#nobody cornered anyone they just happened to lurk in the same vicinity

[hleamii]

The concept for this was entirely by @zippyyyyyyy after a convo we had about this post:

[talonwings]

Who We Are - Empires SMP writing

a gift for you, empiresblr, courtesy of my now 5 hours of fWhip headcanons. feel free to kill me when you're done. (also sorry i don't yet have an AO3 i can link to, i've been on the wait list foreeevvveerrr).

CW for slight body horror, angst, and i guess suffocation kind of?

“fWhip? Hello? Are you in here?”

He heard the call--how could he not have, when the voice was hers? Still, he did not move, remaining where he slumped against the wall of the underground room. One of the redstone crystals blooming from the stone was jammed against his shoulder blade, but even the pain could not entice him to rise.

“fWhip, come out!” Gem’s voice was a mixture of frustration and concern, a tone he rarely heard from her--well, the frustration he had heard before, but the worry was new. Gem almost never fretted about anything; it was how she had kept him and Sausage so well in line up until now.

“I’m going to come down there!” The threat echoed down the passageway that separated the secret room from the unassuming shopfront above it. “I know where your lair is, it isn’t a secret! Don’t make me come down there!”

“Don’t,” fWhip rasped. “Please.”

Gem either couldn’t or didn’t hear him. “I’m giving you one minute, and then I’m coming down there whether you like it or not!”

“Please,” he tried again, but his voice would not obey him. It petered out almost as soon as it passed his lips. He licked them, swallowed, coughed, tried a third time. “Gem, please, go away.”

This time, it seemed, she did hear, for she answered, “I will not go away! Nobody’s seen you in two weeks, fWhip! We’re worried sick!”

“I’m fine,” he croaked--a lie.

“You don’t sound fine,” she retorted. “I’m coming down.”

He opened his mouth to warn her off again, but the tell-tale sound of the painting door sliding back masked whatever he might have tried to say. Seconds later, her footsteps started up, the familiar click of those heeled purple boots getting ever louder as she marched along the passageway toward his laboratory.

fWhip’s gaze darted around in a panic, searching out anyplace that would be suitable to hide. He hadn’t moved from his current spot in over twelve hours, and his limbs protested as he shoved himself violently to his feet, teetering off-balance from the unfamiliar motion. Finally, he settled on a small cranny near the back of the chamber, and limped over to it, cramming himself inside just as Gem’s footfalls indicated that she had reached the door to the lab itself. He heard her swing it open, and then her voice, much clearer now, softly called, “fWhip? Where are you?”

“Go away,” he replied, hating the stony rasp that he couldn’t seem to get rid of now. “Don’t want to see you.”

“Well, that’s just rude,” she replied. He could imagine the look on her face, and fought against the lump it brought to his throat. He wanted to apologize, to beg for her forgiveness, to throw himself into her arms.

“Didn’t ask you to come,” he croaked instead.

“No, actually, Jimmy did,” Gem replied waspishly. “Your enemy. You remember him? The one you stole his most precious possession from? He sent me a message three days ago to tell me he hadn’t seen or heard from you in over a week. Mind you, this was after I’d been questioned by Sausage, Pearl, and Shrub as to why you’ve missed the last two alliance meetings. fWhip, even your enemies are worried about you. Where have you been?”

Oh, if only you knew. His mouth twisted with a hateful, bitter little smile. “Busy.”

Gem audibly scoffed. “Right.”

“Leave, Gem.” The order tasted strange in his mouth, when he desperately wanted her to stay.

“Not until I see you.” He heard her start moving around the room, picking things up and nudging them with her feet, rearranging boxes and sliding barrels aside as she searched.

“Leave.” The cranny was small, but he squashed himself further inside anyway, stone scraping against all the places where his skin was exposed.

“Are you back there?” His stomach squeezed with terror as he heard her move toward him, squeezing between two of the suspension tubes where he had once stored specimens he was researching. “I can’t see you.”

“Please, leave, please.” If he couldn’t order her, he could at least beg her. “Gem, please, if you care about me at all, go away.”

“fWhip, I do care about you,” she said gently. “That’s why I’m here in the first place. Please come out. I just want to know you’re safe.”

He could feel his heart ripping itself in half--desperation to hide warring violently with the desire to finally be seen, even if it would cost him everything. It felt like it might burn a hole in his chest, and his hands tightened reflexively into fists as he battled himself for what seemed an eternity.

“Please, little brother,” Gem whispered.

It was as if she had caved his chest in. A sob dragged itself from his throat before he could stop it, but he finally let himself unfurl from the cranny to drape limply across the floor, gazing up at his sister’s blue-violet eyes as they widened in shock, which turned to horror, which turned to sorrow.

“Oh, fWhip…” Gem reached out a hand toward him, but hesitated, drawing her fingers back before she could reach him. “What happened?”

“You really want to know?” He had to shove back another sob with a monumental effort, watching the way her fingers trembled as she gazed at him. “Or do you want to leave, like I told you to before?”

“No, I would never,” she gasped. “Not now. Not like this.” She sat down on the floor, her violet cloak flowing behind her like a pool of silky water, and slid closer to him, although not quite close enough for their hands to touch. “Tell me what happened.”

He let his eyes drift away from hers, toward the ceiling and the red crystals dripping from its shadowy recesses. “Well, it began two weeks ago.”

Two weeks earlier…

fWhip was not a stranger to surprises, but he liked receiving them far less than he liked planning them.

It had been a long elytra flight from the undisclosed location of the Wither Rose headquarters back to his home in the Grimlands, and the multiple hours in the air were wearing on his body--even though he had been wearing his scarlet goggles for the duration, his eyeballs still ached as if the wind had been hammering them, as did his shoulder blades from the yank and drift of the elytra against his own muscles.

