#saw a tag in the notes about that the other day so... just clarifying!) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fairysluna · 1 year ago

Note

Hi! Could I please request another threesome with Cregan, reader and Jace. Maybe they get jealous when they see reader with another men and want to teach her a lesson? Thank you and love your blog!

i get drunk on jealousy.

Modern!AU — After they've ignored you for a week, you were desperate to have their attention back. Flirting with a random guy might not be the best idea.

MASTERLIST

PAIRING — Cregan Stark x Fem!Reader x Jacaerys Velaryon.

TAGS — polyrelationship/polyamorous, m/m/f, smut (p in v, clit play, handjob, oral sex, creampie, spitting, cum eating, male on male action), jace x cregan, use of alcohol and drugs, kind of drunk sex, dom!cregan, switch!jace, sub!reader, jealousy, cursing. If something is missing let me know!!

AUTHOR'S NOTE — Don't expect so much of this fic, I saw this picture, I saw a vision, and basically my horniness wrote this by itself. Not my best work, but fuck it, this is just for fun. Also, this made me realize that I'm unable to write dom!Jace if Cregan is there too, oops??? I guess??? NO BETA, WE DIE LIKE MEN.

I took this request as an excuse to write this fic so... thank you for sending it and hope you enjoy this!🤍

WORD COUNT — 3.1k

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤenglish is not my first language.

Most people on Campus knew about your strange relationship with Cregan and Jacaerys. Some guys would often call you a whore behind your back, while some girls would prefer the term ‘lucky bitch’; it was no secret that the both of them were quite known for being handsome and gallant, almost acting like real life prince-charmings. Every girl would drool for them, acknowledging their chivalry and politeness. Of course, they already knew about the attention that they received from the opposite sex, they knew about how many girls would love to be in your position. Which is why they didn't understand why you were so eager to act like a brat.

Jace tapped Cregan's shoulder as he saw you chatting with some random guy that suddenly appeared next to you on the couch. Neither of them had seen him before, he was probably a freshman or someone that sneaked into the party without invitation. Both pairs of eyes were intently staring at you, watching every move you make. They knew you weren't oblivious enough to not see it; he was obviously flirting with you, and you were clearly enjoying every moment of it. Jacaerys, being the most jealous out of the three of you, tightened his grip around his bottle of beer, his fingertips turning white as Cregan turned to look at him.

“Don't do anything stupid,” he warned him. “She'll deal with us later.”

“But look at her!” Jace snapped, his breathing ragged.

“She's doing it to piss us off,” Cregan attempted to calm him down. “She won't do anything with that guy. Just wait until the party's over and we'll take care of it, okay?”

He looked at him, obediently nodding as he took a long sil out of his beer to calm down a bit. Jace forbade himself to turn your way, ignoring your desperate attempt to make them jealous. Cregan, being a lot less hotheaded than Jace, acted nonchalantly toward your attitude, pretending you were doing nothing wrong, even when he wanted to grab your arm and take you right in that couch just to clarify that you belong to them.

Cregan knew your purpose, you both had spoken about it earlier that day after one of your classes together. They both have been ignoring you, neglecting your needs and spending more time alone — without you. At first you didn't mind it, thinking that they were busy with the final exams and their final projects of the semester; however, when you knew they were using all that time to plan this stupid party you got pissed, almost screaming at him in the middle of the campus, frustrated. Now here you were, sitting with a freshman trying to get in your pants, all while they were still ignoring you.

Both guys spent the rest of the night drinking, playing some games with other members of the fraternity and having a blast while you were standing in a corner, alone and bored; your two lovers out of your sight. Perhaps that was why you couldn't see Jace searching for you everytime he could, unable to control the jealousy that had grown within him. He couldn't find you anywhere around, which made his mind overthink about where you were, and with whom. Cregan would try to calm him down, offering him his blunt which Jace would accept in order to relax.

Hours passed, it was 4am when the music stopped and everyone passed out in random parts of the fraternity house. Cregan and Jace were stumbling their way up to their dorm, the effects of the alcohol still lingering in their bodies as they struggled to reach for their room. They both were holding onto each other until they opened the door and saw you standing in front of the mirror, wiping off your make up and getting ready to sleep. They noticed you had moved their beds together, making a bigger one as you usually do whenever you stayed with them.

They entered the room in silence, and while Cregan was closing the door and turning the lock, Jace stood closer to you almost drooling once he saw you were wearing one of his shirts. He wrapped his arms around your waist and hid his face on the crock of your neck, leaving wet kisses all over your skin and completely forgetting about the fact that he was supposed to be ignoring you.

“You're so fucking weak, Jace,” Cregan scolded him, removing his shoes and shirt, getting ready to bed.

You turned to look at the eldest guy, who just ignored your intense gaze.

“You're mad?” you dared to ask.

“We both are, actually,” Jacaerys murmured against your skin.

“And why would you be mad? I should be the angry one!”

“Oh, really?” Cregan finally turned, stepping closer to you. “Why is that?”

“You know why! We talked about this and you decided to keep ignoring me!”

Stark laughed dryly, his gray eyes getting darker as he narrowed them. “Is that why you've been acting like a fucking whore tonight? Trying to get into a freshman's pants to get our attention. Fucking pathetic.” He took a step close enough to grab your jaw and force you to look at him. You tried to squirm away from him, but Jace's arms tightened their grip around your body, and you had no escape. “Jace couldn't even enjoy the fucking party because he thought you were sucking another guy's cock. You think that's fair? To make him feel like shit the entire night because you were just needy of attention?”

“I- I didn't-”

“You broke my heart tonight, sweetheart,” Jace whispered in your ear as his fingers reached the hem of your shirt. “You need to pay for what you've done…”

“I'm- I'm sorry, I never meant to-”

“It seems like you need a lesson,” Cregan interrupted you, tightening his grip on your face and making you whine. “Something to remind you that you belong to us.”

Jacaerys' hand cupping your core with one of his hands, burying his fingers between your folds and covering them with your growing slick. He giggled, “she's not wearing panties…” he informed, smiling up at Cregan who clenched his jaw.

“Get her on her knees,” he commanded, and the youngest obeyed immediately, letting you go from his firm grip.

You fell to your knees, scratching them with the raspy carpet beneath you. Jace removed his shirt as Cregan started to unbutton his pants until they pooled around his ankles along with his underwear. You whimpered once you saw his cock starting to get hard under your haze, your mouth watering as you leaned towards his side.

“Get on the bed,” he pointed at Jace. You tried to stand up and follow the instructions too, yet he stopped you by gripping the front of your head and pulling it back. “Not you,” he sternly said. “Open up.”

Obediently, you did as you were told, opening your mouth and letting him press his tip on your tongue. He gave it a few taps, teasing before ge finally decided to start fucking your mouth. Cregan grabbed the sides of your head to keep you still in your position, and his hips started to snap against your throat without further warning. You found stability when you placed your cold hands on his thighs, grasping onto them so you wouldn't lose balance as he had no mercy with you.

You looked up teary eyed, gagging and gulping loudly as you heard his moans slipping out of his plump lips. The small eye contact suddenly became too much for him, so he leaned his head back as he closed his eyes. “Such a delicious mouth,” he praised you, “taking my cock so fucking well.”

His grip around your head started to hurt a bit, his fingertips burying in you as he fastened his pace. It wasn't hard for you to become a mess; your own drool was falling down the corners of your lips as you cried out, your whines being muffled by him inside your mouth, and your slick already starting to leak out of you. Your arousal only grew once he buried himself completely in your mouth, grabbed the back of your head and forced you to stay there for a few seconds, with his length fully sheathed in your throat. Your nose brushed against his pelvis as the air started to escape from your lungs.

“Come on now, baby,” he murmured with a strained voice, feeling his cock pulsing inside your mouth. “Take it… take it all…”

He chuckled softly as you started to tap on his thigh, and he quickly let you go. You gasped once he pulled out of your mouth, gasping for the air your lungs desperately needed. He moaned softly once he saw you; tears on your face, drool falling down your swollen lips — you looked so pretty he even thought about letting you go unpunished and just please you, but then he turned to see Jace; his cock was achingly hard, his ruddy tip leaking as he desperately fucked his fist; he had been so good to you, and you made him feel so bad throughout the night; he deserved a reward, and you deserved a punishment.

Before you could react, Cregan grabbed your body with ease, lifting you up from the ground and carelessly carrying you towards the bed. You moaned with his touch, so needy of him that even his roughness made you squirm out of pleasure. He moved your body around as if you were a ragdoll, shifting your position in bed until you were sitting on top of Jace's pelvis, his cock right between your legs. For a second you thought it was finally the time for them to fuck you, but you were so wrong.

“Grab her hips,” he commanded, using that mandatory tone that drove you and Jace insane. “Don't let her move.”

He positioned himself between the boy's legs, leaving you more confused than before. “What- what are you-?”

“I'm teaching you a lesson,” he stopped you before you could finish your question. “You'll see what happens when you behave and when you don't.”

You saw him leaning down, his plump lips wrapping the tip of Jace's cock and making him squirm beneath your body. Your mouth dropped as you looked at Cregan taking him entirely, his haze fixed in you as the frustration in your body grew even more. The youngest had his nails buried in the flesh of your hips, you heard him moan so prettily that you could even feel the slick oozing out of you, even when you were untouched. It was such a sinful image to witness, especially when Cregan's eyes became teary once he gagged around Jace.

“Oh, fuck…” you mumbled, tears of despair gathering in your eyes as your breathing became ragged. “P-please touch me…”

Jace's hand attempted to reach for your throbbing clit, but the older grabbed his hand and pushed it away. “I'll stop if you touch her,” he warned him. All you could do was cry out.

Cregan's ragged breathing would reach your folds, causing shivers all over your spine. You would try to move your hips to at least rub yourself against Jace's skin, but he didn't allow it, holding you down so tightly that you were certain it would leave a bruise.

The moans turned into whines as Jace started to quickly feel the orgasm coming. His skin was burning as Cregan fervently sucked on his tip, using his tongue to clean up the precum spilling from his slit. Whenever you would cry out or move on top of him he would feel closer to the edge, his body burning inside. “I'm so fucking close, baby,” he whimpered, “keep sucking my cock, I'm- I'm gonna fucking cum… f-fuuck.”

You saw Cregan hollowing his cheeks, milking Jace dry as he came inside his mouth. Drops of the pearly seed escaped from his lips and you felt the need to lick them both clean. You needed a taste, anything that would make you feel some kind of relief.

He sat back up, and as soon as he laid his hazy eyes on you, he grabbed your neck pulling you closer towards him. As if it was a reflex, you opened your mouth while you stared at him through your glossy eyes. He let his spit fall onto your mouth, to then pull you close and fervently kiss you. The salty taste of Jace's release lingered in your mouths as you devoured each other, you would whine against his lips, still sobbing as your pussy was already aching for the lack of attention.

That's when the boy beneath you wrapped you between his arms, forcing you to lay on top of his chest. He didn't even let you catch a break before you felt his cock slowly making his way inside of you, and you gasped out of relief. He stretched you out, providing you with that sweet sting of pain that drove you insane. His hands grabbed your thighs, folding you in half as he started to thrust upwards.

“Don't ever forget who you belong to,” he grunted against your ear as you struggled to keep it quiet. Probably the whole house knew what you were doing, and maybe that was their purpose all along. “You're fucking ours, baby. This tight pussy belongs to us, do you hear me?”

Cregan's hand fell hard on your throbbing clit as you remained silent. A whine left your lips as Jace kept bullying your gummy, wet walls with his girth.

“Answer him,” he demanded, getting closer to you and placing his leaking cock on top of your swollen pearl. You felt the room spinning.

“Yes! Yes! I'm- fuck… I'm fucking yours,” you sobbed.

The whole situation became overwhelming, while one was burying himself in the deepest part of you, the other was rubbing himself on your sensitive flesh, searching for his own release as he wrapped his hand around your throat.

“Fuck, you're fucking squeezing me so tight, baby,” Jace moaned, breathlessly as he felt the mixture of your slick falling down his sack. The lewd sounds of your folds getting stretched by his thickness almost making him cum again. “So fuckin delicious…”

“We've just started and we already fucked her silly,” Cregan chuckled. “She's a fucking mess for us…”

A layer of sweat covered your body; you felt the blood burning inside your veins, the orgasm approaching you embarrassingly fast as they were stimulating your senses. Your eyes rolled back, the desperate pleads slipping out of your lips as you were begging them to make you cum. You were shaking, your face covered in tears as the moans were ripped out of your throat.

“So loud,” the older teased you, “gonna wake up the whole fucking house…”

“I- I need to… please, I need to cum!”

Cregan leaned towards you, and Jace instinctively fastened his pace, burying himself deeper and harder; you had a hard time thinking straight as the older’s hands tightened around your neck. “Ow, poor girl, wants to cum. I don't think you deserve it.”

“P-please, Cregan…”

“Work for it,” he demanded. “Make Jace cum and then you're free to do it too.”

Almost as if it was an instinct, you started to move your hips up and down Jace's cock, making the thrusts more intense and deeper. The younger moaned loudly, already feeling overstimulated by your movements and feeling his sack heavy with a new load of his release. He thought about how pretty you would look with your legs spreaded and his seed falling from your weeping hole; that image alone almost made him peak right in the spot.

“Jacey, please!” you whined, already growing tired. “Please, please, cum in me!”

“Want me to fill your pretty cunny, baby? Mhm? Want my cum inside of you?” he teased, and you rolled your eyes as your walls clenched with his filthy words.

“Yes… yes, please… give it to me, please…”

As a spectator, Cregan groaned loudly, quickly rubbing his hands around his shaft with his eyes fixed in the way Jace was filling you up, bewitched by that bulge in your belly that grew each time that he would bury himself deep inside of you, touching your sweet spot over and over until your head feel dizzy and all that left your mouth were incoherent mumbling.

“I can't… I can't hold it…” you sobbed.

“Come on, baby, I'm so fucking close, just wait for me,” Jace whimpered, his movements getting more desperate and sloppier.

“I can't! I can't! F-fuck…”

Everything came to a breaking point once your release gushed out of you, spurring all over them and making a complete mess. Neither of them could hold back after such an obscene view in front of them, and they were quick to follow. Jacaerys finally spilled himself in you, his seed painting your walls and filling you to the brim. Lastly, Cregan stained your shirt and flesh with his pearly drops, moaning so beautifully that it made you feel butterflies in your belly.

You hissed when Jace pulled out of you, feeling your legs shake while Cregan struggled to stand up from the bed and looking for something to clean you up while you laid against the younger’s body, who softly wiped the tears out of your face.

“Shh… it's okay, you did so good for us, my love,” he cooes, so gently. “So, so good.”

“I'm- I'm sorry,” you mumbled while Cregan returned to your side with a towel in his hand. With soft brushes he started to clean your thighs, your belly and the raw flesh between your legs. “I- I never meant to make you two feel bad… I was- I was being so selfish-”

“Hey,” Cregan stopped you, holding your face with gentleness; so different from his previous touch. “It's already behind us, okay?”

Once he finished cleaning you up, your body fell into Jace's embrace as he wrapped his arms around your body, pulling you closer to him and cuddling with you. He hid his face on the crook of your neck and softly hummed when the remains of your sweet perfume reached his nose.

“We love you so much,” he whispered, “please, don't ever do that to us again…”

You grabbed your face only to see his puppy, brown eyes. A gentle, soft kiss was shared as you felt Cregan laying down behind you and fondling your body, soon you three had your limbs tangled as you kissed and caressed each other without shame. Loving touches that relaxed all of you.

“I'm sorry,” you whispered again to the both of them. “I'll never do that again.”

“Do you promise?” Cregan asked.

“I promise,” you softly nodded.

The Northern boy leaned to leave a soft kiss on your cheek, you both shared a gentle smile which let you know that the anger that was once within him was now fully gone.

follow @by-fairysluna for updates!!

GENERAL TAG LIST — @islandfantasydream @arcielee @bucknastysbabe @zaldritzosrose @rafeism @valeskafics

CREGAN TAG LIST — @purplequxxn @iloveharbingers @jeongiegram @koobratzy @foxyanon

JACAERYS TAG LIST — @iloveharbingers @alynna-m @katharina1111 @simp-aholic

#house of the dragon #hotd #cregan stark smut #cregan stark x reader #cregan stark #jacaerys velaryon smut #jacaerys velaryon x reader #cregan stark x jacaerys velaryon #jaceagan #hotd smut #hotd fanfic #cregan stark x you #jacaerys velaryon #jacaerys velaryon x you

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lullabies-blue · 1 year ago

Text

Thomas Hewitt/ Reader

𝔚𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔩𝔬𝔳𝔢, 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔬 𝔥𝔞𝔰 𝔫𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔦𝔱? 𝔑𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔱𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔴𝔢𝔢𝔱𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔦𝔱𝔰 𝔫𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔞𝔯?

Written in third-person limited POV, focusing on Thomas. Content tags: Neurodivergence, Cannibalism, mentions of rape, Canon typical violence, self harm, Mommy issues, child abuse (mentioned), good vs. evil with nothing in between, religious trauma. Author notes: I honestly intended this to be short and to the point- but here we are. I read a lot of Thomas/Reader stories where Thomas is portrayed as neurotypical and I don't know why it bothers me so much- it's just fanfiction after all, but I wanted to write a short "love" story where Thomas is violent and scared and lonely. He's nonverbal, he's mentally disturbed but not 'slow'. His world is very black and white and full of violence, so that got me wondering- what would love look like for him? What would happen if this man, who has only ever known darkness, met someone who was nice to him? Fair warning, lots of rambling ahead. I also just want to say that I am Autistic and that influenced a lot of this story- from the way that I write, to how I portray characters, to certain interactions. So if anything seems weird to you, I apologize- my mind works in weird ways. If I need to clarify anything, just shoot me a message. I would love to talk about the writing process and why I included certain things. Important: This is about 15k words and NOT even half of it. I had to cut it into pieces, will update the rest in another post.

Thomas brings the axe above his head, his breath ragged as he swings it down and cuts the piece of firewood in half with a low grunt. He’s hot, even though it’s the middle of winter- the weather low even with the sun that hid behind the clouds- and his shirt is sticking to him uncomfortably, the sweat doing nothing to cool him down.

He lodges the axe into the tree stump, grabbing the two pieces of wood and throwing them in the wheelbarrow before he wipes his forehead with dirt covered hands. It was the last chore of the day, and he was tired and sore- a tightness in his shoulders that seemed to spread all the way down to lower back and made him want to get in bed. His mask is damp and tight against his face, the skin underneath irritated. He wants to go inside and change, the thought of taking a shower was frustrating but he knew that he needed one. He could smell himself- bitter with sweat and the slightly suffocating scent that seemed to stick to chickens now clinging to him from when he had cleaned out the chicken coop. His nails were lined with dirt- hands and arms caked in grime. It made him feel heavy and slow.

Uncle Hoyt would drag him to the back and hose him off if he saw him, and he hated that more than he hated cleaning himself off- the feeling of water on his skin something he had never got around to liking. He could handle other things- blood never seemed to churn his stomach, or when Momma or Uncle Hoyt used to ask him to go clean out the pig pen- back when they could afford to have pigs, they were empty now, the whole farm seemed to get emptier and emptier as the months passed- he hadn’t thought that shoveling pig shit into a bucket was all that bad. But he had trouble smelling sometimes, especially with the leather pressed so tight against the place his nose had once been.

He takes the handles of the wheelbarrow, filled with enough dried out wood for the weekend- maybe Monday, if the weather stayed where it was at- and began to haul it towards the house. Momma would need some in the kitchen, to boil water and heat the ovens for Supper when she got back from town. He’d have to check the fireplace on the main floor- sometimes even on the coldest days of winter that room stayed warm enough that if they were to turn on the fireplace it’d be too uncomfortable to sit in. He would wait until Uncle Monty asked for more- he didn’t like it when any of them made decisions for him, more so now that he was stuck in that wheelchair.

There were no fireplaces upstairs, just piles of blankets to layer and hope they did enough to keep them warm. Sometimes it would be enough for him, but there were nights that even with two or three of the ones Momma sewed together for him; he would still lay awake, teeth chattering from the cold. It’s why he hated the cold- he could manage the heat, but winter was unpredictable even in the deep south of Texas.

Uncle Monty is in the living room, asleep in his chair as the TV keeps playing, almost as loud as his snoring. He walks past him, noticing the almost empty fireplace. His footsteps are heavy and loud from the metal on his shoes as he carries an armful of wood into the kitchen. He sets it down on the dining table, right on the white plastic cloth momma had set out before she had left, dirt falls onto the floor and he makes a low, grumbling noise of frustration, hoping that she didn’t see it when she got home.

He had forgotten the plastic mat last time and gotten her favorite tablecloth dirty -the mud staining the light blue cotton forever. He didn’t see why it was such a big deal, Momma had once told him that life was messy, that’s how one knew that they were living it, but she had been so angry at him then- sending him out with the bucket and soap, shouting about the mud he had tracked inside their house. Supper had come late that night- Hoyt growing angry at him. He liked it when it was ready and waiting for him when he got home- shouting at momma that working men weren’t supposed to wait for food.

He had gotten into an argument with him that night- he didn’t like it when people were mean to momma. Uncle Hoyt had called him a bad name- making his blood boil.

He didn’t want that to happen again. He didn’t like how badly he had wanted to hurt Uncle Hoyt at that moment. Momma said that family fought all the time, but he had to be careful not to do anything that he would regret. Maybe he would regret it when his blood stained his clothes, but part of him wasn’t so sure. He liked him better when he was Uncle Charlie. Uncle Hoyt reminded him of the bad men.

He tries not to think about it anymore when he heads back outside to grab a few more pieces of wood for the living room. He didn’t like thinking back on the things that made him angry, sometimes he couldn’t come back from them, and he’d end up doing something bad.

By the time he’s pushing past the double front doors, Momma’s car is pulling into the dirt path off to the side of the house. It’s an old one- rusting from the heat of too many summers, but momma didn’t mind it.

The car comes to a stop as he picks up another armful of wood and takes it inside.

Ever since Hoyt became Sheriff of the town, things had gotten better for them. There were never days where they went to bed hungry, the meat freezer down in the basement always seemed to have enough for them. If it ever ran low, a Hoyt always seemed to find a way to get it restocked. Momma had taken over the shop in town after the owner had passed away and Hoyt made sure that his son- one of the bad men- went right along with him. He had filled the bellies of those who still stayed in town, too hungry to care enough to question them. Sometimes she brought back what didn’t sell that day and they’d have themselves a little feast. There were days Uncle Hoyt brought a guest with him- always a woman-, other times he’d ask momma to bring his food up to his room- the muffled screaming drowned out by Monty’s TV show.

