#parental death mention /

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[amberjazmyn]

decade 💔🥹

pairing : f1 grid x driver!reader

summary :  aston martin driver elouisa holland is great at keeping her composure in front of the judgemental and ruthless eyes of the formula 1 media circus. that is until she gets asked about why she only has her mum and siblings at her races but not her dad even though everytime she did speak about her dad, it was positive. those who knew why her dad wasn't present at races were worried for how elouisa would respond until the room fell silent when she explained since they clearly couldn't understand or recognise the tense in which she spoke about him. 

warnings : mention of parental death, dark humour, f1 grid press conference, driver x female!reader, platonic x f1 grid, driver reader x max verstappen

a/n :  i have to admit, this was slightly self-indulgent because, fyi, my own father died a decade ago this year and this is exactly what i feel like i'd respond with if someone asked me where my dad was if i talked about him in such a positive light and them not recognising the tense in which i spoke about him. and, also, yes, i have elouisa as an aston martin driver because, no hate but, i'm not the biggest fan of lance stroll so he's just not part of the grid and elouisa is instead but all the other drivers are still in the grid though with a special guest appearance of sebastian vettel. 

it wasn't a shock to find out that the media circus involved with formula one was invasive and sometimes brutal. asking questions that people would think would be off-limits from asking however, within f1, no question was off-limits since there were no secrets within the sport. not even questions about personal matters like their families or their love lives since majority of the drivers had relationships that whilst weren't technically secret but on the private side and other personal matters in their life were safe from media scrutiny. things that didn't even relate to being a formula one driver would be asked instead of the more important questions like how they felt about their car or how the race itself went. and of course, because of these nosy reporters who always wanted clicks and the best and juciest headlines, all the drivers on the f1 grid was put through some form of pr media training so they'd always have the perfect response that would also still give them some privacy as well as preparing them for the harshest of harsh questions without lashing out and gracefully rerouting the conversation back to the original topic of racing. so, if they were responding to a question that was quite invasive and teetered on the line of a privacy violation, they didn't give too much away and they weren't giving the reporter the exact response that they so desperately wanted. and, most of the times, it worked perfectly and the drivers hadn't had their whole lives being plastered over the internet. however, for the first time, elouisa holland's pr training did not come and save her because no matter how hard she tried giving the intrusive reporter her pr media trained responses, he still wasn't satisfied and kept on pressing her for a better answer then the one he had been given. 

so, because of that, she decided to tell the truth and it was a hard truth that would also make many people uncomfortable but, elouisa had been pushed too hard and too far and unfortunately, it was with the entire f1 grid around her alongside the nosy reporters. who most of them already knew the unfortunate reason why her dad wasn't seen around the paddock during grand prixs and why whilst she always spoke lovingly of her dad, she always spoke about him in the past tense. and that was because elouisa's dad died when she was only eleven years old when she was still karting alongside some of those who she now shares the f1 grid with. 

however, that's not how the press conference started. it had actually started as an amazing group interview with all of the drivers, all twenty of them, all bunched up together on the teeny tiny couch. all of them giggling and making jokes with one another and the interviewers and the moderator. elouisa was sat in the middle of red bull's max verstappen and ferrari's carlos sainz jr, verstappen on her right and sainz jr to her left. the three of them were giggling amongst each other and it was during that moment of the three of them giggling that the invasive interviewer, a man who was like at least a couple decades older than elouisa, asked her the one question she had always managed to skirt around giving a proper answer and avoid. 

however, the moment her head looked away from max and carlos and over at the interviewer, it was as though she already knew what question he would be asking. and that was before she had even lifted her head up and before he had even opened his mouth to say anything. 

"you always speak about your dad in such a positive light but we never see him around the paddock or at any of the grand prixs. if he's so great and so loved by you, then why doesn't he make any effort in supporting his daughter in a sport that for so many years, was male dominated and still is considered to be. as the only female driver on the grid, it has to upset you that majority of the drivers have their entire family with them to support them but you don't. especially with the consideration that you are actually quite a talented driver and really getting up there in the status of a legend. but, this is something you always avoid and never answer properly so why are you always talking so happily about your dad but when you get asked why he's never here to watch you drive, you always avoid and deflect, why is that?" elouisa should have prepared herself better but, she genuinely thought reporters were getting bored of asking this question because of the fact she always avoided it

however, this crusty old man was persistent and it seemed as though by his stance and the look on his face, that he wasn't going to back down until he got the answer he desired. but, of course, elouisa wasn't going to back down either so, she started to respond with the same old, media trained answers that she had always used every single time. 

"my dad and the reason why he doesn't turn up to races has no connection to where i am now as a formula one driver. this isn't a question you would ask to someone like max or to charles so why am i the only one being questioned on this topic other than the obvious that i'm a female and they're men? if you have a better question that is actually in relation to this weekend's grand prix, i will happily answer it but, any other non-related grand prix questions, will be ignored, thank you..." elouisa trailed off, placing the microphone in her hand back into her lap as she smiled over at max who gave her a worried look

elouisa knew that the guy was going to keep on trying, it was obvious. however, she didn't want anyone to notice just how bothered she got when people constantly asked about her father and why he was always mentioned but never seen. 

like mentioned before, she was eleven when her father died. and for the longest time, after the death of her father, it was as though her life went by ever so slowly. she wasn't sure how she was still alive because she never really remembered much from ages eleven to eighteen since those years just culminated together all into one. of course, she liked to say that she was the happiest she had ever been from her formula 2 days in 2020 and onwards but, everyone knew she was still struggling deep down. since the loss of her father, she developed an anxiety disorder that was then rediagnosed as ptsd since panic attacks would always strike the australian girl at the worst and most inconvient of times. however, they never bothered her when she was racing or in interviews which she always thought was suspicious considering just how much more dangerous formula one racing was then anything else that she had going on in her life. at eighteen, she made her formula one debut with torro rosso even though it was only just for that debuting performance. after debuting with torro rosso, she moved to renault and then alfa romeo within the same year since the two teams fought over her, spending one half of the year with renault and then the other with alfa romeo. then, aston martin contacted her for a multi-year contract which she couldn't turn down as they had been renamed and brought back after changing their name from racing point to aston martin. and because they knew alfa romeo were never going to keep her for longer than the second half of her rookie season. and in late 2021, elouisa would be the number one driver of aston martin alongside fernando alonso. 

even though elouisa seemed to smile a lot in regards to talking about her dad, it always killed her a little inside because she always spoke about him in the past tense, reminding her of that solemn fact that, her dad was truly never going to come back. no matter how many times she wanted to forget or pretend that his death was just a mean prank that went too far. of course she did. how else would she talk about her dad who was no longer walking the earth anymore? besides, it had accidentally become a habit that she never wanted to get into in the first place. of course she wished her dad was still alive. it was the same for her best friend, charles leclerc, who drove for ferrari. his dad had also passed away but charles was a lot older, he was nineteen and a year away from getting his formula one contract. so he knew the very pain that elouisa went through every single day when she would look and see the other drivers have both of their parents be present for them at every race. it was something she had always longed for and even sometimes loathed her mum for. she had always wanted her mum to fall in love again and when she didn't, it made her slightly hate her mum for not wanting to try to love someone new again just because she was afraid of the same thing happening again. it hurt elouisa to see her mum just blantly ignore her children when they begged and cried out for more than just their mum. only their youngest brother a mummy's boy. the rest of the siblings obsessed with their dad which caused four of the five siblings way more grief from the loss. 

it brought a painful ache into elouisa's heart every single time she remembered the words she said moments after the death of her dad had been announced. the first thing that fell out of little eleven year old elouisa's mouth was 'when am i getting a new dad?'. and even though she was now twenty-one, it was still something that haunted her every waking hour knowing that those were the first words that came out of her mouth. she was eleven, not a baby, yet she was still so clueless about death being final. that death meant the person wasn't going to come back. and now that she was older, she understood why little eleven year old elouisa said what she said. she said those words because she never wanted to be living a life without a father in her life. whether that was her biological father or a father that stepped up and fell in love with her mum and her five children. 

however, that never happened. elouisa's mum never fell in love and it was still something that elouisa would pick fights with her mum about. calling her mum selfish because she's too scared to fall in love again. reminding her that she can't stay miserable forever and that it's not a crime to try again and give her family the stability that they've been missing for the last decade. 

blinking back the cruel truth of elouisa's life, she was pulled back into the press conference as the intrusive interviewer asked her the question again, "i'll ask you again, why are you always avoiding questions that involve your father's obnoxious absences from the races? if a father loved his daughter so much, he wouldn't be avoiding all of her races so where is your father and why are you avoiding answering questions about his whereabouts?" the interviewer asked sharply, waiting for the moment elouisa would crack under the pressure he put her under 

everyone just watching in wait. the drivers beside her all holding their breath as they never truly knew how elouisa would respond or react when asked about her dad. whether she'd laugh hysterically and insert dark humour jokes, in a bid to cover up her uncomfortability. whether she'd cry because it was a day in which she really missed her dad. or if she'd just be nonchalant and continue to ignore the interviewer. however, this time, it was clear that elouisa was equipped with the perfect answer. the answer that no one was ready for because of how brutally honest and uncomfortable it was. 

giggling under her breath, it seemed to excite elouisa that she could finally throw away all of her pr media training and just make this absolute asshole of an interviewer uncomfortable, "sir, i have a question for you, do you have a dad?" elouisa starts as the interviewer is shocked at getting questioned himself but he quickly recovers and nods his head 

"yes, i do, elouisa, why?" the interviewer questioned as elouisa smirked, her plan was working as the drivers looked at her slightly worried - max holding her hand moreso for his own comfort than hers 

"well, when you talk about your dad, which tense do you talk about him in? present or past?" elouisa questions as the interviewer was still confused but not those around him as they all went into a solemn silence 

"present? i don't know, why are you asking?" he huffed, his arms crossed over like a child as elouisa giggled once again as she shook her head 

"okay, good to know your dad is still alive and kicking, sir. i say that because, if any of you interviewers really did your job and did it well enough, you would have picked up on the tense in which i use to speak about my dad..." elouisa trailed off, her head turned to the side as the other interviewers bit their lips in a bid to not make any noises of shock as they finally realised the way in which she spoke about her dad when she did talk about him 

however, this stupid man didn't. he didn't make the connection because it was always this one interviewer that always asked and asked and prodded but never actually paid attention to what was being said and how it was being said. he only cared about his intrusivity being listened to and responded to so he could get the content and reactions he needed for his big stories. 