“Maybe next time I take a horse,” he muttered to himself as he angled in for the landing. The deepslate roofs of the Grimlands were beginning to glide by beneath him now, and he made for the circular patch of dirt at the back of the manor that was his customary landing site, his eyes trained on it until something else caught his attention.

“I am positive that was not there before…” One hand came up to tap his chin as his gaze caught on the massive outcrop of deepslate that had bloomed at the front corner of the manor gardens, studded with glinting redstone crystals. A darker shadow within the ring-shaped formation suggested there might possibly be a hole there, though how deep was indiscernible from this far above.

“If somebody has been trying to steal from me again--wait.” fWhip narrowed his eyes at the spot, investigating it more closely now, for it seemed more familiar the closer he drew. He could vaguely recall setting a circle of rocks within the closed hedges, and in their center, a red container, filled with--

“Damn! Xornoth again!” His breath huffed out harshly as he realized what had happened. First the explosion, and now this…

Veering off-course from his typical spot, he carefully glided down until he was low enough to snap the elytra closed and drop gracefully to the ground between the wide hedge rows. From down here, the deepslate ring seemed much larger than it had from the air, its jagged edges stabbing into the blue sky. He could tell now that there was, indeed, a hole at the center, exactly where he had placed the shulker-box filled with Xornoth’s corruption.

“Damn,” he whispered again. He edged closer, peering carefully at the hole as he neared in an attempt to see what might be at the bottom. It appeared to be deeper than he was tall, however, and he was forced to maneuver up to the very lip of the hole to get a good look at the bottom. Thankfully, there did seem to be a bottom, lurking maybe ten feet below the surface; the depths of the hole were quite dark, though, only dimly illuminated by patches of glimmering red crystals, and he was unable to determine much more than that.

fWhip wondered, briefly, if he ought to just ignore the hole. Common sense would seem to suggest that it was involved with Xornoth in some way, and therefore worthy of at least being avoided for the time being until he could request the help of his allies. fWhip, however, whether fortunately or not, had always been availed of a strong sense of curiosity--it was how he had developed so many of his gadgets and tools. Besides that, there was something about the depths of the small hole that seemed to call to him, and him specifically.

He glanced around, taking stock of who might be nearby in case he needed to call for help, and saw no one in the immediate vicinity. There was a groundskeeper’s cottage just on the other side of the hedge row, but he had no way of knowing whether anyone might be inside.

“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to take a chance,” he murmured. “Here goes.”

Gingerly, he sat down at the edge of the hole, dangling his legs off the side and exploring for possible footholds. It took him a minute, but his toes finally caught on a ledge, and he was able to hoist himself down and into the vertical shaft. Thankfully, the same jagged-edged property of deepslate that made it look menacing also made it excellent for climbing, and he had relatively little difficulty lowering himself the full ten or eleven feet to the bottom, where his feet landed on solid stone. Looking up, he was surprised how dim the sky seemed to be after such a short descent.

Now what? he thought to himself as he gazed around at the narrow walls on all sides. Surely I didn’t make an ass of myself climbing down here for no reason.

He had but a few seconds to wonder, as a strange hiss caught his attention, echoing from the rock walls. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but the small hole began rapidly to fill with a reddish mist, which, when he inhaled it, made the inside of his nose and throat burn as if he had inhaled fire. He coughed, accidentally inhaled again, and coughed more violently, and still the stuff spewed into the cavern, and he began to wonder whether this was a trap, and whether he had been an idiot for climbing down here, and whether his allies--his friends, his sister--would find his corpse rotting down here. His hands scrabbled for handholds to lever himself back up, but the mist had filled his eyes now, and it stung, forcing him blindly to his knees. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could barely think. Lights danced behind his eyelids, and his throat was a tunnel of fire, and then he was unconscious, and knew no more.

Present day…

“And the next thing I knew, I woke up. And...this.” fWhip gestured down to himself, unable to keep his mouth from curling like he had tasted something sour. “Or, well, part of it.”

“Part of it?” Gem cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it was just the wings at first.” He tugged at the grey-black appendages, hating that he could feel it when his fingers brushed the leathery flesh. “And to be honest, I thought they were awesome. Who hasn’t dreamed of having wings? Sure, they looked a little gargoyle-ish, but it seemed like a small price to pay for not having to use elytra anymore. And it felt like the redstone magic was helping me, maybe giving me a gift to fight against Xornoth. I thought it might be something good.”

“And then…” Gem prompted when he trailed off.

“And then...the rest started,” he whispered. “I tried to ignore it at first. I thought maybe I was hallucinating, or getting sick, because it started with just my eyes, and I felt like maybe it would go away if I just, I don’t know, pretended not to notice. But then it was my skin, and then my hands, and then...and then my face.” He turned away from her as a visible shudder made its way through him. “I look disgusting.”

“Why didn’t you call us for help?” Gem murmured.

“Because it was my fault it happened!” he growled, shaking his head. “Because I was an idiot and went down that hole and breathed in that gas, and now I’m a monster, and I have no one to blame but myself. Because I couldn’t wait for you.”

“fWhip, no!” He could see the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, and he hated himself even more for it, for making her upset. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know what would happen, and you’ve always been an investigator. And now you’ve had to suffer alone, and I had no idea, and…” Her voice caught. “I was so worried. I thought maybe the demon…and especially after those dreams...”

He swallowed. “I...I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t know how to face everyone like this.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, simply listening to their own breaths. Finally, Gem said, “It doesn’t look that bad, you know.”

fWhip eyed her dubiously. “Gem, I look like a gargoyle. Like some kind of…” The word demon couldn’t force itself out, but he could see she understood, for she vigorously shook her head.