He liked to stay in the basement on those days. It was harder to hear the pleading and begging as Hoyt played too rough with them. He would always get stuck with getting rid of them afterwards and he was starting to dislike the chore.

By the time he finishes stacking the wood, Momma is calling out for him, the front door swinging open. He freezes- his shoulders squaring and his breath suddenly heavy as he looks up at the hall, hidden between a wall and the fireplace. There was someone with Momma. He could hear the footsteps- Momma walked with a purpose, heavy and loud like him. She said that she did it so God would hear her better, but he wasn’t so sure that God was with them anymore. The ones that came after her were lighter, nervous.

He didn’t like guests. Didn’t like that Momma and uncle Hoyt had developed a habit of taking in strays that would just end up in the basement with him later. They would scream when they saw him- call him those names that made the anger come. Some of them liked to hurt him, momma taking him to the bathroom afterwards and stitching him up.

“You’re going to love my Tommy. He’s a little bit shy but he’s got the sweetest heart.” Momma says and he hears the other person laugh. It’s a soft noise- gentle in a way that manages to make his heart race faster as he tries to crawl deeper into the tiny space. “He’s here around somewhere… but let’s get you set up in your room then you can come down and help me with supper, okay?”

Another laugh, his heart racing uncomfortably in his chest. He didn’t want Momma to find him, he was already so tired.

“Of course,” the stranger says, and she- the thought of a woman in the house irritates him- doesn’t talk like Momma or Hoyt or Monty. Her voice is quiet, it doesn’t drawl out. He’s heard it before- she must be from out of town. “I would love to!”

For a moment, he feels bad for the woman as he hears them go up the stairs. He always feels bad for them at first. Momma said that his heart was too kind. Hoyt called him a pansy boy, in need of toughening up. He doesn’t know why he feels bad, the guests were never good people- he’d always come to learn that, but it never seems to do anything to make the twitch of guilt go away from his heart. The steps grow quieter the farther up they go- until he hears Momma’s muffled voice and then her footsteps coming back down.

She spots him, curled into himself in that tiny, dark space and she sucks her teeth, shaking her head. “Thomas Hewitt, what in the lords name are you doing there?”

He feels embarrassed all of a sudden, getting caught like this. He makes a low noise in his chest, pointing to the firewood.

“Come on and get on out of there if you’re done then, we’ve got company.” She comes down the rest of the steps and makes her way towards him. When she holds out her hand he takes it, a comfort that has his heart slowing down.

“I need you to go and grab the rest of her stuff from the car- poor girl don’t got no power in her home.” She says with a shake of her head as she pulls and helps him to his feet. “She’ll be staying with us until her electricity gets put back up.”

He shakes his head, this time the noise he makes is in protest, a deep groan of anger. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want her in his house.

Momma frowns, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now listen here Thomas, not everyone is as lucky as we are. Sometimes we have to help those in need.”

He wants to believe her- Momma wasn’t one for lying, after all- but this isn’t anything new. He knew how this would end; with the woman in their bellies and her screams in his head, keeping him awake at night. She would make a mistake and then she’d end up in the basement, begging for her life.

It was like Momma had set her up to fail, like a game that promised a prize that would never come, and Thomas didn’t want to play. Not this time. He shakes his head again, his way of telling her no.

Momma and Uncle Hoyt have a lot in common, no matter how sweet and gentle Momma tried to be, her anger was almost as bad as his. He doesn’t like it when she gets angry at him- everyone was always angry at him- and he can see it in her eyes, making him bend his chin against his chest as he let out a whine, glancing down at the ground. She never hit him, but she would ignore him and that hurt a lot more.

“Then you go on upstairs and tell the poor girl that she’s got to leave. I won’t be the one to break the bad news.” Momma huffs, stomping over to the kitchen. “Tell her you would rather see her freeze than offer a small kindness.”

There it is, that harshness in her voice that makes him tremble, his heart picking up its pace until he feels like he can’t breathe. He shakes his head again, digging his fingers into his arm. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the woman. Didn’t want to be forced to deal with her later but if this is what Momma wanted, then he would do it. He would make her happy.

He lets out another noise, smaller this time and turns towards the door. Part of him is angry- angry that he wasn’t allowed to be angry without being punished. Angry that sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t allowed to have a say when it came to things. He felt as if momma sometimes liked to hurt him on purpose- pushing and pushing until he snapped.

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, he feels the guilt settle in his stomach, hot and suffocating. Momma wasn’t like the bad people. She wouldn’t hurt him. Sometimes he just made her so angry- he knew that. He knew that he was difficult and stubborn and sometimes she got tired of dealing with him.

It wouldn’t be long before the woman disappeared anyways- Hoyt will see her at supper and he’d take her upstairs. The screaming will start, and everyone will act like they couldn’t hear it; Momma would knit, and Monty would turn the volume on the TV up until it was too much. He’d end up sleeping in the basement again, picking at his skin until it was raw and bleeding- the crying twisting his stomach and threatening to swallow him whole.

He just had to wait until then. He would be good until then.

The trunk of the car was left open for him, and he finds the woman’s things waiting for him. It’s not much- a simple backpack, filled with so many things that it ballooned uncomfortably. He grabs it, grunting at the fact that it was heavier than he thought, and slams the trunk close. The car shakes and squeaks at his aggression as he carries the bag inside. He doesn’t like the fact that he’s touching the stranger’s things.

He’s dirty- his fingers staining the bag- but he’s also dirty inside. Rotten from the anger, the bad he’s done. The bad he was going to do. He can feel himself soiling the items inside- turning them just as dirty as him as he walks into the kitchen and sets the bag down on the floor. Momma had taken the firewood he had left and put away the mat. He could feel the warmth of the fire even from where he stood across the oven- filling the room with the scent of smoke. He grunts, wanting Momma to turn around and see that he had done what she asked. He wanted her to smile at him- to ease the way his heart still hammered in frustration.

She turns, but the softness in her eyes isn’t directed at him- she barely looks at him and his heart sinks further down into his stomach, tension building in the back of his neck. He can hear her footsteps now- the creaking of the staircase as she came downstairs. He’s standing in front of a wall, the staircase on the other side. For now, he was hidden- but it wouldn’t be long until she stepped into the kitchen, and he couldn’t hide anymore.

“We’re in here dear,” Momma calls out to her. “Tommy here’s got your bag for you.”

He sees her for the first time out of the corner of his eye- spotting her before she spots him, her eyes on Momma. She’s short- shorter than momma by a bit, and clean and well dressed. Her sweater is thick and colorful, the cuffs of her sleeves neatly folded against her wrists. Something there catches the soft yellow light of the kitchen- a thin golden bracelet halfway hidden beneath the fabric. Her jeans look like they’ve been around for a long time- a different shade of fabric stitched into one of the knees. Her boots are old and worn out, reminding him of his own.

He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this feeling that runs through him as he inspects her.

“I really like your house!” she says- voice light and full of excitement that made his mood worsen. “Its-” whatever she was about to say dies in her throat as she turns her head to the left and spots him for the first time.

He doesn’t let her look at his face- turning his head to the side as he folds into himself, chin against chest. He doesn’t like this- doesn’t like that she stares at him without saying anything. He can feel her eyes on him- inspecting him- an animal on display. His chest rises and falls painfully, his breathing hard and loud in the silence. He can feel his hands twitch- his thumb nail grazing along the length of his finger.

“This is my son,” Momma’s voice is tight as she talks. “Tommy this here is our guest. Don’t you want to say hello?”

He shakes his head, his hands trembling. Something wet lands inside the sink and he startles. He hears Momma suck her teeth and he can see her in his mind- shaking her head like she does whenever he does something she doesn’t like.

He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like that Momma is getting mad at him, that the woman still stands there, watching him tremble in fear. He could already hear it- her laughing as she called him an idiot. They always called him something. They always laughed at him.

“It’s okay,” her voice shakes a bit as she breaks the silence, and she coughs and clears her voice. “I, um, I’m a little shy myself so I know how hard it can be sometimes.” She speaks slowly, her voice almost a low whisper. She tells him her name. Tells him that it’s nice to meet him.

He doesn’t say anything- not that he can, he’s never spoken a single word- but he nods his head, his eyes quickly glancing over at her. She’s still looking at him and his heart almost beats through his ribs. He expects her to be looking at him like they always look at him- filled with disgust and hatred, looking for any excuse to leave, to get as far away as possible from him- but he doesn’t find that in her face.

He finds her mouth twisted downwards and her eyebrows pushed together just a tiny little bit, her eyes gentle and wide. She looked at him as if he was a dog out by the side of the road on a hot summer afternoon refusing help and she had been chasing him with a bowl of water.

She looks at him like there was nothing scary about him. Like he was a man, dirty from a long day at work and not a freak- poor and disfigured- a monster. He had never seen that look from anyone who didn’t live in this house, and it scared him. It terrified him that someone would decide to look at him like that.

But as soon as he met her eyes she looked away, towards Momma- a smile in her voice.

“What are we making for dinner?” she asks, stepping farther into the kitchen and pushing her sleeves up towards her elbows- ready for whatever Momma tells her to do.

The tension disappears just like that, Momma laughing lightly as she places her hand on the woman’s back and pulls her close. “You’re such a darling, helping me out like this. How about you start getting out the pots and pans? They’re over there by the pantry.” She pointed to the cupboards by the fridge and the woman nodded and went straight towards them.

With her back to them- Momma turned and looked at him finally. He could still feel his heart hammering away at his chest, but this was more manageable. He was still waiting for the names to come, for the screaming and the disgust to appear in her eyes. Sometimes when Momma was around people hid it a bit better, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long until they couldn’t hide it anymore.

He expects Momma to still be mad at him- blue eyes dark with anger- but instead she sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder, a silent apology that has his muscles relaxing. The woman pays them no mind- bending down to inspect the cupboard down there.

“Go on and take her bag up to her room and get yourself cleaned up, okay?” She tugs on the collar of his shirt before fixing his hair out of his face. It’s damp from his sweat, but she doesn’t flinch. “She’s a good girl- try to handle her with care, alright?” Her voice is a low whisper- something the woman wasn’t supposed to hear. It unsettles him as he nods along with Momma- not quite understanding what she meant. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to nod along with her or shake his head, but Momma doesn't wait for an answer, patting him on the cheek before she turns her head and calls out to the woman.

“Honey, Tommy is going to take your bag up to your room- is that alright?”

The woman rises from the ground, two pots neatly stacked in each other in her hands. “Yes,” she says softly- her eyes meeting his. “Thank you, Tommy.”

She smiles at him shyly and his heart begins to hammer against his ribs again. He feels his skin begin to burn- his flesh raw and exposed to her. Even underneath his mask he can feel himself heating up as he looks away, scrambling to grab the bag.

He needed to get away from her- from Momma and her words that he couldn’t understand. He felt like he couldn’t breathe with her here. He stumbles up the steps- feet so heavy against the wood that he swears he can feel the house tremble underneath him.

Momma gave her the room across his- the empty one where she liked to keep the extra bed sheets and towels. But it’s cleaner now as he turns the knob and goes inside, the curtains pulled open to let in the bit of light that still shone from outside- the sun close to setting. The piles of blankets that were on the bed are gone- the sheets neatly tucked into the space between the mattress and the boxspring. There’s a jacket thrown on top- red and faded, the cuffs ripped up on one arm.

He sits the bag right next to it- on the floor, wiping his hands on his jeans. It topples over and he lets out a grunt- fixing it so it sat upright again. He decided that he would stay up here until Momma called him for supper. He wouldn’t go down to the basement while the woman was here- he was worried that she would be stupid enough to follow him down there. That would be the end of her. Blood and flesh and sinew torn from her bones for them to feast on.

He’s careful when he’s leaving the room- closing the door gently so that it doesn’t slam before he hurries off into his own- locking the door behind himself.

Here it’s dark, his windows covered in greased up newspapers. He didn’t like it when it got too bright- when the sun shone through and reminded him of the mess around him. His room is small and cramped and full of things that he had hauled up from the furnace room so that he wasn’t stuck going up and down all the time. Uncle Monty said that he sounded like a ‘goddamned bulldozer,’ stomping around the house when he was trying to sleep. So, it was better this way- even though sometimes he got irritated that there were too many things. But it meant not being bothersome, so he tried not to mind much.

He checks the door again- making sure that he had really locked it, pulling and twisting at the doorknob just to be safe. He knew that no one would come up here and go into his room- Monty was stuck on the first floor, Momma was with the girl in the kitchen preparing supper and Uncle Hoyt wasn’t home yet. But he was always a little paranoid, just the tiniest bit afraid that someone would knock down his door and see everything about him that he had tried so hard to hide. Not even Momma was allowed in here. This was his- the only place where he could hide from everyone, where he didn’t have to worry about anyone disturbing him.

He takes his mask off and it’s not quite the relief he was expecting- the leather inside has gone stiff, his face raw and tender and aching from all the sweat and dirt that had managed to get in. He can feel it as he runs his fingers across his face, a cut on the corner of his lips that wasn’t there last time. It blends into the sores and scarred tissue already there, his skin long ruined. It shouldn’t bother him- but as he opens his mouth and feels the skin stretch and crack, a drop of blood welling up and rolling down his chin- he gets upset, grunting in frustration. He had wanted to clean the mask and add some petroleum to try and soften it up so it wouldn’t bite at his skin anymore- pinching and scratching and making the pain worse. It would have been something to do, something to keep him busy and distracted until he had to face the inevitable, but now it was something that he no longer wanted to do. Why would he? What would it change?

It was never this bad- but ever since his nose began to fall away, it only ever seemed to get worse- no matter what he did or how hard he pleaded for it to just stop and go away- nothing ever changed. There was no one there to listen to his pleas.

With a low groan of frustration, he tears his hand from his face, wiping the blood on the front of his shirt. He hates himself. Hates everything about himself. Momma liked to say that the bad people were liars, that people who were hurting only ever knew how to hurt others- but he knew that wasn’t true. He was a monster. He saw it, looking back at him in the mirror- wild and ugly and evil, everything that he did not want to be. He hated taking his mask off- hated knowing that the man that existed underneath it was the same man that he was trying to escape from.

Coming here was a mistake. He should have stayed downstairs, should have gone out back to the barn- there he would have found something, anything, to do.

He takes a breath like Momma showed him, trying to push the anger away- down, down, down, until he couldn’t feel it slithering through his veins and pounding in the back of his head. He just had to focus on something else-he liked it when he had chores, things to do that kept him busy and away from the bad thoughts. He takes another deep breath through his mouth- dirt and salt on his lips as he picks up the mask and tries to clean it off on his clothing. It does nothing but lift the dust off into the air as he places it on his face, tightening it too much across his head, leather digging into tender skin. He would take a bath, change his clothes, then sit in bed and wait. Uncle Hoyt would come an hour after the sun disappeared and then he would have to go downstairs. He didn’t want to go downstairs.

He didn’t want to feel the bad feelings anymore. The fear, the anger. The woman would look at him and his throat would tighten, and his heart would beat painfully. He hadn’t liked that feeling- trapped in his own skin, unable to get away. Yet at the same time, he wanted her to look at him. No one ever looked at him.

He could still feel her eyes- soft and warm on his skin, simultaneously calming and worsening his anger. He was half embarrassed- covered in dirt and sweat stains, his clothing old and faded- Did she think that he was disgusting? He was always messy in everything that he did- always having to teach himself how to do things. Filth had never been a stranger. Had never bothered him. But he finds himself wanting to wash the grime and sweat from himself- even if he was just going to put the same clothes back on.

His stomach growls, empty and needy as he unlocks the door and roughly pushes it open- he finds the woman outside of it.

The door swings open, the gust of wind pushing her hair around as the door barely manages to miss her. She’s looking up at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open- her arms up by her chest. It scares him, seeing her there and he makes a messy, garbled noise of surprise.

“Sorry!” she speaks fast, her words all pushed together. “I was just trying to find the bathroom!”

He feels his heart beating in his throat, muscles tense and solid as he stares down at her. She’s so much shorter than he thought- he could reach out and crush her throat in his hand and it wouldn’t take much force to do so. He’s almost tempted to, his fingers twitching at his sides. Momma would get mad at him when he dragged her body downstairs- but she would forget eventually.

“I’m in your way- I,” she takes a step back, her eyes finally releasing his. “I’m sorry, I’m just-”

He grunts. Low and short- his way of telling her to stop talking. Nothing she says is making any sense to him and the sound of her voice makes his heart hammer at his chest. Thunderous and loud and painful. It scares him how easily she does that to him. Such a small thing like her, carelessly walking into a house where God was nowhere to be found without a single ounce of caution. He could take her to his room, and no one would hear her scream. He could scare her more than she scared him.

She squirms in the silence like a rat stuck in a trap. She tugs at her sleeve, at her collar- his breathing loud as he watches her- watches her chest rise and fall with every breath, her eyes on the space between them.

Another grunt and she startles backwards, looking up at him. This time, when her eyes meet his own, he doesn’t cower even though his body tenses and he can already feel her pulse beneath his hand.

His body is stiff as he steps out of his room and moves out of the way of the door- he has to turn his back to her and for a split-second, panic runs cold and fast through his veins as he remembers the woman who had stabbed him. The door slams close as he turns around quickly, eyes wide and wild as he looks down at her hands.

He expects to see a knife pointed at him- the scar on his shoulder aching from the memory of being sliced apart, the pain still there even after all the months that have passed since. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that pain- the woman and her friends had attacked first, had tried to hurt his family. Uncle Hoyt had told him, so had Momma with tears in her eyes and blood splatters on her dress. They were bad people who wanted to do bad things to them, and it was his responsibility to protect them- to keep them safe. It hadn’t mattered that his hands shook so hard with fear, and he could taste vomit at the back of his throat, vile and burning, he had to protect them. They were all that he had. He couldn’t- wouldn’t- lose them.

He was panting as he searched the woman and finds nothing in her hands, her eyes widening as she takes another step away from him.

Was she scared?

Did she finally see it? The evil that radiated off of him that others seemed to see- always scared of getting too close to him- He was a disease on this town. A burden. Did he finally scare her?

Would she scream?

Was she going to hurt him- just like everyone else? Drive a knife into his flesh- a pain that would only last for so long before it faded into a memory that he refused to think of. A pain that wouldn’t be so bad compared to the shame that churned his stomach whenever a stranger screamed when they saw him.

He waited- teeth clamped together as he stared her down in the heavy silence.

He watched as her lips part, lower lip trembling slightly. If she screamed, he would hurt her before she could hurt him. If she screamed, she would be nothing but a pile of bones, tossed into the fire by the time the sun rose tomorrow.

Scream, he thought, fingers twitching at his sides. Scream already and let this end already.

“You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” she whispers and her voice trembles even as she keeps talking. “I can tell- you’re looking at me like I just pulled out a gun on you or something.” She lifts her hands towards him and moves them back and forth, as if she was showing him that he had nothing to worry about. “But my hands are empty-”

She lifts her hands, palms facing him, and wiggles her fingers. “If it makes you feel better, apart from a kitchen knife I don’t think I’ve ever held a weapon.” She smiles oddly at him- as if she wasn’t sure how to do so, her eyes still wide and unblinking. As if she was worried that he would lunge at her at any second.

He doesn’t like how his body seems to let go of its worries and fears so fast, his shoulders drooping and his heartbeat slowing down until it’s no longer pounding against his ears as the ringing slowly starts to disappear. He unclenches his teeth, the pain still lingering in his jaw and neck, and suddenly, he’s no longer thinking of hurting the woman- of how easy he would have snapped her neck. He still could, part of him even ached and begged for him to do it. To get it over with.

But he doesn’t listen to that part of him that never truly seemed to go away- always begging for blood, for a voice that would finally be heard. He’s staring at her hands instead, focusing on the tips of her fingers that are flushed pink. He notices the birthmark on her left middle finger- a tiny dot right underneath the crease of her knuckle. He notices all the tiny little lines that make up her palms and the way her thumb trembles lightly.

He did not like her.

He did not like the way something as simple as her hands was enough to draw his attention- his eyes seeking out the tiny little patterns between her fingers. He did not like how her voice could soothe him so easily when he wanted nothing but to crush her- to take her, to taste her flesh on his tongue and her blood on his lips.

He did not like how she called out to him as he just stared at her- stared through her, voice gentle with his name. It wasn’t the same as when Momma said it though. This felt like a spell, a bad omen- Satan’s own voice whispering temptation in his ear. Sweet and gentle and unfamiliar.

She made him feel the same way he had felt that one night he had snuck upstairs to watch Uncle Hoyt and his new friend. He had pushed the door open just enough so that he could see but still stay hidden from the light. He hadn’t made a single noise as he watched Hoyt undo his pants and pull the woman’s legs apart. He hadn’t been able to see much from his hiding place, but what he heard had sent a shock of electricity through his body- blood boiling with need as he listened to the crying and the begging and the sound of something slick being hit over and over again. His stomach churned the same it had that night- tight and hot and restless for something that he could not give it.

He lets out a whine- deep and guttural and full of frustration. Go away, he wants to yell at her. Go away before you ruin everything.

“Tommy…?” she asks again, not understanding his plea.

He whines again and it takes him a second to realize that he’s scratching at his arm- digging his fingers into the old scars there and agitating the skin. It hurts. But that pain is familiar and calming and helps him focus on something other than the panic rising in his throat.

She was messing it all up.

It’s supposed to just be the four of them- Momma, Hoyt, Monty and him. It’s always been just the four of them. There wasn’t enough space here for her. She was too much of a change to get used to- too loud, too much. Even if he went and hid in the basement until Momma got tired of her, he knew that he would still be able to feel her through the walls, a choking weight in the air that would only poison him until he forgot what it was like to be ignored and cautious even in his own home. He’d be able to hear her- hear her laugh, her steps, the tiny little noises she would come to make the more time went on. She would fill this house with her until she soaked the walls and filled in the foundation. Until everyone forgot that she had a stranger at one point- a spontaneous good dead in all the bad they dealt in.

And even then- what would stop Hoyt from taking her to the room where almost all of the women ended up in? From the emptiness of their bellies that might make them remember that she wasn’t one of them- that she was the answer to their starvation?

