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missberrycake · 5 months ago

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So, I know we all love the headcanon that Eddie moved in with Wayne when he was a teen or a pre-teen, be it because one or both parents died, chucked him out, are in prison, etc. But! I’ve been thinking about another option.

What if Wayne has been looking after Eddie since he was a toddler?

It all comes as a bit of a shock to Wayne who, in his early forties, had pretty much assumed he’d missed the boat on the whole ‘kids’ thing. And yet, here he is, taking in his baby nephew when his brother turns up on his doorstep one day.

When it starts, it’s only supposed to be for a short while. His brother’s wife is newly out of the picture (it’s a crying shame, Wayne had liked her, she’d stayed a gentle soul throughout) and he just needs some time to get himself sorted, right? But then a week turns into a month, turns into two months, turns into half a year and Wayne? Well, he gets attached to the kid, so sue him.

Because little Eddie is a rambunctious boy. He’s full of gummy smiles and bubbling laughter and Wayne runs himself in circles trying to stop him from toddling into sharp corners and sockets and yards of rope. The two of them are well suited, it seems, and Wayne takes to settling Eddie on his knee in the evenings and going through the races for the next day in the paper.

Eddie chooses a winner more than once.

Every day, when Wayne comes to pick him up from Julia’s two trailers over (he’s still got to work, something his brother hadn’t considered before he left, or maybe he didn’t care), Eddie greets him with his arms out, already chatting away with the handful of phrases that he knows.

The boy’s hair is soft and his cheeks smooth and if Wayne gets a little sentimental when he tucks him into bed at night, then nobody else needs to know, do they?

He’s a sweet boy. He deserves someone to care for him.

So when his brother turns up again with vague mutterings about there being some work for him down in Florida, Wayne’s chest aches.

“What’s your plan for the littl'un?” he asks.

“Ed? Whad’ya mean?”

“I mean, have you got a place to stay lined up? Who’s gonna look after him while you’re working?”

“I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

He shrugs and Wayne feels something close to panic bubbling in his veins. When he suggests that perhaps his brother should travel ahead, get himself settled first before sending for Eddie, he doesn’t expect him to agree so readily. He can’t say he’s much surprised though.

The entire exchange doesn’t take more than ten minutes and his brother doesn’t ask after Eddie once, doesn’t show any desire to see him, doesn’t even step inside the trailer—not one jot of fatherly affection shines through.

It only occurs to Wayne that evening that perhaps this was the outcome his brother wanted. But, hell, it’s fine with him—he’ll let him think he’s winning. Wayne knows who’s got the real prize here.

He doesn’t mention the visit to Eddie, the kid doesn’t need to know, too busy digging holes and collecting bugs.

Just like he expected, his brother never sends for the boy. They get letters for the first few years, poorly wrapped and ill-thought through trinkets for the kid’s birthday and Christmas, but it’s not long until they fall by the wayside too.

Once Eddie’s older, they have a conversation about it. Have to, really, when Eddie comes home from preschool and is full to the brim of questions, because apparently Peter Gillespie says that everyone has to have a mom and a dad, “and I know I have a mom because you’ve told me about her and I said that she’s not around and Mrs. Lang told Peter to be quiet but then I thought about it, but I don’t know, ‘cause you’re my dad, right? I know I don’t call you dad, but that’s what you are, isn’t it? Because what else would you be and Peter says I have to have one.”

It floors Wayne for a moment, but he recovers quickly. He leads Eddie to the couch where he sets him on his lap. For the next while the two of them look through all the pictures that Wayne can find of Eddie’s mom and Wayne’s brother. Wayne makes sure to hold him close and tells him it doesn’t matter that he’s ‘just’ his uncle, that he loves him as much as he would a kid of his own, that he’ll always be around to take care of him. And Eddie takes it all in his stride, in the way only children can.

“So I can’t call you dad?” he asks.

Wayne lets out a long breath, rubs at his jaw.

“It’s not that you can’t, kiddo, it’s just that I ain’t.“

Because it feels a little like stealing. What would happen, if one day his brother came back and found his kid calling Wayne ‘Dad’. If the boot were on the other foot, Wayne would be angry as all heck. And there was still time, wasn’t there? For his brother to see the error of his ways? Who was Wayne to keep all of that from Eddie?

“Okay,” Eddie says quietly. “Uncle Wayne is still good.”

“Oh, it’s still good, is it?” Wayne crows and squeezes Eddie tight. “I’m sure glad I meet your high standards, your majesty.”

Eddie just giggles at that. He always giggles when Wayne puts on his voices.

“And what would the esteemed gentleman like for dinner tonight, huh? The options are spaghetti hoops, spaghetti hoops, or - now let me think. Oh! Spaghetti hoops.”

The nail in the coffin comes one day in the summer of 1978, just before Eddie’s twelfth birthday. It’s been over eight years since his brother dropped him off in search of better things and sure, there have been some days where Wayne has been tearing his hair out, but through all of it he knows he made the right decision that day in the doorway of the trailer. He wouldn’t change Eddie for the world, and he knows by now that there are some out there that would, who would only see the difficult or the different in him, but isn’t that what being a parent is? Loving your kid no matter what? Seeing the good in them and helping them see it themselves?

When his brother slams the door shut on some car so shiny that Wayne wonders if it’s fresh out of the packet, he knows they’re in for some trouble.

“Nice car, man,” Eddie whistles from where he’d been lounging on the plastic chairs out the front of the trailer. Clearly the sight of something so drenched in luxury in their neighbourhood makes it so that he just can’t help himself.

Wayne’s brother grunts in that way that he always did when they were younger, like he’d gotten away with something.

Wayne just watches, then, as his brother nods at the book in Eddie’s hands. “A reader, are you?” he says, a joke in his voice. “What’s this? Always knew there were brains in the family somewhere.”

“It’s ‘Lord of the Rings’,” Eddie replies, uncertain. His gaze flicks to Wayne, who nods. Funny, that the kid was quiet now, he’d been ranting and raving to Wayne about that goddamn book every spare second of the week. “It’s got orcs and wizards and elves in and stuff.”

“Fairytales?” his brother scoffs. It grates on Wayne like a physical thing. “What you been doing to the boy, Wayne? Here.” He turns back to Eddie. “You know me, kid?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“I’m your old man! So you like cars, do you? Want to go for a spin in her?”

