#now its shrapnel in both your hearts

[genericwizard]

Thinking about a kaeven separation arc where Kaeya chooses to leave Mondstadt because he feels it's what he has to do / powers beyond his control force his hand. And Venti lets him go because of Who He Is and won't break his core belief of individual autonomy, even if he's shoving down his personal feelings.

Would Kaeya be relieved that he doesn't interfere? Or upset that Venti puts his responsibilities as an archon first and won't admit he wants him to stay? Would he silently wish Venti would've come with him, hypocritically believing that a God would never follow him anyway?

[p0orbaby]

Sinners | Envy

summary: jealousy rears its ugly head

warnings: SMUT 18+, use of a strap, dom!leah, angry sex

a/n: this one’s a little feisty

word count: 1.3k

Lust | Gluttony | Sloth | Greed | Wrath | Pride

-

Leah’s face is flushed, her eyes blazing with an anger that mirrors your own. This argument has been escalating for a while now, words sharpening into knives that cut deep. The room is thick with tension, the remnants of the stupid awards ceremony still hanging in the air like a bad smell. You can still hear the distant echoes of laughter and conversation from the afterparty, but here, in the suffocating silence of your living room, everything feels like it’s on the brink of exploding.

“Are you seriously trying to make this about me?” Leah snaps, her voice razor-sharp, slicing through the fragile calm that had barely been holding. “You were practically draped all over her. I invited you, for fuck’s sake. Do you have any idea how that made me look?”

You shove a hand through your hair, your frustration boiling over, turning your blood to lava. “I was just being friendly! You act like I’m not allowed to talk to anyone but you. That’s not my problem if you’re feeling insecure”

Leah’s eyes narrow into slits, and she steps closer, the heat radiating off her body making the air between you both almost unbearable. “Insecure? I’m not insecure. I’m pissed off because you’re being fucking disrespectful. You think you can just waltz in there and flirt with everyone while I’m supposed to sit there and smile?”

Her words sting, lashing out and striking nerves you didn’t even know were exposed. But beneath the surface of your anger, something else bubbles up—a twisted, burning need that’s just as furious and insatiable as the rage. You can’t deny the way her jealousy, her possessiveness, ignites something primal in you.

Before you can think twice, before you can convince yourself that fighting her off is the right move, you surge forward, grabbing her shirt and ripping it open, buttons scattering across the floor like shrapnel. Leah’s eyes widen in shock for just a moment, but then she’s on you, her hands yanking at your clothes with a savage desperation.

“You want to make a scene?” she growls, her voice rough and feral as she shoves your pants down your legs, nearly tearing them in the process. “Let’s fucking make one”

Clothes are discarded carelessly, the fabric pooling on the floor as your bodies clash in a heated frenzy. Leah’s hands are everywhere at once, her touch rough, almost punishing, as she presses you against the cold glass of the living room window. The sensation sends a shiver through your overheated skin, the stark contrast heightening the tension coiling in your belly.

Your breath fogs up the glass as Leah’s fingers slide between your legs, her touch demanding, insistent. “Stay right where you are,” she orders, her voice a low rumble that vibrates through you. “I’m going to show you exactly what happens when you step out of line”

You shiver at the raw authority in her voice, a mix of fear and arousal twisting in your gut. But the words that spill from your lips are defiant, almost mocking. “You think you can just control me? I’m not some toy for you to play with, Leah”

Her fingers pause, and for a moment, you think you’ve pushed her too far. But then she’s right up against you, her body pinning you to the glass, her breath hot against your ear. “Oh, you’re not just a toy. You’re mine,” she hisses, her voice laced with a dark promise. “And I’m going to make damn sure you never forget that”

She pulls away abruptly, and you hear the rustle of her moving across the room, followed by the unmistakable clatter of a drawer opening in the distance. Your heart pounds in your chest, anticipation and dread warring inside you. When she returns, she’s holding a strap, her eyes gleaming with a mix of determination and something darker, more primal.

“Since you want to act like a little brat,” Leah says, her voice low and intense, “I’m going to show the world who you belong to”

She doesn’t give you a chance to respond before she’s positioning herself behind you, the cool plastic of the strap pressing against your entrance. You barely have time to brace yourself before she thrusts into you, hard and unyielding, the sensation almost too much too fast.

Your gasp echoes through the room, your body instinctively arching away from the cold glass as Leah grips your hips, holding you firmly in place. “Stay still,” she commands, her voice brooking no argument. “You’re going to take every inch of this, and you’re going to love it”

You can’t stop the moan that escapes your lips as she starts to move, her thrusts deep and punishing, each one driving you further into the window, the cool surface biting into your overheated skin. The pleasure is sharp, almost painful, but it’s exactly what you need, what you’ve been craving since the argument began.

Leah’s pace is relentless, her hands tight on your hips, her body pressing into yours with each thrust. “Tell me you’re mine,” she demands, her voice a fierce whisper, her breath hot against the back of your neck. “Say it”

You grit your teeth, stubbornness flaring up even as your body betrays you, pushing back against her with each thrust. “I’m not yours,” you manage to gasp out, even as the pleasure coils tighter and tighter in your core.

Leah’s grip on your hips tightens almost painfully, and she leans in closer, her lips brushing against your ear. “You’re about to be,” she growls, punctuating her words with a particularly hard thrust that nearly knocks the breath out of you.

Your defiance crumbles under the weight of her dominance, the pleasure and pain blurring together into a dizzying whirlwind that leaves you gasping for air. The slap of her skin against yours, the rough drag of the strap inside you, it’s all too much, too overwhelming.

“Tell me you’re mine,” Leah demands again, her voice harsher now, tinged with frustration and something more—desperation, maybe. “Say it, or I swear I’ll fuck you until you can’t speak”

The threat sends a thrill through you, your resolve wavering under the onslaught of sensation. “I’m… I’m yours,” you finally gasp out, your voice trembling, the admission dragged from your lips like a confession.

Leah’s pace doesn’t falter, but you can feel the satisfaction radiating from her, a dark chuckle vibrating through her chest as she leans in to nip at the back of your neck. “Good,” she murmurs, her tone dangerously soft. “Because you belong to me, and I’m going to make sure you remember it”

Each thrust drives the point home, the rhythm of her movements becoming almost hypnotic, your body surrendering completely to her control. You’re pushed closer and closer to the edge, your hands braced against the window, your breath fogging up the glass as you struggle to hold on to any semblance of control.

But Leah doesn’t give you that luxury. She fucks you harder, deeper, her grip on your hips unrelenting, her dominance absolute. “Look at yourself,” she demands, her voice a low growl. “Look at how good you take me. How much you need me”

Your eyes flicker open, catching your reflection in the window, and the sight that greets you is almost too much. You’re pressed up against the window, your skin flushed, your lips parted as you pant for breath, Leah’s body moving behind you with a determined ferocity that leaves you trembling. The image is raw, primal, and the sight of yourself like this—vulnerable and utterly dominated—sends you spiraling over the edge.

You come with a cry that echoes around the room, your body shuddering violently as the orgasm rips through you, Leah’s name falling from your lips like a prayer. But she doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down, driving you through the aftershocks, her own breaths coming in ragged gasps as she holds you steady.

When she finally pulls out, you’re left slumped against the window, your body trembling, your mind a hazy blur of pleasure and exhaustion. Leah presses a kiss to your shoulder, her touch now gentle, soothing the sting of her earlier roughness.

“Remember, please” she murmurs, her voice low and almost tender, her lips brushing against your ear. “Remember that you’re mine”

[the-winter-spider]

The Last Countdown | Drabble

Bucky x reader

Word Count: 1.2k

Warnings: Angst, death

A/N: Posted the happy new years fic now heres the sad one

----

The call came in late that afternoon, the kind of mission no one wanted on New Year’s Eve but couldn’t afford to ignore. A rogue Hydra cell had surfaced, armed with a weapon too dangerous to leave unchecked. The four of you scrambled into gear—there was no time to waste.

“Quick in, quick out,” Steve had assured everyone during the briefing. “Minimal risk.”

Bucky glanced at you as the Quinjet roared to life. You’d squeezed his hand, giving him a confident smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “We’ll be back in time to watch the ball drop.”

He’d nodded, even though the unease twisting in his gut hadn’t let up since the mission briefing. Something felt off, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice it. Instead, he leaned closer, brushing his lips against your temple. “Be careful, doll.”

The mission started smoothly enough. The Hydra base was tucked away in a dense forest, its defenses formidable but not insurmountable for the team. Steve led the charge, while you and Bucky partnered up to dismantle a line of armed guards patrolling the perimeter.

“Watch my six,” you called over your shoulder as you sprinted toward a control panel near the base’s entrance.

“Always,” Bucky replied, firing off a clean shot that dropped an approaching guard before they could get close to you.

The four of you moved like a well-oiled machine, systematically clearing the base room by room. But as you entered the heart of the facility—a vast, dimly lit chamber housing the weapon you were there to neutralize—the operation spiraled out of control.

“Trap!” Natasha’s voice crackled over the comms as the doors slammed shut behind you and Bucky. The chamber lit up with blinding red lights, and the sound of machinery powering up filled the air.

“Y/N, get down!” Bucky shouted, grabbing your arm and pulling you behind a stack of crates just as the first explosion rocked the room.

The Hydra weapon—some kind of energy-based bomb—was unstable, and its protective casing had been compromised in the crossfire. Every shot fired, every explosion, seemed to hasten its countdown.

“We need to disable it now!” you yelled, scanning the room for any sign of the device’s control panel.

“On it!” Bucky moved to cover you as you dashed toward a console near the weapon.

But then you saw it—a Hydra operative in the shadows, raising a grenade launcher aimed directly at Bucky.

“Bucky, move!”

You didn’t think. You just acted. Sprinting toward him, you pushed him out of the way as the grenade hit its mark, detonating with deafening force.

The blast threw you both across the room. Pain lanced through your side as you hit the ground hard, gasping for air. You looked down to see blood pooling beneath you, a jagged piece of shrapnel embedded deep in your abdomen.

“Y/N!” Bucky scrambled to your side, his metal arm trembling as he pressed his hand against the wound. “No, no, no. You’re gonna be okay. Just hang on, alright?!”

Your vision blurred as the weapon’s countdown ticked closer to zero. “Bucky… you have to… disable it…”

“Forget the weapon!” he shouted, his voice breaking. “I’m not leaving you!”

Steve’s voice came through the comms, frantic. “Buck, we need that device deactivated now, or it’s taking out the whole forest—and us with it!”

You grabbed Bucky’s hand, your grip weak but insistent. “Go, Bucky. Please… save them, Ill wait okay? Il wait.”

“No!” He shook his head, tears streaming down his face. “I’m not leaving you, baby. Don’t ask me to do that, please, I cant, I cant..."

But your strength was fading fast, and you knew there was no other way. “You’re stronger than this, Buck… you can, please, for me?"

For a moment, he hesitated, torn between saving you and stopping the weapon. Then Steve’s voice came through again, yelling about the countdown—seconds left now. "For you.." He breathed out

“I love you,” you whispered, your voice barely audible over the chaos.

Bucky pressed a kiss to your forehead, his tears mingling with the blood staining your skin. “I love you too, doll. Always.”

And then he was gone, running toward the device. You watched him through dimming eyes, your chest aching not from the pain of the wound but from the knowledge that this would most likely be the last time you’d see him and that hurt more than any wound.

You reached up tearing your comms out of your ear, you couldn't handle 2 more goodbyes, all you had in you was one. You could feel it, death, looming in the corners of your vision, pulling you in but you fought it with everything you had left because you wanted those blue eyes to be the last thing you saw, not some dingy hydra roof. You sighed when you heard the machine powering down. You could feel him, "I waited” You mumbled.

The clock on the wall read 11:52 PM. Only 8 minutes until the New Year. But time was the furthest thing from Bucky's mind as he cradled you in his arms amidst the rubble.

“Stay with me, baby, please,” he pleaded, voice cracking under the weight of his desperation. His gloved hand pressed against the wound in your abdomen, but it was too late. You knew it.

Your trembling hand reached up to touch his cheek, brushing away the tears streaking his face. “I’m sorry… I thought we had more time…”

“No, don’t—don’t talk like that,” he choked, shaking his head as if sheer force of will could keep you alive. “We’re gonna go home. I’ll take care of you, I promise I’ll take care of you, You’re gonna be okay sweetheart, you gotta be.”

“Your eyes….” A weak smile tugged at your lips, the kind that had once lit up his entire world but now only broke his heart. “I love you, Bucky. Always.”

The words were barely a whisper, and then you were gone.

Bucky froze, his entire body going cold. The sounds of the battle around him faded to nothing, drowned out by the unbearable silence of your absence.

--

Hours later, back at the compound, Steve found him in your shared room, still clutching the small velvet box he had intended to give you the next morning. The ring inside, simple and elegant, was supposed to be a promise of the future you’d never have.

“I was going to ask her tomorrow,” Bucky murmured, his voice hollow. “New Year’s Day. A fresh start. It was supposed to be my year Stevie, finally.”

Steve placed a hand on his shoulder "Buck.." He started, but Bucky shrugged it off, stepping away. “Why, Steve?” he asked, turning to face his oldest friend with tears streaming down his face. “What did I do to deserve this? Huh? What kind of life is this—watching everyone I love get ripped away from me? I—” He broke off, his hands curling into fists. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t.”

Steve tried to respond, but Bucky didn’t wait to hear it. He walked out into the freezing night, leaving behind the remnants of his broken heart and the dream of a life he’d never have.

The New Year arrived, but for him, it felt like the end of everything.

[peachdues]

Phantasmagoria (Part I)

Tell Me to Stop (Sanemi’s Version)

Sanemi x F!Reader, Modern AU

A/N: it's time. This one is very personal to me, and I've drawn a lot upon my own life/experiences to write this. I hope it lives up to expectations, but in case it doesn't, remember there is still a part two and a part three (so more smut/angst/feelings).

Massive TW: grief, loss of parent to cancer, canon character death (in non-canon way), drug and alcohol abuse, anger, unhealthy coping mechanisms galore.

CW: 10.5k words; explicit sexual content. Unprotected sex/oral (F!receiving), mildly dubious consent (Reader doesn't tell Sanemi it's her first time, and there's a question whether he would've done it); both Sanemi and Reader are under the influence. Creampie, lots of cursing, angst.

For the playlist, listen here.

Without further ado!

Speak in tongues / I don't even recognize your face / mirror on the wall / tell me all the ways to stay away

phan·tas·ma·go·ri·a – an exhibition of optical effects and illusions; a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined.

Once upon a time, as a little girl, she’d believed love was pretty; she imagined it would be soft, pink, and shiny and make her feel warm and pretty in return.

As an adult, she’d come to realize that love wasn’t pretty at all; it was cold, lonely, and painful.

Love was dull and harsh and all-consuming.

Love was black.

For Y/N, loving Sanemi Shinazugawa was like falling into one of the black holes she’d learned about in science class as a child. It was infinite and empty and there was no space for anything but the all-consuming void that promised to rip her apart and condemn her to oblivion.

This love had taken her naïve, romantic heart to chew up and spit back out, leaving her only with a misshapen lump held together by the leftover sinew of her hopes and dreams.

Y/N believed her love for Sanemi would be the death of her. It was a poison that had seeped into her veins and was slowly rotting her from the inside out. She knew it was stupid to love someone who would not and could not love her back, but she hadn’t yet figured out a way to stop.

And since she could not stop loving him, she could only resign herself to its toxicity until it killed her for good.

—————————————————————————

Summer had ended, and Y/N was dreading having to return to Ubayashiki University. Dreading it because she’d spent the entirety of the summer back in her – their – hometown, caring for her ailing mother, and that isolation had meant she didn’t have to wake up every day with a pit in her stomach at the thought of running into him. But then her mother had finally succumbed to her illness a week prior, and Y/N was now forced to carry on in the world as though hers had not just been blown apart.

Looking back, Genya’s death had marked the end for a lot of things, including the once-irreverent trio that had been Y/N, Kyojuro, and Sanemi.

They had been friends – the best of friends, really, since pre-school, in large part because of their parents. Kyojuro, as warm and as vibrant as the sun, had been their grounding force, always wise beyond his years but quick to laugh. Then there was Sanemi, and though he could be prone to his episodes of anger, he was a staunch, loyal defender of his friends and would do anything if it meant making them smile. Last, there had been Y/N, and she’d been so happy to just love her boys and be loved by them. She’d always felt invincible with them by her side, ready to take on the world, together.

And for a while, they did.

Their friendship withstood even the toughest of trials. It lasted through the death of Kyojuro’s mother and the subsequent decline of his father, so unable to cope that he could not function without the bitter sting of alcohol to soothe the pain of Rukka’s absence. Their friendship had even endured the deaths of both Sanemi’s and Genya’s parents at the hands of a drunk driver, the shrapnel from the crash permanently scarring both of the boys’ faces, though Sanemi had born the worst of it.

But because they’d had one another, they’d made it through. Y/N’s own mother, though a single parent, took in both Shinazugawa boys until the state placed them in a home, though that rarely stopped Sanemi from frequenting Y/N’s house after school. Even Kyojuro grew to be a constant fixture around her house, drawn to the warmth and love her mother showed both boys as if they were her own.

And then they all grew up, and they were set to begin their first year of university at Ubaya-U come the fall. The three of them had been eager to set out into the world, to grab at any and all opportunities that arose, and for each of them to become great in their own right.

But not two weeks into the fall semester, Sanemi received the phone call that had brought his world crashing down around him. Genya, his beloved, cherished younger brother, had been shot dead outside of their foster home, killed by some kid in retaliation for some fight Genya hadn’t picked.

Y/N hadn’t been with him when he received the news, instead only getting a text from Kyojuro to getthefuckoverhereNOW. She’d bolted from her class and ran to the boys’ dorm across campus. She’d found Sanemi, curled into a ball on the floor beneath a hole he’d punched into the drywall, sobbing, and she hadn’t known what else to do but hold him along with Kyojuro while her own tears threatened to blind her.

Hours later, when Sanemi realized he would have to return to their hometown to make final arrangements, he’d asked Y/N to accompany him to the train station. Kyojuro would have gone as well, but he’d been unable to call off from work, and so the three had planned for Y/N to return with him the next day, as she was the only one between the three of them with a car on campus.

Of course, Y/N agreed to drive Sanemi to the train station, because she couldn’t possibly imagine leaving him alone. He’d looked so lost, so broken, and she would’ve done anything, anything at all, to lessen the weight on his shoulders.

Because she loved him, and she’d loved him for years, and love meant giving everything you had, everything you were to the other, especially in times of need. So she agreed, and though he’d been unable to speak, Sanemi had rested his head on her shoulder in silent gratitude.

She’d not known that, in her efforts to love and support him at his lowest, she would doom their group’s entire dynamic.

In retrospect, she shouldn’t have said anything. It was the wrong time, the wrong way to tell him what was in her heart, and she’d known that; but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She’d been unable to stop the way her heart clenched as she walked him towards the platform at Amane Station, his head hung low and his eyes rimmed red from hours of crying. It hurt her to see him in such pain, hurt so badly that she’d been desperate to alleviate it in any way she could. She’d thought it would have been enough to hug him, to give him a reassuring squeeze and a promise that she and Kyo would be back home the following morning and that he wouldn’t be alone.

But then, before she could stop them, those cursed words had fallen from her lips and ruined her, ruined everything.

I love you, Sanemi. With all my heart.

As soon as she’d heard herself say it, she’d known she’d fucked up. She knew, as Sanemi stiffened in her embrace and pulled away from her, that she’d indelibly altered things between them, and that she could never take those words back. And she’d known, the moment she saw the cold, bewildered look in his eyes, so angry it made her stomach drop, that he neither returned nor wanted her love.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” He snapped, stepping back from her, creating a chasm between them that could not be bridged.

His train had finally arrived, and he’d stormed away from her, turned his back to her, and refused to look back as he boarded the car. She’d stayed behind, standing there amidst a throng of travelers and their families, for a long while, tears slipping hot and fast down her cheeks until the salt burned permanent tracks into her skin.

It hadn’t mattered that Kyojuro had called her later, Sanemi having filled him in on what happened, what she’d done, to tell her not to worry; that Sanemi had just been frustrated and overwhelmed, and that all would be well between them after the funeral.

Kyojuro lied. Sanemi hadn’t so much as looked her way the entire time she and Kyo were with him during his brother’s funeral and had refused to even acknowledge her small greeting. Y/N understood he was going through the worst pain imaginable, and she’d known he was angry because she’d dumped her feelings on him when he’d been in no place to receive them, but his rejection still fucking hurt.

Worse than his rejection had been his total ignorance of her, his obstinate refusal to so much as acknowledge her existence. Y/N hadn’t been able to understand how he could be so angry with her to not even treat her like a person, to pretend as though they hadn’t been friends – best friends – since they were in diapers.

Y/N had wanted to give him space, however, and wanted herself to stop loving him so things could one day go back to how they’d been, so she started to distance herself from Sanemi, believing she would still have Kyojuro, her sun, to lean on if she needed it.

But she’d been wrong, so very wrong. Because Kyojuro had defended Sanemi with a not-so-gentle reminder that ‘he’s dealing with a lot right now,’ which only fractured her heart even more because Kyojuro had taken a side and it hadn’t been hers.

Thus, Y/N was left to love them both at a distance, and she was forced to watch them carry on their friendship without her, even though they’d all come to Ubaya-U together and even though her exile from the group meant that Y/N had no friends at all.

So, her first semester at university, the semester she’d dreamed would be life-changing and exciting, became a cacophony of sobs smothered into her pillow at night so her roommate wouldn’t hear her winking out like a dying star. And she had no friends, because her best friend didn’t think she was his, and she couldn’t stop loving a boy who didn’t want to love her back.

—————————————————————————

Her mom got sick in the spring of her first year. Initially, it had been a good prognosis. Y/N somehow managed to balance her busy, pre-law class load with her mother’s care, fluidly alternating between office hours and hospital appointments. But no friends meant she’d had no one to talk to, no one to lean on in those moments when her legs gave out and sobs wracked her body because she’d been so fucking scared of losing her mom. But she’d been kept busy enough to be able to squash that loneliness down and ignore it like her boys had ignored her, and so, she’d pushed through.

By the time summer had come, however, things had grown exponentially worse. Several nights ended in Y/N having to call an ambulance to rush to her home, because her mom had fallen and Y/N wasn’t strong enough to lift her by herself, and there hadn’t been anyone else she could call.

There had been a few times – maybe two or three – when she’d passed Kyojuro on the street, home briefly to check on his little brother, and the fiery blonde would make a face like he wanted to say something like he wanted to talk to her or care about her, but Y/N would turn and run before he had the chance.

She never saw Sanemi, though that hadn’t surprised her. She hadn’t expected him to be able to stomach being back home so soon after Genya.

Her mother’s condition yo-yoed throughout the summer and into the early fall of her second year of university. Just when it finally seemed as though things were looking up for her mother, when she was just days from her last treatment, she died.

No one had been there to hold her – to comfort her – when Y/N began wailing as her mother’s chest rose for the last time and did not go back down.

Her mother had died, and Y/N had been left utterly and completely alone.

Her mother’s funeral had taken place on a sunny October day, the autumn air cool and crisp as an apple. She’d stood beside her mother’s casket as stranger after stranger passed, offering their condolences and personal anecdotes of her mother’s kindness.

Not once had she seen a familiar face. Not once had either of her boys made an appearance, not even for the woman who had loved them as her own.

She’d returned to campus a few days later, and because the universe had decided she’d not suffered nearly enough for some unknown crime, she ran into him. By the cruelest twist of fate, Sanemi decided to cross the street opposite her at the same time, and what was left of her heart skipped several beats.

For all her efforts to put distance between them, she still loved him, and it was a realization so bitter she thought she would start dry heaving right there on the pavement. She tried to duck her head, to avoid catching his attention, but the crosswalk light changed, and he was suddenly walking towards her, and she couldn’t help but chance a glance up.

Lilac eyes collided with her own, and Y/N thought the world was about to open beneath her and swallow her whole.

His gaze lingered for a touch longer than normal for a stranger, and Y/N feared he’d be able to see the scars from her tears on her face or see how her heart still bore the tattoo of his name. But then he blinked, and she took the chance to vanish among the throng of students, dashing back to her dorm before the tears could spill down her cheeks once more.