He's sinking his nails in harder- the thin skin underneath breaks and he itches at the spot as if there was something alive and buzzing under the flesh. He doesn’t feel the pain as the blood begins to gather underneath his dirty nails. He can see it, even in the dim light- but he can’t feel it. Can’t stop. He digs and digs and digs, hoping for the thoughts to stop- for the voices to stop telling him that he had to kill her. That if he didn’t, he had to make sure that she never left- that this house swallowed her whole and kept her from running, from leaving them. Leaving him. If she tried to run, he could keep her in the furnace room; could tie her up and warn her that if she wasn’t good, she wouldn’t be able to stay.

He could be good to her. He would learn if he had to, would ask Momma to teach him to be gentle and kind. He would not make her angry, would not make her cry or scare her away as long as she listened to him. As long as she stayed with him.

He’s lost, stuck in the farthest corner of his mind, in a future that would stop existing if he simply reached out and touched her. All he had to do was cover her face with his hand, she would be too surprised to fight him off when he pressed her against the wall and kept her there-the weight of him against her back. He could already feel her as she squirmed against him- her body unable to stand still as her lungs began to burn. He could already feel her warmth through his clothes, feel the way his heart would race as she sank her fingers into his skin, drawing blood from fear and desperation. His fear would seep into her flesh, make her lash out more. Her pain would become his and they would be inseparable in that moment.

It’s when he feels her- fingers cold and desperate as she prods and pulls at his arms, forcing them apart that he returns to reality- to the dimly lit hall, the heat of the fireplace already seeping through the cracks in the foundation. He can feel the way her arms tremble, her fingertips burning holes into his skin.

The woman’s eyes are wild when he looks at her, all wet and round- something in them, in the way she looks at him, makes his heart fill with lead- knocking against his ribs painfully.

“It’s okay!” she says, her voice panicked as she keeps repeating it over and over again, almost as if she’s trying to convince herself- or maybe she thinks that if she says it enough times it’d become true.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” she repeats, her eyes on his as she pulls his arms towards her. “We just have to get this cleaned up and it’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t budge when she tries to pull him towards the staircase- instead, he watches as she stumbles over her own feet, her hands sliding down his arms.

“We need to get this clean,” she’s pleading now, tugging at him to get him to move. “It’s going to get infected if we don’t and there’s no doctor in town anymore-” the more she talks, the more hysterical she begins to sound, her voice growing higher. “I don’t know where the bathroom is, but we can go down to the kitchen, Luda M-”

He doesn’t let her finish, easily pulling his uninjured arm free from her. He didn’t want Momma to know. To see the mess that he made of himself. She would yell at him if he was lucky- tell him that he was sick in the head, hurting himself like a damn fool again. But he knew that Momma wouldn’t be kind like that- she would take one look at him, dripping blood on the floor and she would blame the woman for his pain.

He could already hear her yelling, the shrill sound bouncing through his head. Momma wouldn’t care to listen, to see anything other than what she wanted. Momma was like that- kind and sweet and quiet until someone was stupid enough to go after the family. He was like her in a way, protective of them all. He liked to think that he got it from her- that he couldn’t possibly be bad when Momma’s blood ran through him, sweet and caring.

He couldn’t let Momma find out. Not now- not when he had decided that the woman standing in front of him was worth more to him alive than chopped up into pieces that would fit into the deep freezer.

With a grunt that shuts the woman up from her rambling, he grabs her arm. She’s soft and small under his touch- her sweater itching at his palm as he begins to pull her deeper into the hallway, into the darkness. Away from Momma. Away from a future he wanted no part in.

“No, Tommy we have to go downstairs. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice is shaky as she takes a couple steps forward before planting her feet and refusing to keep going. “Your mom might me better at this than me, please.” She pleads even as she begins to walk again when he refuses to stop.

He tries to tell her that Momma couldn’t find out. That if she did then he wouldn’t be able to protect her- to keep her safe. Momma would tell him to get rid of her and he always did what Momma wanted, even if sometimes he didn’t want to.

He loves Momma. Loves her more than Uncle Hoyt or Monty. He loves her more than anything or anyone- even himself. He could suffer through any pain as long as Momma was with him- as long as she was happy with him.

He tries to tell her that he knows exactly what he’s doing, but all his words come out as a garbled mess of a groan, the muscles in his throat too weak to form any actual words. It frustrates him- hearing himself talk in a way that no one would ever understand.

He lets out a low howl, that frustration growing when she stops walking again. He has to be careful not to hurt her- he didn’t want to accidentally pull her arm too hard if she was going to make this a habit. He just needed to get her to the bathroom. She had to wash off the blood on her hands before she went back downstairs. He could take care of his injuries himself- Momma had taught him how to clean and bandage cuts and bruises. Though he wasn’t concerned with the open wound dripping blood down his arm.

Right now, he needed to get the woman to understand that Momma couldn’t find out about this. That if she went down those steps, stained with his blood, then there was nothing he could do to keep Momma from lashing out. Facing her, he points to himself- finger beating against his chest twice before he points at her.

He’s watching her- his eyes on her as she watches him repeat the action two more times. Her face is flushed, her eyebrows pushed together, and he begins to worry that she’s not understanding him, that now that he’s let go of her, she was going to be stupid and try to push him back towards the stairs.

Letting out a small whimper, he grabs at her wrist. She’s pliant under his touch- her skin cool and soft. Touching her reminds him of the Cattle fences that were used back when the Slaughterhouse had been open. He had touched one by accident, not fully understanding why they had so many warnings signs- and just like back then, something hot and quick ran through him. Back then, the muscles in his fingers and arms had tensed and burned, taking away all his strength. But touching her, feeling the way his scarred thumb slid against the thin skin on her wrist- felt like a shockwave of warmth had run through him- intense and disorienting and addictive.

It scared him, but he didn’t let go of her even though his brain was yelling at him to stop touching her. He couldn’t. He had to keep her safe. Slowly, he began to raise her hand towards him, his mouth opening as he made a noise from the bottom of his throat.

He looked at her face as he pressed the back of her hand against his chest. She was already staring at him, her lips twisted into a frown. He couldn’t look into her eyes for too long, something in him ached when he did, so he kept his eyes on her mouth as he tapped her hand against his chest. That same warmth that was spreading through his arm poisoned his chest. He could feel it in his throat, in the depth of his belly- It knocked around in his head until he was dizzy.

For a moment, with her hand on him and his eyes still glued to her lips, he forgets about the bad people who called him all those bad words. He forgets all of the evil that he’s done, all the screams that haunt him, all the blood that he can never wash off.

He finds the confidence to raise his eyes to her own and part of him is scared that in them he would find disgust at having to touch something like him. A smaller, quieter, part wonders if she feels it too- the electricity that flows out of her and through him. He wants her to tell him that she feels him in her- that he’s also warm and electric through her veins. He wants her to tell him that a real monster wouldn’t feel the way he did- that if he really was a monster, the softness in her eyes wouldn’t be affecting him so much.

Dropping his eyes, he taps his chest with her hand twice before pointing it towards him. He does it one more time before he lets go of her. He expects her to pull her hand away, but instead she lets it linger on his shirt, the dirt and stains not bothering her. He wonders if she can feel the way his heart knocks against his ribs.

“You want me to follow you?” her voice cracks a bit as she takes her hand away.

He nods, grunting as he motions to a door off to the side behind him before he lifts his bloodied arm and runs his hand over the scratches- they’ve stopped bleeding already, his arm a mess of blood stains and dirt. Pointing behind here, towards the staircase he shakes his head, bringing his hand back towards his arm and covering the mess he made.

She doesn’t say anything as she tries to piece everything together- her face twisting into itself as she thinks. He repeats the movement, groaning when he points at the staircase and once more when he covers the cuts. ‘Not safe,’ he tries to tell her, ‘Take care of it here.’

Realization makes her eyes brighten, her features smoothing out. “You don’t want Luda Mae to find out?”

It’s not exactly what he was trying to say but he lets it be, seeing as it was close enough. She could have thought that he wanted her to go down and grab Momma- and he was worried that with how small she was she would take off running before he could stop her. In trying to help she would run straight into her end.

The thought made his stomach drop- a sudden chill rocking through him.

“Tommy- I don’t know if I can do anything about that…” she pauses, and he watches as she reaches for him, taking his arm in both of her hands. Her touch burns him again, and this time he can’t stop the small whine of delight from escaping his lips. Her mouth twists down as she inspects his arm- and he tenses, waiting for her to start yelling at him, for the bad names to come. But they don’t- she stays silent, her eyes glued to his arm.

The damage isn’t bad- compared to the collection of scars that line both of his arms, this was nothing. He had scratched a small hole in his forearm- breaking the skin and tearing apart the bit of muscle and fat there. He was lucky that he hadn’t hit anything vital- that he had stopped when he did.

When he was younger, he had taken to cutting- tearing flesh from his body and slicing himself open as a punishment for his mistakes, for his bad thoughts. He had done a good job of keeping it from Momma until the night he had cut too deep, and the blood wouldn’t stop. He had ran to her, howling in fear- bloody arm pressed against his chest. She had made Uncle Monty hold him down while she stitched him together, only a glass of whiskey to keep the pain away. She had yelled at him the entire time-first with tears in her eyes then when they had dried up and she had finished sewing his skin together- she had taken the belt and beaten him raw. When she got tired of beating him, she had told him that this was all Satan’s fault- that she had no choice but to beat the devil out of him. God was gonna soothe his pain, his fears, his anguish. He would see, Momma liked to say. She had kissed him on the forehead, and he swore he had seen the devil on her shoulder, laughing at him.

The pain hadn’t convinced him to stop- he simply learned how to hide it better, how to keep things clean, how to stitch himself together on those nights that he fantasized about finding peace in death. He learned where to cut and how deep to dig- and eventually, Momma made herself forget it ever happened at all. Sometimes, he thought that she was afraid of God- of making him angry, of him turning his back on her. It’s why he didn’t tell her that every once in a while, he could feel the devil itself pumping through his veins. Taunting him.

The woman gently turns his arm, and he pulls himself from the memories, watching as her fingers caress his skin. She’s too trusting- doesn’t she see the danger that she’s in? How easily he could overpower her? This was a Godless house, no matter what Momma and Hoyt thought- he knew the truth. He knew that they were all rotten, inside and out. She would be ruined by them all if she stayed. He would ruin her with his sins-but his guilt wasn’t strong enough to stop his desires.

“It looks a lot worse than it is, doesn’t it?” she asks him, but he doesn’t answer- too busy watching the way she touches him- her touch making his breath deepen.

He likes the way she doesn’t mind that his blood is on her hands- twisted into the tiny cracks of her bracelet. She’s careful and slow as she traces the tip of her index finger above the crater he had created in his flesh. He’s almost tempted to push her hand down- to feel her flesh against the inside of his own, to have her hurt him before he could hurt her- but she moves her hand away before he can make up his mind.

“Okay…” she sighs, not letting go of him. “Show me what to do.”

He grunts in satisfaction, the weight of Momma finding out and the woman being punished lifting from his shoulders. Slowly, he turns the arm she cradled in her hands so that he was grabbing her instead- his hand swallowing hers.

He tries not to think about it too much as he tugs gently and finds no resistance in her steps. He almost smiles- lip twitching against the leather on his face as he leads her to the bathroom. Inside him, the devil starts to dance in glee.

The room is cold as he pushes open the door and pulls her inside before he follows. He can feel the cold seep into his thin shirt, see it with every exhale when he turns on the light and shuts the door, dropping the woman’s hand. She shivers and he wants to know if it’s from the cold or the fact that he’s no longer touching her.

The light flickers and dies for a couple seconds, leaving them in darkness before it turns back on- low and yellow like all the others in the house. It makes the woman’s skin look sickly- washing her out as she blinks and tries to get used to the light.

“We have to clean it,” she’s already walking around him, towards the sink. It’s a small one, too low for him to reach without having to bend his knees uncomfortably. Maybe that’s why she pauses mid-sentence- was she trying to picture him, hunched over as he scrubbed the dirt and blood and sweat from his arms?

The thought of her thinking about him- caring about him- splits him in two, a feeling that he’s never experienced before.

“Where are the towels?” she asks, turning around to face him. “If we lay some down on the floor it should keep the mess down a bit, right?”

He doesn’t tell her that it’s not a good idea- that a pile of soaking towels would raise questions that need to stay buried instead. So, he shakes his head, already closing the small distance between them.

The bathroom is small- all of them are. The tiles on the walls are a faded green color, some of them cracked- some of them are separated by mold- the caulk so old and weathered by age and neglect. He hopes that she doesn’t see them- his blood warming in embarrassment as he tells himself that he would fix them later, before she realized that this house was falling apart right under their feet.

The toilet and sink and the bathtub are old- not quite as stained, but still the same faded shade as the tiles that surrounded them. Under the harsh yellow light, it all looked a mess. At least it wasn’t like Hoyt’s bathroom- with too many colors and carpet all over the floors that trapped the smell of tobacco and sweat and soap, the steam that seemed to linger and stick to the walls doing nothing to lessen the stench.

He’s careful as he walks around her- suddenly aware of just how close they were. In here, with the door closed, being near to her seemed almost intimate in a way that he could not quite grasp.

He was used to being alone with people- usually they were screaming and begging, or already half-dead, delirious and confused from the pain and the blood loss. He was used to them thrashing and running and fighting back- hitting him with their fists, kicking him, throwing whatever they managed to get ahold of. They would always scare him when they did that- the pain eventually making him mad until he lashed out and hurt them on purpose.

They didn’t seem to understand that he didn’t want to make them suffer- that he was being kind- taking their lives quickly so that they didn’t have to be so afraid.

He was used to the screaming, the name calling- no matter how scared or afraid he got, he always knew how it would end.

With the woman, he had touched her- she had touched him- without screaming, without her begging or flinching or trying to run away. Out in the hall there had been enough space for him if he needed to get away, but here it was just the two of them- existing in a space that no one else seemed to belong in.

It terrified him just as much as it thrilled him. It made him feel the same way as when he had to chased down someone that had slipped out of his hold- but this time his mind wasn’t telling him to kill. This time, as he stood besides the woman, her eyes on him as he turned on the faucet and waited for the water to warm, something inside of him was telling him to chase her down in a completely different way- to keep her at his side.

Even if he had to chain her and train her- he did not want her to leave. He would not let her leave.

He remembers when he had first started at the Slaughterhouse, when he had been put to work with the cows- separating the babies from the mothers as soon as they were born. He would take them- carefully scooping them up in his arms, a child at the time, not knowing better, not knowing what it was that he was doing- and carry them to another part of the barn where he would drop them into cages so small that even he couldn’t fit inside.

They would cry and shake, unable to stand, unable to realize what lay ahead of them. He would feed them scraps he had stolen from the feeding center- oats or barley or even handfuls of grass from outside- shoving his hand through and letting them eat from his hand. They would calm down, even though they could not stand fully- their heads hunched over and pressed against the metal. He would show them that even if they weren’t going to live long- even if the world around them didn’t seem to care for them- they weren’t alone.

She did not have to be caged like them- though if he had to, he would keep her locked up if it meant keeping her beside him. Down in the basement where no one would hear her- where no one would disturb them, he would get her to see that he was a kind man, that he only wanted what was best for her.

She was already so much like the calves from back then- stupid and small and too trusting of him. It wouldn’t be hard to break her, to convince her that it was all her fault- that there was nothing left for her outside this home.

When the water heats up- steam rising and filling his lungs- he runs his fingers under the stream. Dirt and blood stain the sink, the hot water turning his fingers pink. It hurts, but not enough for him to stop. He rubs his hands together, the water turning pink as it drains. He can feel her eyes on him as he scrubs the grains of dirt from his skin.

For some reason, it embarrasses him- having her watch him do something so mundane and ordinary. He almost swore that he could feel the warmth from her eyes on his skin- hotter than the water. It makes the simple task suddenly seem foolish, makes him feel as if this was the first time he was doing it and he wasn’t sure if it was right or wrong.

With a grunt he tries to push the thoughts from his mind- cupping his hand and filling it with water before he splashes it onto his arm, onto the wound he had given himself. It makes a mess- water splashing onto his rolled sleeve and onto the floor, the sink too small to prevent the mess.

“Can I?” she says- and she’s suddenly closer than he had thought, her body pressed against his side. He can feel her through his shirt, through the thick fabric of her sweater. He swears that he can feel the softness of her body, the beating of her heart, the blood rushing through her veins on his very skin. It makes his heart leap into his throat- the sudden touch making him want to push her head into the glass of the medicine cabinet or pull her closer- he wasn’t sure which one he wanted to do most.

He stands still, body tense as she reaches for him, grabbing his arm and lifting it closer. She must have found the linen closet- an old, red washcloth in her other hand which she places underneath the running water. She hisses, pulling her hand away and opens the cold water.

“Doesn’t that hurt you?” she asks- and there’s no anger in her voice, no underlying judgement that has him tensing up, muscles rippling with dread that he had done something wrong. Momma liked to talk to him like that sometimes. She liked to ask questions that made him feel bad, that made him regret coming to her- guilty that he had bothered her. Hurt that she saw him as something bothersome.

He shakes his head, his way of telling her that no, it wasn’t hurting him. If he had a voice, he would tell her that his skin is so damaged that he could barely feel it, that some days he even preferred it- he liked the way his skin turned red and pulsed in a way that was almost comfortable, soothing.

“This will feel much better,” she holds her fingers under the water, and once it’s at a comfortable temperature she lets it run over the washcloth. “Tell me if I’m hurting you, okay?”

He nods sharply and she smiles at him- the corners of her mouth lifting. He expects her to rub the wound directly, desperate to clean it off before infection sets in. Instead, to his surprise, she wipes around the length of it- scrubbing gently at the blood matting the hair on his arm. The hand holding his arm is gentle, her fingers sinking into his soft flesh and holding him still.

He watches her- watches the concentration on her face that has her eyebrows knitted together as she wipes and rinses, repeating those two motions over and over and over again until his skin is cleaner- until the dirt is gone and there’s nothing left to hide the many sins he carried on his skin.

She pauses- and he can almost read her mind at that moment. He can see it in the tension in her wrist, feel it in the way her fingers tremble just a fraction of a second before they dig a little deeper into his arm. The feeling of her nails scratching at him isn’t painful, but it startles him just the same as if it were- a warmth growing in his chest that travels down to his belly and pools there- filling him with a different sort of sin.

He expects her to say something about the hundreds of tiny little cuts and bruises that she’s unearthed- he can feel it hang heavy in the air- his lips tingling from anticipation. From the worry that she would open her mouth and ruin it all.

It would either be disgust or pity- and he wanted neither. The scars were his to carry- his own punishment for his terrible deeds. Uncle Hoyt always cringed and acted like he didn’t see them- even though his mouth and face twisted as if he had eaten something sour. The pity always came from Momma- her hands on his as she prayed to God to take away whatever burdens he seemed to be carrying around in his heart. She wouldn’t touch them- maybe out of fear, or anger, or maybe just like Uncle Hoyt, she was disgusted as well- scared that if she touched the scars, they would somehow ruin her as well.

The corners of the woman’s mouth are still twisted down when she glances up at him- her eyes too dark to read. He wonders what he looks like in her eyes- what is it that she sees in him that no one else seems to see?

He waits for her to talk- to break the tense silence that’s choking him- but she doesn’t say a word, dropping her eyes as she picks up the bar of soap that’s been there for months. It almost slips out of her hand, and she lets go of him completely- his arm frozen in place, his body already missing hers. The tension disappears, as if nothing had ever happened, as if it had never been there to begin with. It rolls from the points of pressure that she had left behind on his flesh and up his arms. It moves in his veins, thick and syrupy- coating all of him in a feeling that’s doesn’t sit right.

Maybe he did want her to speak- to pity him after all. But the moment is gone, and he doesn’t have a voice to bring it back- to tell her what he was feeling, so he lets the discomfort drown him just a bit as he watches her act like nothing wrong had happened.

She rubs the bar between her hands, underneath the stream of water and his heart sinks at the thought of her cleaning all traces of him from her skin- he wanted to coat her in all that he was- his scent, his hatred, the bitter taste in his mouth that never seemed to go away- he wanted her to have it all, to carry him even if they were apart for a split second. An extension of him- equally as fearsome.

“Come here,” she motions for him to bring his arm towards her hands, letting the bar fall into the sink. Her hands are covered in soap as she takes his arm in between them- gently scrubbing from his wrist to the inside of his elbow, where his rolled-up sleeve sat. At first, she doesn’t touch the wound- and he can feel the hesitation in her fingers as she scrubs at his arm, circling around it. She scrubs at his skin, at the spaces between his fingers, taking his hand in her own and gently massaging it.

It's the first time anyone has done something like that to him- and while he can’t understand why she was being so thorough when it would have been easier to just hand him the soap and let him do it, he has no intention of stopping her.

He simply watches and enjoys- his mouth twisted into the closest thing of a smile that he could manage underneath his mask.

“Tell me if I hurt you, okay?” she says quietly, and it takes him a second to understand her words, his mind lost even to himself- her fingers lightly press against the cut as she speaks, drawing him back into reality. He tenses as she begins to clean it out, rubbing soapy water into it. It doesn’t hurt- not with how light and slow she moves her hand, her finger dipping into the hole he had scratched open. He expects it to hurt or sting or startle him- but pain doesn’t come. Instead, he groans in delight- enjoying the way her finger seems to be tearing into him, stretching his skin open. It’s like she’s making space for herself inside of him- forcing herself into the parts of him that held him together, sinew and muscle and blood- now poisoned with whatever sickness the woman had inflicted in his heart.

“Sorry!” she says quickly, pulling her hand away from him. The once white bubbles between her fingers are now a soft shade of pink, mixed with his blood. It all disappears down the drain as she rinses her hand, drying them on the front of her jeans.

He grows frustrated at the fact that there’s no way to tell her that she hadn’t hurt him- that he wanted her to do it again. That the pain she caused him was almost addictive- sweeter than the whiskey Uncle Monty sometimes let him have whenever he was in a good enough mood to share.

The woman motions for him to rinse his arm, already cupping her hands together under the faucet and letting the cool water pool between her hands. He angles his arm awkwardly into the sink and she lets the water trickle from between her fingers over his arm slowly. He watches as she repeats the motion, rinsing his arm- it’s so trivial and boring, yet he’s in awe as she takes care of him.

Without a second thought, the woman is already devoting herself to the mundanity of life with him. He could see it as she turns the water off and tells him to wait- as if he would leave her side, as if he could do something so absolutely stupid- subjecting himself to an agony he had no intention of experiencing firsthand.

He hears the closet door open behind him, making him turn around and look at the woman as she rummages through old fitted blankets, washcloths and towels until she finds what she needs. With one hand pressed against the pile of folded towels she pulls one free, tossing it over her arm. “I don’t know how long this has been here for-” as she talks, she moves onto her toes, stretching her arm out as she reaches for something on one of the top shelves.