"...okay, and? what's the tense in which you speak about your father got to do with this question that you always avoid?" the interviewer questioned in slight stupidity as elouisa sighed, her eyes rolling as she reaised she really would have to spell it out for him 

"fuck me...sir, if you were slightly smarter and actually paid attention to the things i post on social media on days like birthdays and annviersaries and why i never respond to your abhorrent questions, as well as paid attention to anything that is seen on my racing helmets, you would know that my dad has been dead for an entire decade...that's why no one in this interview pen has seen my dad except for the other current and former drivers on the grid because when i was eleven, i was still in karting. at eleven, i hadn't even realised that i wanted to reach formula 1 let alone any of the others. if you paid enough attention instead of focusing on the disgusting and intrusive questions to write your big story about, you would be knowledgeable in the news that my dad's dead, mate. like, he's dead dead. like he's so dead that i don't even think i can remember what he sounds like anymore..." elouisa trailed off as the entire press conference fell silent except for some of elouisa's giggles and the clicks of cameras and the one filming the press conference live 

after finally getting the response that the interviewer so desperately needed, he gulped back in embarrassment. his entire face went red and his mouth fell into a straight line as though someone had zipped it shut. he didn't know how to respond and elouisa found it hilarious. she loved when she shut down the ignorant and intrusive reporters because they always reacted the same exact way that this interviewer was reacting. but, it didn't take long before the interviewer then started to try and save his arse. 

"...i...i'm so sorry. i...i didn't know that your dad..." he stammered as elouisa held her hand up, making him stop talking and he did, however it was max's voice that spoke up next, not elouisa's

"...cut the crap, mate. it's obvious you're not truly sorry because if you were, you would have stopped intruding the first time elouisa avoiding responding to your inflammatory questions! if you were that good of an interviewer as you boast to be, you would know that constant nagging isn't going to get you the answer you long for, it's going to end in the same way this press conference has ended. with a driver being pushed to their limit and giving the truth that you so wish for in the most uncomfortable and confronting way possible because you just couldn't stop prodding and poking for a response. but, well done anyway i guess, cause you got what you wished for, right? you now know why elouisa's dad isn't seen around the paddock even though elouisa still talks about him," max was not playing around, he was furious as were the rest of the drivers on the grid but, no one could see the steam that was billowing from the ears of newly retired f1 racer, sebastian vettel 

sebastian had retired but he was still as ever present around the paddock when he was able to be. and at this grand prix, he just happened to be watching the press conference from the very back with nico rosberg, former f1 driver now journalist and they, nico and sebastian, were pissed. the both of them had seen elouisa holland grow up and see how she went through her life without her father present and how it devastated her. how the grief was always ever present around her when she did everything. if these pesty journalists actually did their jobs and paid more attention to things, they would have seen the very clear memorial that the aussie girl has in honour of her father on her helmet in the same way carlos has maria di villota's red star on the back of every one of his helmets or the way charles always pays tribute to his father and godfather, jules bianchi. if they had just noticed these things, they wouldn't have needed to ask these questions but, they probably still would have because they loved to prod and try to break down the only female on the grid to test just how mentally strong she was up against the male drivers. they always did it on purpose because they wanted to prove that girls shouldn't be allowed in formula one and elouisa was their scapegoat every single time. however, this time, elouisa knew what they tried to do and she wasn't going to allow them this time. 

and that made both sebastian and nico proud of their girl. it made the entire grid proud of their girl. they knew from the beginning that elouisa was not the person to mess with but, people still tried yet, as the saying goes, you fuck around and you find out. and this time, this particular journalist did just that. he fucked around and he found out and he wished he never fucked around. and since max let the interviewer have it, it seemed as though he, elouisa and the rest of the drivers were no longer interested in finishing the press conference so they all stood up and, in solidarity for their fellow driver, they all walked out of the press conference. leaving the poor moderator, who was the sweetest guy in the world, all on his own in a room filled with reporters, having no clue what to do since this was being filmed live with no way of editing or cutting anything out. unless the camerman just decided to cut the cameras entirely before moving onto the rest of the grand prix weekend. which, is what the camerman decided to do anyway. the press conference had begun to drag a little too long and it was no longer the light, fun and easy-going press conference that it had started out as. 

as the drivers left the press conference, a breath of air just seemed to evaporate around them. what were they meant to do now? they couldn't remember what was next on the agenda. then, out of nowhere, elouisa bursts into incontrollable giggles. and, this of course, confused the others because how on earth was what just happened that funny? but, they knew not to question her so they also started giggling and the awkwardness just went away. 

finally, elouisa calmed down as she rested against max, "...mate, the look on that old dude's face when i told him that my dad was dead dead was hilarious!" elouisa sighed with the biggest smile on her face - the purest of trauma responses as the other drivers looked at her 

"it for sure stumped him from saying anything else, that's for sure!" lewis chuckled softly as he shook his head as elouisa nodded her head 

"it was supposed to! i said it for that exact reason! i wasn't going to sugarcoat it since it wasn't the first time old mate was begging for my response and he finally got it!" elouisa shrugged her shoulders as max sighed and pulled her closer to him 

"and that's why i love you, elouisa!" max hums with content as elouisa doesn't fight against max's embrace but embraces it and moves closer to him 

"why thank you, maxie! at least someone's not afraid to say it!" elouisa giggles before she stops as she feels the way the looks of the others change from the momentary joy back to sympathy 

elouisa wasn't normally one to get upset over her dad. because, right from the get go, she would always talk about him and she would be able to do that without crying. it was something that actually confused many people because they couldn't believe just how poised she was when she'd talk about her beloved dad so quickly after his devastating loss. how could she not? her dad was her hero, the reason why she even got into motorsport and why she was now a formula one driver even though he would never live long enough to see it. he still had the belief in his daughter that she could make it. that was why she had made it clear that her entire racing career with formula one would be dedicated to her father. but, when it did get quiet within her head and she did get upset about her dad, she knew she could go to any of the other guys in the grid and they'd be there for her to hold her as she fell. 

that was when the very distinct memory of driving on the anniversary of her dad's death and winning popped into her head. 

ʚ✩ɞ

"...elouisa, i don't want to freak you out considering today's already been an emotional day but, with ten laps left, you are in the lead. max is a whole lap behind you with carlos. fernando is near the back with valtteri and logan. so, you just keep on pushing, okay baby? you keep on going and you get that win, alright?" elouisa's radio engineer's voice crackles as elouisa's breath gets shaky 

"thank you! i'm pushing now!" elouisa breathes out before a quick "over" is heard and it's once again quiet between elouisa and her radio engineer 

it was the italian grand prix. not only the home race of ferrari but also the home race of elouisa holland who is an australian-italian f1 driver for aston martin, born and raised in australia to italian parents which meant that she could claim both the australian grand prix and all the italian grand prixs as home races. and, that's what she did. however, this time, this italian grand prix in monza was the most important home race for elouisa. it was the first time that she was in the clear running for a podium finish. but, not just any podium finish but a win. so, that's what elouisa and her team at aston martin were vying for at this italian grand prix. and right now, without even realising it, since she had been swamped by grief and agony of the memory of it being the tragic passing of her father, elouisa was inching closer and closer to getting her first ever italian grand prix win at monza.

elouisa doesn't really realise what's going on because she's so dazed and taken out of the joyus moment but, she knows somewhere deep down inside of her that she's finally snagged a win at one of her home races. celebrating with her radio engineer was supposed to be joyful but it was as though she wasn't even in her body. it was as though she was having an outer body experience and watching it happen. she hadn't even realised that she had driven her car into the parc ferme and in front of the p1 placard. so, it took max, who grasped second place and carlos in third place to help her out of the car and take her helmet off that she started to come to again.

"...elouisa! you did it, you won!" max smiled, his helmet also off as his hands squeeze the girl's cheeks as she looks at him with bulging wide eyes in shock 

"what? no...no i didn't!" elouisa stammered, she was sure max at some point had overtaken her but when she turned to look at carlos, he shook his head, also smiling wide as he joined max 

"yes, you did, hermana sister!" carlos rubbed elouisa's back as tears welled in her eyes, she couldn't understand why or how she had even won a race on a day as agonising and grevious as the annviersary of the death of her beloved dad

"then why don't i feel happy or excited?" elouisa's voice cracked as max and carlos remembered, their eyes sullen 

they hadn't forgotten what this day was or the feelings it brought up for their best friend. how could they forget? they grew up with elouisa and her family. of course, they were on the older side of the grid but, they still grew up with elouisa in the same way they grew up in similar circles to the rest of the drivers on the grid. so, they knew and remembered the exact time on this specific day that they got the news that elouisa's dad had died. it was devastating for all of those in the karting and motorsport world because elouisa's dad was well-known and very well loved. and because he was so involved with it, it had come as a huge shock that the news had come out during a karting championship that elouisa was actually participating in alongside george russell, alex albon and oscar piastri. and, exactly like today, on the anniversary of her dad's death, on the day that it was announced her dad had died, she had also won that karting championship, having no knowledge that at home, her mum was grieving over the loss of her husband and the father of her five children who were all at the karting championship for elouisa. 

maybe that was why whenever elouisa won on days like anniversaries and the birthday of her dad, it never felt happy or exciting. it always had a tinge of sadness because it was another win that he would never get to witness and be apart of. nor was it a trophy that he would be able to  see. so, getting this win at monza was equally amazing for elouisa and aston martin but it was also agonising that it was yet another win that would never be seen and celebrated by and with her dad. maybe that was why her mum had slowly started to stop from coming to races. she couldn't bear to see her little girl on that podium, winning races, without seeing both of her parents there watching. max and carlos could see that the grieving girl was ever so slightly starting to breakdown and they hated it so, they didn't hesitate. pulling her in for a hug, they pulled her closely and held her tightly. the formula one commentators mentioning just how sweet it was that even though they were rivals on track, as soon as they got out of their cars, they were best friends and were there to take care of one another. they also hadn't forgotten what day it was that the italian grand prix managed to fall on this year so, they couldn't do anything else but pay their respects and send their love to elouisa and the rest of the holland family.