She barely made it to her room before her legs gave out from under her, her sobs choking from her throat.

She wished her mother had taken her with her.

—————————————————————————

It was fitting that Y/N met the personification of spring at the start of the spring semester.

Her name was Mitsuri, and Y/N sat next to her in her 8:00 AM class. The girl was so bubbly and bright that it was difficult, even for the drab Y/N to resist striking up a conversation with her. Mitsuri was a streak of color that bloomed across Y/N’s eternal gray sky, with her exotic pink and green hair and permanent blush. It took only a few weeks, but Mitsuri and Y/N became the best of friends, and Y/N could not get over how good it felt to have one of those again.

Mitsuri and Y/N began to do everything together, and bit by bit, Y/N felt herself smiling more, laughing as her friend flirted with every him, her, and them who crossed their path. They figured out they shared nearly every class together, and when they weren’t furiously taking notes during their lectures, they were studying together in small corners around campus, dreaming of what was to come after exams and graduation in a year and a half.

Her pink-haired friend helped Y/N feel confident again, like a person. Mitsuri helped bring Y/N back out of the shell she’d so carefully crafted in the wake of her abandonment, and she began to feel a little lighter, a little more buoyant thanks to the happy, beautiful girl at her side.

That wasn’t to say Mitsuri didn’t have her own demons – she very much did. At night, Mitsuri and Y/N push their beds together in the latter’s dorm (Y/N’s first roommate had long since moved out). There, huddled together under the mess of blankets and pillows, they would whisper the names of their heartache with one another – Sanemi and Obanai – and they comforted each other, wiping their tears away with soft promises that as long as they had one another, they would be okay.

By March, Mitsuri convinced Y/N to go clubbing with her. Y/N was hesitant until she looked in the mirror after her friend had spent the evening primping her and turning her into a woman Y/N scarcely recognized in the mirror. Her friend had dressed her in a short, emerald green dress that hugged every curve just right, a teasing slit going high up on her left thigh. Y/N’s hair had been slicked back into a high ponytail that swung tantalizingly between her shoulder blades. Her cleavage was a bit more exposed in the pinkette’s dress than Y/N was accustomed to, but damn if she didn’t look downright sumptuous.

Y/N was determined to let loose, to not think about the black stain on her heart that was him, and so she greedily accepted Mitsuri’s hand as the two braved the chilly, early spring air. Mitsuri pulled her through the doors of the club -- the Kizuki Moon Lounge -- and for the first time in a year and a half, she felt alive.

Beneath the strobe of multi-colored lights, amidst the pulsing bass of the techno-music threatening to rupture her eardrums, Y/N had found herself anew; no longer was she the sad, morose girl who barely existed. Under Mitsuri’s care, Y/N transformed into a raving princess, who owned the sticky floor of the Kizuki’s club each time she and her friend traipsed onto it in their too-high heels, wearing too-short dresses and clutching too-strong drinks in their greedy hands.

In April, Mitsuri introduced her to Shinobu, a wisp of a pharmacology student who was every bit as beautiful as she was terrifying, though Y/N could not exactly place why the petite girl could scare off any ill-intentioned man that tried to swagger over to them, given her ever-present, sugary-sweet smile.

She also met three girls – Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma – who were beautiful and fun-loving and rounded out the newly-formed friend group with their fire-and-ice personalities.

First, there was Hinatsuru – quieter, but still capable of throwing it back and having a grand old time, especially once her drink of choice (rum and Coke) had the opportunity to work its way through her blood. A pretty blush was always the telltale sign that Hina was ready to jump up on a table and captivate anyone who had the pleasure of watching her dance.

Next, there was Makio, brash and bold, but fiercely loyal. Some asshole had made the mistake of snapping the thong-like top of Mitsuri’s skirt once and found his head shoved down on the table, his arm pulled back in a self-defense maneuver as the dark-haired beauty threatened to wrench the man’s offending arm from its socket.

Finally, there was Suma, who often clung to the other two like a lost child, but once she gained her confidence, would flirt with absolutely anything and everything that moved, with a sultry giggle and a bat of her pretty eyes. Within only twenty minutes of knowing her, Suma had convinced Y/N to make out with her, the beautiful girl tasting like cotton candy and summertime as their tongues lazily danced together beneath the throb of the club lights.

With her new group of girlfriends, Y/N began to lose herself to the alluring beck and call of Ubayashiki’s local rave scene, her nights quickly becoming defined by sticky drinks and jeweled makeup, and the skimpy outfits Mitsuri always shoved her into. But she could not find it in her heart to care, because for once, her mind was on something else that didn’t involve the smell of pine, or lavender eyes, or the feeling of a home that no longer existed.

But even though the sour drinks made her feel so warm and vibrant while she danced, there were still moments when clarity hit and she missed them.

She missed the way Kyojuro’s strong arm would drape around her shoulders, heavy and warm, and how his embrace always felt like home, his deep laugh infectious.

She missed the way Sanemi would pretend to hug her unwillingly but would leave his hands lingering on her back or her waist once she moved to pull away, a small smirk tugging on the corners of his tantalizing mouth. She missed the smell of his cologne, woodsy and clean, as he would lean in close to her face to tease her until she blushed.

She missed them so much that the sharp sting of alcohol eventually stopped dulling the pulsing ache in the cavity where her heart once beat. No matter how many shots, no matter how many sticky acid drinks she tossed back, that gnawing in her chest would not cease.

Then, one night, Shinobu pressed a small, lilac pill into her hand, and everything changed.

Initially, Y/N was apprehensive, because the pill perfectly matched the hue of the eyes of the person she wanted to forget most. But Shinobu promised her that this pill she’d created in a lab for school – Wisteria – will have her feeling like a kid on Christmas, and that promise, coupled with a flutter of Shinobu’s pretty eyelashes made Y/N cave.

At first, she felt nothing, no impact beyond the slight buzz provided by the round of shots she’d done upon first arriving at the Kizuki. But then, as Mitsuri twirled her beneath the flashing lights of pink and yellow, Y/N’s world exploded with a vibrance she’d neither seen nor felt in nearly two years. Everything, all at once, became magical; effervescent; infinite.

The Wisteria seeped into her veins and made her feel like Christmas lights had been implanted under her skin. Y/N felt shiny and beautiful and sparkly under the combined effect of Shinobu’s magical concoction and the balancing burn of her tequila, and with her new group of girlfriends flanking her side as they bumped to and ground against one another to the beat of the music, Y/N felt almost like she did when it was just her and her boys. Only now, Y/N felt even better, because, with her girls, she could ignore the way the black in her heart was slowly beginning to fester, even if that meant Y/N was beginning to feel more and more numb with each passing rendezvous at the club.

Because that numbness meant that at least she couldn’t feel the acrid bite of her unrequited love for him, and that was what she wanted all along, right?

—————————————————————————

(May)

Of course, Y/N should’ve known she couldn’t stay light and resplendent and numb in her neon and black light paradise forever. Because unfortunately, despite the large student body at Ubaya-U, her new friend group just has to intermingle with them.

Really, it was all Shinobu’s fault. Towards the end of the semester, Shinobu began dating a quiet, withdrawn boy named Giyuu, who happened to be good friends with the man that Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma all have a thing for – Tengen.

Tengen was a recent graduate of Ubaya-U, and an even more recent hire at the local police department, his imposing size and discerning ears a coveted asset amongst the group of detectives who’d scouted him out. Having someone affiliated with the local police be part of their group ended up being a huge advantage to them, however, given the general inclination for people to look the other way whenever Shinobu began dealing her Wisteria in the secluded corners of the Kizuki’s lounge.

What was not an advantage, however, were Tengen’s friends, because Tengen, apparently, had become best fucking friends with Kyojuro, and by default, him.

Y/N stood awkwardly between Mitsuri and Shinobu as the latter presented her group of girlfriends to the new, rag-tag medley of boys that now included the very two Y/N had gone to great lengths to avoid. She tried to ignore the burning weight of both boys’ stares as Y/N finally introduced herself to Shinobu’s new boy toy. Only when she could not possibly avoid them any longer, not without raising questions, did Y/N finally allow herself to turn to them.

“Y/N!” Kyojuro looked so surprised to see her and yet, so overjoyed that it didn’t feel fair.

Y/N could tell by the jerky way the blonde’s arms twitched towards her that he’d been about to envelop her in one of his signature bear hugs, but he’d hesitated, apparently uncertain whether he was still permitted to do so.

Ultimately, Kyojuro’s elation at seeing her once again won over his doubt, and he pulled her in tightly against his chest, his arms squeezing her with a security she hadn’t realized she’d been missing. For the briefest moment, Y/N’s eyes fluttered shut as she allowed herself to thaw, ever so slightly, in the fierce warmth of her friend’s embrace.

It was a mistake; the moment she’d allowed herself to relax, she’d felt the damning prickle of tears behind her eyelids, and an uncomfortable lump had begun to take form in her throat. So with more reluctance than Y/N wanted to acknowledge she felt, she stepped away from Kyojuro, hoping that the dim lights of the club concealed the mist clouding her eyes.

Unfortunately, the end of Y/N’s reunion with her former, fiery friend meant there were no more obstacles, no more distractions, between her and the white-haired, scar-speckled man who gazed at her with an intensity that, to her annoyance, still made her want to squirm.

And as his eyes bore into her, she chanted over and over in her mind for him not to say it, to not let her name fall from his lips, because she could not bear to hear it. It would’ve been easier, so much easier, if he simply pretended like she didn’t exist, because then she could go on pretending like she wasn’t walking around without a heart; like he hadn’t been carrying it with him even all these months later.

His eyes did not match the smirk he had as he said her name, but it still took everything Y/N had not to fold right there.

But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him know that he still held any power over her, and so she merely raised an eyebrow at him and smirked back, challenging him.

“Sanemi.”

—————————————————————————

“’Sanemi’ is your name when I’m mad at you,” Y/N warned him, tapping his knuckles with the spoon she used to stir the cake batter. “Otherwise, you’re just ‘Nemi.’”

Sanemi smirked at her, sticking his finger back into the bowl to swipe another glob of cake batter as Y/N mixed Kyojuro’s birthday cake together. “And what about when I’m being annoying?”

Y/N flicked a bit of batter at him, nailing him perfectly on his nose with the chocolate mixture. “Asshole seems the most appropriate.” She squatted down to pull a baking pan out from below her mother’s stove. “Did you remember to get the candles?”

The grocery bag crinkled as her white-haired best friend shook it, the box of candles within jostling. “Sixty-one candles for the sixty-one-year-old man,” Sanemi said proudly.

“Haha,” Y/N mocked, though she swiped the bag from his hand to check to ensure he’d actually bought sixteen and not, as he claimed, sixty-one candles. “I’m impressed. It seems you are capable of following directions.”

Sanemi leaned across the counter and peered up into her face, that damn smirk of his widening as he saw the faint blush creep across her cheeks. “I always follow your directions, Y/N.” He said lowly, raising a finger to wipe a speck of cake batter from her cheek.

“Hardly,” Y/N scoffed, using the need to get Kyojuro’s cake in the oven as an excuse to turn away from him and hide her warming face. “I think you prefer malicious compliance.”

“You wound me!” Sanemi protested, splaying across her mother’s counter in mock-injury. “When have I ever not followed your instructions with a smile on my face?”

Y/N turned back to him with a teasing grin. “’Nemi, since when do you ever smile?”

—————————————————————————

Shinobu’s eyes flickered back and forth between them, a smile forming on her face even as Mitsuri tugged pleadingly at her hand. “Do you two know each other?”

Sanemi said “yes” at the same time Y/N said “no,” and the former’s head snapped to Y/N’s face, who fought to keep her features neutral and cool. “Not anymore, anyways.” She clarified though she refused to acknowledge the way Sanemi flinched in response.

Shinobu looked between them again, her smile fading to something more pensive. Kyojuro only continued to watch Y/N, his expression sad and so very out of place in this castle of infinite pleasure and fun, and Y/N found herself desperate to escape it – to escape them.

Suma, the gods’ gift to the universe, interrupted the tense moment with her arrival, and she produced a small baggie of those lilac pills that promised Y/N’s escape. Y/N could feel both Kyojuro and Sanemi gawking at her as Suma pulled her in close, the little lilac pill already dissolving on her tongue, and kissed her, as they’d done so many times before.

When the raven-haired girl pulled away with a giggle on her lips, Y/N looked back to her former friends and held her tongue out, Suma’s pill now almost completely dissolved in her mouth, and she winked at them. Let them realize that their Y/N was long-gone, buried alongside the mother whose death they refused to acknowledge.

Suma offered the newcomers a pill each, and Y/N was surprised that both accepted. Kyojuro hesitated more than the ivory-haired man next to him, who held Y/N’s eyes as he placed the little tablet on his own wicked tongue, an answer to her earlier challenge. Y/N grimaced at the idea that Sanemi was willing to play along in this little game, willing to impose upon her paradise if it meant torturing her a little more.

So Y/N tossed her hair over her shoulders and turned her back to him, letting Suma and then Makio, tug her back into the crush of people on the dance floor to twirl and grind to the music, as both boys stared after her and she let herself be lost to them once more.

—————————————————————————

He found her the following Friday, as she waited against the bar for her drink.

“And where have you been hidin’ all this time?” Y/N fought the shiver that threatened to lick up her spine at the sound of that cursed, gravelly voice that had always made her weak at the knees.

But Y/N hadn’t spent the last twenty months learning how to keep off of Sanemi Shinazugawa’s radar for nothing, hadn’t learned to keep her grief and rage and pain locked deep inside the empty cavern of her chest, just to crumble under the intensity of that lilac stare.

Y/N threw her head back to swallow the shot of tequila the bartender had placed in front of her before turning to face him. Sanemi looked every bit the simpering, cocky asshole she’d always known him to be, leaning up against the sticky wood of the bar, one fist resting idly under his cheek as he watched her.

She met his gaze evenly, shoulders loose with a relaxedness that she didn’t feel. “I’ve been right here,” she replied smoothly.

Sanemi shook his head, clicking his tongue disapprovingly at her. “Nah, you haven’t,” he downed his own shot of vodka before returning his eyes to her, looking her over in consideration. “Though, I guess it would’ve been hard to know it was you anyways.”

Y/N bristled at the comment but kept her voice light. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Sanemi watched her carefully for a moment, though his eyebrows furrowed, as though he was struggling to choose his words. “I just wouldn’t have expected to see you in a place like this.” He decided, after a moment, a frown tugging at the corners of his sinful mouth.

It was Y/N’s turn to smirk. “That would assume you knew me at all to begin with,” she challenged, motioning to the bartender for another shot.

Something tightened in Sanemi’s eyes as he held her gaze, and it clenched the knot of unease that had balled in her stomach. “I did, once.”

Y/N kept her face impassive. “Maybe, as a girl.” She accepted her second shot from the bartender and brought it to her lips, biting down on a wince as the sharp burn of the cheap liquid slid down her throat. “But not as a woman.”

Though she did not show it, his words struck a wound deep within her that she’d not realized still festered; because, as hard as she tried to pretend that the man beside her was a mere stranger, his words reminded her of the harsh truth.

She was still in love with him; had been, ever since she’d learned what love meant.

A shadow flashed across his face before disappearing, that insufferable smirk sliding onto his face once more. “I guess you’re right; a girl doesn’t wear a dress like that.” Sanemi purred.

Y/N fluttered her eyelashes at him, a foreign boldness taking over her mind even as the echo of her heart begged her to flee. “Do you like what you see, Sanemi?”

Her former friend’s answering grin was wolfish. “I’ve always liked what I’ve seen of you, Y/N,” he grabbed her last shot from her hand, ignoring the protest in her eyes as he tipped the tequila back easily down his throat. “You just always seem to disappear before I have a chance to properly appreciate you.”

Y/N knew she should run away from him, and fast, but her hand betrayed her as it reached up to brush a bit of confetti from his hair that lingered from earlier. She nearly hummed in satisfaction at the way Sanemi’s breath hitched in his throat as she drew close, her fingers just barely grazing the skin of his forehead.

“Guess you’ll have to catch me.” Was her only response, before Y/N departed for the dance floor and her friends once more.

Sanemi’s eyes remained locked on her the entire night.

————————————————————————

The days blurred into weeks, as Y/N and Sanemi’s new relationship took form.

The convergence of their friend groups was inevitable, though Y/N resented it; but now, they all went out as a unit, rather than as two separate groups which just so happened to run into one another, and it annoyed Y/N to no end.

More annoying was the fact that Sanemi seemed as willing to partake in the sacred ritual of taking Shinobu’s precious Wisteria with them, though he seemed to do it less out of a desire to feel like the flashing strobe lights of the club and more so because he wanted to get on Y/N’s nerves.

“Drugs are bad for your health, y’know,” that damnable gravelly voice snapped her attention away from the Wisteria that sat in Shinobu’s palm.

Sanemi’s shoulder bumped into hers as he came to stand beside her in a darkened corner of the Kizuki’s seating lounge, out of sight from prying eyes as Shinobu dispersed her latest batch of tiny purple pills, a smirk on his lips and a challenge in his eyes.

Y/N scoffed, reaching to take the small offering from her friend’s hand. “And so is that vodka you keep slugging back.” Y/N’s fingers were about to close around the Wisteria when Sanemi plucked it from the dark-haired girl’s hand, a cry of indignation squeaking past Y/N’s lips.

Sanemi held the pill teasingly in front of her mouth as Y/N glowered up at him. “Open up,” he ordered, pinching her key to paradise between his thumb and index finger.

Eyes locked with his, Y/N slowly let her lips part and held out her tongue. Sanemi leaned forward, taking her jaw in his free hand as he placed the small tablet on her tongue with the other.

 “Good girl,” he murmured, eyes lowering to her mouth as he watched her, hungrily.

As she accepted the Wisteria from him, Y/N let her tongue flick out and graze against his skin, dragging it lightly up the calloused edge of his index finger before she closed her mouth, letting the tablet dissolve on her tongue. Sanemi exhaled harshly through his nose, his hand gripping her chin possessively as he stared down at her mouth, and Y/N thought for a moment that he was about to give in right there and kiss her.

At the last moment, Kyojuro clapped him on the shoulder as he returned from the bar, and the spell was broken. Y/N blushed slightly as she turned back to Shinobu who made no secret of her raised eyebrow at the exchange between the two former friends.

Later, as she broke away from her friends dancing on the floor, she’d noticed Sanemi for once, was not looking at her, but at the hand he’d used to slip her the Wisteria, an unreadable heat in his eyes.

————————————————————————-

Sanemi liked to watch her while she danced.

At first, it had been unsettling to feel a pair of eyes boring into her back as she bumped and ground against Mitsuri or Suma, head tossed back as she let Shinobu’s pills work their magic, but she’d grown accustomed to it. Now, she craved the knowledge that he was thoroughly transfixed by her, because that meant at the very least, she was filling his thoughts while they were out almost as much as he filled hers every moment of the day, despite her efforts to numb him out of her life.

She’d confided her secret joy in Mitsuri, who’d conspiratorially promised her they would do anything and everything to drive the lilac-eyed man wild with desperation so that he might feel an ounce of the pining he’d shackled Y/N to feeling every time he so much as looked her way.

One night, a gaggle of them had gathered over in one of the Kizuki’s seated lounge areas as Shinobu pressed her Wisteria into their greedy, waiting palms. Sanemi’s eyes were locked on Y/N, as they usually were, as she’d exchanged a knowing glance with her pink-haired best friend and placed her pill beneath the heavy glass of her discarded drink and ground the violet pill into magic dust.

Eyes on Sanemi, Y/N delicately cupped the powder in one hand and brought her free fingers to the low bodice of her corseted top, tugging lightly on the strings to loosen it, inching it down lower to reveal the tops of the twin swells of her breasts, though stopping before she could be accused of exposing herself in public. She then turned her attention back to Mitsuri, her pink-and-green friend watching her with a sugary deviousness that made her stomach bubble with excitement.

Wordlessly, Y/N leaned back on the table, to the cheers and cat-calls of her friends, and she sprinkled some of the violet dust along the exposed top of her cleavage. Mitsuri leaned over her body, all vanilla perfume and pink hair tickling Y/N’s delicate skin as her friend held one nostril closed and inhaled every speck of the amethyst powder with the other. Y/N’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she let out a wanton moan beneath the black lights of the Kizuki, as her best friend kissed her collarbone in thanks.

Sanemi had gruffly excused himself for the bathroom and did not return for another five minutes. In his absence, Mitsuri had slyly let Y/N know that his eyes hadn’t once left her face throughout the entire vulgar exchange, much to her secret delight.

Y/N knew she was dancing closer and closer to the fire.

She knew that Sanemi wasn’t far from snapping, from losing whatever restraint he thought he had when it came to her, as she deliberately pressed each one of his buttons every time their group ventured out.

The next time he came close to breaking was when he saw another put his hands on her.

A hand gripped her ass, and Y/N turned and saw a man with long white hair and odd-colored eyes give her a wink. He was attractive, that was certain, but there was something predatory in his eyes that made her feel gross, so she moved closer to her circle of friends, keeping an eye over her shoulder.

Eventually, the strange man wandered off, and Y/N felt as though she could relax once more as she swung her hips to the beat thumping over the stereo strongly enough to make the dance floor vibrate. Shinobu held out a hand that Y/N eagerly grabbed, her friend twirling her as she laughed, carefree and alive beneath the resplendent rainbow of lights.

The song slowed to something more sensual, and Y/N was about to take her cue and move toward the bar when a hand grazed her upper arm.

Though it had been nearly two years since she’d last felt his touch, Y/N knew only one person capable of bestowing such a warm and gentle caress, even in spite of his hardened appearance.

Sanemi, to her eternal surprise, had made an appearance on the dance floor – his first if she remembered correctly.

His eyebrow was raised in question at her, and Y/N couldn’t help but appreciate he was asking permission to dance with her, rather than just sidling up and grinding on her like any other man would.

Sanemi looked so god damn handsome in that printed short-sleeve shirt. His sleeves had been cuffed to further show off his considerable biceps, and he’d left the top three buttons open, revealing his scarred but downright divinely toned chest. As he leaned in slightly, waiting for her permission, Y/N caught a whiff of his cologne, and it smelled like home.

Fuck it, she thought, her lips curving up into a siren’s smile as he stepped closer to her, bringing one large hand up to hold her waist as they began rocking to the beat of the music. Their foreheads were nearly touching as their bodies pressed closer and closer together, Y/N’s hips completely flush against his as they danced. Their noses brushed, and Y/N realized how dangerously close their lips had come.

Sanemi brought his other hand up to press against the small of her back, the one on her waist tightening slightly. Y/N looped one arm around his neck, her other hand coming to rest against his chest as they ground, Sanemi setting the pace perfectly in time with the beat.

Through her eyelashes, Y/N could see Sanemi’s amethyst gaze drop to her lips.

She knew she should pull away; she knew if she let him close the distance between their lips, she would also be closing the distance she’d spent so much time carefully crafting between her, and him, and even Kyojuro.

But Y/N also knew she couldn’t pull away, either; she’d waited, for so damn long, to know what his lips would feel like, and she was drunk and a little high, so the inhibitions that would normally have sent her running had long since been overshadowed by her unbounded want for him.

She felt his breath against her lips, and she closed her eyes.

Before she could finally achieve her lifelong dream of kissing Sanemi Shinazugawa, the music changed from the slow, sensual beat that they had been grinding to, to something louder, faster, and more exciting.

A scream grew louder as Mitsuri returned from heaving her guts up in the bathroom, and grabbed Y/N’s wrist, wrenching her from Sanemi’s grip and hauling her deeper into the dance floor to rave alongside her.

By the time Y/N was able to emerge from the surging crush of people dancing and raving, Sanemi was already back at the bar, leaning against it with his beer in hand, watching her.

She’d half expected him to look angry, but he only raised his drink at her, in toast.

The smirk that tugged on the corners of his mouth was full of promise.

—————————————————————————

Y/N supposed it was inevitable that this game of cat-and-mouse they’d been playing would end, and end like this.

She’d known where the night was heading the moment she showed up at the club in Mitsuri’s emerald green dress – the one she’d worn her very first time there in that strobe light palace – and saw his eyes darken from lilac to eggplant. Y/N felt the blazing heat of his stare in her bones even as she danced with her girls, could feel his magnetic pull as he watched her like a predator eyeing its next meal.