He almost moves to help her, his body already swaying in place, eager to move, to make himself useful to the woman. But he spends too long trying to decide- her hand closing around whatever it was that she had seen earlier. She lets out a small noise of delight as she drops down to the balls of her feet, and it wracks through him, sending a shiver of warmth up his spine that spreads across his chest- tightening the muscles in his lower belly.

“Expired medicine and antibiotics are better than nothing, right?” She asks as he turns and faces him- lips curved up into a smile and he almost finds himself mimicking it- the corners of his lips twitching. He catches himself, hot embarrassment forcing his eyes to drop from her face- down to the small plastic medicine bin in her hands. It did not matter that he had his mask to hide behind, the way she looked at him made him feel as if she could somehow see through it- his face exposed for whatever ridicule and insults she would eventually throw at him.

There are bottles of pills stacked on top of one another- the type that Momma used to give him when he was feverish. It would take his sickness as well as his hunger- leaving him too heavy to do anything but lay in bed until the heat of his body burned through the drug. There are other things as well- gauze and bandages, silver packages of pills he couldn’t identify, the label worn off a long time ago- a bottle of Vaseline, faded from the years sits next to a glass jar of Vapor-Rub. Looking at it, he swears that he can smell it even with how far away from the jar he was- even though his nose hasn’t worked properly for months, he feels the ghost of it wrinkle as he cringes from the offensive smell his mind reminds him of.

Momma used to slather him with it when he had first started working at the Slaughterhouse. He hadn’t been used to the smell of it back then and every day he went back had been miserable. The scent of death and blood and shit had soured his stomach until he had gone and thrown up the oatmeal Momma had made for breakfast all over his worktable. All over the slab of meat he had been told to break down. He can still remember the taste of animal blood on his tongue after he had wiped his mouth- forgetting that his hands and arms and chest had been covered in chunks of offal. His boss had called him every bad word under the sun-some were words that he had never heard before, now fully engrained in his mind, tearing at his heart once Monty had told him what they meant.

When he had gone home that night, after scrubbing his station clean- the blood mixing with his waste underneath his nails, in the strands of his hair and in between the cracks of his boots, Momma had slapped him. She had been waiting for him on the porch, her face twisted down in anger, the blue of her eyes dark and cold behind her glasses.

She had called him a great big idiot- uncaring of how dirty he had been, of how hard he had silently prayed to God for the day to hurry up and end so that he could leave and go home. At one point, when the bell for Lunch had rung and he was forced to stay and catch up to everyone else- his boss throwing what Momma had packed for him in the garbage before spitting on it with a laugh- he had wanted to die, his chest burning every single time he brought the cleaver down. He had wanted to die right then and there- to stop existing all together. To be nothing but the air around him- free from the bad people, from the stares, from feeling like all that he did was somehow inherently wrong. No matter if it was an accident or not, no one ever seemed to care enough to listen to him.

Momma had gotten a call from the Slaughterhouse- telling her that because of his careless mistake he would have to be let go. Momma had told him, as she dragged him to the hose out back, that she had begged and begged and begged for them to give him a second chance. They couldn’t lose his income, not with Uncle Monty getting less hours at his job and the Government cutting Uncle Hoyt’s veteran checks so suddenly. They were barely making ends meet as it was- this would ruin them.

She had yelled and shouted, spraying him with cold water until he was a shivering mess, the blood no longer crusted over on his skin. He could feel the cold water pooling in his boots, making his socks stick to his toes. It hadn’t even mattered to him then, his heart hammering away at his chest at the thought of never having to go back. Of not having to wake up so early to walk all the way to the other side of town in a place that he hated.

He didn’t even mind when Momma had beat him, welts forming on his wet skin from the belt she kept exclusively for punishments. The pain was nothing in comparison to when Momma had told him that she had made sure that he had kept his job.

They were going to cut his pay, a little every check, until he paid off the cost of the half cow he had puked all over. But he still had a job, he was still able to help the family out- wasn’t that good? Momma asked him, smiling at him like she hadn’t just beat him tired.

Momma warned him that he couldn’t mess this up again. That there were no more chances after this- sending him up to his room with no dinner, his stomach already empty and rubbing against itself.

The morning after, when she had woken him up- his body sore from all the walking that he had done and the bruises forming on his back and legs- Momma had twisted open the jar of Vapor-rub for the first time, filling his room with the slightly sweet- minty smell.

She had bought it last night, right before the shop closed- with the bit of lose change she had managed to scrap together. It’s gonna help you from making another mistake she said right before she shoved a finger full of it into his nose. It was thick, and cold, burning the inside of his nose as he moaned in pain, trying to push Momma away before she shoved more into the other nostril. She had smacked his hand away, telling him that this was for his own good. That this was only until he got used to it.

He had moaned as tears began to form, shaking his head- trying to empty his nose, the burning crawling up into his head and making his eyes water painfully. Every inhale he took through his mouth burned its way to his lungs. Momma only slapped him again- telling him that this was his fault. That he had to do this for the family.

“You’re so selfish Thomas!” she shouted at him, holding his jaw and shoving another finger into his empty nostril. “There’s no room for useless boys in this house, do you understand?”

He couldn’t remember anything after that. His memories about that day lost to the pain he had put himself through. He remembers bits and pieces- the hunger. The burning. The anger.

He always seemed to remember the anger. Flashing through him- hot and cold, boiling his blood.

Something outside of his thoughts rattle and he’s once more standing in the bathroom, a man three times the size of the child that he had once been. Beside him, the woman had set the medicine bin on top of the toilet tank and was rummaging through it- the source of the noise that had brought him back.

He’s tense, the muscles in his neck thick and tight. He doesn’t like how he seemed to live more in his memories- constantly remembering all the things that he just wanted to forget. He didn’t want to remember, to be reminded of the pain he carried.

The woman glances at him, holding a small yellow squeeze tube and a roll of self-adhesive medical tape in one hand. Their eyes meet and she smiles at him, even though he can feel the way his face is twisted down into a scowl- his eyebrows heavy over his eyes.

He doesn’t mean to glare at her- to make her smile falter slightly as her eyes widen just a fraction. He could almost see himself in her eyes and he doesn’t like the him that he imagines. Large and imposing- a thing that only knows how to hurt, how to cause fear. He waits for the woman to realize her mistake- to realize that she was trapped in a small room with a monster.

“Give me your arm?” she asks him, holding out her right hand. “Let’s get you all wrapped up, okay?” her smile is still small, and he can see the wariness in her eyes, but when he places his arm in her hand she doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t rush him- wanting to get this over with.

She pulls him towards her instead, slender fingers wrapping around his forearm as much as possible. She tugs, and he moves- lightweight in her hold.

He’s aware of the muscles in his face- of how, even if he’s partially hidden behind his mask, his face sits. He makes himself relax- something that comes easy with the warmth of her hand on his body, easing the tension that he still carried from his memories. Her touch burned into him, filled him until he swore that he could feel her in his blood- pumping through his heart.

Her eyes don’t leave his as she pulls him closer, and motions with her head for him to sit down on the toilet. “It’ll be easier, that way you don’t have to keep your arm in the air.” She explains, shuffling out of the way to make space for him.

Underneath his weight, the toilet squeaks and shifts as he does as told, awkwardly sitting down. She’s taller than him like this, his head at the same level with her chest, making him have to tilt his head back just a bit to meet her eyes.

Her smile had grown in the time he had looked away- and he can’t help the heat that spreads across his face, his ears growing hot. Could she feel it? The warmth that she caused him? The uneasiness thrumming through him that had the tips of his fingers aching to touch her? To hold her like she held him?

“Can you hold this?” she asks, already dropping something into his expecting hand. It had been resting on his lap, calloused covered palm open and waiting- a beggar’s pose. The ointment and tape weren’t what he had been waiting for, but he takes them, closing his thick fingers around them.

What he didn’t expect was for her to lean over him with a mumbled “sorry”, her hand falling onto his shoulder as she reached for something behind him- inside of the medicine bin.

He doesn’t know what to do- his body freezing underneath hers as her neck grazes his mask covered face. It doesn’t last long- maybe a fraction of a second before she’s pulling away and dropping the hand from his shoulder, but it was enough.

Enough for him to inhale the light scent of her- woodsy and sweet and nutty- just the smallest hint of sweat underneath that. It reminded him of the baked goods Momma used to make for him on his birthday when he was small. It was comforting in the same way that it twisted his stomach with the pain of remembering something that used to make him so happy, something that had been taken from him so abruptly once Momma decided that he was too big to celebrate his birthday. Too old to be cared for.

The woman had been so close that he swore that he could almost hear the blood pounding through her veins. He had almost been tempted to turn his head and feel its pulse with his lips. To scratch her skin with his mask- the scent of her tainting it the same way it has already ruined his senses.

He could picture it- his teeth sinking into the warm and thin flesh she had so stupidly given him access to. It was almost scary- the way his mouth began to water at the thought of her blood on his tongue, raw flesh between his teeth. He wanted to fill his belly with it- to make her a part of him in a way that no one could take from him.

Would she taste as sweet as she smelled?

He swallowed down saliva, clearing the bad thoughts from his mind- scared that if he kept focusing on them, he would do something that he didn’t really want to do. Something that he wouldn’t be able to take back, no matter how hard he begged and prayed and tried to undo.

He didn’t want to hurt her right now. No matter how hard his mind was telling him to do it- replaying all of the times that he could have done so. Showing him all of the ways that he still could.

He feels ashamed of his thoughts, of the temptation that he was barely keeping at bay- and finds himself unable to look at the woman as she rips open a piece of plastic, tossing it in the garbage can between the toilet and the sink. He keeps his eyes on the space between his legs, on her beat-up boots as she stands in front of him- sweet and unaware of what a horrible person he truly was. Of all that he was struggling to not do to her.

“Do you think Luda Mae is getting suspicious?”

The question startles him, reminding him of the world outside of the bathroom, outside of the woman in front of him.

“She’s probably thinking I ran away; don’t you think?” the woman’s laugh is small, feathery light. He doesn’t know how to answer- not knowing how long they had been up here. There was a possibility that Momma had grown suspicious, or maybe she thought that he had snapped and taken care of her in the only way that he knew how.

Vaguely, he shakes his head. Whether it’s to disagree with her or to tell her that he wasn’t sure- he let’s her decide on which one he’s trying to communicate. If Momma had been concerned, she would have come upstairs to check on her already, so he wasn’t too worried. He shrugs, and her laughter fills his ears again.

“Right. If you’re not worried, then I won’t be either. I just don’t want her to think that I’ve been a horrible guest- running off in the middle of helping her with dinner.”

He shakes his head again and this time its to reassure her that Momma wouldn’t think that. At least he hoped that she wouldn’t. The thought of Momma angry at the woman made his chest burn uncomfortably. An ache that slithered in the tight spaces between his ribs- hot and uneasy in its slickness.

“Well, what’s done is done, lets just get your arm bandaged. I might need your help facing her again.” The woman likes to talk with a smile, he’s noticed. It was as if her mouth had no other way to rest- the corners turned up towards the heavens, towards her eyes that liked to seek him out- unafraid of what she saw, of what others liked to look away from.

He wondered if she was joking- if she was just talking in order to fill the silence. He knew people who did that- people like Hoyt and his old boss at the Slaughterhouse, who had to keep their mouths moving or they would stop existing all together. He liked to think that if he had a voice, he would be like that too- not quite as annoying, but loud enough that people were forced to look at him, to listen to what he had to say.

He would tell the woman that he would keep her safe. That he wanted to go down with her and show Momma that she had done nothing wrong. That if anyone was to blame, it was him. It was his fault that she had stayed away for so long. He would hide her away from Momma’s anger- keep her tucked behind him- safe.

If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to leave just yet. They could stay here a little longer- everything behind that door non-existent. He could make believe that Momma was still at work, busy with too many customers- outsiders who were just passing by, headed for more than the meat hooks in the basement of this house. That for a bit his uncle’s Monty and Hoyt didn’t exist. That the world was just for him and her.

That would be enough for him. He was almost tempted to ask God- to check and see if he was still paying attention to him after all that he had done.

The woman moves from in front of him and takes a seat on the edge of the tub, her knees rubbing against the outside of his thigh as she grabs his arm and places it on her lap. He can feel the buckle of her belt against his knuckles- his arm suddenly a solid weight as he feels the warmth that radiates from the space between her thighs.

It crawls along his skin- up to his shoulder and through the space in his chest. It reminds him of the times that he’s stayed in one spot for too long, his limbs falling asleep. Though there was no uncomfortable pain this time- Instead it felt like a million little bugs were crawling around inside of him- a buzzing under his skin that he was unused to, but not disgusted by. It was something that maybe he could get used to.

It settles in his belly- thick and heavy and hot, stirring awake thoughts that felt too uncomfortable to focus on. Shamefully, he raises his eyes from the woman’s lap, trying to think of something other than the way her jeans clung to her thighs or how close his fingers were to the space between her legs- somehow hotter than the rest of her, the back of his hand burning pleasantly. He wanted to keep it there- to soak all of himself in her warmth until he knew nothing more.

He pushes the indecent thoughts from his mind, suddenly growing paranoid that the woman would find out what he was thinking about her. He didn’t want her to think that he was disgusting. Rotten just like Uncle Hoyt, who was obsessed with playing with their food.

“Is this uncomfortable for you, Tommy?” maybe it was because the silence had gone on for too long, but the woman whispers her question- her voice only for him, distracting him slightly as she reaches for the things she had given him, plucking them from his hand before he even had a chance to register the movement- her hand too fast that he barely feels the way her fingers skim his palm.

She’s already twisted open the bottle of ointment by the time he shakes his head- the cap balancing on the edge of her knee. With a hum she nods- her eyes focused on her own hands even though he wants her to look at him again. He wanted her to ask him more questions- her voice tender and sweet whenever she spoke to him. He wanted her to distract him for his thoughts that liked to pull him away from her- and right now he wanted to stay right here, to not miss a single moment.

The ointment is cold against his skin- the woman squeezing a light amount right above the wound. He can feel it cleansing away all of his wickedness- her finger swiping at it until it’s in the deepest layer of his flesh, leaving nothing behind but an oily residue that coated her thumb. Without a pause she sticks a piece of gauze on top- taping it up until the gauze is well hidden under flesh colored medical tape.

He had found it in the pocket of one of the first of Uncle Hoyt’s guests- setting it aside for Momma along all of the jewelry he had collected. Maybe it was for a reason that he had second guessed his decision to throw it away. Maybe that had been a sign from above that you were on your way- that God hadn’t abandoned them after all.

The woman is gentle as she pats the covered wound and leans back a bit to meet his expectant eyes. What does she see in them- in him- that makes her look at him so sweetly?

“You’re all set. How’s it feeling? It’s not too tight, is it?”

#texas chainsaw massacre #thomas hewitt x reader #leatherface #thomas hewitt #slasher fandom #slasher fanfiction #slashers x reader #slashers #slasher community #leatherface x reader #the texas chainsaw massacre

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loosesodamarble · 8 months ago

Text

About the recent chapter drop...

So chapters 374, 375, and 376 of the Black Clover manga dropped as of the day I've started drafting this post. I have many feelings about this chapter, as several friends can attest. I was going a little a lot feral in a group chat.

Wanna quickly tag @thoughtfullyrainynightmare, @lyranova, and @kalolasfantasyworld for encouraging me to write this little essay. I'll also tag @drmarune as a fellow Faust fan (I know you also love the Yami family so hopefully my thoughts on them are satisfactory).

So let me begin with saying that I'm mainly a Faust girlie. But I will be covering both the Yami and the Fausts to the best of my abilities because the family stories are connected. I cannot give thorough commentary on the chapters if I ignore what's going on with Yami and Ichika.

Okay so! Where to start with my analysis?

I guess the most obvious place to start is with Chapter 374. Title: Demon-God. The "Demon-God" in question is supposed to be Yami. Yami's Dark Magic is seen as ominous and being the attribute of a supreme devil enhances its demonic connotation. Grey, while healing Yami's wounds in chapter 323, noted that Yami's body had become devil-like. Yami is infamously known as the "God of Destruction" in Clover Kingdom. And finally, in chapter 342, Ichika and Yami's father stated that the Yami clan reserves a title for the strongest member of them. The title: Demon-God. (In other words, this chapter could've been titled "Yami Sukehiro" and it wouldn't have changed anything./lh

Looking between when Yami takes the demon soul pill and the fuzzy glimpses of when Ichika took the pill, I'm wondering if the main reason Yami was able to stay sane while under the drug's effects has to do with his current condition. What I mean is... Ichika was just... kinda there. There's not much detail but there didn't seem to be much going on and Ichika and Yami's father just gave Ichika the drug on a whim. There was no outlet for the surge in Ichika's physical prowess. Meanwhile, Yami takes the drug while severely injured but also in the mindset that he has to get up and help fight off Lucius's army. His physical abilities are getting kicked into high gear and he has something to target with those powers. Maybe my reading is weird or wrong. But could it be that the reason no member of the Yami clan was able to stay in control when they took the drug is because they weren't taking it in the right condition. Like, being on death's door probably isn't a prerequisite but maybe no one took the drug with firm grasp on what to do with the excess power. I dunno.

Rewinding a bit... That reunion! FUCKING IMPECCABLE! I love the way Yami at first sees Ichika as a little kid. The way he remembered her last he saw took precedence over reality for a moment (AND HE'S NOT THE ONLY VICTIM OF IT!). I love Ichika's apology; the way she details the truths she learned recently (probably not just from her memories being triggered but I'd assume she had Ryuu clarify everything to her so she could really be thankful to Yami for making sure she'd be alright) then topping it off with the "I'm sorry." As a little sister who has misinterpreted things done by my older siblings, I really felt for Ichika. I can tell that Ichika is in pain, realizing how she wronged Yami by viewing him as a destroyer, but there's also so clearly a relief in knowing that the whole time, he had her best interests at heart. (Okay, my sisters never murdered our whole family clan, but you get the idea.) And Yami doesn't linger on it. He accepts her apology and even points out how he had help making sure Ichika was okay.

The flashback of Yami and Ryuuya parting ways... Ryuu always believed in Yami. Also, I love the panel of Yami with the torii gate and the rising sun behind him. The juxtaposition of the torii gate and rising sun - very Japanese and thus Hino symbols - with Yami being just about to leave Hino is like... Symbols of his homeland seeing him off essentially. MAN! I FELT SOMETHING THERE! Anyways, I know that Yami and Ryuu are looking forward to meeting up again now that they know it's possible.

Now back to when Yami has taken the demon soul pill. Yami is taking on his final form as the Demon-God of Destruction. I love the way Yami's form looks.

The splatter of blood from his wounds is replaced by Dark Magic spreading over his body. The facial markings draw one's attention to Yami's eyes and it makes me think of how on oni masks in noh theater(? I think I have that right), the upper brow and the cheeks are scrunched closer to the eye area to frame the eyes. I'm talking out of my ass here, sorry. His thoughts in the moment too are so juicy! Before, his protection of Ichika meant abandoning her. No more of that though; they're together again and Yami will keep it that way.

I love how his panel shows that Yami has incarnated into a true God of Destruction. But he's not destroying aimlessly. He's in control and he's directing his path of chaos towards Lucius's madness and will tear it apart to save everyone.

Yami and Ichika don't get to have a long heart-to-heart due to the present circumstances but Tabata gave them just long enough to breathe and reconcile. To me, it also keeps in line with the way the Yami family works. Yami Sukehiro is quick to act and react. He bears some heavy burdens in his life but he is not a man who wallows in pity or sorrow. His response to adversity is to take it in stride as best he can and make his way towards the future. He accepts Ichika's apology and the pill to awaken what has always been a part of him: the will to protect. Ichika is shaken from seeing her brother so helpless and pouring her heart out in what little time she had. And Yami did shield her at the end of chapter 374, but in the next chapters, she's locked into a fighting mindset. She says herself that she won't stand by any more; she intends to shoulder the responsibility of this battle and fight alongside her brother as an equal. The Yamis are resilient people who can take so much, and the burdens are made easier now that they can carry them together.

Speaking of together, the combo spell that Yami and Ichika have is called "Black Heavens." It's got layers! The Yami clan are connected to demons and devils through their Dark Magic and thus stand opposite of the heavens thematically speaking. The combo spell also builds off of Ichika's Black Star spell and Yami's Black Hole spell. The way the Dark Magic is the antithesis of a religious heaven, darkness is what makes up most of the spatial heavens is awesome. Also the fact that black holes form when stars die and collapse... Yami is the older (and thus closer to dying) sibling... I just needed to put those thoughts out there while still firmly on the topic of the Yami siblings.

Now onto the next chapters...

Chapters 375 and 376 have to be talked together because just like Nacht and Morgen as twins, and just like the Faust-Yami dramas, the two are connected! 375 is titled Strafe and 376 is Sühne. The English releases of the chapters clarify that the words mean "punishment" and "atonement" respectively (if there is any specific connotations to those words, they're lost on me and I would happily accept any clarifications). (Also note that the words are German; Faust and Germany just go hand-in-hand). I've already made a post about Nacht and how his character centers on the themes of punishment and atonement. To quickly summarize, Nacht's character is about continually punishing himself as his atonement for killing Morgen. (I do also point out how he avoids forgiveness as a way to resolve his guilt, but there isn't a chapter titled "Forgiveness" here, now is there?) So these chapters seem to be Tabata's finale for Nacht (and Morgen). (I do hope that a page of the next chapter does see Nacht and Morgen sharing some final words, because if Acier got to give her kids some kind of goodbye, then Morgen should get a chance to say something to Nacht as well. Please Tabata.)

Moving on from just the chapter titles! What actually happens in the two chapters?

Chapter 375 starts with Nacht getting a good look at Morgen and, like the fandom did chapters ago, clocking the devil that Morgen is in possession of: Lucifugus. The wretched memory of the day Nacht tried to summon Lucifugus is burned into his memory; of course he'd recognize the bastard.

Regarding Nacht's thought that Lucifugus is controlling Morgen's body... We know from Sister Lily's words/behaviors (a bit of Acier too at the very end for her) that the human beings who have been turned into Paladins are still conscious/aware/present as themselves. It's just that Lucius's brainwashing is forcing them to believe a certain way, spout that nonsense about "saving the world," and take the actions they are taking. Put simply: a fragment of their true selves exists within the false persona of the Paladin that Lucius forced on them. However, I'm certain that Nacht knows it is in fact Morgen in control but he's trying to tell himself otherwise.