  ʚ✩ɞ

"...hey, you okay, schat darling? you went off somewhere, you back with us now?" max giggles softly as elouisa blinks, looking max in the eyes and nodded her head 

"yeah...yeah, i'm fine, sorry. yeah, i was in fairyland for a little bit. i'm sorry, what were we taking about?" elouisa mumbled as she leaned further into max's protective hold as max smiled 

"don't apologise. and whatever we were talking about before doesn't matter anymore, what was going on inside your head? where did you travel off too?" max's voice softened as he got the two of them to sit down on the couch, the other drivers following suite as elouisa scoffed softly 

"my first win at monza...on dad's anniversary..." elouisa trailed off as max nodded his head, the other drivers smiling softly, understanding how agonising that was for her 

"...why's that schat?" max wondered, he remembers that day like it was yesterday and it haunted him at how elouisa was so hollow and as though it wasn't her controlling her body that entire day

"it's a cruel reminder that it's now been a decade since he's died and i still forget that he's never coming back even when i win races..." elouisa whispered, tears that hadn't been shed since that podium, rose in her eyes as her lip trembled 

"...you can cry, lieverd sweetheart." max whispered and that was all that elouisa needed to hear before the tears tumbled down her face as max hugged her close to his chest, her hand covering her face, the other one wrapping around max's middle

the rest of the drivers weren't sure what to do. so they just stood awkwardly, feeling bad for their teammate that her breakdown was most definitely caused by the extremely persistent and abhorrent interviewer from the press conference. that was until lewis led the rest of them out by loudly announcing that they probably had better things to be doing than awkwardly watching max and elouisa. and, max and elouisa both would thank lewis for that later on in the day. not because the other drivers were being ignorant or rude, but it was uncomfortable to see their best friend and teammate cry and not know what to do other than just stand there awkwardly. they for sure could have gone in for a group hug and hopefully used that as a way to maybe make elouisa let out a croaky giggle but, they didn't want to push it or make her feel worse. so, with lewis in the lead, they all left the paddock and allowed max and elouisa to be left on their own. knowing and trusting that max would do everything in his power to get elouisa back to the elouisa they all knew and loved again. 

and it wouldn't take too much longer before max was able to dry elouisa's tears and get that smile back on her face. followed by a shrill giggle not too long after he got her smile back. sure, it was a painful reminder that her dad was gone but, he was never forgotten. no matter how many decades went past since the loss of her father, elouisa would always dedicate the rest of her life as a formula one driver to him. because he was the one that truly believed that his little girl had it in him to have what it took to become a formula one driver. 

fin

ok this ending was shitty and awful but, whilst i was rewriting an old one-shot that is once again max focused, i had this idea so i decided to write it before i forgot it. and this is what i had come up with. and yes, some of what is written in here is what i've through with the passing of my own dad. the truth starting with that, this year, october 2024, it will be an entire decade since my dad died. meaning that exactly like elouisa, i was also eleven when my dad died as i am now twenty-one. which means, it's getting to the point where i've been remembering him for longer than i've known him and that honestly kind of shatters my heart in a way that, by next year, 2025, he would have been dead for the exact same time as he was in my life and that just doesn't sit right with me for some reason. however, because it hasn't even gotten to ten years yet, i shouldn't be thinking about that just yet! and, another thing that is true that i've included in this story is that, not that long after it had been confirmed by the paramedics that my dad was dead and had stopped responding to cpr and defibrilation, i had said to my mum "when am i getting a new dad?" and, i cannot say that i am proud of that statement. it is truly something that haunts me everytime i remember that i said those words. i was just so confused and had no clue what was happening because everything had happened so quickly that those were the words that just tumbled out of little eleven year old amber's mouth.  i was also originally diagnosed with anxiety but then earlier this year, it was rediagnosed as ptsd because of how severe the anxiety within the ptsd was. so, yes, like i said in the author's note at the start, this was a very self-indulgent fic. i hope i didn't make anyone depressed but if i did, i promise i'll help pay for your therapy

©⠀amberjazmyn's original work. do not translate or steal any of my fics. 2024

[schnuffel-danny]

trying to do an infographic of my headcanons of Jack/Vlad pre-college 😅

it was Them VS The World for years and then Vlad had to go on and die in a freak accident and ruin everything smh 😒

oops they really are just OCs at this point aren't they....

[paingoes]

Rubies - Trial III

the prosecution makes its argument

(Content: living weapon whumpee, past trauma, referenced child abuse, referenced caning, past emotional abuse, war, guilt, parental death mention, child death mention, emotional whump, crying, angst, comfort)

In the Emperor’s quarters, the dead far outnumbered the living. Delta knelt upon the bearskin run and ran his fingers through its thick white fur. He wanted to reach for the mouth of it, to feel the teeth, but he dared not move without permission. The fresh cane marks along his calves made sure of that.

“Here, boy.”

The Emperor had taken to calling him boy, which he found strange and overfamiliar. To his handlers, he had always been One-Oh-Seven. More and more, it has simply been Delta. There was no need for numeration when there were no others.

He rose up off of the carpet, taking silent steps until he stood in front of the weary form of the old man. 

The doctor was nowhere to be seen. For this, he was grateful.

A hand heavy with time and with rings pressed against his forehead. Did he look sick? He didn’t mean to. The Emperor would find no fever there, at any rate. Delta ran cold.

“Are the stars all in alignment tonight, poppet?” He withdrew his hand. “Will today be a good day?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

There was no gap in between their words. There was no hesitation. He would be punished for lying just as quickly as for failing, so he was careful not to lie. Of course today would be a good day. 

Delta was excellent.

But the Emperor still searched him. It was not illness he had sensed. 

“Is everything alright?”

The concern in his voice only made the sting worse. Delta looked down in shame.

It was sullenness. That was all. He was cold all over, soaked with shame. It was bad, he knew. He was supposed to take all punishment without complaint, but Delta so seldom needed correction. It hurt all the more when it did come. He couldn’t get the chill of it to leave him. He’d been torn into. 

Unfit, the doctor had said. Unworthy of the privilege. Disgraceful.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Delta responded, the shame of it deepening. He hadn’t meant to sulk about it. He was only proving their point.

There was nothing wrong with his ability to perform, which is all the Emperor had really been asking. A little emotional hurt had never impacted his powers before — thank god for that. Today would be no exception.

With that, the Emperor rose up. Delta followed a half-step behind him. He was getting on in age. It was never hard to keep up.

They walked all the way past the war room, out onto the deck of the ship. The air was thin in the upper atmosphere, but it was getting more bearable upon the descent. There were a collection of advisors and generals gathered about by the railing. Delta kept his head bowed respectfully, careful not to look them dead on. With the Emperor there, he knew they wouldn’t dare touch him. But it was a deeply ingrained habit and one he saw no reason to break.

There was a pressure at his shoulder. It was meant to be reassuring, but it only scared him worse. He could see the target below. Its perimeter was painted in a pale orange color.

They wanted showy this time.

Space was made around him as they clicked the collar off of his neck. He closed his eyes. The light was painful. All the hearts beating so close were distracting. 

Disgraceful. He felt the sting of fear in his chest and prickling at his eyes. It was going to hurt. He was getting frigid in a way he hadn’t before. He didn’t want to be hurt.

He zeroed in on the target anyway, visualizing its delimitation among the pale. He wished they’d given him something to hold onto. All he had now were his own hands and his nails cutting indents into the palms. Showy. The world snapped as the target was turned to dust.

The collar clicked back on. Blood was already pooling in his throat and in his sinuses. The migraine aura descended. He swayed, but not fall. The Emperor’s hand steadied him there. It moved calming circles into his back. He heard the applause, but to him it sounded miles away.

“Incredible.” The Emperor had whispered into his ear. “You were wonderful.”