The more sober part of her was nervous, knew that she was about to cross a line she couldn’t walk back from. She knew that what was about to happen – giving her first time to Sanemi – would do nothing but exacerbate the poisonous love in her heart, but that part of her was so small, so feeble against the fire she felt in her blood as she approached the bar where he stood.

She pretended not to notice that he watched every move she made as she leaned over the ledge to order another shot. Only after the bartender placed the little glass in front of her, only after she tipped her head back and let the acid liquid slide down her throat, did she turn to meet his punishing gaze.

“You really should try joining in on the fun, Sanemi,” she kept her voice at a normal volume, forcing him to lean in slightly to hear her over the pulsing beat of the club music. She resisted the urge to close her eyes as the familiar whiff of his cologne hit her nose, the smell of a home and of a time before he ripped her heart out and stomped it to dust.

Sanemi smirked, and her stomach dipped at just how beautiful he looked, standing there below the pulsing glow of the lights. “I’m havin’ fun watching from here.” His lips were close enough to her ear that she shivered, gooseflesh erupting over her bare arms.

She wouldn’t let him know how much he still got to her, but she also couldn’t resist teasing him a little further, curious to see how far she could push him until he broke. She lifted her hand to pat the part of his chest he’d left exposed, his skin burning under her touch, as she made to pass him.

Sanemi snapped.

He grabbed her hand before she could pull it away and tugged her closer to him, knocking Y/N’s breath from her as he whirled her around and pressed her up against the dirty club wall to kiss her like she’d never been kissed before. He pinned the hand she’d had on his chest against the wall, over her head, while the other burned its imprint onto her waist. His kiss was demanding and hard, but Y/N was addicted to him. She brought her free hand to his neck, digging her nails in slightly to the sensitive skin to elicit a growl from him as he nipped her bottom lip.

Sanemi released the arm he’d pinned to the greasy club wall to hold the side of her face, tilting her head to he could deepen their kiss, his tongue sliding into her mouth to dance with her own. Y/N couldn’t control her body as she pressed into him, desperate to feel him against her, to feel him fill every empty part of her until she felt whole again. She knew she was dooming herself further, knew she was only setting herself up to fall harder than she already had, but she couldn’t stop because it was Sanemi, and she loved him.

She felt his growing hardness against her thigh, and she couldn’t stop her hips from grinding against him, heat pooling in her belly. Sanemi moaned into her mouth as her hips undulated against his, and Y/N felt herself go molten at the sound. She wanted to make him do it again and again, but Sanemi tore his mouth from hers before she could.

His chest was heaving, and his eyes were wild and dark as he looked at her. His eyes fell on her reddened, kiss-swollen mouth, and even in the dim light of the club, Y/N could see his pupils explode. He grabbed her hand, and suddenly he was tugging her through the crowded dance floor, through the groups of people near the exit, until they were outside, the night air cool on their overheated skin.

Together, they stumbled down dark, empty streets, though Y/N could not find it in herself to feel afraid, because Sanemi was there, and while he may not have cared about her enough to love her, he was still a gentleman who wouldn’t let her be hurt by anyone but him. They walked as she laughed because he kept stopping and pulling on her hand to kiss her again and again, as though he too, could not get enough of her.

Y/N didn’t know where they were going, but eventually, they arrived at an apartment complex, and it dawned on her that he’d brought her to his home. His lips were on hers the whole walk to his door, never breaking even as he fumbled for his keys. Sanemi finally unlocked the door and pushed her inside his dark apartment, kicking the door shut behind him.

Sanemi’s hands shot for her waist as he crushed her against him, his tongue licking the roof of her mouth. Y/N was sweaty and slightly sticky from the club, but the way Sanemi held her to him made her feel so god damn pretty like he’d been set adrift in a starless sea and she was his only lifeline. Sanemi’s hands moved from her waist to cup her ass, kneading her flesh as he moaned into her mouth again. His hands slid lower, grabbing her thighs to lift her up so her legs could wrap around his waist.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmurs, her head tilted back as Sanemi’s lips laid claim to her neck, his hips pressing her harshly against the entryway wall of his apartment.

The snow-haired man groaned, his hands fondling the soft curve of her ass beneath her dress. “Then tell me to stop,” he whispered, his breath hot as his tongue teasingly traced across her collarbone.

Y/N whimpered as she tightened her legs around his hips, locking him closer to her. If he stopped then, she thought she would fall completely apart.

“Tch, just as I thought,” his teeth nipped harshly against her throat as Sanemi pulled back to look into her eyes. “You can’t.”

Sanemi set her down, but he did not pull away, instead kneeling before her to run his large, warm hands up the length of her calves before bringing them around to the back of her knees. He tapped each leg one at a time, signaling her to lift it slightly. With a jolt, Y/N was completely suspended in the air with both legs over his shoulders, as he buried his face into her cunt.

He did not even bother removing the flimsy, lacy thong she’d worn under her dress, choosing instead to bypass it entirely as his tongue dragged right up her slit. Y/N’s head smacked into the wall behind her as she moaned, and she couldn’t tell whether it was the Wisteria or Sanemi that had her seeing fractals of light behind her eyes. She found that she didn’t much care either way, however, because what Sanemi was doing to her felt fucking incredible.

Her fingers fisted in his hair as Sanemi fucked her with his tongue, his teeth grazing across her clit in time with his thrusts into her. He was groaning lewdly as he feasted upon her, eyes lifting every so often to meet hers, to ensure she was enjoying it as much as he was.

“I knew you’d taste fucking sweet,” he muttered as he broke for air, fingers digging firmly into her ass as he hauled her back onto his mouth. His tongue darted in and out of her folds, lapping up every drop of her essence that he coaxed out of her, before he dove right back into her entrance, forcing her to ride his tongue as she writhed above him. Y/N desperately sought to grab onto anything for purchase, so that she could grind harder against his face, but Sanemi had her pinned in the middle of the wall, rendering her helpless to let him tear her first orgasm from her, followed by another, and then another, never once lifting his mouth off her tender core.

Eventually, Sanemi decided he’d had enough, and he moved to carry her to his bedroom. Just after he tossed her onto his plush mattress, there was a moment before he pounced on her when Y/N could really look at him. The only source of light was from the full moon outside, casting everything in Sanemi’s bedroom in its silvery glow. The moonlight illuminated the soft platinum of his hair, made his lavender irises melt into precious gems of amethyst as he raked his eyes over her panting, blushing form. His gaze darkened at the sight of her dress strap, hanging off her shoulder, before dropping to the hem that has ridden up her legs.

Y/N barely had time to take another breath before he was on her again, almost ripping the fabric from her in his haste to get it off, to expose her.

“This fucking dress,” he growled in her ear, finally tugging the zipper all the way down and shoving it down her legs, chucking the flimsy material behind him.

She was almost bare to him, but he was still clothed, far too clothed. Y/N sat up and ripped his shirt, the buttons popping all over the bed while he smirked down at her. She couldn’t find it in herself to be embarrassed, however, because then his skin was touching hers, and it felt like heaven even if Y/N knew she was only descending deeper into hell.

Sanemi graced her lips with one more bruising kiss before beginning his descent down her body, and Y/N felt electrified under his touch.

His hot mouth first came to her bare breasts. “Fuck,” he whispered as he let his tongue trace the first of her mounds, swirling around her hardened nipple before letting his teeth nip gently at her. Y/N squirmed under his ministrations, the sensation foreign to her and yet somehow, it felt wholly right, that the first person to explore her body this way would be him.

Not that she would tell him, of course; she didn’t want him to hold back, she needed him to fuck her as though there was no tomorrow. If he knew it was her first time, he would slow, or perhaps insist on stopping altogether, given that they were both high, and she couldn’t have that.

Sanemi pressed his hips down against hers, pinning her against the mattress and stilling her movements as he took his time lavishing her breasts, covering her in small marks that he soothes with sweet kisses that were enough to get her utterly drunk on him. Y/N let out a high-pitched whine as she felt Sanemi grind against the mattress as he sucked on her other breast, his abdomen pressing deliciously against her aching cunt still covered by the lace of her thong, as she desperately swiveled her hips, eager for him to relieve her once more.  

Her desperation spurred his movement, as he detached himself from her breast with a low groan, resuming his descent down her body, pausing only to suck and nip at her stomach, before settling between her legs once more. Sanemi’s lips met the band of her thong and he growled, deep and guttural as he pressed his nose against her, inhaling deeply and letting his tongue flick out once more to lap at her wetness over the rough lace obscuring her from view.

Y/N was nearly sobbing from overstimulation, Sanemi having already ensured she’d finished on his tongue three times in the hallway. Now, she needed him to fill her, and quick, or else she thought she would combust.

“Sanemi,” she whined, and his eyes flicked back up to hers, dark with want. “Please, I need you.”

Her words had an instantaneous effect on the heaving man between her legs, because suddenly his body was covering her own, his weight pressing down on her, and his pants were gone, and he was slamming into her with a force that left her screaming and writhing against his soft sheets.

“Shit!” Sanemi snarled in her ear as his cock plunged into her dripping heat, so tight and so unaccustomed to the thick length now bullying in and out of her with abandon. “You’re so – ah – fuckin’ perfect.”

Y/N was sobbing on his mattress, but not from any discomfort. The combination of Sanemi’s body mixing with the Wisteria had utterly blurred out any pain or unease she felt at the intrusion of his rigid length into her core, and instead, Y/N felt herself shatter into a million pieces, only to be fucked back together again by Sanemi, who kept one bruising hand on her hip while the other ensnared itself in her hair as he thrust wildly in and out of her.

But she was not close enough for him. The silver-haired god above her pulled her legs over his forearms and braced his hands on her inner thighs to spread her wide as he pounded into her, leaning down into her face to make her blush, just like he used to do. Only now, instead of teasing her, he was whispering filth that had her turning scarlet and begging for more.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he grunted, his hips snapping in and out of her with a ferocity that left her breathless. "You've no idea –”

The speed with which he drilled into her propelled them up his bed, but Sanemi moved an arm to come between her head and the wrought iron of his bedframe, protecting her.

“You’re a fucking dream,” he snarled, sitting back on his knees as he began to bounce her against his groin, her breasts jolting with every forceful snap of his hips.

“Sanemi,” Y/N moaned, her back arching off his luxurious sheets as her legs tightened around his hips. Under his breath, Sanemi swore.

“Again,” he croaked, the sticky pap pap of his hips slapping against hers filling his room with the sweet music of their dance. “Say it again.”

Y/N could hardly process his demand over the sensual drag of his cock in and out of her needy walls, Sanemi’s movements chasing every breath from her and replacing it with him, as though there were some parts of her that remained untainted by him.

“Again,” Sanemi insisted, his groin pressing against hers as he ground against her, his rough base swirling over her aching clit demandingly, causing her legs to spasm around his hips.

“S-Sanemi!” Y/N howled as he lifted himself from the mattress by his knees, taking her hips with him as he suspended her half in mid-air and pounded relentlessly into her, rendering her incapable of making any other sound that wasn’t a devotional to him.

Through bleary eyes, Y/N looked to see Sanemi’s own gaze fixed on the way her mouth was frozen in a perfect “o” as he pulled moan after sigh from her throat with his hips, his fingers digging into the plush of her ass as he bounced her up and down his aching member again and again. Y/N arched her back even more, allowing him to hit deeper within her and she felt an unfamiliar pressure begin to build in her stomach.

It was similar to what she felt out in Sanemi’s hallway, beneath his tongue, but this time was different. Every push and drag of his cock into her syrupy wetness had her feeling electric like the lights of the Kizuki club were being strung beneath her skin and plugged in, and she was slowly becoming a beacon of light for the man chasing his own release above her. Her eyes rolled back into her head as that coil wound tightly, Sanemi’s name falling from her mouth like a plea as she begged him to let her fall apart in his arms.

Above her, Sanemi fared no better, as his hips began to jerk and press into her without the steady rhythym he’d so carefully built, a cacophony of snarls and moans pouring from his mouth along with the filth he muttered against her skin as he sucked harshly at her neck.

Sanemi readjusted his stance above her, his thighs pressing hers down into the mattress, and Y/N lost control.

“N-Nemi!” Y/N gasped as the unfamiliar coil in her belly suddenly unwound. She was far too overcome by her pleasure to recognize she’d accidentally used her old, affectionate nickname for him as she reached her peak.

But the slip did not go unnoticed by the snow-haired man rutting into her from above, as the moment the nickname fell from her lips in her haze, Sanemi’s own release followed, his seed barreling into her hot and fast as a pleasured cry of her name tore from his throat.

Sanemi’s hips rolled into hers for what felt like hours as he poured every ounce of himself into her greedy, demanding core, Y/N taking every drip of his cum. It felt exquisite, to have the man she’d so desperately loved for so long be reduced to such a mess by her body, and Y/N savored the way his warmth filled her, as though it were possible of bestowing life back upon her even though it was he who’d chased it away to begin with.

He collapsed atop her, finally spent and satisfied, an arm winding around her waist as he sleepily pressed a kiss into the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Sanemi rolled to his back, pulling her with him, and locking her against his chest as though they were lovers. But the combination of the night’s activities with the dwindling effects of the Wisteria had exhausted him, and it was not long before his chest began rising and falling in a steady pattern of sleep.

Y/N giggled quietly to herself, marveling over the fact that her tolerance for Shinobu’s Wisteria was apparently much higher than his. Under the moonlight, she found her dress puddled in a corner of his room and shrugged it back on, gathering her heels in one hand and locating her bag with the other. She turned back and looked at the sleeping face of the man who still held her heart and smiled slightly, before closing his bedroom door gently and taking off into the summer night.

There was a new ache between her legs, no doubt the product of having her virginity taken in such an enthusiastic way by the man she’d left sleeping in his apartment, though he was none the wiser. Y/N felt oddly satisfied, as though she’d achieved some lifelong goal, as the summer air caressed her face. As she stumbled down the night-warmed pavement back to her apartment, Y/N laughed, her chest feeling light and empty for the first time in a long while.

Want more angst? Smut? Pain? Stick around for part two and see shit literally hit the fan.

Likes, reblogs, tags, and comments are always appreciated!!

[itacats]

Rain of Shadows

FT: Simon x gn!reader

Warnings: Graphic depictions of torture and its psychological impact, References to past trauma and betrayal, Themes of isolation and self-worth, code name used for reader, please let me know if anything else should be here!🙏

SUM: here we go, delving into the duality of survival—both as a struggle for life and as an emotional reckoning. Captured and tortured, Rain faces the raw truths of their identity, grappling with a lifetime of betrayal and loneliness. Meanwhile, TF141 confronts their own failings, united by a newfound resolve to bring you back—not just as a soldier, but as a person worthy of trust and belonging.

A/N: This part was emotionally intense to write, balancing the physical toll of captivity with the psychological journey of self-discovery. It’s a pivotal moment, showcasing both Rain’s resilience and the team’s evolving bond. It’s about redemption, not just survival. 🌀💔

Rain of Shadows Masterlist

Part 7 - Shadows of Survival

The rhythmic thrum of the helicopter blades echoed in the tense silence as TF141 prepared for the mission. The air inside was thick with unspoken words, the residue of frayed bonds lingering like smoke after a fire. You scanned the faces around you—Price’s stoic determination, Soap’s restless energy, Gaz’s quiet focus, and Simon’s stone-cold indifference. His silence was deafening, a barrier between camaraderie and confrontation.

You had long since grown accustomed to isolation, existing on the edges of teams, never quite fitting in. It was easier to be misunderstood than to explain yourself to people who would never grasp the depth of the darkness you carried. Solitude had always been a shield, but now it felt like a prison, reinforced by the mistrust that simmered among the team.

“Gear up,” Price barked, his commanding tone breaking the quiet. “We move in ten.”

Your grip tightened on your weapon as you stared out into the dark horizon. Another mission, another chance to prove your worth—or reinforce their doubts. You didn’t know which weighed heavier.

The mission unfolded with chaotic precision. The plan had been simple, but the enemy’s response was anything but. Gunfire cracked through the night as you and Soap laid down suppressive fire, your movements synchronized despite the tension that lingered between you.

Gaz flanked the enemy from the left, moving like a shadow through the battlefield. You relayed his position to Soap, but something was wrong. The enemy seemed to anticipate your every move, their strategy shifting as if they knew your playbook by heart.

Then came the explosion.

The deafening blast swallowed the world around you. Shrapnel tore through the air, searing pain blooming in your side. Disoriented, you felt the ground shift beneath you as darkness surged, pulling you under. The last thing you saw was the team retreating, their forms blurring into the chaos.

Consciousness returned slowly, dragging you into a cold, harsh reality. Metal bit into your wrists, the acrid stench of sweat and grime filling your lungs. The guttural voices of your captors pierced the silence, each word a cruel reminder of where you were—and what awaited you.

The torture began swiftly, hours turned into days, but time was meaningless now. Electricity coursed through your body, pain erupting in waves that blurred the line between reality and memory. They stripped you bare, not just of armor, but of identity, each jolt peeling back layers of who you thought you were.

Flashes of your past flooded your mind: the empty promises of a childhood marred by violence, the cold betrayal of handlers who had shaped you into a weapon, and the countless missions where survival was your only victory. The threads of humanity within you unraveled, each one snapped by the agony of your captors’ relentless cruelty.

Then came the harrowing memory of the moment your handlers had sold you—torn from your life yet again. The realization that your every order, every mission had never truly been yours.

Your mind shattered like glass. That was the deepest hurt, wasn’t it? Not the physical pain, but the truth that you had never escaped the cycle of betrayal and war. The roots of malice were entwined within you, poisoning any chance of nurturing bonds. You had never learned how to trust—how to lean on others.

But even as the darkness threatened to consume you, there was a flicker of something else—a memory, faint but persistent. It wasn’t the screaming of enemies or the grim orders of your past; it was laughter. Soap’s teasing grin, Gaz’s steady voice, even Simon’s rare moments of dry humor.

Back at headquarters, the weight of your absence hung heavy over the team. Price stood at the head of the table, your file spread before him like a map of a life none of them fully understood.

“They didn’t just take a soldier,” Price said, his voice low and steady. “Rain spent their whole life as a weapon. They took someone who’s never known anything but survival. Their file… we all knew it, but we never really understood.” He pushed through the contents of your file on the table, the papers fluttering like leaves in a chilling wind.

Gaz leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “They think they can break Rain,” he said firmly. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

Soap’s jaw tightened, his voice cracking under the weight of his emotions as he recalled his own painful upbringing, sharing a past of survival with someone who had constantly been pushed to the brink. “Do they even know what it’s like to trust someone? To feel like part of something bigger?”

“They’ve never had that chance,” Price replied, his tone heavy with regret. “But they’re one of us now. And we don’t leave our own behind.”

Determination settled over the room like steel, binding the team together in shared resolve. For all their doubts, for all the fractures that had begun to form, they knew one thing with certainty: you were theirs.

In the depths of your confinement, those memories became your lifeline. You fought against despair, grappling with the shards of who you could have been beyond the soldier inside. With each jolt of electricity, you felt the threads of your identity unravel, but in those fragmented memories, amidst hallucinations born of pain, you glimpsed the shadow of warmth—friends who had tried, even if you had resisted.

You had been taught to be alone, but now, the whispers of your team encircled your consciousness—a tether, a light through the choking darkness. Their resolve pulsed with warmth, igniting the instincts you thought had gone cold.

As their laughter reverberated in your mind, determination surged through you. You would return—for them, for the chance to understand these connections, and to escape the chains that sought to bind you once and for all.

As the team prepared for the rescue mission, their unity grew stronger. Doubts were set aside, replaced by a singular focus: bringing you home.

Price’s voice rang with conviction as he addressed the group. “Rain’s one of us. We owe it to them to bring them back—and to show them what it means to be part of a team—a family.”

Simon’s silence spoke volumes, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes—determination, perhaps even guilt. He had doubted you, but now, with the weight of your absence pressing down on him, he realized the value of what you brought to the team.

Miles away, in the cold grip of your captors, you felt that resolve. It was a faint, distant warmth, but it was enough.

You weren’t just fighting to survive anymore. You were fighting to return—not just to the battlefield, but to the people who had begun to show you what survival could truly mean.

Going to put this little Rain Background blurb right here for some context for this part and the next:

Rain’s past was forged in secrecy, a life shaped by handlers who sought to create something more than human—a living weapon. Conceived not from love but as part of a cruel experiment, Rain's existence was a calculated endeavor to strip away individuality and free will. Their mother died in childbirth, and their father, distant and unloving, relinquished Rain to the hands of nameless figures who molded them into an instrument of precision and obedience.

Raised without the comforts of childhood—no toys, no friends, not even a sense of belonging—Rain's world was confined to training grounds and sterile classrooms. Education came in the form of grueling routines and relentless evaluations, where failure was a punishable offense and exhaustion merely an obstacle to overcome. Electroshock therapy was used to rewire their thoughts, ensuring compliance and sharpening their instincts to serve, not question.

When Rain’s handlers sold them to Task Force 141, they disguised the transaction as another mission. Suspicion simmered, but Rain followed orders as always. Unbeknownst to them, the move was meant to be either their salvation or their end. Over time, Rain has begun to lean toward the former, finding something unfamiliar yet tantalizing—a sense of camaraderie, even home. But the scars of their past linger, threatening to unravel everything as Rain confronts the question they were never allowed to ask: Who am I, beyond the mission?

Taglist:

@jessicab1991

@burningarcadething

If you would like to be tagged in this story, let me know!

Here's the current post schedule with some upcoming stories to look forward to!

[sorceresssundries]

The Serpent

Pairing: Gale x Female Tav (Durge) - SFW

Word Count: 1.8k

Summary: A Macbeth inspired one-shot. Tav, now free from Bhaal's control, urges Gale to abandon his devotion to Mystra to forge a new path alongside her. Inspired by Act 1, Scene 5 and Act 1, Scene 7

A/N - Not going to lie, nervous about this one! Macbeth is, in my opinion, one of the greatest texts ever written. Obviously, this is inspired by and not a direct interpretation - however there are a number of lines/references to the play, as well as the obvious overlapping of themes - Ambition, devotion, temptation, the supernatural... etc Please leave a comment or reblog if you enjoyed it! I'd really love to hear your thoughts about this one!

Tav had died. 

Gale had watched it happen. He had been roused from his charmed unconsciousness just in time to witness the cruelty of Bhaal in all its vengeful savagery. Tav’s strong, supple body had contorted and snapped with crunches that echoed through the gore-stained, cavernous temple. He watched, mouth agape and eyes wide, as she had denied her birthright and been drained of her father’s blood. Bhaal’s retaliation, the scream of Tav's death, slipped between his ribs and twisted the life from his devoted heart. The world slowed, darkened, and quieted as she lay in the stillness of her god's rage - small and broken. Gone.

The scent of dank and decay staining the very air of Bhaal’s temple clotted in his throat as he lost all breath. Canker and gore settled under his fingernails as he gripped the stone altar with such fervour his fingers threatened to snap. The light from his world had been extinguished. 

And then...

She came back. Like it was nothing. Like the reigniting of a snuffed-out candle still pouring smoke. Withers reclaimed her from the afterlife, and she was… glorious...different. New. She was full of hot fury and cold vengeance, the two forces pressing together to hiss its way from between her bared teeth as she rose again.

She had stepped towards him, ignoring all others, her foot crushing down upon the skull of her slain sister, splitting it into unrecognisable shrapnel. She did not even blink. Her blood-soaked hands cupped his face. Her eyes, once familiar and warm, looked as though they had opened for the first time. 

The two lovers found themselves alone in a dingy temple chamber, the room cold and bare, where Tav had dragged him for a private reunion. It was the longest they had been apart since their meeting, and they both ran their hands over each other, searching with damp eyes for any injury, desperately needing to touch after days apart. They had thought each other dead.

Gale didn’t know how long it had been since Orin had taken him, but it felt like an age. Tav kissed him furiously with blood on her lips, and her taste was iron and fire. Eventually, she pulled away to search his face once more.

"Are you alright? Did she hurt you?" Her sharp voice was barely a whisper.

"I thought he had taken you from me," he said, pulling her back against him. "For a moment there I..."

He remembered the look on her face when Bhaal’s edict was laid before her, the way her eyes flickered and jaw tightened the way he had seen so many times before. The hard, set expression of a person once again thrown against the relentless tide of another exhausting decision. Despite her previous promises that she would deny her heritage, he didn’t know which way she would be swept.