I mean, looking back at chapter 374, Nacht's immediate reaction to seeing Paladin Morgen is to mentally call him Morgen! It's then here in chapter 375 where Nacht is saying that Morgen isn't in control.

Nacht is distressed. He's face-to-face with Morgen, whom he killed, and using the very same power that Nacht had tried to gain and caused Morgen's demise. It's double the shame and guilt on Nacht's conscious. And so he tells himself that it's Lucifugus, not really Morgen, in control. It's an act of desperation. Nacht is trying to convince himself that it's not Morgen's he's facing as a way to relieve himself of some of the stress/anguish that would come from this battle and defeating his opponent. Because if it's not really Morgen, then Nacht wouldn't have to feel any more guilt/grief about it, would he?

I think it's entirely in-character of Nacht. He's attempting to distance himself from the reality before him, similar to how he distanced his past failings from his own person by projecting his criticisms onto the Black Bulls. It never erased his feelings of self-loathing, but it was what Nacht did so he wouldn't just sit and wallow in misery. He pushed his self-hatred onto others and became the cold, critical vice captain of the Black Bulls to fulfill his mission of spying on Spade Kingdom. And now, instead of projection, he's straight up denying things. In this battle against Paladin Morgen, Nacht is trying to ignore the painful reality in order to spare his feelings and see the fight through.

But Nacht couldn't deny the truth for long.

Lucifugus wouldn't be saying these things to him. Who knows what Lucifugus would say to Nacht, if anything at all. Either way, it's Morgen speaking to Nacht. And it shakes Nacht to his core. Not the mention that what Morgen says would also drive the knife deeper into Nacht's heart. The brothers may not have been close while Morgen was alive, but Morgen still understands Nacht enough to call out his feelings of despair.

The way I'm reading it, Nacht falters in battle because he can no longer lie to himself. He's fighting Morgen. A twisted up version of his beloved younger brother, but it's Morgen nonetheless. In submitting to that reality, his feelings (guilt, sorrow, remorse) overwhelm Nacht and it gives Morgen the chance to gain the upper hand in their fight.

And like with Yami seeing Ichika as her younger self for a moment, Nacht's view of Morgen is from ten years back (you can tell by the fluffy robe having having grey shading while Morgen's Paladin robe is pure white and the details on the collar area). At least for one page, we know that Nacht sees Morgen not as the enemy Paladin, but as the kind and noble Magic Knight he used to be. (The present and Nacht's memories of Morgen overlapping and distracting him earlier on too is something I personally believe in just to make it all the more painful. But that's more headcanon and not analysis.)

Nacht laments how he thought he'd already cried all his tears before. But that can't be the case. Nacht's love for Morgen is an active and present feeling for Nacht. So long as Nacht loves Morgen is something alive in his heart, he will find himself crying over and over again for the loss of Morgen's life. That's the way it seems to be turning out for Nacht. Unless he completely closed his heart off to his affection for Morgen, his tears will never truly dry up. It's small, quick line in the chapter but it speaks so deeply to Nacht's feelings. In contrast to Yami who can take things in stride and move on, Nacht is someone who holds onto his suffering and lets it haunt him to the depths of his soul. Nacht and his thoughts focus on things that are gone and cannot be changed. While he does live in the present and makes things better for the future, Nacht has trapped himself with thoughts of a past that can't be undone. It's part of the tragedy that is Nacht's character.

(Real quick, we're going to put a pin in Morgen saying "Brother, let's start over again. Together!" Right before he attempts to blast the ever loving crap out of Nacht. Mixed messages much?)

I wanna bring back the title of chapter 375: Strafe (Punishment). Back in chapters 285 and 287 (coincidentally before and after Nacht's backstory in chapter 286), Nacht thinks to himself "I don't care if I die." Nacht nearly sacrificed himself three times during the battle. Devaluing his life over and over was Nacht's way of punishing himself for his past. And now Nacht is repeating that behavior as he tells himself that he'll defeat the Lucius clone and Morgen even if it kills him. Nacht showed himself some mercy when he stated his intent to live with the Bulls properly. However, he didnt actually stop seeing himself as an expendable sacrifice; in his eyes, his death is worth more than any life he could life. Which hurts to see as a Nacht fan! This time, though, Nacht isn't endangering himself as punishment but he still receives it. Morgen, the very person Nacht wronged so many years ago, is the one delivering the punishment. Physically and emotionally, Nacht's being destroyed. And, in my eyes, it could be that Nacht is okay with it. He didn't stop hating himself, he just stopped acting on that self-destructive feeling. He's accepting Morgen's attacks because Nacht's pain in the present can't be as bad as the pain Morgen felt as he died.

Thankfully, Yami comes in for the save. And when he gives Nacht another talking to, Yami says this:

Yami knows that Nacht didn't let go of the past. That he's been quietly keeping the pain in his heart. The way Yami validates the idea that Morgen's death is a sin on Nacht's part is fascinating. Looking at the big picture, it was more an unfortunate accident; Nacht did incite it by summoning Lucifugus but Morgen chose to destroy the relic with his own hands. Neither Nacht nor Morgen are to blame, they just took actions in line with who they are and it resulted in Morgen's sacrifice. Whether or not Yami wholeheartedly agrees with Nacht's view is a discussion for another time but here, in the moment, Yami leans into it. Yami speaks to Nacht based on those beliefs. From there, he drill it into Nacht's head that if he's going to hold onto what happened as his sin, then he has to use it as a way to push himself into the right course of action rather than let it stop him dead in his tracks. In chapter 376, Ichika also chimes in to get Nacht on his feet again. Her remark isn't only directed at herself; it resonates with Nacht too. Neither of them can leave Yami to deal with Morgen on his own. They don't have the luxury to stand idle and both of them are people that are above being victims of their pasts. Yami was there to protect them so they have to do the same.

Yami and Ichika's words together deliver a powerful message. “If you are going to carry a sin on your conscious, do something with it.” For Nacht (and anyone really), it's a mistake to acknowledge his faults and leave it at that. It doesn't do any good. To give meaning to his sin and the feelings that come with it, Nacht has to act upon them. He has to do what needs to be done to make up for the sin. That means killing Morgen again, not as a tragic accident but as an act of care and the means to free his spirit. It doesn't erase a thing but it makes things as right as they can be.

Quick break from Nacht and his feelings regarding Morgen to have a talk about Yami and his Morgen related feelings!

Yami has a moment to share words with Morgen. He makes it clear that his ire is directed at Lucius. In Yami's mind, there's no real blame on Morgen for his actions as a Paladin. He understands that Morgen wouldn't want so much death and destruction in the name of a new world. It's all Lucius's manipulations. And this view of Morgen again shows the contrast between Yami and Nacht. Nacht is stuck in the past and is seeing Morgen as his dear brother who he couldn't do anything for. Meanwhile, Yami's thoughts are in the present and he's seeing Morgen not as his friend but as an unfortunate puppet being controlled. Yami does acknowledge Morgen as the enemy but he's drawing a fine line between Paladin Morgen and the Morgen he knew.

Also, Yami's desire to see the memory of Morgen be untainted by his deeds as a Paladin is an interesting contrast to his usual feelings towards being looked down on. He's shrugs off most insults towards him (though he can admit when his feelings do get hurt) and is fine with the Black Bulls being considered the worst squad. But Morgen is different. Yami doesn't want to see Morgen become someone tainted by acts of cruelty, even if they aren't entirely his own choice. It says so much about Yami for him to want to preserve the integrity of Morgen's memory. He treasures his friendship with Morgen so deeply because Morgen was one of the first people to accept Yami and believe he could be a squad captain. Yami won't let anyone have any reason to think unfavorably of Morgen. He who saw the good in all should be seen as good by all. That is Yami's belief. I love it so much.

Back to focusing on Nacht!

We return to Nacht at the start of chapter 376: Sühne (Atonement). This chapter really is all about Nacht's final act of atonement for the sin he'd been punishing himself over for years.

Now before he re-enters the battle, Nacht has a moment of contemplation. The dream he describes is brief but it carries so much meaning. Nacht looks back and wishes he'd joined the Grey Deers as Morgen had always suggested he do. He really had always desired a closeness with Morgen but his fear of doing harm to his brother instead outweighed his love. His regret over not taking Morgen's hand sooner is evident and it again drives home the idea that Nacht's thoughts always return to the past to haunt him. And the line about Nacht and Yami fighting over Morgen's attention shatters my heart further because-!

Morgen probably would've chosen Nacht over Yami if he had the option. As much as Morgen and Yami made a good team, Morgen wanted to share that understanding and synergy with Nacht.

(Also, we are creating another pin for this moment.)

Both of the Fausts were jealous of the bond that Yami had their brother! Morgen and Nacht are more alike than either of the realize and it's yet another tragedy in their lives that they will never know that about each other! I JUST! AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGH! I can't be calm about this, guys! Morgen and Nacht keep reaching into my soul and drawing out more of my love and tears with how their dynamic continues to grow more heartbreaking!

(Deep breaths, Soda! Take deep, slow breaths now...)

Nacht thinks about how Morgen would've smiled at his and Yami's antics. Morgen is always smiling in Nacht's memories (except when he infiltrated the Fausts' devil ritual basement and tried to dissuade Nacht from summoning Lucifugus, but that was a special circumstance). Morgen's smile being so ever-present in Nacht (and Yami's) recollections of him goes to show that he was a beacon of positivity to both of them. Morgen was light, warmth, happiness.

But Nacht always wakes from that dream and he cries each time, mourning the loss of something that never was but could've been. But he refused to have any of that, having pushed Morgen away each time he asked Nacht to join him. Instead Nacht chose the path of devils and Forbidden Magic. He widened the chasm between himself and Morgen. His actions have led him to a world where he caused his brother's death and now will have to see him die again. In short, the first page of chapter 376 is about the ache caused by what Nacht wants in his dreams and what he has to face in reality.

We cut to Yami fighting Morgen for a bit which includes Morgen refuting Yami's statement that Lucius is a bastard. And we also see Morgen saying

(Adding another pin for that. We'll come back, promise. It's just that I want to divulge the very depths of my Morgen thoughts closer to the end [closer to Morgen's end really].)

I've already discussed how Ichika's words with Nacht help him with his mental/emotional breakthrough so I'll skip over that portion of chapter 376.

As I said at the start, the Faust and Yami family stories are connected. They parallel each other. The families are connected to demons or devils (demon soul pills for Yamis and devil binding ritual for Fausts). The elder sibling was seen as an ideal heir (Yami's strength was lauded by his father and Nacht's father said that Nacht "inherited the magic and the spirit" for dealing with devils). Despite not being what their parents wanted, the younger siblings do find an honorable place for themselves in society: Ichika becomes a Ryuzen Seven and Morgen was a Magic Knight. Both families experience a tragedy and the ideal heir from either family withdraws from their younger sibling, but those events happen in different orders between the two. The Yami clan was slaughtered and then Yami left Hino while taking the blame for the incident. In the Faust family, Nacht emotionally pulling away from Morgen and going down the path of devils is what led to the confrontation in the ritual room and everyone's deaths. Nacht and Yami carry the burden of those incidents. Nacht blames and punishes himself for his crime against Morgen. Yami takes the blame for a crime he didn't commit for Ichika's sake.

The families also contrast each other. Before the Yami clan was destroyed, Yami and Ichika were rather close (Yami urged Ichika to follow him when he left the house in that one flashback). But, as said earlier, Nacht and Morgen had grown apart before Morgen's death. Yami and Ichika look remarkably different but their magics are the same. Nacht and Morgen are identical twins but their magic attributes are different (but complementary). Yami protected Ichika in the past and now has a chance to fight alongside her. Nacht hurt Morgen in the past and has to fight against him in the present. The Yami family's resolution brings them closer together and heals them. The Faust family's resolution involves once against being separated and an unending pain for Nacht.

Talk about a well-constructed narrative and characters right there.

Now that I've noted the families' connections, it's time to return my focus to solely the Fausts.

Nacht's words to himself before he re-enters the fray. Again, his thoughts turn to his own death. But here he admits that dying would be the easy way out for him. He looked down on his own life, sought his death, because dying would be an escape from having to carry the guilt for the rest of his life. Then Nacht comes a realization: "Tears don't mark the end of sin." He realizes now that leaving his emotions to stew won't resolve the sin. What Nacht needs to do is to fully atone for what he did and that will give closure for what he's held onto for so long.

Nacht's four devil Unite form isn't as complex as his other forms but it doesn't bother me. It's probably for the better that Tabata didn't try to design something that incorporated elements from all four forms. Equus gets the most representation in the four-way Devil Unite with shields and the minimal armor around his shoulders. Otherwise, Nacht is simply cloaked in shadows and the combined might of his devils (and anti-magic, can't forget the anti-magic). I love the clear view of all the facial markings brought on by the devil unions (especially since the face covering that came with Equus form made it hard to tell where the markings were!). He's lowkey matching Yami and his facial markings. AND THE CROWN OF HORNS! MY GOODNESS! My friends know how much I get worked up over Nacht and his horns. I'm positively feral that Tabata has given me canonical eight-horned Nacht! KJADHGIUAEHTHAEIHT! (Coherent thoughts, Soda!) Also, I can also tell that the combined power has made the horns manifest larger than they usually would on Nacht. Him using all four devils at once is him fully embracing his dark past. Maybe he formed his contracts with Gimodelo and the others in the wrong mindset, but things have changed. He's using an "evil" power that killed Morgen for good, to save Morgen (through death but saving regardless).

Morgen, upon seeing Nacht unleash his full potential says something he said during Nacht's flashbacks of him: that Nacht has the greatest talent for magic. He even says "I knew it" and looks eager/fascinated by what he's seeing. Morgen really does have so much faith in his older brother. It'd be sweeter if the two of them weren't on a collision course for combat.

And what a feast for the eyes the battle is. It turns into chaos, but a beautiful

The combo spell from Nacht empowered Shadow Magic and the Yamis' Dark Magic is Walpurgis Night. It's of course tied to Nacht more than the Yamis, as that event is celebrated the night and day of Nacht and Morgen's birth dates. There is so much more to Nacht and Morgen's connection to that holiday since it's about warding evil spirits and protection of witchcraft. Like, Morgen first protected Nacht from Lucifugus and now Nacht has to protect the world from the evil Morgen is enacting on behalf of Lucius. That's all I can say about that though since that's basically all I know about Walpurgis Night. (Maybe in the future I can read through all of Wikipedia's cited sources and more to actually know the whole deal.)

Morgen puts up quite the fight against three opponents, two of whom have their physical and magical abilities at their peak at the moment. He doesn't know it but these are his final moments.

So let me talk about what I've observed and come to believe about Morgen.

Morgen Faust. A man who was good incarnate. The very picture of a good man. Who loved everyone and was loved by everyone. It was in his nature to help, save, and protect others. But his perfect image hid someone who probably felt very lonely.

Let's bring back those pins we gathered earlier. The first two pins (the starting over and Morgen admitting Yami was a better partner for Nacht) are very easily connected. Morgen's dream had been to be close with Nacht, to stand side-by-side with him. But they weren't close. Then Morgen saw Yami, a stranger from a foreign land, connect to Nacht with incredible ease. It probably hurt Morgen to see that, to see that Nacht found someone else to share his joys with. Morgen didn't hate Yami for being more compatible with Nacht and even befriended Yami himself. Morgen, at least in my personal headcanons, might've seen getting close to Yami as a way of better understanding Nacht. But even though Morgen could get along with someone who was Nacht's friend, he still couldn't directly close the gap between him and his brother. Again and again, Morgen suggested Nacht join the Magic Knights but was always brushed aside. And so Morgen was left feeling frustrated and probably a little lonely too because he couldn't have the one bond he wished for.

In reading the recent chapters and looking back on old chapters regarding him, I wonder if Morgen reached out to and accepted others so easily because of his missing connection with Nacht. As in, being pushed away by Nacht made Morgen want to ensure that no one else felt rejected or left alone. It's not compensating for something he lacked, but rather a reaction of "I was hurt in the one way so I will protect others from that same hurt." I believe Morgen genuinely cared for the people he knew in some capacity though not in the same way he valued Nacht. To apply some specific terminology, Morgen holds storgic love ("Because we have the specific bond of family, I love you") for Nacht and agapic love ("Because you are a human being, I love you") for everyone else. So Morgen loved everyone. And everyone loved him back. Though I doubt the adoration of strangers did anything to soothe the ache Morgen felt over Nacht's absence in his life. Either we've experienced it ourselves or seen it represented in media: Person A has an event and want Person B there to support them; the event comes around and A discovers B isn't there so even if they win or get praise from others, not having B there makes it hard to celebrate. That's what it probably was like for Morgen not having Nacht with him.

In the end, Morgen was unable to close the rift between himself and Nacht. And it was his dying regret. Revived a Paladin, Morgen voices his desire to start over with Nacht, to make right the mistake of not being close to him when he was originally alive.

The lack of a specific bond wasn't the only thing making Morgen lonely. I think Morgen also isolated himself in a way. He put himself under pressure to be strong by himself.

Let's bring back pin three, where Morgen says he'll clear the way for a new world. Looking at that alone, he's kinda just saying that he's following Lucius's orders to fight the Magic Knights for Lucius's victory. But then put this proclamation with what Morgen said back in chapter 368:

And also what he thinks to himself in chapter 376:

He talks about fighting and being the strongest on his own.

I also want to point to how he confronted his family about their work with devils. He came to the underground ritual chamber alone, and not even while wearing his uniform as a Grey Deer on top of that. Forbidden Magic was being practiced and Morgen could've (probably should've) brought along his squad to arrest his family and their followers. But he didn't. He faced his family's sins not as a Magic Knight but merely as Morgen Faust. In Morgen's eyes, it was his family's business and thus his personal responsibility as part of it to stop them.

So we have repeated instances of Morgen voicing thoughts and acting in ways where he sets himself up to be on his own. I can think of several factors for why Morgen might have this mindset. He was the black sheep of his family and overlooked by his parents so he didn't have their support. Nacht kept his distance too. His Light Magic also meant he was looked up to, believed to be strong like the first Wizard King, just for having the attribute he had. All of these together would feed into the belief that Morgen is separate from other, for better or worse. With that belief instilled, Morgen could then tell himself that he has to rely on his own strength, that others can rely on his power alone.

Yes, Morgen seeks partnership from Nacht and works alongside Yami but ultimately tells himself he has to do things by himself. And it's possible that Morgen wanted to be closer to Nacht because he thought that only his brother, his flesh and blood, could be depended on to lessen Morgen's burdens.

Morgen becomes a lot more tragic with all this in mind. He wasn't just a pure soul who died young. He wasn't just a good man lost to sacrifice. He was a lonely person who struggled between his desire for a bond with his brother and his belief that he had to stand alone. Worse yet, he keeps on ending up alone. Other members of the former Grey Deer like Yami and William get their own squads and become more associated with those groups. Morgen by himself as a legacy member of the Grey Deer. Ten years ago and in the present day, Morgen has no one with him in death while Nacht and Yami get to continue living and working as partners.

Like the words that chapter 376 has near it's end says, "The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow it casts." All of Morgen's good, the inspiration he brought and the hope he symbolizes for others, is so bright. But it makes the shadow of sorrow that might exist within Morgen all the more saddening to me.

This is just my own reading of Morgen so take what I've said with a grain of salt but... At least for me, Morgen has gained a whole new depth to his character thanks to these new chapters and how it made things from before clicking into place for me. I don't always like Tabata's handling of the story, but I do love what he's given me for me to draw the conclusions I have.

Well that's Morgen's finale. And now for my last statement on Nacht's part of the chapters.

Quick observation: to me, part of Nacht's horn set up from his four-way Unite, resembles Morgen's own. From Slotos and Plumede, Nacht gets horns that point outward and curve in a way that matches Lucifugus's horns.

You can best compare it here and even with Nacht partially obscured... I can see the similarity.

Moving on, or rather moving back to the line, "the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow it casts." It brings to mind that one quote "for the greater the love the greater the grief" by C.S. Lewis. It captures part of the core to Nacht's character. His love for Morgen was so deep that the grief of losing him transformed him as a person. Morgen's light of hope was so bright and it makes Nacht's shadow of despair dark.

But the true essence of who Nacht is comes from the last words in the chapter, his last words to Morgen.

"Goodbye, Morgen. I will shoulder this pain forever."

Nacht regretted his sin, punished himself for it, and atoned for it through killing Morgen a second time. This is his closure for the past. But even with that, Nacht cannot - will not - let go of his sin or the pain it's caused him. It's a part of him for the rest of his life. He will find it in himself to live and maybe even find happiness, but the love and happiness he got from having Morgen around will never be replaced or filled in. Morgen is lost forever and so Nacht will mourn forever.

Part of me is sad to know that Nacht has committed himself to such feelings. But a greater part of me understands that it's a part of his character and loves him for it. He holds on, to his emotions or the people he cares for, so fiercely to the point of it hurting him. It's probably not a healthy mindset to have but Nacht's fictional so we can let it slide. I see it as tragic but also admirable.

To me, this is the real end of Nacht's arc. First in Spade, he had to learn that despite his faults, there were people who cared for him enough to save him. And now on Judgment Day, Nacht faces his sin head on and gives it a resolution, thus accepting all he's done and all of himself where he once projected his self-loathing onto others.

I'm left with bittersweet feelings from these chapters. There was beautiful art. I developed a deeper appreciation for characters who aren't my favorite characters. The characters that I do adore above all the rest got a spotlight on them. Morgen and Nacht both showed off incredible feats of power and their story got an ending. All good things. But I've also come to see a much sadder side to Morgen beyond being a black sheep. And Nacht's statement of eternal pain brings me to actual tears just thinking of it. I'm also upset that unlike Acier, Morgen isn't shown giving a goodbye to his family but I can still hope that chapter 377 spares page time for that. But even with these sad notes, I'm happy because I can better appreciate the Fausts with what I've been shown.

I love these chapters and the stories they tell/finish. I can't wait for the physical volume containing the chapters so I can return to them over and over again.

I hope that this post wasn't boring or too repetitive. I hope it made sense. I had to bounce around in the chapters' details and even called back to older chapters to get my points across. I just... had a lot to say. Several times while writing this, I ended up going back to add onto a topic I thought I'd finished (I'm looking at you Yami family and the Walpurgis Night spell).

I didn't have any plans for what I was going to say. I knew I was going to talk about how the Yami and Faust family dynamics closed out and the development of my perception of Morgen. But a lot of things just came to me as I wrote. And I think that worked for the best.