And like that, he was glowing. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t supposed to feel a thing, but the warmth of the praise made itself at home in him. It was the only time he let himself feel anything close to pride — and he could have lived in its light. It was almost worth it. He felt sick enough to die and it was almost worth it.

~~~~~~

Silas placed the blank sheet of paper down onto the desk and slid it towards him. His expression was grim.

“I want you to write down every target you can remember hitting. Names and dates. It doesn’t have to be exact.”

The room was small and dark, not much bigger than a broom closet. Maryam sat beside him at the table. He had a legal right to keep her there — and thought he had not asked her to, she volunteered to accompany him. 

Delta rocked his leg a little as he felt at the rough graphite of the pencil.

He took the order for what it was. He had a good sense for it. There were some things he struggled to remember, but in general, his memory was better than most. He had been allowed no distractions. He’d had no choice but to focus in.

He started with the earlier days of his imperial career — the battleship he’d crushed on the water, the first show of strength before the purchase was made. And then there was all that came after. He was never told until the day of what he would be after, but he remembered them all the same.

Marisol

Pyrha

Holliday

Basalt

Clover

Killian

Versus

He wrote mechanically, appending the dates as best as he could. He’d already made up this list in his mind several times. He’d have offered it to Levon if things had gone differently, but as it stood, he’d never been given the chance.

Regina

Ursa

Deidra

Anatol

Timber

Jocobe

Weissan

He soon ran out of space on the page. He write in a smaller script around the margins.

“That’s enough,” Maryam said, eyeing the prosecutor nervously. Delta kept writing.

“You can stop now,” Silas agreed, reaching to take the paper back.

“I’m not done,” Delta snapped. 

He recoiled just as soon as he’d said it. He didn’t know where he’d gotten the nerve to speak like that, to talk back at all, and especially not to them. He dropped the pencil and drew back into the chair, fully expecting to get smacked in the mouth, bare minimum. 

The hit didn’t come. Silas took the paper and examined it without much reaction. It was a long list — and that was only with the Emperor. He hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet.

“Can I ask you something? For my own curiosity?” Silas said.

Delta looked up at him.

“About how far away from the target are you when activated?”

“…A mile, sir.” Delta tapped at the chair.

He nodded. “What’s the closest you’ve ever been to someone you’ve killed?”

He heard Maryam scoff beside him, but he thought it was a fair question, if an abrupt one. He had to think about it for a second. As the answer came to him, he felt the shock of ocean water, stealing just as much breath from him as it had the first time.

He held his hands up to demonstrate, having no other way to quantify the distance. Right up against his body. He’d garroted him, wrapped the chains around his neck and held him there. The water had done the rest. He hadn’t even used his powers.

“Daniel Martino,” he answered quietly, “The same night I got picked up.”

It was his most recent kill  — and if Levon’s word was anything to believe in, it would be the last. 

He hadn’t told anyone about it until now.

“Your handler?” Silas asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Silas and Maryam exchanged a look he could not read.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t fault you for that.” Silas folded the paper into his pocket.

The clemency caught him off guard. Delta looked down, embarrassed all the same.

~

The shades were drawn in the conference room. It was a stormy day outside — Delta could imagine how the static might’ve felt on his skin had he been out there. For now, all he could do was imagine it.

“Delta,” the prosecutor drew his attention back, “I asked you a question.”

Silas was sharper with him when there was a crowd. He was familiar with this tactic. It didn’t register to him as a surprise, only as a kind of dull pain.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Delta said weakly, but sincerely. “…Could you repeat it, please?”

He usually would not have been bold enough to make requests, but then he usually wouldn’t have zoned out in the first place.

“Were the accounts of lateral violence within the Institute true?” He asked, then clarified: “Were the students there encouraged to hurt one another?” 

“Yes, sir.” Delta closed his eyes. He did not need to guess the next question.

“Did you ever use your powers to injure the other students?”

Not because he wanted to. He didn’t know if he was allowed to answer with that. It had been a yes-or-no question — and his handlers had gotten mad whenever he tried to explain himself around it. He didn’t know if the same rules would apply here.

“Yes, sir.”

He caught the concerned looks of the others at the conference table. The council members had shown him no scorn so far, in spite of everything. He dreaded losing it. But in his mind, it was an inevitability. He couldn’t make himself look back.

“Did you ever kill any of them?”

It wasn’t the same as injuring. The administration had loved to use him as a threat long before he was in the imperial service. He’d always be the first they brought out they sent to scare the others into submission. After the first few times — cracked ribs, broken arms, and painful shocks — any actual violence wasn’t needed. The threat alone was enough.

That wasn’t the same as killing. While the punishment had been painful, the kills were quick. Those were for safety alone. Nobody ever died as a punishment. They died because they were about to kill everyone else.

It’d been a yes-or-no question. The answer was yes, obviously.

“Yes, sir.” 

He kept his eyes down. Kitty shifted a bit to his left. He didn’t want to see the way her face changed when she found out.

Silas ended his line of questioning. The lights dimmed further as the video began to play.

PYRHA 08

SOL 07

The caption showed against the grainy white backdrop. He could see the town in his mind before it was shown on the screen. It was before the disaster. Jade was pushed up into the edges of the home. All their streets were still cobblestone. From above, as he had seen it, the town looked to be built into a crescent moon shape. The blue tops of buildings stood out against the pale sand.

“…There was this burning, endless light…”

The voiceover played over still frames of the cloud. The images clipped together in animation. He saw the tip of the airship approaching the edge of the sky.

Whoever had produced the documentary had no knowledge of the cause. How could they? It was a superweapon, they were sure, but how could they have known what? 

All they could do was to quantify it. The ground temperature had reached the same peak as the sun. The duration lasted ten to fifteen seconds — 12.945 seconds, Delta corrected in his mind. There’d been no warning. 2,031 people had died. About five hundred families.

The focus was the math — and more than that, the footage. Few of his attacks had ever been so well documented. But almost as an aside, they had spoken to some of the eye witnesses.

A girl with chestnut brown hair smiled sadly into the camera as she held up the picture. The image quality changed again as a video from inside her house began to play. He could not tell if she was the infant or the child holding onto it inside the cedar living room. The camera shifted angles to capture their mother grinning on the couch, clapping along to the silent song. 

There was some primordial ache in him that would not sleep. It’d always burned too hot. After the first few times, he’d learned not to touch it.

He felt it burning now, pressed up against his skin with no escape.

“And my friends always made fun of me for being such a townie, because I had to ride the bus two hours just to get to school,” the girl chirped softly, “And I remember that morning, my mom telling me not to stay too long after classes. She wanted me to come straight home that day because-“

Her voice broke. 

“Because we were going to go out as a family.”

The clip cut away to the moment the sky tore open.

Delta stood up before he knew what he was doing. He stumbled blindly away from the table, pushing out into the hall.

He’d taken her parents from her. Ripped her away from them, the same way he’d been ripped away from his own. The loss cut through him sharper than he could ever remember. 

He was crying. He couldn’t stop it. The sorrow and fear enveloped him in equal measures. He’d walked out. He hadn’t been dismissed, he’d never walked out like that in all his life. But he couldn’t stand to hear anymore. He didn’t want them to see him cry.

He wanted his mom. It was silly. He didn’t even know what she looked like. She clearly hadn’t wanted him.

“Delta?” Levon called after him. He stopped dead. He was recall trained — he wouldn’t dare move farther. But he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. He didn’t think he could.

He sank to the floor instead. He tried to hide his tears, but his body shook from the effort. He was still good about being quiet when he was hurt. He was trying very hard to be good about it.

A soft sob escaped him anyway. Levon bent down onto the floor beside him.

“That was too far. I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.” Levon placed one hand lightly onto his shoulderblade. His thumb worked over the knots that had formed there, so bound up and painful.

“I’m sorry,” Delta said. It was always the first thing to come out of his mouth these days, no matter how much they tried to correct it. 

He remembered how young he was at the time. He remembered how proud he’d been.

“I didn’t know,” Delta said through tears, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know, baby,” Levon’s voice got quiet. It didn’t echo. No one else could have heard. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”

Then, even quieter, the admission: “It’s not your fault.”

Delta sobbed into his sleeve, leaning over so that his face almost touched the ground. He wished he could stop it. It was taking everything out of him.

He felt a gentle tug at his sleeve. It was an invitation. He accepted it before he could stop himself, too desperate for any semblance of comfort. Levon pulled him into the hug. His cries grew muffled as he hid his face in the fabric of the shirt.

“I’m so sorry, baby.” Levon said, the pain audible in his voice. He carded his hands through the boy’s hair, doing all he could to soothe him.

“I didn’t mean to,” came the soft whine in response.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @floral-comet-whump @littlebookworm69

@lordcatwich @human-123-person @paperprinxe @whomeidontknowthem @chiswhumpcorner

@bacillusinfection @dietofwormsofficial @ichortwine @whump-queen @lumpywhump

@jumpywhumpywriter

[quirkle2]

little things about the zombie au that make me sad

the two guns ritsu owns are more dangerous than they normally would be on account of the fact that he does not know how to properly handle either of them. he doesn't know how to hold a shotgun, and he's very bad at trigger discipline. the first time he fires that shotgun he probably gets his ass knocked back by the recoil, and depending on how he holds it, it could probably hurt him or twist something (reminder that he is both small and very light). it's a miracle the kid doesn't shoot himself or mob Or tome accidentally, but he's doing his best with the knowledge he has

during the journey, ritsu had 2 whole years to mourn their parents—mob, however, was effectively put into a time capsule due to the infection and therefore when he wakes up after the cure, he's rushed right back into that new, fresh grief and trauma of witnessing his parents die

buried beneath all the dirty and bloody supplies ritsu carries in his bag is an old, dead nintendo DS he'd packed for a sleepover before the apocalypse started. it screams 13 year old in a nightmare

at some point in the story when ritsu is somehow finally made aware of the exact date, he realizes that he missed mob's birthday, and that his brother is now 15. he is quiet and distant for the rest of the evening