“No, you don’t look anything like that,” she said. After a long pause, she quietly added, “You look like my little brother.”

He tried, but couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down his cheeks. “Thanks,” he whispered.

She reached over and finally took his hand, and he almost shouted with joy at the touch of another person; her skin was warm and soft, her delicate tiny fingers gentle as they closed around his rough, clawed ones.

“We’ll figure this out,” she promised. “Together.”

He nodded, and squeezed her hand. “Together.”

[a-king-alone]

Ghostface (DBD) x gender neutral reader Summary: Danny has a crush on you ~

You awaken to find yourself in another trial. Same as usual. All you feel is endless rage and hate it all because it never ends and you don't know how to make it stop. Nobody else does either. You and your fellow survivors just do your best to cope with the uncertainty of when the Entity will summon four of you to a location, only for you to be hunted down and exterminated.

Nobody knew why they were chosen. Everybody assumed it was completely random and for some reason, you got plucked out of what used to be your very promising and aspiration-filled life only to awake in a dark forest near a campfire, where you met the others and learned of your forced twisted fate. You felt robbed of your life, robbed of having agency of your own existence. And it pissed you off.

You, though. You got pretty good at learning how to play the game and how to get out without dying, at least 50/50, you'd say. Fellow survivors looked to you for advice on how to proceed and often, you were the one directing a plan whenever you spawned together into the trial. Half the time, you could escape, against certain monsters out there. But some of the killers, there just was not any kind of hope of living through their terror. They were too good at it.

One of the select few that came to your mind adorned an extremely creepy, slim white mask. And he was the one you hated the very most. He was one of the silent killers and those killers were the ones you detested because they always caught you off guard. You never knew where he would be or from where he was watching. And he was always watching.

You groaned inwardly after you gathered a grasp on your surroundings. It was the institute, a large building with narrow corridors. Last time you were spawned into this area, you and your team had to face the insufferable Doctor. His madness spread through shockwaves, causing intense and unimaginable pain so great that anyone would scream at the impact. It was difficult to avoid the Doctor when everybody kept screaming within his vicinity.

You hoped it would be anyone but him. You regretted such a thought later. It was impossible to get away from him in this hospital and you were pretty sure it was his personal domain.

The air felt chilled as you quietly tip-toed through the open hallways, only walking when you felt safe one of the rooms, where various medical equipment could conceal you. A yell erupted from somewhere near you and you hunkered down next to a gurney.

Another pained scream came again, but closer this time and you heard the grotesque noise of bodily meat being hung onto a hook. You knew then that it was a silent killer because whenever the killer was near anybody, your heartbeat would escalate more and more the closer they got to you. Yet right after your teammate was hooked, your heartbeat calmed quite suddenly.

Your brows knit together, trying to think fast. It didn't matter which one it was, you had to go and help your teammate. You were the one closest to them, you couldn't just leave them. You crept through the safety of the room toward where you had heard their scream, just barely peeping from a doorway both ways. Nothing there, but you did see your friend hanging.

Darting from your position, you quickly grabbed under their armpits, using all the strength you could muster to lift them off of the bloody hook. When you first began your trials, you couldn't even do it. It took a long while for your body to get used to the abuse and toughen up.

"C'mon, now!" You grabbed his hand, leading him away toward another room, a tight spaced one, then ripping your friends shirt where a large gaping hole was in their chest, exiting through his backside. It looked disgusting. While wounds like this would ultimately end someones life simply by blood loss and the brutality of the trauma, in this realm, where the trials took place, the survivors bodies could somehow handle a lot of physical damage.

It was funny, in a way. Veteran survivors preferred the hook wound a whole lot more to the wounds killers could make. This wasn't half as gross as seeing your friends head smashed in with the sledge hammer of a psychotic hillbilly. It was even worse if they survived it. You shuddered.

"Well, it didn't break your collarbone this time," you said with a light chuckle, to try and ease the mood, as your friend merely winced in pain as you attempted to patch up the wound and stop the excessive bleeding.

"Thanks," he groaned, inhaling sharply when you pressed down.

"You'll be alright Jake, you've seen worse," you assured him, even though he didn't look very hopeful. His lips thinned with a small smile, sitting against the wall to rest for a moment.

"Leave me here, I'll be fine," he assured you, though you were worried that he wouldn't be. But you trusted his word and nodded.

"Alright. I haven't heard the others—"

A scream echoed down the hallways interrupted you, before another did as well following shortly after. A shaky breath left you and you swallow, hard. It sounded as if the other two were severely injured, not hooked, but injured enough to become rendered immobile. Jake struggled to stand, holding the wall for support.

"I'll go, Jake. Find a generator, work on it. We've got four to go and we're all getting screwed. But we can get through this," you tried to sound hopeful as you spoke, but it felt futile. Usually when the trial snowballed in the killers favor, it was highly unlikely that anyone would make it. Fuck that. You had to try.

Jake nodded as you both parted ways. You inhaled a deep breath, letting it exit your lips. You crept as quietly as possible down the hallways, until you heard another scream, that high-pitched scream definitely signaled being hooked. As you were heading in that general direction, you heard another, but from your other teammate, in the opposite direction.

Oh, fuck me, you thought. Alright. Jane is closer, I'm going to get her and then tell her to find Jake. Then, I'll get Claudette and we'll split somewhere together. Alright... I can do this. I can do this.

As you approached Jane hanging there helplessly, blood began gushing from her wound when she began shaking her head, waving her hands to let you know the killer was lurking near by within her line of sight, but not yours. You stopped behind a counter, peeking over to scan the area. Your eyes widened.

Your frozen stare met with that dreadful white mask on the other side of the counter, which tilted at you as he waved his hand at you. You darted away immediately, rounding the corner out of his sight. You couldn't hear him at all, fuck! When you arrived to a room line with bookshelves filled with novels, you positioned yourself beneath the desk in the center.