Thank you to whoever was able to power through this massively long post. Or even just read specific parts. Anyone looking at this post at all would mean something to me because while I mostly write this so my head and heart wouldn't explode from keeping it all inside, being heard by another is nice.

Thank you to any readers. Thank you, Tabata for writing Black Clover. Thank you, Yami and Ichika for your shared arc and contributions to this chapter. And thank you, Nacht and Morgen Faust for lighting my soul on fire.

#black clover #nacht faust #morgen faust #yami sukehiro #ichika yami #black clover manga #black clover spoilers #black clover meta #soda asides #long post #i wrote this post instead of doing things like sleeping and eating #two days in a row i woke up before the crack of dawn and my immediate move was to write this #not even the need for a good grade in college got this much writing and passion from me lol #also fair warning #i will likely end up writing an addendum/follow up for this

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sokoviansimp · 2 years ago

Note

Hi so for the package AU from the prompt list you just reblogged can you write 29 and 8? for wanda and y/N? pleasE? also ily and i hope you have a great day

Invasion

✒ Pairings: WandaNat x child!Reader (platonic)

✒ Summary: What happens the first time Y/N gets hurt in Wanda’s care? - with prompt dialogues

29. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

8. "Are you hurt?"

✒ Tags and Warnings: gunshot wound, invasion

✒ Author's Note: So sorry for the wait, I basically rewrote the events of this twice.

✒ Word Count: 2483

✒ Read Time: 12 minutes

Masterlist : Socials

The Avengers compound hummed with activity as the team prepared for an important mission. The team was tasked with thwarting an imminent threat from a nefarious group seeking to exploit a powerful artifact. As the team gathered their gear and reviewed their plans, you watched with wide-eyed fascination. You wanted nothing more than to be part of the action, like your superhero guardians.

Wanda crouched down to your eye level. "Remember, sweetie, this mission is too dangerous for you. You'll stay here with Nat," she said, her voice filled with motherly concern as she saw the sparkle in your eye as you fantasized about being with the team.

You pouted but reluctantly nodded. You understood the dangers, but that didn't stop you from feeling left out. "Okay, Mama."

The mission was set to begin at sunset. As the Avengers geared up and made their final preparations, you watched from the sidelines. Wanda and Nat had promised to keep you safe, and they both took that promise seriously.

With a heavy heart, Wanda glanced at you. "I know you're disappointed, love, but I need you to stay here. It's just too risky for you."

Your big, innocent eyes filled with tears. You understood the need for safety, but your heart ached to be with your beloved Mama. "I'm scared, Mama." you mumbled out barely above a whisper.

Wanda's heart clenched at the vulnerability in your voice. She knelt down and hugged you tightly. "I promise Nat will protect you, Y/N. Nothing will happen to you, I swear."

“Not me, you.” You explained. You had no reason to worry about your own safety, but Wanda was going on a grave mission, you couldn’t help but worry that something may happen.

“Me? Detka, I’ll be ok. We all have each other’s back.” Wanda assured you, she hadn’t even thought about her own safety to be frank, too busy worrying about how you would react to being without her. Though, maybe that’s what motherhood is all about, always putting your child first. Their feelings, their happiness, and their safety.

“Pwomise?” you wondered looking up at Wanda with doe wide eyes and pure innocence.

“I promise that I will do everything in my power to come home to you safe and sound.” She clarified. Even though unlikely, Wanda couldn't bring herself to make a promise she didn’t have the full power to keep. There was always a chance something could happen to her in missions like these and you both knew it.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the Avengers embarked on their mission. You and Nat standing by watching them depart, your small hand tightly gripping Nataha’s. The compound felt empty and eerily quiet without the usual banter and laughter of the team.

Hours passed, and the tension in the compound grew palpable. Nat kept one eye on the security feeds, monitoring the team's progress. Unable to sleep, you pushed any hesitation you still harbored for Nat aside as you clung to her side like a lifeline. The minutes stretched into hours as you tried to find comfort in your stuffed animal and Natasha’s closeness.

Taking Natasha’s attention away from monitoring the team, an emergency alert blared through the compound. Her heart skipped a beat as she read the message: " Multiple intruders detected. High Alert. Seek safety immediately."

Normally this wouldn’t phase Natasha, but with you to protect, fear gripped her nervous system, and she scooped you into her arms. "Stay close, kid. We need to go to the safe room." With you in tow, she rushed through the corridors, heart pounding with dread. Her first priority was getting you to safety, “How many are we looking at FRIDAY?” she said aloud to the Artificial Assistant.

“I count 7 armed soldiers and 2 unarmed, Miss Romanoff. Would you like me to deploy the nano recon drones for more real-time data of the base?” FRIDAY responded with limited emotion in her voice.

“Deploy the recons and the defense droids, and notify Fury!” she demanded as continued to rush you to safety. On the verge of tears, you waverly spoke, “Natty? What noise is dat?”

“We just need to go to the safe room, Y/N. Someone is here,” she explained as she tactically rushed you across the compound.

You wanted to ask who, but soon enough, you couldn't hold back your tears anymore. The loud noise, the frantic state that Nat was in, and the lack of Wanda all came crashing over you. Even when Natasha seemingly kept her cool as she checked corners and cleared hallways before ushering you along, you could tell that something was very wrong.

“Shhh, everything is going to be okay, I’m not going to let anything happen to you, ok?” Nat tried to reassure you but your tears continued to fall.

Once you got to the safe room, Natasha instructed you not to let anyone else in, no matter who they said they were and to be as silent as you could, before rushing back out to take control back of the building.

“Any idea on what their play is here?” she questioned FRIDAY, trying to put the pieces together, as she left you to gather the weapons she needed to take on such a group. There was nothing on the radar that would’ve led the team to foresee this event happening. Especially now, when everyone is away.

“Intent is Unknown,” FRIDAY informed.

Was that it? Everyone is away, in fact, everything they’d been following for the last 2 months pointed toward this weekend in Glasgow. Was it a distraction?

Pulled from her thoughts, Tony’s name came buzzing through her phone. “Romanoff,” Nat greeted like any other phone call as if she wasn’t in the middle of a dire situation.

“Nat, everything ok there? I’m seeing alerts come through.” Tony queried, optimistically hoping something may have unintentionally triggered the alarms, even though he had taken extra precautions to block unintentional triggers.

“Here? Oh yeah, everything is great. You know, except the gang of at least 9 trying to take over the compound. Peachy, really.” Nat sarcastically replied, she wasn’t upset with Tony, but it was one of her coping mechanisms in times like this, “How’s everything in your neck of the woods?” she wondered, trying to see if her theory had any ground.

“Surprisingly quiet. I’m sending you some help,” Tony said as he deployed suits and more equipment to help fight alongside Natasha.

“Thanks, I have a feeling Glasgow was a distraction,” she uttered as she marched toward the invaders.

Amidst the dimly lit corridors of the Avengers' high-tech compound, The Black Widow stood alone. The emergency alarms blared in the background, casting eerie crimson lights that danced across her sleek black suit. The once-peaceful sanctuary had been infiltrated by a group of highly trained armed guards, and Natasha was the last line of defense.

“Hey, Fellas!” Nat cheekily shouted towards them

The guards, clad in tactical gear and armed to the teeth, advanced on Natasha with cold determination. They moved in unison, their footsteps echoing ominously against the cold, metallic floors. Natasha could hear their synchronized breaths, a chilling reminder that she was outnumbered.

With a flick of her wrist, Natasha activated her Widow's Bite, sending electrifying shocks coursing through her fingertips. The room's lights momentarily flickered, casting eerie shadows as her attackers closed in.

The first guard lunged forward, wielding a baton. Natasha sidestepped his attack with grace, her movements fluid as water. She delivered a swift kick to his chest, sending him crashing into his comrades.

A second guard opened fire with an assault rifle, spraying bullets in Natasha's direction. She rolled behind a nearby pillar, bullets whizzing past her. Her keen reflexes and agility kept her one step ahead of the deadly hail of gunfire.

From the shadows, she launched a pair of electrified Widow's Bite disks. They struck two guards, incapacitating them instantly. The room was filled with the acrid smell of burnt fabric as their uniforms smoked.

Amidst the chaos of the compound invasion, as Natasha fought valiantly to protect their home, a sudden surge of determination welled up within you. Being safely tucked away in the secure room, you could hear the sounds of the struggle outside and it gnawed at you, filling your mind with a mixture of fear and courage. What if something happened to Nat? You could prevent it.

With small, trembling hands, you pushed open the heavy door of the safe room. Your heart pounding in your chest as you took hesitant steps toward the fray. You watched Natasha, in her awe-inspiring Black Widow suit, fighting against the row of heavily armed intruders with incredible skill.

Then, You watched her take some punches and you couldn't just stand there. You have powers too, powers you’re still learning to control. With a deep breath, you focused your thoughts, trying to remember what Wanda had taught you about harnessing your abilities.

As the guards closed in on Natasha, your eyes glowed with a faint, cyan hue. Your small hands extended outward, palms out, and concentrated. Vibratory waves emanated from your palm, a powerful force that rippled through the air like invisible shockwaves.

The sudden disturbance caught the invaders off guard. Staggering and stumbling back, their weapons falling from their hands as they tried to maintain their balance. Natasha seized the opportunity, delivering swift and precise blows to disarm them.

But in your determination to help, you had left yourself vulnerable. One of the guards managed to regain his composure and, in a desperate act, fired his weapon in your direction. The shot rang out, and a searing pain lanced through your left shoulder.

Before Natasha could even catch sight of the bullet, you were on the ground crying in pain. Both Tony’s drone and Natasha swiftly subdued the last of the guards and she rushed to your side. Her heart ached with worry as she gently cradled you in her arms.

As soon as the bullet made impact, Wanda could sense that something wasn’t right, even from miles away. It was as though an invisible thread had been pulled taut, stretching across the miles that separated you. Her brow furrowed in concern as she continued to sense that something was terribly wrong back at the compound. She couldn't put her finger on it, but her maternal instincts told her that you were in danger.

Wanda began running through every option she has to get to you. Would using her powers be faster? What if she used her powers on the jet, could she make it go quicker without overloading the engines?

After weighing her options, she went with the latter. The team had already reversed course once they discovered it was a set up, “Hang on tight,” she said before supercharging the engines.

“Wanda, what are you doing?” Clint managed to get out as he was smushed against his seat from the G-Force.

“Y/N is hurt. I can feel it.”

When she finally arrived at the compound, her fears were realized. The sight that greeted her was both heart-wrenching and heartwarming. She found Natasha cradling you in her arms, your face contorted in pain but also displaying a remarkable resilience.

Wanda rushed to your side, her eyes filled with concern. "Y/N! Natasha!" she exclaimed, her voice trembling. She knelt beside you, “Are you hurt?” she frantically asked, her hands glowing with a soft, soothing light as she assessed the extent of your injuries.

Natasha looked up, relief washing over her features as she saw Wanda. "Wanda, i’m sorry, i- i’m so sorry, i put her in the safe room and she tried to help-," Natasha explained, her voice laced with fear of wandas wrath and admiration for your bravery. "She used her powers to protect us, but she got hurt in the process."

“Mama, miss you!” you gasped through clenched teeth.

Wanda's heart swelled with a mixture of pride and concern as she looked down at you. Gently stroking your forehead, she used her powers to ease the pain. "You're so brave, little one," she whispered, her eyes filled with tears. "I'm here now, and I'll make sure you're okay."

Though clearly in pain, you managed a weak but heartfelt smile as you looked up at Wanda.

Even though Wanda was upset that you were caught in the crossfire, she couldn’t blame Natasha. She understood that Natasha, like herself, cares deeply for your well-being and did everything in her power to protect you during the invasion. The priority for both of them was getting you fixed up.

Wanda paced nervously alongside Natasha in the compound's infirmary while you lay on a medical bed, receiving treatment for the gunshot wound.

Natasha reached out to gently place a hand on Wanda's shoulder. "She's going to be okay, Wanda. The doctors are doing everything they can."

Wanda nodded, but her brow was furrowed with concern. "I know, Nat. I just can't believe she came out of that safe room. She's so young, and she shouldn't have been in danger."

Natasha sighed, understanding Wanda's anxiety. "I get it, Wanda. I tried to keep her safe, but she's got that Stark stubbornness, you know? She was determined to help."

Wanda looked at Natasha with a mix of gratitude and worry. "I appreciate that you were here to protect her, I just wish it was different, I wish I had been here, we should have been more careful. She's just a child."

Natasha nodded in agreement. "You're right, Wanda. We should have been more careful about sending everyone on a wild goose chase. But you know how determined she can be. She wanted to help because she’s seen you and me doing what we do."

Wanda sighed, her shoulders slumping with fatigue and relief. "I know, and I'm proud of her courage, but I, I just hate to see her in danger like this. She can’t take after us, I never want her to be in danger again."

Natasha squeezed Wanda's shoulder reassuringly. "We'll keep her safe, Wanda. We're a team, remember? And we'll make sure she knows the importance of staying out of harm's way."

Wanda finally met Natasha's gaze, and there was a softness in her eyes. "Thank you, Nat, for protecting her. I don't know what I would have done if something had happened to her."

Natasha smiled gently. "We're her family, Wanda. We'll always do whatever it takes to keep her safe." she noted as she enveloped Wanda in a comforting embrace. Sinking into the hug, Wanda clung to Nat as she buried her face into her neck and relaxed into the arms of her lover.

As they continued to watch over your recovery, the couple knew that they would need to work together to ensure a balance between protecting the child they loved and nurturing your independence and bravery.

Taglist: @mymommawanda@livslifeonline@reggierizzoli@mythixmagic@lesbicentism@marvelogic@katethewriter @inluvwithfictionalwomen @spooky-reader1 @marvelogic @kissforvoid @pono-pura-vida

#the package au #sokoviansimp fics #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda marvel #wanda maximoff x you #anon ask #bry answers #wanda mcu #elizabeth olsen #wanda maximoff x child!reader #natasha romanoff x child!reader #child!reader #avengers compound #natasha romanoff mommy #ask bry #mommy wanda #mama wanda

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singledarkshade · 3 months ago

Text

Always Left Behind

Summary - Returning home after leaving his grandfather with the giant aliens, Daniel is fine.

Author’s Note - @gateathonworks month three, the prompt I chose was Episode Tag.

This is an episode tag to Crystal Skull with spoilers for The Gamekeeper and Forever In A Day.

Hope you enjoy.

The clang of his feet on the ramp was a relief to Daniel, meaning he was actually solid once more. Reaching the bottom, he was instantly greeted by General Hammond.

“It is good to see you, Dr Jackson,” Hammond said.

Daniel smiled, “It’s good to be seen again.”

Hammond glanced behind him as the Gate shut down, “Where is Dr Ballard?”

“Dr Ballard,” Daniel stated, with a little more brightness than he intended, “Has opted to stay with the giant aliens and learn more about them for us.”

Hammond stared at him in silence.

“He’ll contact us in a few months to give us an update,” Daniel added before noting, “I’m guessing Janet wants me in the infirmary after everything.”

Without another word, Daniel headed out the Gateroom, heading to the infirmary knowing that Hammond was asking Jack what had happened.

Jack quickly explained what had happened to on the planet and waited.

“It looks like I now have to report we lost Dr Ballard. That’s a conversation I’m looking forward to,” Hammond frowned before asking, “Dr Jackson is…”

“Being Daniel,” Jack replied, “I’ll catch up with him once the doctor is through with him.”

Hammond nodded, “On that note, all of you should get to the infirmary now. We’ll do a full debriefing later.”

Jack motioned the other two members of his team to head out before he followed, worried about his friend.

But he knew that he would need to hold off on that, especially when he reached the infirmary and found Daniel fast asleep. Janet had him hooked up to multiple machines, ensuring he was fine after his disappearing act.

“Amazingly,” Janet said moving to Jack’s side when he watched his friend sleep, “He’s in good health. A little tired, a little dehydrated but astonishingly in healthy.”

Jack sighed softly, “That’s good to know.”

“He’ll be asleep for a while,” Janet assured him, “Go and get something to eat then rest. I’ll let you know when he’s awake.”

Jack stared down at Daniel’s face, lax in sleep and for once not bothered by bad dreams.

“His grandfather stayed on that planet,” Jack said softly, “Chose the aliens over his own grandson, who he’d just made amends with. I don’t understand it.”

Janet sighed, “I don’t either. I will say though that in Nick I saw a part of where Daniel’s focus on his work comes from.”

“But Daniel wouldn’t abandon those he loves for it,” Jack replied.

*********************************************

Daniel was in his office when Jack found him after ensuring SG6 were debriefed properly and then meeting the new recruits who were joining them. That was always fun, watching the newbies going from disbelief to astonishment in the space of a few seconds.

“Aren’t you meant to be resting?” Jack asked.

Daniel glanced at him, “Just trying to find a book to take home with me,” he held up his hand and clarified, “A specific book I want to read.”

“How you doing?” Jack tried to be nonchalant.

“Still a little tired,” Daniel explained, “But I’m fine. Just hoping Janet will sign me off on Monday so we can get back to work.”

Jack chewed on his lip for a moment as Daniel moved several books to one side and tried again, “About Nick.”

“What about him?” Daniel asked absently.

“Just thought you might want to…” Jack hesitated because he knew, like him, Daniel didn’t really do conversations about feelings.

“Want to what?” Daniel glanced up.

Rolling his eyes, Jack stated, “Talk about Nick leaving.”

“Jack, I’m not upset by what happened,” Daniel told his friend. He shrugged, “It happens.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jack said.

Daniel tilted his head slightly, “It does to me.”

Nodding when he looked at the book he picked up, Daniel put it in the bag then grabbed his journal sliding it in and turned to Jack.

“I’m heading home before Janet chases me,” Daniel said, “I’ll see you in two days.”

Before Jack could say anything else, Daniel was out the office calling back at Jack to turn the light out when he left.

“Well,” Hammond said when Jack finished his version of events after Sam and Teal’c debriefed, “That matches what Dr Jackson told me. How is he, considering his grandfather stayed on the planet?”

“He told me he’s fine,” Jack said, the frown unbidden.

Sam tilted her head thoughtfully, “Isn’t that Daniel-ese for not fine?”

“Usually,” Jack told her, “But when I talked with him, he actually seemed fine.”

The other three stared at him amazed.

“Does anyone have anything else?” Hammond asked, when they all shook their heads, he continued, “Then you have forty-eight hours leave. Dismissed.”

“I would like to visit Ry’ac while we have the time,” Teal’c stated before Hammond left them.

“Of course, Teal’c. Be ready in an hour and we’ll open the Gate for you,” Hammond replied before leaving them alone.

“Tell me you’re not going back to work, Carter,” Jack said sternly.

Sam chuckled, “I’m going to go see my brother. What about you?”

Both Sam and Teal’c stared at him, making him roll his eyes.

“I’m going to check in on Daniel,” Jack assured, “Then I’ll see.”

*********************************************

Daniel answered the door, looked at Jack before he turned around and walked back into the apartment knowing Jack would follow him.

“I promise I am resting,” Daniel said as he sat on the couch again, “You didn’t have to come check.”

“Well, the doc doesn’t trust you,” Jack smiled.

Daniel rolled his eyes, “If you want some coffee, the pot is fresh. And there’s some pastries as well.”

Jack raised an eyebrow questioningly as he headed to the kitchen.

“I felt like a walk,” Daniel noted at his friend’s unasked question, “Passed the bakery and they smelled so good. After not eating for a few days, I really wanted one.”

Snagging a chocolate and almond croissant, Jack poured himself some coffee before taking a seat across from his friend. They sat in silence while Jack ate, and Daniel continued to read.

“So,” Jack said, after he finished the last few crumbs, “How are you?”

Daniel let out a soft sigh of irritation, “I’m fine. Jack. I am.”

“Even with what happened with Nick?” Jack pushed.

Putting his mug on the table, Daniel looked at his friend, “I’m fine, Jack. I’m not upset. This isn’t the first time Nick has left me.”

Jack winced but didn’t get a chance to say anything as Daniel continued.

“Nick has left multiple times in my life,” he said with a shrug, “I’m always the one left behind.”

“That’s not true,” Jack told him.

Daniel shook his head, “I’m not talking about you, but my parents left.”

“They died, Daniel,” Jack reminded him.

Shrugging Daniel replied, “That time. My parents loved me, I know that. But they weren’t expecting to have a kid so early in their marriage, or possibly at all. I was an accident. And before you ask, I know because I overheard my mom say once that I was the best accidental discovery they made.”

Stunned into silence Jack wasn’t sure what he could say, surprised when Daniel continued.

“They sometimes forgot I wasn’t an adult and there was more than one time that one of the workers had to remind them I was waiting for them. Then they died and Nick left me for his work, doing the same every time he visited which wasn’t that often,” Daniel paused and sighed, “Then Sha’re left me.”

“She didn’t want to leave you, Daniel,” Jack said softly, “You know that.”

Daniel dropped his head back, “I know. But it feels like it sometimes because she spent the last of her energy trying to tell me where her son was, instead of how I could save her. Then we would have found him together. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help but feel that way sometimes. And now Nick is gone again. But I’m fine, Jack because I’m always the one left behind. I’m used to it now.”

Jack frowned, “Not anymore.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, Jack,” Daniel stated, “If we survive this, Teal’c will one day return to the Jaffa, while you and Sam are both career military. You’ll be promoted at some point and could be sent anywhere. I’ll be here. There’s nowhere else I can go.”

Jack stared at his friend for several minutes, he knew that no matter what he said Daniel was in one of those moods that needed more than words. Pulling out his keys, Jack unhooked the spare key for the house from it and placed it on the table in front of his friend.

“Am I getting instructions on what you want me to check?” Daniel asked sarcastically before demanding, “Why are you giving me your spare key?”

“It’s not a spare key,” Jack stated, “It’s your key. For now, and no matter where I am, no matter where I live. If I get promoted, which is very unlikely by the way considering me, you will always have a key and a place in my house.”

Daniel stared at the key.

“You won’t be left,” Jack said, “And you’ll always have me there to drive you crazy.”

Chuckling, Daniel took the key and stood. He added it to his own keys with a smile, before turning to Jack.

“I’m hungry,” Daniel said, “Do you feel like lunch?”

“Only if you’re buying,” Jack jumped to his feet.

Shaking his head as he grabbed a jacket, Daniel motioned his friend out, “Why am I buying? It’s not like you worked through the night to find me.”

#stargate sg 1 #fic #episode tag #friendship #daniel jackson #jack o'neill

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random-thot-generator · 2 years ago

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Dirty Little Secret + pt. 3

JOHNNY 'SOAP' MACTAVISH x FEM READER

Summary: Johnny shows up out of the blue and gets to meet Aunt Rue. Cue the impromptu come-to-Jesus meeting.