How easy it would have been for her to accept the offer of a God. She could have been unstoppable, the weapon of the dread lord himself. And yet, she had cast his gift aside and paid the ultimate price. She was free. His brave, fearsome warrior was her own, and he loved her twice over.

Her wide, frantic eyes darted between his. Her pupils were small, as though filled with too much light.

"I am sick of being the puppet of another."

Even the way she spoke sounded different. He had expected that if she turned from Bhaal’s influence and became her own person, that person would be soft and forgiving. There was no gentleness in her at this moment, only fury and determination. For what though, he wasn’t sure.

"Tav, you must rest," he murmured as her shaking, stained hands pushed against his robes, her lips meeting every inch of skin she was unveiling.

"How intoxicating it is, to be free. To know that not even a God can claim me."

"Hush, love."

"You could join me in this feeling. We could share in it. You could cast aside your God as I have mine."

His hands froze at her waist. She was drunk on battle and blood. Her words rattled inside his head, but he tried to push them down and pay them no mind. He must be clear, he must be focused, and he must be the pillar of strength for her to lean on.

"Let us rest back at camp. We can’t speak like this, not now."

"Why? You fear your mistress will hear your heretic lover’s siren song of blasphemy? The only god in this place is murder. Her weave may still dance across your fingertips, but I assure you there is none of her presence here. You are without her, as it should be."

She disentangled herself from his grasp and began pacing in front of him, a recently unleashed animal - suddenly wild and hungry.

“They dare to bend us upon their altars, so let us snap. Screw your courage to the sticking place, Gale. What are you afraid of?”

Gale had fallen in love with Tav in spite of the bloodthirsty shadow that skulked behind her, stealing her light and darkening her dreams. He had always thought that part of her was severable, but what if it wasn’t? He had thought light would filter into the gaps Bhaal left behind and soften her sharp, blood-laced blades. But she wielded them still, with such focus she may as well be forged of steel herself. 

Maybe… this had been her all along, and he was shocked at how much it did not alter his feelings. He loved her then, just as he loved her now. There was a slice of sickly guilt as he considered what that said about him, but it was soon stitched up and forgotten in the wake of relief that she was still so full of life.

He loved her, she was alive, and she had snapped the shackles which bound her

Was she right? Could... perhaps... he dare to do the same?

It would be a lie to pretend he had not thought of it, that he had not lain awake night after night with the thrum and pulse of bruise-purple malice waiting within him like impatient thunder. His bitterness made the wound glow, the tendrils carved into his frail, mortal flesh coiled and squeezed the softness from his heart. It beat like a war drum as he recalled the written words of Karsus. He had pulled the forbidden knowledge from the pages of his annals and gorged himself on it, tasted and savoured each promise it held. Transcendence. Freedom. Immortality. 

A vision had slinked into his thoughts when sleep eventually found him, clear and seductive. Him, with skin of divine silver, crackling with jolts of unconfined magic. The mark of the orb still burned into his almighty form - a reminder of what he had endured, a mocking gesture to the one who had thought it would be his undoing. The crown of Karsus rested atop his head, where it belonged.

He was the embodiment of a God with the scarred, yielding heart of a mortal. Had he not earned it? Had he not served and worshipped and waited. Even in his confinement, in the pit of his solitude, he had prayed. He had begged. He swore then he would never inflict that torture of silence upon anyone who loved him so, he could be so much more merciful.

The decision lay before him like a dagger.

“Mystra… is everything I have known. She is the magic I wield, and the weave I master. She honoured me.. Loved me…”

His voice sounded small as it echoed back to him from cold, hallowed walls. 

“And abandoned you! For what? Wanting more? Loving her too fully? Devoting yourself too intently? You risked your life to bring her that restless monster which has sunk its claws into you, and she has left you to rot with it. Are these the Gods we are destined to serve? Cruel and unforgiving? We could be better, we could be more.” 

She was wringing her hands together. Her small thumbs massaging into palms calloused from the tight gripping of swords, rubbing against the blood which sat there. Orin’s blood. Bhaal’s blood. Her blood. Over and over she rubbed her hands, as though trying to remove the bloodstains from her skin. Her eyes never left his.

“You were the one who told me of the Annals of Karsus. You came to me, coveting it's dark potential. You begged me to hand it over, and I did. I saw ambition greater than even its author in that moment. I sensed your dark plot as you were spinning it and now you would relinquish that ambition and let it slip through your fingers like bone-dust?” She cradled his face between her sore hands once more, to make his uncertain eyes meet hers. “What has changed, that makes you break this enterprise to me?”

“I.. What if we fail?”

“How can we fail? I told you that I would not let darkness consume me, that I would be greater than the urge which pulsed through my blood and clouded my mind, and look at what I have done. I gazed into the eyes of my father, the one who whetted the blade of my ambition, and I cut my own bonds with it. I am severed, an undone thing. I slaughtered my blood-kin, tore her monstrous form apart till she was naught but sinew and bones. And I would do it again. I would dash her brains out over and over, upon each and every wall of every temple in every city if that is what it took to fulfil my oath to you”

She smiled, with what remained of her softness. “Untwist your knotted stomach and detangle your nerves and we’ll not fail. We were made for this.”

He closed his eyes in focus. The vision swirled again behind his shut lids. Silver skin, crackling magic, a re-forged crown…

She held his hands in hers and kissed them, softly, reverently. The blood on them smeared across his pale fingers. 

“You said you knew how to reforge the crown. So, do it. Claim it. Take it for your own and grant us an everlasting future, away from the shackles of those who would dare to bind us.”

He moved to push strands of gore-matted hair away from her face, so he could see her eyes. Look at her fully as he made his decision, as he grasped the dagger before him. 

“And what of Karsus? Of his folly? Is that not a lesson to be learned?” He said, his voice stronger now. “What do I have that would cause me to succeed where he failed?”

Her smile was wide - so wide it split open a wound at her lip, dripping blood down her chin. 

“Me.”

[morningsharksworld]

Sparks and Shrapnel⚙️

Hazard x Mechanic! Reader

A/N: is this an excuse to write mechanic fics because I think hazard would like someone like that too? Yes, yes it is 👹✨.

Summary: Hazard comes by for a repair

────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────

The clang of metal and the soft hum of welding tools filled the small workshop. You were elbow-deep in the guts of a hover bike, grease smeared across your cheek and fingers as you worked to coax the stubborn machine back to life. The flickering overhead light cast your shadow across the workbench, the rhythmic beat of your favorite playlist thrumming in the background.

The sound of heavy boots approaching caught your attention. You turned your head just as the door slid open, revealing Hazard. His rugged frame filled the doorway, his signature smirk tugging at his lips.

“Ye’ know, sparks and shrapnel aren’t all that different” he teased, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His blonde hair was tousled, his sharp eyes scanning the chaos of your workspace. “Reckon I’m in the right place.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across your face. “You’re here to make a mess, aren’t you?”

He chuckled, stepping inside. “Nae this time. Actually, I’ve got a wee favor to ask.” He placed a small device on your workbench. It was a detonator, its casing scorched and wires frayed. “This wee thing’s seen better days. Think ye can work yer magic?”

“You’re lucky I like a challenge” you replied, grabbing the device and inspecting it. “But you owe me. Again.”

“Dinner?” he offered, his tone light but his gaze lingering on you a moment too long.

Your heart skipped a beat, though you masked it with a snort. “Depends. Are we talking five-star or street food?”

“Whatever ye fancy, Sweet Pea” he replied, the nickname rolling off his tongue with a lilting charm.

You shook your head and got to work, your hands moving deftly as you stripped the detonator of its damaged components. Hazard lingered, watching you with quiet admiration. There was something mesmerizing about the way you worked, completely immersed in the task at hand. The soft glow of the tools highlighted your focused expression, and Hazard found himself leaning closer without realizing it.

“You’re staring” you said without looking up.

“Am I?” he replied, unrepentant.

You paused, glancing at him. “Yes. And it’s distracting.”

“Can’t help it” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “It’s not every day I get to watch an artist at work.”

Heat rose to your cheeks, and you ducked your head to hide it. “Flattery won’t fix your detonator any faster.”

“Aye, but is it workin’ on you?” he asked, leaning on the bench, his face closer to yours now. The air between you seemed to crackle with tension like the moments before a fuse ignites.

You set down the tool and met his gaze, your lips quirking in a challenge. “Maybe.”

Hazard’s smirk widened, but before he could respond, the detonator let out a small pop, followed by a faint spark. You both jumped, laughing as the tension broke.

“Guess that’s a sign I should keep my hands tae masel” he said, his grin mischievous.

“For now” you shot back, picking up the device. “But you’re not off the hook for that dinner.”

“Wouldnae dream of it” he replied, his tone softening. He watched as you resumed your work, his heart beating just a little faster. There was something about you, something he couldn’t quite put into words. But he was willing to stick around to figure it out—even if it meant more sparks and shrapnel along the way.

[mercurygray]

i would like to request miss cordelia + 13 from the nosebleedclub list if you don't mind!!

This was a really good one, Kind Anonymous Friend! I had this idea for Bucky and Cord and decided I think it's just going to stand on its own for now.

Fair warning: It's a little spicy.

13. the state of your heart.

She could see the flares well enough from the tower as they came in, wings shot to pieces, engines smoking, red flare after red flare, wounded aboard, wounded aboard, wounded aboard.

Captain Brennan's girls would have their work cut out for them today.

It was easy enough to kick around outside the Interrogation hut, waiting outside for news but really only waiting for Bucky. Brennan had said once that she could come, if she liked, but Interrogation seemed like a door she could not - should not - cross behind. That room was where the day dwelt, and where it was supposed to stay. One by one they all emerged, grim angels still in need of comfort, and behind them all came Bucky, somehow taller and grimmer than them all, shoulders set against it like he was supposed to carry the whole war by himself.

Cord took a deep breath, tried to smile. Come on, then, Atlas - carry me instead.

There was a slash on his cheek from something that might have been shrapnel, and ragged edges on his face from where his mask had cut into his face. Doc Stover would probably want him in the infirmary, but he wouldn't go - not until he'd finished other business first.

"C'mere," he said, making a grab for her hand, one arm full of his kit bag and the other full of her, unafraid of anything.

The packing sheds were deserted at this time of day, the crews already done with the equipment from today's run, tomorrow's crew not due to start for hours yet. Plenty of walls that would hide them now and tell no tales after.

No sooner had the door shut then he had dropped his bag and pressed her up against the wall, lips hard and insistent on her own, his sheepskin seeming to enfold the both of them inside it, his hips grinding up against her own. His body was doing the speaking his tongue no longer had words for, and she left her own words aside, too, to let his hands fill with her hips, the curve of her pants, the swell, underneath her own jacket, of breast and brassiere. She could feel him getting hard against his flight suit, and he stepped to the side, his feet bracketing her own, so that he could rub himself against her, mumbling pleasure into her mouth until he could take no more, and fell back a little, panting, and looked down at her with expectant, sad eyes and a smile that didn't quite reach. She tried to smile back and brushed a curl off his face. She always wanted to ask how it had been, but it was useless - he was only like this when it was worse than he wanted to say. If he wanted to lose himself in something, she would let it be her. At least then she would know where he was.

She kissed his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, and laid his hand back on her left breast, letting him squeeze for a moment, and the two of them stood together, breathing, returning. You are alive, and I am alive, and we are alive here now together.

Finally he spoke, quieter now, his heart less fierce. "Hey, gorgeous."

She smiled. "Hello, handsome." She traced the wound on his face. "You should go see the doc."

He tried to shrug it off, hands slipping down to her waist, thumbs stroking at her hips. "Wanted to take my other medicine first," he murmured. "Look at the state of us," he said, half-guilty and bashful, like he didn't know what he'd done, or how he'd done it. Her shirt was wrinkled and her tie was all wrong, and his flight suit was a damn mess. "You ought to stop me."

Stop you why? The question pulsed in her throat like a live coal. How can I care about that when there's the state of your heart?

-

if you like Cord here, you can read more of her here on tumblr in her tag.

[absolutebl]

I'd like to specify a request for good Thai shows that just finished. They're my favorite for many reasons, and I also enjoy getting to learn more Thai words.

Good 2023 Thai BL That Recently Finished (to Binge!)

(I actually held off answering this one until a few had ended this week because I didn't have many for 2023. It's not been great year for Thai BL so far IMHO. Now South Korea is KILLING it. So is Japan.. in a different way.)

My School President

9/10

GMMTV gave us a classic high school set Thai BL with tropes like messy boys singing their feelings that made this one Love Sick for the modern age with all the gentle sweetness and pining ache, but none of the dated damaging tropes or issues.

Yes, we’ve seen it all before, but I still ADORED this. And there is a lot to be said for the classics being re-executed perfectly. Who let my BL be this wholesome and funny? This show was fantastic, it’s only flaw was the singing (and that’s my baggage).

My favourite GMMTV BL offering to date. And yes, I've watched them ALL. (YouTube)

Step By Step

9/10

This was Thailand’s answer to The New Employee, and everything I loved about that show I loved about this one.

This was an office romance between stern boss and sweet subordinate that felt more authentic to an office environment than previous Thai BLs of this ilk. And that authenticity added tension to the narrative and character development (how novel). Now that might be because it has western source material, or it might be because it is actually kind of old-fashioned (it’s been years since I worked as an office grunt). I also really enjoyed the brothers’ relationship, and kinda wished they hadn’t attempted (and failed) to give said brother his own side BL.

(Gaga & YouTube & Viki)

La Pluie

9/10

This BL takes to task the fated mates trope and what it means to have love chained intimately to predestination. It’s about how faith in destiny before choice diminishes the authenticity of emotion, relationships, and connection. This is a high concept to examine through the lens of a BL.

By activating + examining the soulmates trope this show is challenging a foundation of romance: the idea that there is one person meant to be your one romantic partner all your life. This means that we, as viewers, spend much of the show worried about it having a happy ending, and that’s the source of both its brilliance and tension: would the narrative have the strength to truly challenge its own romantic core?

But, ultimately, all this elevated complexity was executed in a somewhat shaky manner with the narrative derailing into some serious pacing issues and characters manipulated by miscommunication. However, with good chemistry and decent acting all around, plus some excellent high heat and representation of consent and a few other rare tropes, this one has to (like it’s sibling show My Ride) earn a 9/10.

I enjoyed it even as it made me think. (iQIYI)

Make a Wish

8/10

PNR (from Sammon: Manner of Death & Triage) about a doctor who can see the dead and strikes a bargain with a wish-granting irreverent tree angel - naturally they fall in love.

Stars Fluke Natouch opposite not-Ohm, but who cares bc Fluke has chemistry with everybody. Once again the Thai afterlife is incredibly bureaucratic but I enjoyed the premise and the unfolding of the story (it’s not predictable but still satisfying and with nice little twist). I like that the doctor is just gay af and has a fag hag bestie and everything.

The cast is excellent but the comedic stylings are too overblown and tonally off. It had sad parts and did make me cry but is ultimately happy with a great sex scene, good smiley kisses, and all the agency. (grey)

Moonlight Chicken

8/10

I enjoyed this complicated little show, even though it’s spectacularly messy gay with lots of shrapnel and authentic pain.

I thought EarthMix turned in their most compelling performance to date. But it was GeminiFourth who stole my heart.

That said, the most interesting central relationship was that of Jim & Li Ming, their father-son angst mixed with evident affection made me tear up.

This was more slice of life than it was BL, but it ended happily so I’m not mad at it. (YouTube)

Never Let Me Go

8/10

Bodyguard romance where poor boy must watch over rich boy for family obligation reasons. Simple premise well executed with a few bumps that made it feel like it was trying to tackle too much (when it wasn’t).

Still, an enjoyable show that benefited from being handed to PondPhuwin who did a stellar job with their roles and chemistry. Is it going into permanent rewatch rotation? No, but a solid GMMTV offering. Of GMMTV passing out new series to established pairs this has been the most successful IMHO. PondPhuwin were about 10000x better in this than FUTS (and that's FUTS's fault, not theirs).

It's typically Thai in that its a bit bloated and has a confusing plot, but at least it HAD a plot and the central relationship is solid and loyal. Their Our Skyy 2 follow up is great. And very much adds to the cannon in a fun way rather than feeling superfluous - making this show ultimately 14 eps rather than the usual 12. (YouTube)

Destiny Seeker

8/10

A darn near perfect pulp featuring 3 likable grumpy/sunshine pairings with uncomplicated iterations of enemies to lovers. At least one half of each does a decent amount of pining and there’s good chemistry, classic tropes, and communication rep. It’s fun and full of linguistic jokes.

Sublimely cheesy but a good rainy day offering with tons of rewatch potential. (WeTV)

Bed Friend

8/10 (Triggers include: child abuse, attempted rape, family abuse)

Office frienamies transition a flaming hot one night stand into a f-buddy relationship that is built on a puppy/cat dynamic (and kinks into it at one point). Our puppy is loyal, smitten, and protective with endlessly longing eyes, while our cat is snarky, prickly, and deeply damaged (ALL THE TRIGGERS).

NetJames give lovely high-heat with excellent chemistry and tuned-in performances of surprising depth, unfortunately the story ultimately failed them. Had the show had the strength of its convictions and kept to a tighter, darker, harsher 8 eps it would have been the first high heat to earn a 10/10 from me, but once they fussed with it, it dropped to a solid 8/10.

Could have been great but was overworked. Still if high heat is your thing, this one will not let you down. (YouTube)

Between Us

8/10

Featuring the hugely popular side characters from 2019��s Until We Meet Again, Win Team (played by Studio Wabi Sabi's most popular, and commercially viable, pair BounPrem - Long Khong, You Never Eat Alone, Seven Project, Even Sun), adaptation of the y-novel Hemp Rope.

It’s a serviceable series about hot swimmers flirting and dealing with family drama in a sweetly earnest manner, but ultimately it squanders the talent in play. I would’ve preferred a cleaner narrative arc, less angst and more plot, fewer couples, and a shorter series.

That said, there’s nothing objectively wrong, sub-standard, or off-putting about this show. And it has lots of consent and other good qualities.

It’s fine. Watch along here. (iQIYI)

This list dated July 16 2023, not responsible for anything that came after, that'll probably be in end of year wrap ups.

[comfort-sun-and-moon]

🌗 “I like my shirt on you, it looks cute.” DCA Eclipse x Y/N Fluff

“I like my shirt on you, it looks cute.”

The unsure pause your companion gave was followed by the heartbreaking sound of twisted metal as his head forced its way into a tilted position.

The state of the poor robot was abysmal. Truly, he was a health and safety hazard in just about every way imaginable. Loose wires, sharp pieces of broken plastic casing and metal springing out like shrapnel were everywhere. As well as dust and dirt and grime from head to toe. The poor thing stood in unsure contrast to the bright blue shirt with three happy little rainbows on it.

After a stare off, the bot awkwardly turned on his one remaining foot and looked back at the long mirror hung on the back of your bedroom door.

“Y-you think it really looks nice?”

“Yeah!” You tried to force a chipper tone despite the looming feeling of grief in your heart over all this. “Really, Eclipse, I think it looks cute on you.”

“Okay, we'll believe you then.” He stood just the slightest bit taller. “Thank you, Starshine.”

“Of course! Pants'll be easier to pick out, I only really wear two kinds.” You walked over to pull the bottom of your dresser open, revealing neatly folded pants, half of which were blue jeans and the other half that were leggings.

“Oh okay.” Eclipse turned back to the dresser. “The pair you like the least is… probably the only safe bet.”

He made a waving gesture with his arms, trying to make a point of showing his ruined state, but doing so caused stray chips of who knows what to fall onto the carpet. His flat face turned down towards it and remained fixed on it for several seconds. Which prompted you to try and break him out of it.

“Hey its gonna happen. Don’t worry about that either.”

“How are we not supposed to worry?” Eclipse’s voice wobbled worse than the steps he took to get closer to you. “I’m making a mess of your nice apartment! And after you were so kind to us! It’s awful!”

“It’s fine.” You tried to assure him with a soothing tone.

Eclipse collapsed beside you still crouched at the dresser. Several more chips fell to the beige carpet below from the sudden movement. The bot’s head turned a fraction, and then he let out a whine that sounded so close to a sob you thought he might somehow start crying.

“Be honest. Are we even salvageable at this point…?” His voice was a much lower volume now.

“Your still talking, aren’t you?” You said with deadly seriousness. “That means you’re salvageable. You're all still here; still talking. That’s all that matters.”

You watched as his frame began to tremble, punctuated by a rattling sound as his parts clicked together.

“Oh, thank you.” His voice switched from sad to joyful in a second. “Thank you so much, Starshine!”

He suddenly lunged at you and reached around for a desperate hug. You barely repressed a flinch as you felt something on his arms cut into your shoulder, but you weren’t going to shove him away just because of an accidental scratch.

So instead, you carefully reached both of your own arms around him, pulling your poor battered friend into a hug you both so desperately needed right now.

“It’s gonna be alright, Eclipse.” You gently pat him on what remained of his back plating. “I promise.”

=======

Feel free to send in writing prompts/ starters if you like! I’ll happily write some when I have time 🙂

[synthy-sizer]

You could take the short path of launching yourselves straight up, or maybe even crashing through the window, but it only feels right to go the slow way. Two sets of footsteps shuffle up the steps. Your shoes making contact with creaking stairs and crunching shards of glass and debris are once again the only noise in the tall stairwell. Every building, every street echoes. The whole world has abandoned this derelict city and moved out, leaving everything feeling like a nearly empty warehouse on the final day of a clearance sale. That must be how they thought of it, too. Always in it for the money. You and Lust pass by one entrance after another. Some doors are barricaded. Some are ripped off their hinges, and the beam of your flashlight reaches into a deep abyss. And of course, there's everything in between. Shattered windows, plywood…sometimes you can't believe that even at the end of the world things just continued. That when a glass door shattered someone would come in and put plywood over it to keep people from cutting themselves on the broken glass. Why even fucking bother? In a few more years every living being would turn into a monster and the only source of light in the dark would be the iridescent multicolored glow of an angel.

Finally, you reach the 13th floor. “This is it.” Lust looks at you. “Are you ok?” Is anything ok? “I think so. Let's try not to stay here too long.” You roam the familiar halls. Memories you've worked to suppress float to the surface, and you do your best to force them back under the waves. Your fingers trace the old walls, causing old paint to chip and fall from the lightest of touches. The doorways to old classrooms beckon but you refuse to look at them, much less indulge their invitations. Lust follows you silently. She's never been here, because you didn't want her to be here. You're sure she's curious, but she politely follows your lead and doesn't explore. It already feels bad enough exploring here, like touching an open wound. Exploring the old rooms would be like shoving your fingers into it.

Finally, you reach the place you've been aiming for, the only reason to come here at all. The wall of fame. Most of the plaques have fallen now, trophy cases have been toppled and reduced into piles of glass, and old tacky banners and words taped to the walls have long since faded and fallen, resulting in a patchy mess of missing parts. You bring your attention to one of few plaques still hanging on the wall. You know it well. The 1985 graduates who earned the prestigious right to a fast track working at Apollo. The students who showed the most potential in science and development fields. Engineering, coding, genetic engineering and biology. Looking back, perhaps the latter half should have been a sign. But how would you have known? You look down the list of names, until you see one that feels like a knife to the heart; Avery. You pause for a moment, and take hold of the shotgun you always keep on your hip. You step back, point the barrel at the plaque, and fire. There's a spark of hot, orange light for a split second and a loud boom as it fires, and the plaque explodes in a wave of shrapnel, as does the wall behind it. The barrel is still smoking as you wordlessly shove it back into its harness. Lust watches you quietly for a while before speaking up. “Do you feel any better?” You think you do. “Let's go to the roof.”

You both dangle your legs over the edge of the roof. After the suffocating atmosphere of the building and its contents, the open air feels incredibly refreshing. “Hey, thank you for coming with me. And for respecting my boundaries.” You feel for her hand. “And for knowing what I wanted more than I did, I guess.” Her fingers lock in yours. “You're welcome.” Evening is creeping in. You can see the sky starting to turn orange. “Do you think it'll work?” “I think so, yeah. We've put so much into the rocket. So many hands have touched it now. There's no way it won't work.” “You know I don't just mean that. Using the megastructure feels like a long shot.” “It's all a bit fuzzy I guess, yeah. But we don't have a choice other than making it work.” You glance at the moon hanging in the sky. “Why haven't you told Sofia about what the megastructure actually is, anyway? And what it's doing?” “Because I'm scared, Lust. I'm scared of hurting her like that.” “I thought you wanted her to be ready. Didn't you get upset that she was scared of using a gun?” You sigh. “Maybe I'm softer than I thought I was.” She laughs. “I never thought we would have a chance to raise a kid. Fate has a twisted way of making that happen, I guess.” You sit in silence for a while longer. “We need to get back soon. Final preparations and all that.” You nod, and your heart races. “Hey, Lust. I know we've had trouble talking about it, but if we don't get another chance…I…uh...” You're choking on your words.

