#past abduction

[whump-tr0pes]

Lux in Tenebris - epistolary interlude

This is part of the Lux in Tenebris interlude, which comes after the Whumptober 2021 recapture arc which ended with this chapter.

Lux in Tenebris masterlist

AO3

Contents: epistolary writing, grief, death, burial, demon whumpee, survivor's guilt, past abduction, pining

~

Dee,

Fall is here and I can’t stop thinking of you. I know that you’re dead - Dara told me that you’re more than dead, you’re gone - but I can’t stop myself from looking for you in everything. I know we planned to carve pumpkins this Halloween, and I keep staring at yours. I didn’t carve mine, either. They’re both starting to rot. Dara keeps telling me I need to throw them out, but… not yet. I can’t do it yet. 

We buried you. Or… the body you lived in. I go and sit by your grave but I can’t feel you there. That makes sense - you’re not there. Even if there is such a thing as ghosts, Eva and Dara keep telling me that you could never be one. You’re not in heaven or hell. You weren’t exorcized after being stabbed, you just… stopped. But… please, Dee. I’m begging you to please be alive, in some way. Even if you choose to haunt me, please, please, I don’t care. Just something that would show that you’re still with me. Even if you were angry. Even if you hated me. Even if I never got to see you again because you were sent somewhere I could never be. As long as you were still alive, it would be alright. As long as I didn’t have to live with the fact that I got you killed, I could stand to be haunted by you. 

I looked for you, Dee. We looked for you. I’m sorry it took us so long to find you, and I’m sorry we got so little time together, but I looked for you. I wish I could tell you that you never deserved any of it. I saw in your eyes that you thought you did. It was a lie. It was a lie, Dee. 

I go to the playground where you were taken every day. I try to remember how it felt in those last few happy moments we had together. I try to feel something of you that might still be there. I try to think of what I could have done to stop you from being taken. I would have done anything, Dee… I’m so, so sorry. It was my fault. I’m so sorry. 

Please still be with me, somewhere in the world or beyond it. Please find your way back to me. Please still be alive. Please come back home to me. I’ll never let you go again, if you will just let me prove it to you. I’m so, so sorry. Please come back to me, Dee. Please. 

I’ll wait for you. As long as it takes, I will wait.

Love,

Ilya.

@womping-grounds , @free-2bmee , @quirkykayleetam , @walkingchemicalfire , @inpainandsuffering , @redwingedwhump , @burtlederp , @castielamigos-whump-side-blog , @whatwhumpcomments , @whumpywhumper , @stxck-fxck ,  @whumps-the-word , @justwhumpitwhumpitgood,  @inky-whump ,  @orchidscript , @inkyinsanity , @this-mightaswell-happen , @newandfiguringitout , @whumpkitty , @pebbledriscoll , @im-just-here-for-the-whump , @endless-whump , @grizzlie70 , @oops-its-whump , @kixngiggles, @1phoenixfeather , @butwhatifyouwrite , @carnagecardinal , @laves-here, @mylifeisonthebookshelf , @wolfeyedwitch , @batfacedliar , @also-finder-of-rings , @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump, @extrabitterbrain, @i-eat-worlds

[shi0n]

this time around there are many people wearing matching nezushionish outfits.. WISH THAT WAS ME...

[iamanartichoke]

I was told there was going to be an alien invasion today ... it's almost noon, no aliens and I still have to work ... this is bullshit.

[fighting-these-demons]

The Shuffled Age of Piracy AU

I didn't feel like copypasting so take a broken up screenshot 😂

BASICALLY imagine Into The Pit but like, in Coastal France or New England instead? In this beautiful room?

Anyway.

🤷‍♀️

Just a neat thought.

[mossydice]

new blood • proper wee reference for pepper !! work clothes/makeup + casual chilling out look ᓚᘏᗢ

[skyler10fic]

Lightning Strikes Twice: Ch. 1

Summary: Melinda May and Phil Coulson are sent on a mission to recover a missing child in a supernatural storm. But the child they come back to Shield HQ with is not the one they were sent to find.

Read on Ao3 / See Author's note for warnings

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

Shield agent Melinda May shivered in the spring night air. What a night to be on duty.

