sporting a variety of bruises in an array of tones. His chest area was especially bruised, sporting what appeared to be suction marks around his nipples. He was, rightfully, terrified, his face contorting into a mixture of fear and regret. The one thing you noticed about him the most, however, was that peculiar head of very prominent black hair that almost camouflaged into the darkness of the night.

Your first thought was relief, since you finally had a face to the culprit of the crime scene that you had just cleaned up hours prior. Your second thought was checking what you last ate and drank in the last 24 hours. After making sure you didn't consume any hallucinogenic substances, you turned your attention back to the man—half man was probably a better way to put it. You couldn't get a proper word out before the being in front of you began rapid-firing apologies and explanations. You couldn't make out very much from his…eloquent speech, apart from the words "farm", "mistreatment", "hybrid", and "escaped".

Though not much information was supplied, it was enough for you to put two and two together. Plus, if the continuously frequent visits from men in uniforms asking about "a missing product" told you anything, this farm had located him and was currently hunting him down. Now, you weren't educated in the laws about half human-half animal people, but you were fair to assume that whatever was happening at his farm was against a bunch of workplace regulations. You did your best to bring the now hyperventilating man to your house without causing too much suspicion, which was noticeable hard to do considering how sketchy it would look to see your neighbor's silhouette dragging something prominently non-human back to their house. Nevertheless, you both made it inside without anybody calling out to you, which you would take as a victory.

First order of business now, get some clothes on the poor man. It was decently into the nighttime now, the poor thing must've been freezing. You told him to sit down near the heating device while you went and got some clothes and blankets for him. You got him one of your old shirts as well as some sweatpants and underwear. While making sure he was comfortable and warm, you started making light conversation just to fill in the air. You weren't sure what to do in a situation like this, so maybe eradicating the silence would make you think better. Your efforts were wasted on him though, as he looked down at his lap with a perfectly sculpted neutral expression.

Deciding to let him be, you got up and cooked the both of you some food. You made sure to avoid steak or dairy products, half out of respect and half out of dumbfoundedness. You sat down next to him and handed him his food, which he immediately dropped. Startled and a bit offended, you asked him why he did that. He responded with that neutral face, perhaps sporting hints of embarrassment, that his muscle function was heavily underused thanks to the abuse he endured back at the farm and that it would take a while before he got full control over his actions. It made you question how he could've made such a sizable hole in your backyard, but you were too tired to question him about it. Your half-asleep mind came up with a brilliant solution to his dilemma, fortunately.

Picking up your fork, you pricked a bit of food and brought it to his lips. Surprised adorned his face for seconds before he hesitantly opened his mouth, allowing you to feed him. You went slow, matching his pace and letting him tell you when he wanted another bite. It was serene, an act of kindness that the hybrid in front of you probably hadn't felt in a long time.

❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥

Giyuu didn't register when his adoration for you intensified to what it was today. He remembered the night when you first met very clearly, as it managed to break down every single prejudice he had about himself in mere hours. You were so gentle with him, so patient and loving, even when he had dropped your food and messed up your backyard. You didn't send him back to that place, you never even pressured him to tell you about it.

By this point, he had been living with you for about a year and a half now; it melted his heart that you wanted him to stay and hadn't kicked him out yet, but it also made his ever-growing feelings for you fester for longer. It scared him, being so close to you. Closeness back at the farm meant he had broken a rule and was about to be punished, it meant torture and nights spent crying until he had no more left to give. Closeness with you, however, felt like home. Home, what a funny word indeed.

He felt close to you when you both sat down by the heating device that night you met, knees almost touching due to the proximity; he felt at home with you when you softly brought food to his lips, letting him know you were willing to cooperate with him in the moment. He felt close to you when he was cowering into your chest because of a nightmare, reduced to a sobbing mess of tears; he felt at home with you when you gently cradled his head in your hands, wiping his tears away and promising that he was safe with you. He felt close to you when he let you touch his horns, bowing his head to you in an act of submission; he felt at home with you when you traced over his horns like they were made out of porcelain, like if the man in front of you deserved nothing but the softest of touches.

You were his home, the place he could run to without judgement, the place where he knew he wouldn't be shunned or thrown away. Naturally, Giyuu wanted to repay you; old habits die hard and this one just happened to be learned back at the farm. He knew that relying on his instinct for this wouldn't get across his point though, so he had to formulate something else.

He thought for days about a variety of presents he could give you, but none of them seemed perfect enough. You had enough home decorations, he couldn't cook all that well to make you something, you had made it clear to him that you didn't want a maid much less try and use him for food, he didn't know how much he wanted to risk going outside with you; there were so many discarded options he was beginning to get overwhelmed. He could always offer you his body, but he wasn't quite sure how to approach that subject. Sex and intimacy back at the farm where basically two different worlds; where there was one, the other couldn't be. He couldn't give you something as bland as a sexual experience, you could get those for less than he was offering you and with much more experienced people.

Why was this so hard? All he had to do was thank you for everything you'd done for him and then give you something in return, why was he fretting so much over this? He looked at you in search for something that might help him figure out what he could give you—and accidently stumbled upon the perfect gift. You were staring at the TV screen, soft eyed and sporting a stupidly lovesick grin, as some movie played on the screen. Said movie just happened to include a couple's first time, and they couldn't have been more awkward about it. Still, the way each touch they made radiated love and adoration was making you giddy. Giyuu saw how much fun the couple seemed to be having, even though they had failed to advance below the waist for the past 45 minutes or so, and could instantly feel his cheeks heating up. Did you want something like this?

It was a little overwhelming, you see. Giving you his all, his most vulnerable, and recieving the same from you? Being treated so gently, so softly, so…human. The image on the screen flashed to a shot of a pair of hands slowly carresing and fondling with the chest of the other, taking time to squeeze them and tease their partner. Giyuu looked back at you and saw you with a slightly darker hue adorning your cheeks. Huh, he might've just found his gift for you…and all thanks to some random Saturday night movie.

❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥

You came home from a night out to a completely silent house. Yeah, Giyuu wasn't known for being loud, but he would at least have something playing in the background while he went about his day. Sometimes you would catch him humming some tune you've never heard before, but it never failed to make your day. You put your bag down, took of your shoes, and traveled deeper into the empty house. Once you reached your bedroom door, you began getting suspicious. Did he run away? Was he unhappy here? Was he playing a prank on you? Did the people looking for him miraculously find him? You hadn't seen him since you set foot in your house and you couldn't distinguish even one sign of life anywhere.