“You don’t have to Eddie. Not if you don’t want,” Wayne pipes up then. He knows his boy well enough that he can see the internal war going on behind his eyes. And, hell, it is a nice car. Eddie bites his lip and stares at Wayne, eyes wide, asking permission.

“‘Course he wants to.” And his brother is already walking back to the driver’s side door. He winks at Eddie. “Gotta lot of catching up to do, ain’t we?”

“Hold this for me?” Eddie asks and hands Wayne his book before jogging away.

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach when Wayne watches the dust trail behind the car as it leaves the trailer park. He sits out on the porch all afternoon, eyes flashing towards the road every few minutes. It isn’t until almost dusk that it careens into the park once more.

The passenger door slams violently and Eddie stomps towards him.

“He’s not my dad,” he splutters as he pushes his face against Wayne’s shoulder. Wayne can feel where his cheeks are hot and flushed.

Cradling the back of Eddie’s head with one hand, he mutters gently, “Yeah, son, I know.”

And how had he ever thought that man could be Eddie’s father? No, Eddie may still call him ‘Uncle Wayne’, but they’ve gone well beyond that and both of them know it.

Directing Eddie back inside the trailer, Wayne sends a small nod to his brother where the man is still lingering by his car door, looking faintly murderous.

Let him try, he thinks. No one’s taking his boy from him now, come hell or high water.

[Yeah, I'm scouring the archives and trying to salvage as many headcanons as I can from my old deleted account, but let's just pretend this is brand new content.]

#stranger things #steddie #eddie munson #missberrycake #wayne munson

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dragon-kazansky · 7 months ago

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Bridgerton shade of blue

Benedict Bridgerton x Female Reader

Benedict bumps into you, quite literally, at a ball while trying to escape his mother's attempts to find him a partner. You decide to humour him with a dance, not realising just how entwined you would become with him. It seems the universe will find every excuse to push you and Benedict together, no matter how much you fight it.

{Masterlist}

{Previous Chapter} - {Next Chapter}

Season one

Chapter Nine - Late night scandals

♡♡♡

"What do you think Bridgerton?"

Benedict turns around to find the artist he had accidentally offended at the gallery the other night.

"This one more to your liking?"

"Mr. Granville--" Benedict raises from his chair to approach the man.

"Perhaps they should take it over to Somerset House so it can be skyed right next to mine."

"I believe I owe you an apology, sir." Benedict says, feeling rather embarrassed.

"Unnecessary. I actually quite enjoy the eloquent stings of your critique. So?" He gestures back to the painting on the wall.

"A touch morose for my tastes," Benedict says.

Henry points to the next one.

"A tragedy. The hound deserved better," Benedict comments.

Granville laughs. "Where is yours?"

"My..."

"Your work," Granville clarifies. "Are you tell me you're not an artist yourself?"

"Well, I-- I suppose sometimes I like to... Well, I mean, I almost--"

"I believe 'yes' and 'thank you' are the words you seek. But either way, you should come by my studio." Mr Granville holds out a small card to Benedict, who accepts it. "The pieces I do for myself are there, and I think you will find my real work far less, um... Oh, how did you put it? 'Cold and lacking inner life?'"

Benedict scrunched up his face as he nodded, still burning with embarrassment. "I shall never live that down, shall I?"

Mr Granville leaves.

Benedict returns to his table where he had been absentmindedly doodling. Eyes. He was sketching out a pair of eyes. Pretty ones. From memory.

He sighs and closes the sketchbook.

♡♡♡

As you sit in the drawing room of the Bridgerton house, as invited by Violet, you discover that she had no idea about the boxing match, or that Daphne had been there.

You keep your eyes focused on the latest Whistledown paper, though you had stopped reading it.

Daphne was playing the piano while her mother interrogated her.

"A boxing match is no place for any young lady." Violet sighs.

"Is it a place for a prince? Was he at today's match, sister?" Hyacinth asks.

"He certainly was."

"It is a loathsome and barbarous form of entertainment," Violet was very displeased.

That was when Daphne took the opportunity to mention you had gone as well, which had Violet looking at you.

"You too?"

You glare softly at Daphne, who gives you a smug little look. Crafty one, she is.

"Anthony invited me," you admit.

Violet looked terribly ill all of a sudden. You were sure she would being this up with her eldest son at some point.

"What about the duke?" Hyacinth asks.

"What about the duke?" Both Violet and Daphne ask at the same time. You eye Daphne curiously from your seat.

"Was he also present?" Hyacinth asked, less enthusiastic now.

"I do not know," Daphne says. "If the duke was there, I did not see him."

Hyacinth leaves the piano to go see what Eloise is up to. She had been scribbling away in her book since you arrived.

You put the Whistledown column down and rose from your seat to seek entertainment near the window. Watching the street was surely more entertainment than listening in on that conversation.

Anthony enters the room and greets both his mother and his sister. You turn and he greets you too.

"Did you truly take your sister to a boxing match?" Violet hounds him.

"Your admonishment will have to wait. I have news," he cuts her lecture short. "Prince Friedrich has asked for my permission to propose." He looks at Daphne.

She stops playing. "So soon?"

"Well, what did you tell him?" Violet asks.

"That I know better than to answer for my sister. I have no objections to the man. People speak well of him. Whatever you decide, Daph, you shall have my support."

You look at Daphne quietly.

"I... uh... I..." She doesn't know what to say.

"You need not decide now," Violet tells her. "You certainly have no known him long."

"Let me know when you have an answer, and I shall convey it." Anthony says to his sister.

"Indeed." Daphne looks at him.

Anthony leaves as quickly as he came in. It was clear Daphne needed time to think.

♡♡♡

When Daphne had pleaded with you to attend the next ball with her, you couldn't say no. There was a sadness to her gaze, and you wondered from where it had risen.

Something had happened between her and the duke, and she had been off kilter ever since.

The ball, like all had been so far, was wonderful. The theme was a little more out there this time, but everyone was behaving quite perfectly.

You were standing with Daphne as she scanned the crowd. Exactly who she was looking for, you weren't quite certain. You would suggest the prince on the account that the duke was apparently leaving London tonight.

The prince could be seen across the room. He was in conversation with someone. You glance toward Daphne, but your gaze shifts as Cressida Cowper comes over. You give Daphne a gentle nudge.