Warnings/Tags: Angst - obviously, Profanity, Sex is mentioned but nothing explicit, Soap's POV, Rue's POV, Reader is taking a moment, Aunt Rue's a good mum, No use of Y/N

(Notes: Again, no smut. We're not there yet, folks. Wanted to get Johnny's side of the story out there, along with Aunt Rue's thoughts on the matter. Just a warning. Edited this to Kickstart My Heart on loop, so if there's a shit-ton of mistakes... my bad. 🤷‍♀️)

Word Count: 2K

Johnny felt like the wind had been knocked out of him when he heard your voice behind the counter, but when you suddenly popped into view, it almost brought him to his knees. The only thing that kept him from reaching for you was that horrible, devastated expression on your face. Tucking his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking, he took a hesitant step towards the counter, as if approaching a cornered, wild animal.

"I'm no' here t'cause ye grief, hen," he murmured, trying to make eye contact. "I jus' wanted t'see ya."

You blinked up at him, huffing a breath out of your open mouth. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again," you confessed, sounding dazed. "How did you…?"

Johnny scratched the back of his neck, feeling like a bit of a creeper. "I, uh… I saw ye on the news. Some sort o' festival 'r somethin'."

"The May Day celebration," you mumbled, remembering the news cameraman panning his camera along the row of booths on the boardwalk. "Bloody hell. So… you saw me and just decided to stop by for a visit? After six months?"

Johnny's look turned sour. "It was no' like I knew where the hell ye'd gone off to, now was it? Ye jus' took off without sayin' a bloody word," he replied, his tone low and accusing.

You scoffed, your own expression growing dark. "And how could I have told you, Johnny? It's not like you ever bothered to give me your number, remember?" you fired back.

The bitterness in your tone cooled his anger instantly. "I…" He huffed out a breath, shoulders slumping. "Yer right. Tha's on me." His contrite expression returned. "It was jus' a shock, comin' back an' findin' ya gone, yer flat empty. I was no' expectin' it. Not after…" He blew out a breath, running his hand over his mohawk. "I dinnae ken wha' t'think."

You crossed your arms over your chest, lips trembling. "I'm surprised you thought of me at all. Why did you even go back to my flat? Things not work out with your other bird?"

"Other bird?" he repeated, scowling, looking utterly confused.

Before you could clarify, your aunt pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Whatever she was about to say died on her lips as her eyes darted between you and Johnny. "Everything alright, love?" she asked you.

"Everything's fine." You dragged your eyes away from him to address your aunt, your tone softening. "I'm sorry 'bout your tea. The box was empty, and then he showed up, and…" You sighed, closing your eyes, shoulders dropping in defeat. "I— I need to go back to the stockroom. Maybe there's another box of oolong back there."

Picking up on the obvious tension and your need to escape the young man, Aunt Rue patted your arm affectionately. "'Course, love. Go ahead. I'll see t'him."

You gave a slight nod, eyes slanting towards Johnny for only a second, but then your chin gave a wobble, and you rushed through the swinging door. He called after you, taking an unconscious step forward, hand reaching out, but you didn't stop. A pained expression crossed his face before he turned and paced a few steps away, raising both hands to rub over his head, holding them there as he blew out a frustrated breath.

Rue pursed her lips, studying him before her eyes cut back to the kitchen door. "So, I take it ya know one another," she drawled.

Johnny turned back around, dropping his arms to his sides. He looked like a whipped pup. "Yes, ma'am. We were… She was my…" A myriad of emotions played over his face before he sighed, remorse evident in his eyes. "Aye. We know each other."

Rue smirked, brows lifting. "I see." She turned to the hot water urns and grabbed a couple of to-go cups. "Tea or coffee, lad?"

Johnny blew out a frustrated sigh. "Dinnae bother, ma'am. I should prob'ly jus' go. Sorry t'have bothered—"

Rue snorted, amused. "Ya ain't gettin' off that easy, lad. Been dealin' with that heartbroken lass for six months. I've got questions, an' you're just the one to answer 'em. So. Tea or coffee?"

Johnny opened his mouth to refuse but didn't have it in him to argue. "Coffee, please. Black with sugar," he mumbled.

Rue hummed in acknowledgment, making them both a strong cup, forgetting about the oolong. She needed all cylinders firing for this one. As she worked, Red finally showed, cheerful as always. He gave Johnny a friendly nod, opening his mouth to greet Rue, but she cut him off.

"No time for chit-chat this mornin', Red," she told him, throwing a couple of rolls into a bag and handing them over. She reached beneath the counter and grabbed his favorite jam packets, then rounded the counter to hand them to him. "On the house, yeah?" she said, ignoring his shocked expression. "Off ya go, then. See ya tomorrow."

Red could do little more than nod as Rue herded him out the door, casting a flummoxed look back as she shut the door and locked it behind him. Reaching for the cups she left sitting on the counter, she handed one to Johnny.

"C'mon, lad. Let's go out back an' have ourselves a wee chinwag."

She led the way to the back exit, checking to be sure you were still inside before motioning him out the door. Walking over to a pair of metal folding chairs leaned against the wall, she grabbed one, nodding for Johnny to take the other, then sat down with a tired sigh. Once, they were both seated, she crossed her legs and looked him over with a critical eye.

"Alright, then. First things first, lad. I'm Rue, her aunt, and you are…"

"John, ma'am. John MacTavish, but ye can call me Johnny."

She nodded, giving him a tight-lipped smile. "Well, it's nice t'meet ya, Johnny." She took a quick sip of coffee and smacked her lips. "Now, let's get down t'brass tacks, shall we?" She sat back and crossed her arms over her lap. "I'm goin' to take a wild guess an' say you're the reason why my girl came runnin' home with her tail between her legs. Not seen her in that bad a shape since her da dumped her on my doorstep, so it must have been serious. How long were ya together?"

Taken aback, it took a moment for Johnny to answer. "I been seein' her fer almost two years, but we were no'… I mean, it wasnae…" He huffed a frustrated breath and scrubbed his hand over his 'hawk. "It's— It's complicated."

Rue rolled her eyes, making a scoffing noise. "Bloody hell, this generation, I swear…" She shook her head. "Just say ya were fuckin', lad. Jesus." She scoffed again. "Complicated, he says…" she muttered.

Johnny gaped at her, surprised by her blunt words. His brows furrowed, an embarrassed look on his reddening face. "It was no' jus' fuckin'," he muttered, sounding defensive. "I cared 'bout her— do care 'bout her."

"Uh-huh. So, what happened, then? What would send my girl runnin' back to the one place she worked so hard to escape, hm?"

His lips parted, but he didn't have an answer. Eyes darting back and forth, he searched for an explanation, a reason why you would just up and leave him without saying anything. He thought it might have been another bloke, but after that last night together, he couldn't bring himself to believe it. So, why? Why did you leave? He had been searching for that answer for the last six months. Finally, he settled for repeating your confusing words from earlier. "She said somethin' 'bout another bird," he said glumly. "Dunno wha' the hell she's talkin' 'bout."

Rue's brows ticked up. "Sure about that? You're a handsome lad. Doubt ya have trouble pullin' the birds."

"No!" he snapped. "I'd never che—." He cut himself off, gritting his teeth in frustration. "There was no other bird," he grumbled out.

His hand clenched into a fist, the other warping the to-go cup, some of the hot brew spilling over his knuckles. Cursing under his breath, he set it on the ground, slinging the hot liquid off his hand. He glared at the back of his hand, then huffed a tired breath, his expression softening. "I dinnae want anyone else. Jus' her." He shook his head, looking lost.

Rue studied him, her head tilting to the side. "She never mentioned you, ya know? Never once spoke your name. I knew she was hurtin'— obviously, but there was somethin' about the way she looked when I'd try to bring it up, like she was... ashamed. 'Course, we've all been fools for love, so I figured some bloke had filled her head with a bunch of pretty words, promisin' her the moon an' stars, then broke her heart, but…" Her eyes narrowed. "Explain to me what 'complicated' means."

A look akin to the shamed face you would always give her now came over his. He started picking at one of his cuticles, studying it with keen interest, his bottom lip jutting out a little.

"When we first started hookin' up, it wasnae a big deal. We'd run into each other at the pub an' end up back at her place." He shrugged but then paused, his eyes growing solemn. "But then, somethin' changed. I'd catch m'self thinkin' 'bout her, like all the bloody time, while I was deployed. Then I'd come home an' find m'self goin' back t'tha' same damn pub, hopin' t'see her, gettin' pissed when she was no' there." He sighed, shook his head. "I finally gave up pretendin' it was jus' a hook up, an' started goin' over t'her place when I was on leave."

"So, you're a soldier, then," Rue said softly.

A grim look pulled the corners of his mouth down. "Aye. A sergeant in the Army. Special forces." He frowned, an inner struggle going on inside his head. "I ken 's no' the best job t'have, no' when ya got a lass waitin' fer ya at home. 'S hard t'make it work, bein' gone so much. Most birds canna hack it, end up callin' it quits. Figured I'd come home one day an' she'd be shacked up wi' some other bloke. Thought that might'a been wha' happened, but... I had t'see fer m'self." A sad expression made his eyes look luminous in the morning sun. "Tol' m'self I should leave her be, let 'er go, but I canna do it."

He sighed, leaned back in his chair and scrubbed at the scruff on his cheek. "I never tol' her how I felt, dinnae think it was fair puttin' tha' on her. Tried no' t'crowd her, dinnae hang about her place, makin' a nuisance o' m'self. Thought I was protectin' her, but it was jus' as much fer me, I guess. Dinnae help."

Rue's heart went out to the poor lad, despite how bloody stupid he was. "Could ya not tell that she loved ya, lad?"

Johnny's brows shot up, his mouth falling open. "She… She loves me?"

Rue sniffed a laugh. "Bloody hell, you really are an eejit, aren't ya?" She shook her head, amazed at how clueless he was. "'Course she loves ya, ya daft numpty." Her eyes grew shrewd as she watched him process the revelation, saw the hope bloom in his eyes.

"So, tell me, Johnny boy. What are ya willin' to do to get her back?"

part 2 part 4

#john soap mactavish #soap x reader #john soap mactavish x reader #john soap mctavish x fem reader #cod soap x reader #cod soap x fem reader #cod soap #cod soap mactavish

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implausiblyjosh · 2 years ago

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I made a post a couple days ago about the Quinton Reviews situation. I'm deleting that post.

In that post, I expressed my emotional response and thought process as to why I saw vague posting from Lady Emily and Sarah Z as fucked up, and how it seems like people are vaguely alluding to Quinton being creepy without providing anything other than vibes and a handful of awkward DMs posted publicly on twitter in early 2021. In my mind, here's two people who I have seen with my own eyes have a history of spinning a narrative in bad faith, sometimes in the face of clear contradictory evidence, and one of whom has a negative history with the person in question. Since it was all vague posting, there are no specifics. There was just a pattern of history to go off of, and it looked clearly bad to me. I expressed that sentiment on here, and clarified questions and points people had when the post started getting traction.

Yesterday, Sarah Z saw it and reblogged it to her followers with clarification that her vague post was actually about Colleen Ballinger. Since then, she and others have suggested or demanded that I delete the post because it's misinformation, that I shouldn't have made a call out post for something I didn't have the full picture of, that I should have just asked her what was up, and that I was aiming to make a viral post.

The post was never a call out post. I was, very clearly, expressing frustration at something that was bothering me with public vague posts I was seeing. There was no call to action, I wasn't warning people about anyone, I was simply saying "this shit sucks!" about what I was seeing online. If that's your definition of a call out post... I'm not sure what to tell you.

I also do not really understand the "you should have just asked me" line. Not only because all lines of personal messaging to you were closed off, but why would I try and ask about a vague posting, seemingly vent post, wherein you say it's a red flag to vent to your audience because it leads to bad things. On top of that, I really don't need to reach out for comment, I'm not a journalist. I'm venting frustrations with public vague posts.

I'd also like to say that the angle that I was intentionally trying to make a viral post is silly at best. My initial post had no tags on it, and I cannot control what posts of mine speak to people. I'm also not sure if ~2k notes (at the time Sarah Z brought up the viral angle) is really viral, but I don't think I've ever had a post crack 200 before this weekend. Feel free to correct me on that. Additionally, you reblogged this to your audience instead of messaging me. All my lines of messaging on here are open, and it wouldn't have spread as far if you didn't reblog me.

I do not think my read of the vague posts were out of line. I laid out my reasons to think that Sarah Z is someone who spins a narrative, sometimes in the face of clear contradictory evidence, in her published work. I've also seen a pattern of making digs at him, on top of the posting of the DM from him. I simply do not trust her in this instance, and seeing it all line up just so made it seem like it was a dig at him. And while she's saying that I'm wrong, and that the post wasn't about him, she's still implying he's a creep in that clarifying post. So while she says I'm wrong about the vague post, my "seems like people are calling him a creep based on vibes and awkward DMs" point seemingly still stands.

At the end of the day, I wanted to vent on here about something that was bugging me. I didn't wanna dance around my specific points, so I was specific in what bothered me. I do not think I was as clear as I could have been in what my specific issues were, and for that I'm sorry. If/When I make criticisms in the future I will be sure to be as clear as I possibly can be.

The post is now gone, and I'll leave this pinned on my account for awhile.

#josh average talks

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happycharacter · 11 months ago

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@islandmusic I am sorry to have to post this again; even though you DMed me, I can't actually reply to it since your DMs are set to people you follow. I really do appreciate your POV about how you feel, thank you so much for replying and just having a genuine conversation about this whole thing with me. ^^;;

I am sorry for the trouble I gave you for awhile; I really do understand feeling "copied" by others, because I've had people steal things I've made myself for their own and imitate personal aspects of my identty to an extent--and I know its not a good feeling. It's very frustrating and it does feel hard to get away from it. I'm sorry that your privacy and feelings often aren't respected by others. To be very genuine--I do think you are very unique and have a keen eye for pretty pictures, and I understand you post a lot in "kawaii" circles and those people really can be brutal. I see so many blogs that look and feel so similar, like carbon copies of each other, you know? I get that there are many people who took your aesthetics and ran with it. I'm sorry it felt like I was another one in that. I think when I first made my blog, I didn't really understand that because it never happened to me 'til I had gingerbreadfrosting for awhile. I think once I started experiencing it, I understood how annoying and disheartening it is. It's hard to want to be yourself when there are people that are dying to jump to it and make it their own. But I try to find all of my own uploads to my blogs organically now; I do get inspired to look for certain things based on other posts I might see but these days, I don't really want to bother stealing from anyone.

I'm not sure why this started in the beginning, and I know its likely disappointing that I can't explain my part of it, because you do deserve a reason and an apology. Even though I don't remember, I am sorry for back then, too. I think that I only started reposting from your other blog earlier this year because I saw some posts from it by someone else's blog where it looked like the blog was deactivated, and I assumed it was. It seems like things just escalated from there. For the record, I do forgive you and accept your apology! I know that when this starts, its really suffocating and its hard to get away from, and I shouldn't have done that to you. In your situation, I don't truly blame you for the way you felt. We're both mature adults though, and I want us to both be ourselves and enjoy posting here instead of worrying about feeling copied or stolen from.

I don't know how you'll feel about this, but I'd like to be able to unblock each other and I'd rather just reblog from you in the future if I come across your things. You don't have to unblock me if you don't want to! It's totally up to you, but I will unblock you later, and you can interact with any of my blogs if you choose to. I never reposted any of your GIFs because I know its tiring to see that done, but if I saw some of them in someone's blog/my dash then I would remake them just to have on my blog. I only did it to be able to post it, and I didn't really tag these posts properly to get notes, but I do know that it looks bad and is a negative feeling alone just knowing that something you already GIFed was done by someone else, and I am sorry for the stress I've caused you. If you'd like, if you know any posts in particular that were reposted from you, you can send them to me and I'll remove it. I definitely have no intention of stealing from you, I don't go out of my way to and I try to make sure I haven't done so lately. If I post something similar to something you have at a time, I'd just like to clarify it was by accident, and if I do post something you have after you've posted it first, and you happen to notice, you can always let me know and I'd be happy removing mine. ^^

I had to leave my computer mid-writing this so I hope this makes sense and comes together well. Thank you again for being so nice about this, and I'm really glad we could talk about it at all! You can choose to reply to this if you want, but I also understand if you want to leave it at this. If you do choose to reply, don't worry about how "late" it is, there's no rush. I'm also sorry if some of my words don't make sense or are mixed up in any of this, I didn't sleep much last night.

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words-after-midnight · 1 year ago

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Hi! I went through the libaw tag while I was bored and???? It's so good??????

I am in love with Gabriel now. New blorbo acquired. All your snippets are great. And also all your chapter titles are fire.

Idk where you're at with the querying but best of luck on that. I wanna see this published so I can devour it.

Just wanted to say how much I love what I've seen of this story. You're doing great, bestie 👍

(Also, do you have a taglist?)

🥺 You just made my day! This was such a sweet message to receive. I'm glad you enjoy the snippets and titles (my titles are definitely a point of pride for me, haha), and that you find the story intriguing. That's the goal! It's not really the kind of story that tends to get much attention in these spaces, tbh, so I'm pleasantly surprised with the warm response some of my recent snippets have received.

Gabriel would most likely be shocked that someone considers him blorbo-worthy, but I'm sure he would appreciate your affections! I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with him myself, but he's definitely one of my more compelling characters and I'm proud of the way he turned out. As a character, anyway. As a person is more complex, lol. Either way, definitely poured years of blood, sweat, tears and research into that guy, and I suppose if I was trying to produce upstanding fictional specimens of humanity I'd probably be writing something other than crime thrillers.

More under the cut because this got suuuper long (💀):

RE: querying - I've been "getting ready to query" for like a year at this point, lol, but that's mostly because the edits after my last beta cycle became QUITE a bit more extensive than anticipated. It's definitely for the better, though. I'm very, very happy with the way it's turning out. Not only am I successfully addressing a lot of my own nagging issues and recurrent beta reader comments, but the structural edits are also allowing me to trim the word count quite a bit (which... the word count has been a MAJOR hurdle in my journey with this project, because of tradpub word count limits in my genre versus the complexity of the story). I'm about 70% done with edits at this point. There will be things actively happening on the querying front in the near future - I will update on that asap.

Re: taglist - I don't currently have any taglists because I worry about my ability to be consistent with maintaining them. You're not the first person to ask about a taglist for libaw specifically, though, so I might try to see if doing one just for that project is feasible. Stay tuned.

Side note, I saw your tags on my post from last year about libaw's history and while they are very (!!!) sweet I feel I must clarify: I started the project in 2008 (when I was 17, for reference), but I haven't been working on it actively throughout that entire span of time - there was a long period between late 2013 and early 2022 where I did very little writing/work on creative projects in general, so it was shelved for most of that. It took me 2.5 years to draft (2008-2011) - at the time it was two novels totalling ~400K words - and then I spent most of 2012 and 2013 doing large-scale revisions, which included a full rewrite/merging of the novels in 2013. Then I took it back up again for good in early 2022 (two years ago today, coincidentally). So that's definitely still a very long time to work on one novel, but not as long as the entire span of years since I started it.

I've always said this is the book of my heart, and I won't try to release it until I'm happy with it and know I've given it my best shot. I've never regretted that for a second, but it's taken a long time to get there, for both personal and skill-related reasons (namely, there's a social commentary element to the story that's taken me a lot of effort, research, and development as a writer to get right - it's ongoing, but I'm getting close based on recent feedback). To be close to reaching the point where I can genuinely feel "my" (independent, prior to pub-related edits) work is done after well over a decade is very cool for sure.

#ask #libaw #sorry this got so long jfc

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memorydragon · 1 year ago

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So I thought I was going to take a day off from ranting about how mental I am because of these gay cops, but nope. Normal levels have not receded.

First of all, I really do adore Bu Chonghua. He's a condescending prick at times, but I love him and I love how Huai Shang lets him be so very wrong at times.

Even when that wrong hurts like fuck.

There's this moment when they're both out of town-ish to interrogate someone and they stay in the same room because it's too late to go back. That morning, Bu Chonghua sees Wu Yu walking around, half asleep and shirtless and completely relaxed, and he realized that at some point, Wu Yu has marked him as 'safe'. And yes, I'm normal about that, but the point is, when exactly did Wu Yu mark him as such?

I made that post about misunderstandings being well done in this plot, but I need to clarify that there are sometimes Bu Chonghua is a condescending prick and Wu Yu is very correct when he's calling acab. The first time I read through it, I was like, yeaaaaaah, Hua-ge, I love you, but you're really being a condescending prick. And Wu Yu was well deserved in bitching him out.

The second time I read through it, it hurt like a fucking truck. Putting aside my personal flashbacks of being othered by someone who thinks you're part of 'them' while being completely and totally dismissive of my identity, when Bu Chonghua tries to draw the line between criminal scum and say they don't change, he was off. He was so off by miles and Wu Yu sneers and says he'll never become like Bu Chonghua because he really, really fucked that one up.

Which is why not even half an hour later when Wu Yu gets triggered so badly he's throwing up his stomach lining (onto Bu Chonghua's shirt XD), it had to be so jarring. Because Bu Chonghua correctly assesses his ptsd (which he knows, because he's been living that same empty life and have I mentioned I'm Normal about these trauma kittens?) then says 'I want to pull you back from that.'

If you saw my post from yesterday, yes I've been thinking about this all day to the point I can't even keep reading because massive fucking ow. Now, if you've been following me for a decent length of time, you're probably aware how I feel about spoilers. Namely, I don't care a wit about them. You can spoil me anytime and I won't care. Honestly, I prefer spoilers on some things (not to be hipster, but I was into tgcf before any of my friends and I would have really liked a spoiler about certain things but had no one to give them to me) and my enjoyment always comes from the journey rather than the destination in most cases. My spoiler tag is a polite accommodation for everyone else, which I sometimes completely forget to do, but I do try to keep up with it. (On that note, I'm so sorry, tgcf donghua second season was completely untagged for that. I completely forgot. -_-;;; ) That said, what I'm about to discuss is one of the few times I've actually danced around a major spoiler, because this one is quite big. I've avoided mentioning it explicitly in my previous posts about Tun Hai, but I'm about to mention details. So this is your warning, I'm about to talk about a spoiler that even I consider to be a significant one. If you don't want spoilers, scroll past and don't click the read more.