Still, your concern was overpowered by your tiredness, so you promptly entered your bedroom and passed out almost immediately. You swore you would never underestimate how soft your bed could be again; it felt like you were sleeping on a very fluffy cloud. As you dozed off, you failed to notice the door of your bathroom door opening and closing, a figure now ocuppying the space in front of it. Your lost roommate was blinking down at you in confusion; you weren't supposed to fall asleep this early, were you seriously that tired? His plan of recreating the movie scene failed, and that stung a bit, but you looked so comfortable drooling on your pillow that he let you be.

Though, he couldn't help but sit down next to your pillow, pushing his thighs together until they sort or replicated it. He had done his own research, no matter how long it took him to figure out how to work your computer, and found that humans liked resting their head on soft things. And if you asked him, his thighs were pretty soft. Slowly, almost as if he wasn't even moving at all, he managed to position your head on his thighs, moving the pillow away from you. It was a different touch than what he was used to, the blades of the machines never felt quite as soft as your hair on his skin. He looked down at your sleeping face, scrunched up yet so peaceful, and he couldn't stop the strange warmth that invaded his chest. He never understood you fully, but having you here with him was enough for now. Even if he had planned for something completely different, this wasn't so bad either.

❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥

You don't remember your pillow being so warm, and so soft. Slowly shifting to lay on your stomach, you wrapped your arms around your comfortable pillow and snuggled into its warmth.

Oh how you couldn't be more wrong.

Giyuu was both flabbergasted and appreciative. You looked like you were having the best sleep of your life, but the way you hugged onto his hips and how your lips would occationally graze his thighs had him more worked up than he wanted to admit. There was a faint ache in his chest, different from the mushy feeling he felt. This one was a bit more painful, as if something was messing with his chest. He knew that feeling all too well. It was the same feeling he got right before those suctioning cups were placed on his chest.

Maybe, releaving himself a bit wouldn't hurt—at least, not more than the pain he was in right now. Holding in his milk wasn't healthy and, no matter how badly we wanted to keep this from you, he also didn't want to wake you up. So, he relied on his instincts to guide his hand down towards his nipples, a wet stain on the shirt he was wearing. He flicked one of his nipples over the shirt, stain becoming just a tad bit bigger as he could feel the liquid drip down his chest and abdomen. He bit his lips hard, attempting to muffle any noises that fell out of his lips. He swore he didn't sound so sinful back on the farm.

"Ngh~"

You turned back around, laying on your back once more before yawning. You felt something wet fall on your tongue.

Was that…milk?

Your face scrunched, confused as to why your saliva tasted like milk. There was also something dripping on your face. Did you sleepwalk outside again or was there a leak in your roof? You slowly opened your eyes, bothered by the constant droplets on your face which broke the very nice dream you were having. Instead of being greeted by another hole—you were starting to notice a pattern—you were greeted by the sight of Giyuu's chest slightly covering your vision as his hands teased and played with his chest. Your ears, which were apparently not working before, suddenly decided to bless you with the sound of soft moans and wanton whimpers, a few keens here and there when his fingers did a particularly rough motion.

What a wonderful sight to wake up to.

"A-ah! P-please~"

He didn't even know what he was begging for, but it only made his motions become rougher. He was in too deep to notice that you had opened your eyes and had shifted your head off his lap. That is, until he felt your hand on his shoulder. He turned his head towards you, eyes dazed yet holding a twinge of panic. Still, he couldn't stop his fingers from moving across his chest, moaning shamelessly. He was panting like he ran a marathon, chest swollen and a bit heavy.

"Y-you're awake! I have a—mphm!—g-gift for you!"

He managed to get out through his moans. With a not-quite-all-there smile, he pushed his tits together. You could see why they were so heavy now, as milk seemed to endlessly pour down his chest. He leaned forward slightly, allowing a perfect view of his cleavage. He looked up at you with half-lidded eyes, a dumb smile on his face.

"I-I saw how much you seemed to like that—ngh!—s-scene in that m-movie the other day, so…"

Well, he didn't need to tell you twice. He let out a loud keen once you attached your mouth to his nipple, tongue running over the sensitive bud while you teased more milk out of his chest. The sounds he was making were glorious, and you were quite thirsty after that long nap…

Oh well, he'd have to sit still and pretty for a few hours while you got your fill.

[ape-apocalypse]

can you reccomend some of the documentaries you watched about apes?

Funny enough, I've been planning on making a list of documentaries so thanks for the push! I’ve watched a bunch to hype up for Kingdom and I’ll keep watching as we wait for POTA news. These are what I've been able to find with my various subscription services and internet access in the USA so their availability may vary for you. Also a warning that, due to these being non-fiction documentaries there is very real footage of animal injuries and death (from both humans and natural circumstances).

Monkey Business (Amazon Prime) - A long running show (9 seasons) about a primate rescue center in the UK. I really loved this one because you got to follow apes of the course of years. I even cried when one ape who had been there from the first season passed away in the final season. The show mostly focuses on chimps and orangutans but also features lemurs, woolly monkeys, gibbons and other species. The center focuses on giving the animals in their care the most natural life they can in captivity, and also assists in breeding programs for several endangered species. Jane Goodall even comes out in one episode to present them with an award for excellent enclosure construction. The theme song is very loud and distinctive, the point that my roommate asked how long this series was because she could hear the theme song coming from my room for weeks as I went through all 9 seasons. Highly recommend this one because the personalities of the apes really stand out when you spend literal years with them; it's worth the time commitment, I loved it.

(Also in making sure I had all the details about this show right, I learned there was a follow up show called Monkey Life that featured Andy Serkis himself narrating the first season and they seem to all be available on YouTube for free so I have a new multi-season show to watch now, thank you!!!)

Orangutan Jungle School (YouTube) - Rescue group dedicated to teaching young orangutans how to survive in the wild so they can be released when they're older. Only the first two episodes of this show are available on YouTube for free but I also devoured any clips I could find. I found this show particularly hilarious because the baby orangs are adorable. They cry when they don't get their cups of milk fast enough or when they can't figure out how to crack into a coconut. I always see adult orangutans as slow moving, so the activity and demanding personalities of the babies delighted me. If nothing else, watch these two clips because I have watched the clips of the babies screaming and the humans overreacting to fake snakes on repeat for ages.

Chimp Empire (Netflix) - Two chimpanzee groups in Uganda's Ngogo forest face off over territory and food, while each group faces their own struggles from within. This one is about wild chimps and it is fascinating to see their natural ways outside of rescue centers. The cinematography is gorgeous; I'd love to know how they got all these shots without disturbing the chimps. It's only 4 episodes; I wish it was longer but it packs a lot into its short run time.

Meet The Chimps (Disney+) - A one season show focusing on chimps living in a rescue center in Louisiana. A single season show so you don't get a lot of time with the chimps but it's got a much smaller number of chimps to get to know than Monkey Business. Also the troops are housed near each other so it's interested to see the dominance displays, even through a fence. My favorite part was near the end with the mystery of who was the father of an accidental baby. I guessed wrong!