"Daphne." Cressida chuckles. "You look beautiful, as always."

"Thank you, Cressida," Daphne says politely.

"You could have chosen anyone," Cressida says. "You have gentlemen lined up to pay you tribute. Yet you did not hesitate to steal my chance for happiness away, did you? I knew the marriage market would make rivals of us, but I never thought youcapable of being my enemy."

"The man made his choice, Cressida. What did you expect me to do?" Daphne asks.

Daphne walks off in the direction of the prince. You look at Cressida and then walk off in the other direction.

There is nothing you could ever say to her.

You begin to walk alongside the dance floor, watching the couples dance. A hand comes into view, and you turn to see a friendly looking young man smiling at you.

"May I have this dance?"

You take a moment to gather yourself. You had hoped one of the Bridgerton boys would be here to dance with you, but you supposed you couldn't rely on them every time.

"You may."

You go with him to dance.

It seemed Benedict wasn't here.

♡♡♡

Benedict was, in fact, making his way to the studio of Mr. Granville. He was intrigued by the artist.

He finds the address and knocks on the door. Henry Granville answers.

"Mr. Bridgerton."

Benedict stands there a little awkwardly.

"Come in, come in."

Granville lets him in. Benedict enters and follows him. He is led further inside and finds himself in a large room. A circle of easels presented around two nude models.

"I do not know what I was expecting, but it surely was not this." Benedict says.

"Oh, simply a gathering of like-minded souls." Henry tells him. "Here, let me show you what I've been working on."

Benedict is led further inside the studio. He passes a couple of painters discussing war so causally.

"What do you think?" Henry asks.

Benedict walks over and takes a look at the canvas.

"Hmm. It's a far cry from Somerset House, I must say."

"I shall take that a compliment."

They both chuckle.

"And I must say, I'm truly jealous. Is this your life?" Benedict asks.

"There are advantages to being the second-born." Henry tells him. "Heirs have the responsibility. Second sons have the fun."

They both chuckle again.

"So... why not go have some fun?" Henry gestures to the models. He's giving Benedict the chance to epress himself through art.

Benedict picks an easel and sits down.

♡♡♡

As you dance once again tonight, you spot Anthony standing off to the side. He's staring at the opera singer.

You hard heard whispers about him being infatuated with an opera singer, but had no idea if there lay any truth to them.

You continue dancing with your partner.

Benedict was still a no-show tonight, which you found to be rather disappointing. You had been looking forward to another evening of his little quips and teasing.

When the dance ends, you curtsy to your partner and head in the direction of Anthony and Violet. Lady Bridgerton had tries to introduce her son to a rather pretty young lady, but he showed no interest.

"Shall we dance, Lord Bridgerton?" You ask, looking at Anthony.

He turns and looks at you, for half a second, thinking you were another lady his mother was intent on pushing on him.

"Yes, let's." He offers his arm, and you take it. Violet watches you both go. Even if he chose you, she would be pleased, but she knows her son will not take you as his wife. You're his friend who has come to rescue him from her for a while.

Violet downs a third glass of champagne.

"She is persistent," you say.

"Hm?"

"Your mother."

Anthony chuckles softly. "Yes. Quite."

"The opera singer..."

He looks at you.

"Nevermind. Its not my business."

Anthony's expression softens. "I was - am - found of her."

"Yes. I assumed as much."

Anthony sighs. "It's complicated.

You nod and say no more on the matter. Anthony spins you around elegantly.

"Is Benedict not here tonight?" You ask, twirling with him.

"Benedict? No." He gazes at you. "Why do you ask?"

"I just noticed his absence."

"Missing your dance partner?" He teases.

You chuckle. "Am I that obvious?"

He winks at you, and you shake your head with a smile. "I'm fond of you boys. I can't help it when I notice one of you is missing."

Anthony grins. "How lucky we are to have gained such a special friend such as you."

As Anthony gives you another turn around the floor, you spot Colin speaking with Penelope. You smile softly at the sight and then turn your attention back to the eldest brother.

At least you'll have one Bridgerton on your dance card tonight.

As the next dance begins, Anthony keeps your company longer. You're aware this may catch attention from others, especially Lady Whistledown should she be here, but none the less, you dance with him twice.

You soon see that Colin has left Penelope on the sidelines to dance with Miss Thompson, and you also find the prince talking to Daphne amidst their dance.

The dance ends, and you manage to catch sight of Daphne fleeing the ballroom.

Anthony bows, and you curtsy.

"Until next time." He nods his head at you. You smile and nod, taking your leave. You worry about Daphne and intend to go check on her, but you're stopped by another gentleman.

You sigh and realise you'll have to dance with him before you can flee again.

The dance feels like it drags on, and on, and on. You smile, you listen to your partner talk, but your mind is focused on Daphne. She did not look well when she fled.

When the dance ends, you spot Anthony leaving the ballroom. You waste no more time and follow him.

He heads outside. You follow.

"Anthony?"

He turns and looks at you. "Go back inside."

"What's the matter? What's happening?"

"Did you see him?" Anthony asks urgently.

"Who?"

"The duke."

"He is here?"

"He was, and now I can't find Daphne." You realise he's concerned about his sister.

You hear something further in the garden, and Anthony hurries off. You follow him, close on his heels.

What you find is not what you ever expected to see.

Simon and Daphne were not just kissing. His hands were all over her. Her dress had been pulled down. You cover your mouth, though you can not hide the gasp that escapes you.

Anthony runs at Simon.

"Bastard!"

Simon receives a strong punch to the face. He falls to the ground, and Anthony takes another swing. He punches him a third time and then stands beside his sister. You hurry to her other side and checks her over.

"Daphne..."

She is speechless. She has no words for you. They have been caught in a compromising position.

"You will marry her," Anthony declares.

"What?" Daphne looks at her brother.

"Immediately. We can only hope no one saw you take such liberties, and my sister is saved further mortification. You will marry her!"

Anthony is angry.

"Brother!"

"I cannot marry her," Simon says.

"You have defiled her innocence, and now you refuse her hand? I knew you were a rake, Hastings, I never thought you a villain."

"I cannot marry her," Simon states more firmly.

Daphne looks hurt.

"Then you leave me no choice. I must demand satisfaction."

"A duel? Anthony, you cannot--" Daphne begins.