ritsu loots the bodies of humans he's shot for ammo, because ammo is a currency at this point. settlements will do basically anything for more ammo, so ritsu gets a nice haul when he waltzes in there with a bag full of bullets he can't use. he hates doing this for two reasons: 1) looting dead bodies was not made for 13 year olds or their fragile mental health, and 2) ritsu is basically handing the patrols more opportunities to kill innocent zombies. he's backed into a corner—ammo is the most valuable thing he has on his person, and he doesn't need it, but he Does desperately need food, so he trades off that ammo box with starving, unsteady hands and exchanges it for a meal so he and his brother can survive one more night

horrid thing abt That ^ is that after a while of doing this, ritsu becomes quite desensitized to the concept. at one point, he shoots a man in self-defense and when he's looting the corpse, he realizes this guy has a Lot of ammo on him—enough to trade for several meals, probably. ritsu has this very fleeting thought of "wow im kinda glad i kil—" before he stops in silent horror of what just came across his mind and how natural it had felt.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Woke from a nightmare, this morning

(Can't recall enough of it to relate a full narrative, but part of it involved a Gumshoe-like character investigating the kitchen of a suspected serial killer that had gone missing, and the "camera" of the scene kept returning to, and focusing on, the knife block on the kitchen counter. And as the semi-lucid Dreaming Witness to this scene, I knew this was the proverbial "Chekhov's Gun," and that the killer was about to return, attack the Gumshoe, and then go out and kill more people.)

And when I woke up, I was missing my late mother something terrible. And the ache of that longing is made all the more throbbing because I have no one to share my memories with.

I mean, I could tell all of you what my memories are, but because you never knew her, we can't share those memories together. None of you knew the sound of her laugh. And the sound of it is starting to fade from my own memory (she died more than half my lifetime ago).

And I just has a Big Sad, today.

[sincerelybubbles]

Tw: parental death

My dad died this morning :T

I’ve been estranged from him for years but it’s still weird

[angstyaches]

Augusnippets Day 26

Prompt: Nightmare, requested by anon

OCs: Blake and Nancy

Word Count: 375

CW: reluctant whumpee, nightmare, parental loss reference, supernatural reference.

___

“Blake,” a soft voice called. “Sweetheart?” 

Blake sat up and reached forward. A slender hand slipped out of sight, swallowed up like a pill by murky, indistinct shadows.  

“Mother?” he gasped.  

“Oh! Goodness, I –” 

Blake blinked. He saw his green sweater thrown over the back of a mahogany chair. A stack of books from the library on the nightstand. Heavy burgundy curtains with gold tiebacks. 

“I’m sorry. It – it’s only me.”  

Blake cleared his throat, dumbstruck. Madam A wasn’t supposed to call any of them ‘sweetheart’, was she? It seemed wildly unprofessional, as did the hand that was touching his shoulder through his sweat-slicked shirt. 

He gave a shrug, ridding himself of her hand. 

“Good evening, Madame A,” he said in the most sterile voice he could muster. How dare she touch him? He had half a mind to threaten her with a lawsuit. 

Unbothered, she held a mug towards him. The purple shimmer in her eyes was dampened by sleep. “Pleasure to see you, Blake.” 

“Can’t say the same,” Blake muttered. His nose wrinkled as he eyed the mug, though he couldn’t deny that its dark, steaming contents smelled... exhilarating. Like... birthday cake? He could almost feel the crunch of multicoloured sprinkles, sugar dissolving on his tongue, and all he'd done was breathe in the steam. 

“It’ll help,” Madam A said, “with the nightmares.” 

Blake stilled. He lifted his chin, readjusted it when he felt it begin to quiver. “What did... What did I do?” 

Madame A waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing detrimental. You frightened Lilith a little, but –”  

“Forrester was here? In my room, while I was sleeping, while...?” While the murkiest recesses of my mind were flooding the room? Blake fought another chin-tremor. “I'll kill them.” 

Madame A pressed a hand to Blake's wrist. “You can speak with them about it tomorrow.” She pushed the mug into his palms. “Drink, and then back to sleep with you. You’ll want to be in tip-top shape for tomorrow’s workload.”  

Blake narrowed his eyes.  

“You didn’t think that having manifested nightmares would get you out of the pairs project.” Madam A gave him a small wink. “Did you?”  

Indignance burned in Blake's veins, heating his cheeks. He decided to blame the tea in his hands. 

___

@augusnippets

[watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees]

Smoke and Mirrors

me? updating this story? what?

Finn goes by he/they

masterlist

CW: angst, pet whump, parental death mention, smoking, relapse, memory loss, somewhat conditioned whumpee, body image issues, dehumanisation

It was a strange night. Xavier seemed to be entirely lost in thought. The camera and the various lighting setups had stayed back in the trunk, and they both sat atop the hood of the car.

Finn with their legs pulled close to their chest, an attempt to stabilise themself, though the hood was almost perfectly horizontal and rather flat, the metal under him still felt slippery. He didn't want to fall off it.

It was exhilarating to watch the night sky from there. The engine was still slightly warm under them, and it was a blessing in the cold evening breeze. They wore a pair of comfortable black trousers and one of Xavier's shirts. They weren't filming, he wasn't trying to train them to do anything, they just sat there in silence.

Xavier leaned back, resting his back and head on the windshield. He pat the safety glass next to himself for Finn to join, but they shook their head. They were painfully aware of just how much space they took up, even though it wasn't much more than the other.

Finn had chubby thighs and pudgy hips and stomach. They stood slightly shorter than Xavier did, only by an inch or so, they still perceived him as taller. He was stronger than them by a considerable amount, even though he didn't have much obvious musculature to show for it. His arms and legs were evenly toned, he worked for it, but mostly as a hobby made possible by his generous income.

They might just have been weak by comparison. Finn had always hated it, he thought. The gym just wasn't for them, even though Xavier dragged him along a couple of times, and the threat of filming a video there loomed over them every time he headed out there.

They didn't remember a single moment before they woke up on his couch, but they couldn't conjure up a reality where they ever enjoyed working out.

They wondered if there ever was a time before Xavier. Looking up at the sky, it was sort of familiar, they knew there would be stars and that they'd be far away, shining like someone threw glitter all over the place, but this felt like the first time they really saw it. He had no recollection of ever being outside in the night, far away from the city lights, that made it impossible to make out the bright little dots on the sky.

Xavier played with the end of his leash absentmindedly. He twirled it around his fingers, rolling it around and then letting it unfold, just to do it again and again.

Finn had to tear his gaze away from the mesmerising vastness of space after a particularly strong tug around his neck. He didn't seem to notice them watching, he was lost in his own head.

His eyes didn't look so unnaturally bright and icy in the dark, they looked quite normal. They were sure if they leaned closer they would see the reflection of the sky in them. He looked something akin to an average guy.

Finn didn't feel that visceral cold that would never leave their chest in his presence, now it was only the warmth of the engine surrounding them and the ever present, but small movements of the leather around their neck. Xavier's body just happened to be next to them.

They trained their gaze back to the sky. There had to be constellations somewhere in the chaotic sprinkle of lights, he knew that for sure. He didn't know any, but was sure they were there. They contemplated asking Xavier, if he would show them. Finn found that being able to recognise some would bring them a step closer to placing that distant familiarity somewhere in his brain where it was safe. Replace it with this memory.

Before they could take a breath to ask, Xavier cleared his throat and spoke first.

"My dad used to bring me out here when I was a kid" He stopped fidgeting with the leash. His voice was sort of raspy, with an emotion Finn couldn't place. He never talked about his family, and they were glad. They could pretend they were similar in that fashion, and that they both shared that ache of missing a part of themselves, not even able to bring it up. Of course he had a family, and of course he remembered them. Finn was the one, whose entire world was Xavier, their earliest memory, their owner, the substance that was supposed to fill the aching holes in their being, where their past had been ripped out of them. "He died two years ago today" he continued.

"I'm sorry, sir" Finn muttered. They didn't know if they should add anything at all. It was strange and uncomfortable to hear whatever he had to say.

"I used to think, I'd never be able to come back here" he said and finally looked at Finn.

"Why are we here then?" He thought he was brave for asking that so openly, but didn't dare look back at the other. They held their gaze on a particularly bright star above the treeline ahead of them. They heard fabric rustle and something heavy squeaking across the glass, as Xavier shrugged and sat up.

"Because now I have you, pup" he reached up and ruffled their hair in a way that he surely meant to be affectionate. His voice was warm and deep, and while he didn't look back at him, he was sure for once that his entire being wouldn't be in screaming contrast with it.

Xavier's fingers twisted in their curls slightly pulling on them and his fingertips rubbed on their scalp wrong, they wished he had taught them how to enjoy the touch. Finn realised the cold was back, but a milder version of it, sure, but it was back. "I don't think I'd be able to be here all alone" They hummed, uncertain if they should agree or disagree, it was a sound of acknowledgement.

This time they noticed Xavier move, they turned and looked. He patted down his pockets on his jeans. His hands shook slightly, as if he was unsure of what to do next. He found what he was looking for and pulled a palm sized rectangular object out. Finn couldn't see what was written on it in the dark, but he popped the lid open with practiced ease, the shake of his hands easing a bit and he pulled out a lighter and two cigarettes. There were only a few more left in the box.

"Here" he held one out for Finn, and a reflex they didn't know about bubbled up, hidden deep in their brain.

"No, thank you, I quit" they wanted to say, lifting their hands defensively, holding it between their body and the cigarettes.

That wasn't them anymore, they didn't think so at least. They had one purpose and one purpose only, and it was to obey Xavier. So they accepted it without a word and lifted it to their mouth.

They knew just where to place it between their lips and how to hold it between their fingers. They have never done this before, not that they could remember at least and it came as naturally as breathing.

"Ever smoke before, puppy?" Xavier asked, as he leaned in close, holding the small flame of the lighter for them. They just shrugged. They probably have, as all signs pointed to that. His voice should have sounded shrill, like icebergs colliding into each other, with the intent behind the question. He knew they couldn't remember and it was entertaining to poke at them for it.

Finn took a lungful of the smoke and blew it out slowly. For a moment or two he looked at the grey cloud, he just created astounded, even in such darkness he saw it wave and twirl around itself before it completely disappeared.

The bitter taste that coated their mouth processed just a second late. It seeped into every cell of their tongue, it pressed down on it like the muzzle Xavier had them wear sometimes.

They looked up at the sky again, and gasped. It looked a million times more vast and unfathomable. There were sparks of colour mostly yellows in some of the stars they didn't notice before, but were all they could think of now. The clearing they parked in looked less dark, the trees in the forest more pronounced. Things he had seen just a moment ago came into focus one after another.