Kingdom Of The Apes: Battle Lines (Disney+) - Two separate ape groups, one of chimps and the other of gorillas, sort out fights for dominance and leadership of the troop in their own ways. Personally I didn't like this one. Jumping back and forth between gorillas and chimps in a documentary less than an hour didn't leave me very invested, but I thought I'd add it if anyone was interested.

I'll throw in a couple podcasts too, should be free on your preferred podcast app:

Ologies, one episode on primatology and a separate episode on gorillaology

National Park After Dark, a two-part episode on the life, work, and murder of Dian Fossey, a primatologist who worked with gorillas and wrote the book 'Gorillas In the Mist'

The Wild With Chris Morgan, an episode on orangutans called People Of The Forest

There are a lot more documentaries I want to watch, especially several for free on YouTube. I hope this list is of interest to you and I welcome recommendations from anyone else.

[goldninja91]

Since The Art of Murder is gaining so much traction right now, I thought I'd put out a personal tier list of how likely each character is to be the murderer and why I think that's the case. So here we go, from lowest to highest:

Sosuke: This man did nothing wrong. Protect him at all costs!!

Seriously though, I hightly doubt Sosuke is the murderer, despite being the most physically capable of doing so. It's made clear early on that he hates injustice and the death of innocents. Being an anime character, he wears his heart on his sleeve and is appropriately melodramatic when he mourns the death of OC. He just seems like an open and honest man who unfortunately can't communicate with his friends due to the language barrier.

Albie: Albie may not be like other girls- er, I mean, other 2D princesses, and she may have a shrewd mindset, but I also doubt she killed OC either. Despite her (perhaps unintentional) putdown of OC at the beginning by saying he "wasn't even a real character," every other interaction she had with him had her acting more sweet and caring, showing him the ropes and leading him around the room to explore.

She was also the one to suggest helping OC out of the sketchbook on the night of the murder. If she were the murderer, I think she would have been much more careful in how she approached that situation. She also seemed as confused as everyone else as to why Sosuke and Winn were covered in mud and water, respectively. Speaking of...

Winn: I still don't think she's the murderer, but Winn was acting incredibly strange the whole time. Which is to be expected of a cartoon protagonist, but this was a different kind of weird. Winn was the first to actually suggest the idea of murder, and was quick to try and accuse Albie. Then when tensions started to rise, she shifted the blame over to Sosuke by saying he was by far the most suspicous, due to his show being over and him being covered in "mud cake."

However, I still think she's innocent. This is mostly due to her excitement in being around OC, as well as her shedding a tear out of pride when she first learned that Pip had made an original character. From that, even with Winn's worries later in the song, I think we can safely assume that even if Winn is jealous, she's not so jealous as to destroy such an important milestone for Pip.

Giorgio: I'll be honest... I'm kind of on the fence with this one. On the one hand, the "the detective was the culprit all along!" story I feel has been done plenty of times before, but... we're primarily looking at in-universe character moments, and Giorgio has plenty.

Firstly, Giorgio is clearly a bit vain and narcissistic, taking great pride in his "natural beauty" and being the most popular route in his game, "Ace Romance Detective: Crimes of Passion!" He was also the first to deviate from the group when they were showing OC around, fading into the shadows and voicing his own fears of being erased with no one else to hear him. And while Winn was the one to suggest the idea of murder in the first place, Giorgio took that idea and ran a country mile with it while also instantly labeling himself as the only non-suspect, launching into an ominous song while he himself is cast heavily in shadow.

However, I still don't think it's him. Giorgio going down the murder rabbit hole with Winn could just be excitement on his part at finally getting to do some real detective work. And while he is pretty self-centered, he also clearly cares about Pip and the other characters, even OC. This is shown as much when he's taking charge in showing OC around, and securing the idea of investigation by voicing his own concerns that Pip would be crushed if she found out her creation had been destroyed. He's clearly concerned about her welfare in that moment. Which leads us to the final contender...

Pip: You all knew it was coming. Still though, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "artist hates her drawing, so she tore it out," though that already would be a neat twist. The truth may be that it wasn't actually Pip, but other circumstances in the real world that caused OC to be torn from her notebook. Firstly there's her dog Weaboo, but that feels too obvious.

My personal theory is that Pip doesn't have many friends. This is mostly inferred from how she talks to her own drawings, even saying things like "Thanks for being my friends again today." That is not something someone with healthy friendships does. And the expression she makes while saying that exact line makes her look like she's dead inside.

Pip might be routinely bullied at school, and perhaps said bullies are the ones who ruined her sketchbook, spilling water on it to try and ruin her sketches. As for the mud, Pip might have just accidentally dropped the sketchbook in her yard, with Weaboo running over it while running in the mud.

Admittedly, this isn't much in terms of evidence. And if I'm wrong, so be it. I just wanted to share my thoughts with y'all. What do you think?

[voraciousvore]

Giganterra (Chapter 4)

Prologue/ TOC | Previous (3) | Next (5)

Word Count: 2.2k

------ Chapter 4: An Arrow to the Knee ------

Eren had the misfortune of living near the colossal border walls. No humans wanted to be in the shadow of the unsightly structures that marred the natural landscape and reminded them of their own confinement, so settlements on the fringes of the kingdom were sparse. Eren had grown up in the area, so she was used to it. There were advantages to living away from the large farms and the bustle of the cities. Her humble little cottage was surrounded by a forest with abundant quantities of untapped resources. She could harvest fresh mushrooms and berries and hunt for game like rabbits and deer. She also had plenty of room for a modest garden of fruits and vegetables. She appreciated the solitude and extra space. 

Even so, Eren hated to be reminded that she was fenced in on all sides like a caged animal. While she had peace and quiet most of the time, giants were noisy simply by virtue of their great size. Their footsteps frequently caused seismic ripples through the earth. Occasionally, during late nights, the giant guards would get drunk and rowdy, and Eren could hear their deep voices resounding from the other side of the wall as the scoundrels laughed, argued, gambled, and engaged in minor scuffles. She’d have to bury her head under a pillow and plug her ears to get any decent sleep. 

Hatred festered in her heart for giants. She despised them for their arrogant air, their casual cruelty, and their constant oppressive presence. With her being so close to the border crossing, she had personally witnessed giants carrying off distressed humans in cages. They felled trees by kicking them over and scarred the forest by crushing the vegetation underfoot. She’d almost been stepped on once herself, with complete indifference from the offender. They didn’t care about human lives at all and saw them as nothing more than commodities to be exploited, not people. 