"He dishonours you, sister." Anthony looks at her. "He dishonours you and me and the very Bridgerton name. I have misjudged you, indeed. You have duped us both, but I shall not see my sister pay for my own misdeeds. We will settle this as gentlemen."

"I understand," Simon agrees. "I shall see you at dawn."

"I do not understand," Daphne says softly. "You would rather die than marry me?"

You look at Simon quietly.

"I am truly sorry."

"We need to go, Daph. Before anyone should see us." Anthony says softly.

You reach out for her arm gently and pull her away, Anthony follows you both.

Daphne takes her brother's arm after he begs of you not to say a word about anything. You swear by it, looking him in the eye. Anthony thanks you.

You drift off from them as you enter the ballroom once again.

Anthony approaches Colin and tells him he is taking her home. He asks Colin to take care of their mother. You decide to step in and help. Anthony looks grateful.

Anthony and Daphne leave.

Colin looks at you, but you just smile softly at him and ask him to help you with Violet. He doesn't say anything about Daphne or Anthony.

Neither do you.

♡♡♡

@callmemana - @lilscast - @imgondeletedis - @benedictbridgertonss - @clownsdiehard - @wxnterwidow333

@sillynilly27 - @autumn-slaves - @ben-has-arrived - @ajdelilah - @aadu2173

@booknerdlife - @tamlinrose - @sarahskywalker-amidala - @cheryyluv - @louschan - @lou-la-lou - @cultish-corner

@hopshusushi - @katherinejess - @nannabug - @afunkyfreshblog - @f0x33 - @dd122004dd

@jupitervenusearthmars - @orchiidflwer - @bespinnn - @captainlunaxmen - @winchestersimpalababy - @acupnoodle

@ms-fandomgirl - @fablesrose - @anyaisinyourcloset - @meowzerzstuff - @orchiidflwer - @bespinnn - @crazymar15

@cosmixstar - @bree3parchen -

#Bridgerton shade of blue #benedict bridgerton x reader #Bridgerton #female reader #dragon writes

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kurthummeldeservesbetter · 12 days ago

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other ideas for what happens after Viktor wakes up:

He and Jayce make out passionately and get the hell out of piltover and then they go spend the rest of their days as a small mechanics/toy shop owners.

Jayce says lmao nah bro you clearly aren’t in the right headspace right now at least rest for a day before leaving and Viktor is like whelp can’t argue against that logic

Viktor is like you want to be the John the Baptist to my Jesus and Jayce is like I don’t know what the fuck that is but sure

Jayce gives him a fluffy robe instead of that magic sheet cloak and Viktor realizes he can’t be a cult leader looking like that so he just pouts in the lab for the rest of time

Viktor amnesia AU????? Oh the possibilities. He’s like hi I just got here and I’m purple. why am I naked and also who are you. Who am I. Do I have a name, a last name too perhaps? oooooo and jayce is like well we’re partners. And Viktor is like married? And Jayce is like whelp fuck it yeah. Married! (That way he can also solve the problem of Viktor not having a last name)

OOOOO Viktor’s magic/hexcore cult also affects Jayce? Feels compelled to follow him no matter what? And Viktor is now Came Back Different and is like well don’t know what to do about that!

Viktor gets out of the hexcore 3d painting whatever the fuck he was in and he’s just. Back to normal. Regular healthy man. Viktor is like well my terminal illness and chronic pain is gone but now how do I style myself without my cane?? he leaves to go figure it out lmao

Viktor gets out and everything is the same except he’s got a Jersey accent. Like a deep one. He doesn’t know it’s changed. Jayce is like well fuck. *contemplates pushing him back in to try and reverse it*

Viktor gets out and he’s like well I’m pissed you didn’t destroy it and also made more weapons but I’d likely use it to save you too (debatable for some but work with me here) let’s just start fresh and also I need real clothes before we stop this war. (He and Jayce also make out in this one too.)

Viktor gets out and he’s a cat. Jayce is happy. (He’s allergic to dogs).

#arcane #jayce talis #viktor arcane #jayce x viktor #arcane spoilers #jayvik

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glassrowboat · 8 months ago

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Daydream in a Nightmare

Authors note: I read a soulmate au where with dream sharing. Everytime you fall asleep you and your SM would meet in a world that would reflect your consciousness and who you were. So down below are the boys and what I think the places their dreams would depict.

Mondstadt

Diluc: The cathedral. His mom, back when she was alive, used to play during service and afterwards Diluc ran over greeting her with the biggest smile, asking her to play him one more song. She never failed to. Maybe that's why there's always a gentle melody playing whenever you see him as he rests his fingers over the same white tiles, simply trying to remember how to play.

Kaeya: The Dawn Winery. Or at least parts of it. Behind closed doors there's the scent of grass, of dirt, and the faintest smell of ash. He says it's simply the vineyard that in the real world would be right outside, but he knows well as he pulls your hand from the doorknob that it's ruins of a fallen nation haunting him right on the other side.

Albedo: Glass walls. A maze of mirrors and reflections. If you ever have stopped to bother to count between Albedo’s musings as he shares with you the secrets of the world, you'd notice that for some reason he always has more reflections in the walls around you than of your own figure. Like there's more of him than there is of you.

Venti: Old Mondstadt. Back before the revolution, back when there were people in the streets wishing their God weren't so unjust, but in his dreams that wall of spiraling wind is never there. A warped perception of a life he wished to have lived as he sits in your lap not as Venti the bard, but a wind sprite trying to bury into your clothes for warmth. Just don't call him pipsqueek or he'll try and bite your fingers. Playfully. You think.

Liyue

Zhongli: A place that no longer exists, one torn away by this world during the archon war. It's unlike him not to comment on a place, a trinket, an item, as you pick something up and fiddle with it, but this place he never goes into full detail on. However, he will tell you all about the artisanship of the table you two are sharing tea over.

Baizhu: His home back in Chenyu Vale, back before the illness hit his village, back before his parents passed away. Just a modest home that shows signs of being truly well lived in and loved. Mindlessly while you two talk he'll be cleaning the place, just the way he always does at the pharmacy. Though it does help give him something to fill the silence. It turns out he's a lot more used to Changsheng chiming in with comments than he thought. He just hopes you two get along when the time to meet in person finally comes about.