She hushes you. “Don't worry, I know.”

NEXT

PREVIOUS

[thetravelingtyper]

Comfort Character: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Real-Life! Fanfic Author GN!Reader

After a spoiled date, you are comforted by your version of your comfort character...

(Technically within my Spitfire Universe ;)

Part 2, Masterlist

Warnings: None, Self-indulgent Fluff

The reader is the author of the Spitfire Series, Simon here is one and the same kids: Tumblr / Ao3

Not required reads but I do mess around with Simon a lot and he is a softie...

Seriously this hit me randomly yesterday and I wrote it with speed, enjoy my loves :D

You sat tired and ruffled while hunched over your laptop, a current draft for the Spitfire Universe sat open with a blinking cursor. You sighed, hitting a mental roadblock. Music streamed absentmindedly through your unhearing ears as you snuggled further into the fluffy blanket on your shoulders. 

Your date had gone terribly, they spilled both ketchup and a drink on you as they turned quickly away from their current, well, now ex-girlfriend. The ex thankfully had been understanding and you both dumped drinks on the cheater. You got the ex’s number, you remember with a smug smile. A good friend you think. 

You stretch your fingers, then with eyes filtering over the dark of your apartment you spot your cat. Nebula raises an ear at your quiet shuffling blanket and gives a huff. He makes no other movement. You smile, warm fuzzy feelings erupting with love in your chest as your eyes shoot back to the unfinished fic on your laptop screen.

Within it, your insert character wraps their injured Leuitnant. Spitfire had become your metaphorical stand-in so you could sass the hell out of Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley. You had started the fic tucked into a secluded corner of your University library.

You grin and continue writing.

“Who knew flying shrapnel was sharp and-”

“Shut it, Love.” His gruff voice held no bite but his hand shot up to your elbow and yanked you down to eye level.

“Be quiet or I will shut your mouth for you.” Blond hair splayed messily over his eyes, he was maskless and you smirked, nicely shirtless. White gauze wrapped its way up his scarred chest…

You exhale out your nose, head bopping to raised beats through headphones. An unconscious smirk pulls on your lips, you bite them, then frown. Eyes not leaving the screen you reach over the arm of your couch for chapstick. You find it, then open it, you raise it to your lips, then…BANG.

There is a thud against your door that causes you to jump. Nebula shoots up with a startled meow. Your eyes shoot around as you tear off your headphones, music trickling out. You shoot for the light, eyes burning as your living room is illuminated with warm yellow light. 

You freeze in the silence, heart pounding in your ears as the ashy black of Nebula darts towards you like a baby, he leaps into your arms, the fat cat's long hair a steadying comfort. You calm as the silence settles into warmth. Your anxiety kicks up a little, but you ground yourself, petting Nebula into a purring mess. 

Then almost as an apology, there is a steady knock at the door. Your head tilts in consideration.  It was 11:30 pm and you didn’t recognize the knocking. Both of your next-door neighbors had specific patterns with which they knocked, you thought for a moment then shrugged, and you set Nebula down with a pouty meow. He followed you as you passed through the kitchen and to your front door. 

While you normally had access to your peephole, sloppy painting by a maintenance worker covered it last week. You braced for anxiety as the knocking stopped, seemingly sensing your presence. But instead of nerves, you found that a weird and unnatural calm had settled over you.

You felt yourself at the edge of fate in a weird way, you blinked then it flashed away like a spark in the wind. Then a gentle whisper of a knock and your hand automatically pulled the door open.

There was no one there, your apartment light spilling into the dim hallway. You felt safe because to get to the floor with the elevator you needed a keycard, and there was a friendly but very fit ex-navy officer as your late-night door guard. You peered down the hallway, then taking a timid step you looked out. Then a black shape engulfed your vision, like a flicker, his form blinked and then stumbled forward.

Your arms opened and you lunged forward on instinct, the flickering form suddenly heavy and breathing in your arms. You yelped as 200-plus pounds of muscle fell forward into your arms, you fell back into your apartment, but a second before impact padded arms engulfed your head and you were knocked back into the crook of an elbow as a massive form engulfed yours on the carpet.

Your breath was restricted and you were warm, you realized this and your arms shot up. Well, they would have, instead, you felt blindly, your hands pinned by a jacketed abdomen, as you discovered. The body underneath was muscled and your hands dipped under a jacket to feel soft cotton.

“Hello?” Your voice comes out firm, you weren't scared more just confused. The outlandish situation suddenly turned on its head with…

“What the fuck?”

The smell of gunpowder and leather hit your nose as breaths tucked themselves into your neck, the elbow under you unwrapping and your head gently settling back onto the carpet. Your eyes slid open as the weight is lifted off of you and your heart freezes.

The man hovered over you now, a muscled arm easily propping himself up over you while his other hand caught one of yours, your mouth tumbling open when your eyes met his.

Pale scarred skin turned up in a grin, his skin clean of marked black shadow, but umber eyes melted in the warm light, your free hand shot to his chest, covered in a plain black shirt through his open jacket, a steady heartbeat pounded under your splayed fingers. His head tilted and his brow shot up with a smirk.

He seemed content to just watch your brain short circuit, but you caught Simon off guard when your raising head fell backward with a groan.

“Nope, I cannot afford to feed you. You’re fucking massive, Christ.”

Simon froze, then with a light heart, he laughed, his chest shaking and his other arm shot to brace on the other side of your head. Your stomach fluttered at the sound, a nervous giggle escaping you as your hands shot to his chest. 

“Alright, I think that wine was bad…” Your words fizzled out as his heated gaze caught your eyes. His body then lowered against yours and you gave a concerning sound. It caught in your throat as he pressed closed lips to the base of your neck, his breath warm against you. You gave a nervous hum, fully convinced you had passed out while your mind flittered in fantasy. But the heavy body upon yours said otherwise, as did the chest-rumbling chuckle. His lips tingled as they moved against your skin. His voice sent sparks through your body, an open door forgotten long ago.

“I’m all real,” he lifted himself up, but only enough to stare brown eyes into your soul, a familiarly written scar on his brow called your hand.

Whatever he was about to say was cut off, confidence in his voice simmering then fizzling out as tender authorial fingers traced his face. Your tired mind filled with affection at the character above you. You felt caught in a dream as the sadness and disappointment of earlier melted away with Simon’s confusion at your touch.

You withdrew into your mind as you thumbed his brow, blond tresses of hair tickling your hand, Umber eyes shot over your face as nerves clawed their way through his chest, somehow your gaze made him freeze, but…

“You are beautiful.”

Your comment came as that of a creator, a tired but brave soul throwing itself into the abyss. The darkness of uncertainty is chased away by creation. The reflection, no your version of a character was solid under your hands in this dream and you smiled, your heart pounding as you cherished the comfort of one of your favorite characters to write.

“You were always my favorite to write, thank you brain.”

Your smile froze his heart, whatever he was going to say dying on his mind. For the entity that had become Simon at this moment, he never felt more loved. A flickering echo became a solid reality as life suddenly slammed into him, his arms crumpled but then with the threat of crushing you he caught himself with sprawled hands. He groaned and his eyes slid shut. The echo became flesh as his artificial heart pounded real blood through warmth and muscle. Memories of the character hit him as history rewrote Simon Riley into reality.

A troubled life claimed by service and forces flashed in his mind, and yet, your written reality became stone, with some edits by the Fates. Simon Riley here set Ghost aside to retire early, the other members of the 141 all off and now forever safe, records downstairs writ themselves new and Simon’s muscles tensed with the weight of life.

And yet, he noticed, the heavy weight of consciousness and then love, you still figured yourself in a dream. He then smiled as your hands traced his face. A thumb brushed his lips, then the weight of a familiar chain materialized on his neck. Its twinkle in the light caught your eye.

A silver ring hung next to a retired dog tag, your fingers then found warm metal. A weight on your chest shot you awake as you felt invisible hands tie a chain around your neck. You shot up on your elbows, Simon naturally flowing back to sit on his knees as you woke up. Your hands felt at your neck and you found a simple silver chain, but your breath caught at the ring on it.

“What?”

Nebula padded into view as reality resumed, you pulled yourself up in a daze, eyes only seeing the open door and you stood to close it automatically. A warm chuckle startled you in the silence, your forgotten music now streaming back into your consciousness, you really needed to turn it down you thought-, 

Warm hands yanked you back and you tumbled into awaiting arms, the apartment door took the moment to shut itself as Nebula meowed at the new presence in the room. Simon soon was sprawling over your laying form on the couch. Your brain stuttered and you blinked.

“Wait?”

Simon chuckled and your heart was pounding, you were awake now.

“We have all night,”

He dipped his eyes to your lips, and you gave a nervous chuckle heart fluttering,

“Love.”

The lips that then pressed against yours were, very very real.

[jgmartin]

THE RUNAWAY

The forest is black. Pitch black.

I pound over the dirt trail, my feet turning the pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounces and jolts, shuddering as it rolls across the wooden bridge. There’s something in the air tonight. A chill. 

But it isn’t the chill of autumn. No, this is the chill of unease. It crawls up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about these woods, something about this trail isn’t right. It’s the unmistakable dread of being watched. 

Pursued.

I stand up and ride harder. My lungs burn with every push of the pedals but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to get out of these woods fast. The hospital is twenty minutes away. I just need to make it there.

I’m close. 

So close. 

WOMP

Bass rumbles behind me. It’s followed by a rush of wind, enough to throw me forward while ravishing the forest like a tempest. Trees groan. Their frames break and kneel, surrendering to the gale. Branches and leaves come loose. They ricochet through the air like shrapnel, cutting into my cheek and and I throw up an arm to keep myself from losing an eye. 

This is insanity. 

It’s lunacy. 

I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I have to make it through this. I have to get out of these woods, get back to the hospital to see my sister before the heart monitor flatlines. 

She’s not doing well. Are your mother and father home?

No, ma’am. 

Can you get here to be with her? She doesn’t have long. 

Yes ma’am. No matter what. 

The distant bass nears, growing thunderous. It’s as though the whole world is shaking, like the Earth might split in two and swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. I let loose a defiant roar, sweat pouring down my temples as my legs tremble, willing my bike forward.

Faster, dammit!

Faster!

There’s a flash. Then another. 

Lightning?

No.

I’m answered by an explosion of light, so violent and bright that I can’t see a damn thing. I holler. Scream. My body jerks forward as my front wheel collides with what feels like a fallen branch. Next thing I know, I’m flying over my handlebars.

What’s the phrase?

Ass-over-tea-kettle.

Yeah, that’s it. 

I brace myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the pain never comes. Nothing comes. It’s as though I’m floating in limbo, like gravity’s unable to finish what it started. I can’t feel a thing– not the dirt beneath me, not my face pressed against the bark of a tree. For a little while, I think I’m dead. That I’m in purgatory. 

But then my eyes adjust. The world comes into focus, beginning as a blurry smudge, but soon becoming a picture-perfect recreation of my worst nightmare.

I’m not in the forest anymore. 

I’m above it. 

I’m looking down at the mess of trees and I’m terrified at how small they are, how much smaller they’re getting with every passing second. 

I’m floating into the sky, being carried by a narrow beam of light. 

___________________________

That was a long time ago. Thirty years, give or take. 

A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same: the nightmares. I have them every night. I dream about that blinding light, that same low bass and that same gut-churning horror of being eaten by the sky. 

I used to think they were a coping mechanism. I figured that since the dreams came shortly after my older sister passed, that maybe they were just how my eleven-year-old brain was dealing with the grief. My therapist seemed to agree.

“You’re quite right that there may be a link there,” she’d tell me, lowering her glasses and offering a medical-grade smile. “It’s very likely that these dreams are a form of abstract healing, a means to allow your mind to come to terms with its trauma.”

For a long time, I thought she was right. Or better put, I hoped she was. Now though? Well, I think maybe we were both wrong. 

Shit. 

Where are my manners? 

I’m over here rambling about my childhood, and you’re wondering who the hell I am. 

My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m a boogeyman, but not the cool kind. I don’t hide in closets or haunt old houses. I’m the type that your parents rant about while watching the evening news, the sort that tinfoil hats point to whenever things go wrong.

I’m what you might call a Man in Black. 

The work I do is classified. It’s the sort of work that happens behind the scenes, with shadowy people in shadowy circles. So when I tell you that last night something catastrophic happened, I’m not talking about the stock market dipping a couple percentage points. I'm not talking about increased traffic on your morning commute. 

I’m talking about trouble. 

Lots of it.

It’s the kind of trouble that’s making me do something I don’t generally do, which is break rules. By the end of this, I might break all of them. But this is important, and in moments like these I find myself thinking about my late sister, Hope, and how she would have wanted me to do the right thing. It’s how she raised me, after all. 

So here goes nothing. 

This begins with a story, but it ends with a decision. The story is mine, and the decision is yours. When I’m finished, you get to choose whether you spend the time you have left a little wiser, or laugh this off as the ramblings of a lunatic. 

Whatever you choose, I’ll have made my peace. 

The story is a personal one. It’s about me, but it’s also about you– it’s about everything in the universe, right down to the last atom, and how all of us are facing a horror the likes of which we can’t begin to imagine. 

It’s the story of the worst night of my life, and what might one day be the worst night of yours. 

It goes like this. 

_______________________

The beam of light sucks me up and spits me into absolute darkness. The sensory whiplash is enough to give me a headache, something like a migraine that pulses near my temples and feels like a bulldozer inside my skull. 

It’s uncomfortable. 

But not half as uncomfortable as the situation I’m in. 

“Hello?” I mumble to the dark. I stumble to my feet, feeling around my environment blindly. It’s cold. Hard. It feels like I might be in a room full of metal, but I can’t imagine where that would be. A warehouse?

Footsteps echo in the distance. They’re closing in. 

“Who’s there?” I sputter, and I think maybe I’ve been drugged. People don’t just up and float into the sky in the middle of the night. It isn’t a thing. 

That means I’m hallucinating. 

That means whoever kidnapped me knows a thing or two about stealing kids. 

That means they’re a professional. 

What’s the phrase?

Serial killer.

Yeah, that’s it.

WOOOOMP

I clap my hands to my ears. It’s that same bass from the forest, except now it’s reverberating all around me. Another bass joins it. This one is different… coming from a new direction, with a lower tone. It’s almost like they’re communicating– like morse code. 

“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anybody!”

Static crackles. It’s followed by a sharp squeal of microphone feedback, then the buzz of modulating frequency. “Communication calibrated,” a digital voice says. “Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: New Mexico. Language model: English.” 

There’s a pause, it’s long and silent enough that I can hear my pulse rushing through my veins. I’m positive I’m going to die. These things don’t happen to people who live to tell the tale. 

“Can you understand us, homosapien?” the voice asks.

Yes, I say. 

Can you turn on the lights? I ask. 

The only thing worse than being murdered is being murdered in the dark. 

Yes, they say. 

I’m blinded for the third time in as many minutes. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the green glow as it fills the chamber. Wherever I am, it’s strange. Alien. Tall vats of liquid are scattered around a large, circular room, each hosting tubes that extend outward to a central console. Everything is metallic. I can’t make out any labels– any sort of identification at all. 

“Is this level of light sufficient?” another voice asks, this one right behind me. 

I wheel around, and my breath catches in my chest. In front of me is something that doesn’t exist– can’t exist. It’s roughly ten feet tall, and it’s got sharp teeth, sharp claws, scaled skin, and a tail. It’s a monster. A living, breathing monster. 

Fuck.

I scramble backward. My back collides with one of the vats, and blue liquid sloshes against the glass. “Thehellareyou?” I shout all at once. 

“We are the Chosen,” says the first voice, approaching my other side. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.”

They stare at me through giant eyes, and each of those eyes are filled with dozens of pulsing pupils. Almost like ink blots. 

“I’ve been abducted…” I sputter, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real… and I’ve been abducted…”

“Correct,” says one of the aliens. I realize this one has gray scales, while the other has teal. At least I can tell them apart. 

Gray looks at his arm, and a digital screen comes to life. He taps at it with a crooked finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but devoid of purpose.” He looks at me, cocks his over-large head to the side. “You have neither the option to fight us or flee us, so it would be best to comply. Do you understand?”

My jaw hangs open. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Are these aliens really standing there reading me my Miranda Rights? “Are you going to probe me?” I ask. “Like the movies?”

Teal blinks at me, his pupils dilating. “Negative.” He points to a vat. “We will break down your genetic tissue into usable material, harvesting your most compatible DNA strands while discarding the rest. It is for the greater good.”

I follow his finger to the tank, and now that I’m right up against it, I can see clearly what’s floating inside. My stomach twists into a knot. Inside of it is a human body. Everything from the man’s waist down has been dissolved, and what’s left of his intestines are dangling freely. 

“Jesus Christ!”

“There is no cause for concern,” Teal says. He lumbers across the chamber to the metallic console that all the tubes are feeding into. “Your disappearance will be accounted for. A clone will be deployed to resume your life, preventing suspicion and avoiding social disruption.” 

“Let me get this straight,” I say, trying to ignore how faint I’m starting to feel. “You’re going to kill me… to save humanity?”

“Correct.”

The room spins. My chest gets tight and my vision becomes a scrambled mess. My ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble, losing my sense of equilibrium and I think I taste vomit in my throat.

“No,” I mutter. “This isn’t happening… Can’t be happening…” 

I steady myself against a vat, looking up to see a dead woman’s face staring back at me. Pieces of her skull have been eaten away. I can see the wrinkles of her brain underneath.  

“Heart rate out of range,” Gray says, but I hardly hear him. He grabs my wrist, presses a device against the center of my hand. 

I struggle. Fight. I try to use my teeth, but he’s strong, much stronger than me. A coldness pulses against my palm, almost like an ice cube, and soon that frigid sensation is traveling across my fingertips. Up my arm. 

“What did you…” I mutter, but the sensation is rolling through the rest of my body. It’s soothing. My eyes find my palm and I see a strange shape seared into the skin, a scatter of dots surrounding a black square.  Suddenly I can’t remember the thought I was trying to finish. Was any of this really worth panicking over? 

It was just a few corpses in vats, after all. 

“You have been administered a sedative,” Gray explains. 

My heart rate slows. My ears stop ringing. The ghost of a smile sneaks across my face.

Gray’s staring at his display. “Cortisol levels reduced. Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate subject has achieved a suitable level of suggestibility to proceed.” 

“Affirmative,” says Teal, working the console. 

I feel like I’m drifting through the lake on a warm summer day. My heart is full. I’m in absolute bliss, and all I can think is that Hope should get to experience this before she dies…

“Pulse is quickening,” Gray says with a frown.

Hope.

My sister.

My dying sister, alone in the hospital wondering why her little brother abandoned her. 

“Sedation effect dropping,” Gray says. “98%. 94%. Emotional instability reaching unacceptable levels.”

“Hope,” I sputter, feeling like I’m coming out of a daze. “I have to get to the hospital– please! My sister is sick! She needs me!”

Gray presses the device against my other hand, and another pulse of relaxation courses through me. “Invalid concern,” he tells me. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to her decomposition.”

Fucking aliens. It takes everything I have to fight against the sedative, to make my case. “How?” I groan. “How is my DNA supposed to save humanity? What the hell is it saving us from anyway?”

Teal turns from the console to face us. His giant eyes are narrowed in a thoroughly displeased manner. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”

“Rebuttal,” says Gray. “Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of a compromised harvest at 34%. Solution: permit subject to understand purpose of sacrifice. Result: sense of closure and enhanced probability of project success.”

Teal turns back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”

Gray looks at me. He places his scaly fingers against my head, and I squirm a little. “Brace yourself for disorientation,” he tells me. “You will experience physical unease and hyperstimulation. After, you will understand the horror that awaits your species in the dark.”

_________________________________

For a long time, that’s as far as the nightmare gets. Gray prattles on that I’m about to see the truth, some twisted fate that justifies melting humans into sludge, but before he can deliver the goods, I wake up. 

Every. Time. 

Blue balls doesn’t begin to describe it. 

Last night, it happens again. The nightmare, I mean. Same aliens, same tanks of human soup, but this time I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the bedside table. There’s a name on the screen that I hate to see.

“Whatisit?” I grumble. 

“Jesus Christ, Mitchell. I’ve been calling for ten minutes!”

My boss. Lisa. 

She goes off. The words are coming out like machine-gun fire, and from the background chatter I figure she’s speaking to more than just me. It sounds like there’s a crowd around her, like she’s briefing suits as she jogs down a hallway.

“Got all that?” she asks. 

Something about a shitstorm. Something about an F35. The air force just shot down a UAP, which is how we say UFO these days to avoid getting laughed out of the room. Apparently it happened in New Mexico. My backyard. 

This calls for a liter of coffee. Maybe two. 

I stumble into the kitchen and put a pot on. I have some time while she holds the phone to her chest and barks orders at the drones around her. One cream. One sugar. My spoon clinks against the side of the mug as her voice blares through the speaker. 

“Mitchell?” she says. “Still there?”

She says she’s got coordinates. I take a sip of scalding java. I’m dazed enough I barely feel it burn my tongue. My fingers punch the coordinates into my laptop, bringing up the location the supposed UAP was shot down. 

I spit my coffee over my screen. 

“The fuck?” I mutter, leaning forward and doing a double take at the map. 

“What is it?” she’s asking.

“Nothing,” I’m saying. 

But it’s a lie. The truth is, the coordinates are a dead match for the forest where I had my waltz with psychosis thirty years ago. They’re the coordinates from my dream. Right down to the rickety old bridge. 

I ask her if she’s sure the numbers are correct.

“Am I sure?” she snaps. “Look, if you’re asking me if this is another Chinese spy balloon then the answer is go fuck yourself. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past twenty minutes. This is the real deal, so suit up and get ready to go. I’ve got a bird on the way.”

The clock on my microwave reads 2:34 a.m. and my stomach is telling me to sort my life out. “Do I have time for breakfast?” I ask. 

Click.

The line goes dead. 

Twenty minutes later, a helicopter is landing on my lawn. I board it in a daze, and we take off in the direction of the crash like we’re trying to outrun a cruise missile. I’m watching the lights of the countryside drift by, and it occurs to me that from all the way up here, in the dead of night, they almost look like stars. 

I wonder how long it’d take to snuff them out.

How long it’d take to burn a whole galaxy to ashes?

To crush a universe in the palm of your hand?

Things to consider. 

The closer we get to the crash site, the worse my thoughts become. They’re bordering on obsessive. I’m tangoing with darkness. Radio chatter is coming through the com line, something about aliens and extraterrestrials, but all I’m thinking about is controlling my bladder. 

I’m drowning in hypotheticals. 

I’m wondering what happens if I lose my mind between here and the crash site, what the protocols are, where they’ll take me. Do I get the night off? The week?

“Everything okay, sir?” 

It’s the co-pilot. She’s turning in her seat and looking at me like I’m having a medical emergency. 

“You look a bit pale,” she tells me. 

My muscles work overtime as I twist my mouth into a smile. “Never better,” I lie. “How far out are we?”

“Twenty miles,” she says with a reassuring grin. She turns back in her seat and I take the opportunity to let out an exhausted sigh. 

I close my eyes. Take a dozen deep breaths. 

Happy thoughts. 

I try to ignore how dry my mouth is, how badly my hands are shaking. I try to ignore the fact that every time I look down at my palms, I see that same scatter of dots, that same faded square that no doctor has been able to explain. “I’ve never seen scars like that,” they tell me. “How’d you get them?”

I don’t know, I tell them.

I don’t know.

But I do.

I’ve known this entire time, probably, but I’ve just been too terrified to accept it. I’m not what I think I am– this world isn’t what I think it is either. It’s all of this that’s making me want to curl into a ball. It’s making me want to weep on the floor, to scream at the top of my lungs and pull my hair out with everything I have.