Today, she was hunting in the forest, one of her favorite activities. She enjoyed the thrill of the hunt: tracking an animal through the woods, stalking her prey, killing it, and reaping the fruits of her labor in the form of a hearty meal. She discovered a set of fresh deer tracks in a patch of mud and followed them. She spied the distinctive shape of a deer through the trees and slowed her pace, moving stealthily in a crouch until she had a direct line of sight. 

It was a doe with her spotted fawn, grazing on a plot of grass. Eren slid an arrow out of the quiver strapped to her back and raised her bow. She aimed, keeping her hands steady, and pulled the string taut. Just as she was about to launch her arrow straight into the deer’s breast, the earth shook beneath her and disrupted her aim. The deer jolted at the interruption and darted off into the forest. 

Eren cursed to herself with frustration. The ground quaked again, and again, with the rhythm of giant footsteps, several of them. She didn’t have to look far to discern their towering profiles striding towards her. A flock of birds scattered in a panic. 

“Why—the trees are so small!” a deafening voice boomed, echoing through the woodland. The birds swooped past the giant’s pillar of a leg, far thicker and taller than any tree. “Look at those birds!” 

Eren rolled her eyes. Stupid giants. They were so clueless and indifferent to the interruption their mere presence caused as they stomped through the forest. She perceived, with some alarm, they were heading right for her as they stepped over the trees like they were nothing more than tall grass. She dashed to get out of the way, ducking into a bush as an enormous boot clomped down and split a tree trunk straight down the center with a loud crack. Eren shuddered at the raw power on display. The giant didn’t seem to even notice as he kept walking, chattering on in a voice that resounded across the land.  

Their long strides brought them through the area with alarming rapidity. Their footsteps faded as soon as they came. They transformed into distant figures on the horizon, their voices still traveling through the air in a low reverberation. Eren huffed and gritted her teeth, returning her unused arrow to her quiver. She was mad about missing out on some venison, but her rancor over the situation ran deeper than that. More than anything, she felt weak and insignificant, in the face of such overwhelming power. 

She tried to push on through the day and sought out the deer she lost, but they were gone. The giants had disrupted the wildlife and sent the animals into hiding. Her mood soured further. Later on, she caught sight of a rabbit nibbling on some dandelions, unaware of her presence. Her heart quickened with anticipation as she prepared her bow. Yet again, the ground rumbled and the rabbit fled at a breakneck speed. 

“Sir Maneater, are you alright? You seem a bit flustered,” a giant voice cut through the air. “You needn’t worry, no harm was done to the wee lass.” 

Eren swore and glared up at the great behemoths as they appeared far above the treeline. With her bow still drawn, Eren leveled her weapon at the nearest giant in a burst of impulsive anger. Without thinking of the consequences, she shot her arrow. The projectile sailed over the leaves of the trees and bounced harmlessly off his boot as he raised his leg to step over a tall tree. She heard the soft clink of chainmail from under his clothes. 

“I’m fine. A word of advice, Joey, it’s best not to get too attached to humans. Particularly with our purpose for coming here,” the knight wearing the chainmail recommended. He was speaking more to himself than to Joey, as he couldn’t get the cute, tiny blonde damsel out of his mind. He knew it would be foolish to get emotionally involved—yet, he could still almost feel her light weight in his palm, and for whatever reason it made his stomach flutter with butterflies. 

Eren’s temper flared hot at his dehumanizing words, particularly since she was unaware of the context. She had a brief moment to reconsider her actions, but dismissed any caution and nocked another arrow. Her rage encouraged her to be reckless. She knew better than to try piercing chainmail, and instead aimed for the other giant he was speaking to. She aimed far higher and fired another arrow, watching as it sailed in a magnificent arc and planted itself right beneath his knee. 

“Ouch! What was that?” Joey muttered, halting in place. A small spot of blood appeared on his breeches. Eren covered her mouth and giggled to herself, hiding behind the trunk of a tree. Joey deftly pinched the tiny arrow embedded in his skin and plucked it out. “I got a splinter or something in my leg.” He didn’t realize that the microscopic bit of wood was, in fact, an arrow, and tossed the minute sliver away. 

Emboldened by her victory, Eren loaded another arrow and aimed as high as she could. She drew back the string with all her might and released with a twang. The arrow followed an impressive parabola and stabbed into his leg again, this time in the flesh of his thigh just above the knee. 

“Ah! Again?” Joey said. This time, when he pulled the arrow out, he examined it closely. “Hey, this is an arrow! Somebody is shooting at me!” He angled his head down and his glasses caught the sun with a bright flash. His fearsome look made Eren’s blood run cold as she realized she was in danger. She stayed hidden, her heart pounding in her chest. Fortunately, the giant wasn’t able to spot her in the bushes. 

Leon and Sir Maneater shrugged and kept walking, clearly not considering the mini rogue archer a threat. Joey frowned but followed behind them, continuing to sweep the ground with his eyes as he proceeded. The canopy of verdant foliage obscured his view of the ground, however. He felt a tiny droplet of blood dribble down his knee from the fresh wound. It bothered him that a creature so small was able to wound and evade him; his pride as Sir Maneater’s trusty squire was wounded, ever so slightly. 

As the giants stomped past her, Eren experienced a surge of courage and peered out from around the tree. She aimed her bow at the flesh of the giant’s calf and launched a final arrow. Her arrow bit into its target with perfect accuracy, and Eren grinned mischievously. Her grin vanished, though, when the giant spun around with startling speed. He was expecting her to fire again, so he was already on edge and ready to go. Eren didn’t have time to duck behind the tree before his eyes landed on her. 

Her mind went blank with fear and she bolted, just like the rabbit and deer earlier. She couldn’t outrun a giant, however, and he easily crouched down on his haunches and blocked her path with a massive hand exceeding her height, like a wall. She squeaked and dropped her bow as he effortlessly scooped her up into his hand. 

“Hey, what are you doing? Why are you shooting at me?” Joey inquired. “Attacking a giant so rashly could be dangerous for a little human!” He didn’t intend to frighten the diminutive woman, but his voice was as loud and menacing as thunder to her. Thinking fast, she grabbed an arrow out of her quiver and thrust it into one of his fingers. 

“Ah!” Joey gasped with surprise and dropped her. Luckily, she didn’t fall far and managed to land in Joey’s lap without serious injury. Before he could react, she slid down his enormous thigh to a soft patch of ground, sprang to her feet, and sprinted as fast as her feet would carry her. 