Ga ming: A festival. There's water kicking up at everyone's feet, up to everyones ankles as people with their face covered in all manner of masks walk you both by. Ga ming would pull you along from booth to booth, trying his best to win prizes despite the fact you both know they'll be gone by the time you wake.

Xiao: A Chinese pavilion in the sky. You walk among the clouds as you follow the path of the street, looking over the accents that seem somehow both rich in color and dull, muddied all at the same time. Something you've noticed from his dreams compared to yours, his always have a lingering black fog creeping in at the corner of your eyes. It makes you feel like someone else is in this world with you, like there's eyes waiting to do more than just watch.

Inazuma

Kazooha: A meadow. The wind passes you both by, stirring up pages of books you two sit reading in silence. You can't help but wonder if these are all books he's read before, especially the ones that wax poetry or something else. His thoughts, perhaps? Maybe Kazuha's very own writings? But that matters little as his head is resting on your shoulder as you try to catch words between the fluttering sheets of paper.

Itto: A kabuki play. It always ends up in you two hiding away in the back room where the performers would get ready before getting back out on stage for the next act. You would see the brightest of colors, richest of fabrics, and practiced movements so fine tuned that you can't understand why Itto is so focused on taking the makeup on the vanity in the back simply so he can paint your face with red marks just like his. To each their own you suppose, and who are you to complain when it means drawing hearts on his arm when Itto isn't paying attention?

Gorou: A tea house. It's a small place, simple, but certainly not lacking charm as Gorou pours you a cup. At first the fact you could actually taste the rich herbs on your tongue in this dreamscape threw you off, but now it's just another part of this odd reality. But saying that, the first time you spat out the drink he offered as soon as the bitter taste hit you. Apparently he never expected you to not already be used to green tea. The poor fella was apologizing for the rest of the night, ears laid flat on his head and tail tucked between his legs. It's okay though, you made it even by trying to give him dog treats. It was you having to beg for forgiveness then.

Thoma: It was different this time. No glowing blue flowers and a forest that you two would stroll through mindlessly while chatting for hours. No, this time Thoma was sitting on a wooden platform below a giant stone statue. Intriguing, yes, but mattered little compared to the rope burns around his wrist. He tried to tell you not to worry about it. That it was an accident. But that mattered little as your lips pressed to the red, irritated skin and he gave you a strained smile. You knew better than to ask about it more from there.

Ayato: It's ever changing. It's like he is constantly thinking of something whenever He falls asleep and it reflects in his dreams. Once it was a Japanese styled room the next it was some room in Fontaine's architecture. But it's always a bedroom. A place of relaxation as Ayato buries his head in your lap like it was a pillow. He'll whine about being overworked until you're tempted to pull on his hair just to make the man shut up for once, but last time you did that it led to the bed being used for a lot more than just rest. For now just pat his head and let him vent, the man needs it.

Sumeru

Kaveh: A sketch brought to life from his mothers blueprints. One he saw his mother sketching back when Kaveh was a boy and she would let him sit on her lap, let him comment on the drawings. She would always find some way to incorporate his addictions into the sketch. Nowadays he knows the building that was actually constructed in the end to be simpler, duller than the one his mother wanted, but in his dreams with you it stands tall and proud.

Al Haitham: An attic. It's dusty and it clearly had a hole in the roof that was covered over by some wooden planks and nails. A patch work job that needs to be fixed but if you ever take the time to bother with it while Al Haitham sits in an old rocking chair covered by a quilt reading the night away it will only be there the next dream cycle. It pisses you off. He pisses you off. All nonchalance and an apathetic look even as you plop yourself in his lap and take that book away. And what pisses you off even more? How he dares to call you needy as he holds you close. It's best to ignore the fact he started reading over your shoulder.

Tighnari: Pardis Dhyai. He'll sit on the walkway watching you kick the water of the ponds around, paying no mind to when you splash at him. Not anymore at least. He's learned quickly if he makes a snarky comment you'll give one back and it'll go on and on until somehow it ends in him getting dragged into the pond with you. Both dripping algae filled water as he wondered what gods made this numbskull his mate.

Cyno: Lambad's Tavern. Everytime he would come back from treks in the desert he would go there, get a drink, and play a round of cards with whoever was willing. It was a pattern. Work, work, rest, and more work. But now he didn't have to constantly be on work mode as he sat with you in the old booth shuffling cards as he tried to explain to you how TCG works. So far everytime you lose you've thrown those elemental dice and him, and with a smile he lets them hit him in the head despite being fully able to dodge them. His soulmate is such a sore loser.

Wanderer: Shakkei Pavilion. He hates it. Hates that this is the place his unconscious has chosen to sink onto so stubbornly. His wooden fingers would slide over the paintings depicting Scaramouche’s past that has now been severed from him in everyone's eyes but Nahida and the Traveler. If you knew, would you still hold his hand? Would you still trace the details of his joints and comment that you find his pretty face such a stark contrast to his sharp words? He's afraid to find out, the idea that you might be his fourth betrayal always lingering in the back of his mind.

Fontaine

Neuvillette: Under the water where the currents would carry stray bits of seaweed and fish swimming past. The first time you shared a dream with him here he had to calm you down as instinctively you held your breath, taking your hands in his and assuring you if he can talk like this, you can suck in air just as well. It took some time getting used to, but now he watches as you grab starfish off the ocean floor and bring them over to him like a prize to be presented. This is what humans must be like Neuvillette tells himself as you braid them into his hair.

Worcestershire sauce: A home. A nice one at that. Big, had decent furnishings, pictures of kids hung up on the wall. If you listened closely enough you could even hear children playing outside from the cracked open windows that showed the brightest sky outside. Wriothesly would walk behind you as you would watch the grass blowing in the wind, not saying a word as he rested his chin on top of your head. He never thought he'd be back here again. The very place made him feel sick to his stomach, but with you? It was bearable. Even as you tried to grab his handcuffs from him.

Snezhnaya

Childe: His childhood home. Back before the renovations he bought for the place with his money as a harbinger, back before the redecorating of rooms to fit more children, and back to what the house was like when he was just a boy yet to fall into the abyss. Back when everything was simpler. He would pick up toys that have gone missing, never to be seen again and stare in wonder how it all is exactly how he remembers it. It makes it so much easier to be Ajax with you, rather than Tartaglia.