Because the only two people in his life who have ever genuinely cared about him and not who they thought he was wanted to take him out of that hell. Because his aunt gave him a name he can no longer use, because Xie Xing came back just for that promise. Because he's been forced to live someone else's life, the life of the only person who gave a damn, because he wants so badly to escape to a place where poppies aren't grown and he can't do that as himself. Because he's carrying Xie Xing's wish that he lives on for the both of them. And just fucking ow, little fish, please stop breaking my heart.

And this is where Bu Chonghua is marked safe, even so close after he fucked up so badly, because that's the one thing he's been promised by people who actually see him, that they're going to take him out of that hell and into the light. And Bu Chonghua just casually says this, not understanding why Wu Yu is stunned by something that to him is just normal amount of caring. Because two people died before they could make good on that promise, despite how hard they both tried, and how hard Wu Yu knew they both tried and died in their attempts. And I'm so fucking unhinged by this.

Because when before Bu Chonghua has even realized it, he's put himself along side what only two people have ever tried in in Wu Yu's life. All of that night, when Wu Yu shows him his favorite 'movie' (this little fish, Wu Yu, baby, why are you like this XD), when he follows Bu Chonghua out, when he watches Bu Chonghua basically take on a whole street gang while venting, only stepping in when Bu Chonghua was actually in danger, when Bu Chonghua is sitting there thinking by himself that Wu Yu deserves so much better, and when he realizes that Wu Yu can occasionally stick his head out of his shell and look around if someone is patient enough to wait (Abso-fucking-lutely feral). All of that time, Wu Yu has marked him as safe and I'm so Normal about Them.

#Swallowing the Seas #Huai Shang #This is Mem's life #meta and things #*inarticulate noises*#THEM #Listen I'm normal amounts of unhinged and feral about these novels #which is as it should be completely off the charts

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bluravenite · 2 years ago

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(I’m gonna mention age regression in this, just a heads up!)

Hi :) I saw in the notes on one of your posts that you mentioned age regression and specifically “BAD age regression” and bad age regression headcanons, and I was wondering if you could possibly expand on what you meant by that? (/gen) I’m just a bit confused as to what you mean and as someone who writes age regression, I obviously don’t want to be writing anything that people think is “bad” but I’m just not quite sure what your definition of that is…?

I hope this comes off as/gen because I’m just genuinely curious and if you’re willing to clarify, I would appreciate it, but if not then that’s okay too. I hope you have a good day/night!

Yes of course I am willing to clarify!!

I don't want anyone to feel like writing age regression itself is bad, I am referring to instances where I have not been aware of the contents within a headcanon or a fic about age regression that became triggering.

I am talking about glorification of self harm and eating disorders, grooming and sexual harassment.

Instances where ghouls who are experiencing age regression are put into situations that are mishandled. Because as someone who deals with littles IRL it's just very upsetting to see triggering content not be filtered or tagged properly and especially under age regression content!!

THIS BEING SAID, that is not a callout to anyone, the content I am talking about is also things that I have spoken about with the respective creators either to let them know I needed to block their page because of it, or that they should work to tag things properly so that nobody will be triggered by that sort of content anymore.

It's just something that at the time caught me vERY off guard in a BAD mental place (this year has been hell) and I remember talking about it to groups of people who agreed it was upsetting, so my brain simply dubbed it the BAD AGE REG

That doesn't mean all age regression content is bad AT ALL, in fact I too enjoyed going to the specific tags or blogs sometimes and scrolling through them, I've never had issues with that, please don't ever feel discouraged from writing what you love!! Especially if it makes others happy, just because one person says they don't like something shouldn't make you feel like you need to stop. In fact double it and post more!! If it's what you love.

I hope this made sense? And please feel free to contact me through the messages or here if you want to talk more or clarify anything more I genuinely promise I don't bite and I'm not trying to be mean, I am just unfortunately bad at wording stuff, which I need to fix.

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steppingstonesuniverseguide · 2 years ago

Text

One More Step Out of the Pit: Chapter 13/26

Summary: It had been Tommy and Tubbo for practically forever. They clawed their way out of hell together. They discovered their superpowers together. They started working for the Superhero Guild together before even coming of age. Tommy probably owed Tubbo his life ten times over. So, when the three supervillains he'd been assigned to bring in managed to take Tubbo hostage, well, there was really only one thing to do.

He knew, of course, he was signing himself up for torture and death by offering that trade, but that was okay.

It'd have to be okay.

AO3 Link (See AO3 for Warnings.)

(This story is finished and has been posted on AO3 for a while, but I'm posting it on Tumblr so it's somewhere else too (considering the day AO3 was down a bit ago). The author notes will all be kept as well. If you are following the blog and don't want to see these posts, block the tag #backlog.)

“Technoblade,” a voice called, causing Techno to jerk awake from a deep sleep. His eyes landed on the figure hovering at the end of his bed. “Technoblade, hello,” he said, waving when he saw Techno was awake.

“Ugh. Do you have to watch me sleep?” Techno asked.

“I’m not watching you sleep,” Ghostbur said. “I’m waking you up.”

Techno sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Why?” he asked tiredly.

“You need to watch Tommy,” Ghostbur told him.

“Wilbur was going to watch Tommy,” Techno said with a stifled yawn.

“Yeah,” Ghostbur said, “but then he fell asleep.”

“So?” Techno asked. “You watch him then.”

“I can’t,” Ghostbur said with a frown. “I need to go do something.”

“Schlatt can wait one night. I’m sure he won’t fall back into alcoholism and make a deal with the devil that fast.”

“I’m not going to go see Schlatt.”

“Then what?” Techno asked. “All you do is talk to Schlatt and stare at me or Phil while we sleep.”

“Tommy asked me to check on his Tubbo?”

“…His what-o?” Technoblade asked.

“His Tubbo,” Ghostbur said, as though repeating the word clarified anything. Techno gave him a blank look and he started his ‘bouncing’ which was really just him hovering higher and then lower in a rhythm. “His friend! They’re really quite close, you know. Tommy’s worried he might be sad.”

“Tubbo,” Techno repeated. He was not quite awake enough for this conversation. Or for Ghostbur in general. “Tubbo is… the hero we kidnapped?” he guessed.

“Uh huh. I promised Tommy I’d check on him!”

Now, Technoblade’s brain was still in the process of waking up, but something in what Ghostbur had just said struck Techno as odd. “You know his friend’s name is Tubbo,” Techno said slowly. “And you somehow know where this Tubbo is to check on him.”

Ghostbur must have realized his mistake because the bouncing stopped abruptly until he was almost sitting on the bed and his glowing eyes went wide.

“Ghostbur,” Techno said patiently. “Have you been keeping secrets?”

“W-well you have to understand Technoblade,” he started to babble. “It really is Awakebur’s fault. He can be quite stubborn you know and kind of mean, and well, I did follow Tommy home from HQ the first time because Awakebur wanted to know more about him, but you see Techno he was really sad. And he is quite little, just a baby really. Did you know he’s only 16? And actually 16, 16 not like me or you at 16. Far too young to be doing hero work. I don’t know what they were thinking. And he lives in a little dirty apartment and doesn’t eat nearly enough. He and his Tubbo leave notes around for each other because the heroes were mean and don’t let them work at the same times, so they barely see each other and Tommy gets the bed all dirty because he’s always too tired to shower when he gets home, but Tubbo never says anything because he knows Dream is far too hard on him. And, and Alivebur would be mean, because he decided he doesn’t like him very much. You know how people who are alive can be oh so testy about things. It’s really silly, you know. So, I decided to forget about those things when I’m awake. He is tiny Technoblade.”

“…Will” Techno sighed, pinching his brow.

“And, and, you living people are so vulnerable when you’re sleeping. He’s awake right now, but what if he falls asleep and he’s alone. He can’t be alone. He’s too little. You have to watch him Technoblade. Please?”

Techno could tell Ghostbur was not in the mood to listen to reason. Even if Tommy was 16, that was definitely not too ‘little’ to sleep alone, especially when locked in a secure underground facility no one knew the location of. The ghost clearly did not see it that way, but to be fair, he had a hard time letting Phil sleep alone some nights. “Ugh, fine,” Techno groaned, resigning himself to his exhaustion. He reached over to flip on his lamp.

“Oh, thank you Technoblade!” Ghostbur cooed. “You are such a good little brother.”

Techno’s head whipped around to face him. “Don’t start that shit. We are not related! I have lived longer than you.” Probably. Ghostbur just gave him a mischievous smile. “You’re lucky I can’t smother you with a pillow again,” he grumbled.

Ghostbur just chuckled, sounding for a moment more like he did when he was awake. “Go babysit,” he requested as he faded out of sight.

“You stained my sheets blue!” Techno realized when he vanished. “Why do I even bother trying to have pink ones?”

After pulling on a green hoodie that was actually Phil’s and deciding contacts were definitely not worth it at this time of night and thus forgoing the mask in favor of glasses, Techno took the steps downstairs, grumbling all the way.

Tommy looked up from his place on the bed when Techno shoved open the door to the cell, seeming surprised. Techno had to pause at the sight of him. Ghostbur had apparently gone wild because blue stained his nose and forehead as well as his bedsheets. Apparently Ghostbur had taken it upon himself to decide the Will-please-not-the-face rule was not in place for Tommy because there was clear intent behind the kiss shaped mark above his eye. He might as well have written the word ‘mine’ across his forehead in permanent marker. Fucking, possessive bastard. That wouldn’t be coming off for days.

“What are you doing here?” the kid asked.

“Ghostbur said you were awake and that I should keep you company.”

“I don’t need company,” he grumbled.

“Too bad,” Techno said airily. He eyed Wilbur’s slumped over form leaning against the bed. Idiot. He’d complain all day if he woke with a kink in his neck from sleeping like that. With a shake of the head, Techno turned to the large pile of pillows and blankets Phil had panic gathered in fear Tommy might be cold and began spreading them all out in one corner of the room. He kicked the pile around until it looked comfortable enough and then walked over to where Wilbur sat. He carefully scooted the chair back from the bed, catching his body as it tried to fall forward. He made a confused sound in his sleep. “Hush you, it’s just me,” Techno told him. “Stay asleep.” He carefully slipped one arm under his knees and the other under his shoulder blades. Despite the bit of jostling maneuvering him so he was clutched to Techno’s chest caused, he headed Techno’s order to continue sleeping. He carried him over to the corner and laid him out on the pile of blankets, tossing one over him.

Tommy was staring at him when he turned back. Techno waited for whatever thing he wanted to say, but nothing came.

“What?” he finally asked, tired of the unplanned staring contest.

“You forgot your mask.”

“Didn’t forget,” Techno said. “Didn’t want to put my contacts in.”

“Don’t you have, like, a secret identity?”

Techno shrugged, unconcerned. He honestly wore the mask more for the aesthetic and Phil didn’t even wear one. The only one who really wandered around the city and could possibly be recognized was Will and that cat was out of the bag thanks to a certain ghost. The kid started gnawing on his lip again. “Stop that you’re going to bleed,” Techno scolded.

“Fuck you, I do what I want.”

“You want to bleed?”

“Is that a threat?” Tommy asked, bristling defensively to Techno’s confusion. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure Philza said you can’t hurt me right now, and he might be your dad or whatever, but you still shouldn’t piss him off.”

“It’s not a threat,” Techno told him, resisting rolling his eyes. “I’m not planning to hurt you. I was commenting on you hurting yourself.” The words seemed to sooth him a bit. “Also, Philza’s my friend, not my dad.”

Tommy tilted his head. “Ghostbur said Phil adopted you when you were six.” Fucking Ghostbur.

“Legally,” Techno said, “but we’re actually just friends.”

“You were six.”

“It’s complicated,” Techno said. “What else did he tell you?”

“Not much…” Tommy said. “Just stuff about how being a ghost works… and his name… and your name.”

“Of course.”

“Your supervillain names all suck, by the way,” Tommy informed him. “Having your name in the supervillain name doesn’t make sense. It’s supposed to be a secret identity. What is SBI all of your middle initials?”

“God, I wish.”

“What is it then?”

Techno looked at him. “No.”

“Aw, but what does it matter?”

“No.”

Tommy pushed his lower lip out. Techno stared at him, unimpressed. “…You look weird without the mask,” Tommy said.

“Mmm,” Techno replied, unconcerned. He walked back over to the bed.

“Seriously, no one’d be scared of you if they knew you looked like that under the mask.”

“Oh, trust me,” Techno said. “They would be.” Without warning, he flopped himself face first onto the free side of the double bed, ignoring how his glasses poked his face.

“Hey!” the kid said, sounding surprised. “This is my bed.”

“Ghostbur woke me up in the middle of a sleep cycle at, like, 2am,” he said into the pillow. “Shush.”

“Aren’t you, like, afraid I’ll murder you in your sleep and escape?”

“I’m not falling asleep,” Techno said, his eyes closed, “and no, not particularly.”

“I’m dangerous!”

“Mmm.”

“Bitch.” Techno felt him shuffle around a bit on the bed. He hissed when the movement jostled his injury and Techno opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him. “Your hair’s weird.” Techno was starting to think ‘blank is weird’ was just the way Tommy demanded attention.

“Okay.”

There was a pause. “It looks cool though when it’s all braided and you’re wearing the skull mask.”

“Thanks.”

“Why do you wear it so long though?” Tommy asked. Techno wasn’t getting out of conversation, was he? “I mean, it’s awesome and all, but your main thing is close combat.”

“Used to wear it short,” Techno admitted. “People used to shave it. Then, I’d cut it short with a knife so it wouldn’t get tangled. Phil taught me how to care for it a bit after I met him. I started to like it long when I knew how to take care of it, so now I just let it grow.”

“Well, it’s very pog man.”

Techno rolled his eyes. “Thanks,” he said again.

“Is it naturally pink?” he asked.

Techno snorted at the question. “No,” he said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Tommy said, affronted by his amusement. “Sometimes people with powers end up with weird shit like wings!” Which… was fair enough.

“It’s white naturally,” he said. “Not sure if it was when I was born or if it happened later. I’m due for a dye, see?” He tapped at his roots which he’d noticed the morning before were starting to peak through white.

Tommy leaned over to look, careful to keep his hand on his own pillow.

Techno sighed. “You can touch it.”

“Huh?” Tommy asked.

“My hair,” Techno said. “You can touch it.”

“Really?” he asked.

“It’s basically Wilbur and Phil’s favorite pastime, so it’s not like I’m not used to it.”

With the permission, he reached out a cautious hand to touch a few of the strands on the pillow, his head cocked in curiosity. “Wow,” he said, “how the hell do you get it like this?”

“Lots of time and lots of product.”

He grew a bit bolder, though he did not take near the amount of liberties Wilbur often did. He just basically pet it against the pillow so Techno could just barely feel it. His distraction gave Techno a chance to really look at him. He did look quite young especially now. Ghostbur had said he was 16 even though that made no sense. What was the Hero Guild doing if that was the case?

Sixteen, Techno contemplated. That was young, wasn’t it? Did Techno even know what it was like to be 16? He’d been 16 once, twice, and never.

Sixteen was a home made out of an old, abandoned train car and Phil always bringing back something extra when he went out for supplies, sometimes these things were functional, but often they were not, and he really did not understand. It was a white stuffed bear Techno never understood the significance of until an 8-year-old handed a much newer version of it to him years later saying he could have it. It was being on the verge of trusting after almost a year and a half, but not quite there yet.

Sixteen was also Will’s eighteenth birthday and Techno pinning him to the ground of the living room in the house upstairs, because he wouldn’t stop mocking Techno for still being a child when he was an adult even though Techno had been an adult first. It was Phil ignoring them to cut ice cream cake in the kitchen trusting Techno wouldn’t actually cut off his son’s oxygen with the pillow he’d placed over his head.

Sixteen was lost like water slipping through a drain never to be recovered. It was lost in blood and death: his own, his own, his own, until he managed to make it someone else’s. How could he possibly know when he’d existed for 16 years when for every stumbling two steps forward, he took one back? Did it pass in the blood-soaked arena or on the cold street or in a prison cell? There was no way to ever know.

What was sixteen for this boy? Techno had to wonder. He worried silently that with the gash on his stomach and the pallor to his cheeks, it might linger somewhere closer to the first or third than Techno was comfortable with.

“Why are you looking at me all funny?” Tommy asked.

“How am I looking at you?”

“Funny,” Tommy answered.

Techno rolled his eyes. “Helpful.” Tommy kicked him and Techno narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you want to sleep?” he asked.

“I apparently have had too much caffeine, so sleep is not an option right now.”

“Fantastic,” Techno said, shoving his face back into the pillow.

Tommy gave him about two seconds of silence. “Do you have a superpower?” he asked.

Techno sighed. “Yes.”

“I’ve never seen you use one,” Tommy said, “and we’ve fought a lot of times.”

Techno took his head off the pillow. “It’s not one I use often anymore.”

“Why not?” Tommy asked with a frown.

Techno turned to face him. “If you’d ever given me cause to use it, you wouldn’t be alive.”

He must have accidently done something with his voice because Tommy’s already pretty pale face went a bit paler.

Techno tilted his head. “It wasn’t a threat,” he said. “Just a fact.”

“I could kill you right now if I decided I wanted you dead isn’t a threat?” Tommy asked.

“No because I don’t have a reason to want you dead.”

“You don’t?” Tommy asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

Techno squinted at him. “Kid, what exactly do you think is going on here?”

The kid started biting his damned lip again, his hand clenching his pillow, but he didn’t say anything.

“You are aware we aren’t planning to kill you, aren’t you?” He just stared at Techno. “Shit kid, we’re not going to just murder some unarmed child in our basement. You’ll be ransomed back to the Guild eventually.” Well… at least, that had been the plan, he thought, looking at the blue marks adorning his face.

“But I’m your enemy,” he said with a frown.

“Being a general nuisance and kicking Wilbur in the face a couple of times isn’t quite enough for us to want your head on a spike.”

Tommy was looking at him all confused. Shit. How had Phil explained the fact that most people actually didn’t want to murder people indiscriminately? Technoblade was not equipped for this. Uh…

“Is that…” Tommy interrupted his thoughts.

“What?” Techno prompted when it was clear he wasn’t going to continue his sentence.

“Why didn’t you kill me that one time?” he asked quietly.

“When?” Techno asked.

“You know,” he said. “That one time I found you in the alley. We fought and you had me at sword point. I thought you were going to slit my throat then, but you just walked away. We were alone and I’d attacked you. I always wondered why you didn’t.”

“I thought that’d be obvious,” Technoblade said, but Tommy just frowned. “Did you forget the rest of that fight?” he asked. “You thought you’d snuck up on me and I didn’t notice until it was too late. You’d grabbed my sword and held me at sword point on the ground. You’d thought you’d won.”

“Yeah, but I hadn’t,” he grumbled.

“You hadn’t,” Techno agreed. “In fact, you didn’t even really find me. I lured you there on purpose.”

“Why?”

“It was a test. We’d fought a few times and I wanted to see if you were a threat.” He shrugged. “You weren’t.”

Tommy looked unhappy with that statement.

“It’s not an insult,” Techno said.

“It sure fucking sounds like one,” Tommy replied.

“It’s not,” Techno said. “It’s a compliment really. The first person I ever registered as not a threat was Phil and he’d actually just beaten me in combat. It has nothing to do with skill, though yes, obviously I could beat you in hand to hand considering I wrestled the sword away from you after.”

“I don’t get it.”

Techno hummed. “You asked me why I didn’t slit your throat. Well, why didn’t you slit mine?”

“Well… because I’m a hero,” Tommy said, “and I’d already won or thought I did, so I should just call it in to the Guild. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Techno snorted. “Funny joke kid. Most heroes would love to put a sword though my chest,” not that it would end, had ended, well for them, “especially with no one watching.”

“So, you didn’t kill me then because I didn’t try to kill you?”

“I give people back what they give to me,” Techno said. “It’s why Phil has my loyalty, why Wilbur has my protection, why many people are dead and buried, and it’s why you don’t need to fear dying at my hand.”

“Oh,” Tommy said. “That’s nice of you.” Like he’d just offered to give him a ride home on a rainy day. Like it was a favor he didn’t expect.

This kid was fucked up.

They were silent for a while and then Techno sat up with a sigh. He fished his phone out of the hoodie pocket. “Well, neither of us are sleeping. What types of movies do kids watch these days?”

Tommy blinked at him. “I don’t watch movies.”

“Right.” He fiddled with his phone for a bit and then handed it to Tommy. “I locked you out of everything but Netflix, so don’t even try it,” he said.

Tommy spent about 30 minutes just scrolling through Netflix, reading the titles, before he selected a horror movie seemingly at random.

He proceeded to refuse to back out for the entire 2 hours of the movie’s runtime despite the fact that he was clearly not built for horror movies. Hmm… maybe the R rating did mean something; he was only 16 after all. He ended up curling into a ball the best he could with a cow stuffed animal clutched to his chest and jumped at everything that happened on screen. Ah, so that’s what the stuffed animals in Wilbur’s room were about.

Techno tried not to laugh at the jumpy boy. He really did.

“Dickhead,” Tommy spat when the movie ended. “Stop laughing at me.”

“We could have backed out at any time.”

“No! I’m a man! A big man.”

“Sure, Tommy. Next time you’re watching a G rated movie. Animated animals only.”

“I do not like you.”

“Is that why you’re trying to cuddle me for comfort?”

“I am not. Shut up.” He pressed his forehead into Techno’s shoulder. “When is Ghostbur getting back? I like him better.”

“We could wake up Will.”

“No. Ew.”

Techno chuckled and Tommy sat up, still holding the cow stuffed animal.

“Hey, Technoblade,” he said, looking over at Wilbur’s sleeping form in the corner. “Do you have any shaving cream?”

Techno blinked at him. “What? Why?”

Tommy shrugged, his eyes cutting to Techno and then back to Wilbur and then back to Techno.

Oh, Techno thought. “You know what?” I have a better idea.”

“Technoblade, I’m going to be rather cross with you,” Ghostbur warned from the bed. He’d returned while Technoblade was sneaking up to the kitchen. He didn’t know what they’d discussed while he’d been gone, but it was likely about Tommy’s friend.

Despite his words of warning, Ghostbur didn’t move to stop Techno, likely because Tommy was full on giggling over his small bowl of chocolate ice cream topped with strawberries and whipped cream.

Technoblade shrugged. “Meh. Worth it.”

Author Note:

Ghostbur: Ah, but you see Technoblade. He is baby.

Techno: *rolls eyes*

**1 hour later**

Techno: Oh no. He is baby.

(This conversation was illustrated and you can find it here!)

#backlog

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