“Hold on, wait—” Joey called to her, reaching out his hand, but then he stopped. He could’ve easily grabbed her again, since she was well within arm’s length, but he considered the look of terror on her tiny features and reconsidered. He watched her disappear into the brush, her long black hair flowing off her shoulders. He felt a mild guilt, knowing he had frightened her; it hadn’t been his intention. His regret only deepened when he realized that this was his first real interaction with a human, and he had failed miserably, without regard for how she might feel about being grabbed against her will. 

Joey looked down at his hand pensively, at the arrow poking out of his skin. She hadn’t hurt him that badly. The tip was sharp, but the arrow was too tiny to really cause him significant damage beyond spilling a single drop of blood. He pulled out the thin stick and flicked it away. He noticed the miniature bow in the grass and picked it up gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, so as not to break it. Joey, in his training for knighthood, had handled a bow many times before, and he marveled at how teeny and cute the weapon was, like a toy, while also so precisely crafted. No giant could possibly manufacture an item so small and with such fine detail.  

“Joey, are you coming?” Leon questioned, from several paces off. 

“Y-yeah,” he replied. He carefully set the bow back down where he found it, as tempted as he was to keep it as a souvenir. He stood back up, removing the other arrow from his calf, and rejoined the other giants. 

Eren felt like her lungs were going to pop from exertion as she fled at top speed. She ran as far as she could before her breath finally gave out and she had to stop, flopping down against a fallen log. She gasped for oxygen, sweat pouring down her face. Despite how terrifying the encounter had been, she was exhilarated. She had succeeded, not only in wounding the giant, but also evading capture. She survived, with only her bow as a casualty. 

Despite their godlike size, the behemoths weren’t immortal beings, immune to damage. They could be hurt, which meant they could be killed. Eren grinned to herself wickedly, clenching her hands into fists. She wanted to slaughter them all. She’d gotten a huge thrill out of sinking her arrows into some giant flesh, as revenge for their complete domination of Minimaterra, and their despicable superiority complex. Her resentment escalated into bloodlust as her victory clouded her judgement. 

She no longer felt like some insignificant little bug at the feet of the giants, only worthy of being stepped on. She had agency. She could become a giant slayer, a hero, saving the lives of other humans. She imagined sneaking into the castle and assassinating the giant king, perhaps poisoning him or slitting his throat while he was sleeping. Her thoughts may have been nothing but pure fantasy, but they were rewarding, and comforting to her. They followed her into her dreams that night, and she slept well, despite the obnoxious voices of the giant guards over the walls, echoing from afar. For once, Eren felt she had control over her life, an outlet to vent her murderous resentment. She had hope for the future. 

Chapter 5

[galtx]

GALTx eNews: Keep Halloween All Treat, No Trick

Halloween has become one of the most popular holidays and is celebrated more widely than ever! Keep these safety tips in mind to make sure your hounds' Halloween is all treat, no tricks:

1. Staying In for Trick or Treating: One of the greatest risks for hounds on Halloween is escape through repeatedly opened doors. The best safety precaution will depend on your hound’s propensity to escape. Some hounds do well on a leash until the trick or treating stops. Other hounds are ok with a baby gate or ex pen at the front door. Shy dogs might need to be kept away from the door entirely, either confined to another room by a closed door or in a crate.

2. Going Out for Trick or Treating: The safest course is to walk your dogs before dark and to keep them indoors for the rest of the night. If you can’t resist trick or treating with your hounds, remember they will be exposed to unusual commotion and noises. Even dogs that are usually brave may become fearful. Keep an extra tight hold on the leash and cross the street to avoid startling decorations or boisterous kids. Watch traffic closely and consider reflective safety leg bands or headlamps to increase visibility.

3. Keep Pets Safe Inside: Because of the association of black with Halloween and the use of animals in some rituals, black pets are at risk for being teased, stolen, injured and even killed. Check your fence, gates, doors, and windows to ensure your pets are safely enclosed and keep them inside with you as much as possible for Halloween.

4. Check Tags and Microchip Info: Take a moment now to make sure your dogs’ identification tags are secure and current and that the contact information associated with your pet’s microchip is up to date. Click here to read more about what to do if your hound gets lost. 

5. Think Twice About Costumes: Pet costumes are often more fun for humans than hounds. If your dog looks uncomfortable in a costume, he probably is. Go with a simple bandanna instead. If your pup loves to dress up, make sure the costume does not restrict movement, breathing, barking, panting, hearing, or seeing. Remove any objects that might be chewed off and become a choking hazard. Don’t use elastic or rubber bands as they can cut off circulation. Always supervise pets in costume and monitor for overheating. 

6. Keep Candy Out of Reach: Dogs shouldn’t have any candy, but chocolate and candies sweetened with Xylitol are especially dangerous. Keep all of the sweets out of reach and watch young children with candy to ensure they don’t inappropriately share. If you think your pup ingested something harmful, contact your vet or call the 24-hour ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center hotline at 888-426-4435. Remember, candy and wrappers will likely be on sidewalks and in yards for days. Take care that your pup doesn’t pick anything up to eat on walks.

7. Decorate Safely: Consider how your hound will interact with Halloween decorations in your yard and house. Keep candles well out of reach and away from spaces your greyhounds plays. Remember that eating raw pumpkins can cause stomach upset in dogs. Electric cords can be tripping and chewing hazards. Electronic screams, moans, and other Halloween noises can be frightening, especially to sensitive hounds.

We hope you have a “greyt” holiday full of fun for everyone!

10/17/24

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The California Senate passed a bill today that would require cities and counties to protect wildlife connectivity in their land-use plans. The Room to Roam Act, Assembly Bill 1889, directs local officials to minimize harm to wildlife movement as part of their long-term planning and offers development guidelines such as incorporating wildlife-friendly fencing and lighting.

The bill, which received state Assembly support in May, now awaits the governor’s approval.

“Decades of reckless development decisions have fragmented California landscapes, and wildlife are paying the price,” said J.P. Rose, Urban Wildlands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we plan development with care for the natural world, our wild neighbors can have a chance to roam and ultimately thrive.”

Many animals across California are imperiled because poorly planned development has cut into their habitat, leaving them trapped and struggling to survive. Mountain lions, California red-legged frogs, mule deer and many other animals struggle to find food and shelter, and some suffer from harmful inbreeding due to habitat fragmentation.

“California has more threatened and endangered species than any other state,” said Mari Galloway, California director at the Wildlands Network. “AB 1889 is a critical tool to help our biodiversity through bridging the gap between local land-use and wildlife habitat needs.”

The bill, which is co-sponsored by the Center and Wildlands Network, complements the Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection Act, which requires the California Department of Transportation to prioritize wildlife crossing structures when improving or building roads. It also complements the Center-sponsored California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2023 which makes landscapes safer for wildlife by limiting toxic rodenticides. The Room to Roam Act also helps California meet its 30x30 goal to conserve 30% of the state’s lands and waters by 2030.