Dottore: The hospital he was working in when trying to help Eleazar patients. For the life of him does he hate it, being back in the desert always having to tip his shoes out of sand that never seems to fully clear off. It doesn't help you try and pour sand down his shirt, but in a way he supposes it's better you two stay out here under that blistering sun than you going inside to be met with the smell of death. No, you don't need to know about that side of him just yet.

Pantalone: His office. It always makes it hard to tell at first if he's awake, not when the same scene greets him either way. You always joke about him being married to his work and you're the mistress in this relationship. At this point he counts on the comment as soon as his eyes flutter open and he's greeted with the sight of you sitting on the desk he's been using as a pillow. Still, he can never help the genuine smile at seeing you once again.

Captain: A flower field. The snowdrops peek out from under the fluffy blanket of white powder, crunching under every step he takes. Even in his dreams the cold of Snezhnaya is ever present, ever biting. It only makes sense you are shivering behind him even as he lets you steal his cloak that is more of a blanket on you than anything. This field, he knows it well, knows that what waters these flowers is more blood than anything else, but that matters little as he wraps his arms around you. Maybe he can find a way to dream you a proper jacket.

Pierro: A grand hall. It reminds you of the way ballrooms are described in romance stories as the couple depicted would dance the night away. Columns so high you have to tilt your head back just to see where they meet the ceiling covered in paintings you've never seen before. That is until Pierro steps into your view. He always offered his hand to you before you could ask, and as your fingers interlocked he would tell you about them. Always ready to answer your questions. It meant someone was curious about a part of his long lost nation. So, of course, he was always happy to share.

Scaramouche: A never ending fire. It's a small shack, engulfed by flames that never seem to dwindle or burn out the wood it feeds on. Like this place was stuck in time in his mind. He doesn't talk to you, not any more than a sharp shut up. The only time that glare he showed you disappeared is when you pulled your hand back from the curious fire with a hiss, not expecting it to actually hurt in this fake reality. For a moment you could have sworn he took a step towards you, but he never came any closer than that as he hissed at you to be careful. Dumb mortals should at least know not to burn themselves.

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 months ago

Text

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s homes.”

“Yes. And we’ve seen plenty of living ones too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

“You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio Junction up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio Junction to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a glimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x y/n

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nightisawkward · 24 days ago

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"Another challenger… it has been ages. Perhaps you have forgotten how this game is played. Allow me to remind you."

Happy halloween fellas!!! Hermitcraft/Life SMP inscryption AU ft. Boatem gang I cooked up awhile ago but never got around to posting B-) Wild life smp has reminded me how mentally ill I am about putting these Guys in Situations so here I am

Mild to major inscryption spoilers under the cut!

For those familiar with the game, the general roles are:

Luke Carter - "Challenger"/Grian

In this AU Grian is still a trading card-based youtuber who's recording all this nonsense going down real time as in canon, but has closer ties to the GameFuna company equivalent, named "WatcherCorp". His old college roommate/best mate Jimmy went to work for them, but mysteriously passed away in a fire at their headquarters. He found the Inscryption cards in Jimmy's leftover personal belongings a few years after his death, and decided that the best way to honor him would be to make a video featuring the project he put his heart and soul into... in more ways than one.

Key difference from canon Inscryption: Grian's mind is sucked into the game of Inscryption whenever he is playing. He is able to enter and leave the game at will, but he doesn't realize this until he first dies to Leshy/Pearl and ejects himself unconsciously out of fear of dying. The only reason he realizes he isn't hallucinating is because his camcorder footage proves he actually enters the game. He obtains the "Watcher's Eye" during Act 1, which he keeps for all future acts and allows him to see things he shouldn't see as a Challenger.

P03 - "Scarred Stoat"/Scar

Despite being the one who convinces Grian and the other Scrybes to stand up against Pearl, no one seems eager to spend any more time with the conniving conman than absolutely necessary. This may have something to do with Scar's history of backstabbing and cheating both Scybes and Challengers whenever it benefits him most. Which makes it rather unfortunate that Grian is must spend time with Scar in order to gather as much information as possible.

In the beginning, Scar and Grian do not get along in the slightest. Grian finds Scar's attitude too "fake", while Scar finds Grian's "cowardice" to be irritating. At some point, the two go from passive-aggressive fighting, to a grudging truce, to more friendly, lighthearted banter. Neither person seems to trust the other, but it doesn't seem to stop the two from being ✨saddled with unnecessary feelings✨. Scar's Act 3 world is much like Leshy's Act 1 world, with much more emphasis put on environmental storytelling and general Vibes than actual gameplay. Even if his game is a smokescreen for his true goal of Ascension, he feels strangely obligated to give Grian his best shot.

Scar in his proper Scrybe form appears more steampunk than canon P03. Think of a Grumbot with Scar's boatem base aesthetic and tons of missing nuts and bolts. P03's bastardous tendencies+ Scar's steampunk base made this role perfect for him.

Magnificus - "Horned Wolf"/Impulse

Impulse is a talented artist and an even more talented programmer. His future sight stems from his literal sight: His eyes are able to see read the code veil behind Inscryption, allowing him to predict likely futures based on what code is running. He often laments his status as an NPC, claiming that if he were given administrative privileges and the actual ability to modify source code he would have been able to escape Inscryption long ago.

He is rather absent in Act 2, focusing on finishing his "artwork" as soon as possible. He uses his brush to create a menagerie magical creatures with strange abilities in hopes that using one in battle might trigger a unfixable bug, allowing him to rip a hole through the source code. It is unclear whether he was able to accomplish his goal before Act 3 roles around, but it seems like Scar's method of Ascension seems awfully similar to Impulse's... perhaps a sneaky spy was able to steal Impulse's information?

As a proper Scrybe, he resembles a walking mop or a yak with overgrown fur. Most of his features are indistinguishable, save for his small horns and his glowing goat eyes.

Lemora - "Distinguished Stinkbug"/Mumbo

Mumbo is by far the most easygoing Scrybe in the cast. While he would greatly prefer an eternal slumber over yet another temporary ceasefire amongst the Scrybes, he is willing to work with the others in Act 1 simply because he finds his stinkbug form too uncomfortable to sleep in. Mumbo's goal is simple: to delete the game of Inscryption, and therefore himself, and finally rest. However, finds the constant power struggles in the world of Inscryption rather tiring and simply can't be bothered to make a grab for power himself to achieve this goal. This hasn't stopped him from asking Grian to destroy floppy disk of Inscryption. Unfortunately for him, the temptation of the o̷l̵d̷ ̶d̸a̶t̷ [REDACTED] mysteries within Inscryption are simply too powerful for Grian to resist.