It’s making me want to throw open the helicopter door, take a breath of fresh air and then plunge head-first into the dirt like a human turnip. And if I thought it was that easy, I might just do it. 

But somehow, I know it isn’t.

I know it won’t save me– won’t save us, from what’s coming. 

See, last night I had the same dream I’ve had for the last thirty years. The same abduction. The same aliens. But last night, I got to see the director’s cut. The Extended Edition. Last night, when Gray told me he was going to show me just how fucked we all are, he actually came through. 

Imagine that. 

What I saw was everything. 

I saw how all of this ends. How all of it began. What I saw is what’s waiting for us in the black infinity of space. And the more that I think about it, the more I think it might be driving me mad. 

“Just up ahead,” says the pilot. “Ten minutes to touch down.”

Eight minutes.

Five. 

“Jesus,” he says, at the three minute mark. “Are you two seeing this?”

And up ahead is a plume of smoke, rising into the night sky. There’s the faint flicker of fading fires, the haphazard glow of industrial lighting, and there, at the center of it all, is the unmistakable shape of something that shouldn’t exist.

“That… doesn’t look like it’s from this planet…” the co-pilot mutters over the com line. 

“No,” the pilot replies, and his voice is shaking. “It doesn't.” 

They’re right. They both are. What it looks like is something extra-terrestrial, something alien. It looks like something ripped straight from my worst nightmares.

And really, that’s just where I wish it had stayed.  

__________________________

The moment Gray touches my head, static ripples across my skull. I froth at the mouth. Choke. For a little while, I think I’m probably dying, but then I lose all sense of awareness. I’m falling. I’m breaching the atmosphere of my mind and crashing into a dimension outside of myself, outside of everything. 

Images flash. They’re like a film reel, playing across my consciousness from every direction. They’re everywhere. Inescapable. It’s as if I’m inhabiting them, as though they were moments in time and everything from sight, sound and smell are collapsing in on one another like a dying star. 

Gray calls this ‘disorienting.’

But then, just when I tell myself I want out— that I can’t take it anymore because my disembodied ghost is about to explode… It slows. The whole process hits the brakes. The visual hurricane calms from a category 5 to a 3, and then settles into a 1. 

Whew-ie!

Moments float to the surface. Others sink out of sight. 

Like a sponge, my mind starts absorbing information– everything from quantum physics to the lyrical discography of Shania Twain. Knowledge becomes trivial. As soon as I want to know something, I reach out and take it. 

It’s exhilarating. 

But then, something catches my attention. It’s a series of shimmering lights in my lake of thought, gleaming jewels that seem to be drawing me toward them. Somehow, I know that these are why I’ve come here. These are what Gray meant for me to find, the so-called truth that would justify all of the abductions, all of the murders. 

So I reach out. 

Information bombards me. It carpet-bombs my mind, and in the overwhelming chaos of it all, the entire history of the cosmos is laid bare before me.

I see it. I see everything. 

Gray and Teal? Not monsters. An alien species called the Vytar. Their technology eclipses humanity’s, and they’ve existed for billions of years. They’ve done remarkable things in that time, everything from mastering hyperlight travel to creating edible spray cheese. They’ve even charted the entirety of the cosmos. 

What I’m saying is they've been busy.

But my revelations don’t stop there. No, they keep coming.

Tragedy. 

I see tragedy. 

I see it in the Vytar’s search for answers. In their quest to uncover every nook and cranny of the universe, they come across two devastating discoveries. Firstly, they learn that they are alone in the cosmos. Secondly, they discover their species is going extinct. 

How?

It happens like this. 

Near the edge of space, a Vytar ship discovers life. But it isn’t intelligent. Far from it. This life is microbial, viral, and it infects the explorers. They toss themselves into quarantine. They’re observed, and a shocking discovery is made– this virus?

Not so bad.

In fact, maybe it’s just what they've been looking for.

Soon, Vytarians across the cosmos are lining up to be infected with the virus. Within a century, their entire species are carriers. It jumps between them like the common cold, but they don’t mind. Not at all. Why? Easy. This virus comes with a satisfaction guarantee: biological immortality. 

Now there’s a deal. 

The trouble is, these Vytar don’t work like humans do. They don’t have sex and make babies and then sleep and then wake up and do it again. No, these Vytar lay eggs. And only certain members of their species lay eggs. And what’s more? They only lay eggs during a specific molting period at the end of their life cycles. 

See what I’m getting at?

Biological immortality or laying eggs. Pick one. You can’t have both if you’re the Vytar. But by the time they figure this out, this virus has infected every last colony of their civilization. Unable to reproduce, their population enters freefall. It develops what’s known as an existential crisis, and if there’s one thing civil society hates, it’s dealing with an existential crisis. 

Tempers flare.

Emotions run hot. 

This brings us to the crux of the Vytarian dilemma. War. 

And lots of it. 

Worlds erupt into conflict. Galaxies become battlefields, and whole solar systems are laid to ash. If you thought nuclear weapons were bad, then consider what happens when a moon is kicked out of orbit into the surface of a planet. The bloodshed is immeasurable. As the fighting escalates, the stars themselves become weapons. The Vytar discover that if you can just push one toward instability…. Well, boom. 

There goes the neighborhood.

These Vytar? Nothing if not creative. 

But it’s just this penchant for outside the box problem solving that massacres their species into the low billions. Over a single millenia, the Vytar are swept from an inter-galactic species, to one inhabiting a single world on the edge of space. 

Having met their downfall at the hands of their technology, the surviving Vytar turn toward spiritualism. Cults form. Different sects have different beliefs, but one eventually consumes the rest: The Way of the Chosen. The Way promises an end to Vytarian pain. 

No more existential crisis. 

No more killing. 

All the Vytar need to do is open their hearts and minds to a simple three step program:

Show a little pride. We’re the only intelligent life in the universe, so start acting like it!

Persevere. Immortality is our final test. Keep your chin up!

Ascend. Just make it to the heat death of the universe, and you’ll be granted salvation!

Believe it or not, it’s a big hit. 

The Vytarians flock to it in droves because it offers what they need– a sense of purpose, and a break from the emotional turmoil that’s consumed them for decades. In a matter of years, The Way becomes the dominant socio-political force across the Vytarian homeworld, bringing the last of the warring factions together. 

It’s a beautiful thing. 

But what’s the phrase?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Yeah, that’s it. 

Not everybody is a fan of how The Chosen conduct business. But The Chosen make it easy for them– all who disavow their belief system are exiled. It’s for the good of the Vytarians, they say. And maybe they’re right. After all, these are a species of aliens that have seen just what disagreements can lead to. 

Fire. Fury. Mass graves and floating corpses in the vacuum of space. 

No thank you. 

That’s a risk they won’t take. 

One of these exiled Vytarians is a scientist. He has no name in the shared memory save for ‘The Heretic,’ and he is both the architect of humanity and the genesis of our greatest threat. In his assessment, the Vytarian extinction is an inevitability. He perceives their current peace as fragile, held up by a corrupt theocracy whose foundations could crumble any moment. Once they do, boom. Back to war. Back to genocide. 

It won’t be pretty. 

Worse still, when the last of the Vytar perish, so too will the last form of complex intelligence. Their species won’t just die– it’ll be forgotten. The universe will become a barren void, an unconscious minefield of drifting cadavers.

That will be their legacy. 

But the Heretic, he’s a mover-and-a-shaker. He’s the sort of individual who likes to solve problems, not create them, and so when he thinks of the Vytarian extinction, when he acknowledges it as a slow-motion inevitability, he isn’t giving up. No, he has a plan. It’s not a great plan, mind you. It’s not even a plan with a high-likelihood of success, and nor, for that matter, is it a plan that’s strictly legal.

But it is a plan. 

It goes like this: if the Vytarians are dying out, then something must replace them. There must be intelligent life to take their place, to give warmth to this cold cosmos, and remember their legacy. Since no other intelligent life exists in all the universe, that leaves him a single option.

He’ll just have to make some. 

And this Heretic? This mover-and-shaker?

Well, he succeeds. 

And really, that’s where this nightmare begins. 

_________________________________________________________________________

The helicopter touches down in a clearing that shouldn’t exist. 

I step out to find a forest that’s broken, smoldering, one that’s cleaved in two with a cloud of cinders in its wake. This isn’t how I remember this place. Not at all. I remember a wooden bridge over a lazy creek, and tall trees that–

“Mitchell!” 

Somebody’s calling my name. Running toward me. 

My boss.

Lisa’s got her phone pressed to one ear and her other hand is frantically waving at me. All around us are government personnel, fellow men-in-black types looking equal parts panicked and terrified. Nice to know I’m not alone. 

“Mitchell,” Lisa says, breathless. “Finally! Follow me.”

We take a stroll down the newest gully in America. Pieces of splintered metal scatter the ground, and here and there I see techs in hazmat suits brushing dust from the debris. Above us, the moon is being shrouded by a gigantic tarp. They’re extending it across the entire crash-site, likely hoping they can get it up before foreign satellites move into position and stick their noses into our business. 

“Looks like a warzone out here,” I say, loosening my tie. Is it hot out, or is my anxiety just turning my body into a furnace? Tough to say.

Either way, Lisa’s not paying attention. 

“Understood, sir. I’ll keep you posted with any and all updates as soon as we have them.” She hangs up her phone and turns to me. “Sorry, did you say something, Mitchell? Tonight’s been a nightmare.”

I can imagine. 

As we make our way toward the UAP, Lisa tells me the government’s been hounding her for details. 

What exactly did we shoot down? 

Are we going to war? 

She says we’ve probably got three hours until the media wakes up, and then we’ll need to start beating the journalists back with sticks.  “This is a fucking disaster,” she tells me, and she reaches into her jacket and grabs a flask. “Whisky?”

I shake my head. “Haven’t touched the stuff for years.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Bottom’s up. 

She wipes her mouth and shoves the flask back into her jacket, taking the sort of breath you take when you’ve hit your limit. “I should’ve kept on as an accountant,” she says. “I’d still be in bed right now.”

The closer we get to the UAP, the easier it is to see through the haze of smoke. The craft is no longer just a smudge in the distance. Now I can make out its general shape. Its general size. It looks big enough to pass for a stadium, and round enough to sell the illusion. 

“A flying saucer,” Lisa says, shaking her head. “You’d think these aliens never heard of a bad cliche.” 

We get to the edge of the perimeter and flash our badges. Three soldiers let us through. 

“Listen,” Lisa tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Before we go inside this thing, I want you to take a few deep breaths, okay? We’ve had a couple incidents already.”

“Incidents?” I ask. 

“Sure. One guy pissed his pants. Another was taking photos of this… corpse in a vat, and he throws up all over the inside– of the vat, not the corpse. Whatever. Point is, he completely fucked the lab team trying to get a sample.” She runs a hand through her hair. Chuckles darkly. “Luckily, there are about a dozen other corpses where that came from, but still. The smell was awful.”

Vats. Corpses. My stomach does a front flip and I almost take a page out of the photographer’s playbook. “So this is the real deal,” I mutter, pretending this whole thing doesn’t feel uncomfortably familiar. “Aliens actually exist, huh?”

“Just wait,” Lisa says, stepping into the dark of the ship. “This next part is gonna blow your mind.”

_________________________________________________________________________

The Heretic creates life in his image, using Earth as his petri dish. 

His first lifeforms are what you’d call prototypes. Rough drafts. They’re giant reptiles, dinosaurs, and a scattershot of various traits and biology. They’re a means to discover what works and what doesn’t on the path to evolving complex intelligence. He studies them closely. Then he studies them some more. 

But what’s the phrase?

Nothing lasts forever. 

Yeah, that’s it. 

We’ve covered that the Vytarian are an advanced species. We know that they’re no strangers to space, and we’re well aware that their wars wiped out 99% of their population. But what we haven’t covered, is that some toys are still left-over from those wars. 

And The Chosen? They possess almost all of them. 

One of these is a fleet of surveillance drones, the sort that drift through the cosmos and ping headquarters if they see something suspect. One of these happens to drift by Earth. Can you guess what happens next?

Images of the Heretic’s well, heresy, are transmitted to The Chosen. Minutes later, he gets a collect call from 40 billion light years away. 

What is this, the Chosen High Council asks. 

Blasphemer, they condemn. 

But the Heretic isn’t shocked by this. He knows that according to The Way, the creation of new lifeforms is the exclusive domain of their deity, The Distant One. He knows that what he’s done is criminal. That maybe it’s also considered an affront against all of existence, and that it’s maybe grounds for execution and inviting the wrath of god upon all Vytarians. 

Relax, he tells them. 

It’s you or us, they say. 

I can explain, he tells them.

Don’t bother, they say. 

The line goes dead. The Heretic figures he’s got about a handful of weeks before The Chosen arrive to dish out their justice, so he flees to a neighboring star system. While there, he realizes The Chosen were never aiming for him– only his life’s work. A meteor is propelled into the surface of the earth, and the moment it impacts the planet becomes fire. Six trillion lifeforms scream in momentary agony before turning to ash. 

The Heretic weeps. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Years pass.

Then centuries. 

These turn to millenia, and millenia become eons, and the Heretic decides to risk returning to earth. He wants to find closure for the loss of his creation. He wants to pay his respects. But when he arrives, his sorrow becomes hope. Life, it seems, has survived. 

More than that, it has thrived. 

Yet this life isn’t the same that he set out to create. No, this life is the biological progeny of tiny balls of fur he created to feed his prototypes. They’re what you and I might call mammals. Except some of these mammals are impressive– they have large brains, opposable thumbs, and what’s more, they look a bit like you and I. 

They’re humans. Among the first. 

The Heretic is fascinated by these humans. He recognizes they possess complex intelligence, sentience, and a strong sense of adaptability. He observes them as they form social groups, watches as they create the ghosts of language. 

Yes, he thinks. This is it. These lifeforms will inherit the universe, and in doing so, immortalize the Vytar in their memories. 

But a problem remains. The Chosen.

If they discover the earth is teeming with life, then they’ll circle back and finish the job. This time, they won’t pull punches. The planet will become an asteroid field, and all of its life will be red mist upon the floating rocks. 

But what to do?

How to keep humanity alive, to shield it from the overwhelming might of the Vytarian military? It seemed impossible. Equations run through the Heretic’s mind, scenarios infest his thoughts and in not a single one can he fathom succeeding. He has but one spacecraft. No weapons to speak of. 

And it occurs to him. 

Humans are hardy creatures– adaptable. Given time, they will evolve to reach parity with the Vytarians. Then, their superior numbers could compensate for any gaps in technology. But such a plan hinges upon them getting up to speed, ascending to an evolutionary singularity in which their gains become exponential. He cannot afford to wait millions of years when The Chosen could discover him any day. 

No, he’ll need to interfere. Spike the gene pool. Rig the results. He’ll need to give humanity more than a push, he’ll need to throw it down the damn stairs if they have any hope of surviving. 

But there’s a way. 

Yes, there’s always a way. 

He devises a solution called Project Runaway. 

It starts by creating a new lifeform. It’s aesthetically identical to a human male, but it’s born from the genetic harvest of thousands of his peers. Each strand of his DNA will be carefully selected for, prioritizing the potential for runaway evolution. Then, these strands will be spliced with Vytarian genes. Not much, but enough to access fragments of the shared memory– the Collective Recall. This will allow the man to gain intuitive understanding of billions of years worth of wisdom. It’ll permit him to think faster. Adapt more quickly. 

Then, as this man spreads his genes through the population, his progeny will inherit his DNA. They’ll evolve quicker. Think faster. This is how it works.

This is how humanity inherits the universe. 

_________________________________________________________________________

“Watch your step,” Lisa says, stepping into the UAP. 

I follow her inside. For a moment, I’m blinded by the glare of industrial work-lamps. Then my senses are assaulted by a cacophony of sound and movement. We’ve entered a hive of activity. Crowds of people buzz around us, some in biohazard suits, others in military camo. 

Where we are is a large circular chamber, one surrounded by dark corridors leading to other locations of the ship. Right now, teams are taping those entrances up with plastic wrap. Other teams are setting up perimeters, hanging pieces of paper above archways labeled A through Z.  

“You alright, Mitchell?”

“What?”

“Are you alright?” Lisa says, and she’s got her arms folded. She’s looking at me like she thinks I’m about to become her newest headache, maybe piss myself all over the deck. 

“I’m fine,” I tell her, forcing a smile. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know? Never been in an alien spaceship before.”

“Sure,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “Join the club. We’re heading down corridor D to find somebody named Major Luca– I was talking to her a few seconds before you showed up. She said she’s got something to show me. Something big.”

“Spare me the suspense, Lis. What are we after?”

“From the sounds of it? Bodies.”

“Bodies?” I say. “Like those corpses you mentioned, the ones in vats?”

“Not quite. According to Luca, these bodies aren’t exactly… Well, they’re not human. Probably.” She punches my arm, gives me a cheeky smirk. “Relax, Mitchell. The Major confirmed they’re already dead– nothing to be scared of. Let’s go.”

She leads us down the corridor labeled D, and every step I take is worse than the last. 

My heart is flying. It’s pounding a million beats a minute. I put on my best poker face, nodding along as Lisa briefs me on the UAP, but internally I’m having a breakdown. It’s taking everything I have not to hyperventilate. The further we get into the spacecraft, the more I’m wondering how much of my dreams were dreams.

The more I wonder if all I am is just some clone with a badge. 

“What did the bodies look like?” I ask, clearing my throat. “Did these aliens have scales, and tails…and  sort of look like lizards?”

Lisa laughs. “No idea. Luca didn’t give me much of a description, but I’d bet money they were little green men. It’d go with the whole flying saucer motif, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I swallow. “Suppose it would.”  

She chatters on. This, that, something else. Apparently they’ve got an ironclad alibi to deal with the journalists, something banal enough to keep them far away from the crash site. But I’m too deep in my own thoughts to register what is. I’m too deep remembering all the awful aspects of the dream that wasn’t supposed to be real. I’m remembering him. 

The Runaway. 

And the more I remember, the more I wish I could forget. 

____________________________________________________

The first time the Runway opens his eyes, he’s twenty years old. 

He’s laying naked in the jungle, the sun scorching his skin with ultraviolet rays. He sits up. He has no instructions. No guidance. This world is entirely new to him, utterly foreign and in his stomach flutters the first ghosts of adrenaline. 

From the outer ring of Saturn, the Heretic watches.

The Runaway rises to his feet. He takes his first shaking, trembling step and stumbles into the grass. He groans. Pain. A new sensation. He gets back up, tries again. It’s harder than it looks, walking when you’ve never done it before, but eventually he gets the picture. For him, it gets easier by the second. 

After only an hour, he’s running through the ferns. Climbing trees. And his stomach is screaming. 

Food.

He must find food. 

But what to eat? 

By his third hour alive, the Runaway has learned to forage. By his sixth, he’s consumed enough poisonous berries to floor an elephant, and is writhing on the ground. The poison burns his stomach. It makes his tongue swell and his skin glisten with sweat, but as the seconds become minutes, the agony fades to pain fades to healing.

His body is adapting. His digestive systems are hardening themselves against the poison, and soon, the Runaway rises back to his feet. 

Evolution has begun. 

As the sun sets, the Runaway collects wild game from crude traps. He has begun subconsciously tapping into the Collective Recall, intuitively teaching himself to skin animals, to make fires, to cook flesh for taste and health. 

He is learning. 

As the week comes to a close, the Runaway is surrounded. A pack of wolves has been hounding him for days, and now they’ve come to deal with this trespasser upon their territory. They circle him. Their teeth gnash, saliva leaking from their jaws. In their throats is a growl, a threat of death, but the Runaway has learned to handle his fear. Now, it serves him.

His muscles tense. His hands flex in and out of fists, and his eyes follow the beasts as they pad the ground. The large one, he thinks. The large wolf will engage, and the rest will follow. But he doesn’t give it time– he dashes forward, faster than even the wolves can react, and he brings his fist down upon the skull of the largest. The animal is stunned. Dazed. He follows up by grabbing its jaws, and pulling with all of his might. 

The other wolves flee. They yelp and they scream as their champion falls to the dirt, dead. 

The Runaway dresses himself in its hide. 

At the end of the month, the Runaway has evolved to the point he barely needs to eat. Twenty calories a day serve him all that he needs. A handful of berries, and he can operate at peak mental and physical capability. By the close of his second month, he no longer needs to breathe. He fishes hundreds of meters below the surface, fighting off sharks for choice morsels swimming in the deep. 

On the anniversary of his birth, the Heretic observes that the Runaway no longer ages. His DNA suffers no damage each time it splits. He has become biologically immortal. 

After five years, he transcends humanity. The Runaway is now capable of perceiving individual atoms, and by the sixth year of his life, he can manipulate them. Matter becomes his plaything. The laws of physics become little more than suggestions, and so if he wants to fly, then he does. If he wants to reach into the minds of living creatures, he does that too. 

The Runaway has become the most powerful lifeform to ever live. But the Heretic is not concerned. 

No, he sees what his creation is. He sees that this anomaly, this Runaway is kind. Empathetic. With each passing year his interest in violence wanes. Before long, the Runaway cuts himself off from humanity altogether, unable to stomach their wonton savagery and thirst for blood. Some have taken to worshiping him. Others, reviling.

To him, they are all the same. Misguided, fearful, and ruled by instincts he has learned to see beyond. These humans may as well be a separate species. 

To find respite from this chaos, he meditates. Sometimes he does this at the bottom of the sea. Other times he does this atop high, wind-swept peaks. Anywhere his senses are sufficiently assailed to block out the madness of the world around him.

And it’s while meditating on one of these peaks that the Runaway begins looking to the stars. He wonders if there may be more out there. 

Is it possible, he thinks aloud, that there are others like me?

Could I find a companion of my own?

And it’s while he’s pondering these thoughts, while he’s gazing into the deepness of space, that he finds something looking back at him. A lizard. Housed within a strange capsule, floating in the outer rings of a celestial body we know as Saturn. 

It is the first time he and his maker lock eyes. 

Weeks later, the Runaway’s breached the atmosphere of Earth. A month after that, he’s traversed the solar system and made it to the Heretic’s ship. He’s tapping on the hull. The Heretic welcomes him inside. 

“Hello,” the Heretic says, in the ancient tongue of man. 

The Runaway peers at him. “Hello…” he says slowly, but it is not in the ancient tongue of man. It is in the low bass of Vytarian. “Your language is… strange… but I believe I can master it. Who are you? Why have you been watching… me?”

The Heretic doesn’t see the point of mincing words. He comes clean about everything– after all, the Runaway is capable of looking into his thoughts. What’s the use of playing coy? He starts with the extinction of the Vytarian people, and ends with humanity’s role as inheritors of the universe, and the Runaway’s role in leading them there. 

“Have you any questions?” the Heretic asks. 

“Many,” the Runaway tells him. “Above all, why do you fear me?”

“I don’t,” the Heretic says. 

“You do. I see it reflected in your thoughts.”

“The fear you see reflected in my thoughts,” the Heretic begins, speaking with careful deliberation, “... it does not belong to me. You are viewing fragments of the Collective Recall, a shared knowledge passed down by my people. You are viewing the beliefs of those of us who remain from the Old War– followers of the Way of the Chosen.”

“These followers,” The Runaway says, his expression twisting with shock and horror. “They think of me as a monster– an abomination!”

“Not exactly,” the Heretic tells him. “Strictly, they do not think of you at all. In order to protect my work, I cut myself off from the Collective sometime ago, so all you’re seeing are faint echoes of their dogma. To them, my work is blasphemy. But yes… I believe that should they learn of you, your vast capabilities would indeed frighten them. They would think you a monster.”

“And to you?” The Runaway asks. “What am I to you?” 

The Heretic reaches toward the Runaway, claps his shoulder. He smiles in the human way. “I am a barren lifeform, ravaged by a virus that has stolen the hope of my people. I am unable to achieve my biological imperative. Reproduction is beyond me. You ask me what you are to me? You are my legacy.” He slowly, awkwardly performs the human ritual of embrace, wrapping his arms around the Runaway.

You are my son.

_________________________________________________________________________

I take a breath. It’s brief. Gasping. Gray is standing in front of me, his pupils pulsing, and I’m suddenly aware that his name isn’t Gray it’s Wor. He’s 70 million years old. Not only that, but so is his friend– and his name isn’t Teal, but Kez. They’re both devotees of the Way of the Chosen. 