[evita-shelby]

They didn't know we were seeds

chapter 24

cw: murder, past sexual assault, eugenics, mentions of minor primal kink, drugging, prostitution and abuse

taglist: @justrainandcoffee @emotionalcadaver @peakyswritings

Eva stares at the white rose bush as if she could see the future in its perfect white petals. In less than two weeks they had planned this and only time would tell if they would pull it off.

“If the business with the pigs gets resolved today, I’ll come back for Laurie. Jack’s new badge worked.” Eva half-lies to her aunt who doesn’t pry despite seeing through her.

Laurie was at school and would be cared for by her aunt who had become accustomed to her niece’s lying.

The Rebel knows she has the calming pills the Doctor has given her for her anxiety, but she refuses to take them like she refuses the tequila calling her name. She needs to be completely sober for this, there is no room for failure.

If they fail.

Eva doesn’t want to even think what sort of fresh horrors will be unleashed if they do.

The weather will take a turn for the worse up north. The Victor’s Village is more at the center with a warmer and wetter climate, doesn’t get much snow if any like the southern villages where it’s never cold only in the mountains in the southwest. But the north was unpredictable, hot sun or blistering colds.

Bad weather means Jack can stay longer, means coffee for two and Laurie sandwiched between the two of them because his daddy is never home that long.

This time it means Campbell’s shit out of luck.

The wild hogs would eat him in the ruins between 2 and 10, Beetee would ensure the footage showing him coming here would be erased even if it wouldn’t be on the books either way. His lackeys would be blamed but they were so like him the world would be better with them dead too.

For extra measure the fence in 10 would be broken to allow the wild animals to come here and give them an alibi. The herd closest to them had gone as far as the river that began in 2 and ended in 11, who knows where the proof of his demise will end up.

All she has to do is to meet Jack in town, pretend nothing is going on and lead Campbell to the farm.

Except in the riot gear, Eva has no idea which faceless man is him.

This time she is not armed with her brass knuckles and steel toe boots; this time she carries a knife in her sleeve.

They were to meet near the cantina where the peacekeepers used to loiter around and now are forbidden from setting foot there. But they still went, in plain clothes and often just paying the prostitutes there for their usual services in the alley or the abandoned apartment next to it.

No matter how heavy Campbell’s boot is on their necks, life goes on.

Eva pays for a bottle of whiskey ---for Jack who prefers it--- drinks a shot of tequila for her nerves and finds not one, but two Peacekeepers tailing her when she leaves the bar.

One was Jack, one was Campbell’s lackey.

Only Jack would know where to meet her, so she weaves her way through the back alleys she knows better than them and reaches the meeting point only to be caught by the arm by one of them.

The Victor in her panic reveals the knife and places its edge in the only unarmored part of the uniform: the officer’s neck.

“You have no idea how that turns me on.” Jack’s all-too-familiar voice provides a dizzying sort of relief.

“It’s you.” The woman drops her knife with a relieved sight and rolled her eyes at her husband.

“Make sure you have your pills; I’m going to fuck you until the cows come home once this is over.” Jack enjoys games, the instinct of a born hunter combined with being a professional killer since his tweens somehow resulted in a man who likes chasing her around town with the intention of fucking as a reward. If they were to be put in an arena again, he’d probably find it as arousing as he finds being held at knifepoint by her.

“Your mother will be there, aren’t you worried she might hear us?” she asks handing him the bottle of whiskey she had intended to smash against his head had he been the other man.

“Not if we do it in the barn again.” He takes off his helmet, knowing her discomfort won’t end unless she can see his face and reveals that grin she could see the moment he opened his trap. “Are you ready for the fun part, doll?”

Atia Nelson was no stranger to waiting.

Whether it was waiting to finish her degree, waiting for the pregnancy test to come back positive and waiting twelve years to learn the names of her birth parents.

Atia Nelson was no blood relation to the Plinths nor Servilla’s sister, who adopted her after her biological children were disposed of by Strabo Plinth’s heir, Coriolanus Snow.

Something rather obvious given Servilla descends from the same ethnic group those in 10 do and Atia has hair as red as their district color. Something that disqualified her from the inheritance Snow was supposed to split with Strabo’s nephews by marriage and kept her alive after the uninvestigated deaths of Junius, Balbos and Attius.

Atia was born to a prostitute frequented by Peacekeepers both grunts and officers alike and because Pompeia couldn’t afford to raise any of the children she had, gave her up at birth.

She was the youngest, the last of many redhaired children whose fathers were unlisted in their birth certificates and appeared in the same orphanage in the main city. No one knows what happened to Pompeia after Atia was born and adopted by Selene Nelson and until Atia Nelson turned twelve years old, she didn’t even know her name.

Pompeia Ockerman had only an unmarked grave and a reputation. Her beauty had made her a sought-after commodity for the men recruited into Peacekeeper Corps and her poverty easy to exploit.

Atia’s father was an officer from an old family in the Capitol, and when Pompeia begged him to claim his own child, he left her in the dust because the law forbids capitol citizen to recognize a child or marry someone from the districts, so the line above father will always remain empty.

Castrum ‘Chester’ Campbell believed it was her whore mother’s blood that tainted Jack and resulted into becoming a petty criminal whe should have been culled before he was born.

‘But what was there to expect when his mother followed in Pompeia’s footsteps?’ he had sneered at her because children born from a Capitol citizen and a District citizen were seen as abominations to his ilk and every fuck up in her life seen as inevitable thanks to it.

As if being born from the so-called right stock didn’t make Campbell anything less than a monster.

And just like the men who exploited Pompeia because they could, he convinced her the only way her boy could have his charges dropped was if she submitted to him.

She never told her children, not even her mother and her then girlfriend. But Jack had seen the bruises, seen the fear in her eyes and the night before his reaping he promised no one would ever hurt them again.

And now Atia Nelson waits for Chester Campbell to come into the farmhouse expecting to lay a trap for her son.

He comes alone, a mistake on his part. After all, this was just to provide the proof for the crime and take the glory for himself.

“Been long time, hasn’t it?” Atia smiles and bids him to join her for tea.

“Fifteen years and now the defect has bred a different sort of abomination. Must run in his blood.” He sits, the gun inside his coat loaded and within reach knowing she isn’t easy prey. Not like last time. “The boy will die on his twelfth year just like your other grandchild did.”

He drinks the tea, a sleeping tea Eva brewed strong enough to put him under and leave him to die near dried up river between their districts. It would taste the same as any of her homebrewed teas and so he drinks the magnolia tea not knowing Atia has crushed a sedative in it just for him.