She was alone, sitting in the driver’s seat of her Shield-issued black SUV as her husband, Agent Phil Coulson, sweet-talked the local authorities. They had to get into that sports complex. Tonight.

A thunderstorm swirled overhead, but this was no natural April shower. These clouds hid a scout ship of the mighty Kree warriors. Of course, the local police didn’t know that. They only knew that the night’s baseball games were canceled due to weather, and they were instructed to redirect teams, parents, and other spectators to return next week.

Phil frowned as he trudged back to the SUV and got in.

“Any luck?” Melinda asked, already knowing the answer.

Phil sighed. “Your turn.”

“Good. I like my way.” Melinda smirked and pulled out a remote control. With the press of a button, the sounds of gunfire and the lighting of a small explosion played from a cheap special effects kit on the far side of the main building of the sports complex. Out of view of the police officers, it looked and sounded real enough, at least with the rain and the echo off the cinderblock building.

As predicted, the officers ran from their spot to the disturbance. With no more Phil Coulsons around trying to talk their way in, there was no reason for them to be at the entrance anyway. All the sane people had gone home with their young athletes, grateful for a night off instead of huddling under the bleachers in the pounding storm.

That left Melinda and Phil with a clear entrance.

“Buckle up,” Melinda warned as she floored it through the now-clear sports complex entrance and across the parking lot. Phil set off another round of special effects commotion at the building just to cover the sound of the SUV’s engine.

The dirt path to baseball diamond C wasn’t exactly meant to be a road, but it was wide enough, and with the SUV’s capabilities, it got them right to the scene of the incident.

They got out and approached the dugout cautiously. Director Fury had warned them this was no ordinary missing child case. It had been mass hysteria at this site only a few hours earlier.

—---------------------------

The storm had come without warning, zapping down blue and green lightning as if targeting the young players on the field. Parents shouted for their children and children cried for their parents, and the rain pounded down, muffling the chaos. A father in the Special Forces caught a photo of the lightning as his wife called for their little girl. His stomach turned as he realized what the blur was at the edge of the camera. She was only three; it wasn’t her fault. But it was just like her. Of course, she’d gone toward danger instead of running away. Another lightning flash and his daughter disappeared.

“CAROL!” he shouted as he and his wife ran toward the spot in the outfield, but it was dark, empty. Not even a hair left of her. Another flash of lightning, this time directly onto the dugout. They turned back in shock at the loud crack of the wood slat roof splintering. They thought they saw a girl inside, the same size, impossibly far for her to have run, but it was just the afterimage. The lightning flashes were playing tricks on their eyes. They turned back to each other and screamed for Carol until their lungs gave out.

Their seven-year-old son stood frozen, drenched in his white-and-mud Little League baseball uniform. He saw what they wouldn’t admit. His sister had clearly vanished. It was no runaway little girl, lost in the storm, as they would tell the police. She had called out to him as she was hit and had faded away into thin air in the blindingly bright light. He stumbled as he ran toward her, losing coordination as he slipped in the mud. She was gone.

Eventually, the Special Forces officer side of the father kicked back in and he brought the film canister to his superiors at the military base while his wife and son waited for hours into the night at the city police station. The stoic military men developed the film, and as they waited, they heard his story of the supernatural storm, still brewing over the sports complex. Though later he would deny it if anyone had asked, the desperate father asked his officers if the storm could be a foreign enemy’s technology. It was too targeted to be simple, ordinary weather.

The commanding officers exchanged silent glances, thanked the father for the intel, and offered him coffee. They then hustled back to an office with a confidential line and had phoned Shield with the developed images in hand. This lightning wasn’t natural, but it also wasn’t of human origin. Only Shield could provide answers beyond that.

—-----------------

Director Fury then dispatched Phil and Melinda, and here they were, creeping around a dark, stormy park full of baseball fields and tricking police officers into abandoning their posts.

Phil signaled to Melinda to watch his back as he poked his head into the dugout. The smallest of whimpers came from within.

“Carol?” Phil whispered into the darkness. “Is that your name?”

The coast was clear around them, so Melinda glanced past him to the source of the rustle in the darkness.

“It’s okay,” he reassured. “We just want to help you find your parents. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

The shadow whimpered again, and Melinda gave up on watching for danger that wasn’t coming. She knelt down and made sure her flashlight was pointed at the ground.