Since you couldn't hear him, you hoped by remaining out of his line of sight that he wouldn't find you. But unfortunately for you, you heard Jake screaming again instead, your heart racing. This isn't good! You hoped he would've just kept looking for you. Two already hooked and now Jake was found?! You heard his piercing cry as the hook reopened his wound again.

You were their only hope. Three on hooks. You swallowed.

Darting from the desk, you attempted to make your way back to one of them, any of them, because they needed you. At an intersection, you peeked around a corner, looking for blood or any kind of trail you could follow to lead you to your teammates. You had run from the killer in a haphazard path, so you were a bit confused to your actual position and theirs.

But before you could move on, a sharp pain suddenly entered deeply into your backside and you collapsed immediately. Cursing, you struggling to crawl along the ground but found it to be fruitless. You weren't able to save them and you slammed your fist on the ground.

You knew they wouldn't blame you. But you blamed yourself. If you had only been smarter, if only you had outplayed the killer and rescued at least one person, you could've possibly swung the trial back into your favor. Black boots circled into your view before the masked man in blood-soaked leather crouched down in front of you.

"So, we finally meet again," he said in a cheery tune, muffled by that stupid mask that you hated. His gloved hands were playing around with the blood caked onto the blade as he watched you slowly bleed out. You bet he had a smug ass look on his face too under that dumb fucking mask.

"Fuck you," you spat, turning your head away from him.

Most killers didn't interact with the survivors the way he did. The Ghostface tormented them  and reveled in their suffering and would even take pictures of his kills, that sick sadistic bastard. You preferred to just be slaughtered mercilessly than to be toyed with before your inevitable death claimed you and brought you back to the only comfort you knew, the flickering flames of a campfire.

"Why're you so mad~? I did this all for you!" he exclaimed excitedly, the tip of the knife beneath your chin, lifting your head to meet with the bloodied mask of an unfeeling murderer.

You grimaced, jerking your head away from his knife with a scoff. The pain radiated through you with your sudden movement and you groaned, trying to keep your breath steady. You heard him audibly purr with pleasure in response to your pain.

"You're disgusting." You turned your head away from him, seething with anger and hatred, wishing you could just bleed out faster and you could go back to the fog. But you knew that's not what would happen. Not with Ghostface. He never just 'let you go'. No, he always had to have something first. Always.

"Did you forget how I taste already~?" He bent down further, leaning over to where you had faced away from him as the daggers in your eyes met with him. "Want a reminder?"

All you could do is sigh. The most you could hope for is that he would have his dumb little fun with you before finally ending your life and secure his victory as the merciless killer. What a fucking sicko.

You recalled the most recent time you had seen him, some several trials ago, you never kept count anymore. Whenever he figured out it was you that spawned in the trial, he would get sweaty to kill off your teammates before any of you could complete objectives and then he would relentlessly torture you for as long as he felt like before finally ending it. Of course, with his own "personal souvenir" at the end.

The last time, after everyone else got killed, he had tied you up in a way that left you suspended in the air to one of the four hooks down in the basement that spawned in every trial no matter what the location was. He gave you multiple lacerations, deep ones, cutting into your meat over and over. And then he simply watched you after taking a ton of photographs of you, dangling with your pained moans as your blood dripped down your body onto the floor, doing things to himself that you tried really, really hard to block out of your memories.

The worst part was when he turned his own blade on himself, wiping his own  blood from the knife between his fingers and to your absolute horror, he shoved those bloody fingers down into your throat, saying, "Now I'll always be inside of you."

And you bit down. Hard. As hard as you could, though you couldn't tear through leather with your teeth, you hoped it left a bruise at least. He slugged you so hard in the jaw that you were knocked out cold on impact. That feeling of his gloved fingers surrounding your tongue, the metallic taste gagging your throat...

You never forgot it. Not once. And you tried to. It haunted you because there were several killers, but none of them ever did these gross things like Ghostface did. You weren't sure if he did it to others or just you, but you didn't care. You hoped the Entity would somehow  destroy him, even though you knew it was impossible. But that was the only thing you knew to be stronger than him. You dreamt of it.

"Hello? Are you there~? C'mon, stop being so coy," he uttered in an uncharacteristically soft tone, his hand running through your hair gently. You growled, jerking away from him again.

"Just get it over with already," you muttered, putting your face in the crook of your arm so you wouldn't have to have him in your sight anymore, trying to not focus on the pain you felt. It was only a matter of time before he kept doing more worse things to you, it was better to grit your teeth and not let him have the satisfaction of your reactions.

"But it's been so long! I've been thinking of only you, doesn't that make you feel special?" he said, sitting down on the ground now with his back against the wall. His arms went around your middle as he turned you onto your back, pulling you across his lap with ease despite your struggling. Your head was cradled in his arm, the other rested on your stomach and arms. All you could do was grimace as he held you, feeling uncomfortable in the position.

"Yeah, well, I don't think of you, ever," you retorted through your gritted teeth, trying your best to turn your head away but the way he positioned you in his arms kept you from doing it. Each time he'd just move his arm to readjust you.

"You're lying~" he whispered, bending down over your face. You closed your eyes tightly. You didn't want to look at that mask. It was the most abhorrent thing you had ever seen and whenever it emerged in your memories, you felt physically ill.

You felt that he was doing something as his other arm wasn't laying across you anymore, but you didn't care. If you couldn't see, then it didn't matter. You hoped he would just plunge his knife as deep into your chest as it could go. At least you didn't have to look at him. He couldn't force you to keep your eyes open.