The cold in his chest dissipated. The engine has cooled down almost completely, it was only their bodies' heat that still kept the metal a comfortable temperature, but it was perfect.

"Thank you, sir" The words fell quicker from their mouth than they could put a stop to them.

"What for?" Xavier laughed and took a deep drag of his own cigarette and laid back down on the windshield. With his other hand he still held onto the leash.

Finn didn't want to say the cigarette, but that was just it, right? They just lifted it, as a halfhearted answer to his question and took another deep breath through it that was followed by another wave of perfect tranquility.

"Don't mention it" Xavier was a living human being with the same aching hole in his heart where a family should be. They had never felt closer to him than in that moment.

He tentatively scooted up and leaned back on the windshield. It could break under both their weight for all he cared. Xavier beckoned him to lie down there a couple minutes earlier, so if he's okay with the possibility, Finn was too. Still, he was careful to shift his body in a way that it was mostly supported by the hood of the car.

Xavier watched as they found a comfortable position and he smiled. A normal smile that reached his eyes, not one of cruelty or for others, he looked content, loving even, too bad those small details were tucked away from sight in the darkness.

[dreamsofalife]

((Shy has some deep-seated trust issues and a need to control or at least understand everything and everyone so she can't be surprised or hurt by bad things. She can know, learn, and prepare so she isn't caught totally off guard when something bad happens.

...her dad's death fucked her up worse than I thought, huh. I mean, her stepdad leaving as well, and ofc Joy, but like. It all goes back to her dad and the helplessness she felt because of that.))

[necrosemancy]

TIMING: Last night, just before sunset. LOCATION: Mother Morta's Nursing Home PARTIES: Alistair @deathsplaything & Rosemary @necrosemancy SUMMARY: Rosemary witnesses the death of a colleague and friend. She needs to fix it. Alistair is called in to help. (This is the first half of a two part thread) Content Warnings: Parental Death tw, Hospice Care tw, Euthanasia (mentioned) tw, Human Sacrifice (mentioned) tw.

Rosemary had never realized how much blood the human body really held. 

Janice had just stepped outside for a smoke break as the sun finally settled below the horizon. It had only been a few minutes between the nurse walking out to enjoy a few minutes of peace and quiet and Rosemary walking out to leave for the day. The witch had been digging her keys out from the depths of her purse when she heard a soft croaking noise. It was small, and wheezy, and something about it had caused the hair to rise on the back of her neck. Against her better judgement, she followed the noise around the side of the building. 

Rosemary had seen that kind of monster only once before, and she hadn’t been the one to get rid of it. The demon stooped, jaws snapping into flesh as it enjoyed its easy mark. Beneath the creature, shallow shaky breaths still struggling to find a way to bring air into her lungs, was Janice. Janice, who ran herself ragged between working to help pay for her son’s travel hockey league (because of course the child had wanted to play as a goalie, and that equipment was the most expensive) and sewing her daughter's ballet costumes on her lunch breaks. Janice, who was one of the few people who actually remembered Rosemary’s birthday her first year in Wicked’s Rest. Janice, who was dying. 

The witch hurriedly grabbed the cement block they used to hold the door open when a patient needed to be moved to the hospital and rushed back. The demon was too engorged in its meal to pay any mind to the woman who, in a spike of adrenaline fueled rage, wound back before smashing the brick into the demon bird’s skull one, two, three times. The demon let out a shriek of pan, shooting itself into the air and fleeing. Rosemary scooped up the nurse as best she could and hurried her back inside to an empty room, depositing her on a bed. 

Now everything seemed to be red. Blood soaked into the sheets, into Janice’s scrubs…It was everywhere- staining the witch’s hands as she packed gauze she’d stolen from the supply closet into the gaping slash across the chest of the nurse. It smeared the screen of her phone as she frantically hit the first number on her speed dial. “Alistair? Alistair I need you to get over to the nursing home now, this is an emergency. I need help, I can’t do this.”

——

Things have been relaxed for Alistair for the past few months. Granted it’s because they had forced it to be that way, but still. Relaxed. Well, as relaxed as a single parent of a newly turned thirteen-year-old could possibly be, of course. They’d shut out the world except for work, they’d refused to do anything that didn’t directly benefit Tommy or their student, Rosemary, in some way. Otherwise? Count them out. 

Rosemary had become something like family to them and Tommy ever since coming into the picture. She took Tommy out to do things, brought coffee over, and even showed up with things to do just because she was thinking of the two of them. It was nice, as if Melody was looking out for them. But of course, Rosemary was a handful. She was chaotic and didn’t care about the truth of things, she just wanted to be good at it. And she wanted to be good at it yesterday. So of course when her name announced itself on the caller ID, Alistair let out a little sigh before answering it. 

As soon as they answered the phone, Rosemary was frantic. They frowned, looked over to the worker, then to the customers in the store. Well, they had to, right? 

Shit.

Fine. 

“Alright, give me time to get there.” Alistair responded, calling Brutus to their side with a whistle. “I’ll be back! Don’t light anything on fire! Family emergency!” They told the workers in the store before rushing off out the door, Brutus leading the way as happy as could be.

Now of course, being blind complicated things in terms of the whole navigating the world thing. It took time, but they got to the nursing home, only to be grabbed by someone and yanked around back. “What, hey? Rosemary, y’need tae calm down.” Alistair instructed the frantic woman, putting their hands on her shoulders as their accent grew thicker, giving away their own nerves on the situation. “Now tell me what happened, and if they’re human or not.”

_ 

Time felt as though it had dilated. Every passing second felt as though it took hours. This woman who she’d grown to consider a friend’s life was slipping through Rosemary’s fingers because she was too inexperienced to be able to fix it. Gods above, she wanted to fix it. She knew what it was to grow up without a mother, and from everything she knew about Janice, the woman was the best kind of mother a child could ask for. Loving, and attentive, and willing to go the extra mile, even if that meant she had to work twice as hard to get everything done. Grief for what she’d never got to know welled up, threatening to drown Rosemary in it as she waited and waited and waited, trying to spare two children she’d never met the same sadness she’d always walked hand in hand with. 

The second she saw Alistair pass by the window on their way in, she sprinted from Janice’s bedside and grabbed hold of them with blood-soaked hands and dragged Alistair and Brutus to the secluded room with the woman who was just barely breathing. “It was one of those demon things- remember I told you I almost got attacked by one?” The witch could hear the tears in her voice but couldn’t recall when she’d started crying. “Janice- human, she’s human- she just went outside for a break. I was on my way home- you have to help me. Please. Please, she’s got two kids, Alistair.”

——

There had been extensive conversations between Rosemary and Alistair regarding their upbringing. They knew about the absence of her mother, they knew the harshness of her father in return, she knew the coldness of his parents, the indifference of their siblings. There was an unspoken understanding between the two of them. Alistair would do what it took to make sure that Janice lived, even if it meant doing something that one would view as unthinkable. In the past few months, Alistair had come to embrace what they were. They were a necromancer. They had the ability to play with death and come out on top. They had beaten death and for Rosemary, they would traverse Hell. 

Letting out a deep breath, Alistair nodded slowly and walked over to the bed, putting a hand out and pressing it to Janice’s neck, checking for a pulse. There wasn’t one. “Rose, she’s gone.” Their voice was quiet, as if afraid to break the woman. A hand moved to touch the blonde’s shoulder and carefully gripped it. “You know what you have to do.” Their voice was soft, not a command, but a gentle reminder “I will be there with you helping,” they told her. “But you will be leading this. We need a sacrifice and we need to get her out of here without being looked at funny.”

“You get the sacrifice, I’ve got an idea.” 

_

The witch felt her heart plummet at the sound of those two words. She’d known deep down there was no holding on to life with wounds that deep, not for as long as it had taken for Alistair to get there. Part of Rosemary wanted to scream, to cry, to tear the stupid room apart, to go out and find the creature that did this to her friend and tear it limb from limb, piece it back together, and raise it to do her bidding as punishment for doing as its nature bid it. But the steady hand on her shoulder reminded her of one very important detail. 

There was always another option. 

Her blood soaked hand covered the one Alistair had placed on her shoulder as she let out a long, shaky breath. She could do this. With Alistair, she could do this. There was no time like the present to learn the big stuff… Rosemary jerked her head in a stiff nod. “Okay,” she breathed, blinking rapidly as her mind shifted gears. “Okay.” If anyone was going to teach her how to do this, it would be Alistair. No longer because she thought they were her only option. No, she trusted them implicitly. They wouldn’t let anything bad happen, and even if something did occur, they’d be right beside her, weathering the storm together. 

“I’ll be back.” The witch hastily scrubbed her hands off in the sink, trying to get as much blood as she could off to avoid suspicion. She grabbed some spare scrubs from a cabinet, and tore off in the direction of the hospice ward. 

The nursing home always smelled like disinfectant and death. It was quiet enough that the occasional cough and beep of the heart rate monitors always seemed to echo down the halls. Rosemary skidded to a halt in front of room 113. She swallowed, the words she needed seeming to tangle in a ball in her throat. She opened the door to find Mrs. O’Hara, coughing and wheezing feebly, but a bright smile wrinkling the corners of her eyes. The old woman raised a crepe paper hand in a gentle wave of hello. Rosemary couldn’t believe what she was about to ask of this old woman. But knowledge of the people in play was her most powerful tool at that moment. She knew Janice cared for -had cared for- the old woman, spending most of her time in the hospice ward. She knew if she had hope of anyone in this hospital would understanding the balance needed, it would be this woman. Gods help her…

Twenty minutes later, Rosemary wheeled the old woman into the room with Alistair. She swiped the back of her hand at her bloodshot eyes, the tired, cheerful voice of the old woman still in her ears. “I only have a few weeks left of what? Sitting in this room, in pain, just waiting for this to be over?” The woman had shaken her head, pushing the blankets off and trying to pull herself from the hospital bed. “No, I’d rather go and know I’d done something with the end rather than play gin until my lungs finally give out.”

“Ready to go?” She asked Alistair in a thick voice. 

——-

As soon as Rosemary left, Alistair got to work. They slipped out of the room and walked down the hall towards the elevator. Using Brutus as their eyes, they navigated the halls in the basement. When they found the morgue, the snatched the lab coat hanging on a hook on the wall and put it on. Then, they took a gurney and a body bag. If they were going to get Janice out of there, they’d have to play the part.