“You’re safe now,” Melinda assured. She held out a hand and heard a shaky breath. “Can you be brave and come out here?”

The little girl that emerged was not blonde pig-tailed Carol Danvers at all. This little girl took Melinda’s breath away. Part Chinese, Melinda was sure of it, with Caucasian features too, though it was hard to tell in the flashlight’s dim glow. Something inside her knew, as she locked eyes with the girl, that this child could well have been hers and Phil’s. If they had been able…

Phil put on his best dad smile. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

The little girl shook her head. She couldn’t have been more than three at the most.

“I’m Phil,” he introduced. “And this is my wife, Melinda. We want to help you get home.”

The little girl lurched forward and grabbed Melinda’s outstretched hand. She was a little unsteady on her feet, so Melinda picked her up without thinking. The little girl clung to her and started crying. She snuggled into Melinda’s shoulder and wept, making Melinda hold her tighter.

Phil furrowed his brow and pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Fury, this is Coulson.”

“Go, Coulson,” came the reply in Fury’s exhausted voice.

“Were there any other reports of missing children?”

“No, just the one you’re assigned to.” The unstated question made Phil and Melinda exchange a look of dread.

“We didn’t find a blonde girl. This one has dark hair, East Asian features? About the same age.” Phil paused. “Sir, she needs help.”

“Hmm.” Fury was silent for a while. “No reports that fit that description. Bring her in.”

Melinda brushed the little girl’s hair back, wet from the rain, and asked, “Do you know if there are any other kids out here? Maybe another girl like you?”

She raised her head and shook it “no.” And then she spoke, in a raspy whisper that broke Melinda’s heart, “Just me. I’m alone.”

They returned to their search for the child they were assigned to find, but even when they had found the master switch to turn on the lights for every field (revealing nothing), tried every door (all locked), searched every nook and cranny (empty), and called over and over for the child’s name, Carol Danvers, they had to agree with the assessment that there was no one else here. Except the police officers running toward them from the far side of the sports complex, shouting something that was probably “there they are!” and “come back here!” but they were slightly too far away to be heard clearly.

It was time to go.

The girl clung tightly to Melinda as they returned to the SUV. Melinda climbed in the back to gently strap her into the car seat meant for another child—the girl who was still missing. Instead of leaving this little one in the back seat alone, Melinda buckled in next to her to comfort her. The little girl fell asleep, exhausted by whatever ordeal she had been through in this storm. Her tiny lips parted, and her precious eyelashes lay so delicately on her still-babyish cheeks. By the time they made it back to Shield, Melinda May had fallen in love with someone else’s child.

But whose?

When they were back at Shield HQ, the little girl awoke and tried to answer their questions. She didn’t remember her own name or her parents’ names, or her address, or what town she was from. She just “forgotted.”

In the morning, the pediatrician contracted with Shield confirmed it was likely caused by the traumatic experience. Whether the memories came back would be anyone’s guess. More visually alarming, Melinda had discovered deep large bruises on the girl’s ankles, forearms, and back when changing her out of her soaking wet clothes and giving her a bath at the faux hotel room at HQ used for overnight guests. She didn’t say anything that night, settling the girl into a big bed the preschooler described as “the very comfy comfiest!” Phil returned from the office floors of the building with a plush tiger toy from the supplies they used to comfort children affected by trauma and tragedy. This certainly counted. The girl cuddled the tiger close throughout the night (and every night after) and grasped it tight through every nightmare that woke them all up with her crying and screaming until Phil and Melinda could sooth her back to sleep.

The next morning, the doctor dismissed the bruises as minor childhood injuries from running away from home in the storm, an understandable conclusion given that the girl was using everything in sight as a jungle gym, but as a skilled martial artist and agent, Melinda knew bruises intimately. These were old and intentionally inflicted.

“Who has been hurting you?” Melinda asked quietly when the doctor left the exam room and promised to send in a nurse with the evaluation paperwork and test orders to complete at the lab.

However, right now, the little girl couldn’t focus on answering any questions when there were puppies on her new, soft pink shirt to make up stories about. That morning, she hadn’t recognized the ubiquitously preschool-famous cartoon dalmatians, or know that they were called puppy dogs, which was odd, though the doctor said that was explainable by the amnesia. But otherwise, his evaluation said she seemed healthy, if a bit undernourished, and assuming the labs all came back clear, she was well enough to go home, wherever that would be now.