The sedative lasts about eight hours, she’s used them since that night Campbell raped her and after the Games took Jack's peace of mind, her Laurie and sweet little Gina from her, she hasn’t stopped. Now they serve a better use than easing her mind enough to let her sleep.

“Dear me, I think I made it too strong for you, didn’t I?” the redhead pretends this is a social call as her companion slumps to the floor as it all kicks in. Campbell can’t even reach for the gun or the communicator to alert his men. Not that it would have worked anyways. Atia has waited fifteen years to kill this bastard.

By the time her son and his wife arrive, he’s been tied and bundled up in the state-issued fabric used for Peacekeeper’s tents.

“You missed all the fun, kids.” She smiles as she makes sure the bastard is wrapped tight enough for the wild animals that will feast on him until he dies. The reports on the wild hogs say they ate a man in less than ten minutes, Atia hopes they take their sweet time with the good major.

It’s dawn when they return from their trip to the dried up river and the three of them share the whiskey on the porch as Chester Campbell exits the stage forever.

Atia knows the ones to face punishment for this will be Jack and Eva. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the Quarter Quell’s twist will be.

“13 has control of a hovercraft in 2, when the games happen, I will make sure Laurie and the rest of the family are on it or I won’t let it leave the Mountain.” Because she will kill Plutarch Heavensbee herself if they aren’t on that plane.

[jinlias]

— home can be a person | ryujin

a/n: this was inspired on a poem that really did a number on me, but then i fell in love with the idea i was creating so i might turn this into an au! of course, there’s no one else i can picture but her. this is a bit long, so sit tight.

<3 college club leader! reader. vet school! students ryujin and reader

what a strange home.

no white picket fence, but it does have two brown eyes

you never understood how people could fall for someone’s eyes. sure, some people had incredibly beautiful eyes, but that was about it. no other pair of orbs had ever captured your attention but hers.

they’re warm, welcoming and so understanding. you had a feeling they would stick around for longer since the moment you stumbled upon them.

“hello! i’m y/n. the leader of the organization. just to let you know there is no pressure to sign up. but im here to help if you have any questions” you had already started talking as soon as you felt the presence, you hadn’t bothered to look up from the pamphlets you were purposely scattering to make presentable. and when you did, you regret having done it so late.

because there she was, bright, doe eyes paying all the attention to you as you speak.. and then she nods and gives you the most delicate smile you’ve ever seen. you are mesmerized.

she proceeds to run her eyes across the many photos and informational pamphlets before grabbing one and skimming through it.

“how exactly does this work? we just rescue animals and help them survive?”

“well, im glad you asked” you had to gulp once out of your trance and nod, opening one of the white binders close to you. “do you just like animals or are you majoring in something close?”

“both” she smiles softly, she looks like she’s dying to speak of it, like she’s truly passionate about her career choice. “im in my first year of vet school, you?”

“sophomore” the warm smile you send back has her ears turning hot. “okay, so. i don’t know how far you’ve been oriented, but we have a shelter just out of campus. it belongs to us, but that way visitors won’t have to come over and can just focus on finding the right companion”

you keep showing her photos of maps and different angles of the shelter, both inside and out. when you look up, she’s already admiring you, but she nods to let you know she’s still listening.

“right, on campus we have a clinic, anyone from freshman to seniors can join our club and in said clinic we treat the animals we rescue, once they’re healthy and happy, we transfer them to the shelter”

“wow” she chuckles in awe, covering her mouth and swallowing hard as her eyes water at all the before and after pictures.

“yeah” you chuckle with her, enjoying the view. “we also gather a few times a month to hold fundraisers and adoption centers for both alumni’s and not…” you lean over the table and put a hand on your mouth as if to tell her a secret “you’d be surprised how many ra’s turn a blind eye to students with pets”

her eyes widen as she nods slowly.

“so, have i caught your interest…” you let her finish the sentence for you

“ryujin” she smiles again. “and yes. you have. where do i sign up?”

“here you go” you hand her a sheet and a pen “ryujin, has a nice roll to the tongue.”

“thanks, apparently it means strength and nobleness” she smiles as she finishes writing her full name and phone number (per the sheet’s request) “so, y/n. just a sophomore and you’re already the leader. care to discuss how you pulled that off over coffee?”

it’s your turn to get shy and hot. both your ears and cheeks as your smile goes to an o shape and back to a smile. “i don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but i have to be here until five?”

“that’s okay, i have a class at three, maybe i can help you clean up when i’m done and we can head from there?” she watches as you take half a second to think it over and nod.

“it’s a date”

no hardwood floors .. instead, a soft voice

“morning” you had given ryujin a spare to your dorm a few months ago, and every day since you were grateful for your decision, because most of the days she was able to come over a hour before her class and wake you. sometimes she would make you breakfast at her own dorm and bring it over, sometimes she would make right in your own kitchen. “come onnn we have animals to save”

you found it amusing how ryujin flipped your world entirely. you didn’t expect to die alone, you were just content with finishing your studies before focusing on the right person. but the idea of having someone to spend your life with, but they also adored you and looked at you like you put the stars in the sky felt blissful.

you chose to think your love for your career choice was what drove you to wake up so early every morning, but deep down you were aware her voice did most of the heavy lifting.

also, you never thought anyone could love your major more than you, until ryujin. you were so excited to see her everyday, even more so when it had to do with animals, she was so attentive and she really tried to look for any option that would cause them the less pain and anxiety.

like today, your team was scheduled to meet early in the morning and inspect an alley for sick kittens, according to the call you received a few days ago. you were never, ever prepared for what you encountered there though, countless kitties from all different breeds, in inhumane conditions.

“oh my god” ryujin’s voice cracked “c’mere baby, i’m gonna help you. i promise”

in her mission to get one cat’s attention, another also approached. but of course, ryujin offered her embrace to both. they were her responsibility now, just like the three little ones at your feet were yours.

ryujin stood by both of the kittens’ sides as they got all their vaccines, dewormed, spayed.. she sat with them and sometimes sang them to sleep, or she’d cuddle them, tell them about your days together.

and you just watched from afar, too inlove with her to do anything else, you knew from the way she spoke to them she would be home for them too.

no huge backyard,

but it has hands big enough to completely wrap around mine.

no one knew how hard it had been for you and ryujin other than you and ryujin. no one could put themselves in your shoes but each other. no one knew about the late nights you spend making flashcards or asking each other questions. the nights ryujin spent crying because her patients had spent another month at the shelter without any possible adopters. but it had the better moments, of course.

ryujin adopting byul and dallie, moving to your own shared apartment out of campus, meeting your families over the holidays. and just the many, many memories you made together as a couple.

so to have her waiting for you at the other end of the stage after you had just received your diploma brought you all that more peace than just finishing five years of hard work. the way she held your hand and telling you how amazing your speech was, about all the pictures she took while you were on stage. just the pride emanating from her body like a scent, or a vibe..

you were home.