The instructed Brutus to jump up onto the gurney, then cover the dog with the body bag, leaving his eyes and nose uncovered so that they could see and began to push the gurney towards the elevator and back to the floor, where Janice had been left. Now Alistair was no Medical doctor, but they did their time at the hospital they used to work at back in New York. They had seen countless bodies being wheeled toward the morgue in the nursing home, where here it was even more the norm. As long as they stayed calm and acted like this was routine, then this would go off without a hitch.

We just finished putting Janice into the body bag when Rosemary came back. Still using Brutus‘s eyes to see, Alistair concealed their frown at the sight of the woman that rosemary had chosen. “Let’s do this” Alistair told Rosemary with a curt nod. “Get your car and pull it to the front“ Alistair instructed the blonde.

Even though they were a necromancer, Alistair didn’t have much experience with raising the dead; they were much more versed in healing. But that didn’t mean they didn’t know what they were doing for over thirty years, Alistair was trained on how to be the perfect necromancer. Even when they left, they never gave out the craft. They were good at it. They excelled at it. And even if there was a part of them that aboard what they did, there was a bigger part of them that took pride in their abilities. 

Even with all the doubt it swirled in their mind, they would do this for Rosemary because they knew that she would do it for them.

_

The witch walked quickly to the car, depositing the old woman in the back seat. She tried not to think too much about what was to come, but when she glanced in the rearview mirror of her car, there it was waiting for her at the door of Mother Morta’s. Rosemary threw the car in reverse and kept moving. 

She pressed the button to pop the trunk of her car and hopped out to help Alistair. “Thank you.” The words were barely a whisper as she hastily shut the trunk of her car, hiding the body bag away from any prying eyes. The witch didn’t speak again. She opened the door for Brutus to hop in the back, opened Alistair’s door, and hopped into the driver's seat. She glanced in the rearview mirror once more. There was nothing there now, but she could almost feel the eyes of the fates trained on her, daring her to restore the thread they’d cut. So be it. She put the car in drive and sped off. 

____

After getting into the car, Alistair took a deep breath after holding in a breath they hadn’t realized they were holding in. Death was never an easy thing, even as a necromancer. Death came for all, in the end. Being a necromancer only meant delaying the inevitable. Alistair focused on their breathing, feeling the grief radiating off of Rosemary in droves. “Rose, you need to breathe. We’ll fix this. Together.” A hand drifted out to touch hers as they rolled to a stoplight. “You aren’t alone in this. I’m right here.” They weren’t going to let her feel alone. She’d spend so long alone in her abilities, and they didn’t want her to feel that way anymore. 

They withdrew their hand as she began to drive again. “We have to wait until nightfall,” they reminded her in a quiet, far-off voice. “If she doesn’t have something of importance in her, we need it. Maybe a photo of her children in her wallet or something.” They knew they’d have to figure things out, and it was easier for them to worry about the details instead of quizzing Rosemary about it when she was already stressed out and hurting. 

“I’ll worry about the setup, you take care of…” Alistair frowned, realizing they weren’t alone in the car. “Dorothy O’Hara,” the kind but feeble old woman spoke. “Well, Dorothy, we’ll make sure your last moments are well-spent, won’t we, Rosemary?” Alistair spoke, shooting the blonde woman a look. 

__

She sat ramrod straight behind the wheel, taking every ounce of self control she possessed to force herself not to push her foot all the way down on the gas pedal. It wouldn’t matter how quickly she got back to the Sugar Pot. Her speeding wouldn’t alter the reality of the dead woman in her trunk, nor would it hasten the sun's setting. Rosemary could feel their attention fixed on her, and knew without looking over that Alistair was concerned. She flipped her hand on the steering wheel to give the hand covering her own a reassuring squeeze she didn’t quite mean. 

Guilt prickled in her chest. What if that demon had been the same one from the night she’d visited the Raven? What if it had followed her to work? Rational thought told her that it was simply a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’, but Rosemary wasn’t feeling particularly rational. “There’s one taped to the back of her lanyard.” Her voice was hollow as she tamped the sorrow and anxiety down, down, down. “I know they’re her phone screensaver too. But I’m not sure how technology would play with the craft. I don’t think it would work well.” 

The witch glanced in the rearview mirror to the old woman who sat next to Brutus, scratching the dogs chin. “Of course.” She said with as much warmth as she could muster. Rosemary felt she’d made the wrong choice in asking that kind of sacrifice from the kindly old woman. Perhaps she should have picked someone less personal. She had never realized how deeply emotional this process would be if anything hit even a bit too close to home. She let out a long, slow breath as she focused on the path ahead. The street lights flickered on in the rosy evening light to punctuate her thoughts. 

The sun was a hot pink disc gleaming just above the horizon as she pulled into the parking lot. The witch felt an eerie sense of calm settle over her as she switched the ignition off and stepped out of the car. A cool autumn breeze whipped through, and she reminded herself. Balance.  An old, full life lived for one that had been cut too short. Rosemary helped the old woman out of the car, and hurried to fix her a pot of tea inside. 

——

Alistair got out of the car and retrieved Brutus, who quickly went back into working mode the second his harness had been grabbed, despite having loved the attention from Dorothy. They said nothing as they unlocked the front door to the tea shop and flicked on the lights. “Drive into the alley and get Janice inside. I’ll take care of Dorothy.” Alistair told Rosemary in a calm, careful voice as if the woman could break at any moment. Part of them was afraid that she would. “You know I can’t do it myself,” he then added before she could protest. 

After she left, Alistair decided to spend some time with Dorothy. “You don’t have to do this,” they spoke gently. There was a long silence as Alistair poured the hot water for the tea. “You’re right,” she finally said. “But I want to.” Another period of silence. “The doctors gave me no time at all, I’m already on borrowed time. But to let my death mean something? I’ll do it.” Her voice was hoarse and breathing labored, and Alistair felt their heart shatter to pieces.

“I’ll make it as painless as possible,” he assured her. It didn’t sit right with him, using someone who was so friendly. But then, what was left of a life that she spent suffering? She wanted this. She wanted to help, and yet…

“I can see the struggle written all over your face, young man.” Dorothy said to Alistair from her wheel chair. Alistair didn’t respond, the guilt eating him alive. 

“Janice was the only one who spent time with me. My family, I don’t have any. Not anymore.” Her voice was sad, but honest. It made Alistair feel that much worse. 

“She visited me after her shifts, you know. Showed me pictures of her children. Her children need their mother.” Alistair thought to Tommy, then nodded his head. They understood. “I… understand.” Their voice was low and quiet, still very much grappling with the torment of it all. 

“Don’t tell her it was me, she’ll never forgive herself, even if I was destined for death in a matter of days.” Dorothy spoke, voice as severe as she could make it, which earned a nod from Alistair. 

“You have my word.” They spoke in reply, right as Rosemary walked through the back room and back into the main store. “We have some time.” They told her, walking over to the student that had become a dear friend to them. 

__

After turning a kettle on, Rosemary went back out to her car to drive it into the alley. After backing the shiny silver car into the alley, she sat frozen in her car staring blankly at the rearview mirror. Her eyes kept falling on the trunk as the witch tried to focus. She drew in a long, deep breath, and held it until she felt as though her lungs would explode if she didn’t release everything that was pent up inside her. When she exhaled, it came out as a sob. Manicured nails dug into the leather of the steering wheel as she gave herself a moment to simply feel. And what did she feel?

The shock and rage she’d felt in the moment of watching someone she considered a friend die in a truly horrific way had dissipated. The guilt that had set in on the ride over had settled in, twisting and morphing from the grief driven guilt of losing a friend, to the guilt of asking a dying woman to die even sooner in order to save a younger woman. The guilt of knowing if this didn’t go perfectly, she’d be depriving two children of a life with their mother. But the emotions weren’t all bad. The strangest feeling of anticipation buzzed through her veins. She’d never done magic this big before. Gods knew she couldn’t do it alone but with Alistair? Between the two of them, they could do this. 

She closed her eyes and took another deep breath as it all washed over her, giving it all a moment to be acknowledged and validated. When she breathed out, she opened her eyes. “Let’s fucking do this.”

[schnuffel-danny]

I am perfectly fine with Denzel going bald tbh, because in my hc/selfship AU when she goes on HRT her hair gets really thin and brittle and she starts losing hair, so she wears a really expensive fancy wig (Morgan bought it for her) <3 idk I guess people would get mad about something like this? but I love the thought of characters visibly aging and looking different from their most usual appearance :) I hope we get to learn more about this new take on older Crocker!

....I wonder if her mom is still alive tbh I know Denzel would not cope with her loss well

[winterstaryu]

Almost every single podcast, video game, movie, TV show, etc. I've gotten really into in the past six months has featured a dead mom /somewhere/ completely coincidentally and across genres. An extremely common plot point OR the universe mocking me??? You decide!

[hepbaestus]

I hate that I love to read fics with character death.

Especially when the death isn't on screen/detailed in the fic.

There's something in only knowing that a character died and seeing the aftermath/reaction of said character's close relationships that hits harder than actually reading the character's death.

[thewhumperinwhite]

WKW: The Voice That Shakes The Stones (Part 2)

Continued directly from this, but will make more sense if you've also read The Rose Queen parts 1 and 2.

This one follows part one in terms of getting some plot stuff out of the way up top and then some Really Heavy Whump in the back half lmao

TW for: broken bones (including ribs and spine), blood, aftermath of beating/caning, past/referenced child abuse, referenced parental death, referenced decapitation, Again Broken Bones To The Extent That It Is Essentially Body Horror.

----

Morden raises a sculpted eyebrow at Tern. “Been opening my mail, have you?”

Tern looks at him; or at least Morden assumes he does. Tern wears an elaborately constructed mask sewn out of feathers and leather and bone, and removes it very rarely.

“I open everyone’s mail,” Tern says.

Morden knows this, of course. He has no secrets to keep from his own Falconers, and if and when such secrets do arise, he will simply have Thorne deliver them. If Morden feels—caught off guard, set on edge, it is no fault of Tern’s, and snapping at his own Scout will not help him feel more in control, anyway. Morden arranges himself more casually at his desk with a bit of effort.

“What do you think of the Lady’s proposal?” he asks, forcing his voice back into its usual light and airy register.

Tern tilts his head. The mask makes him the most actually-birdlike of all the Falconers, a fact Morden usually finds endearing, though he is struggling not to be annoyed by it at the moment.

“It’s my job to know things, not to act on them,” Tern says finally. Which is a letdown after such a long thoughtful pause, even though it is also true. Morden does not roll his eyes, but the temptation is there. “What do you think, Mord?”