But something suddenly warm against your lips had your lids flying open. For the first time, you were seeing what Ghostface actually looked like, but really up close, too close. All you could see in your utter confusion is that he had slender-ish eyebrows and dark hair, strands falling just above your face. A few defined freckles?! And his lips were pressing against yours and you began to flail to get away from it, but as you did, he grasped onto your arms tightly to hold them against your body in place as he kept forcing his kiss on you.

You breath lodged in your throat as you attempted to keep your lips closed, until he bit down on your bottom one pretty hard, causing you to yelp in pain. And he took that opportunity to shove his tongue into your mouth. Your displeasured voice was muffled by his lips interlocked against yours, but the noise made him moan your name right into your mouth, making you feel sickness lurch into your stomach. Of fucking course he knew your name already, yet you never told him.

When he finally pulled away from your lips, you saw a trail of saliva connecting from his mouth to yours, his gloved hand wiping it away from his own mouth, but leaving it dribbling off of yours. You blinked with tears pricking at your eyes with the fury, hatred, disgust, confusion; so many feelings swirling around inside of you like a goddamn hurricane.

You couldn't believe your eyes. Ghostface was actually a pretty boy. He had that 'pretty boy' type of face, even the damn hair style. And in your mind, despite the overwhelming revulsion, the tiniest little thought crossed your mind that wow, he was super good looking. Okay, sure, you could admit that, you told yourself. You weren't attracted to a sick fuck like him, no matter how damn pretty he was under the mask. All along you thought he was some disfigured monster just like the rest of them under the mask. It jarred you how surprisingly normal he looked.

"Oh, what, can't take your eyes off of me now? Did you fall in love? Are you gonna be mine forever~?" he teased in a soft but somewhat raspy voice, the tip of his tongue running over the top of his lip, those pitch black eyes piercing into yours.

You couldn't take it anymore.

"Why are you doing this? Please, just kill me already," you pleaded for the first time, your voice cracking just slightly. You felt like you were going to cry because you wanted to get away that badly, but you definitely could not allow it to happen and you knew he wouldn’t just let you go. He'd enjoy seeing it.

His grip on your body tightened as a sinister expression crossed his features, leaning down really, really close to your face. "Be~cause, silly, you're Mine."

You were speechless.

"Do you think I enjoy hunting you down every trial? I mean, yes, I most certainly do. But~  it's really a hassle when all I've wanted to do is keep you all for myself," he murmured with a gross simper. He continued on as you could do nothing but stare at him in abject horror.

"Do you know how many pictures I have of you? Hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand. Do you know what I do~ when I look at them~? Do you?"

You gulped the spit that pooled inside of your mouth and his smile widened, his hand rising to meet your cheek, his thumb catching a stray tear that fell from your eyes. "You swallowed me," he whispered so gently as some kind of... almost affectionate type of expression shifted his gaze. You felt like you were about to gag.

You tried to twist away from him but then his grasp on you grew tighter as he bit into his bottom lip with his grin, forcing you even closer to him as his hands gripped hard into you, so hard you thought it might bruise.

"Fuck off Ghostface, you sick freak—-" you had began but your jaw dropped when you saw that he was now looking at you with this gaze of absolute longing, as if he just were completely and utterly enamored with you. As if he were stupidly in love with you or something. He closed the distance again, kissing you once more. Your noises of disapproval were trapped in your throat and every time you did it, his pleasured groans were against your lips.

He parted away from you just slightly, you could feel his breath on you, hot and heavy, when he whispered, "Call me Danny."

His name was Danny?? He had a name?? You hated everything and every moment that passed, how he was showing you that he was a human and not a monster. But he was a monster, he was definitely a monster. He just didn't look like one like you had imagined. You hated it.

"Please, say it," he moaned into your neck as he began nuzzling and leaving kisses along it toward your jaw as you closed your eyes tightly. "Please~"

Why? That was all you could think of in your mind as you were trapped in his clutches. Just why? Why you? Why was he so obsessed with you? Not that you thought lowly of yourself, but you weren't the most beautiful person in the world, not hideous or ugly, but not drop-dead gorgeous either. What was it about you that he was so drawn to? You couldn't ask. And it was obvious that he was growing impatient.

"Say it, or else I'll keep you here forever," he threatened with that stupid cheery tone while your face soured. Was that even possible? Did the trial go on infinitely if the killer kept one alive? You'd never seen it happen so you couldn't say for sure if it was true or if he was bluffing to make you do as he wanted. You bet on the latter, but you also didn't want to stay any longer than you already have. Just give him what he wants and then you can be on your merry little way back into this endless torture and try to forget any of this even happened.

"D... Danny..." you hesitated, saying his name just barely even above a whisper in the smallest voice, but it was enough for him. You could tell. He seemed really giddy about it, smiling like a dumbass.

"Do it again~" he murmured softly and you gave a weakly irritated scoff, feeling fuzzy stars floating around your vision. You had lost a whole lot of blood, most of it pooled beneath your body and all over Danny's lap from the stab wound he inflicted on you. You groaned, unable to keep your head up with the dizziness. Good... You could just fade away...

"Hey, hey, hey, don't pass out yet! I wanna stay with you a little longer!" He propped your body upright, the back of your neck rested in the crook of his arm. It was somehow laughable to you that he looked so concerned for you when he was the one that stabbed you in the back in the first place. His brow furrowed slightly at your weak giggles, but then a smile spread and he started giggling too a little bit along with you.

You scoff again, rolling your eyes, trying to keep them open but finding it more difficult. Why the hell was he acting this way? Before now, every encounter you shared, he usually did some grossly sadistic shit to you and took pictures, or, rarely, other perverted, nasty things. He never outright molested you but he made you watch him perform a few times. This was the first time that he acted so drastically different.