[ruvviks]

for posey 💍🎻🐶💤🧡😥 :]

marshall and posey asks!

💍 RING — does your oc have any piercings? do they want any (more) piercings?

posey has several piercings!! both her ears are pierced in various spots and she has an eyebrow piercing too on the left side, she used to have a nose piercing but after it got infected she just took it out and there's still a little scar from it but she wouldn't be able to put it back in. she also has nipple piercings and has considered many times to get a tongue piercing too, but considering how her nose piercing went for her she's still on the fence about it SHGKFDGJFDKG

🎻 VIOLIN — does your oc play any instruments? what is their skill level (beginner/intermediate/advanced/virtuoso/etc)?

posey can play the cello!! she's REALLY fucking good at it and plays every weekend at a special studio to not upset her neighbors too much, she loves doing it but also she hates telling people about it. a lot of people expect her to be able to play the guitar or something like that and she really wants to be able to do that one day, but the cello has always been her number one instrument :]

🐶 DOG FACE — does your oc have any pets?

she does not and she should never be trusted with any </3 posey does love animals and would love to have a little guy in her apartment with her, but she would just not be able to consistently take proper care of it :( too forgetful and away from home entirely too much, and she knows this, and it's why she won't ever end up with a pet unless she ends up with a partner who doesn't mind taking on most of the responsibilities that come with it

💤 SLEEPING SIGN — is your oc a light sleeper or a heavy sleeper? how are their sleeping habits?

posey is a light sleeper like her brother, but is far less bothered by it. marshall can get annoyed from waking up too often in the night and then frustrate himself out of getting his sleep, but posey will just turn around and go back to her scheduled snork mimi and she will do this until she feels well rested enough. her workdays (she works from home) tend to start at 10am because of this but she doesn't mind working late either, plus she's just really good at keeping the pace up and can get eight hours of work done in like. four or five. sometimes less. so she's mostly just doing her own stuff anyway :]

in the weekends posey is out and about a lot so then she sleeps like, maybe five or six hours in total?? but she catches up on that in the rest of the week where she gets a solid nine hours a night most of the time :]

🧡 ORANGE HEART — does your oc tend to prioritize family or friends?

now this one is interesting because generally posey will prioritize friends; she's not spoken to any family member in almost a decade when the story starts and she wasn't even planning on attending the funeral at all, but then she realized she could maybe reunite with marshall and that's what made her go anyway. she's still angry at him for vanishing out of her life (refusing to address the part where she also vanished out of his, and marshall is exactly the same with this) but also would basically do anything for him. so out of everything i think it's safe to say that posey prioritizes marshall :] and he also prioritizes her above anything else

😥 SAD BUT RELIEVED FACE — is your oc prone to getting stressed out, or is it easy for them to keep their cool?

posey is super chill. all the time always. except for when she's not! but that doesn't happen often but also it can happen at any given point in time so there really is no way of knowing. she's very unpredictable when it comes to that. mostly just meltdowns that she doesn't realize she's having so there's not really a way for her to properly work through it or think of ways to try and manage everything a little better :(

i think most of it is centered around like, how free she is in doing her own thing. the second posey is being restricted in any way she's a lot more prone to panic and have a meltdown and then get stressed out; a very clear example in the story is overture going on a lockdown and posey needing to leave town IMMEDIATELY because she doesn't want to be stuck. she does end up staying because marshall doesn't trust the divine light to just let them leave but she's NOT happy about it

[a-mess-of-a-crow]

Dream time?

I had the most bonkers dream of all time.

(i take medication for sleep problems, they have the side effect of either giving you nightmares or smexy dreams, i have neither of them, but this time it was absolutely long and bonkers)

And i normally have very bonker dreams.

So i was in school, in the PE hall, playing with soccer balls or whatever. And somehow i got pretty mad.

I went back to the main building cuz it was lunch time and one of the students said that my pet inguana lizardwas thrown out of the school day care because there were so many animals. And that they let it run freee for some reason!

I talked to the student that I'm at least glad that they didn't put it to sleep or butchered it.

So anyway i looked for it and it was running around in a translucent plastic egg, the ones from Kinder Chocolate but like big and translucent.

I got it, but then i was a completely different person who was like a body morpher and could turn into anything. And i was outside.

I had siblings who were also kinda body morpher but they decided to be Len and Rin. For whatever reason.

So anyway, i had some body morpher parents who discovered a giant cave entrance that was sealed with metal doors and shit, and behind it was rocks. But my parents found out that there was a big hollow room behind it, and decided to break it open. But by doing so they released a terrible white gooey monster with a lot of holes, but it didn't leave the cave.

The cave was kinda like a lab, and then some guy spoke to them through a screen on the side mocking them about not being able to defeat it.

Anyway my parents gave up and sealed the cave again but they knew the monster was unleashed basically.

While they were fighting, me, Len and Rin were going around the campus of the school, looking at fences and how to escape school bills by making a ghillie suit and not having to pay school fees.

Oh and they we wanted to know what i would be for anime con, since i looked like a fusion of rin and len and then len said he doesn't wanna be himself this time and i got to morph into a tinier version of len, since the both of them were older than me.

There was a bunch of animal stuff too, like following a Blackbird who wanted to just go in a line to find it's family, but that stuff is unimportant rn.

Anyway i went to the cave and opened it, got sucked inside and it was like a whirlwind in there, there were various weird mechanisms that shut the guy from the outside or something and while being flung around, i opened it on accident. I came into the control center or something and the guy was just sitting there in a chair and screamed at me.

He was stuck in there from the past, and since i was from the future, he aged quickly and then because he wanted me to leave, ordered the monster to disappear.

So then i got flung out again, and saw my parents just stand there, they grabbed me and put me in a small plastic basket as a jail. They put rin and len in there too.

But then they were happy that i got rid of the monster and gave me some weird sugary stuff in the form of a little plastic tube, like the cat snacks

And we ate a bunch of sweets together on a tiny table.

I don't know what the fuck that dream was.

Sorry if the writing is shit i just wanted to write it down quickly before i forgot again.

@deargodhelpmeaaa you wanted dream stuff right?

Edit: i forgot to add that when len and rin and me were walking around the campus we also discovered the places where you have to pay the fees and also a few stores. And a building that apparently had confidential papers, but the bloody thing was made out of glass. it was shelves full of books with chairs directly next to it but it was just sealed with glass. Kinda like this but like realistic. What am i saying none of this is realistic

Edit edit: My siblings also wanted to teach me shuffling. And other dances. I don't fucking know why