They searched every database and missing child alert. There were no parents that fit the half-remembered description the little girl gave. Of course, the girl also wondered why no one was blue, why cars didn’t fly here, if they could go to space soon, and a dozen other typical three-year-old questions. After two nights in the faux hotel room and three straight days at Shield HQ, as the little girl napped on a cot and Phil and Melinda and their teammates traded duties looking after her while searching for any surviving family or any matching DNA at all in international intelligence community databases, it was clear this child had nowhere to go. She really was alone in the world.

Fury brought the girl, Phil, and Melinda into a conference room. He addressed the girl first.

“I understand you don’t remember your name, but Coulson and May here have been calling you Skye, is that right?”

“Mhmm!”

“Do you like that name?”

“Yes! They says it’s because I was a gift from the sky.” She looked for approval from Melinda and Phil.

“And where did you live before you met us, Skye?”

“Up there!” She pointed to the sky out the window. “In a big city ship with the big angry blue men. But then I was sneaky sneaking on the ship and I had to hide! And then I came here and it was wet. And then I met you!”

Melinda’s heart skipped a beat. “You came from the Kree ship? Fury, are the Kree blue?”

Skye frowned and her eyes pled with the adults. “Don’t make me go back! Don’t make me! No! Nooo! I don’t wanna go back!” She kicked her little feet and shook her head. When she didn’t receive an answer, only shock from the adults, she curled in on herself, hiding her face in her knees, repeating how much she didn’t want to leave.

“We thought they were just warriors up there. To have children on that ship…” Phil trailed off and paled. If the Kree ship had not vanished when it did in the storm, Shield was about to blast it out of the sky. “The doctor said she was human! How…?”

“Whether this child is actually Kree or simply a lost human child like any other, she needs a home. A safe one. One where she won’t be hit by big men…?” At Fury’s words, Skye stopped muttering and lifted her head. “Or yelled at?” She inhaled deeply and met Fury’s eyes. “And she would get lots of hugs? And everything she needed?”

“Really?” Skye’s eyes sparkled, breaking Melinda’s heart again. “When I’m a big kid, can I go to the bus?”

“The bus?” Phil asked.

“On the scwream.” She pointed toward the hallway in the direction of the room with a TV she’d been watching the last few days. “The big kids go on the magic bus and the lady with the hair and the lizward ….”

“School,” Melinda exhaled. “Yes, you can go to school.”

“Schooool!” Skye squealed. “Even though I’m not blue!”

“No one’s blue here,” Fury corrected for the hundredth time.

“No blues,” Skye sighed in happiness. She looked directly into Melinda’s eyes with her own puppy dog hope. “Can I stay here forever?”

Melinda swallowed back tears and opened her arms. “Yeah. Yeah, kid. You can stay forever.”

Skye squealed and launched herself out of her chair and to Melinda. Phil and Fury filled out the Shield Protocol 0-84: Humanoid Dependent custody paperwork right there on the table. In Melinda’s lap, as the grown-up conversation grew boringly legal, Skye got hold of a pen and the blank back side of one of the forms and immediately started drawing their little stick figure family, along with odd symbols that might have just been scribbles, if she weren’t so intentional about them.

“Look!” Skye insisted. “Look! Look! Look!” When she was satisfied she had everyone’s attention, she pointed to the figures.

“You can be the mommy,” she said to Melinda. “You can be the daddy,” she said to Phil. “And I’m me!” She beamed in excitement. “And Director Fury can be the teacher.” She still had a babyish aw on her Rs, and it made them all melt, even battle-hardened, man-in-charge Diwectah Fuwy, which Phil would be teasing him about for months to come.

Raising a potentially alien daughter who didn’t remember her birth parents or much of anything before, with vague and likely violent early childhood trauma, would be a challenge that required some specialized professional help only Shield could provide, but this day was the first day of an otherwise blissfully happy life together. From that moment on, they were a family.