"Danny..." you whispered his name and it got his attention immediately, his intense gaze focused solely on you, on your half-lidded eyes. Ha. So that was the only smallest bit of power that you could have over Ghostface.

"I.. fucking... hate.. you..." you uttered feebly, your energy and will depleted from you and you were more than ready for death to claim you, but in your blurred vision, you saw that he was smiling so warmly at you. It was that look again. That look as if he were just so hopelessly in love that he couldn't even contain it. It was just confusing and horrifying.

"That's okay," he whispered into your ear so gently and he pulled you into a tight embrace, his hand holding the back of your head against his shoulder, your arms dangling limply.

"I'll make you love me."

It was the last thing you heard before your descent into darkness, your corpse being held lovingly by a psychotic killer who awaited excitedly for the next time that he could see you again. Because he wanted more now. He had a taste of you and he wanted more, so much more. And he would have you. You were his and no one elses.

You belonged to him and he wanted to make sure you knew it. No matter where you were, no matter what you did, he was going to be watching you, following you and awaiting for the perfect opportunity to have you all to himself, again and again and again and again.

[anghraine]

“whatever we deny or embrace” - part one

I just saw a screed about the evils of genderbending, which reminded me to update the final (“final”) version of the queer AU!

title: whatever we deny or embrace verse: queer Rogue One/f!Cassian AU (2/6) characters: Baze Malbus, Chirrut Îmwe, Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, Kaytoo; Chirrut/Baze, Jyn/Cassian stuff that happens: Baze and Chirrut both love Jyn from the start. It’s Baze, though, who likes Cassia. After Eadu, that’s a problem.  previous sections: prologue

PART ONE

“Does he look like a killer?”

“No. He has the face of a friend.”

If asked, Baze could not have explained what he saw in Cassia Andor’s face. It was sharp, hard, unsmiling, her gaze alternately suspicious or vacant. Not friendly by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was she friendly; at best, she snapped out commands without pausing to question whether they would be obeyed.

The face was attractive, but that had never been something to sway him. Certainly not in a woman. Her half-shy, wholly charmed looks at Jyn went further, snuck throughout the long week to Eadu.

Within those few days, he cared about Jyn as much as he had anyone but Chirrut. Baze made quick judgments and lived by them, and his snap judgment of Jyn was of a quiet firebrand fighting to survive without losing herself. He couldn’t have seen more of himself in her had she been his sister by blood. In Jyn’s circumstances, he would have been—Jyn. But in his own, he had Chirrut, and she had no one. Without thinking too much about it, he found himself sticking near her in silent solidarity.

Not quite as much as the captain did, however. The two girls constantly hovered together, amorphously concerned and not appearing to much notice.

(“Women,” Chirrut corrected, and Baze scoffed in the face of his evident amusement.

“Children, the lot of them.”)

From his supportive lurk, he couldn’t have missed Cassia’s stolen glances had he tried. He wasn’t sure how Jyn managed it, in fact. But in fairness, Cassia—who rarely missed anything—seemed no less oblivious to Jyn’s stares.

(“We’re watching a farce,” he grumbled.

“I’m not watching anything,” said Chirrut.)

Then, they reached the Imperial facility on Eadu, and … well. That happened. Baze sided with Jyn as far as he did anyone; she wasn’t right, exactly, but he remembered the bodies of the Temple’s dead too well to blame her. Cassia could spare some modicum of pity for a woman she had exploited, a woman whose father had just died in her arms. Still, it didn’t alter his opinion of Cassia, either. He remembered, too, those last years as a Guardian, clinging to unbending faith under the grip of the Empire. That kind of conviction was not a forgiving thing, and it burnt at both ends.

Captain Andor had not burned up yet, but she was well on her way. Baze knew the signs; he’d been there, and found only Chirrut on the other side. She would find what? The droid? More than Jyn had, to be sure—except Jyn had herself, stubbornly whole. Cassia, cool and clear-headed, seemed a creature of fragments.

“The face of a friend, eh?” Chirrut asked that night, because he always had to have the last word.

Baze thought of just agreeing—he was tired, long day, they only had three days more to the Rebellion, which he did not recall volunteering for—but his soul revolted.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “You’re the one who said she carries a prison with her.”

Chirrut sobered. “She does. I’m sorry for her. But this woman is more dangerous for that, not less. It doesn’t make her a friend.”

“She’s a nice girl,” insisted Baze, halfheartedly pretending that most of his attention lay with unwrapping his repeater cannon. He had space for it. On both ships, Cassia had consigned them to the one set of full quarters available—unnecessarily, but he wasn’t about to give it up to any of these twenty-something children. “They both are, underneath.”

“Far underneath,” Chirrut said. True enough. “The captain, anyway. That nice girl just about put a blaster bolt through an innocent man’s head.”

“So have I,” said Baze.

To his immense satisfaction, his husband had no answer to that. Baze, who could not care less about Galen Erso in himself, undressed and crawled into bed in an excellent mood. He closed his eyes, vaguely soothed by the clatter of Chirrut’s staff and the rustle of his robes as he tossed them aside. He’d always been incurably careless.

Baze was just drifting off when Chirrut spoke again.

“I hope you’re right.”

Longing for sleep, he grunted. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“They have choices waiting for them at the Rebel base, both of them.”

“Probably,” said Baze.

“Choices that could change the galaxy.”

He opened his eyes just so he could roll them. “Uh-huh. Go to sleep.”

All right, he didn’t believe Chirrut’s nonsense. Awake, though, he knew only too well that this Death Star business was galaxy-changing. They had to bring that thing down. That meant Jyn had to play nice with the Alliance, and Cassia had to back her up. He certainly didn’t pretend that his or Chirrut’s word would go far, much less an Imperial pilot’s. And the droid would tear out its own wiring if Cassia told it to.