“Did you see?” Wor asks, and he’s no longer using his digital translator. After the thought transference it seems I can understand the Vytarian language, make sense of the various vibrations that previously just seemed like low bass.

“Yes,” I say, leaning forward. “But not everything.” I look up at Wor, and hit him with an accusatory glare. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there? What aren’t you telling me?”

Kez twists his neck to look at us. His pupils are blowing up and shrinking in quick succession– a reaction I now understand to mean I’m pissed. “You have seen enough, human. Prepare for genetic deconstruction and we will be done with this.”

“No!” I exclaim, and I’m surprised to hear my voice rumbling throughout the ship. It’s thunderous. I clear my throat. “No,” I say, and this time my voice is appropriately subdued. Vytarian is apparently a powerful language. “If you want me to jump into a vat and turn into… corpse chili or whatever, then you have to show me it’s worth it.”

The Vytar exchange glances. Wor’s pupils shrink– he’s nervous. Concerned. “To show you more may invite excess unease,” he says. “It was my hope that a brief glance at the history, the origin of everything could provide necessary closure to commence the harvest of your DNA.”

“Look,” I say. “I’ve seen a lot. I know that whatever genetic material you’re grabbing off people is a lot more useful if we’re agreeable. It’s like hunting an animal. Kill it scared, and the meat is tough. It’s a chemical thing– I get that, and I’m telling you that if you show me the rest, I’ll let you do what you need. I’ll play my part.”

“Invalid request,” Kez says. “Such knowledge is beyond your capacity to bear.”

I frown. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Runaway. It’s obvious he’s the source of your fear and this so-called mission to save humanity. Yeah. I might not have all the details, but just looking at your reactions– it’s gotta be. More than that, I can guess you haven’t had much luck dealing with him either.”

Wor and Kez don’t speak a word. Their expressions say everything I need to know. 

“The way I figure it,” I continue, getting to my feet and taking a deep breath. “Is that I’m a human too. On some level, I’m like The Runaway, just less… well, terrifying. But maybe there’s something in those visions, something in the Runaway’s actions or his behaviors that only a human could make sense of. Ever think of that? I mean, what if I can help you catch something you’re missing? Isn’t that chance worth taking?”

The Vytar are quiet. They stare at one another for a long while, and their pupils explode in waves of emotion. Kez turns away. He lets out a gruff warble and throws up his arms, cursing Wor and me both. 

“What’s his problem?” I ask.

Wor steps forward. He gingerly looks back to his companion, but Kez’s back is turned, hunched over the console in clear disagreement. 

“Kez does not wish to harm your mind,” Wor says quietly. “Your story of your sister… this expiring human you call Hope, well, it has moved him. He fears that if I show you the rest of The Runaway’s story it will cause your mind to fracture, shattering your consciousness in such a way that it may not be repaired. There will be no perfect clone. Your sister will find no solace in her dying moments.”

I look at Kez, watch him tap at the console’s controls and I can’t help but feel guilty for judging him so harshly. At the end of the day, he was just looking out for my sister. 

But, on the other hand, he also wants to turn me into DNA soup. 

“This feels important,” I say to Wor, balling my hands into fists. “If this is really about the fate of humanity, the fate of everything– well, I think Hope would want me to do anything I could to help.” I plaster a weak smile onto my face, trying to hype myself up with fake confidence. “Besides, I can’t imagine it’s that bad, is it?”

Wor places his hands on my temples. Closes his eyes. “You’re right,” he tells me. “You cannot begin to imagine how bad it is.”

_________________________________________________________________________

Images riot past me. 

I’m falling again, out of my body and out of my mind, back into the collective history of the Vytarian species. Millenia pass in moments. Epochs become blurs. My very consciousness is straining under the weight of it all, like a molten ball of mental energy growing redder with every new detail, every new memory. 

And then it cools.

The maelstrom of history becomes a focused lens. Once again I’m observing the spacecraft orbiting the rings of Saturn. It’s the same ship that the Heretic and the Runaway are standing in, exchanging words that will decide the fate of the universe.

“They have come for my world before…” The Runaway says, blinking as he scans the Heretic’s memories. “They took the great lizards then… I see it in your thoughts. Their strike was powerful enough to nearly wipe out all life, to bring the planet to its knees and make molten liquid scream from its surface. If they return…”

“Yes,” The Heretic tells him, placing a hand against the observation window. In the distance is a speck of green in a field of darkness, magnified by a digital overlay. “They will ensure the planet is shattered, along with all life it hosts. They cannot understand you, and this frightens them.”

“And if they understood me?” The Runaway asks. “If I visit them, if I go to this world of The Chosen and show them that I am not some tool of violence, would they forgive you then? Forgive my world?”

The Heretic’s pupils shrink, becoming tiny beads. “A million years of peace could not convince them to love you. It is against their nature. To them, you will always be a false god. A pretender.”

“A false god?” The Runaway mutters. “If I am a false god… then who is the true god?” His expression hardens, his eyes narrowing as he sorts through deeper pools of knowledge within the Heretic’s mind. Suddenly he takes a sharp breath. Stumbles against the hull of the ship. “... Him…”

“The Distant One,” the Heretic explains, predicting what his creation has seen. “Yes. He is the deity of The Chosen, a so-called omnipotent force that exists just beyond the reaches of the universe, in a place called Edge.”

The Runaway’s lips tremble. His eyes, unblinking, grow bloodshot. “This Edge… Have you ever visited it?”

“No,” says the Heretic, sitting down next to him. “It is an unreachable place. Many have set out on pilgrimages to traverse the Edge, but none have returned. If the universe can be called hostile to life, then that place holds an active malevolence for it. None who seek it survive.” 

The Runaway is silent. His mouth hangs open, and he gives the impression that even his ever-expanding intellect is struggling to handle this philosophical equation. Minutes pass. The Runaway does not move. He does not respond to The Heretic’s prompts. 

The two sit in silence for hours. 

The Runaway lowers his head. “These humans are not like me,” he says at last. “And nor are you.” Something wet slips from the corner of his eye. A tear?

Yes.

More come. They fall in a torrent. 

“I am born from these humans,” he says, his words fragmented beneath the weight of his grief. “I am shaped by them, but they torment me with their genetic influence! I am driven toward compassion. My body screams for connection! But to me, these humans offer nothing– their thoughts are too limited to grant me wisdom, their perspectives too narrow to afford me connection. With every passing moment, my mind expands. My function grows. I have become powerful beyond belief, but I would throw it all away to be like them.” He turns his head, locking eyes with the Heretic. “Why? Why would you make me this way? ”

The Heretic’s words are fragile. “I am sorry,” he says. “You must know that it was never my intention to hurt you, child. Were it possible, I would do anything to make that pain go away.”

The Runaway looks away. His hands become fists and he raises an arm, wipes the tears from his eyes. “Perhaps you already have, father.”

“Child?” the Heretic says. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

“Connection,” the Runaway explains, rising to his feet. He leans his head against the observation window, looks out into the black abyss of space and swallows. “I will find somebody like me, somebody that understands what it means to stand above all other forms of life.” 

An uneven smile slips across his lips. “I will find God.”

_________________________________________________________________________

My consciousness crashes back into me. I gasp, throwing my head backwards, smashing it against a deconstruction tank. “Fuck!”

Wor grasps my shoulders. He’s staring at me with a wild look, and Kez is right behind him, both of their pupils are exploding like fireworks. “You saw?” they ask in unison. 

“More than last time…” I mutter, rubbing my head. “The Runaway went to look for God… or The Distant One, I guess.”

“Yes,” Wor says somberly. “The Distant One. The Runaway sought out the Edge.” He pauses, looking concerned. “We had to pull you out of the Recall, biometrics indicated your body was under considerable stress. How do you feel, human?”

“A little fuzzy, but not too bad.” I blink up at the Vytar duo. “Everything alright?”

They exchange looks. Kez huffs, stalking back to his console, his clawed feet echoing off the metal deck. Wor’s eyes are wide. He’s pleased. “We were able to pull considerable data from you during the Recall. I think it may help us in our mission, greatly enhancing humanity’s chance for survival.”

“Great,” I say. “Does that mean you’re not going to deconstruct me?”

“Oh no,” Wor says. “Your genetic material has become even more useful. If we can marry it with the neurological data we processed during your time in the Recall, we can accelerate the production of our countermeasure!”

Maybe it’s the sedative wearing off, or maybe I’m just tired of being buried alive in cosmic horror. “So that’s it, then?” I snap, rounding on Wor. “I get an inch away from understanding the biggest dick in the universe, and instead of throwing me a bone, showing me how it ends, you just expect me to jump into a pit of acid and do my part?”

“No,” Kez says. “You will enter the Recall once more.”

“But–” Wor starts.

Kez’s pupils flare. “The human has aided our efforts at great personal risk. Now is the time to provide him the closure we promised.” His attention turns back to me. “Though this human must acknowledge he may not reemerge from the Recall. This final trip may destroy him.”

I swallow. 

Wor is fretting. “Another Recall could limit our ability to harvest the DNA. After what we just discovered–”

“When the Heretic created humanity,” Kez says, cutting him off, “he did so under the belief that humans would one day choose their own destiny. Perhaps it is time we let this one make such a choice.”

Wor turns back to me. There’s an expression of deep concern in his features. “Your last Recall has given us much data to work with. If you go back… If your mind fractures, then we may not be able to use what we recovered to aid in human salvation.”

They’re both staring at me. It’s like getting to the final episode of X-Files and being told you’ll never learn how it ends– not unless you doom every human on earth. “And if I can take it…” I say, sorting through my thoughts. “If I can handle another dip into the Recall, then is it possible you’d be able to pull even more useful data from me? Could I accelerate this so-called salvation even faster?”

“Hypothetically,” Kez says. “But the chances are slim. Your ‘Hope’ may not receive the support you desire, as the cloning process will be compromised. It may not be possible to produce a clone at all.”

A slim chance is still a chance.

“Do it,” I tell them. “Show me how this ends.”

_________________________________________________________________________

My mind catches fire. 

I feel my consciousness fracture and split, shuddering beneath an unbearable force. For the third time, I descend into the Collective Recall, and this time I know I can’t take it. Thoughts begin to burn up. Memories ignite, scorching to ashes as they’re blown into the void. 

I’m losing time.

Losing all sense of self.

My mother’s name. What was it again?

Wendy? Whitney?

No… Something else.

My birthday. How old am I?

Eleven? Fourteen?

I’m watching myself fall to pieces from the inside out, and it’s terrifying. Bit by bit, I’m forgetting who I am. What I am.

Human?

Vytar?

W   H   O          A    M          I     

And then it stops.

Everything stops.

The cacophony of panic, the missing memories and the impossible fear. It fades to black.

No, not black.

But space.

I’m gazing out into space. There’s a ship here, a metallic craft floating outside a large planet with rings, and suddenly, piece by piece, the memories come back. Saturn. The ship belongs to the Heretic.

I have to investigate. I have to know how this ends. 

Inside, the Heretic is pacing back and forth. He is deep in thought, and there is no sign of the Runaway. He’s gone, I realize. He’s left to find God, or The Distant One, or the Edge. Whatever it is– he’s gone. Missing. 

The Heretic is concerned. He does not think of his creation as volatile, as threatening, but if it were to make contact with the Edge– that place where the laws of physics become unknowable and violent, then there’s no telling what will happen. No. He must intercept the Runaway before he reaches the outer limits of the universe.

He must stop his child.

But his ship cannot track him. He is but one Vytarian and his resources are limited. This Heretic, he’s a smart guy– a real mover-and-shaker, and so he knows what he has to do. It scares him. There will be consequences, but perhaps not worse than the consequence of inaction.

He contacts The Chosen.

They have the resources he needs, controlling the vast fleet of surveillance drones scattered throughout the cosmos. If they allow him their access, then maybe, just maybe, he can find the Runaway and convince his child to stay in the bounds of this universe.

Maybe, just maybe, he can save us all. 

He opens a communication channel. The Chosen aren’t happy with him, not happy at all. 

What have you done, they say. 

You have doomed us in your arrogance, they tell him.

It was never my intention, he replies. If we move quickly we can stop him, we can still set things right. 

Remain where you are, they order.

He does as he’s told. For he is not a fool, and he knows that there is no longer anywhere he can run. This is a disaster he must confront head on. This is his reckoning. 

The Chosen imprison the Heretic. They deploy a fleet to intercept the Runaway, but they fail to reach him in time. He breaches the Edge, vanishes beyond the furthest reaches of the universe and enters that forbidden realm belonging to eternity itself. 

He is with the Distant One now.

God help us all.

Years pass. The Chosen torture the Heretic, they demand he tell them everything he knows. He does. He holds nothing back, save for the birth of humanity. That is a secret that he cannot reveal– The Chosen must never punish the humans for his folly in creating the Runaway. The humans must persist. 

He believes they may yet be our only hope. 

Decades pass. The Heretic sits in chains, buried in a prison deep beneath the dirt. He is being kept alive while The Chosen monitor the Edge, nervous of the Runaway returning. If he does, they may need the Heretic yet. He could hold the key to solving this. 

A hundred years pass. Then nine hundred more. 

At the thousand year anniversary of the Runaway’s blasphemy, a Vytarian vessel reports anomalous activity near the Edge. Space there is behaving strangely. It’s a phenomena they’ve seen only once before, when the Runaway stepped beyond the Edge to find God.

Something is emerging.

It’s him. 

The Vytarian military is deployed to intercept the Runaway. His appearance has changed, his body now sallow and long, his eyes sunken and black. Images are relayed to the Heretic, who has been called before the High Council to advise on the situation.  

This is not him, he tells them. This is not my son. 

Then what is it, they ask. 

But if the Heretic knows, he does not speak of it. He watches the video feed in detached horror, his whole body trembling as a thousand military vessels surround the Runaway. His creation does not move. He floats idly just beyond the Edge, unbothered by the building threat around him. 

“Surrender,” the flagship demands. “Or we will be forced to open fire.”

“Fire,” says the Runaway, and the words echo in the minds of everything across the universe. “You know nothing of fire.”

With a wave of his hand, a thousand warships are torn asunder. They crumble, exploding in blue and black flames as their video feeds are extinguished one by one. A distant surveillance droid relays the carnage. It shows the High Council the nightmare unfolding, and shows the Heretic too. 

He weeps. Howls in despair. 

But the High Council has had one thousand years to prepare for this. They are not yet finished. As the last of the warships burn to dust, they reveal a ring of planets surrounding the Runaway. These planets have come a long way. They have been carted from distant solar systems, distant galaxies, and they have come here for one reason. 

To become dust. 

The High Council flips a switch. Powerful thrusters begin to move the planets toward the Runaway, a hundred of them converging on him at faster and faster speeds. Their surfaces tremble. Their cores begin to shudder.

One by one, the planets crash into the Runaway.

He is buried beneath a solar system, the resultant shockwaves causing the galaxy to shake. From light years away, the High Council observe with bated breath. The Heretic does not look up, for he knows that this ungodly display of force is nothing compared to a god itself. 

What has happened to his child?

How has the Edge corrupted him so?

As the last of the planets impact the Runaway, as the last of their fire and fury fades to scattered rubble, he is revealed to be a mangled corpse. His torn carcass floats between the debris. Pieces of him are scattered millions of miles apart, and these images are shared across the Collective Recall to all living Vytarians. They jump. They cheer. 

The false god is no more. The pretender has been unseated from his crooked throne. 

But bit by bit, his mangled carcass begins to move. It drifts at first. Slowly. But then it picks up speed, and soon pieces of his arms are smashing into his torso, and fragments of his skull are snapping up against one another. He is reforming himself. Resurrecting. 

What returns in his place is a monstrosity. It is a twisted mess, an abomination with nine arms and three legs. Its head is over-large, misshapen and draped in patches of black hair, and his eyes… His eyes are swirling, endless pools of cosmic abyss. No longer, the Heretic thinks, is this thing living. It is now beyond life. Beyond everything.

But the High Council is not convinced. 

A thousand years is a long time, and it’s longer still for a race as advanced as the Vytar. They have suffered wars that have ended solar systems, turned whole galaxies into wastelands, and so they are no strangers to violence. This Runaway? He will learn his place, one way or another. Those planets were never meant to end the monster. No. They were merely an opening salvo. A distraction to give the High Council time to prepare their real weapon. 

And now it is ready. 

In the crackling feed of a distant surveillance drone, the Heretic watches as a red hypergiant star begins to pulse. Plasma lashes from its surface. It throbs. This is it– the most powerful weapon in the Vytarian arsenal, and they’re triggering it on one of the largest stars in all the universe.

Supernova. 

There’s a flicker of light, and the drone feed goes dead. Another drone is tapped from a neighboring solar system, and it reveals a distant glimmer that’s growing, growing. It’s an explosion that’s engulfing everything within millions, billions of miles. It’s stretching outward and consuming neighboring systems. Whole planets and stars are vaporized in the cataclysmic fury of a dying titan. 

And then the explosion fades. It reveals nothing. The whole of the solar system– multiple systems burned to less than ash. Even the Runaway is no more. 

It seems too good to be true. The Heretic wants to believe, but he can’t. He knows just what his creation is capable of, having already seen it recover from being splintered into pieces and scattered across space. He may be vaporized, but…

And there. Slowly, pieces of matter begin to grow in the void. They grow and they grow, reforming until the Runaway’s screaming mouth emerges from a body now wholly unrecognizable as human. It’s a skeletal figure, long and decrepit, with dozens of limbs and a thousand mouths. Its eyes have become one, and within it, there is emptiness. 

But the assault isn’t over. 

The High Council grip their table, watching with nervous trepidation as the final phase of their attack begins. At the center of the supernova, something is forming. It’s swirling. Matter is being drawn into it. Light itself. The hypergiant star has collapsed into a supermassive black hole, and its gravitational force is such that even neighboring galaxies feel its pull. 

The Runaway is being dragged toward it. Still weakened from the largest explosion since the birth of the cosmos, he cannot resist its might. The event horizon is calling to him, beckoning him toward the most powerful trash compactor in all the universe and he is powerless before it. 

Now we will crush him, the High Council declares across the Collective Recall.

Vytarians cheer. 

Now we will break his bones.

Vytarians cheer.

Now we will unmake the unmaker.

Vytarians cheer.

We do this for all of the Chosen! To bring glory to The Distant One!

They cheer and they cheer. 

The Heretic watches through the Recall as Vytarians celebrate in the streets, sing and dance, speak scripture as they hold their arms to the sky in the way of prayer. It is done, they think. This is their judgment day, their final test, and now they will join The Distant One in the Edge. Now they will be granted their salvation. They will ascend. 

But the Heretic sees what they cannot. 

As the High Council exchanges congratulations, the Heretic is watching as the black hole’s pull on the Runaway diminishes. It’s subtle. The distance the Runaway is covering is slowly being reduced from millions of miles per second, to thousands, to hundreds. He is evolving. As he reaches the event horizon, where time and space begin to warp, the Runaway does something he hasn’t done in a thousand years. 

He opens his mouth. Takes a breath. 

And this black hole, this unfathomable force of gravity, is sucked up inside of him. His mouth closes. He swallows. 

“I had almost forgotten…” the Runaway says, his guttural voice echoing across all of creation. “... What pain felt like.”

He blinks out of existence. 

The High Council exchange looks of utter terror. The Heretic is bawling on the floor, for he knows that what comes next will be a horror none can imagine. 

End this, he begs them. End us all. 

And in his mind, he hears screaming. In all of their minds, they hear screaming. Through the Collective Recall, they watch as Vytarians run in panic, fleeing a mangled creature with an eye of a melting star. 

He is here.

The Runaway has come. 

You, the High Council shouts, pointing to the Heretic. We have shown leniency but it’s clear that The Disant One demands your blood! 

There’s a foot on his head. A blade in an executioner’s hand. 

If you have any sense, he tells them, then you’ll give this whole planet the peace of death. 

This began with you, they say, and so it shall end with you. 

And the blade comes down. The Heretic’s head is cleaved from his body, and as his consciousness begins to slip, his final wish is for everything they said to be true. 

The High Council frantically scans the Recall, growing more desperate, more horrified. Any moment now, they think. Any moment The Distant One will intervene, he will deliver them from this monster, this evil made flesh and they will all ascend to join him, having proven themselves loyal. Dedicated. After all, the Heretic is dead, isn’t he? What more is there left for them to do?

But the screaming doesn’t stop. Their Recall is assailed by nonstop suffering, nonstop cries for aid, for mercy, and the High Council watches helplessly while Vytarians are pulled apart, piece by piece. They watch as the Runaway poisons their heads. As he infiltrates their consciousness, cutting up their thoughts and marrying the agony of their body with the agony of their minds. 

Please, the High Council is pleading. They splay across the floor, raising their hands above them in the way of prayer. Help us, Distant One!

And there’s a loud crack.

The Runaway appears before them. He’s levitating in the air, his torso a mangled mess of limbs, his large eye blazing the heat of a billion dead stars. His body is coated in blood. In skin. 

Deliver us from this evil! the High Council says.

Restore that which is holy! they plead.

Unmake the pretender! they beg.

Destroy the false god! they shriek.

And the Runaway spreads a dozen crooked arms, tilts his grotesque head and for the second time in a thousand years, he takes a breath. An uneven smile slips across his face.

He tells them, I already have. 

_________________________________________________________________________

I’m choking on my vomit. 

Strong hands roll me over, and I let loose what’s left of my dinner onto the deck. I cough. Sputter. My eyes are bulging, my heart is racing and it feels like a hundred tiny explosions are going off across the surface of my brain. 

“Human,” Kez says, turning my face to look at him. “Human! Respond!”

I grunt. The words come out a jumbled mess, and I stagger to my hands and knees. “I… I’m alive…” I say, trying again. Good. Those are real words. 

Progress.

“You have been unconscious for an hour,” Wor says, lifting my matted hair. “We thought you were slated for expiry. We had prepared the vat to dissolve your corpse, hoping to get what little data we could.”

He points to a lowered vat in the ground. It’s been emptied of the blue fluid inside all of the others. 

 “Jesus…” I mutter, rubbing my eyes.  The environment is blurry, but second by second it’s getting clearer. “I’m okay, I think. Just a little woozy.”

“Did you see it, then?” Wor asks. “How Vytar ends?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “But that was a long time ago. Where’s the Runaway now?”

Wor and Kez are quiet. It’s as though they’re not certain how to go about answering the question, like they’re worried it’ll unearth memories better left buried. 

“He is still there,” Kez says, eyes downcast. “He is taking his time inflicting pain upon our people. He pulls them apart. Sometimes by their bodies, sometimes by their minds. Often both. When their life gives out, he puts them back together again. Starts over. None can escape.”

Wor nods. “We were off-world when the Runaway attacked. Our task had been to monitor a distant area of the Edge for his reemergence, but once we saw what was occurring through the Recall… We fled.”

“Won’t he know to find you?”

“Oh yes,” Wor says. “He will know to find us. He will know to find Earth, and once he has had his fill of our people, I suspect he will come back and take out his pain upon humanity. Your genetic signature is what has caused him such grief, after all. It is what drove him to find our god.”

I shake my head. It’s almost too much to imagine– some all powerful monster tormenting a population for thousands upon thousands of years, remaking them every time they die. “How…” I mutter. “How do you expect to stop him? After everything I just saw… The Chosen threw a whole solar system at him, caught him in a supernova and even tried dragging him into a black hole. Nothing worked. How are you going to beat something like that?”

“We will destroy him the same way that we were destroyed– and the same way that he was born,” Kez says, placing a hand against one of the vats. Inside of it is a man, and his limbs are dissolved and so are portions of his cheeks. “We will create a virus with accelerated evolution, an evolution more rapid than even the Runaway’s. His immune system will attempt to adapt to it, but it will adapt to his defenses even faster, and then it will consume him, and destroy him.”

I look at the dozens of vats, the scattered corpses of humans being turned into genetic slush. I look at the tubes extending from the vats, follow them to the console in the center of it all, where I see a large capsule sitting on top. Inside, fluid is bubbling. Boiling. 

“Is that it?” I say, nodding to the capsule. “Is that the virus?”

“Yes,” Wor replies, pupils shrinking. “Though it is not yet ready. We are hopeful that we can complete its construction before the Runaway finishes with our people, and comes for your own.”

“How long?” I ask, my voice quiet.

“Two hundred and fourteen years,” Kez says. 

I blink, tears forming in my eyes. “Two hundred… Good God. That’s forever. What if it’s not done in time?”