As a proper Scrybe, he looks almost exactly like Mumbo's minecraft skin: A pale, mustached man with blood red eyes who resembles a vampire. Mumbo denies all vampire allegations. While he is the most "normal" looking Scrybe, Grian would still hesitate to call him "human" ...there's just something slightly off about his appearance that sets him on edge.

Leshy - "Game Master"/Pearl

Pearl is an unforgiving gamemaster that puts more emphasis on providing the player a challenge than her canon counterpart. After her self-proclaimed "tutorial", there is no more handholding and she gives Grian an absolute hellish time. Grian is only able to get a slight edge when he discovers all of the Scrybes, who provide him with stategy help to even the playing field. It is unclear whether Pearl actually enjoys running her Act 1 game or not: she seems to derive an animalistic pleasure from defeating Grian, but there are times where she seems tired and fed up with the endless gameplay loop and intentionally throws during key fights. She switches between manic and depressed at the drop of a hat.

During Act 2, she barely even tries to give Grian a challenge, allowing him to progress straight to her boss fight without any side quests to "get it over with quicker". She seems to hold a deep grudge against Scar for some reason, which is the only thing that motivates her to take action to stop him during Act 3.

Mysteriously, Grian finds a burned and unusable Unicorn card within her Act 1 cabin. Upon discovery, Scar immediately suggests that Grian leave it where he found it. Some things are best left forgotten, after all...

#grian #pearlescentmoon #goodtimeswithscar #impulsesv #mumbo jumbo #boatem #hermitcraft #life series #inscryption #boatem inscryption AU #my nart #I fucking love crossover AUs. Please talk to me about this please please please please please

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moodymisty · 4 months ago

Text

𝕽𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗 𝕺𝖓𝖑𝖞 𝕸𝖊

[ 𝕸𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞𝕸𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖞'𝖘 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙 | 𝕬𝖔3 ]

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 soon

Author's Note: Hi... I finally finish this part. The last two are actually fairly close to being done, I was just really held up on this one. It's not my favorite, but I just had to get it done.

Summary: A Night Lord becomes interested in you while you stand under the eyes of your Salamander guardian, and you find yourself stuck between two titans.

Relationships: Yandere Salamander/Fem!Reader/Yandere Night Lord

Warnings: Hints of nsfw at points, Yandere, Size differences, Very toxic suffocating relationship(s), Some knight/princess dynamics, Demeaning language, Both these guys have hero complexes, Violence blood and bruises and possibly death to say without spoilers

Word Count: 1376

Ever since the moment you met him, Lev has been your shadow whenever Ralkan isn’t around.

Every time, not long after you leave your quarters, he seems to find you.

Whereas the Salamanders have rigid training regimens they must abide by every single day- though day is a bit of a loose term in the depths of space - it seems the Night Lords are largely left up to their own devices as you travel to their destination.

You suppose it makes sense, daily training wouldn’t do much for them other than entertainment; These Night Lords are clearly the best of the their genestock, brought aboard to show the Salamanders who they were working with.

Ralkan had been extremely displeased with you when you’d called this all a pissing contest. The much younger Salamander in your company at the time had snickered at your joke before getting quickly reprimanded and sulked his way back to the firing range.

But as much as he denied your comment and attempted to dissuade any ill will between the two legions as merely the occasion disagreement, you've heard from around the ship that attempts to keep things amicable however have largely failed. You’ve heard rumors of the Night Lords getting into fights with Salamanders, barking and goading confrontation like rowdy, feral street dogs.

Ever since Lev had an altercation with a Salamander- you don't even know if he was the first one to do so- it seems to have only gotten worse. And you still have at least another two weeks in travel before you reach your destination, with everyone trapped in here like fish in a barrel.

At least the Salamanders have weapons, the baseline humans aboard the ship have been forced to shuffle around and avoid eyesight of any Night Lords, and pray they don't stick out of the crowd.

Your conversations with the others aboard the ship might be brief, but you know that some have gone missing. As if the implications let out by Lev's cohorts at the time of your first meeting hadn't already queued you in on it.

Sitting at your desk in the midst of some monotonous work you glance to your left, leaning over to open a drawer and reveal the contents.

The centerpiece of them all is a Night Lord combat knife. The metal shines, but far less that you would expect it to. It's like it eats the very light that touches it. You kept it hidden, Emperor forbid Ralkan found it, but...

You didn't want to throw it away either.

You could hear the sound of the pipes thrumming as you looked up at Lev, and he looks down on you. A serf passed by behind him at a quick pace; Even quicker when Lev turned just slightly at the neck to watch them and make sure they moved along.

He'd found a moment in-between moments- the few seconds where Ralkan wasn't watching - to find you. Perhaps that should unsettle you. But he's given you the first real conversations you've had in awhile besides Ralkan, and you couldn't help but pause.

Ralkan is a safe embrace, Lev is a precarious drop; But you keep looking over the edge.

"You look tired," He said, looking down at you with lazy eyes. He always looks somewhat sleepy and unimpressed himself.

"I was going back to my quarters to sleep, until you stopped me." He grew a smirk that showed sharp, near overgrown canine teeth.

"Maybe you should tell that Salamander of yours to back off then."

You crossed your arms across your chest like a self-assuring hug and focused on the bat wings stretched across the chestplate of his armor.

"Do you know he always has eyes on you? Even when he isn't around? Even his brothers are watching you."

You assumed he's been having trouble getting a moment where it's just you; Many have, not just him. Ralkan has watched you so intently since Lev started sinking his talons into you, and despite finding comfort in him keeping the Night Lord with unknown intentions at bay, you also find yourself tugging away for just an inch of space.

Unfortunately, that space leads right into Lev.

"...His name is Ralkan."

You swallow a knot in your throat. As much as you knew you could talk to Ralkan, push back against some things he said, you had no idea where Lev's limits are; What words might make him decide you're more fun as toy he can break than one he's gentle with.

"Here."