Both women had choices to make, after a fashion. It didn’t require any Force delusion to see that. And both choices seemed somewhat uncertain prospects at the moment. Jyn and Cassia spent the two days after their fight sulking on opposite ends of the shuttle.

Not that they said so. Jyn sat in the quiet, meditating with her crystal. Cassia talked over hyperspace lanes with Bodhi and K-2SO, and calculated coordinates.

Sulking.

Chirrut mumbled some absurdity about them finding their own paths in their own ways. But nobody had time for that. Baze stalked around the shuttle, never eager for conversation, less eager for the one somebody needed to have with their fearless leaders. When he ran into Cassia’s droid, it was almost a relief.

“Baze Malbus,” K-2SO intoned. “You have walked the same route seven times in the last hour.”

Baze didn’t bother responding.

With a distinct note of irritation, it added, “Is this merely a pointless waste of time and energy, or do you expect to achieve something by it? I can tell you that the odds—”

Ignoring this, he said abruptly, “Can you tell me the odds of the captain apologizing?”

Its eyes flashed, recalibrating. “That depends on more factors than you could contemplate.”

“And?”

“Without additional input, nineteen percent in generic circumstances. That number does not incorporate data relating to espionage activities. I assumed you only referred to her present role.”

“That’s right,” Baze allowed.

“Of course.”

“And how likely is an apology to Jyn?”

The droid managed to infuse deep indignation into the slight shift of its head. “What for?”

Baze and K-2SO stared at each other for long seconds. Finally acknowledging that he was unlikely to outwait a droid, Baze said,

“Galen Erso’s death.”

“Cassia did not end his life,” said K-2SO. “In violation of a directive from the acting head of Rebel Intelligence, I might add. If Jyn Erso cannot grasp that fact, it is her failure, not Cassia’s. I rate the chance of the captain apologizing at four percent.”

“That’s your analysis? Or a hunch?”

“I am a strategic analysis droid,” K-2SO snapped, its usual slouch straightening up. “I do not have hunches. Not that you deserve the details, but three percent is the margin of error I allowed for unknown variables. The raw probability is one percent. Rounded up.”

Baze eyed it skeptically.

The droid said, “Apologies indicate regret.”

“The captain likes what she does?” From what he’d seen of her, he found that extremely unlikely. Even Chirrut knew better—well, particularly Chirrut.

“It seems that your ears are decaying with your brain cells,” said K-2SO. “I did not say that. But she does not regret anything that furthers the aims of the Rebellion. She certainly does not think she should waste our valuable time and power sources on useless guilt.” Unnecessarily, it added, “And neither do I.”

“Surprise,” Baze muttered. “So how, exactly, was Erso’s death going to further the aims of the Rebellion?”

K-2SO paused. “It wasn’t. That’s why she didn’t do it.”

And Jyn had nothing to do with it. Sure. But he didn’t feel the need to hear Jyn or himself insulted by a hunk of metal and grease, so he only replied,

“You’re telling me that she’s got nothing in that prison of hers that isn’t for the Rebellion?”

“I don’t know what you mean by prison,” said the droid, primly. “The Empire has never caught us. But she does not do anything that isn’t for the Rebellion.”

“Never?” asked Baze, out of purely disinterested motives that had nothing to do with another young woman on the shuttle. He cleared his throat. “She doesn’t watch out for anyone unless they’re useful?”

The droid tilted its head. “Why would she?”

“Then nobody’s going to be watching out for her when she isn’t,” he said.

It managed to draw itself up into further heights of indignation. “Cassia is always useful. And she has me. I am superior to any collection of organic matter.” Muttering to itself, K-2SO swivelled and stalked off.

A jealous droid. Wonderful.

Unfortunately, Baze suspected that its judgment of their captain could be trusted. Jyn, the injured party, had a much better chance of hearing good sense.

Hearing was perhaps an overstatement. He wandered to her end of the shuttle, and stationed himself in her general vicinity. Neither said anything for a good ten minutes, though the stiff line of Jyn’s shoulders relaxed. A little.

“He must have had all sorts of information,” she said at last.

Baze eyed her from his corner. “Eh?”

“My father,” said Jyn, quite conversationally. “Imagine all the things he could have passed onto the Rebellion. Do you suppose she ever thought of that?”

“Perhaps,” he replied. The Force couldn’t be real. If it were, surely he would not be having this conversation. “Maybe it’s why she didn’t take the shot.”

Jyn’s eyes settled on him, hard and focused. “Did she send you?”

“No,” said Baze. Then he scowled. “Nobody sends me anywhere.”

Though she remained impenetrably grave, the wariness in her face faded. “Someone should let Chirrut know.”

Baze snorted.

They fell silent again, more comfortable with quiet companionship than speech. Beyond that, no sure approach came to Baze’s mind. Another few minutes passed before either roused themselves to speech.

“So you believe her?” Jyn asked.

“Yes,” said Baze. He would have left it at that, would very much have liked to leave it at that, but at Jyn’s ambivalent scowl, forced himself on. “I’ve seen the captain upset before, in Gerrera’s cell. But she kept a cool head.” Until she realized Jyn might get crushed to death, anyway. “She didn’t at Eadu. She was angry, unreasonable. Something shook her.”

Jyn exhaled. Tucking the crystal away, she said, “I suppose so. It could have been what happened, though. It was chaos down there.”

“She’s an assassin, Jyn,” said Baze, as kindly as he knew how. “For a cause, but—a Rebel spy. For decades, if we can trust her that far.”

Her mouth twisted. “So what’s one more dead Imperial to her?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied, though … yes. Pretty much. “Back in our cell, she told us that she’d never been in one before. If that’s true, she’s good at what she does. Very good. A raid on an Imperial facility wouldn’t rattle her. But she was rattled.”