“Correction,” Wor says, referring to the readout on his arm. “Two hundred and fourteen years was our previous assessment. However, with the data we were able to compile from your experience in the Recall…” His long fingers tap at the display. “We estimate it may be finished in as little as thirty three, assuming your genetic deconstruction goes smoothly.”

Thirty three. 

It might as well have been a million knowing what we were up against. “And what do you call it?” I ask. 

“Query unclear,” Kez replies. “In this instance, a name serves no purpose. The virus has a function and it will either succeed or fail in it, and that is all that we are concerned with.”

“But this virus…” I begin, reaching for the right words. “This is the universe’s last chance at saving itself. It’s humanity’s last chance of surviving. It’s your last chance. That’s a big freaking deal– it should have a name, shouldn't it?”

Wor’s biometric readout flashes. “Cortisol levels are rising. Please calm yourself, human, otherwise you risk compromising valuable genetic data.” He looks up at me over his display. “Your clone will have no memory of this, so such an emotional response is illogical. As it happens, should you wish to say goodbye to your expiring sister, we will need to begin your deconstruction immediately. The clone will take a day to prepare.”

I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t know what to say. Tears leak from my eyes. I sniffle, wiping at them as I feel my heart crushed beneath the weight of so much pain. 

My sister. 

Hope. 

She’s dying in the hospital, and I won’t even get to say goodbye. The best she'll get is some lab-grown copycat. On top of that, there’s a mad god rampaging across the universe and he could show up on our doorstep any second. 

My knees buckle. I collapse onto the ground, and for the first time since I was very little, I cry my eyes out. I lean my head against the vat of a dead person, and I cry and I cry. I cry for Hope, I cry for myself, and I cry for every Vytarian who’s dying over and over and over again just to satisfy the twisted whims of the Runaway. 

A hand grips my shoulder. I look up, blinking through the tears clouding my vision. It’s Kez. 

“It is almost time,” he tells me. “Are you ready?”

“Sure…” I mutter. “We all die someday, right?”

He helps me to my feet and leads me toward a lowered, empty vat. “Human,” he says, blinking twice as his pupils pulse with effort. “No– Is…Isaiah Mitchell. It distresses you that we have not named this virus. Why?”

“Because it’s important,” I say, exasperated. I find myself wishing I could be as much of an emotionless husk as the Vytarians. It might make this whole self-sacrifice thing a bit easier. “It’s the most important thing ever created… and it’s just… nameless. It feels wrong. Don’t you see that?”

“No,” he tells me, helping me into the vat. 

I step into the thick, transparent tank. Liquid begins to pour out of several connected tubes, pooling at my feet. It feels tingly. Almost like an anesthetic. 

“What would you name this virus?” he asks, standing above me. 

I close my eyes. I think long and hard, happy for a distraction from my own mortality. But try as I might, I can’t bring myself to focus on it– I can’t make myself think about the virus, the mad god or the end of the universe. All I can think about is her. My big sister. I think about how much I’m going to miss her, and how I wish I could have had the chance to say goodbye before this nightmare unfolded. I think about playing boardgames as kids. I think about her making us popcorn, and watching Jurassic Park past my bedtime. I think about the two of us swinging on the playground, late into the night, and her reading me bedtime stories while our mom and dad were passed out drunk. 

“Isaiah,” Kez says, snapping me out of my reverie. “The name?”

The liquid is around my chest now. I squint up at Kez, my mind already beginning to feel distant, hazy. This is it. The final frontier. 

I give Kez a smile, and I say the last word I’ll ever speak. 

_________________________________________________________________________

The place Lisa’s taking me is on the far end of the spacecraft. It’s deep enough inside that teams haven’t gotten around to rigging it with lighting. So we’re doing things the old fashioned way.  

Right now, Lisa’s making shadow puppets with her flashlight. 

“You have to admit this one looks like a giraffe,” she says, twisting her fingers in a way that looks nothing like a giraffe. 

“How far left?” I ask, ignoring her. 

She sighs. “It’s just ahead. What’s gotten into you tonight, Mitchell?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, frowning. 

“I mean it’s usually me that’s all business. You’re the asshole who everything slips off of like cellophane, but now you’re all brooding and serious.” She shines the light in my eyes, and I stumble backward.

“Jesus! Quit it, will you?”

“Just needed to see your eyes,” she laughs, turning the light forward again. “Had to make sure the aliens hadn’t possessed you.”

“Give me a break.”

“A break? You only just got to work.” She stops suddenly, jerks her head to the side. Her flashlight illuminates a piece of paper hanging above the top of an entryway, and the paper reads D34. “This is us,” she says. “After you.”

I step inside. The room is dark, but to my right, in the far corner, is a scatter of lights and a small crew of people. They’re buzzing around a field of vats. I throw my light over, and my breath catches in my chest. The vats are filled with blue liquid. They’re filled with floating human corpses. 

“It’s real…” I mutter. “Jesus, it’s all real…”

“No shit,” Lisa says, pushing past me. “Major Luca?” she calls out.

A woman comes forward in a white lab coat, and on her uniform is a patch that reads LUCA. “Agents,” she says, pulling down her mask. “Good to see you. The bodies are just this way.”

She leads us through the maze of vats. There are people in lab attire standing above the tanks, dipping sticks inside to grab DNA samples. Others are draining the fluid with small portable pumps. This is it. This is the place I go every time I fall asleep. 

“Here they are,” Luca says. She points at a gray tarp, and I bend down and lift it up. Beneath are two bodies, both large, both dead. They have scaled skin, long teeth, serrated claws and even tails. Once I would have said they looked like monsters, now I think they look like old friends. 

Their name are Kez and Wor.

Lisa whistles, circling them. “Scary bastards, huh? Good thing they weren’t alive and kicking when we got inside. Probably would have gone all Xenomorph on our asses.”

Lisa makes a face, and Luca chuckles. 

I stare at the dead duo. How? How did they let this happen? They were Vytarians– the most advanced species in the history of the universe. How did they get shot down by something as archaic as an F35?

“Did the pilot give a report?” I ask. 

Lisa looks up, lifts an eyebrow. “You’re looking at the first real, flesh and blood aliens that anybody’s ever seen, and you’re asking about fucking paperwork?” She rolls her eyes. “Mitchell, I’m telling you– you’re losing it.”

“The report,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “What did the pilot see? Why’d they fire on the UAP?”

She sighs, long and hard. “Alright. Let’s get this over with. According to the report, the pilot picked up something weird on radar. Flew over to investigate. Once he gets there, he sees this giant aircraft that’s flickering in and out of existence, like one second it’s there, the next it’s gone kinda thing. Real strange. The pilot thinks maybe this is some kind of unknown Chinese spycraft and reports it in, but before he can finish the report, the UAP fires something into the sky.”

“It fires something?” I say, blinking. “Like a weapon?”

She shrugs. “That’s what the pilot thought. He figured it might be some kind of pre-emptive nuclear strike, and so he returned fire on it. Launched everything he had.”

“And what was it? What did they fire?”

“No idea,” she says. “NASA recorded it leaving our atmosphere, and the thing kept picking up speed until it cleared our solar system entirely. They lost track of it an hour ago.”

I shake my head. Pieces begin to fall together, and I wonder if maybe whatever it was the Vytarians fired required such immense power that they had to divert everything towards its launch. All cloaking functions. All shielding functions. That’s the only thing that made any sense to me– there was no way an F35 could match them otherwise. 

“That’s not all, ma’am,” Major Luca says. Her voice is slow, almost nervous. “After I radioed you about the bodies, my team found something else. We think it might have been the payload. The one the aliens launched just before the jet took them down.”

“Show me,” I say, shoving past Lisa. “Now.”

The Major hurries past rows of vats, and I follow. The whole time, I’m trying to ignore the twisting horror in my gut, the creeping dread that my nightmares were more real than I ever was. I see the bodies dissolving in the blue fluid, and I wonder how many other humans are clones. I wonder if the original Isaiah felt any pain when he died. I wonder if he’d hate me now. 

“It’s here,” Luca says, stopping in front of a large metallic console. Yet another relic of my memories. She points to an empty pedestal on top, and in the center of the pedestal is a hole, some kind of chute. “We think the payload they fired was sitting on here,” she tells me. Her eyes move across the rows of vats, the dozens of dead humans and her lips curl in disgust. “Best as we can tell, we think they might have been using our DNA to create some kind of bioweapon. I think that’s what they fired tonight.”

“A bioweapon?” Lisa says, catching up. “Why? Were they trying to wipe us out and just missed?”

“Maybe,” Luca says. “Or maybe it’s like an ICBM, except instead of breaching our atmosphere it’s breaching our solar system. Might be it’s coming back.”

Lisa says something in response.

Luca replies.

They go back and forth. At some point, I think Lisa might be talking to me, trying to get my opinion on something, but my mind is a million miles away. It’s thirty years away. I take a step toward the metal console, toward the empty pedestal. This is where it was– the virus that Wor and Kez had been building to destroy the Runaway.

Hang on.

There’s something underneath it. 

A label. It might be the only label in this entire ship, but it’s covered by dust and made faint by decades of wear. 

Lisa grabs my arm. “Earth to Mitchell?”

I mutter something in response, but I can’t tell you what it is. Words. Just words. 

Just like the word sitting beneath the pedestal. It’s a word that brings back memories, but not memories of floating corpses, or exploding stars, or aliens and mad gods. No, this is a word that brings back memories of a hospital room. 

White.

Sterile.

Inside of it, a girl is lying in a bed, and her skin is pale and thin. She’s having trouble breathing. Tubes are pouring into her throat doing their best to keep her alive, but she doesn’t have long. This girl is dying. And she’s the most important thing to me in the entire world. 

“Chin up,” she’s telling me, and her frail hand rests against my own. She’s smiling. She’s seventeen years old, hardly even had a chance to live, and she’s smiling because she knows that’s what I need to see. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “You’ll see.”

But I think about our mom and dad. I think about how right now, they’re passed out on the couch, and how maybe if I’m lucky they’ll drink themselves to death before I get home. I think about the bruises up and down my arms. I think about the moment my guardian angel intervened, and pulled my dad off of me, just in time for him to shove her backward down the stairs.

I think about the sound her body made as it hit the floor. How still she was.

And now, I’m here, and she’s smiling at me, and she’s telling me that everything is going to be okay even though I know that isn’t. I know nothing will ever be okay again. “I don’t want you to go,” I tell her, and I squeeze her hand as gently as I can. Tears are pouring from my eyes. “Please…”

And I know it’s selfish. I know it’s pointless. I know that my older sister is dying whether I like it or not, and that putting this on her at the very end is cruel, but I’m a kid. Eleven years old. I know if I don’t try I’ll always wonder if it might have worked. If maybe I had just asked, she might have stayed. 

The machine that’s beeping in tune with her heart starts to slow. Beep… Beep. She leans forward, presses her forehead to mine. “I have to,” she whispers. “But don’t think for a second I won’t be watching over you.”

I blink back tears. “Promise?”

“Sure,” she tells me, pulling me into a hug. “That’s what big sisters are for, right?”

And we hold each other like that until the beeping stops. 

___________________________________________________

“I'm talking to you!” Lisa snaps. 

“Huh?”

“Fantastic! You’re still alive.” Lisa looks panicked. Her hair is a mess, and she’s taking another swig of her flask.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. 

She’s wiping her lips, putting the flask back into her jacket.  “Look,” she says. “If this thing really is a bioweapon, then we’ve gotta get information on it. And fast. Like Luca said, just cause we’ve lost track of it doesn’t mean it’s not going to loop back around for us." She pulls out a crudely printed map, starts tapping at it with a finger. "Here, I’ll organize a search through Alpha to Delta corridors, and you handle Echo through Hotel. Look for records, data– anything you can find. Got it?”

“Right,” I mutter. “I'm on it.”

“Great.” She starts fast-walking away, her hands balled into fists. “I’m fucked,” she's muttering, over and over. “There’s a fucking bioweapon out there and I don’t know the first thing about it… I'm fucked…”

I look back to the console, to the empty pedestal where the virus once sat, and I think to myself that what Lisa's saying isn’t quite true. We do know something about this. My fingers brush the dust from beneath the pedestal, revealing the worn label. On it is a single word, scratched by a Vytarian claw thirty years ago.

It’s a name.

A virus like this shouldn't need a name, Kez told me as much. But if it had one? Well, I think I would have named it after my guardian angel. 

I think I would have called it Hope. 

[alchemists-eve]

You find yourself inside a small suburban home. Your body did not follow you, yet you occupy this space. A man sits at his desk, cigarette in hand. His windows are closed, his ashtray is full. In the adjacent room was a boy. The boy sits cross legged in front of the TV, transfixed. The air is still and heavy with smoke that slowly billows its way from room to room, drawn not by a breeze or wind, but by the weight of the smoke itself. 

The man sat in absolute silence until his cigarette ran out. Then he would roll a fresh one, strike his lighter, and begin again. 

The boy stood up and approached the man. “Dad,” he said, “I’m hungry.”

The man sucked air in through his teeth and turned to the child, “And what do you want me to do about it?” He said, his voice muffled by smoke, blowing it into the boy’s face. The child coughed, and turned away. He returned to his place in front of the TV and waited for the day to end. 

The world shifted again, and suddenly the men were much older. The boy, now a teenager, and the man marked by wrinkles. The older man sits in meditation under a large machine. “Turn it on” he commands. The boy approaches the back end of the machine. He reaches deep into an opening in the heart of the machine. This triggers something, you’re not 100% sure what, but the machine roars to life. The boy keeps his hand inside as the machine roars, rumbling and trembling, bent over the man. The man’s eyes are sealed shut.

The machine continues to stir and shake, fear covers the boy’s face. “Dad…?” he asks “I’m scared.”

“Shut up, Gideon. Keep it steady. Do not let go.” he barks.

The trembles of the machine turn into a rumble, turned into the outer lining of metal beginning to burst at the seams. Rivets pop and the boundless machine inside breaks free of its frame, thrashing about inside its metal cage, eager to break free. 

“Daaaaaaad” The teenager whines. “I don’t like thi-”

The man jumps to his feet. He stomps around the machine which threatened to burst and latches onto the boy’s arm. He restrains him, holding him deep inside the body of the machine. The boy, the teenager, his eyes begin to well with tears, his face overcome with fear. “Dad!” He screams.

“Do. Not. Let go.” 

The machine erupts. Shrapnel cuts through the air, slicing through both boy and man. The pair and thrown from their feet and onto their backs. The boy carries on crying, while the man lays in silence. 

“I’m a failure.” Says the man, “A failure of a father.”

********

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***Next Part******Previous Part***

[zhakyria]

A Warrior's Path pt. 1

This scene takes place after the destruction of Alderaan but before the first Death Star is destroyed. Thrawn is confronted about what it means to be a warrior.

More often than not, the paths we walk are not of our choosing. Our path can be manipulated by forces outside our control or by others seeking to either help or hinder our progress. It is our decisions that ultimately shape this path, regardless of who set us upon its course. Yet, we never truly walk a single path, even when we see no others. We all face a variety of paths, and we all have the power to choose among them, as long as we allow ourselves to see them.

A breeze rustled through the leaves, and the tall grass around the pond swayed with its caress. It carried the smells of campfire and the sounds of far off laughter. Thrawn sat on the ground at the edge of the water, leaning back to look at the stars above him. Stars that were simultaneously alien and yet familiar.

The memory of a winter’s night on Rentor surfaced. He went by Vurawn back then, just a young boy of 3 years, unaware of the path he’d walk. He and his sister had snuck onto the roof of their parent’s home, both of them bundled in blankets, their breath clouding the cold air. He remembered how her face lit up when she talked about the stars, and the despair that clutched at his heart when she never returned home the next day. 

Back then neither of their paths had been their choice to make.  

A slight change in the air alerted him to someone approaching. The gait and weight of the step indicated that it was Zhaena. She carried combat sticks and a long quarterstaff. When she neared she threw down the sticks. They landed with a clatter between them, just within his reach. 

“You will fight.”

He looked away from her. His gaze falling upon the pond and the reflection of stars scattered across the water’s surface. At one time he would have appreciated testing his strength against her’s, learning her style and adapting it to his own. He’d seen her take down a growel pack by herself. The large beasts roamed the nearby plains. They were not overly aggressive, but they protected their territories fiercely. She was a formidable warrior, a true testament of their people’s strength and resilience. 

She brought her staff against his chest, just enough to sting, but not enough to bruise. “No more hiding what you are, Mitth’raw’nuruodo. Or have you forgotten your oath?”

He hadn’t forgotten. He’d sworn to protect the Ascendancy. His entire existence, the sole reason for him to live revolved around that singular goal. Yet he had failed. That oath now lay shattered, drenched in the blood of millions, consumed by the fires of the Chimaera. He looked up at her, meeting her glaring eyes. “It matters little now, the one who spoke those words is dead.”

“Is that so?” She flicked the end of her staff upward. 

Thrawn snapped his head back, the staff brushing against his chin, as he dodged the blow. He rolled away and scrambled to his feet as she reversed momentum, the staff coming to a stop just before hitting the rock he’d been sitting against. 

Zhaena studied him, much like he studied her. He knew what she saw, dull, sleep deprived eyes that stared out from behind long tangled hair, the defeated slump of his shoulders, the thinness of his face from a lack of appetite. 

She approached him and brought her staff up, tapping him where the shrapnel scars from a battle long ago spread across his chest. “The scars of our regrets mark us just as much as the scars of battle.” She tapped his chest again. “Our failures only define us if we do not learn from them.”

No one is immune to failure.

“What have you learned?”

He had learned that his decisions cost the lives of millions. That he allowed a threat to the Ascendancy to manifest. That his actions put the very people he swore to protect in peril. 

“That I am no warrior.”

She swung the staff around and he twisted away too slow to avoid the blow that rapped across his shoulders.  

“Wrong.” The sharpness of her tone brooked no argument as she stepped into his space. She was half a head taller than him and broader in the shoulder. The pupils and irises of her eyes were non-existent due to the intensity of their glow. Her voice simmered with barely controlled fury. “You were our guardian, Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” she spat the honorific at the end of his name. “You found evil, and instead of destroying it, you served it.”

Thrawn straightened his shoulders. “I swore to do whatever was necessary to protect our people, to make every sacrifice needed to ensure their survival. I believed the power afforded to me by the Empire would be necessary in achieving that goal.” 

She sneered at him. “You sold yourself to the evil you swore to protect us from.”

“The Emperor only commanded the loyalty of my actions, not of my heart or mind.”

“You became nothing more than a slave to his will.”

He turned away from her piercing glare. “Perhaps.” The Emperor had been difficult to out maneuver. His loyalty had come into question often, and the requests to prove his loyalty had become more difficult to reconcile. He’d been forced to keep everyone at arm's reach, particularly those last few years. The threat to their lives…to Eli’s life….had become too great.

Zhaena stepped away from him; disgust twisted across her face. “Did you even care about the suffering your Emperor’s actions wrought?”

“There are greater evils out there. His actions paled in comparison to what could be.”

“An acceptable loss of life then?”

“I did everything in my power to limit casualties. I needed the Empire strong. Wasting resources would weaken it.”

“Resources. That is all anyone is to you, mere tools, weapons, assets.”

He saw the people but that was secondary; he saw possible allies, potential enemies, assets to be used and managed appropriately. He’d said as much to Ar’alani all those years ago. That was until Eli stepped onto his path. At some point in their journey he’d stopped seeing the asset and instead saw the man. 

“That's how you justified your actions against the rebels, not as people who fought against the injustice, the suffering you and others perpetuated but as threats to Imperial assets.” She shook her head. 

He noticed the minute change in her stance too late and she slipped her staff behind his feet, knocking him to the ground. She squatted down next to him, placing her staff across her knees. 

She looked at him, the anger gone from her face, replaced instead with sadness. “Then perhaps, you are correct. You are no warrior.

Zhaena stood, planting her staff on the ground. “But remember this, Thrawn, you must fight in order to live, and you must live in order to protect our people. Your path may have been built upon your past actions, but it is your decisions now that will shape it going forward. 

“It is your choice if that path will continue to be bathed in the blood of your failures.” She turned away and walked back towards the village.

[themarginalthinker]

Hi,

How's the holiday going?

Still can't get over this thing was Jen and Fen.

They sound so sweet, hope I see them in fic soon. so few questions -

Were they married before vampirism?

How did they meet?

Were the hometowns and families ok with their sexualities (homophobic neighborhood or family)?

Did they want kids when not kindred? Did any of your ocs have kids?

Are any of your characters neurodivergent, what do they think of neurodivergence (I know canonically Nosferatu are quite welcoming over them and even sire from them. Except Kaiser is a dick)?

Lastly what do your nossies think of rabbits? Had to ask that question as I'm a bunblr.

Lastly question for you-

What pets do you like or have?

Sorry for 20 questions here :b

Omg lmaoo every day I see yall slide into my dms and I'm like 'ok, how close much can I infodump about my insane little ocs before I spoiler my own story XD'

(My vacation is going well! Excited for fireworks tomorrow WOOO (even though America is doing very, very little for us to be actually proud of.. -_-)

I think...I shall give you a little sliver of an excerpt from their meeting fic/chapter (haven't decided yet if it's going to be its own thing, or if it will just be a non-Charlie pov chapter yet):

The water was more than mud and rain. In the back of his throat, he can taste blood, but God only knew if that was from coughing up bits of his insides when the gas hit, or if it was the gaping, seeping wound the shrapnel had left.

At least it's not raining now, Fen thinks, staring up from his twisted position. The stars, Lord bless them all, were out and shining brighter than he thinks he's ever seen them.

It figures, one could only find this beauty at the bottom of a trench.

And it is because the sky is so clear, and the stars so vivid, and the moon hiding behind her black veil this time of the month, that he sees the outline of a figure pass over them, at the top of the embankment wall.

Walking in the no-man's land.

;)

-

Jen and Fen were both single when they met. The both of them probably knew by the point they were embraced that they...likely were never going to be men who married. 'Life-long bachelors', a nice way to say it (and in those days, plausible deniability...) Jen especially, given that he was living in rural Appalachia when he was alive (I'm thinking West Virginia, the heart of the coal mining industry in America even today). Their families knew nothing of their preferences towards the same sex, given that sex at all was wasn't discussed outside of what was totally necessary.

One of my ocs has had a child, and was married before they became a Kindred. It's a rather large point of contention in their backstory, but oh, I shan't say who ;>

As far as neurodivergence goes, if you weren't before you were embraced, well buddy, get fuckin ready for THAT experience afterwards lmao. But more practically, yes, I do. My first ever vtm oc Rigby Bennet the Malkavian was schizoaffective and likely on the autism spectrum before being embraced, but had managed to do some university schooling before he met his sire...and things went downhill... I think Nos, Malks, and Gangrel tend to pull from the 'looked over' branches of society, knowing that it could be a chance at a new life, even a reprieve in some ways from the harshness of mainstream society. Not to mention, they're already seen as on the fringes of even Kindred society. I think certain clans tend to group together, even going so far as cohabitating in certain cases. Zephyr has what the others refer to as 'her Malks' which is that she specifically cultivates relations in the local Malk clan of the city. She enjoys hanging out with them, and hey, even disjointed information is still information.

This is also a whole other rant I could go on, but I think in a sense, some clans handle the fact that neurodivergence doesn't magically go away with Embrace, or that is exists at all, better than others.

Sorry if this isn't very coherent, it's early lol.

Do my Nossies think of bunnies:

-Charlie: thinks they're very cute and soft!! She loved holding them when she went to the state fair with her Dad! However...now, she may decide they are good for a monch. BUT ONLY IF THEY'RE NOT SOMEONE'S PET!!!

-Blue: ....well. They're cute. Why are they here though? Are we ghouling rabbits now? Doesn't seem like the most economic animal to add to the hoards, but sure...

-Tweak is Concerned that there's so many types. Why? It's just rabbits! NO CHARLIE, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEIR SPECIFIC COLOR COMBINATIONS ARE CALLED, STOP-

-Zephyr: has ghouled the rabbits and has sent them in a flood to chase Tweak. Look at him run. >:3

-

As for my pets: I currently only have an outdoor cat, but we used to have three in the house, as well as three dogs, a goldfish, and a hamster. Along with the barn animals lol. I do want to move into a place that allows pets, though. I want a cat, and a snake. (Ball python!)