[whumpbump]

Cw: mentions of past abuse, whipping, death

Reactions to tragedy are vastly different from person to person. Whumper knew this and yet, they were still disappointed in what they got out of Whumpee when they showed them the video of them killing Whumpee’s family. Instead of screaming and crying or anger and wrenching at their chains, Whumpee sighed in relief and chuckled to themselves. This was the first keystone moment of their time together after the abduction and Whumper was utterly confused.

Pulling their belt off and whipping between each word out of pure, searing anger, Whumper asked “WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. WRONG. WITH. YOU?”

Catching their breath, they again asked “What the fuck is wrong with you? I just showed you evidence that I murdered your family. Any normal person would be broken beyond belief. Why?”

Laughing, Whumpee uncurled themselves and took off their shirt to reveal a constellation of cuts and scars.

“You think I would miss the people who did this to me? The only reason I stayed with them was because I wasn’t ready to risk it on the streets.”

Whumper backed out of the room, trying to mask their emotions of disappointment and surprise. This one would be much harder to crack.

[foxsoulart]

Ghost F!Leo helps Leo with Krang, gets pulled back with him.(or FLeo gets abducted by his past alternate timeline self, fun times.)

Bonus

First sketches

[mariocki]

Shadows of Fear: The Death Watcher (1.4, Thames, 1971)

"I should like to have danced with you first, you know. It may sound frivolous, but I mean it. There's a certain communication involved there. Have you noticed how some couples have a much more highly developed intuition? They dance as one. There is instinctive anticipation. I used to be very good at ballroom dancing. These are my trophies. Once, I reached the county finals with a girl. Her name was Beryl Harcourt. We were completely in sympathy, you see. That's why I made her the subject of my first experiment. After she'd... gone, I used to play the gramophone in my bedroom for hours on end. We used to do a speciality tango. There's a lot of jealousy and backbiting in those competitions, you know."

[trashmyash]

Took an edible last night cause my tooth pain was so bad and heavily misjudged how much I could handle, the first sign was when I forgot how you wear a shirt and then this is a good summary

I also ate all of my raisin cookies and they never tasted better, it was like they were kissed by an angel that's also the hottest lesbian on earth, anyway

[lifewithaview]

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in The X-Files (1993) Demons

S4E23

Mulder awakens on a Sunday in a cheap motel in Providence, Rhode Island. He has no idea how he got there and has no memory of what may have occurred in the last two days. His clothes are also covered in blood. He has been having vivid dreams however. In one, he recalls his parents having an argument with the Cigarette Smoking Man about Samantha. Mulder was only 12 years-old at the time. He also has images of a white house. Scully soon joins him and they locate the white house with two bodies inside. As far as the local police are concerned, Mulder is their main suspect. Scully however doesn't believe he killed anyone and tries to find the common denominator between her partner and the victims.

*Producer/ writer R.W. Goodwin was inspired to write the episode after reading "An Anthropologist on Mars," a series of essays by Oliver Sacks, in particular "The Landscape of Dreams," featuring a man who could recall every detail of his childhood.

[queerstudiesnatural]

btw i did have a nightmare last night that like, fucked me up a little bit

[somaligovernment]

“The most disrespected person in England is the Gary Lineker. The most unprotected person in England is the Gary Lineker. The most neglected person in England is the Gary Lineker”

-every sports personality on Twitter rn

[pangur-and-grim]

I love that you can just grab kittens. old cat have achy joints and a sense of dignity that you have to play into, so you gotta be deliberate and respectful in hoisting them, but if a kitten is whirlwinding past you, you can just reach out and snatch them. and they'll be like 'mamma mia, I never did nothing :p' and writhe around and lick your fingers. highly abductable animal

[irrepressible-miracle]

Maybe Miquella's curse isn't eternal nascency, maybe his curse is that he'd be slower than everyone else, that he wouldn't have enough time

[i-just-like-commenting]

The way that so many talk about the Greek myths like they weren’t myths. The whole nonsense “discourse” over whether Hades/Persephone is a “problematic relationship,” as if he wasn’t literally Death and she Rebirth, that the whole thing isn’t about the cycle of the seasons or (in the Eleusinian mysteries) reincarnation of the soul.

one thing about orpheus and eurydice is you guys are all like “i’m different i wouldnt turn to look at her” because you are all familiar with the story of orpheus and eurydice. but orpheus wasnt familiar with the story because he was in it lol.