“Orders,” muttered Jyn. “That’s what she said.” She sounded unimpressed, but not as uncompromising as before.

Maybe.

“She’s a good soldier girl,” Baze agreed dryly. It was true enough, though; Cassia seemed to receive and deliver orders with equal intention of seeing them carried out. “I don’t imagine they’d keep her in the field if she weren’t.”

Jyn flinched. But she said in her usual firm tone, “No place for rebels in the Rebellion?”

“They keep their secrets close, everyone knows that.” He folded his arms, knowing he stood on shaky ground and disliking it. “Their spies know enough to carry out orders, and I’d bet not a drop more, unless they run over it themselves. Rogue pilots, maybe. Rogue spies, no.”

“Cassia knew more,” she insisted. “She was the one with the intel this time.”

Baze, following his instincts, kept his mouth shut.

“If that’s why she didn’t shoot—” Jyn paused, hands and lips compressed.

He didn’t risk a direct answer. “For what it’s worth, the droid’s opinion is that she decided your father’s death wouldn’t help the Rebellion.”

Jyn, given the opportunity to deflect onto K-2SO’s many failings, ignored it. She stared up at him with pale cheeks and wide green eyes, looking impossibly young.

“That would mean that Cassia believed me. Believed that Father didn’t deserve to die. She didn’t … she … ”

“Captain Andor is the only one who can answer that,” said Baze.

Jyn didn’t seem to hear. “If she trusts me, then—they’ll listen if she backs me up. Her commanding officer’s a general, and the leader of the Rebellion introduced her to me. We have to get those plans.”

With some skepticism, Baze listened to the exact conclusion he’d hoped she would reach. “True.”

“And …”

Jyn seemed content to let the sentence trail into the infinity of space. He cleared his throat again.

“And?”

Colour flooded her cheeks. She tilted her chin up, hope and determination hardening over her face.

“Trust goes both ways.”

Baze had the good sense to leave Jyn to her epiphany. Considerably more doubtful about Cassia’s end of the business, he arrived in the cockpit to find Bodhi gone and Chirrut perched in the co-pilot’s seat, amidst various switches and signals and technological paraphernalia. He looked both ridiculous and smug, and Cassia more haunted than usual.

“What did you do to the pilot?”

“Nothing,” said Chirrut virtuously. “The poor man fell asleep.”

Cassia lifted her gaze to Baze. “Bodhi just about collapsed once he had nothing more to do. He’s had a long few weeks.”

“One way of putting it,” muttered Baze.

“I know these routes, anyway,” she went on, “so I can manage well enough from here.”

Remembering their escape from the Death Star’s destruction, he said, “Right. Where’d you stash him?”

“The captain carried him to a bunk,” said Chirrut. He tapped his staff against the floor, the familiar rhythm both irritating and soothing. “I didn’t see it.”

Baze rolled his eyes. Chirrut aside, he couldn’t envision it. Bodhi Rook might not be a large man, but neither was Cassia Andor a large woman. At most, she stood at the tallish end of average, a good few inches shorter than Baze. He suspected she’d lost muscle mass lately—all her regulation clothes hung on her—but her frame would never have been anything but narrow.

“Carried?”

“He was still conscious,” Cassia said. “More or less. I helped him.”

Unperturbed, Chirrut smiled. “The captain is stronger than she seems.”

Cassia slanted him a wary glance. Since Baze would have felt exactly the same in her position, and often did in his own, he let it pass.

Behind him, the door to the cockpit slid open. He half-expected the pilot had already woken, but no: it was Jyn. Good.

Maybe good.

Jyn slouched into the chamber. She didn’t seem to have thought beyond that; for one long and intensely uncomfortable moment, she and Cassia just stared at each other.

“Any news?” she said.

“No,” said Cassia, her gaze not so much as twitching from Jyn. She wet her lip. “There won’t be, barring a disaster.”

“Good, then.” Utterly stoic, Jyn folded her arms. “Nothing from the Force either, Chirrut?”

The Force doesn’t work that way, Baze almost said, but closed his mouth on it. It wouldn’t work that way if it were real, which it wasn’t.

“No,” Chirrut said. With a tap of his staff, he rose to his feet, while choices that could change the galaxy ran through Baze’s head. Chirrut had his own concept of truth. “Thank you for your time, captain. I enjoyed our conversation.”

“I’m delighted,” said Cassia, dryly.

Chirrut beamed in her direction nevertheless, nodded in Jyn’s, and headed to the door. Without a word, Baze trailed after him, only pausing once to glance back.

Jyn had flung herself into the co-pilot’s seat, the rigid set of her shoulders just visible from the angle of the chair. Cassia remained in her own seat, her body stiffly upright, and the entirety of it tilted towards Jyn.

The girls might be all right, after all.

“You ‘enjoyed your conversation’ with the captain,” Baze said, once they accumulated a good distance from the cockpit. They’d never lost money underestimating Imperial craftsmanship.

Chirrut, graceful as ever, seated himself on the nearest bench.

“We had a nice talk.”

“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Baze.

“I never said that.” Chirrut leaned his head against the wall of the shuttle and smiled. Of course he did.

With nothing better to do, Baze sunk onto the bench beside him. It occurred to him that Bodhi was asleep somewhere, Jyn and Cassia busy brooding at each other in the cockpit, the droid off doing whatever it was that it did. There was nobody here to draw conclusions or scent vulnerability. Not that Jyn and Cassia … well, they’d see about Jyn and Cassia. If they all lived long enough.

Very casually, he slung his arm about Chirrut’s shoulders.

“You’re an old fool,” he said gruffly.

Chirrut, not bothering with subtlety, leaned against him. “You should know.”