Morden sits up straight and brushes his hair from his face. What he thinks is, she must have eyes in the Castle that Morden can’t see, to be able to time this missive so exactly. But that thought is uselessly paranoid—Tern would know, and Tern would tell him—so he is not entertaining it. Or vocalizing it, either.

“I think she’s audacious,” he says instead, which is true. “And I think I had better consider carefully before I think anything much else.” He folds the letter back up, so that he will not keep reading it uselessly over and over, and looks up at Tern, pretending to make eye contact through the mask. “In the meantime, make sure the Prince doesn’t die, will you? I may finally be able to put him to some use.”

Tern nods, and stalks out silently, still in his soft-soled scouting boots.

Morden makes it, optimistically, another five minutes before he unfolds the letter to read it again.

“Your desires have aligned neatly with our own, dear Crane,” reads the now-familiar script, “and the appropriate sacrifices have been made.”

Morden has not yet opened the accompanying jeweled and gilded casket, but the size and heft of it—and, more importantly, the smell—makes him fairly confident he knows what will be inside.

“A healthy partnership ought be reciprocal, however,” the letter goes on.

Morden chews his thumbnail, a nervous habit he does not often indulge. He scolds himself; he is only now realizing how he has begun to enjoy his exchanges with the Rose Queen, how they have begun to feel so like a game of chess against an interesting opponent as to make him forget the stakes. It has left him feeling—exposed, now, at best; trapped if he is not careful.

He needs to make a plan.

----

This is not part of Crow’s job.

It’s all very well for Tern, who relays Crane’s instructions—“Fix up the Summer Prince; the White Crane had his fun and now wants not to play with broken toys”—and then scurry off with the excuse of some Important Scouting Duty, which Crow suspects is probably bullshit.

When Morden introduces the Falconer’s, he says that Crow’s job is “Throatcutter,” the one who makes sure everyone’s theatrics have resulted in actual corpses at the end of every ambush and skirmish. And although that isn’t all he does—far from it—that is certainly part of his job. If the White Crane had said, “I’m too busy to finish killing the Summer Prince, finish that up for me, will you?” Crow would have done it, and with a whistle and a spring in his step.

Crow is built for ending lives, it’s truly what he’s best at. He doesn’t prolong pain on purpose; he isn’t Raven. Once a creature is past a certain threshold of injury, keeping it alive becomes—boring and sad, and little else.

The Summer Prince flops slightly at Crow’s feet, as if hearing him think this. He is moving like a deboned fish. Sounds a bit like one, as well.

Morden is going to owe him, and Morden doesn’t enjoy owing things, even to his own Falconers. So at least, Crow thinks, there is that.

“I don’t suppose you can walk,” Crow says. He slides the toe of his boot underneath the writhing shape of the Summer Prince, meaning only to nudge him slightly.

There is—more give in the ribs than there should be.

The body at his feet spasms violently as the Prince tries to curl in around himself. He manages to twist his torso in a way that makes Crow’s gorge rise a bit in spite of himself, his handless arm flopping over and up to haphazardly cover his face. His legs don’t move at all.

Crow contemplates, very briefly, the idea of picking the Summer Prince up off the floor and carrying him to Heron’s quarters, or more probably to the Castle’s Healer. He doesn’t mind blood, as a rule. The blood would not be the problem.

The Prince heaves in what must be his first full breath since Crow entered the room several minutes ago. It scrapes audibly against his throat; the effort of taking it arcs his back up off the floor, except that his legs still haven’t moved. Something—either ribs or spine, Crow isn’t sure which—grinds audibly inside him and he loses whatever air he has managed to take in in a single quiet, bubbly-sounding wail.

“Eugh,” Crow says, and turns his back on what is rapidly becoming the corpse of the Summer Prince. Where has that bloody wolf pup got himself to? Cleaning up Morden’s messes is literally that kid’s whole job.

----

(Andry can’t see. He can almost breathe, if he tries very hard. It feels like lifting a very heavy weight, and at the height of each breath there is a sudden stabbing pain in his back, just left of the center, that makes him twitch. He is in—water, maybe. Or anyway his face and shoulders and ears feel wet. His lips feel wet, too, although the inside of his mouth feels very dry indeed.)

(He must have hit his head, he thinks. He knows that burning cracked-egg feeling well enough, in his temple and below his right ear and on the high point of his opposite cheek. And his back is cracked open that way too, not sharp and bone deep like the whip but broad and blunt and shattered like his father’s cane.)

(His father is—dead, he thinks, around the buzzing in his head, like bees tangled up in cotton wool. The White Crane cut off his father’s head, and Andry could not catch it when it was thrown. And now he cannot even tell if he is sorry. His father did kill him once, after all.)

(He had known where he stood with his father, though. His father was not elegant and smiling, like the White Crane.)

(Although the White Crane was not smiling this time, was he, Andry thinks; no, this time he was angry, and the worst part is that Andry does not even know why.)

(…Andry thinks that is the worst part. Then he tries to move his legs.)

----

Heron is the Falconers’ battlefield medic, and he is not a healer. He has smelling salts in his bag that will get a man to his feet and into the fray with an arrow through the stomach; and skill enough with a needle and a bandage to patch up even serious punctures well enough to heal on their own. He even knows the basic alchemy needed to keep a wound from going septic about seven times out of ten.

In this situation he is useful only in that he has a stretcher he is willing to bring to Thorne’s chamber in exchange for the privilege of seeing a mutilated body.

Crow returns with Thorne and Heron after about five minutes, and it is clear as he nears the threshold and begins to hear the Prince’s breath whistling in and out, like wind blowing across a broken bottle, that the boy has not done him the great favor of dying in the interim.

One of the Prince’s eyes is open when Crow stands over him again, but it is rolled back in his head far enough to hide all but a thin ring of blue-purple iris. The other eye is already swollen too far to open more than a crack. Every time he takes a far-too-audible breath he shudders, violently, exactly twice. His torso is still twisted at that odd angle, as though he has tried to roll over onto his side without lifting his hips.

Thorne has been helping Heron carry the stretcher. When he enters the room he drops his end of it with a loud clatter.

Heron does not seem to notice, though he gamely drops his end of the stretcher, too, so that he can dart closer to the body, his pale eyes glittering behind his physician’s mask.

(Tern and Heron are both masked more often than they aren’t; both masks, as far as Crow is concerned, are products of paranoia. Tern is convinced some authority or other is going to discover his identity, as though that would matter now that he is at the right hand of the conqueror of a whole damned country. Heron is concerned about inhalants. This seems sensible sometimes, even to Crow; Heron takes apart something like a half-dozen cadavers a week in pursuit of his craft. However he also wears the mask when it is just the eight of them alone in the Nest or in their rooms here at the castle, and that seems like overkill to Crow.)

As always, Heron’s hands are light, and clever, and ruthless. He pulls the Prince’s fluttering eyelid up and peers closely into his eye, tipping his head back quite gently. Then he presses his fingers against the Prince’s shattered ribs with slow, deliberate pressure, using his hand in the Prince’s hair to keep the Prince from curling up in a ball at what must be excruciating pain. Heron’s face is quite close to the Prince’s answering gasp. Crow, a safe distance away with his arms crossed, thinks to himself that perhaps Heron wouldn’t need the mask if he was willing to do his job without getting so very close.

When the Prince has relaxed out of his pain-spasm, Heron taps twice on the sharp edge of the Prince’s sharp recently-starved hip bone with a gloved fist. The Prince’s gasp this time is much quieter, more of a hiccup than an airless scream.

When Heron stretches out a booted foot to give the Prince’s calf a not-particularly-gentle kick, the Prince doesn’t react at all.

“That’s interesting,” Heron says, his voice dark with things Crow finds professionally distasteful.

----

Thorne left Andry—what, thirty minutes ago? An hour? Surely no more than that. Thorne left Andry asleep on the couch at the foot of his bed, wrapped in Thorne’s borrowed sheets, curled up like a child with the stump of his missing hand tucked under his chin.

Thorne’s bedsheets are in disarray, now, on the floor in front of the couch. There is blood on them. There seems, at least to Thorne’s suddenly spotty and blurred vision, to be blood more places than there isn’t.

Heron’s hand is on Andry’s throat, now, prodding narrow deep bruise that is forming there. Heron is hovering over Andry with the same excited twitchy over-interest with which he treats any sick or injured person. Thorne is familiar enough with Heron’s attention to remember the growing unease and sick, crawling discomfort it inspires.

He usually finds it easier to look away.

“Well go on,” Crow snaps at him from where leaning against the wall, looking mildly disgusted but little else. “Get him on the fucking stretcher already.”

Thorne’s instinct to obey is honed sharply enough that he moves to follow the order without thinking. So at least there is that relief.

[sincerelybubbles]

(tw parental death, cancer)

I just wanted to say im sorry for your loss. My dad passed away 3 months ago, and its hard. He had cancer for 3 years, so not only was i "well prepared" for it, but i also felt disconnected to him, it was hard being next to him.

Anyways, feel free to ignore. I just sometimes feel like nobody i know gets what im going through, so i thought it might be a bit comforting to know someone out there is going through similar loss. Wishing you the best <<3

Tw: parental death, neglect, alcoholism, fun stuff!!

I love you, first and foremost. You’re never alone, no matter how unique your life and circumstances are. Both grieving individually the life you lost that you knew and experienced so intrinsically and having connection to people who have gone through unidentical but similar things can be true.

I think allowing yourself to connect to people in that way is so important. Remembering that you’re living something nobody has before because life isn’t duplicable is all fun and neat until you feel alone. It’s then that I think it’s incredibly important to remember that experiences can feel ineffable but people have gone through similar pain. Nobody is alone, truly.

I decided to answer your ask because I wanted to tell you that, but I hope you don’t mind me taking the space to clarify a bit more about my circumstances because I’m feeling a little alone and isolated myself, despite the above musings about the interconnections of humanity, intrinsic and often ignored.

My biological dad was an abusive alcoholic who chose to no longer be in my life. So that disconnect is an odd roadblock to unlocking the beginning stages of grief. I think deciding someone is gone before that final milestone is actually reached in physical entirety is difficult. It helps with coping in the moment but I also feel like it’s something that has been stolen from me now. My sisters dealing with guilt I can’t comprehend because I put more distance between me and my father then she did. Mostly, the pain of his absolute inability to pick his daughters over anything else hurts. I understand alcoholism is a sickness but the pain of liquid outweighing daughter hood is odd and lonely.

Anyway. I love you all who have sent kind words. Thank you, truly. I hope this wasn’t too much but this blog has always always been a place for me to express myself. So thank you guys for that opportunity as well.