Lev reached to his belt and pulled a knife from it, tossing it in the air gently to grab it by the blade tip and push it out towards you. You didn't touch it, leaning away and staring at it like it's diseased. It might as well be; You don't know what unsaid intentions you'd be accepting if you took it from him.

"I saw your Salamander gave you something," You assumed he was talking about a small trinket Ralkan had made at the forge for you, one of a few. The necklace that dangles around you neck at all times now was also from him.

A practice with things more delicate, he had said.

"Here's something of my own. Don't lose it."

You hadn't lost it, but it had taken some hiding to keep it out of Ralkan's sight. You knew that if he saw it, the rough and disgusting gift- much unlike Ralkan's delicate one - would be gone in an instant.

Perhaps you shouldn't care, it's from an astartes you barely know, but something about it just makes you want to keep it.

Your entire vision as been Ralkan over these past few months. Especially these recent weeks since Lev arrived. The sight of something, someone else is almost enthralling- no matter how dangerous. You've caught yourself looking at the knife multiple times now, remembering the way Lev's armoured fingers wrapped around sharp edge of the blade as he gave it to you, even once having to slam the drawer shut quickly just before Ralkan entered your room to take you somewhere.

He hasn't caught wind of the knife itself yet, but you have a feeling he knows you're hiding something. He's given you openings to say, but you've declined them all. You assume he knows Lev is somehow finding you and is hoping you'll tell him how, what rat holes he's using to get to you, and it frustrates him that you won't.

He probably thinks the astartes is threatening you to not tell him. Rather than that you don't want to.

You close the drawer, hearing the contents jingle around while sighing.

You'd curse even coming aboard the Flamewrought, but you can't deny the advantages of being here. Your work, the people you've met, though most of those people are gone; Ralkan is almost all that remains. You speak to some of his men at times, but the interaction is always brief and controlled.

“Where’s your Salamander now, little one?”

You suddenly burst up from your chair, it sliding with a hideous squeal as you hit it with the back of your knees and nearly stumble over. Lev meanwhile stands in the doorway, watching before stepping inward. You take a step backward as his right hand reaches out to slam the door controls and shut it behind him.

“He left you all alone in here?”

You hold your hands close to your chest as if trying to protect yourself, watching him stare at you with black eyes.

“These are my quarters, he doesn’t stay here.”

Lev scoffs and rolls his eyes. He steps closer, ignoring the way you step back to try and maintain the distance. Seeing him in the halls is one thing; There's a chance a Salamander could see you in distress and help you, or you could scream and try to run, but here you're far out of the way of everyone else by design, and with nowhere to even try fleeing to.

"I'm sure he would choose otherwise, had he the chance. He keeps a very close eye on you, you know. He'd be quite disappointed you left the door unlocked." You do know, quite well in fact, and reiterate as such.

"I'm... Well aware of how through his guardianship is."

He must find either you or the situation funny, and laughs.

"What then, does his Salamander duty and rigor prevent him from going any further? Or do you have someone else already, and he's forced to keep his hands to himself?" He laughs again, but it comes out like an indignant snort.

"A pity, I'm sure it makes him furious having to spend so much time protecting a little thing like you and not even get to enjoy it."

It's cold in this room, always is- the entire ship is chilled, recirculated air - and it makes you able to feel the noticeable heat radiating from his body and his armor as he approaches you.

He smiles, leaning in closer. You know you're out of space when your shoulderblades finally knock against the wall.

Closer again. You can feel his breath on your face, how his long hair tickles your skin. Even closer and his stubble rubs against your skin, burning it.

His lips press against yours and you whimper into his mouth, a noise that makes him moan. Your fear spurs him on and he presses his lips to yours harder, feeling when your hands grab the seams of his armour and either try to helplessly push him away, or at least hold on until he's finished with you. The scar across his upper lip scrapes against yours much like his stubble does- everything about him is rough and jagged. Only when your whimpers get louder and start turning into muffled cries does he finally pull away, his teeth raking over your bottom lip before he pulls them away with a soft ‘pop’.

His smile his bright, like he just found a brand new toy.

“You are soft,”

He says, twisting his brother’s words from weeks earlier. He has this look in his eyes, bright with curiosity, like he’s enthralled by something so simple. You can feel your heart slamming against your chest as you stand in his shadow, tears wanting to prick at the corners of your eyes. You know you have something he wants, but while he's being gentle, the vast unknown behind his eyes his terrifying. But is that unknown better that suffocating?

Lev seems to think it is, one his his gauntlets gripping your clothing as gentle as the armour allows him.

"I can take you, I'll get you away from him and I can keep you safe, all to mys-"

"Get away from her."

Lev pulls back, turning to see Ralkan standing in the opening doorway. His hand rests on the handle of his chainsword ready to pull the trigger and rev it to life, and the look he's giving the Night Lord is nothing short of hellfire.

"It is one thing to be on our ship, but I thought I was quite firm in my orders to keep your disgusting hands off of her, and keep your distance."

The smile Lev had quickly fades into an unimpressed and angry sort of look, wrinkling his nose. He doesn't move away from you, instead just turning.

"You don't get to order me around. I'm no brother of yours."

That struck a nerve of Ralkan's, you can instantly tell. His shoulders squared and his hand flexes around the handle of his chainsword, just tight enough that you hear the engine start to kick on and the chain's teeth rattle as it threatens to spin to life.

“I am from Nocturne. I am well versed in slaying dragons, a rat like you should be nothing at all.”

Lev rolls his eyes, unimpressed by Ralkan's formality. He finally turns from trapping you against the wall to give the Salamander his full attention, allowing you to scurry off to the side.

But while Lev seems casual his hand rests close to his own blade, and despite the smirk on his face and casual lean he is just as prepared to fight as Ralkan is.

“Even if you do kill me Salamander, it doesn’t change that you’re just hoarding her all to yourself.”

The two and their energies make this room feel microscopic in size, as Ralkan shifts and evens his footing. Lev straightens up slightly, putting his hands closer to the weapons hanging from his hip.

You stand back trapped in here with them, with no chance of racing by without either one grabbing you for themselves.

You can only step back, and hope that it doesn’t escalate any further than this.

#warhammer 40k x reader #space marine x reader #salamander x reader #reader insert #reader #mywriting #Yandere!Salamander/Fem!Reader/Yandere!NightLord

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